Astros Choke Watch/Magic Number Update

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Now that the Astros seem have at least temporarily put down the hose and stopped sucking gas for a few days, Red may transition us back to a Magic Number Update.

How it stands right now:

Astros are 1.5 games behind the Rangers.

Magic Number to clinch AL West  is 15

Magic Number to clinch Wildcard Playoff spot is 11

Now go out and beat the previously left for dead Angels.

They Wondered Why the Hogs Seemed so Happy

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A substantial marijuana growing operation was discovered by hog hunters searching for the destructive pests in the Cooper Wildlife Management Area north of Dallas.  The crop value may have been as much as $6 million. OutdoorHub blows the lid off this one, weeds through tea details to hash out the essential facts and tries to pot this discovery in perspective.

Officials with Texas Parks and Wildlife announced last week that officers raided a large and sophisticated marijuana growing facility in the remote swamps of northeast Texas. About 80 miles north of Dallas and inside the 14,480-acre Cooper Wildlife Management Area, several hog hunters stumbled into a sprawling marijuana farm that held more than 6,500 mature plants.

Texas officials said that if not for the occasional report from hikers, hunters, and other adventurous outdoorsmen, many of these operations would never be found. Even so, illegal marijuana cultivators have learned to avoid the most popular hunting seasons.

“They would’ve folded up shop by October 1 ahead of archery deer season opening, but obviously didn’t figure in the opening of teal and feral hog hunting season in mid-September,” said Texas game warden Steven Stapleton.

“The destruction to the habitat and the damage these people did to the environment is probably the worst part,” said Texas Game Warden Chris Fried. “They cut mature hardwood trees, including a pin oak that was at least five foot in diameter, and cleared parts of a levee that will take many years to recover. The chemicals they sprayed, insecticides and pesticides that contaminated the soil and eventually run off into the streams will have lasting impacts.”

Today in Texas History – September 21

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From the Annals of Country Music – In 1968, singer Jeannie C. Riley because the first female recording artist to top both the Billboard Country and Pop charts with her monster hit Harper Valley P.T.A.   With her career-defining hit song, the 23-year-old Riley accomplished a crossover feat that no other woman would match for another 13 years until Dolly Parton scored with 9 to 5.  Riley had come to Nashville from her native Anson to pursue a singing career, but while working a day job as a receptionist she was noticed by the country-music producer Shelby Singleton.  Singleton thought her voice would be perfect for the protagonist in Tom T. Hall’s song about a small-town widow’s fight for her right to wear her skirts short and her heels high.  Singleton was right and Riley’s first single lit up the Pop and Country charts in mid-summer 1968.

Riley was not a one-hit wonder – at least on the Country charts.  She recorded 5 more top 10 singles but never again hit the top 40 on the Pop charts. Riley herself grew increasingly uncomfortable with her signature hit as she became a born again Christian espousing right wing rhetoric and in fact representing the hated values of the Harper Valley P.T.A.  Riley “socked it to” her fans by refusing to perform her biggest hit.

One Thing the Bushes Know How to Do, Cont.

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The Houston Chronicle reports that Land Commissioner and Bush family scion George P. doesn’t seem very interested in following the law when it comes to hiring for the General Land Office.  Either that, or the latest Texas Bush is more interested in rewarding Bush family friends and sycophants.  The Houston Chronicle reports that Bush has failed to follow Texas law in remaking the agency in the Bush family image.

Less than a year after being elected to lead the oldest state agency in Texas, Land Commissioner George P. Bush has dramatically remade the General Land Office by ousting a majority of its longtime leaders and replacing many of them with people with ties to his campaign and family. 

Eleven of the top 18 officials on the agency’s organizational chart a year ago have been fired, forced out or quit, and more could leave soon under an ongoing overhaul that Bush has described as a “reboot.”

In their place, Bush has given top jobs to two of his law school classmates, two relatives of members of two Bush presidential administrations and at least three others with ties to the family or other political leaders.

In all, Bush has hired at least 29 people who worked on his campaign or have political connections, according to a review of thousands of pages of personnel records. The agency did not advertise any of the openings publicly.

State law requires all agencies considering external candidates for a job to post the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission. Newly elected statewide officials often ignore the requirement for some core positions – Attorney General Ken Paxton and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller already have been publicly criticized for doing it a handful of times this year – but Bush’s hiring differs because of how far-reaching it has been, with the hires ranging from a temporary transition director to five campaign veterans hired permanently for the new position of “regional outreach coordinator.”

Another Bush ignoring the law is no big deal, but it seems especially blatant in the case of George P.

Chapter 656 of Title 6B of the Texas Government Code prohibits appointments from outside of the agency except in cases of reorganization ordered by the Legislature.

“Any agency, board, bureau, commission, committee, council, court, department, institution, or office in the executive or judicial branch of state government that has an employment opening for which persons from outside the agency will be considered shall list the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission,” the law states.

Workforce Commission spokeswoman Lisa Givens said she did not know who was responsible for enforcing that law. The commission does not check to ensure that jobs are posted, she said.

The Attorney General’s Office referred questions about the law to the Workforce Commission.

Personnel records show that Bush has directed at least 40 external hires between November 2014 and July 2015 but listed only four of those with the Workforce Commission.

One Thing the Bushes Do Know How to Do

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The Bushes clearly know how to reward friends and punish anyone not swearing fealty to all things Bush.  George P. is clearing if not cleaning house at the Land Office and installing friends and Bush family cohorts.  Former Commissioner Jerry Patterson laments the loss of institutional knowledge while others question where this important agency is headed under the latest Bush name.

At least 111 state workers have been fired, retired or have quit the Texas General Land Office — about 17 percent of the agency’s workforce — under the leadership of George P. Bush, whose so-called reboot has drawn criticism from his predecessor, who says the agency is suffering under “a purge.”

Bush’s house-cleaning invokes the conservative belt-tightening mantra that pervades Texas politics, but the size of the exodus and the tenor with which it was announced has raised questions.

This whole idea is all about looking good,” former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, also a Republican, told the Statesman.

Despite recent audits that were critical of “significant weaknesses” in the way the agency managed contracts under Patterson, the former commissioner called Bush’s shake-up “a purge of the best agency in Texas government and a purge of people who have done wonderful things.”

“It’s all about ‘I’m going to show that I can cut the size of government,’” he said. “I think it’s some serious ignorance. You’ve been hired to do a job. They’re all on the street now, and they haven’t got new jobs.”

When he announced the reboot in June, Bush and his No. 2, Anne Idsal, suggested the agency was hampered by entitled workers and other “threats.”

Threats? What threats?  Please tell us.

Take My Megawatts Please

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Slate  reports on the “only in Texas” phenomenon where electric power was actually cheaper than free this week.

In the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, the mighty state of Texas was asleep. The honky-tonks in Austin were shuttered, the air-conditioned office towers  of Houston were powered down, and the wind whistled through the dogwood trees and live oaks on the gracious lawns of Preston Hollow. Out in the desolate flats of West Texas, the same wind was turning hundreds of wind turbines, producing tons of electricity at a time when comparatively little supply was needed.

And then a very strange thing happened: The so-called spot price of electricity in Texas fell toward zero, hit zero, and then went negative for several hours. As the Lone Star State slumbered, power producers were paying the state’s electricity system to take electricity off their hands. At one point, the negative price was $8.52 per megawatt hour.

Impossible, most economists would say. In any market—and especially in a state devoted to the free market, like Texas—makers won’t provide a product or service at a negative cost. Yet this could only have happened in Texas, which (not surprisingly) has carved out its own unique approach to electricity.

Rick Perry Speaks – Cue the Violins

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Off the Kuff details Rick Perry’s attempt to blame his campaign going down in flames, swirling the drain, crashing and burning, taking a 10 foot walk off a 6 foot pier, biting the big one, taking a dirt nap, sleeping with the fishes, kicking the bucket, falling off the table, chucking up a duck farm, eating leaden death, licking on a cyanide pop, jumping with a brick parachute, batting .000, shanking it into the water hazard, booking a cruise on the Titanic and generally setting a new standard for ineptitude and failure on – wait for it – EVERYONE ELSE BUT HIMSELF!

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “I’ve seen campaigns suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked.”

Cruz Throws Chief Justice Roberts Under the Bus

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Sen. Ted Cruz (TP-Texas) has turned from an enthusiastic supporter of Chief Justice John Roberts to a Monday morning quarterback who now attacks Roberts at every turn.  Cruz, who failed to score any points in Tuesday’s GOP debate, was put on his heels when asked about his past support of Roberts.  Cruz is now making judicial appointments a prime focus of his campaign by arguing that he will put only right wing radical conservatives on the bench.  Red has no doubt that Cruz has a long list of potential judicial Neanderthals in his pocket who are chomping at the bit for the chance to serve their corporate masters and pay obeisance to their insurance company overlords by further cutting back on the rights of ordinary Americans.  The Texas Tribune can fill you in on Cruz’s plan to make judicial appointments a centerpoint of his campaign.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is finding a new pressure point in his proxy war with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: the decision by Bush’s brother to nominate John Roberts, a growing target of conservative scorn, to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Cruz’s offensive, however, is shining more and more light on his own past support for Roberts, an issue that flared up during the second 2016 Republican presidential debate Wednesday in California. 

Asked by a moderator whether it was a mistake for George W. Bush to name Roberts to the high court — as Cruz had suggested — Jeb Bush noted that Cruz was a “strong supporter” of Roberts at the time, and indicated Cruz was trying to “rewrite history” with his recent criticism of Roberts. In a 2005 op-ed for the National Review, Cruz, then the solicitor general of Texas, offered a vigorous defense of Roberts, urging the U.S. Senate to “confirm him swiftly.”

Confronted with that position Wednesday, Cruz ultimately made explicit what he has been hinting at over the past few months, especially in the wake of the most recent ruling from the high court salvaging President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. “It is true that after George W. Bush nominated John Roberts, I supported his nomination,” Cruz said. “That was a mistake and I regret that.” 

Yet Cruz’s admission speaks to a broader conversation he is hoping to have with his GOP opponents as conservative outrage at the high court metastasizes, particularly following its June decision that legalized gay marriage across the country. Cruz’s question to primary voters boils down to this: Which candidate do you most trust to appoint truly conservative judges?

Feel the Excitement of JEB!!!!$$$$?

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JEB!!!!$$$$? held his first post debate rally at a rec center in Las Vegas on Thursday.  The response was, shall Red say, underwhelming.  Right now it seems JEB!!!!$$$$? couldn’t draw a crowd of alcoholics to an open bar. The Washington Post has the skinny on JEB!!!!$$$$?’s flagging campaign.

Jeb Bush’s first post-debate political rally started a few minutes early, in a rec center room built for 200 but only half-full. He started with an in-joke, about a candidate who would not be named and whose rallies were at least a basketball stadium larger.

“I hope that I am so brilliant and so eloquent and so high-energy that you feel compelled to caucus for me,” Bush said as chairs were put down to fill out space. After delivering some of his stump speech, he asked if anyone had seen the debate. “It was crazy, different,” he said, before returning to the subjects of 4 percent economic growth, his “heart to serve” and the unaffordable spending plans of Democrats.

The Las Vegas rally demonstrated how far Bush still has to go. Several attendees, when asked about the debate, talked not about Bush’s performance but about Fiorina’s brutally effective comebacks against Trump. But all were at least satisfied by Bush’s new energy.

Vic Sotelo, who once worked on George H.W. Bush’s security detail, arrived early at the rec center with his wife, Pat. Both were happy to hear the candidate defend his family. Both also understood why their fellow Republicans were rebelling.

“People are excited about Trump and Carson and Carly because they don’t have that politician filter,” said Pat Sotelo. “But you need that filter if you want to govern. Jeb’s always polite. A lot of people take that politeness for weakness. I don’t.”

“All those issues that Trump is talking about are serious issues that everyone is thinking about,” said Vic Sotelo. “I think if Jeb addresses those Trump issues with the politeness and the charisma that he already has, he’ll do even better.”

Bush spent less time talking from the rec center’s stage than he spent signing autographs, posing for photos and chatting with potential voters. As he headed for the exit, he took only a few questions, about where he’d go next and why more people didn’t show up for the rally.

“Three o’clock in the afternoon,” mused Bush.

At least JEB!!!!$$$$? has erased any doubts about his ability to tell time.