I’ve long told my wife that you can almost always tell someone’s political affiliation just by looking at them. The way they dress. The way they cut (or don’t cut) their hair. The expressions on their faces. The way they smell. The way they carry themselves.

Here in Austin, it’s not hard to spot the liberals.

Not just because they are so heavily concentrated in enclaves like SoCo, the 78704 (which really is “just another” zip code), Whole Foods, and Hyde Park that you could blind-fold yourself and start throwing bricks and be assured of hitting one on nearly every throw (sounds tempting, doesn’t it?).

Now, this visual stereotyping is not fool proof, obviously, and I know there are exceptions.

Like one of the writers that I work with (no, not the grizzled Marine Master Sergeant[Retired]) — if I didn’t know him and ran into him at the Super HEB, I’d assume he was a tree-hugging hippie because of his goatee and near waist-long ponytail (until he cut them both of recently). But he’s not — he’s a retired Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy and as staunchly Conservative as 99% of old retired military men tend to be.

But I’ll bet you I’m right at least 90% of the time.

I bring this up, because I read an interesting guest post on the Texas Tribune from Ted Delisi, who is a Republican strategist who lives here in Austin

Sidebar: Republican Strategist? Really? That’s his job title? Sounds a bit…vague. Something an under-employed person would list as their occupation while filing for food stamps. Like “life coach,” or “Social media guru.”).

Today, the Trib found a local Democratic strategist, Ed Martin, to counter Mr. Delisi’s article.

Another Sidebar: Nice job by the Trib of not letting the single article written by a Conservative on their site go unchallenged. It’d be nice if they allowed space for a Conservative challenge to every Liberal-slanted piece they post, too. Of course, that might mean having to put a Conservative writer (or “strategist”) on staff. Probably not going to happen on Evan Smith’s watch.

Anyhow — the Liberal piece and the Conservative piece were each accompanied by a picture of the respective “strategists.”

Without having to click on the links to see which one wrote the Conservative piece, and which wrote the Liberal piece — just take a look at their pictures and guess which one is which:

Ted and Ed? Or Ed and Ted? Which one is the Conservative strategist, and which one is the Liberal strategist?

See how easy that is?