An admission upfront: I’d rather cover a Cat. 3 hurricane than politics. And in the Dallas bureau, which covers much of the Gulf Coast, we’ve had no shortage of storms this season.

That said, we do get the odd political story tossed our way, especially in this very busy political season. Our latest assignment was to do a profile on one of the races for U.S. Senate. Incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn is facing Texas Representative and Democrat Rick Noriega. Part of the assignment was covering the first of two debates where the candidates would face off.

Picture Houston, at a local television station. Various television and print journalists have been corralled into the lobby. The candidates walk down the stairs from a couple rooms where they’ve been engaged in last minute prepping. We take pictures, ask a couple questions and they file past us into the studio. We settle into our seats and get ready to listen up. But we’re not alone.

Every network producer has a Blackberry. If not two. It is the must have accessory. Lose my luggage. Steal my wallet. But try to take my Blackberry and you’ll leave one arm behind. On this particular night, however, I wish I’d accidentally left my Blackberry in the car. This is because, in the space of  a one hour-long debate, I got twenty-one emails. I know. I counted them. They were from the representatives of the two candidates.

It went something like this…

8:06 Noriega’s people: “Cornyn says he’ll put taxpayers first, but proposes 30% sales tax on everything you buy.”

8:10 Cornyn’s people: “More than 8 million Texas taxpayers have benefited from tax cuts.”

8:11 Noriega: “Cornyn ignores his tax and borrow voting record, touts fiscal conservatism.”

8:19 Cornyn: “Information on what tax breaks were included emergency rescue plan.”

It continued. Keep in mind, each email contained several paragraphs in addition to the statements I’m including here. Good thing I’m a multi-tasker and can listen, write and read all at the same time.

8:24 Cornyn: “The facts on Senator Cornyn’s immigration plan.”

8:24 Noriega: “Cornyn failed Texas families on financial bailout…”

8:25 Cornyn: “Facts on the Fair Tax.”

8:25 Noriega: “Cornyn uses immigration issue to divide Texans.”

8:26 Noriega: “Texas families can’t afford Cornyn’s health tax.”

((Note the times on this last batch. Both sides are obviously accomplished typists.))

8:31 Noriega: “Cornyn: It wasn’t me, shifts blame for six years of failures in Senate.”

8:32 Cornyn: “Rep. Noriega: Medicare is not the problem.”

And so on. I’ve only given you half of them, but you get the idea. Gone is the day where a journalist could actually go to an event and anticipate spin AFTER the debate. Now, we get it play by play. Which is why I’m getting out my rain pants and hoping for this political storm to be over soon.

Hurricane coverage usually only lasts a few days, maybe a week. For this one, we’ll have to ride it out all the way through November 4th.

Busted.

We went to TH Harris Middle School to do a story on a traveling fitness center. The program, put on through Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, is targeting the epidemic of obesity in kids. I started talking with the nutritionist for the program who told me that most of the kids don’t eat breakfast or, worse, they’ll grab a candy bar. (I must have looked guilty because not one of us in our team of three, not producer, photographer or correspondent, had eaten any breakfast that morning. I was going to grab an apple in the hotel but some guy was using the fruit bowl as a hat rack. Noooooo thank-you.)

Excuses, excuses. The interview was early. We didn’t have time. This is whining similar to what the nutritionist hears from kids. She rattled off several quick options:

• Whole grain bread or toast with peanut butter.
• Yogurt and a piece of fruit.
• A hard-boiled egg.

I’d like to point out that after the interview when we stopped at Starbucks, while my coworkers had an old-fashioned glazed donut and pumpkin bread, respectively, I was guilted into a fat free yogurt. To be fair to my coworkers, they did go “light” on their frozen caramel-mocha frappuccinos.

Back to the kids. After skipping breakfast, sometimes getting to school doesn’t help much. Many schools serve unhealthy lunches, stuff kids like, say pizza and chicken nuggets, but stuff that’s also off the charts in terms of fat and salt. So out of three meals, two are already a waste. Throw in busy parents and fast food for dinner and you have the makings for arterial disaster.

Here’s where we are:

• About 19% of kids 6-11 are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Over the last three decades, the number of overweight kids has tripled.
• Obesity puts kids more at risk for things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, asthma and sleep apnea.
• Overweight kids become overweight adults. The CDC says that 80% of kids who are overweight between the ages of ten and fifteen will be obese at age 25.

The fitness expert for Ochsner told me something I found tragic. This generation of kids is the first generation not expected to outlive their parents. But you can’t expect kids to do the right thing if parents and other adults are hanging on to bad habits. If we want kids to shape up, we first have to do it ourselves. To help our kids, and ourselves, here are a couple of interesting websites:

• http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/healthyweight/children/index.htm
• http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/wecan/

To people trying to change: I feel your pain. Lunch is upon us and we’re in a city where just looking at the food is apt to add calories. (Would a Po Boy could be considered health food?)

MAGGIE’S ON TWITTER: www.twitter.com/lineback

3pm: We left our location at the flooded out highway and made our way downtown. Fortunately, Kris Gutierrez spent a few years reporting in Houston so he knew his way around. We passed by Reliant stadium, which apparently has damage, but we couldn’t see any driving by.

Downtown was a different story. At a neighborhood near downtown there were trees and bushes all over the street. Further down, at the JP Morgan Chase center, there are windows busted out all over the place. Apparently furniture from one building flew out and busted windows on a building across the street. Workers are trying to get it all cleaned up. In fact, driving around town, it’s been impressive. There are city crews all over where we’ve been cleaning up trees and debris.

Cars driving on the wrong side of the freeway.

11:45 a.m. The first we new something was wrong was when we saw a car driving right at us. What the? No one is supposed to be on the freeway much less driving the wrong way on the freeway. A couple other cars passed us driving the wrong way. Then we saw it. Highway 288 just south of downtown Houston dipped down and disappeared into a lake. In both directions. A TX DOT employee told me it’s at least 6 feet deep.

We met a poor man who drove right into the water before he realized anything was wrong. He got his car out but there are now at least three inches sitting in the bottom of it.

MAGGIE’S ON TWITTER: www.twitter.com/lineback

Surfside Beach is a small beach town of less than a 1,000 people. It’s situated between the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Waterway, about 44 miles west of Galveston.

When we got here this morning in darkness, it was already flooding. As the sun began to peek out, we were surprised to see big waves just a few hundred feet from us. In the space of a half hour, dry roads became small rivers.

After our 8:30a EST live shot, we had to move our truck. We got an ominous warning from Janice Dean about the severity of the storm surge. You can see evidence of that here in Surfside Beach. We’re no where near the storm’s landfall and the town is already drowning. And it could be tragic. We saw a man and woman and their dog driving in the flooded street to get to their home.

They said they were going to ride out the storm. We told them what Fox forecasters had told us — that “life threatening inundation” was likely. About a half hour later, the man’s wife came back in tears, alone. She was leaving. He was staying. We heard there were a couple of his neighbors staying as well.