When is the rot of politicization of everything and the spread of political correctness going to stop? We don't know about you, but your Editor has had enough.

Think about it, in recent years free speech has been under assault on college campuses. When you go to a Broadway show it is entirely possible to witness a performance that ends with having to listen to the actors political agenda. All for the price of a ticket for entertainment. Now the rot is spreading to professional sports where we have players protesting by refusing to stand for the National Anthem, and it's a good bet the NBA and maybe baseball are next.

While we are venting, President Trump did not help things when he went beyond where he should have gone - talking about respect for the flag and our National Anthem to telling NFL owners what to do. President Trump was successful in injecting himself into the middle of this.

TCR has an idea, let's respect the flag, our nation and support the right of free speech (without being shouted down,) which includes professional athletes or performers, but not when they're performing.

As bitter as the politics in America have become is it asking too much to keep the over-the-top partisanship out of some aspects of our lives? Can't we go to enjoy plays, sports, etc., even with people we disagree with politically without politics inserting itself into the proceeding? TCR says yes and this is critical. If not, we are in for a lot more difficult future.

While the GOP nationally as a brand continues to deteriorate, according to a new CNN poll released on September 25, 2017, only 29% [of those polled] hold a favorable view of the Republican Party, down 13% since March 2017. The lowest mark since the question has been asked beginning in 1992. As a contrast, the Democrats approval rate is at 32%, not much better.

So in this nationally toxic environment you would think that the party leadership would be doing things to help move the party ahead. So projects like a Judicial Petition Signing Party is one barometer of party effectiveness.

A few weeks ago the Harris County GOP held a Judicial Signing Party and according to some of our incumbent judges, it did not go well. First, it was in the wrong location. Second, attendance was disappointing with many judges getting only the participants and their staff's signatures. Keep in mind Simpson was forced to do the signing as a one-time event by the Judges as he originally proposed to do signing parties at regional offices.

Not waiting to get full information on the $1 billion budget busting City of Houston bond issue, Simpson pushed a resolution in support of the bonds, which the party's precinct chairmen voted down. Congratulations to Jim Hotze and others who correctly pointed out that the largest bond issue in the City of Houston's history does nothing for flood control and repairs and that the city has no plan of how to pay off the bonds.

These are just the latest examples of failed leadership following the disaster of the 2016 election in which Simpson led the GOP to a historic sweep by the Democrats. In a presentation, this week at the Downtown Pachyderm's Club, Simpson is still selling his discredited plan for success he's been touting since before the 2016 debacle with no apparent change.

Does anyone believe the results will be different in 2018 using the same, tired plan? Could it be that Paul Simpson's goal is the final demolition of our countywide GOP? It's either that or gross incompetence. Regardless, our countywide officials and candidates deserve better and that's why a change at the top of the Harris County Republican Party is desperately needed as soon as possible.

In the fifteen plus years that Red, White & Blue has been on the air, we have done a lot of important shows, this week's is the most important. The subject is "THE BAYOU CITY UNDERWATER - ARE THERE SOLUTIONS?"

The guests are Jim Blackburn and Dr. Philip Bedient, who lead Rice University's Civil & Government Engineering Department.

Tune in on Friday at 7:30 p.m. or Saturday at 6:30 p.m. or set your DVR or find the show on the PBS TV 8 website at houstonpublicmedia.org.

You will learn there are solutions and we need to be prepared to invest about $20 billion and upgrade our development rules. The spending would come from City, County, State and Federal funds. Failure to do so, courts further disaster and a possible crushing blow to our Southeast Texas economy.

The young, hardworking Democratic candidate Robert O'Rourke should not be underestimated.

TCR has looked into Robert and his background and key political positions and funding sources and we find a younger version of radical leftist, Senator Bernie Sanders. He was recently featured in a left-wing website Splinter. In the article, we learn the true nature of O'Rourke and his positions.

Some things we have learned about his positions: transgender military ban, he supports mental health benefits to veterans who received a dishonorable discharge, supports legalized marijuana, and term limits.

On the very critical issue of health care, he supports the Sanders Plan which is single-payer health care, which according to the liberal journalist says, "O'Rourke's views tend to align with the Bernie wing of the party."

Texas already has a young anti-incumbent, Senator Ted Cruz, whose views align more with Texas voters. But Cruz needs to work and campaign as hard as O'Rourke will.

Texas does not want nor need a Bernie Sanders clone Democrat representing them in the U.S. Senate.

TCR Comment: What follows are the highlights of a recent article by Matthew Vadum, an award winning investigative reporter. Vadum lays out what a terrible idea it is if you care about health care.

"The un-American abomination that is single-payer health care, the goal of progressives and other subversives for a century, is rearing its ugly head again in wake of the Republicans' pathetic failure to deliver on their promise to repeal the national embarrassment that is Obamacare."

"Democrats smell blood in the water after Republicans betrayed their supporters by not driving a stake through the heart of the wealth-transferring Obamacare law that is fundamentally changing America by reducing the quality of health care delivery and making Americans poorer.

"Single-payer has never been about health. It is about one thing: control. It is the ultimate betrayal of the American Revolution. It is the triumph of tyranny over the ordered liberty of the American experiment in self-governance.

"The push comes as Obamacare wreaks havoc on consumers, insurers, and providers. The Obamacare exchanges are collapsing, insurers are pulling out of markets across the country, insurance policy premiums and deductibles are ridiculously unaffordable, and are certain to grow even more expensive.

"It also comes as trend-setting California backs away from plans for a state-level single payer program because it would be larger than the entire state budget.

"The leader of this effort is media heartthrob Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described socialist who is more of a communist.

"Sanders wants the hyper-expensive, bureaucratic, actuarially unsound government program known as Medicare to expand to cover everyone in the United States.

"Instead of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars trying to administer an enormously complicated system of hundreds of separate insurance plans, there would be one insurance plan for the American people with one single payer," Sanders said yesterday.

"That socialists have been able to make the argument that government health care is more efficient than market forces without experiencing the widespread ridicule hurled at the Clintons when they pushed for "HillaryCare," is a testament to the lousy messaging skills of Republicans.

"Meanwhile, the so-called Affordable Care Act that Graham is trying to prop up, is falling apart, exactly as it was designed to do. This diabolical program that emerged from the minds of Saul Alinsky adherents, guarantees total government control over health care eventually. Insurers, who are only too eager to sell the rope today that will be used to hang them tomorrow, may get rich in the short term but bankrupted longer-term.

"The system is built on lies. It is a Trojan horse for a total government takeover of health care in the United States.

"Obamacare was enacted only because of a "lack of transparency" in the lawmaking process and the "stupidity of the American voter," Jonathan Gruber, who helped design the program, infamously said in 2014. The law was "written in a tortured way" to fool lawmakers and their constituents, he said.

"If you had a law that made it explicit that healthy people are going to pay in and sick people are going to get subsidies, it would not have passed," Gruber added.

"How can so many people be so obtuse?

"Left-wingers believe government is the solution to the nation's problems. They don't trust markets and insist on controlling them, with disastrous results, as history has shown over and over again.

"Markets actually work well, especially the way capitalism is practiced in the United States. The problem arises when holier-than-thou types come along and declare a basic product or service like health care a fundamental human right, as Obama and other socialists have done for decades. Then government gets involved, red tape explodes like a mushroom cloud, those who provide the product or service have targets painted on their back, and everything gets screwed up. We all suffer.

"The textbook communist approach to a total takeover of health care is harsh. Nationalizing hospitals, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and placing slave collars around the necks of physicians and medical support staff is rough stuff.

"But we do know that with the single-payer system we already have that is, the one provided by the scandal-plagued Veterans Health Administration, patients die every day of neglect, having waited out their last days on lists, ignored and in agony. Government control kills.

"When the government controls every aspect of health care, interest-group warfare runs wild. If you belong to a group with a trendy disease like HIV/AIDS, you get showered in research dollars and care. Get something a little more obscure that isn't a vote-getter, and you die. Under single-payer, you can't go elsewhere in the country, because single-payer is total. Single-payer systems, like the one in Canada, send patients to the U.S. for treatment all the time because the required care can't be provided in that country. Single-payer doesn't triage well, either. Britain's penny-pinching yet monstrously expensive single-payer system routinely denies relatively basic care and allows Britons to go blind and deaf.

"If the U.S. falls under a health care Iron Curtain, there won't be anywhere to go, unless maybe you're rich and can travel to the various, isolated pockets of health care excellence around the world that haven't succumbed to statist strangulation. That is no solution."

Red, White & Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland and liberal commentator David Jones on Fridays at 7:30 pm on PBS Houston Channel 8, replaying Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 8, Monday at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpublicmedia.org.

Red, White & Blue returns, thanks for your support!

09-29-2017: Bayou City Under Water - Solutions with flood experts Jim Blackburn and Dr. Philip Bedient of Rice University.

10-06-2017: Veterans - What are we doing and what should we be doing? With Judge Marc Carter and Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs Director, Carl Salazar.

Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his twenty-first year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last sixteen years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. As a public service for the last 13 years, Gary has published election guides for the GOP primary, general elections and city elections, all with the purpose of assisting conservative candidates. Gary is also in his 15th year of co-hosting Red, White and Blue on PBS Houston, longest running political talk show in Texas history. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant. He can be reached at (713) 621-6335.