Astros are 2.5 games behind hated Texas Rangers
Magic Numbers:
10 to clinch AL West – requires a small miracle at this point
7 to clinch Wildcard playoff spot – very little margin for error
Astros Magic Number Update
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Author Archives: Red from Texas
Houston Texans Update
We have good news and bad news for Houston Texans fans.
The Good News: After beating the mighty Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who were the BNL worst team in football last season) the Houston Texans are now in first place in the god-awful, pathetic excuse for a professional football division that is the AFC South.
The Bad News: After beating the mighty Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who were the BNL worst team in football last season) the Houston Texans are now in last place in the god-awful, pathetic excuse for a professional football division that is the AFC South.
Curtain Comes Down on Carly Fiorina in Texas
Unfortunately, the curtain literally came down – not figuratively and Fiorina’s campaign goes on. But fortunately no one was hurt and the candidate handled the situation with humor.
Today in Texas History – September 28
From the Annals of the Border – In 1859, Mexican rancher, politician, military commander and at times outlaw Juan Cortina rode into Brownsville with a band of 80 men and seized control of the town. Cortina had a long running feud with the Anglos in south Texas who were attempting to oust him from his family’s extensive holdings on the north side of the Rio Grande in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. For his efforts, Cortina was viewed as a champion of Mexicans living along the border in the years after the War. The first “Cortina War” arose from an incident on July 13, 1859, when Cortina saw the Brownsville city marshall, Robert Shears, arrest and brutally beat a Mexican who had once been employed by Cortina. Cortina shot the marshall in the shoulder and rode out of town with the prisoner. Early on the morning of September 28, 1859, he rode into Brownsville again, and seized control of the town. Five men, including the city jailer, were shot during the raid. Cortina’s hold on Brownsville was short-lived as residents of Matamoros convinced him to return to Mexico which he did on September 30.
Featured Artist of the Day
Red watched Julia Hatfield for over an hour on Friday performing at Reba’s in Warrenton and was very impressed with her voice and completely surprised by the quality of her original songs. Not many female singers can get away with singing Folsom Prison, but she pulled it off. And she loves Dolly! Watch out for this young lady from Navasota, Red thinks she is going places.
Red’s NFL Picks – Week 3
“You never lose a game if the opponent doesn’t score.” Darrell Royal.
Thanks, Daddy D. We’ll file that in the almost a tautology column.
Red Rates Himself – Last week 3-3. For the season 8-4.
Your Never Lose Pick of the Week: Patriots over Jaguars. Every year some wretched excuse for an NFL franchise digs deep into their hip pads and pulls out a win over a team they have no business beating. Unfortunately for the Jaguars, this is not that week. There will be no – On Any Given Week – inspirational speech after this one. Red does believe that the Jags are going to better than predicted. But the most we can say this week is, “That on any given week the Patriots are likely as not to kick ass and take names.” New England 42 Jacksonville 27.
Your Don’t Score Pick of the Week: Raiders over Browns. An unlikely candidate for Red’s NFL Game of the Week – but here it is. JFF against Lil’ Carr. JFF can be successful if he has receivers that can go up and pull up for grabs throws out of the air. Oh wait, this just in – 36 year-old journeyman Josh McCown to start on Sunday for Browns. Red feels better about this pick already. Raiders will not make the playoffs but they will be hanging around for a long while and surprising a lot of folks – including Browns’ fans this weekend. Oakland 33 Cleveland 30.
Your Texas Long- Something or Another Pick of the Week: Falcons over Cowboys. Some claim the Falcons are the surprise team of the league so far. Not Red. He had them coming out of the box strong and hanging on to win a weak-kneed NFC South. For Red, the Cowboys are the surprise team – surprised that they keep getting handed wins. Don’t expect the Falcons to fail to show up for 3 quarters like the Giants and Eagles. Oh, and throw in the fact that Romo and Bryant are out – while the Falcons seem remarkably healthy – and it is hard to see Das Boys keeping this one close. Expect the Falcons to dominate possession – which might be the best thing that could happen to a Cowboy offense looking for a grip. One thing is for certain, barring a tie there will be one fewer undefeated team on Monday. Atlanta 29 Arlington 10.
Your Daddy “D” Stands for Dump Pick of the Week: Seahawks over Bears. Since this is the week’s only matchup of winless teams, it is by default this week’s Shit Bowl. Plus, it’s just fun to put the reigning NFC champions in the Shit Bowl. This one could get ugly or perhaps, Red should say, uglier. Don’t give into temptation and turn on a rerun of Sex in the City. No. You have to stick it out and watch every play of this turgid turd tussle. Seattle 24 Chicago 3.
Your Double D Pick of the Week: Broncos over Lions. Red really needs to stop picking against home teams, but he just can’t here. The Lions appear to be in disarray on offense with a complete inability to move the ball on the ground. Red challenges you to name a Lions running back. Hmmm, Red thought so. On the other hand, the Broncos offensive line is pathetic and ol’ PMS can’t get hit like he did last week and end up spending the rest of the season hanging of Kubiak’s shoulder on the sidelines telling him what play he should be calling. For the PMS fans out there – I know who you are – don’t miss this game. With the bruising front 7 the Lions have it could be the last of PMS you will see for a while. Did Red just talk himself out of picking the Broncos. Well, not quite. Denver 27 Detroit 20.
You’re Who I am Kidding Pick of the Week: Texans over Buccaneers. Red figures if he keeps picking the Texans he will eventually get it right. Probably not a winning strategy. But if the Texans stink, the putrid odor of the Bucs isn’t far behind. This really should be this week’s Shit Bowl, but rules are rules. Texans win when their defense gets on the board. They do it this weekend. Offense does enough to not lose this one – but just barely. Houston 21 Jacksonville 20.
Red Can’t Believe he is Blogging About an Impromptu Dance-Off
USA Today Sports has the skinny on a brawl at a high school football game in Dallas – and this time it did not involve the football teams. The rival dance teams from Wilmer-Hutchins and James Madison High Schools got a little too excited during an impromptu dance-off after the game and chaos ensued. Fortunately no one was seriously injured and no arrests were made. The incident did cause the Dallas ISD to make the following statement.
“Impromptu dance-offs are not part of the approved performance for dance teams and fighting is never acceptable. Disciplinary actions will be taken as appropriate.”
Who knew we needed an “impromptu dance-off” policy? For his part, Red fully supports not only impromptu but any other form of dance-off. He does draws the line at impromptu full contact girl fights.
Carly Gets an “F” from Fortune
Carly Fiorina sole “qualification” for the high office to which she aspires is her supposedly successful business career. Fortune takes a closer look at CF’s tenure at HP and the results are not good. Fortune asks the simple question, How did she do?
The answer in short is: Pretty badly.
In 1999, a dysfunctional HP board committee, filled with its own poisoned politics, hired her with no CEO experience, nor interviews with the full board. Fired in 2005, after six years in office, several leading publications titled her one of the worst technology CEOs of all time. In fact, the stock popped 10% on the news of her firing and closed the day up 7%.
Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP’s founder, commented when discouraging voters from supporting Fiorina in her 2010 senatorial run, “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.”
However, before Conservative Political Action Caucus in February, Fiorina proclaimed that under her HP command, “We would double its revenues to $90 billion, triple its rate of innovation to 11 patents a day, and go from a laggard to a leader in every product category and every market segment in which we competed.”
Sure, she doubled revenues—through a massive, ill-conceived, controversial acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002. Fiorina did nothing to increase profits over her five-year term, with the S&P 500 showing net income across enterprises concomitantly up 70%. Furthermore, shareholder wealth at HP was sliced 52% under her reign against the S&P, which was down only 15% in that bearish period. She modeled the old joke of “making it up in the volume.”
Fiorina rammed the Compaq deal through despite intense opposition by analysts, employees, and shareholders. When it appeared that she would lose the proxy vote, the balance was tipped back the other way using hardball tactics that would make Donald Trump wince.
The lost shareholder wealth and lost strategic direction at HP are only part of Fiorina’s legacy. Also lost during her reign were 30,000 U.S. tech jobs, the company’s revered employee morale, and the egalitarian, humble HP way culture. A new defensive, finger-pointing style of leadership led to waves of firing. Dissent was equated with disloyalty as discovered by Walter Hewlett, a board member and son of HP’s co-founder, when he questioned Fiorina’s misguided Compaq acquisition strategy and refused to be bullied into a board statement of unanimous consent, suffering legal and personal threats.
Despite such carnage, Fiorina pocketed over $100 million in compensation for her short reign—including a $65 million signing bonus and a $21 million severance. I have studied comebacks from adversity, but she’s not shown the required contrition nor earned the needed exoneration, and she’s not served as a CEO since. Upon leaving Taiwan Semiconductor’s board, the firm disclosed she only attended 17% of the board meetings. Under Meg Whitman’s brilliant leadership, HP’s character and performance have recovered, but we have not seen Fiorina’s parallel resilience just yet.
Today in Texas History – September 24
From the Annals of Assassination – In 1964, the Warren Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, delivered its report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred on November 22, 1963, in Dallas. The task was made difficult by the sheer incompetence of the Dallas Police Department. The DPD had failed to protect, the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in turn murdered by Jack Ruby, before any real investigation could be started. The resulting turmoil and speculation, led LBJ to form the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy to investigate Kennedy’s death – which became known as the Warren Commission. The WC concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that the Secret Service had failed to adequately protect the President.
The WC’s findings which were riddled with inconsistencies did little to stop the numerous conspiracy theories as to who was actually responsible. The WC’s conclusion that Oswald was a “lone gunman” was disputed by many who witnessed the attack and others whose research found conflicting details in the commission’s report. To many, the assassination of JFK remains the great unsolved mystery of our time. For his part, Red is particularly fond of the Joe DiMaggio theory.
Back to the Astros Choke Watch
Astros lost two of three to the Angels – officially putting Anaheim back in the playoff hunt and resurrecting the Astros Choke Watch
Currently 3 games behind the hated Texas Rangers
Magic Numbers:
14 to clinch AL West (Hah!)
10 to clinch Wildcard Playoff spot
Paradise in Hell 