Texas Jeff

Steve Martin gave us a road map for this back in 1977, perhaps Trump was listening: You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!” How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don’t say “I forgot”? Let’s say you’re on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, “I forgot armed robbery was illegal.” Let’s suppose he says back to you, “You have committed a foul crime. you have stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say, ‘I forgot’?” Two simple words: "Excuuuuuse me!!“

from the Constitution: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. So if the Dems take over the House and Senate and get rid of the filibuster, and the California legislature wants to break into 5 states to get 10 Senate seats, can't they do that? All five of the new states would still be in the top 20 states by population.

Check to see if your kid's school district offers orchestra or not at the middle and high school levels. Some have orchestra and band, some just offer band. If your school offers orchestra, your kid will probably join the school orchestra and take private lessons about once a week or so. If not, you'll probably get a private lesson teacher for after school lessons and that teacher may have a "studio" that offers group classes so the kids can play together. I hope you enjoy "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" because that's all you are going to hear for months as they learn the basics of playing the instrument. That's OK, they are learning. After that things pick up, but for a long time it's just Twinkle.

In Austin, It's 15 as of today, up from a local minimum of about 12 a week ago. Pretty stable between 12-20 over the last month: https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0ad7fa50ba504e73be9945ec2a7841cb Texas as a whole has flattened out. Not going up but no longer going down.

The 7 day average for Travis County bottomed out on Sept 3rd at about 70 cases/day. From there it's rebounded to around 110-120 cases/day. Not out of control, but defiantly a rise. Travis County added something to their dashboard to tell you which zip code had the most cases over the past 7, 14, and 28 days. Right now, 78705 (around UT) is winning all categories. UT is testing the crap out of their population and contact tracing. Kids are getting notified when someone close to them in a dorm has it. Hopefully the Travis County rise is just a result of UT starting the semester combined with a few others getting it through daycares and schools, and not the start of another big outbreak. Statewide, the testing is depressingly flat or even declining. Those simple, quick, cheap, less painful tests can't get here fast enough.

Anyone interested in the stadium and capitol view corridors can check out this page: http://1nsane.info/map/cvc.html That guy created a file you can download into Google Earth that will show you exactly where the CVC's cut through the city. There are two that intersect the stadium, the one from the intersection of 38th and Red River, and the one from the LBJ Library plaza. The 38th at Red River CVC was pretty much blocked by both the west side upper deck and the NEZ construction. It also goes right through the PAC and a state office building. It does not affect the south end zone. If you are standing on the top ramp on your way to the westside upper deck, as far south as you can go, you are pretty much in that CVC. The eastern side of the new SEZ does appear to be in the LBJ Library CVC, but has no effect on the view because the east side upper deck already completely blocks the LBJ Library CVC, along with many of the trees around the LBJ Library fountain. Both of those CVCs probably should be removed or shortened because the stadium isn't going anywhere and it blocks both views. The LBJ Library capitol view is now effectively the south side of the SEZ capitol view. Hopefully they are taking advantage of it. The "gap" where you can see the capitol while you are in the stadium is not in a CVC.

Every two years after our national elections, the new Congress is sworn in on the following January 3rd. So on Jan 3rd, 2021, we will have a new Congress and an old President and VP. If it is also a presidential election year, they meet in joint session on January 6th to count the electoral votes. For this session, the current VP is in charge. So Pence will stand up at the front on Jan 6th, 2021, flanked probably by Pelosi as speaker of the house, unless the R's take control of the house. Four "tellers", two from the house and two from the senate, read and submit the electoral vote count from each state. At the end, the VP announces the new president and VP, if a candidate got more than 270 votes. You can have objections in writing if signed by a house member and a senator, which would turn into chaos if we were really fighting down to the last vote. Pence's role is to oversee this process and announce the new president and vice president. Hopefully someone will win by much more than 270 votes and make this a formality. If no one gets a majority, it goes to the house to pick the president, but they vote by states so almost certainly Trump would win. There are tons of weird scenarios that could come into play if this happens. If a president is not picked by Jan 20th, it's possible that the VP elect (if there is one) or the speaker of the house could be named president , depending on what has happened in the house and senate.

So, I was curious about what the electoral vote count actually looks like. Here is what it looked like in 2017: https://www.c-span.org/video/?421237-1/joint-session-congress-certifies-donald-trump-us-president The current VP is in charge, and in that case Joe Biden was counting the votes to elect Trump as president. I am no fan of Pence, but I do believe that he'll do the right thing if Biden wins ... count the votes and point us towards a peaceful transfer of power.

Jordan Klepper talked to a shirt-owner to attempt to clarify this:

MAFA - Make America Float Again Somebody make hats.

Biden on C-SPAN, comments about Trump and the military are at the beginning of the speech, about 50 seconds in: https://www.c-span.org/video/?475440-1/joe-biden-comments-claim-president-trump-called-deceased-us-service-members-losers-suckers

I would expect UT to have a COVID curve similar to almost all of the other COVID curves out there. They brought together a mix of people who were sitting at home for most of the late spring/summer and now they are all living pretty close together. The UT campus is in the fourth most dense zip code in Texas. There is going to be an outbreak. It should have a sharp rise over maybe 4-6 weeks and then a peak and then tail off over maybe 8-12 weeks. If you look around the world, this seems to be the experience of almost every population out there. I would be surprised if UT is any different. If they have a small, contained outbreak with good isolation and contract tracing we should applaud them for being competent. Hopefully they don't decide to send everyone home to give it to Mom, Dad and the rest of their hometown.

UT has a pretty good dashboard here: https://coronavirus.utexas.edu/ut-austin-covid-19-dashboard They are doing "proactive community testing", whatever that means. Last week they did 678 tests and had one positive.

I think he's going to go the way of Elvis. Vegas shows as pay-to-attend rallies where he just rips people, keeps getting fatter, eventually the lifestyle catches up with him and he's gone, tourists pay to check out Mar-a-lago and/or Trump Tower for a generation. Trump TV will be a thing. Whatever he can sell.

Counties that are part of the "Countywide Polling Place Program" in Texas allow you to vote at any polling place in your county. Here is the list from the July 2020 runoff election: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/laws/countywide-polling-place-program.shtml I count 72 counties on that list, including most of the highly populated counties.

Please let this be his last State of the Union...

Many people are saying that Trump gave Biden ten endorsements now and three to be named later to get Herschel's.

This is a lot of anger about the way things are being run coming from the incumbent party, running for re-election. "I'm angry at what is going on in this country ... and the only solution is to keep going with the guy that has been in charge for a while now"

A note to DC based RNC protesters -- don't get mad, get vuvuzelas. There is not a more annoying sound on the earth than a chorus of those plastic pieces of crap. No line of police would be able to take it.

How about here: https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0d8bdf9be927459d9cb11b9eaef6101f Click on "Hospitals - Regional" at the bottom. Austin is in Trauma Area O. They don't show total ICU beds but they do show available ICU beds - 73 currently available in Austin. Avoid area N (College Station), they have only 5 ICU beds available. Area T on the southern boarder also appears screwed, they have 1 bed left.

Corporations ditch laptops every 3-5 years. Hard to believe there aren't plenty of capable laptops sitting in storage at various used PC locations. Kids need a camera, wifi, a browser and maybe a word processor.

So, anyone think this might end up like the 1968 Democratic Convention with protests surrounding the event?

Head on over to their other dashboard: https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984 In the panel "Weekly Hospitalizations by Race & Ethnicity - MSA", click on the tab "MSA ICU and Vent 7d Mov. Avg."

Strangest Tarantino casting ever ...

In Travis County, it is on the weekend during early voting. Specifically, on Sundays. If the NFL is playing, record the game and go vote. Early voting is starting early this year, there may be multiple weekends to vote. Travis County puts up a great website at www.votetravis.com . You can see polling wait times and pick the place with the lowest lines in real time. In Travis County, you can vote at any polling place in the county, even on Election Day. You can print a personalized ballot on their website. To help others, print one out and mark your choices ahead of time, then bring your printout with you to the polls. You will vote faster and help move the line along for others.