Red Six

Maybe I'm just stuck in 1996, but I have to throw in a mention for Angelo's.

Marriott had operations in Cuba until Trump shut them down last year. Iberostar pretty much owns Varadero Beach. The rest of the world -- especially Canadians, Western Europeans, and Latin Americans -- has been traveling to Cuba for cheap all-inclusive vacations for years. It's basically on the level of Cancun or Punta Cana or Jamaica for them as a value destination for getting drunk and sunburned. Americans suddenly being able to visit freely won't change their economy that much when there is so much inertia toward taking vacations other locations in the Caribbean.

It most likely would be a federal judge. And I don't think you understand the extent of the leeway police are given in terms of knowing what is a constitutional violation. Brisket's hypothetical holding is dead-on with the 5th Circuit's qualified immunity jurisprudence. It is maddening.

@4th and 5 is based one county over, but actually enjoys treading into that quagmire of injustice.

You need this.

Scoring is a lot easier in Encore than Excalibur. No one wants window sex in a portal overlooking a construction Dumpster.

Handing a cop your smartphone is a good way to go down on a kiddie porn charge.

Travis DA is currently rejecting state jail felony MJ cases, i.e., < 5#. I don't recommend trying that in any other county, though.

Lake Travis also managed to fend off their qandidate who made headlines when she threw a fit at Nordstrom Rack. The scary thing is that she had a lot of vocal support until that happened, and she still managed to snag 25 percent of the vote. Still waiting to see if her campaign treasurer Jennifer Fleq files some stupid suit challenging the election. Lakeway also held off her friend who was running for city council (though one of the three winners is at least sympathetic to her). It looks like, for now, the affluent western suburbs of Travis County are staying relatively sane despite their longtime status as a Republican stronghold. Maybe the people with money in the game know better than to summon the dark forces of Trumpism.

When I started feeling something about three hours after getting jabbed, I remarked that it crept up on you like 'shrooms, and then it all of a sudden hit hard. Worst trip of my life; 2/10, would not recommend.

She has a city staff budget so she can hire good handlers. There are still some veteran campaign and Capitol workers hanging around from the Bush and Perry days who know how to run a day-to-day operation.

In Texas, the verdict form begins with the highest charge, and then follows with, "If you do not so find beyond a reasonable doubt, then, if you believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant [elements of the lesser included offense], then you shall render the verdict of 'guilty;' but if you do not so find beyond a reasonable doubt, then..." (not the actual wording, and I'm not going to dig out a jury charge right now, but that's the jist). So guilt is on the highest charge supported by the evidence. If an appeals court finds that the elements of a higher charge were not met, but the elements of a lesser were met, then they can reverse and render.

Her middle name is "Lynn." Her maiden name is "Quast." So, no... "Q" is not her middle initial, but she presents herself in the Internet world as "Kara Q. Bell." If you listen to her rant when she was cited, she's closer to sovereign citizen than Q. But she had Q-sympathetic posts on her now locked-down Twitter, including "just asking questions" about chemtrails. Her campaign treasurer is former state rep candidate and "election integrity" activist Jennifer Fleck, and her largest donor is a longtime (and I thought respectable) Republican operative who should know better than to get near this Dumpster fire. The local GQP is basically trying to MacKenzie Kelly our school boards -- put up a woman (always a woman, because Travis County voters will default to a woman's name) in a low-turnout election, encourage "the base" to turn out, and try to win by flooding the polls with motivated voters. To MacKenzie's credit, she has a decent staff who, so far, has put up decent guardrails to keep her from going too far off the deep end. In Qara's case, the handlers are as nuts as she is. I don't think Qara's candidacy is about winning; I think it's about the donations (which can be funneled to other political groups once the campaign is over), and Fleq having a potential plaintiff to make another Quixotic challenge to Travis County's elections.

Akshually... Texas Penal Code Section 38.02 only requires a person to identify himself if he is arrested. If detained, the offense is only when a person gives a false name, address, or birthdate. An argument could be made that she was under arrest at this time, because the police had probable cause to cite her and her freedom of movement was limited such that a reasonable person would believe she was under arrest. Also, in Texas, almost any offense subjects a person to custodial arrest except, I believe, speeding and open container in an automobile. But she didn't sign up for this law, and therefore she's free to do whatever she wants, amirite? I could go into much more detail about her, but the long and short is that she's part of a larger effort by Q's and Q-adjacents -- utilizing the GQP infrastructure -- to win low-turnout local elections and use the offices as a stepping stone to something greater.

Went to law school with him. He used to post as "WestTxAg" on TexAgs. Otherwise a great guy who epitomizes West Texas.

In my experience... probably 95 percent of the time. So many times I've been told that my client is staying away from the complaining witness, then 6 months later my client is back in jail because they got in another fight. They're in love, and it was just a misunderstanding.

There were, at one point, 62 million shares shorted. The total shares outstanding is approximately 69.5 million. 17 million or so of the shares are held by mutual funds. And then there are all the open short calls. This may not make it to the Moon, but it's going to hang out in orbit for a while.

The bloodbath for the shorts is for the sellers on the call side. Losing 100 percent on a defined risk trade -- as is the case with the buyers on the put side -- isn't really a "bloodbath." It's just how things roll sometimes.

A few years ago, NPR did a story on Selena's "code-switching," comparing clips of her speaking to radio stations in South Texas and Lubbock, respectively. She had more of a Spanglish accent in the former, and Texas twang in the latter. I don't know how conscious it was on her part, given that she was a native English-speaker in South Texas. People tend to morph their language to match their surroundings. Also, listen to some of Al Gore's speeches when he was in the Senate. Sounds like an animated Appalachian rube, compared to his robotic monotone of the past 25 years. For him, though, the Southern accent was probably more contrived.

Steve Beuerlein, erstwhile Dallas Cowboys backup quarterback, donated $400, as did his wife.

Not to derail, but... WTF? You sodomized a kid with a broom handle in high school?

They're like 3M -- deferrals only, no refund on entry fee. It's not really about the money. It's about working toward a goal, then significantly altering the goal. I know I'll have the time and wherewithal to follow through this year. I don't know if, after the dropoff that will likely happen (work spinning back up, dropping down in fitness during the summer), I can rev it back up again next fall. On the other hand, there is the possibility that I could make running 20 miles a week a regular part of my life. It just would require a huge shift in the way I and my family operate.

I've noticed they're playing the "we're really going to happen... no, really, we are... we promise" line pretty hard lately. I just can't see it happening, though. I read some guidance for administering races in the time of covid, and there's no way you could meet those guidelines with several thousand people. I'm one of those people who got off my fat ass during covid (and after a friend in his late 30s dropped dead during the physical act of love), did Couch to 5k during June and July, and is now running 10ks. I set my sights on 3M as a doable achievement, but I'm hesitant to register. I'm not going to do it virtual, and I'm not sure that once the world starts turning full-speed I can get back to half-marathon fitness in a year. It does look like there are smaller, <100 person, long-distance (13.1 and 26.2) races running in nearby counties (there's one in Spicewood in about 6 weeks). There are also some good trail races running. I just may have to shoot for one of those.

We're, I believe, a district bordering yours that's very similar, and there is no way that our "grassroots" parent movement was organic. No one ever put a fancy name to it or held press conferences, but it's clearly organized. I know there is at least one prominent local politician tied into it, as well as at least one, if not two, school board members who are at minimum complicit. The parents involved in the local "open the schools" movement have been absolutely atrocious. I dip in on their Facebook group, and the things they say in there are awful and the same sentiment you describe -- the teachers are disposable. All of this is said without any hint of self-awareness. Now that their kids are back at school, any attempt by the district or individual teachers to maintain health and safety protocol is met with derision. A friend and I attended a recent school board meeting to watch the circus, and it was painful to be in the room and listen to person after person just go up there and trash teachers. After that meeting and word got out that they sunk teacher morale, they were chatting about putting together gift baskets for the teachers, all of whom they absolutely love and value. It was like watching an abusive relationship play out in real-time. I'm curious as to what kind of paper trail there is behind this. These astroturf movements can be hard to pin down, especially if the visible folks out front are volunteers, no money is changing hands, and no elected official is operating it in their official capacity.

I'm in Lakeway/Bee Cave area, in a neighborhood that is par for demographics -- professional class, higher income, educated, etc. -- out here, and the other day I counted 2 for Biden and 2 for Trump on my run. Our next door neighbor now has their Biden sign up. Our across the street neighborhood had her Trump sign stolen, and she plans to rig a shocking device to it in case anyone tries to steal it again. Of my closest clique of 10 or so people out here, I would say that almost all of us have at least leaned Republican in the past, including a person who started his career working in Washington for Republican campaigns. The votes were split among Trump and Johnson for those of us who voted in 2016. I think one is still leaning Trump, but the rest of us are at least not giving him our vote (no one has yet admitted to a likely vote for Biden). Apparently Justin Berry (the ex-cop Republican nominee for Texas House) has been expressly distancing himself from Trump out here, because he doesn't think Lakeway people go for Trump. He is the more "establishment" nominee, and he eked out a win against Don Zimmerman and some other kook. There are some vocal Red Hat types who have been showing up at, say, school board meetings blowing that "6 percent" horn, fighting about masks, etc. But I don't know how deep that vein runs. Many people out here, basically, are tired of Trump's shit. They are people who want low taxes, maybe some guns, and to be generally left alone. He's not playing that well with these educated suburbanites.