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 Rodrรญguez (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 cafรฉ 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.

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.