This whole "Democrats outraising Republicans" thing is becoming a trend. Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez is Winning the Money War against Republican challenger Lowell Cannaday, and the Familiarity War, too. Gromer Jeffers fills you in.

Republican State Senator Florence Shapiro of Plano announced that she's going to explore taking over Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's seat after KBH leaves to do whatever she ends up doing, which is a departure set for 2012 or sooner. (You can count on sooner.)

Chris Turner just sent this out, in re: the piles of money he raised through June:

...when we file our campaign finance report with the Texas Ethics Commission tomorrow, we will report having raised over $200,000 in the first six months of this year!

I encourage you to listen to our interview with Chris and visit his campaign website.

President Bush is going to terminate the executive ban on drilling for oil off the shores of the United States today. That alone isn't enough to get this party started, as Congress still has to decide to undo its own prohibition of the practice. Read all about it here.

Bob Dole did some ads for Viagra, but the very mention of the product (or questions about health care policy) has the potential for making John McCain look very, very uncomfortable:

A real asset on the trail, who understands the real problems facing American families and workers:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices...

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

A hot news item this morning is the new FBI plan to allow investigations of people based on ethnicity or race, initiating counterterrorism investigations of individuals without probable cause or evidence. I'll just point you to the story and say that this seems like an incredibly bad idea, and you don't have to be some terrorism or policy expert to know that.

Starbucks is closing 600 stores. Now there will only be one store on some blocks rather than two.

$143

...or now, as the media would have you believe it. Polls are already out and Kay Bailey Hutchison is winning!

(And if she isn't, Perry is totally probably losing).

And according to other media sources, Bill White is definitely possibly running for Governor. Maybe.