Current lead 1.0 game over the Rangers
Magic Numbers:
24 to clinch AL West
21 to clinch Wildcard Playoff spot
The needle is moving slowly.
Astros Magic Number Update
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Texas Bullet Train Moving Forward?
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.
Today in Texas History – September 9
From the Annals of Big Government – In1966, President Lyndon B, Johnson signed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act. The two bills made the federal government responsible for setting and enforcing safety standards for cars and roads. “In this century,” Johnson said before he signed the bills, “more than 1,500,000 of our fellow citizens have died on our streets and highways; nearly three times as many Americans as we have lost in all our wars.” Detroit’s refusal to make safer cars was notorious and consumers had little choice at the time as foreign cars were almost non-existent on US roads. “Safety is no luxury item,” the President declared, “no optional extra; it must be a normal cost of doing business.”
Detroit managed to eliminate some of the safety standards in the original bill. Older readers will recall the decades long fight car makers put up against installing air bags. However, the impact of the NTMVSA was noticeable. All cars now had seat belts for every passenger, impact-absorbing steering wheels, rupture-resistant fuel tanks, door latches that stayed latched in crashes, side-view mirrors, shatter-resistant windshields, windshield defrosters, lights on the sides of cars and other protections. It is almost impossible to estimate the number of lives that was saved by these acts.
The Acts passed without a single negative vote in Congress – something that is unimaginable in today’s world.
Football Gets Uglier
Two players from San Antonio John Jay HS have been suspended after they blindsided and speared an official in a game at Marble Falls on Friday. Two players from Jay had been ejected from the game prior to the play and there were some controversial calls, but no one can ever recall seeing such a blatant and cowardly attack on an official at any level. It is possible that the players were egged on by comments from a Jay assistant coach. CNN has the video. It’s bad when your high school team is making the national news for this kind of thuggery.
Reaction has been swift and severe.
“The first thing we want is that those two kids never play football again,” Austin Football Officials Association secretary Wayne Elliott said.
“These types of actions against any game official at any level are inexcusable,” said a statement by NFL Referees Association executive director Jim Quirk. “We fully support the suspensions of the players involved, along with a full and complete investigation by the Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL).”
The referee involved wanted to press charges and it is very possible that the two players may face criminal charges.
Today in Texas History
From the Annals of the Indian Wars – In 1874, Lt. Francis D. Baldwin and three army scouts captured the Kiowa Indian known as “Tehan.” Tehan was a white captive of the Kiowa Indians taken when he was a child, perhaps between five and ten. The Indian name Tehan was their version of Texan likely from the Spanish which many Indians spoke on some level. He was adopted by the Kiowa medicine man Maman-ti and became a respected and fierce warrior. He was in striking contrast to the Kiowa with his red hair, fair skin, and thick neck. Tehan was about eighteen when the Red River War broke out in the summer of 1874. He was among those who fled the Wichita Agency in late August and camped near the upper Washita River while traveling west toward Palo Duro Canyon. While looking for stray horses, he was captured by Baldwin. Although Tehan pretended to be grateful for his “deliverance,” his captors took no chances and kept a rope tied about the prisoner’s neck to prevent any escape attempt. Tehan escaped during a subsequent skirmish with the Kiowas. He rejoined his adopted tribe, sporting a suit of clothes the troops had given him. In later years several men claimed to be Tehan. His actual fate will likely remain a mystery.
Pope Francis Reaches out to Texas Teen
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
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.
Astro Magic Number Update
Current lead 2.0 games over the Rangers
Magic Numbers
28 to clinch AL West
26 to clinch Wildcard Playoff Spot
The needle isn’t moving much.
From the Annals of the Republic – In 1839, the last mention of the steamship Cayuga was recorded and the notable vessel passed from history. The Cayuga, an eighty-eight-ton side-wheeler built in 1832, had been the first commercially successful steamboat in Texas and was critical to the Texian war effort during the Revolution. She carried army supplies, messages, and transported government officials and refugees. Most curiously, she was the floating capitol of Texas. Pres. David G. Burnett impressed her for public service. When the government was forced to evacuate Harrisburg ahead of Santa Anna’s army, Burnet and his cabinet used the steamer as their temporary capitol for about a week.
After the revolution ended, the vessel was sold at auction on December 15, 1836 at Lynch’s Ferry. The new owners refitted the vessel and renamed her the Branch T. Archer. The last mention of the former Cayuga was a Liberty County sheriff’s sale on this date in 1839, advertising the sale of the historic vessel.
$106 Million Down the UH Drain
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.
