Monday, November 29, 2021

The Cyber Monday Boycott Wrangle



A very Merry Christmas to ExxonMobil Beaumont for making their locked-out employees' holiday a little darker.


A bit of Lone Star political goings on:


Thus endeth the latest episode of Hamlet-esque dithering of potential Texas Democratic goobernatorial candidates.  This series began in 2012 and ended in January of this year when the original lead, JuliΓ‘n Castro, was first cast.  That hasn't stopped national and state media from keeping candles lit at the church altar for him.  We can only pray to Doorknob that he will eventually join Henry Cisneros in the Hall of Forgotten.

And that smell isn't from Pasadena; it's River Oaks Lawn Odor.
$770,000 for "much-needed equipment and training for HPD".

Well as long as it's for the cops.  Let's get a bipartisan photo and demonstrate that George Carlin was right all along.


THIS is how to analyze campaign finance reports.


After cleaning up ERCOT and PUC (I perhaps should have inserted a 'sic' after "cleaning up") heads need to roll at the Railroad Commission.  They won't.


 Let's move on to the criminal and social justice lowlights.


Whew.  A week's worth of foul behavior over the Thanksgiving holiday.  Quite an accomplishment.  Here are some climate updates from around the Great State.


Greg Abbott guarantees us that it will.  What does he know that he isn't telling us?  Let's keep our eyes peeled for clues.


And via Bloomberg (use this link for Yahoo and jump the paywall) a Permian-based oil company went up in flames, burning their lenders and the planet as well.

Mark Siffin, 71, was no ordinary wildcatter. Sitting in an office in Houston on a rainy day last year, wearing navy corduroys and red sneakers, Siffin recounted the circuitous path he had taken to become the chief executive officer of MDC Energy LLC. He had dabbled in lots of businesses, from gemstones to art, before becoming a big-time real estate developer with projects in West Hollywood and Times Square. Then, in 2018, he snagged more than $700 million in loans to drill wells in the Permian Basin ...

It took just 14 months for his company and his half-century dream to implode. Siffin shelled out money he didn’t have, his lenders said, drilling wells too fast as oil prices slumped and investor interest in the shale patch waned. In November 2019, MDC plunged into bankruptcy.

[...]

While Siffin was battling with creditors, his employees were dealing with another problem: MDC couldn’t pay to treat the unwanted byproducts that come up with its oil. The company was required by its pipeline operator to get the hydrogen sulfide content below 4 parts per million. A few of MDC’s wells produced gas with a concentration of 2,000 parts or higher, state records show.

Instead, MDC burned it off. Javier Morin, a former completions consultant for the company, remembers driving from the trailer where he slept to the well pad and seeing either side of Interstate 20 lit up by MDC flares. “At one point it looked like a little town,” said Morin.

In November 2019, the same month MDC filed for bankruptcy, the company’s flaring doubled from the previous month, according to production reports filed with the state, while its gas output grew just 1.4%. By the end of that year, MDC was flaring more than 12% of all the natural gas it produced. That rate continued in 2020, making MDC the second-worst Permian operator for flaring in a list of 45 companies compiled by consulting firm Rystad Energy.

Data derived from satellite imagery show that MDC’s flaring may have been even greater -- roughly twice as much in 2020 as what it reported to regulators ...

Don't miss Sharon Wilson's reporting at the end.

Sadly I have more Tweets and links on all these topics that will appear in the next Wrangle, tomorrow or later in the week.  Let's wrap today on a calmer -- if not entirely happier -- note.

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Sunday, November 28, 2021

Thanksgiving Leftover Funnies

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Friday, November 26, 2021

A Keep Warm and Buy as Little as Possible Wrangle


We have the capitalists nervous already, y'all.


Your local small business needs your help.


I will make one exception.


Yeah, gonna keep it light today.  More Funnies tomorrow, and back to the cold, cruel reality of a sick sad world on Cyber Monday.

Today it's turkey tetrazzini, maybe some turkey enchiladas, and mostly a collection of tryptophan-induced soothers.


Lighter, PDid.


Still too mean, dude.


(inner voice: Better.)

Don't wait for Giving Tuesday; be helpful now if you can.


Tens of thousands, not hundreds; I have been corrected.  Okay.  You ever driven to San Antonio without stopping until Frank's in Schulenburg (you know, before it closed) and then pissed steadily for a minute and 45 seconds?  My response is the same: who's counting?


Read Joe's thread.


Democrats: Do NOT let Republicans get to the left of you on this.


(I thought you said this was gonna be light.)  Yeah.  Okay.

We’ve had great turnout for the fabulous show of art and photographs old and new curated by Geoff Winningham.

But we still have amazing prints to sell. So come and buy this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, and help support Save Buffalo Bayou and Friends of Don Greene.

All the work in the show focuses on Buffalo Bayou, from maps and postcards promoting the health benefits of 1836 Houston to recent photographs documenting flora and fauna.

Here is a link to the catalogue. Besides Winningham and 19th century photographers, the show also includes photography by Jim Olive and George O. Jackson, as well as artwork by Janice Freeman.
Gabriela RodrΓ­guez (3rd Grade, Treasure Forest Elementary School), “Legend of the White Buffalo,” 2016. 
Signed, archival pigment print from an original monoprint.

Don’t forget to check out the lovely large-format photos and artwork on display in the cafΓ© itself, 2604 Dunlavy. The bulk of the show is hung in the gallery, located next door at 1709 Westheimer.

“Baptism in Buffalo Bayou,” ca 1900-1914. Baptism on the South Bank of Buffalo Bayou, opposite Glenwood Cemetery. Anonymous photographer.


The Ghost Adventures crew investigated this place a few years ago.

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Thursday, November 25, 2021

Turkey Toons

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Wednesday, November 24, 2021

A Pre-Turkey Day Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Who are these people, though?  I mean besides Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.  Are they people who want to be here for the jobs, the politics, the allegedly low taxes/cost of living?


Pleeease California -- or New York -- our Texas, y'all.  Just a little bit.  More leftist than liberal, though, and since I'm wishing, more Green than Blue.


If you're a Democrat running in 2022 and you're not advocating for weed, you might as well not waste your and everybody else's time and money.  You should be running and voting Green, but a lot of you aren't ready for that conversation yet.


If you're a Democrat or a Green or a Libertarian and you're not running on keeping the power on, wake up and smell the coffee.  Gambling is still illegal in Texas, but Governor Fish Lips has $55 million and his political future riding on no blackouts right before the primary elections next spring.  Does that sound like a good bet to you?  Maybe we won't get another Uri.  Maybe the new guys at ERCOT who are telling him the grid is just fine will be right if we do.  But if I were a betting man -- and I am -- I'm taking some of that action.


Seems like the odds for a fourth special session are getting better every day.  We know the Repukes want one to ban employer vaccine mandates, and with all the Lege vacancies at the moment, who knows what the outcome of anything Abbott might put on the call could be?

It's a little early for the governor to be focused on November 2022 by lying about Beto, but that just goes to show you that you can't put anything beyond him.


The University of Austin's mascot is not going to be an elephant.  Much too noble a creature.  I'm thinking Leeches.


And a Happy Thanksgiving to all the people that Mayor Turner screwed out of affordable housing in the years to come.


The findings push pause on at least six apartment and multi-family projects the City of Houston wants to help build until Houston sends corrections to its plan. It puts at risk $91 million in taxpayer-funded housing subsidies and the future of 933 apartments, many for low-income Houstonians.

GLO reviewers say their overall conclusion is that, "The City of Houston does not have appropriate processes and the necessary controls in place to meet (the multi-family program contract requirements)."

The program is designed to provide affordable housing to low-income families using federal funds, but the GLO found multiple instances where the city didn't follow its own housing recommendations -- the ones developers were given before planning finding the city lifted lower scoring projects above those that scored higher.

The GLO said that "result(s) in a competitive process that is not fair and open."

Say whatever you like about Ted Oberg and Greg Groogan and even George Pee Bush at the GLO.  It was Tom McCasland who first blew the whistle.

One more thing before I get off the corruption beat.


More hard news after the holiday.  I need some soothers now.

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