Author Archives: Red from Texas

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About Red from Texas

I'm proud to be Red. I have lived most of my life in Texas and I love this place. Here are a few things you should know about me. 1. I am happily married and intend to stay so. 2. I live in a house that is older than you, unless you are really old. 3. I own 2 rifles and a shotgun. I think handguns are just trouble. 4. I have never killed a man, but have taken out some deer and hogs. 5. I was a good student, but never close to being valedictorian. 6. In no particular order I like the Houston Texans, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Astros, FC Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur, Texas Longhorns and Houston Dynamo. 7. I hate Dallas but always have a good time when I go there. 8. I was a Dallas Cowboys fan for 26 years but declared that I was no longer a fan during the 1987 strike. 9. I don't own any pets. I like cats, and a good dog and I have met at least 3 of them in my lifetime. 10. I think the best part of Texas is west of I-35. 11. I own two pairs of cowboy boots, but don't wear them very often. 12. I don't have a pronounced Texas accent, but can affect one when needed. 13. My last meal would be fried shrimp with tartar sauce, a baked potato with all the fixins', a dinner salad with 1000 Island dressing, yeast rolls and chocolate fudge pie for dessert. 14. I'm an old Dad, but my children are none of your business. 15. I have two degrees from UT-Austin and somehow managed to fall in love with and marry an Aggie. 16. Most of my family are right-wing nut jobs but I love them anyway. 17. When I get to play golf on a regular basis, I shoot in the low 80's. 18. I don't get to play golf on a regular basis. 19. I think Fort Worth is the best town in Texas by a long shot. 20. I have a mean herb garden. Regards, Red P.S. Remember it's not a color, it's a state of mind.

Stand in Line to Insult Ted Cruz

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The thin-skinned Senator Ted Cruz (TP-Texas) thinks that Pres. Obama has insulted him by criticizing Cruz’s proposal to only allow Christian refugees into the U.S.

When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who is fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful, that’s not American.

Apparently, they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America.  . . . At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of 3-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.

Cruz responded claiming that, “It is utterly un-befitting of a President to be engaging in those kinds of personal insults, attacks.” Cruz further charged that Obama was “belittling the Republican field” and called for the President to “insult me to my face.”

First, the Republican field is doing a more than adequate job of belittling itself with its  ridiculous rhetoric.  Second, Cruz seems to have a double standard about insults.  Cruz has accused Pres. Obama of waging a war on police, being a state sponsor of terrorism and violating the constitution.  Cruz also claimed that Obama’s “vilification of law enforcement” was responsible for the shooting death of Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth – a patently absurd claim in light of the facts surrounding that tragic murder.   Them’s  fighting words where Red comes from.

Moreover, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC points at that if Cruz should be concerned about anyone insulting him it should be Cruz himself –  who just last year argued that we should be accepting Syrian refugees while castigating the President for failing to act.  But that was before Cruz realized he could score some political points with his Tea Party base by attempting to look tough by calling for a halt to resettlement of all but Christian refugees from Syria.

What’s more, Cruz is doing more than just posturing and thumping his chest for the cameras. As the Washington Post reported, the senator “introduced a bill Wednesday that would prohibit refugees from any country the State Department has determined is controlled in part by a foreign terrorist organization from entering the United States.”
 
How would blocking victims of terrorism help? Cruz hasn’t explained, though it’s the sort of move that’s likely intended to impress Republican primary voters.
 
That said, if the senator is serious about a spirited debate over U.S. refugee policy, perhaps the best course of action would be an argument between this version of Ted Cruz and last year’s version of Ted Cruz. 
Interviewed in February 2014, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared that Syrian refugees should be permitted into the United States and argued that this could be done without jeopardizing national security.
 
“We have welcomed refugees – the tired, huddled masses – for centuries. That’s been the history of the United States,” he told Fox News in a video featured on Cruz’s website. “We should continue to do so.” He added: “We have to continue to be vigilant to make sure those coming are not affiliated with the terrorists, but we can do that.”
I’ll look forward to Cruz’s condemnation of Cruz for his reckless indifference to national security.

Today in Texas History – November 19

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From the Annals of the Civil War – In 1863,  Pres. Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of a national cemetery for the soldiers who had fallen in the epic battle the previous July near the small Pennsylvania town.  Barely two weeks before the dedication, Lincoln was asked to make some appropriate dedicatory remarks.  His three minute address followed a two-hour stemwinder given by famed orator Edward Everett.  Lincoln considered the address to be a failure, but it has become recognized as the most forceful and eloquent defense of the democratic ideals of our country ever spoken.

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Red’s NFL Picks – Week 11

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“When it comes to football, God is prejudiced – towards big, fast kids.”

Chuck Mills

Red Rates Himself – Last week 4-2. For the season 40-20. Open front door, stretch arms, breathe fresh air – think positive thoughts.

Your God’s Favorite Team Pick of the Week: Patriots over Bills. Either God shines favorably on the Patriots or Bill B. made a deal with the Devil. The latter seems more likely, but the presence of divine intervention cannot be discounted when looking at the Pats. They lose wide-outs, linemen, running backs, ball boys and they just keep on winning. Red is picking the Patriots to win until they lose and then will pick them some more. That said, Red doesn’t like the lines here. God is telling him to take his money elsewhere. New England 33 Orchard Park 10.

Your God’s Second Favorite Team Pick of the Week: Raiders over Lions. Little known fact, God is a huge Raiders fan. Puts on the black and silver every Sunday, paints his face, opens up a 40, calls in Al Davis and always has 50 yard line seat. A more obvious fact, God hates the Lions. And just like Red, God is also a big player on the over line.  But he is going under this week with the line at 48. When God speaks, Red listens.  Oakland 24 Detroit 21.

Your Goddamnit Pick of the Week: Jets over Texans. The Texans seem to respond favorably to Red’s scorn, so he heaps it on this week. Texans, yeah you! You think that beating the Bengals is going to turn around your season. You have another think coming, Mister. Yeah, you have Red Ryder’s (nee Red Rifle) number. Well take that to the deli counter at the Central Market – they won’t even slice your ham correctly. The Bengals had an off week and you took advantage. La di – frigging – da. You think being 4-5 and sitting atop the Pathetic Excuse for a Professional Football Division (PEFPFD) that is the AFC South is something to shout about. Here, shout this – we are the first team in NFL history to be behind by more than 40 points in back to back games. You think that your defensive woes are behind you. Wait ‘til, Fitzpatrick comes back to NRG Stadium to put an asswhipping on the team that let him go – for Brian Hoyer! The bearded wonder is going to throw for 5 count ‘em 5 touchdowns. The Jets are going to steal your lunch, kick your ass and take names. Guys you never heard of are going to score touchdowns. Bill-O the Clown will be fired at half time. Red is going to bet the farm against you and have two farms come Monday morning. New Jersey 45 Houston 31.

You’re Oh my God! Pick of the Week: OTNA’s over Panthers. This exercise just isn’t all that much fun and much too time consuming unless Red can go crazy every once in a while. OTNA’s are coming off big win over the Saints. While Red is still convinced they suck, the time is ripe to eliminate one more team from the ranks of the unbeaten and it isn’t going to be the Patriots. Interesting fact of the week – never before in NFL history had 3 teams had 8-0 records. Another one falls away this week. Take the OTNA’s and the points – any points will do. Landover, Md 28 Carolina 17.

Your Godforsaken Pick of the Week: Jaguars over Titans. By the rules of the game, Red just can’t seem to avoid putting the Jaguars in the Shit Bowl week after week. These teams have but 5 wins between them. So the battle for the AFC South Basement (which is a sub-sub-basement indeed) will require Red, for the 4th time this season (at least), to pick the Jags to win this week’s Shit Bowl over the Titans. Despite Red’s warning, the Shit Bowl is not necessarily a bad game – just usually so. This one is on the knife edge of watchability so the usual measures (e.g., locking up weapons, hiding poison, avoiding high places) will not be needed. Red thinks it is very likely that Mariota will have an excellent game and that the Jags will score oodles of points against the shaky Titan defense. Red rarely bets the Shit Bowl but is making a big play on the over here at 43.   Jacksonville 32 Tennesee 25.

You’re a Mighty Fortress is Our God Pick of the Week: Dolphins over Cowboys. Red, you ask, “Don’t you have to pick another game to make up the weekly six-pack.” Well, Tommy, that’s technically correct, Red always picks at least six games and the occasional bonus game. But, Sammy, Red is tired this week and almost just dozed off writing this sentence. So where can Red turn when the other games are inducing a soporific state? Ah, Lonnie, Red can always turn to his unmitigated hate for the Cowboys to finish off this week’s picks. So, Jimmy, Red is going to pick the lowly Dolphins led by Lamar Miller who has almost single-handedly destroyed Red’s fantasy football teams this year. Let LM destroy the Cowboys for a change. And maybe next week Red will have to revise the Red Rule – but for now it stands at – Score 13 points and beat the Cowboys. Miami 13 Arlington 9.

Photo of Chuck Mills (left) coaching at Pomona College.

It’s Annual Unclaimed Property Time

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Each year the Texas Comptroller issues its unclaimed property list.  Under Texas law, unclaimed funds in dormant bank accounts, refunds, security deposits and other places will ultimately escheat to the state unless claimed by the rightful property owner.  It’s worth a brief check at ClaimItTexas to see if you might be due some cold hard cash.

Greg Abbott to Terrorists – “You Win.”

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Gov. Greg Abbott (TP-Texas) continues to posture on the issue of allowing Syrian refugees into Texas.  Abbott must know that he is powerless to stop legitimately admitted refugees into the State, but that message would not play well with his Tea Party base.  So instead, Abbott grandstands making spurious claims about his authority.  But under the Refugee Act of 1980, a state governor cannot legally block refugees. Each state has a refugee coordinator, which is funded by the federal government.  The coordinator works with relief agencies and directs federal funds for refugees. So while Abbott may be able to throw a wrench or two into the works, there is absolutely nothing he can do to prevent Syrian refugees from coming to Texas.

What our poor idiot governor is really doing is playing into the hands of ISIS.  ISIS and the ongoing civil war in Syria have resulted in a flood of refugees overwhelming Europe.  ISIS has seemed essentially powerless to stop this incredible population drain.  That is until now.  It seems clear to Red that ISIS intended the latest attacks in Paris to provoke the exact response we are seeing.  Cut off the willingness of Europe, the US and others to accept refugees out of the fear that a few jihadists might slip through, and you will begin to see the end of people fleeing from ISIS because there is nowhere to go.  ISIS wins.   And that is to say nothing of the moral bankruptcy of abandoning thousands of families who are suffering because of the aftermath of W. Bush’s foolish Iraq warmongering.

Maybe the rise of ISIS was not exactly foreseeable, but that Iraq would descend into chaos unless we kept a major, major military presence there was inevitable.  If Red hears, “The Surge worked and Obama lost the war,” one more time his head might explode.  The Surge working only because, the die-hard Iraqis were smart enough to realize that they could wait us out and that there was no way the US was ready for a decades long occupation of Iraq.  What has happened was more or less inevitable, but was also  greatly aided by the civil war in Syria.  And as much as we might like to, we cannot simply wash our hands of this mess.  Taking legitimate refugees is a part of American tradition and responsibility that we cannot now turn our backs on.  Unless, of course, you want ISIS to win.

Today in Texas History – November 18

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From the Annals of Texas A&M –  In 1999, 11 Texas A&M students were killed, one former student was killed and another 28 injured during construction of the annual bonfire for the UT (or TU as the Aggies would have it) game.  The bonfire had been a tradition at A&M for almost 90 years.  Early Bonfires were just that – piles of trash. But over the years, the Bonfire grew exponentially, setting the world record in 1969.  By the time of the 1999 Bonfire collapse, the Bonfire ritual had become a months long endeavor producing what ultimately proved to be a precarious 90 foot tall six tiered structure centered around two telephone poles affixed end to end.   The ensuing investigation revealed that there were no exact plans for the Bonfire, the structure had never been approved by an engineer, and that drinking and hazing were prevalent.  None of that took away from the tragedy of the event and the dedication of those who died in the construction accident.   The tragedy led A&M to declare a hiatus on an official Bonfire. However, since 2002, a student-sponsored coalition has constructed an annual unsanctioned, off-campus “Student Bonfire” in the spirit of its predecessor.

Photo of the 1928 Bonfire.

Today in Texas History – November 17

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From the Annals of Houston –  In 1981, Kathryn Whitmire was elected as the first female mayor of Houston.  Whitmire was first elected as City Controller for two terms and then to five consecutive terms as mayor. She also served as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Texas Municipal League. As mayor she appointed Lee P. Brown as the first African American to serve as police chief. Brown later would become mayor.  Whitmire was defeated in 1991 by political power-broker Bob Lanier in an election that turned largely on Lanier’s opposition to Whitmire’s plan to bring mono-rail to Houston.  Whitmire moved to Hawaii in 2001.

Forget About Syrian Refugees, We Must Protect Ourselves from the Insidious Dangers of the “Stealth Dorm”

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While Gov. Greg Abbott (TP- Texas) frets over Syrian refugees and boldly states that Texas will accept none (Red wonders exactly how that is going to work), our Poor Idiot Governor is ignoring the real crisis facing our state – the specter of the Stealth Dorm (ominous music plays).

It’s a good thing the Austin and Fort Worth City Councils are on the job, because they have recently passed anti-Stealth Dorm ordinances to deal with problems allegedly created by TCU and UT students cohabitating in willy-nilly fashion. The FW ordinance prohibits more than five unrelated people from occupying a single-family home, no matter how large it is, while the Austin ordinance puts the limit at four for new construction. The ordinances are allegedly justified as an attempt to preserve single family neighborhoods and avoid an end-around of municipal zoning laws.  The allegedly awful consequence of allowing people to decide where and how to live include increased traffic, parking problems, noise and “overflowing sewers.”  Red can see possible problems with the first three, but fails to see how 5 college students tax the sewer lines any more than a houseful of teenagers who are all related in some form or fashion.  The hubbub has caught the attention of the Business Insider which you can peruse if you want to know more.

How Would a Real “Tea Party” Fare in Texas

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The divide in the GOP is playing itself out on the national stage as the Tea Party wing (represented by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, etc.) fights it out with the Establishment wing (represented by Jeb!!!!$$$$?, Marco Rubio, John Kasick, Chris Christie, etc.) while the Insanity wing (Donald Trump and Ben Carson) leads the way.  Meanwhile, Red wonders how his many Republican friends can continue to stand with a party in which 43% of its members think Pres. Obama is a Muslim, which believes we can deport 11 million people back to wherever they came from without any problems, still believes that supply-side economics works, and wants to return to the gold standard.

Simply put, the Republican Party needs to break up.  We will have your Grandfather’s Country Club GOP which believes that responsible governance is a good thing, that not all government is inherently evil, understands that many aspects of modern commerce require reasonable regulation, recognizes that compromise is an essential part of life, and which has more or less sane fiscal policies.  Then you will have a Tea Party which will be ideologically pure and stand for kicking out every last undocumented alien, huge tax cuts for the very wealthiest, bring back the gold standard, making gay marriage illegal, destroying any right to choose, instituting religious tests for office, allowing guns everywhere, repealing the 17th Amendment, instituting property ownership requirements for voting and any other policy that will insure that the upstanding good, white people of  America remain in control.

The Texas Tribune has the breakdown on just what might happen if the GOP were to fracture.

Candidate filing is underway and guess what, Captain Obvious? Almost everything that’s competitive in Texas races will come to a head in the March primary and not in the November general election.

That said, recent polling shows that not only are there strong factional differences between Tea Party and non-Tea Party Republicans, but also that the anti-establishment types are a sizable part of the Texas GOP.

The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll asked Texans which primary they’d be voting in; 50 percent said Republican and 35 percent said Democrat. It also asked how they would vote in a congressional race if there were candidates from the Republican, Democratic and Tea Parties. Once again, 35 percent chose the Democrats. The Republican number dropped to 22 percent, and the Tea Party got 17 percent. The percentage of “don’t know” responses rose, too.

One of the poll’s co-directors, Daron Shaw of the University of Texas at Austin, reads that to say that 43 percent to 44 percent of the GOP primary voters are Tea Party voters. That faction is relatively small in the Legislature, especially in the Texas House. But they’re bucking for a promotion, talking about entering enough candidates in the 2016 elections to seriously challenge the conservatives now in power.

The races will firm up over the next month; the filing period that opened on Saturday continues through Dec. 14.

Today in Texas History – November 16

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From the Annals of the Republic –  In 1845, the Republic of Texas concluded its last Indian treaty.  The agreement was the culmination of the Tehuacana Creek Councils, which began in the spring of 1843.  Jesse Chisholm has worked to convince a number of Indian groups, including the Caddos, Tawakonis, Delawares, Lipan Apaches, and Tonkawas, to meet on Tehuacana Creek near the Torrey Brothers trading post south of present Waco. A second council met at Fort Bird on the Trinity River in the fall of 1843.  These councils resulted in a peace treaty between the Republic and the Wacos, Caddos, and others.  However, the Comanches were not represented.  President Sam Houston called another council meeting at Tehuacana in April 1844. The Comanches were yet again absent, but by October 9, 1844, Houston had negotiated a treaty with a part of the southern Comanches, Kichais, Wacos, Caddos, Anadarkos, Hainais, Delawares, Shawnees, Cherokees, Lipan Apaches, and Tawakonis. At the November 1845 council the Wacos, Tawakonis, Kichais, and Wichitas agreed to the treaty of October 9, 1844.