Quite a sight, Blue Origin’s first rocket launch southeast of El Paso off I-10 near Van Horn in far West Texas. It’s the latest example of the Lone Star rising.
With SpaceX’s new launch facilities at Boca Chica Beach on a sandy peninsula just east of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast, expected to be ready for Falcon Heavy launches in 2018, Texas will claim an ever-larger share of space commerce.
If the federal socialists can only control their desire to tax or regulate everything that moves.
Posted in Science/Engineering, Space, Texana
Tagged Blue Origin, SpaceX, Texas space facilities
The loony lefties at Salon (find it yourself, I hate even linking to them) already are sneering at the right-wing “lunatics” of Texas. But with President Worm you never know. He specializes in duplicity, after all.
So Gov. Abbott’s instructions to the Texas State Guard (largely a ceremonial unit) to keep an eye on those Pentagon “maneuvers” beginning in July at various places around the state seems sound to me. As well as amusing.
Via Instapundit.
Posted in Blogosphere, Texana, Troops
Tagged Governor Abbott, Pentagon maneuvars in Texas, Texas State Guard
Can’t remember the last time I saluted a small business, but Northwest Hardware and its manager Tracey K. Lara were really special to our Northwest Hills neighborhood. NH operated here, by some accounts, for 44 years and we patronized them for the last twelve, never imagining they would close.
Much less close with so little fanfare. Not even a Going Out of Business Sale for their scores of loyal customers. They just folded their tent and stole away. Which, considering their many years of very personal service to all, is passing strange.
Northwest Hardware was the second business in that shopping center on Far West Boulevard to close since the center was bought out (and tastelessly remodeled with a minimalist look) by Goodwill Industries, the “charity” which gets all of its merchandise for free and is known for paying its execs big bucks while short-changing its disabled employees. One business closing is a coincidence. Two is a trend. Who will be next? And why?
Good luck, Tracey! We’ll all miss you and we’ll be much poorer without Northwest Hardware.
This is one cool jazz album you gotta have. It’s Latin American jazz, called nuevo tango, mostly original but all in the style of Astor Piazzolla, an Argentine composer who grew up in Italy and later moved to Brazil. But nevermind all that confusion.
APQ is my genius violin teacher James Anderson’s quintet, called the Austin Piazzolla Quintet and this their new (third) album is called, simply, APQ. And it’s been out there for purchase (for as little as $10 for ten tunes at an average of six minutes each, but you should be generous and pay $20) for several days now.
Try it. I’ll be very surprised if you don’t like it.
Comments Off on APQ’s new album
Posted in Fiddle Stuff, Music, Texana, The Culture
Tagged APQ, Astor Piazzolla, Austin Piazzolla Quintet, James Anderson, nuevo tango
The Stupid Party, which is really an offshoot of the Democrat Party, making the USA ruled by a single political party (except for the shouting) has caved in on the Worm’s AG nominee.
After holding up Loretta Lynch’s confirmation for months. Ironic name for an AG, that, “lynch.” When anybody gets screwed by the AG, you can say they were Lynched. At best, she’ll be Eric Holder in drag.
And our guy Ted skipped out on the vote instead of being recorded as a nay. He used an old Worm excuse. He had to fly home for a fundraiser. I’m pretty much more interested in Rubio, any how, who did vote nay.
I think he has a much better chance, if he can prove himself sufficiently to the establishment to beat Bush 3 to the nomination. It may be the Vichy GOP, and Rubio not much better than a Democrat, but either we vote for them or we get eight years of Godzillary and Slick. No thanks.
But I won’t expect any hope or change. Our greedy, corrupt and incompetent federal government will continue thus, as today’s confirmation proves.
Comments Off on The Vichy GOP caves
Posted in Blogosphere, Texana, The Culture
Tagged Cruz skips vote, Rubio votes nay, The Vichy GOP caves on Lynch
Depending on how the next Texas court defines “nonmedia,” that is. The Texas Court of Appeals for the Second District (Dallas), seems to be saying if you’re not part of the institutional media, it will be easier for plaintiffs to win a libel judgement against you.
“…this is an unfortunate result, and also requires Texas courts to now decide who counts as ‘media’ for First Amendment purposes. Do book authors qualify? Filmmakers? Academics? Bloggers? (Does it matter whether they make money blogging? Whether they blog on The Washington Post site, even if they are not newspaper employees?)”
I learned to be wary of libel when I was a newspaperman. Hence I try to reserve my criticisms here for obvious public figures, like the Worm, Godzillary and Joey Hairplugs. Take on a small-town mayor, however, one who is not wellknown beyond his jurisdiction and you might run afoul of this new ruling. Not to mention criticizing a private citizen with less-than-temperate language—which would have been true even before the ruling.
Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, Texana
Surveying the Back Forty and the roof this morning, we see that last night’s hail storm (video is someone elses, not ours) battered so many leaves from the rancho’s trees that they cover everything. At one point last night there was so much hail on the patio it looked like drifting snow.
The pea-sized hail lasted only about ten minutes in the midst of a downpour. Had it been longer or the hail bigger I suppose it would have been worse. Lakeway, out west on Lake Travis, seems to have gotten larger. How badly ours damaged the roof shingles remains to be seen. The last time they were replaced was in 2003 after a similar hail storm, but the ice was larger then as I recall.
Of course the power went out shortly after the hail stopped. The power always goes out in Austin when there’s a thunderstorm of any ferocity. It was out from about 9 to midnight. Calculate that inconvenience into your thinking if you’re planning to move here. And then, please, don’t.
UPDATE: Roof shingles look okay. The ones we can see. Need to get the copious amount of tree leaves blown off to be sure.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 