Longhorns a Long Way from Respectability

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USA Today reports that the University of Texas football team is not ranked in the pre-season polls for the first time in 17 years.

For the first time since 1998, Texas will begin the season without a number next to its name.

The Longhorns  are unranked in the Amway Coaches Poll, which was released Thursday. It’s not surprising given that the team finished 6-7 in 2014, capping Charlie Strong’s first year as head coach with a 31-7 loss to Arkansas in the Texas Bowl.

Texas had its worst season in recent history in 2010 when it followed a national championship loss to Alabama with a 5-7 record. The program hasn’t been the same since, going 36-28 the last four years without a single 10-win season. Still it always found a way into the preseason poll in that span, averaging a 19.5 ranking.

Not this year. Texas only received eight points, putting them at No. 38 outside the poll.

Today in Texas History – July 31

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From the Annals of the National Pastime –  In 1990, Nolan Ryan posted his 300th career win.  Pitching for the Texas Rangers, Ryan threw 7 2/3 innings with eight strikeouts in an 11-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. His historic 300th victory came in his 24th season in the majors, his second with the Texas Rangers.  Ryan had failed in his first bid for a 300th win the week before, pitching at his home stadium in Arlington, Texas. His second attempt came against the Brewers in front of a friendly crowd in Milwaukee. Ryan improved as the game went on, and by the fifth inning, the Rangers had taken a 5-1 lead. Ryan rung up two strikeouts in the fifth, one in the sixth and two more in the seventh inning. With two outs in the eighth, a defensive error put two runners on base, but with a crowd of 55,000 rooting him on, Ryan once again summoned the fastball that had won him 299 previous games. The talented young Gary Sheffield popped-out on a 96 mile-per-hour fastball to end the inning. After the Rangers tacked on insurance runs and the bullpen closed it out for an 11-3 win, Ryan became the fourth-oldest 300-game winner in baseball history after Phil Neikro, Gaylord Perry and Early Wynn.

Pistol Packing Pastor Pops Prowler

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KTRK reports on an early morning shooting at a Baytown Church.  Pastor Benny Holmes has apparently shot an intruder.
Baytown police responded to a shooting at the Church of New Beginnings. Police say the pastor armed himself and shot an intruder. KTRK Photo. Police say Pastor Benny Holmes was at the church sometime after 6:00am this morning when he a heard a man trying to break into the building. Homles then armed himself and shot the intruder.
The intruder was then rushed to Memorial Hermann Hospital via Life Flight. His condition is unknown.
Pastor Holmes made national headlines last year for taking down a suspected package thief in his front yard. At the time, he said pointing his 45mm pistol at the grandmother was the only way he would get her to feel the fear of God.

Today in Texas History – July 28

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From the Annals of the Toreros – In 1908, James Harper Gillett made his first appearance as a novillero  at Plaza de Toros in  Guadalajara. Gillett was born in Ysleta in 1884. His parents divorced in 1889, after which he had no contact with his father for twenty-four years.  His mother married Guadalajara resident Samuel M. Lee in 1895. The family lived in Guadalajara and Gillett began calling himself Harper Baylor Lee.  Lee learned the art from his friend Francisco Gómez, El Chiclanero, a retired matador from Spain.  Lee determined to see if he could make it as a as a professional torero. In 1910 he became the first American to attain the rank of matador de toros.  He appeared in fifty-two corridas and killed 100 bulls. His career was cut short by the chaos of the Mexican Revolution. After reconciling with his father in 1914, he changed his name to Harper Baylor Gillett.

Speed on Brother, Hell Aint Half Full (of Texans) Yet.

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Texas is the best place to speed in the US.  Anyone who has recently driven on the racetrack that is I-10 between Houston and San Antonio can testify to that fact.  Red was doing 85 in the right line recently and cars were blowing by in the left lane at speeds up to an estimated 105 mph. And why not drive like the proverbial bat released from Hades?  According to WOAI – the consequences of speeding are much less in Texas than in the rest of the country.  Red would argue that the chances of actually getting a speeding ticket in Texas are slim.  The DPS has been stretched to thin by Gov. Abbott (TP-Texas) sending them on a fool’s errand on the Texas border. Trying to enforce Texas law is weak tea compared to grandstanding on immigration issues.

Texas has by far the most lenient speeding laws in the country, according to a study by WalletHub.com.  WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzales says they measures a number of factors, from that the posted speed limit is, to how strict the penalties are for people who have been apprehended.

 One example, Gonzales says, is at what point the minor offense of ‘speeding’ gets kicked up to the far more series offense of ‘reckless driving.’   For example, in Virginia, driving more than 20mph over the speed limit is automatically considered to be ‘Reckless Driving,’ and a motorist can get up to three months in jail for the first offense.  She says Texas is one of the few states where speeding is never considered reckless driving, no matter how fast you’re going.

 “Texas has no limits, so it is unclear what is reckless driving to the police officer who pulled you over,” she said.

 Almost every other state considered a third offense of speeding over a certain amount to be reckless driving, but Texas doesn’t.

  “There is no minimum jail time for the first or the second offense, and there is no license suspension on the records, either.”

Gonzales says Texas is also one of a handful of states without an ‘absolute’ conviction for going over the speed limit.  In most states, a radar reading of 10 miles over will be adjudicated guilty by a judge, but in Texas, a motorist can argue that there were extenuating circumstances, like the motorist was passing a vehicle or trying to avoid an accident.

Texas also gets high marks for outlawing cameras to register a motorist’s speed and automatically send a ticket, about a third of the states allow that.  Texas also does not have additional penalties allowing an officer or a judge to bump a routine speeding arrest up to ‘aggressive driving.’

Texas also caps the fine for speeding to $200.  In many states, the fine can be $1,000 or more.  In Virginia, for example, the fine for speeding can be $2,000, in Washington state its $5,000.  Texas also does not allow license suspension for speeding.  The aforementioned Virginia allows a motorist’s license to be suspended for up to 3 months for a first offense.

 And, to top things off, Texas has hundreds of miles of I-10 and I-20 in west Texas where the speed limit is 80 mph, and a stretch of State Highway 130 with a posted 85 mile speed limit, the highest in the Western Hemisphere.

Photo from http://www.autoblog.com

Jade Helm 15 Update, Cont.

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As we enter the 12th day of Jade Helm 15 it has been a deadly dozen days.  Deadly quiet that is. But that aint fooling us Texans.  And it must be noted that Pres. Obama has been in the ancestral homeland and unable to personally direct the round up of our women, children and most importantly guns.

Meanwhile, the Daily Texan reports  that a June 25 poll conducted by the Texas Politics Project from UT and The Texas Tribune revealed that nearly 44 percent of Texans believed the federal government would likely send troops to impose martial law, and 43 percent believed the federal government would likely confiscate their firearms. Red believes that 43.5% of Texans can’t be wrong about anything. If you’re over 50% then things are different – witness repeatedly electing Rick Perry as governor – but in the 40’s you are on solid ground.  So despite all visible signs that there is absolutely nothing going on, it is just a matter of time before the jack-booted storm troopers descend like a swarm of angry wasps thinking they’re gonna open a fresh can of ass whip on your town.  So stay alert and report back to Red.

Vigilantly yours,

Red

Ted Cruz on How to Lose Friends and Fail to Influence People

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Salon has the complete breakdown on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (TP-Texas) implosion on the Senate floor.  In the aftermath of calling Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Droopy Dawg – Kentucky) a liar, things proceeded to get ugly – or more accurately uglier.  Cruz’s support in the Senate is apparently down to 3 other true believers.

All Ted Cruz wanted to do was abuse his position in the Senate to grandstand on issues that would help bolster his faltering bid for the White House, but his decision to call Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “flat-out” liar on Friday had dire consequences for the Texas senator, whose Republican colleagues turned their back on him when he tried to perform a simple roll call on Sunday.

As Politico’s Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report, McConnell’s decision to move ahead with an effort to extend the Export-Import bank’s charter by attaching it to a highway bill infuriated Cruz, who characterized the procedural move as a “flat-out lie” in direct contradiction with how McConnell assured Republican senators the bank would be handled.

That he said that isn’t the issue — that he said it on the Senate floor, which has rules governing how senators address each other, is. “I think it was a violation of the rules,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said. “It’s not how you treat a colleague regardless of how you feel.”

Maine’s Susan Collins (R) agreed, saying that “I know emotions run high on issues in the Senate, and those are the times when I think we have to take special care to abide by the rules of the Senate, particularly Rule 19, which is very clear that no senator is to impugn the integrity of another senator.”

As you might imagine, Cruz did not agree, claiming that his anger was justified because “in the entire course of this debate neither the majority leader nor any other senator has denied that he looked me in the eye and he looked every other Republican senator in the eye, and he flat-out said [there was] no deal on the Export-Import bank.”

Cruz, his Republican colleagues said Friday, was wrong on that account too. Fellow GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Lindsey Graham took what could be considered a cheap shot, saying that “unless you have been completely missing in action, you’d know this day was coming. I did a press release and floor statement. I think he’s going down a road very few senators go.”

His decision to do led him to a place where very few senators end up — standing on the Senate floor Sunday looking for the 16 senators required to hold a roll-call vote and only finding three supporters. Raju and Everett report that as this simple procedural vote failed, McConnell craned his neck and stared the junior senator from Texas down.

Or, as Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander (R) put it, “you learn that in kindergarten — you learn to work well together and play by the rules. Another thing you learn in kindergarten is to respect one another.”

Today in Texas History – July 27

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From the Annals of Local Government –  In 1888, Randall County was organized. Among its first settlers were Lincoln Guy Conner and his wife, who grazed cattle in the vast Palo Duro Canyon area in the Panhandle. The Conners bought their land for three dollars an acre, built a half dugout, and established a general store and post office. When the county was organized, the dugout was a polling place. The Conners’ daughter was the first white child born in the county. In the spring of 1889 Conner laid out the townsite of Canyon City. He donated town lots to anyone willing to build a home or a business. Over the next two decades he became one of the growing city’s most prosperous citizens.

Rick Right-Wing Record

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A recent column by Ted B. Lyon, Jr. in the Dallas Morning News attempts to set the record straight on Rick Perry’s record as Governor of Texas.  Lyon’s ire was raised by a recent Jay Ambrose column that as Lyon put it did  “everything but give Perry credit for talking Sam Houston into attacking at San Jacinto.”

Let’s compare what was written with some facts.

Crediting Perry for holding schools accountable or that he urged affordable college education is misguided at best. Texas parents sure know better.

Perry was so hostile to public schools that over 600 districts — in rural counties as well as urban and suburban neighborhoods — sued him for failing to meet the minimum standard of support required by our state constitution. Exhibit A is the $5.4 billion education cut Perry signed into law. It’s the first time in over two decades that state leaders failed to fully fund Texas’ rapid enrollment growth.

Forget that Perry might have urged making college more affordable. Look instead at what he signed off on: deregulation of college tuition that has been devastating to families with college-aged kids. On Perry’s watch, the cost to send a young man or woman to college in Texas shot up by over 50 percent.

As far as jobs go, the one Perry protected best was his own, and he made sure he got paid pretty well, too. Turns out that Perry was not only earning a full-time salary as governor, he also was double-dipping by taking a state retirement pension. While a lot of new jobs were created in Texas, most of them were due to Texans’ willingness to work more for less pay than people in other states, making it harder to support a family.

Perry actually turned down the biggest new jobs opportunity — health care expansion. Nonpartisan studies show that expanding health care in Texas would create over a quarter-million new jobs and pump billions into the Texas economy. Republican governors all over the country put their personal politics aside to realize this benefit for their states. Perry didn’t have the insight, political courage or plain old common sense to do the right thing for Texas.

Perry backers like to throw around buzzwords like deregulation and trivial lawsuits. That may be music to the ears of insurance executives and nursing home owners, but what has it really meant for Texans? Well, under Perry, Texans have been forced to pay the third-highest home insurance rates in the country. If an elderly parent or disabled loved one dies from abuse in a nursing home, Perry has tied the hands of judges and juries. He’s capped the value of a loved one’s life or disabling damage suffered to $250,000 — less than Perry took home in salary and pension every two years.

There’s no problem with Rick Perry letting everyone know that Texas is the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world. I absolutely agree with him. I also know, along with others who are paying attention, that Texas is a great state despite Rick Perry and not because of him.

Jade Helm 15 Update, Cont.

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Yesterday Red spotted a very suspicious convoy of street sweepers on Alt. 90 at a location to be disclosed.  Red doesn’t ever recall seeing regular street sweepers on a highway.  Much less a US highway.  It’s just possible that they were sweeping up more than the leftist litter left on the road.  Maybe they were sweeping up information on your whereabouts in anticipation of the round up of your women, children and most importantly guns.

Red also notice an unusual concentration road kill at certain points on the highway.  Early target practice perhaps or more likely experimentation in advance of the second wave alien invasion phase of JH15.  Remember what they were doing to cattle back in the 90’s.  For the meantime, Red is keeping J.Edgar (Red’s Belgian Shepherd) inside while continuing to tempt the jack-booted latter-day Nazis Feds with the prospect of obtaining Mrs. Red for their devious mind control experiments and sexual perversions.  But they aint biting yet.  Any day now.

Vigilantly yours,

Red