If you turn on your TV to cable access Channel 17 (the Travis County channel) right now (Wednesday, at 7:41pm), it appears they are showing some sort of candidate forum. Speaking at this moment is James Crabtree, the Republican who is challenging Dana DeBeauvoir for the office of county clerk. And over on Channel 10, well-known Austin political consultant Mike Blizzard is telling you why you should support the bonds.

And over on CSPAN, you can see the candidate debate for the Indiana 9th Congressional District. Of course, your best bet is to flip over to MSNBC and watch Keith Olbermann, the bravest journalist on corporate TV since Edward R. Murrow.

Bill Welch's fundraising woes are over, thanks to an enormous wad of campaign cash from sources other than his personal piggy banks. The Republican nominee for Travis Co.'s HD 47 seat collected nearly $700,000 in the last month, most of it from major GOP PACs, including House Speaker Tom Craddick's Stars Over Texas. (Democrat Valinda Bolton raised $277,820 in the same period.) Quorum Report did the math on both candidate's big contributions, but Welch's were particularly intriguing because of his previous fundraising problems. QR pointed out that more than $250,000 of Welch's winnings came from Texans for Lawsuit Reform. The sudden windfall effectively kills the buzz that Welch was having to self-finance his campaign because his old primary rival for the House seat, Susan Combs, a GOP leader and the party's nominee for comptroller, still harbored a grudge against the man she beat in '96. For whatever reason, the rumored money embargo has been lifted.

The Travis County Democratic and Republican parties are hurling charges at each other of, either willfully or accidentally, suppressing voter turnout with misinformation and harrassment.

Chris Bell's newest commercial is his first to gun directly for Rick Perry. In "Sick," Bell takes down the guv's cozy relationship with TXU and its disastrous health and environmental effects on the state. (At least Perry got the world's largest bong out of the agreement.)

Watch "Sick" below:

It’s been a tough couple weeks for independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman. For starters, his campaign has been fielding a handful of nasty e-mails regarding the Kinkster’s health care plan, dubbed TexasCare, which he unveiled Oct. 18. Essentially, the TexasCare plan would offer subsidized health coverage for all Texans, paid for on a sliding scale – thus, single folks sans kids, for example, would pay the most for coverage.

Republicans found their voice again this week, and boy is it shrill. It all started when Sen. John Kerry told some college students to "study hard [and] make an effort to be smart... If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Republicans demanded that Kerry apologize for insulting the troops, but Kerry said he was actually insulting Republicans for getting us stuck in Iraq. Seizing on a pointless excuse to make hay out of the Kerry dustup, Gov. Rick Perry called on Democrat Chris Bell to condemn Kerry for his "demeaning statements." If Bell doesn't condemn Kerry's comments, Perry warned, than it must mean that Bell agrees with Kerry. Consider Bell in agreement that Republicans got us stuck in Iraq.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge T. John Ward issued a preliminary injunction blocking state Attorney General Greg Abbott from what plaintiffs, including the Texas Democratic Party, described as overzealous enforcement of a ballot-handling law.

The plaintiffs had sued Abbott because he had prosecuted 13 individuals for possessing the ballots of other voters. The six citizen plaintiffs claim that they were doing nothing more than helping elderly friends or relatives get their ballots into the mail. Abbott contends they were committing voter fraud.

Have the voters of Virginia finally woken up and realized that they don't want a flaming racist for their senator? After weeks of polls showing George Allen (son of the famous Redskins coach; maybe the racism was ingrained in him by that team name) slightly ahead, now they're showing him slightly behind. An average of five polls on Electoral-Vote.com is showing Democrat Jim Webb ahead, 49%-47%. I presume one of those is a CNN poll yesterday showing Webb 50%, Allen 46%. Those numbers could be affected further by a video yesterday showing Allen supporters tackling a heckler and slamming him to the ground. I don't know how that will play with Virginians, but to my eyes it looked mighty thuggish, more befitting the third world or eastern Europe that a democracy.

It's anybody's guess which party will come out on top Tuesday, but it will hinge on five races in particular: Montana, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, and New Jersey. Also worth bearing in mind: As of this writing, Electoral-Vote.com is predicting a 50-50 split, but that site counts Bernie Sanders as a Democrat. Technically, he's an independent, but he always caucuses with the Dems.

Now this is some funny shit, from the Chris Bell campaign:

Background: in 1990, as co-chair of the Clayton Williams campaign, Carole Strayhorn staged an "Ann Watch" outside the State Treasury, wanting to make sure that Richards was putting in her time as State Treasurer. AWR (Ann Willis Richards) Women and Men for Bell will monitor the Comptroller's Office to make sure Strayhorn is now doing her job.

Good luck guys.

Times and location below the fold.