Category Archives: Texana

Democrats shut down I-35 South

Posted on September 19, 2015 | 4 comments

Well, actually it was the local Austin version of Black Lives Matter. But BLM is an ally of Democrat presidential candidate Ma Barker. She’s met with their national group to plan strategy for their protests. Which they turned on her rival Bernie Sanders.

So, to my mind, BLM is a Democrat operative outfit. And what they do is a Democrat do.

The shutdown of the southbound lanes of I-35 through downtown Austin began at 1 p.m. and lasted about ten minutes with cops blockading the lanes so nobody would be run over. I bet the drivers were just thrilled as all get out. You wanna bet this will convince them to vote Democrat? No, I don’t think so either.

UPDATE:  The chief Democrat, our Barry Hussein, also plumps for BLM.

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Posted in Texana

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Steve Patterson: Hatchet Man

Posted on September 15, 2015 | Comments Off on Steve Patterson: Hatchet Man

My old friend Marcos the barber has the best take I’ve heard yet on why Texas athletic director Steve Patterson was fired today. Marcos, a devoted Longhorns fan, figures they hired Patterson to impose a long list of changes, take the heat for all of it and then be fired for it, making the university look innocent. With a bonus, in addition to his guaranteed $1.4 million  a year through 2019.

Among other things, Patterson cleared the basketball and football decks of white head coaches and hired black head coaches for what are, after all, mostly black teams: Shaka Smart and Charlie Strong. He also raised ticket prices at the football stadium, instituted sales there of beer and cleared some of the deadwood donors from their box seats to make room for new, richer blood. None of which changes are likely to be reversed, according to Marcos, since they are undoubtedly what the U. wanted all along.

“Arrogant, uncaring, humorless,” the daily’s Kirk Bohls describes Patterson. In other words the perfect hatchet man. If you ever read it in the local snooze media just remember you saw it here first. Courtesy of my friend Marcos.

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Posted in Texana, Texas Football

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Waco, circa 1993

Posted on September 10, 2015 | 5 comments

You get a lot of stupid assignments in journalism, mainly because a lot of editors have no imagination. They also have a herd mentality, i.e. if others are doing it they have to do it, too. Even if their resources would be better spent doing something original.

Thus I wound up sitting and sleeping in a cold car during much of the February to April ’93 Branch Davidian standoff, in a long line of similar cars on a two-lane back road occupied by similarly bored journalists similarly assigned to be part of the totally similar herd. The only break in the scrum blockaded front and rear by the state police was to leave the car now and then and go hang out with the TV guys in their heated satellite vans.

Fortunately we were too far away from the BD compound to have to listen to Billy Ray Cyrus sing Achy Breaky Heart, which the FBI insisted on loudspeakering into the compound hour after hour in a weird attempt to break the religious fanatics from their biblical fanaticism. Fat chance. We also were too far away even to see the ball of fire and the boiling black smoke when the compound finally went up and killed all those kids who were supposedly the whole point of the federal siege.

Reading this old Larry McMurtry piece brought it all back. The waste of time. The cold. The boredom. The impossibility of learning anything that everyone else didn’t already know. It’s one reason I consider myself a recovering journalist. And gratefully at that.

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Posted in History, Obsessions, Texana

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Facebook’s windy blowjob

Posted on September 8, 2015 | Comments Off on Facebook’s windy blowjob

“Facebook announced that it’s building a massive new data center in Fort Worth, Texas, and that the facility will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy…”

Impossible. Totally impossible. As big a “blow” job as any lie our Barry Hussein ever thought of telling, about health insurance, Benghazi or Iran. As Power Line notes:

“…all Facebook is really doing is calling 200 MW of new general wind power ‘their’ power, even though it will feed into the general grid whose backbone and main stabilizer will be natural gas and coal.”

“New general wind power” totally subsidized by federal grants because it can’t compete with fossil fuels.

But can the average lefty journalist or news reader figure that out? ‘Course not. Facebook gets its “blow job” and Barry Hussein gets his alternative energy sleight-of-hand. And, as always, the taxpayer gets screwed.

Via Power Line.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Texana

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Go get ’em, Ted

Posted on September 2, 2015 | Comments Off on Go get ’em, Ted

Our own Ted Cruz lays the blame for the ambush killing of the Texas deputy where it belongs: on our incompetent president and his one-sided racial policies and incendiary racial remarks.

The Democrat operatives of the alphabet media, meanwhile, jumped on the deputy’s boss, the Harris County sheriff, for alleged “insensitive  statements.”  The most biased among them, MSNBC, ran the ugliest picture of Ted anyone around here has ever seen.

Gov. Abbott ordered Texas flags to half-staff in honor of the white deputy, Darren Goforth, who was shot in the back 15 times, apparently by a black man who has been arrested. As near as I can tell via Google, the president has not done the same with U.S. flags, which is not a surprise. He had to be pressured to do it for the Chattanooga military recruiters who were slain by a jihadi.

On Monday, however, Mrs. Charm and I saw several lowered American flags at businesses along U.S. 290 in Harris County as we returned to Austin from Houston. Little ad-hoc decision-making there, apparently.

Nevertheless, according to CNN, President Obama made a condolence call Monday to Goforth’s widow. Obama said he told Kathleen Goforth that he would continue to “highlight the uncommon bravery that police officers show in our communities every single day. They put their lives on the line for our safety.

“Targeting police officers is completely unacceptable — an affront to civilized society.”

I don’t remember any previous highlighting of uncommon bravery, but maybe I’m having a senior moment.

UPDATE:  Everyone needs to back off. Now.

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Posted in Obamalot, Texana, The Culture

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Mrs. Charm finally at the goal line

Posted on August 28, 2015 | 2 comments

Seems like it took forever to get Mrs. Charm to her goal line date with the high-dose chemo at M.D. Anderson for her recurring lymphoma. She was in pretty bad shape when we went back Wednesday, after she demanded the docs get moving. Chemo finally began sometime after midnight Thursday in her 15th floor hospital room. It’s expected to continue through Saturday night. The first round of three, that is, with two weeks recovery in between each one.

I’m planning to drive back Sunday morning to pick her up and bring her home the same day, hopefully before dark. U.S. Highway 290 between Austin and Houston is easy. It’s the Houston end that sucks. Driving in six lanes of freeway at 70 mph is hard enough in daylight. Dazzled by all the lights, and the other cars and trucks weaving in and out, it’s much harder at night. Plus my 71-year-old eyes can’t read the signs anymore until I’m almost on top of them. But after three weeks of back and forth frustration I’ve almost got the route memorized.

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Posted in Cancer, Mrs. Charm, Texana

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“I hope everyone gets well”

Posted on August 22, 2015 | 1 comment

So said a chirpy fellow, ostensibly from Nacogdoches, on the shuttle bus Thursday from the Best Western to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s main building. Underscoring that cancer patients are all over the place.

We’re back home again and not looking to return until the 31st. All that’s waiting now, apparently, is the busy MDA pathologists’ analysis of Mrs. C.’s tests, including a tissue biopsy of one of her cancer-loaded lymph nodes. Oh, and her doctor’s vacation. As she says, never get cancer in August because everyone is gone.

She’s still running a fever, knocked back by continuous doses of Tylenol and in constant pain which pain pills every six hours still are helping. But her right leg is swollen up to twice the left one’s size, so much she doesn’t like to be seen and walking is difficult. Treatment can’t start too soon for us.

Mr. B., meanwhile, had convinced himself, through faulty math, that treatment would be for nought. Our Israeli pal Mr. Goon, who has a degree in physics, explained where he went wrong. For once he was happy to be mistaken.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Cancer, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Science/Engineering, Texana

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