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Texas Jeff

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Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. My uncle, a small business owner, said that the goal of every person in corporate America was to never open the door and hear "Hello, I'm Mike Wallace with 60 Minutes, do you have time for a few questions?". He said if you hear that you're screwed. Did Trump not know that 60 Minutes has been asking tough questions since forever?
  2. I think there is a big wave already underway in Texas and it's only showing up in the hospitalized data. The hospital numbers for both Texas and Travis County are up sharply but overall case numbers are not spiking in the same way. Pandemic fatigue has set in and people are just blowing off getting tested. Now would be a great time to deploy those 15 minute $5 tests. Where are they?
  3. Just voted at the Austin Rec Center (near House Park). Zero line at 6pm. Walked right up. Austin ISD is hosting a football game but there is a ton of parking in the ACC garage next door.
  4. Austin ISD spends about 11 cents building and repairing schools for 75,000 students, about 59 cents on everything else, and is forced to give about 41 cents to the State of Texas. If you are going to show Prop A as a separate bar from the City of Austin then you should make recapture separate from AISD funding. Austin ISD also does not get the benefit of a 1% sales tax. Cap Metro will get $250 million from that tax just next year, even if zero passengers board a bus.
  5. I saw a post from a Travis County poll worker that said that the wait times are really a rough guess. If you want, you can help the poll workers and all of us by starting a stopwatch when you get in line, then telling the poll worker how long you waited in line once you get to the front. I think they can enter that info into the system rather than having to guess at the wait time. Something you can do to help others while you are waiting in line...
  6. When there's something strange... In your briefing room... Who you gonna call? COVID BUSTERS!
  7. Two scoops ...
  8. So this big strong guy comes up to me ... 6'4" ... straight out of central casting, tears streaming down his face. I said "what's wrong son?" He said "Sir, I just wanted to let you know...'" I said "Son, you can tell me ... what's on your mind?" He said "Sir .... I've just been ordered to drive you around the block..."
  9. I think they normally use Marine One to go to Walter Reed. They do it all the time to get to Air Force One and it's probably just easier and more secure to do that to set up a motorcade. I think I remember that it was a big deal last year that they took a motorcade to Walter Reed for the "first half of Trump's physical" instead of the helicopter. I've been in DC twice when Marine One flew over me near the White House. It is really cool to watch.
  10. It's possible that they took him to the hospital yesterday because he could still walk to the helicopter, before a time when maybe he can't. Imagine the optics if they would have waited a week in the White House to see if his case stayed mild, then had to take him to the hospital. What if they would have had to wheel him out to Marine One on a stretcher with oxygen and nurses wearing hazmat suits, three weeks before an election? Not a good look. Whatever happens to Trump now will be out of sight.
  11. Thinking positively, I think you are going to love watching high school games next year at House Park. Austin High gets clobbered by our friends to the west but also has some great games. The lack of a track puts you right on top of the action with a great view of the Capitol and downtown. Close games are a blast.
  12. My bad, I did not include enough info on how to get your ballot... Enter your voter information at the bottom of the page and say "Look me up". If it finds you in the system, you can then click on "View my ballot". You should get a PDF that is customized for you..
  13. Travis County folks, sample ballots are up at votetravis.com. To see the sample ballot, you have to enter your voter information at the bottom of the page and say "Look me up", then "View my ballot". You can view or print a sample ballot that will match what you see at the voting booth. Fill it in ahead of time and bring it with you to vote quickly and keep the lines moving. It is OK to bring printed materials with you into the voting booth.
  14. The last question was the worst part of the debate for me. Wallace asked if we were going to have a free and fair election and something about not declaring victory until an independent consensus had emerged about who was the winner and Trump went on a crazy person rant. Same question to Joe Biden and Biden looked into the camera and answered "yes, go vote, you have the power to determine the outcome of this election". I thought it was a good moment for Biden and a pretty horrible preview of what November is going to be like. Biden had a genuine moment admitting that Hunter had a drug problem but said he was better now. Trump, of course, would lie about such a thing and deny it. It wasn't a policy discussion but it showed me that Biden is able to admit to misfortune and have a positive mindset that the future can be better than the present. About Tech 2008 or whatever game you thought was worse, football is a rough game with lots of emotion. And yet we have refs that throw flags and the players may say that a call is bullshit but they still abide by the ref's call. Maybe we need that in the next two debates. If you are being an asshole during the other person's time, it's a personal foul. A little yellow flag flies in and you have to move your podium back 15 yards. Using that standard, they would be fishing Trump out of Lake Erie right now.
  15. First term presidents usually get shellacked during their first debate for a second term. Dubya did and he went on to win. Obama did and he went on to win. I think Reagan did too but came back with his "age and inexperience" quote in a later debate on his way to crushing Mondale. Trump is going to show up unprepared and try to interrupt and BS his way around the debate. Biden has to keep it short and to the point and look like a competent person that can hire well and return us to sanity.
  16. Red shirted kid up front is Bobby Hill takin' a leak. Dang it Bobby!
  17. 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!!“
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. Jordan Klepper talked to a shirt-owner to attempt to clarify this:
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