Category Archives: Uncategorized

Quote for the Day

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“After all, the devil fights under great disadvantages, and has to carry weights in all his races which are almost unfair.  He lies as a matter of course, believing thoroughly in lies, thinking that it is by lies chiefly that he must make his running good: and yet every lie he tells, after it has been told and used, remains as an additional weight to be carried.  When you have used your lie gracefully and successfully, it is hard to bury it and get it well out of sight.  It crops up here and there against you, requiring more lies; and at last, too often, has to be admitted as a lie, most usually so admitted in silence, but still admitted, -to be forgiven or not, according to the circumstances of the case.  The most perfect forgiveness is that which is extended to him who is known to lie in everything.  That man has to be taken, lies and all, as a man is taken with a squint, or a harelip, or a bad temper. He has an uphill game to fight, but when once well known, he does not fall into the difficulty of being believed.”

Anthony Trollope, Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite

Trump and his lawyers, Cohen and Giuliani, for all their many faults, at least no longer have to worry about falling into the difficulty of being believed.

 

 

 

Today in Texas History – May 17

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Grand jury indicts 106 in Waco biker shooting - CBS News

From the Annals of the Shoot-outs –  In 2015, members from the Bandidos and Cossacks  motor cycle gangs and other bikers began fighting at the Twin Peaks restaurant off Hwy 6 in Waco.   Police were monitoring the scene and after gunshots were fired a major shoot out commenced.  As one of Red’s friends cynically reported at the time, “No one was injured – (sotto voce) – nine bikers were killed.”  In fact, nine gang members were killed and twenty others injured.  Unraveling the sequence of events has been challenging.  It does appear that most of the dead were killed by police fire.  More than 150 were arrested at the scene, but there has been but one trial of Bandido leader Jake Carrizal more than two years later.  And that ended in a mistrial.  The overall impression is that the McClellan County District Attorney’s office was overwhelmed with the extent of these cases and has badly bungled the investigation and prosecution of some who clearly committed crimes and others who did not.

Today in Texas History – May 16

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From the Annals of Civil Disobedience –  In 1968, 400 high school students from Edgewood HS in San Antonio walked out of class and marched to the Edgewood ISD administration office.  The EISD was overwhelmingly Hispanic with 90% of students of Mexican heritage.  The students were complaining about inadequate supplies and unqualified teachers.

The walk-out resulted in further action.  In July, Demetrio Rodríguez and seven other Edgewood parents filed suit on behalf of Texas schoolchildren who were poor or resided in school districts with low property-tax bases.  The problem resulted from the numerous school districts in Texas.  Bexar County incorporates all or part of 19 different school districts – many of which were set up to segregate students of different races.  EISD had one of the highest tax rates in the county but raised only $37 per pupil, while Alamo Heights, Bexar County’s wealthiest district, raised $413 per student.  Because of the vastly different appraised value of the property in the districts, the tax rate per $100 property value needed to equalize education funding was only $0.68 for Alamo Heights but a punishing $5.76 for Edgewood.

Thus, began the decades long fight over school funding in Texas.  The Rodriguez case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court which ultimately ruled against Rodríguez, holding that Texas’ school financing did not violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and punted the issue back to Texas.  The Court also held that the state would not be required to subsidize poorer school districts.  But this was not the end as most observers know and the fight over school funding continues.

Will the Beaver Eat the Gator? Buc-ee’s claims Choke Creek’s logo is too similar

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Mega-roadside store chain Buc-ee’s has sued its much smaller competitor Choke Creek claiming that CC’s cowboy hat wearing alligator logo is too similar to Buc-ee’s baseball cap wearing beaver.   The trademark infringement suit was filed in December of 2015, but is being tried this week in U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison’s court in Houston.

Red for one has never confused a baseball cap with a cowboy hat or a beaver for an alligator – especially an alligator sporting some awesome “guns.”  Just saying.

Today in Texas History – May 15

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From the Annals of the Writers –  In 1890, Katherine Anne Porter (nee Callie Russell Porter) was born in Indian Creek.  At age two, her family moved to Kyle after the death of her mother in child birth.  They lived with her paternal grandmother Catherine Ann Porter – whose name she later adopted – until her death when KAP was 11.  After that the family moved around Texas and Louisiana.  She received little formal education beyond elementary school but did attend the Thomas School in San Antonio.  She left home at 16 married a well-to-do scion of a ranching family who physically abused her.  They divorced after about a decade and she had her name changed to Katherine Anne Porter in the divorce decree.  After her divorce she spent time in New York and Mexico where she became acquainted with Mexican leftists such as Diego Rivera.  She made her living ghost writing and doing publicity work for movies.  Her first published story was Maria Concepcion in The Century Magazine.  In 1930, she published her first short-story collection,  Flowering Judas and Other Stories.  After an expanded edition of this collection was published in 1935, she began to receive true critical acclaim.   Her only  novel Ship of Fools was a best-seller and the movie rights made her financially independent.  She continued to write short stories including Noon Wine, a collection of short stories set in Central Texas.  Today she widely recognized as a master of the short story genre.   The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965) won the Gold Medal for Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award.  She died in 1980 and her ashes were buried along side her mother in the Indian Creek cemetery.   She is a must read for all lovers of Texas literature.

Lost Texas

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Texas A&M Press has published a new book by photographer Bronson Dorsey.  Lost Texas is filled with 179 photos of buildings across the state that have been abandoned.  These structures are mostly from small town Texas and show the faded and crumbling glory that the state has lost with its rapid urbanization in the last 75 years.  Red has tried to photograph a few of these same buildings over the years, but defers to a real master in Dorsey.   Dorsey has a companion website at www.lost-texas.com.

Today in Texas History – May 14

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From the Annals of the Freedom Loving Germans –  In 1854, delegates from various local German political clubs met at the annual Staats-Saengerfest (State Singers’ Festival) in San Antonio.  The meeting might otherwise have escaped notice, except that the delegates adopted a declaration against slavery declaring it to be evil. The declaration went on to state that abolition was to be the work of the various states who should seek help from the federal government (in the form of payment for freed slaves) to help end the moral abomination of chattel slavery.  The Texas Germans were falling in line with other organizations such as the Freier Mann Verein (Freeman’s Association) from Northern States who had enacted similar declarations.  As one might imagine, the declaration was not well received in the strongly pro-slavery (and virulently racist) Texas of the time.  In conjunction with ongoing antislavery newspaper articles in the German language press, many Anglo-Texans grew more and more hostile to their German-Texan neighbors.  This was clearly evidenced at the outset of the Southern Rebellion by the murder of many German Texans who were attempting to go north to fight for the Union.

Robert Jeffress says to almost everyone, “You’re going to Hell! Red says to Robert Jeffress, “If the likes of you are going to be in Heaven, Red will gladly go to Hell!”

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Baptist Super-Preacher and Tea Party Icon Robert Jeffress of the First Baptist Church in Dallas was chosen by Trump to speak at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Red sees this as a fitting choice because Jeffress has a mainline with God who apparently has let RJ in on the big secret of who is and isn’t heading to burn for all of eternity in the lake of fire.

According to Saint Jeffress, any non-Christian has one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the River Styx:

“God sends good people to Hell. Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism — not only do they lead people away from God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in Hell.”

But it does not stop with non-Christians.  All you supposedly God-fearing Papists better watch out as well. According to his Holiness the Divine Jeffress, Catholics are also on a greased skid headed for Satan’s realm.

“Today the Roman Catholic Church is the result of that corruption. Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s word. It comes from this cultlike pagan religion. You say, ‘Well now pastor how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church.’ After all, the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the blood of Christ and salvation. Isn’t that the genius of Satan?

If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don’t do it with purple paper and red ink, you’re not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.

And that’s what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.”

Oh, and let’s not forget about the Christians who support Clinton.  If the Eternal Arbiter Jeffress is right, they might as well give in and start worshipping Satan now – it might get them a better deal in the outer circles of Hell because there is a special place reserved for those Democrats.

“The other choice was Hillary Clinton, and although my friend Juan describes her as kind of St. Hillary of Chappaqua, she’s hardly a bastion of virtue herself. If I am going to hell, Juan — like you say I am for supporting Donald Trump — then that means you’re going to be a hundred floors below me for supporting Hillary Clinton.”

And so, RJ is of course the perfect choice to say some prayers for our good Jewish friends (who still are headed for the jaws of Satan in the RJ version of events) when the U.S. opens its new provocative embassy in Jerusalem today.  He’s just the kind of preacher that Trump likes, a bombastic bullying sack of horseshit cloaked in false religiosity who worship the true Trumpian god of Money.

Red for one can’t wait to meet up with all the “good people” in Hell.  Especially if the likes of Jeffress are populating the streets of Heaven.

 

 

Today in Texas History – May 11

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A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan Completo - Videos On-line ...

From the Annals of Guitar Heroes –   In 1995, B. B. King, Eric Clapton,  Robert Cray, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Dr. John and SRV’s bandmates from Double Trouble appeared for the filming of a “Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan” in the Austin City Limits venue.  The TV movie version of the concert was released in 1996 and received critical praise.  Vaughn’s old band Double Trouble, led by his brother Jimmie, and the big time stars play tribute to the late-great blues man.  In between the songs are tributes by the guest stars and excerpts of Vaughan’s performances from various concerts.