Category Archives: Texana

Jobs or evolution?

Posted on August 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Jobs or evolution?

Speaking of Rick Perry, the Left, as usual, is hammering him over his alleged disbelief in evolution. His religious belief actually is their unspoken agenda.

“Unemployment is 9.1%, the economy is in the tank and you’re worried about a candidate’s position on how old the planet is?”

It’s the usual Democrat ploy. With Palin, it’s abortion. With Perry it’s evolution. Gotta keep the feckless Obamalot in the White House somehow.

Via Instapundit.

UPDATE: It gets worse. Smearing Bachmann as a racist. Pathetic.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Texana

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Will Irene do an Ike?

Posted on August 27, 2011 | Comments Off on Will Irene do an Ike?

Joe Bastardi, late of Accuweather, now forecasting for a start-up called Weather BELL, thinks (as of this afternoon) that Hurricane Irene is of the “genre” of Hurricane Ike which whacked Galveston in 2008. Same low central pressure calculation (950 mb), he says, and a tighter eye than Ike as Irene moves north “riding a path only seen a couple of times in  200 years.”

The picture above is of the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston which Ike cleared of vacation homes and the people still in them who had refused to leave. So, while some forecasters are calling hype on Irene, Joe is betting parts of the Northeast Coast are going to look something like the above.

Hope not. But there it is. We shall see.

UPDATE:  She did not, in the sense that she did not produce Ike’s storm surge waves that cleared Bolivar. So far, inland flooding is her big story.

UPDATE: As of 9/29: At least ten billion dollars in damages and 40 deaths, so far. Epic flooding of rivers and streams from Irene’s drenching rains, from North Carolina north to Vermont.

People who refused evacuation are now surrounded by rising floodwaters. Albany, NY, as far inland as that is, is having 100-year flooding. Irene was not the wimp some are saying she was.

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Posted in Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Rick Perry’s first celebrity endorsement

Posted on August 27, 2011 | Comments Off on Rick Perry’s first celebrity endorsement

Singer, songwriter, mystery novelist, and sometime failed politician Kinky Friedman says he would vote for Charlie Sheen over Obamalot (“Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay.”)

But, all in all, the famed leader of the Texas Jew Boys band of the 1970s, and continuing iconoclastic Hill Country celebrity, prefers Perry:

“So would I support Rick Perry for president? Hell, yes! As the last nail that hasn’t been hammered down in this country, I agree with Rick that there are already too damn many laws, taxes, regulations, panels, committees, and bureaucrats. While Obama is busy putting the hyphen between ‘anal’ and ‘retentive’ Rick will be rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.”

Worth a read in full, here.

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Posted in Obamalot, Scribbles, Texana

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Rain!

Posted on August 26, 2011 | Comments Off on Rain!

Mrs. Charm’s photo, celebrating yesterday’s brief shower in near South Austin, something quite rare this year in any part of the city.

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Posted in Mrs. Charm, Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Help a friend

Posted on August 24, 2011 | Comments Off on Help a friend

My San Antonio friend and Texas Scribbler Web master Scott Chaffin has been diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer.

Self-employed as he is, Scott’s in need of some help for treatment costs. Instapundit’s notice yesterday already is helping. Note tip jar upper right sidebar here. I gave something. You should, too.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, Texana

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WWW: Wonder

Posted on August 23, 2011 | Comments Off on WWW: Wonder

I’ve read a lot of Robert Sawyer’s scifi, and enjoyed most of it, but this conclusion to a trilogy (and, indeed, the first two books, Watch and Wake), takes the prize.

It’s a bit preachy, as others have said, but the AI’s achievements, particularly the takedown of a dictatorship, justifies most of it. Sawyer’s usual liberal politics and Canadian ethnocentrism also are pretty well balanced this time out. And no Texan could complain very convincingly about his Texan main character, or the amusing way he handles her sometimes skeptical encounter with Canadian culture.

The ending also surprised me, which is always delightful in a novel, not so much for the content as for the unexpectedness of its leap. We can only hope that the tale’s singularity, and particularly Sawyer’s AI, is a reliable forecast of our future, in addition to being enjoyable entertainment.

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Posted in Library, Science/Engineering, Space, Texana

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Rick Perry’s negatives

Posted on August 20, 2011 | Comments Off on Rick Perry’s negatives

As Bill Whittle said on Pajamas TV the other day, I’d vote for a floor mop over Obamalot in 2012. A pot of red geraniums would do.

So I don’t particularly care about Rick Perry’s negatives. There are some. You can’t live in Texas and not know how thin-skinned the old Aggie can be. Governor Good Hair the Lefties call him. We do have some Lefties here. Not many, but some. (they’re mostly in the news media.) And, like their chums on both coasts, they prefer mockery to debate.

Nobody can be in power as long as Rick has been governor and not be tempted to cheat, at least a little. So don’t be surprised if this apparent kickback deal turns out to be the next “big story” in the NYTimes. It’s for sure they are digging for something. If necessary they can always fall back on his views on abortion (against) and evolution (doubts it). Gotta help their pal Obamalot continue to par-tay and vacation nine weeks a year on Cape Cod.

Michele Malkin has hit on probably Rick’s biggest problem for conservatives, his attempt back in 2007 to have Austin play nanny (and, probably not incidentally, reward a former contributor) by “mandating” papillomavirus vaccines for every eleven-year-old Texas girl. Of course it went down in flames and ol’ Rick predictably flew off the handle. Now says he was big about it. He wasn’t, actually.

So the guy who now says he wants to make the federal government as inconsequential in our lives as possible (great line, even greater idea) is, obviously, just riding the latest bandwagon, in hopes he can get the GOP nomination. And maybe he will, and maybe he can beat the “first black president” out of a second term. He does have some great lines. I wouldn’t bet big money on him winning. But, like Whittle, I would vote for a floor mop over Obamalot.

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Posted in Obamalot, Scribbles, Texana

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