Red Six

The speaker was Kara Bell, not Kara King. The latter is a level-headed public servant and middle school math teacher. The former is a psychotic, failed school board candidate who is fronting an astroturf movement to kill public education.

I lived in her district when she was elected. She beat out a field of other nobodies and won against Ellen's pick in the runoff. The district was primarily Oak Hill/Circle C, but she lived in that remote corner by Westlake, so she wasn't really involved in any of the neighborhood groups or hyperlocal politics. Apparently she had a politically connected boyfriend who ran the show. Politics aside, Ellen was responsive and accountable to her constituents. Paige is just kind of... there.

It's a single sentence in a book. It's not obscene, it's not pornographic; it's at worst vulgar. Parents can look online any time to see what books their kids are checking out. If they're truly worried about what their child is reading, they can preview it. A Young Adult book realistically depicting a young adult's thought process and language is not inappropriate. I pay taxes for the school library too, and I would like it to provide a wide variety of options to my child, even if parts of the book make me uncomfortable. I read several Robert Cormier books when I was in junior high and early high school, and they were great, even though they had some dark themes like sexual assault and suicide. But they were books that didn't insult my maturity and intelligence and helped me grow intellectually and as a reader. I still have situations 30 years later where something reminds me of Jerry Renault or that kid on a bike. The books had characters that thought like me and talked like me along with great storylines. I remember my 6th grade English teacher introducing them to me with the caveat that they were controversial and sometimes banned (which is the way to get a 6th grader to read, by the way), and it frustrates me when people can't see past the words on the page to really analyze what they're saying.

This is failed school board candidate Kara Bell, aka the "Woman of God" of Nordstrom Rack fame. She has never had anal sex, and she doesn't want to have anal sex. This happened on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, school district police reportedly went into a middle school library to investigate the offending book and others, and the superintendent removed them from the shelves. Things are getting fucked up.

This is just the Littlefield Fund for Southern History updated for the modern age. Also, while Googling that to ensure that it was really a thing and not just some figment of my imagination that I conjured from my Orientation walk a couple decades ago, I found that two of the three George Littlefield Professors of American History are black. Heh.

I'm wondering if they don't have much more capacity at the moment, so the numbers can't increase further.

One of the school mom Facebook pages (the one that posted the Nazi meme the other day) is streaming it. So far the three pediatricians, a couple nurses, and an EMT have come out as for masks. A Q and a "Patriot" so far have come out against. Odds are the board will not implement a mask requirement.

They called an emergency school board meeting for Thursday night regarding covid-19 safety measures. I wouldn't be surprised if they fall 4-3 on requiring masks. Which way, I'm not sure. All I know is that I reinforced to my elementary daughter this morning that she needs to keep her mask on at school, because there are some parents who think giving their kids horse medicine will cure covid.

At our elementary school, the principal told the teachers and staff they had to wear masks, without telling them they had to wear masks. Looks like 50/50-ish of the students at dropoff, but my kid says she only keeps the mask on part of the day, so who knows. Older kid didn't say much about middle school, but I think most of the people in her friend group are wearing them, so that's a plus. As far as bullying, my wife told them to be nice, but I'm just waiting for a call (or, more likely, a FB message) from a parent telling me my kid said something awful to their unmasked child.

We lived near Brodie and Davis up until about a year ago. Elementary school in our neighborhood was good, but the middle school was so-so and the neighborhood mostly fed into Crockett (which isn't terrible, but isn't great, either). It's a great area for access to Bergstrom, though -- all that was between us and the airport were two stop signs in the neighborhood, and then you just went MoPac to Ben White.

There are lots of developments out east near Bergstrom, e.g., Easton Park. People who are moving here from out-of-state and don't know any better are snatching them up. The schools out there are Del Valle, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the new developments take the area over, a la Dripping Springs over the past 15 years.

The local lefties are apoplectic that the superintendent was not wearing a mask at an event last night; the righties were so happy to see his smiling face greeting parents. At my older kid's orientation last night, I'd say it was about 50/50 masks, with most of her friends in the masked 50 percent. I just hope she doesn't repeat what I've muttered about some of the unmasked kids' parents... On the plus side, my other kid's teacher said in her intro email that she would be greeting students masked with a smile. That's reassuring and should help my daughter feel more comfortable wearing a mask.

Living in a fast-growing Austin suburb that is full of transplants, my anecdotal observation is that the people moving here from the West Coast, Chicago, or New York tend to be ridiculously right-wing, and they will tell you they moved to Texas because of freedom. Southerners -- Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, etc. -- seem to be more moderate, as do people from other parts of the Midwest, the mountain states, etc. A lot of the Texans seem to be Bush Republicans who aren't particularly liberal but also aren't crazy and some of them may have even voted for Biden without telling their parents. There's the person with the "In this house..." sign on every block, and most of them seem to be from larger Texas cities. Long story short... the transplants are almost a wash with a centrist lean. They tend to be educated and well-to-do, which tends to favor the Dems with current national demographic trends, but with Texas Dems generally running flaming bags of dog poo statewide, the transplants aren't going to be much of factor.

We were there in April during the stimmy ramp-up and before the end of the first mask times, and it was surprisingly good. We stayed at Paris and service was frequent there as well as Downtown. I could park myself at a slot, VP machine, or table and have a drink in my hand within minutes. I don't know how the pours are in mixed drinks; I just asked for straight Scotch and it was good enough for me. Much better than our last time there at the end of February 2020, when it was awful everywhere I played. Wynn, Park MGM, Cromwell, Caesars, Ex, Luxor, Cosmo -- they all sucked. Service overall was much better this year.

The stupidest people I have met have law degrees from Princeton.

There was little to no spread in schools during the past year, but that was because they were wearing masks. In our community, the kids were catching it at dance/sports/church where they weren't wearing masks. So if they're not wearing masks in school, we likely will see an uptick in spread, especially because there are so many bug-chasers who, because the school can't make them keep their kids home, will send their kids to school even if they're positive.

Back when he was just a fancy hairdo and toothy grin sycophant of Jana Duty's in the WillCo Attorney's Office, I eavesdropped on a conversation of his in the courthouse hallway shortly after Sandy Hook. He was basically touting the NRA line of "If the teachers were armed, it wouldn't have happened." So "just bring [your] guns" is par for the course for him.

I listened to the public comment section of my local school board meeting. There were two citations to the Nuremberg Code regarding the vaccine, one who said that things would change when the 2020 election was proven to be fraudulent, one mother and child who cried about how masks made their school experience horrific, lots of "let's see our kids' smiling faces," and plenty of that "MY CHILD MY CHOICE" action.

Only to DL at Oilcan's.

When you either foment the belief, or outright state, that covid is a hoax, there is a cure (HCQ, Ivermectin, whatever), there's a microchip in the vax, etc., you're not suddenly going to get people to get vaccinated just by pulling out the Trump trope of accusing Democrats of... whatever it is she is accusing them.

All we got popped for in the 80s was an assistant coach buying a recruit a pair of cowboy boots. So either we weren't trying hard enough, or we were just good enough to cover it up.

They're finally realizing that all the voter suppression in the world won't help if your own voters are disproportionately dying.

"This gummy isn't hitting. I'll eat all 10."

The embargo is very far-reaching with how interconnected multinational corporations are. For instance, a credit card issued by a foreign bank that, so far as I know, is entirely contained within one non-U.S. country (e.g., Germany's Sparkasse) can get blocked because its payment system utilizes American bank infrastructure. It's not like American companies can backdoor their way into Cuba through a foreign subsidiary; Coca Cola France can't buy Cuban sugar for beverages there, InBev can't import Cuban rum, Altria's European and Asian subsidiaries can't import Cuban tobacco, etc. Technically, you're not supposed to even purchase a Cuban cigar in Mexico or Italy or wherever. The goal is for zero American dollars to make its way into the country (though that doesn't keep hard currency from arriving via foreigners). An American embargo will shut down an economy real quick. ETA: That's not to discount the impact of communism. But the embargo is really the death knell.

Some people aren't into the taxidermy bear and wood paneling ambiance.