Category Archives: Texas News

Finally, Some Good News

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The Dallas Morning News reports that the Taco Universe is Expanding.  Along with Red’s waistline.

From Dallas to Fort Worth, you’ll find more taquerias than ever serving righteous Mexican street tacos. Then there are the restaurants and food trucks that tuck Asian fusion fillings into tortillas. Velvet Taco’s tikka chicken taco, Good 2 Go Taco’s Thai Juan On, and Ssahm BBQ’s Korean tacos are among the mavericks with a following. In between these extremes are Mexican chefs and disciples of Mexican regional cuisine who tweak classic tacos with gourmet ingredients.

Gabriel DeLeon, chef-owner of Mi Dia From Scratch in Grapevine, adds gourmet specials to his stable of traditional tacos.

“The street taco craze started a few years ago. From my standpoint, it got boring. Chicken tinga, al pastor, fried fish — everyone has these traditional tacos, even food trucks and gas stations,” he says. “Chefs are trying to elevate tacos. An upscale environment is suited for upscale tacos.”

Cricket Season is Almost Here

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Red remembers walking around the Capitol Building on a hot September night many years ago and it seemed the whole façade was swarming with crickets.  Red had flashbacks to that invasion of the giant grasshoppers movie that scared the living daylights out of him on one of his first sleepovers.  The experts claim that conditions might be just right for another massive cricket invasion in the next few weeks.  KXAN has the details.

 It’s the time of year when people will hear more chirping as crickets start to pop up around Central Texas.  “The best indication of a cricket outbreak is past history and in the past, Texas has experienced big cricket outbreaks,” explained Alex Wild, Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas. He said those outbreaks in past years happened when there was a lot of food for crickets to eat, followed by a dry summer and then rain at the end of summer.

“Only time can tell, it looks like it might be a good season, but until we see the washes of crickets piling up on our porches, it’s going to be hard to predict,” said Wild.

Exterminators like Joe Cantu, Vice President of Operations for Bug Master, said they tend to see more cricket activity between August and September. “It’s one of those pests where nobody wants to have around. It’s a nuisance pest, they’re overwhelming, they really smell, so the phone starts ringing,” said Cantu.

Experts suggest people control the lighting around their homes and businesses because crickets are attracted to the lights at night. Cantu said the critters will harbor in cracks and crevices during the day. “If you see them during the day pretty active, that’s a big problem,” said Cantu. “There’s a heavy pressure of crickets if you start seeing a lot of them during the day.”

“I don’t know what people’s issues are with crickets, I personally find them charming, but generally I don’t think businesses like having insects washed up in big numbers around their entrances,” said Wild.  “Sometimes if they’re are enough of them, they’ll pile up after mating when they’re at the end of their life cycle, they’ll just pile up and the bodies will pile up and that can lead to some pretty bad smells.”  Wild said crickets are, “harmless animals, they don’t bite or sting, it’s mainly just the nuisance of having things around that you weren’t expecting.”

One place where they may be unexpected are football games where the crickets are attracted to the lights.  “They might have just wanted to see the game but I’m not going to speak for the crickets,” said Wild jokingly.

Photo from Premium Crickets  – who knew?

Trump Takes Texas by Storm

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GOP Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump spoke to a crowd of approximately 15,000 in Dallas last night.  Here are some excerpts from the speech.

Wow!  Thank you for coming out tonight to see me – but who wouldn’t want to see me? Really?  Everyone loves me.  The women love me.  The Mexicans love me.  The Jews love me.  The Red Necks love me.  Jesus loves me.  After all, I am the most amazing human who has ever walked the face of this planet.  Not that I walk that much.  I usually ride in a golf cart.  And by the way, that walking on water thing – I taught Jesus that one.  Jesus, nice guy  – son of man and all – but he was no one until he came to see me. 

I have so much energy.  I never run out of energy. It’s ridiculous how much energy I have. You could run the entire state of Texas solely on the energy generated from my farts.  Which by the way, don’t even stink. How amazing is that?  And Jeb!, nice guy – but low energy guy – you can’t even run your refrigerator with his flatulence. 

And that other Texas guy, Ted Cruz.  Nice guy.  Nice Canadian guy.  By the way, the Canadians love me too.  More energy than Jeb!  You might be able to run a decent sized subdivision on Ted’s ass gas.  But really, that’s nothing like the kind of energy that I can generate.  Ted, hmmm.  Too bad I am going to have to squash him like a bug. 

And Hillary, by the way, never farts.  Never. How can you trust someone who never farts?  I fart all the time.  I wake up farting.  My farts will make this country great again.

Here in Texas you know about the illegal immigration.  There are probably some illegal aliens in this arena tonight. And you know what, they love me too!  But I am going to fix this.  I am going to build a wall – a real wall.  It will be very wall-like. Extremely wall-like.  You know the Chinese built that Great Wall and it’s 13,000 miles long.  This wall won’t be that long – but it will be even greater.  And much taller. A tall wall. Taller than my hair. I’m thinking two or three thousand feet tall.  Go try and buy a ladder at Home Depot that will scale that wall!  Yeah, Where can I find the two thousand foot extension ladders?  Sorry, out of stock!  This wall will be beautiful – everything I build is beautiful.  I am beautiful and people love me for my beauty.  And there will be a beautiful door in the wall to let the good people through.  Because the good people love me too!

I am a deal maker.  I make deals.  I know the toughest negotiators in the world.  Most of them are awful, despicable, disgusting humans. Really.  Many of them should actually be in prison.  You have never heard of most of them.  So I am going to turn over the country to a bunch of guys you never heard of – but who are incredible bad-ass negotiators.  These guys would sell their mother to the Devil if they could get a sweet deal out of it.  How great will that be?  We can negotiate with tough guys like Putin. You know, I eat guys like him for lunch.  Vlad, you want Crimea?  Okay, give us St. Petersburg and throw in Kamchatka to make it worth my while – I hear it’s very nice there in the summer.  We’ll build a golf course and let you play anytime for the twilight rate.  Deal done.  It’s that easy. 

We are going to have so many victories.  We are going to have so many victories!  Why? Because I am a winner.  I always win.  Even when I lose I win.  How great is that?  We are going to have so many victories, that you will get tired of winning.  Really! You will grow to hate winning.  You will be begging for a humiliating defeat.  Victory will be a dirty word.  By the time I am through with this country, everyone will utterly despise winning. 

Thank you Dallas for coming out tonight. I know I made your lives that much better just by mere presence.  Really, you should be thanking me.  Me and my hair.  Which is real by the way.  And beautiful.  You know the hair dressers love me too.  Even the gay ones. 

Why do the Job You Were Elected to do When You Can Feel the Excitement of JEB!!!!$$$$?

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The Houston Chronicle details how Land Commissioner George P. Bush seems to be more interested in helping JEB!!!!$$$$? than in doing his job.  Questions about Bush’s commitment to the job were asked during his campaign – with the assumption that the Bush scion already had his eye on bigger things.

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush has been out of the state or otherwise off of work nearly half of the time since his father entered the GOP race for president, records show, raising questions about whether the scion is fulfilling his pledge to remain focused on his first elected office.

Personal time – both related to the presidential race and for other reasons – took the commissioner away for the equivalent of 23 of the first 50 work days after father Jeb Bush announced his bid on June 15, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of records obtained under the Public Information Act. The total includes 15 full days off and dozens of smaller chunks of time off on other work days that add up to eight more days.

It is impossible to tell exactly how much of the time off was spent campaigning, because the commissioner’s official calendar does not say what he did in those hours. Social media posts indicate he spent a significant amount of it on the trail, however, speaking at his father’s announcement in Florida, publicly stumping for him in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, headlining a fundraiser in Texas and attending a campaign staff retreat in Maine.

Texas Bullet Train Moving Forward?

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Backers of the envisioned “bullet train” between Houston and Dallas claim they are still moving forward with the project and are celebrating a successful round of fundraising, seeing a key federal study move forward, and most importantly surviving the scrum of this year’s legislative session.  WFAA reports on the proponents and opponents of the ambitious project.  The project pits Texas Central Partners who see the benefits of a rail line connected two of America’s largest cities against Texans Against High Speed Rail composed of mostly affected landowners.

Texas Central Partners announced in 2012 a partnership with Japanese train operator JR Central to debut that company’s bullet train technology in Texas. Unlike most other train lines in the country, Texas Central predicts its train will operate at a profit and has pledged to not take public subsidies to cover operational costs. JR Central plans to sell its famed Shinkansen trains to Texas Central and play an advisory role on the system’s operations.

Texas Central officials have described the 240-mile stretch between Dallas and Houston as the country’s most-financially viable prospect for a profitable high-speed rail line, pointing to the large swaths of rural, flat land and the cities’ robust population growth projections as key selling points.

The ambitious proposal immediately drew a healthy mix of excitement and skepticism, with some outright antagonism developing over the last year, as rural communities near the train’s expected path learned more about it.

Texas Central has said it plans to run 62 trips between Houston and Dallas daily. Yet, most Texans in communities along the route won’t be able to ride them. Though the route remains a work in progress, the company has plans for only three stations: Houston, Dallas, and Grimes County near the Bryan/College Station area.

While many Houston- and Dallas-area officials have backed the project, officials in communities in between have mostly come out against it. Statewide officials have largely avoided taking a position.

Pope Francis Reaches out to Texas Teen

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Pope Francis has been conducting video teleconferences with parishioners around the world.  He recently connected with a Texas teenager who claims to have lost a soccer scholarship when the school found out he was an undocumented alien.  ABC News has the full story.

Soccer aficionado Pope Francis took a page from his favorite sport’s handbook recently in his message to a young man in McAllen, Texas, who had shared his story of adversity during an ABC News virtual audience with the pontiff via satellite.

Ricardo Ortiz, 19, of Houston, told Pope Francis on Monday that he’d lost a soccer scholarship to college once the school had found out he was not a U.S. citizen.

“They informed [me] that I wasn’t able to attend the university of my dreams,” he said. “I ended up going to a community college, started working full time, started supporting my family.”

When Ortiz was around 17, his father had an accident and nearly lost his leg. He was not able to work.

Thankfully, due to the 2012 immigration law Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Ortiz attained a work permit and held down after-school jobs.

“That happening impacted my life in a very deep way. I had to become the breadwinner of the family. I had to be the person that supported our family,” said Ortiz, whose family had then grown with three younger brothers. “I never lost faith. I never lost the strength that my father and mother gave me.”

Eventually, his father was able to return to work and Ortiz was able to graduate high school, where he’d picked up soccer in his junior year and excelled. On Monday, he asked the pope what was the solution to the world’s problems.

Pope Francis, a well-known avid soccer fan, expressed admiration for Ortiz and told him Monday that “the match is played between friendship in society and enmity in society.”

“We are all created for friendship in society. All of us bear responsibility for everyone else,” the pope said. “And each one has to make a choice in his or her heart. And we have to help that choice to be made in the heart. Escaping it through addiction, through violence, does not help. Only closeness and giving of myself, all that I have to give, the way you gave everything you could as a boy, when you supported your family. Don’t forget that.”

Mom and Dad Must be so Proud

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A Texas State student in San Marcos is now driving an child’s electric Barbie car after her license was suspended for DWI.  Apparently, walking  or riding a bike was just  too much for this dedicated student who has attracted a lot of attention for roaming the campus and environs in the pink Barbiemobile.  UPI reports on the attention that the carless co-ed is getting. The moral – don’t let exercise get in the way of your abject laziness.

Tara Monroe, 20, a junior studying industrial engineering, said her license was suspended and her father took her car away after she refused a Breathalyzer test during a DWI stop following a Waka Flocka Flame concert.

“Riding a bike around campus sucks,” Monroe.  “Like really sucks.”

Monroe’s solution came in the form of a $60 electric Barbie Jeep she found for sale on Craigslist. She said she named the vehicle Charlene in honor of its previous owner.

Monroe, for her part, seems to be reveling in the attention.

“Most people don’t find the things me and my friends do very funny, just immature, so I didn’t expect to get this big of a reaction,” she said. “People who don’t know me are shocked but my friends weren’t even surprised because I do stuff like this all the time.”

“This is the best way I could have gotten my 15 minutes of fame,” she said. “Basically, it was the best decision I’ve made in college, yet.”

Yes, Mom and Dad must be so proud.

$106 Million Down the UH Drain

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The University of Houston is desperate to achieve Tier 1 status – this time in athletics.  The Texas Tribune reports that UH has transferred over $108 million from vital academic programs to support its athletic programs that the good citizens of Houston could not care less about.

But while fan attendance may be lacking, the university’s teams have received huge support in another way. To fund its ambitions, the University of Houston has transferred more than $100 million from its academic side to its sports programs in recent years, figures reviewed by The Texas Tribune show. Meanwhile, the university has launched or is planning a series of expensive sports construction projects, and the school’s athletics department has struggled to stick to its annual budget.

Athletics departments at public universities are generally expected pay their own bills, with schools usually chipping in to cover shortfalls. But Houston’s subsidies in recent years have grown beyond the norm. From 2008 to 2014, the school transferred $106 million to athletics, according to financial reports reviewed by Tribune.

Houston’s subsidy shows no sign of shrinking this year, even though administrators have told the department that they’d like it to become more self-sustaining. School leaders remain committed to making the teams more competitive. They see basketball and football success as a way to increase the school’s visibility and strengthen student and alumni ties. To do so, administrators say, the school has to spend money. 

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reports on exactly how little the City of Houston at large cares about UH’s quest to become the No. 4 sports attraction in Houston (after the Texans, Astros and Rockets).

Imagining the Cougars filling the void is laughable in 2015. The University of Houston can’t fill its own football stadium, let alone carry the weight of a major athletics program in a city much more obsessed with the Aggies and Longhorns. But that doesn’t mean Hunter Yurachek can’t recognize the enviable opening currently staring the Cougars straight in the face.

“This is a city that is on the rise, and this is a university that is on the rise. … We want to get to the same level from a wins and losses standpoint and a notoriety standpoint that our pro sports friends are having in this marketplace,” said Yurachek, UH’s vice president for intercollegiate athletics.

Convincing scattered alumni to show up for Tom Herman’s debut against boring Tennessee Tech at TDECU Stadium is one thing. Making the Cougars stand out in a region long devoted to the NFL, NBA and MLB is another battle entirely.

If Herman is juggling 50-pound barbells, Yurachek is lifting multiple mountains at once. Mack Rhoades’ replacement was as honest, upfront and direct as the Cougars’ splashy new football hire during a recent interview. Yurachek also didn’t shy away from the multi-tiered challenges the university faces at it attempts to build something that’s never been built in a city that thrives on endless expansion: a collegiate program that deserves annual attention and devotion, not just random likes on Facebook.

“We’ve got to increase our fan base,” Yurachek said. “We’ve got somewhere in the neighborhood of 160,000 University of Houston alums that live within an hour drive of this campus. Our season-ticket base for football is roughly about 14-15,000, and that’s not good enough.”

UH sports are laughable indeed.  Red advises you to go to a Dynamo game – at least they aren’t wasting your tax dollars on a foolish quest to gain attention.

We Want Rick, We Want Rick, We Want Rick – to Quit

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Rick Perry’s troubled path to the GOP nomination took another hit on Wednesday when  the campaign lost the last of its staff in New Hampshire. Perry’s New Hampshire political director Dante Vitagliano has left one sinking ship for another by joining the still on the ground campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich.  According to Vitagliano, “it has become clear that the path forward for Gov. Perry is not through New Hampshire.”  Leaving open the question of exactly where is it that Rick’s path actually runs through?

Apparently, Perry’s only remaining hope is ultra-conservative South Carolina. Perry continues to maintain a staff of five in SC.  Perry field director, Erik Corcoran, heads the staff and claims that Perry has actual volunteers in the Palmetto State,  “We’ve confirmed to [Perry headquarters in Austin] that they hired the right people and we’re in it for the right reasons,” Corcoran said. “I’m not going to disparage anyone who has left, but it sends an enormously powerful message, especially to young people, that there is a team out there that’s in it for the right reasons.”

Listen up young people.  Get on the bandwagon of a 65 year old, tired and temperamental white guy who hasn’t had a new idea since 1996.  The staff needs you.  They’re in it for the right reasons – after all it’s Perry’s last chance to boost his enormously oversized ego.   Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Abbott Wants Fed Money for Healthcare

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Gov. Greg Abbott has adamantly refused to expand Medicaid even though it would provide billions in federal dollars and provide health insurance for many of the millions of Texans who are still uninsured.  The negative economic impact on the Texas economy is estimated to be at least $66 billion in lost funding – money that would create jobs and keep workers and their families healthy.

Abbott, who must be seen doing everything he can to oppose “Obamacare”, hasn’t been shy about attempting to hang onto another source of critical funding for Texas hospitals.  The federal government provides a huge amount of money to Texas hospitals through the uncompensated care pool. For four years, the feds have reimbursed Texas’ safety-net hospitals for care they provide to people who cannot afford to pay because Texas refuses to embrace Medicaid expansion.  Now that the feds are threatening to cut off this funding, Abbott is up in arms and has his administration attacking those who are arguing for Medicaid expansion.  The Texas Tribune has the whole sordid story of Abbott’s duplicity, his attempt to smear his opponents and his refusal to turn over the emails that show his role.

Make up your mind, Gov. Abbott.  Either you are for or against the federal government funding health care in Texas.