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  1. More from Howe: We just got done meeting with David Pierce and a few players before this weekend’s season-opening series against San Diego. Here are few things to note: — Lebarron Johnson Jr. is getting the ball and Charlie Hurley will start on Saturday. Pierce said when Johnson takes the mound, everybody in the program believes they’re going to win. He thinks LBJ is going to have a special season. — Tanner Witt is available to pitch this weekend, but the Sunday starter is officially TBA. Pierce said Witt is close to top form, but he’s still working through a few things. — Heading into the season, Pierce indicated the team’s top three bullpen guys are David Shaw, Gage Boehm and Grant Fontenot. — Pierce all but confirmed that Jared Thomas will lead off and start at first base. Thomas said he’ll play wherever Pierce wants him, but he’s expected to get some time in center field. Casey Borba, Nik Sanders and Cam Constantine have worked at first base whenever Thomas has gone to center field. — Expectations are high for Jalin Flores at shortstop. Pierce has said Flores and Max Belyeu (who Pierce said has earned the right to start in right field) are two of the most improved players in the program since the end of the 2023 season.
  2. Assuming you're quoting me, but even if not. I'm not assuming Mahomes is scoring a TD since they hadn't done it all game aside from the time they got the ball after the punt hit the 9ers players leg. What I am assuming is that, if it was a viable option, the Chiefs were going to win it or lose it with Mahomes and not their defense, even though their defense had been exceptional all year. Shanahan played for the 3rd possession but the Chiefs never had any intention of letting it get to the 3rd possession. Acting as if Shanahan would go for 2 had they scored a TD is pointless. He wasn't ballsy enough to go for it on 4th and 4 inside the 10 but he was going to be ballsy enough to go for 2? I don't buy it. That said, had Purdy thrown it to Aiyuk on the last drive of the 4th instead of going to Jennings they would have gotten the first down and ran out the rest of the clock and we (probably) wouldn't be having this discussion.
  3. At the moment, Texas has tiebreakers over WV and KU. We need things to go our way, but it’s likely we finish tied for 1st or in 2nd. And yes it is very possible to get a 1 seed without winning the Big 12 regular season, but does require some help from teams playing NCST, Iowa and Ohio State
  4. This is the only way taking the ball first makes sense to me unless you're just not worried about the other teams offense at all. Any other option and you're letting the other team have the first crack at winning the game. They may not decide to go for 2 should they only be down by 1 after scoring a TD, but the opportunity is there & every team has a 2 point play or 2 that they can go to & if you just watched your defense give up a TD then that probably influences your decision even more. "But the defense was gassed" - The defense was on the field for less than 2 minutes on the final drive in the 4th. If they were "gassed" it was because they had played an entire game & that wasn't going to change with one drive anyways. Even their 8 minute drive didn't make the defense look any better once they took the field. "The defense had held them in check most of the game" - All the more reason to give them the ball first & not let them have 4 downs to get a first down every time. Also, it's fucking Mahomes, you're not going to keep him down forever. "We would get 1st crack at sudden death IF we were tied" then call a better play on 3rd & 4 and go for it on 4th & 4. Make them drive 50 yards for a long FG or 60 yards for an easier FG but only have 3 downs to do it instead of 4. It was a bad decision in the moment & it's a bad decision now. It looks worse when the Chiefs players said "we talked about the new rules every week" vs the 9er players having no clue. I'm sure Shanahan knew, but the optics are bad when comparing the players. There's no "captain hindsight" here, I was shocked when they made the decision & I was completely unshocked at how it played out (other than them kicking the FG instead of going for it).
  5. @Brisketexan and @YGIFS and everybody else - want to know why Abbott and the others went batshit? Why Texas has declared war on LBGTQs? Because one man has decided he should tell Texans what to do and think. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/ The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy The state’s most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn’t an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians.. You may not think about Tim Dunn. Indeed, unless you’re a close observer of Texas politics, it’s likely you haven’t heard of him. But Dunn thinks a lot about you. For two decades he has been quietly, methodically, and patiently building a political machine that has pushed Texas forcefully to the right, sending more and more members of the centrist wing of the Republican Party into exile. A 68-year-old oil billionaire, Dunn seeks to transform Texas into something resembling a theocracy. If you ever wonder why state laws and policies are more radical than most Texans would prefer, the answer has a lot to do with Dunn and his checkbook. If you question why Texas’s elected officials no longer represent the majority of Texans’ views, the reason can be traced to the tactics employed by Dunn and the many organizations and politicians he funds and influences. He has built his own caucus within the Legislature that is financially beholden to him. And despite his Sunday school pleas for comity, Dunn has deepened Texas’s political divisions: there are the Democrats and what remains of the mainstream conservative Republican Party. And then there are Dunn and his allies. . He grew up in Big Spring, about forty miles northeast of Midland, with three older brothers in a cramped house. He now lives in a mansion, hidden within a roughly twenty-acre walled compound on the northern edge of Midland. Nearby is the nondenominational church where he regularly delivers sermons as a lay minister. The Dunns are one of Texas’s wealthiest families, having acquired inexpensive leases in the Permian Basin years before fracking made it possible to extract oil and gas from fields previously thought to be in decline. As a political power broker, he mostly operates behind the scenes, routinely writing six- and seven-figure checks. This money is only the visible portion of a political operation that shapes the agenda in Austin and is feared by many Republican elected officials. Throughout its history, Texas has seen plenty of influential men who have shared their message from the pulpit. And a steady march of rich men have opened their wallets to get politicians to do what they want. But we’ve never seen the two archetypes merge in quite this way. Dunn has said he believes we’re in the midst of a holy battle that pits Christians against those he refers to as Marxists, who he claims want to control all property and take away freedom. Marxists “are increasingly becoming bolder and more brazen in their quest for tyranny,” he has warned. “It is becoming clear they want to kill us.” The founder of Marxism, he argued, wasn’t Karl Marx. It was Satan. For Dunn, politics, work, and religion all run together. “I have very deliberately unsegmented my life,” he said in 2022 on a podcast hosted by Ken Harrison, the chair of Promise Keepers, a national evangelical group for men. “I don’t have one approach in business and another approach in ministry and another approach in church . . . I work for God, and God has given me a bunch of jobs to do.” Dunn directs that work from the center of a hive of his own creation, surrounded by politicians and pastors, fellow oil billionaires, and political consultants, all of whom are carrying out his vision. He still has a bee on a string—except these days, that bee is the state of Texas. . In the past two years Dunn has become the largest individual source of campaign money in the state by far. Until recently his main tool for exerting influence has been the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, to which he has given at least $9.85 million since the beginning of 2022. This is nearly all the money he contributed to Texas races over that span and the majority raised by the committee. The political action committee targets Republicans, many of them quite conservative, whom it deems insufficiently loyal to the organization’s right-wing agenda. Dunn is not a passive donor who will dole out a few thousand dollars after a phone call and some flattering chitchat. The funding machine he has built is designed to steer politics and control politicians. Its methods are deceptively simple. A Dunn-affiliated organization lets lawmakers know how it wants them to vote on key issues of the legislative session. After the session, it assigns a number, from zero to one hundred, to each lawmaker based on these votes. Republicans who score high, in the eighties or nineties, are likely to remain in Dunn’s good graces. But those who see their scores drift down to the seventies or even sixties—who, in other words, legislate independently? Their fate is easy to predict. They’ll likely face a primary opponent, often someone little known in the community, whose campaign bank account is filled by donations from Dunn and his allies. This cash provides access to political consultants and operations that can be used to spread false and misleading attacks on Dunn’s targets, via social media feeds, glossy mailers, and text messages. “They told you point blank: if you don’t vote the way we tell you, we’re going to score against you,” said Bennett Ratliff, a Republican former state representative from Dallas County. “And if you don’t make a good score, we’re going to run against you. It was not a thumb on the scale—it was flat extortion.” Ratliff lost in 2014 to a Dunn-backed right-wing candidate, Matt Rinaldi, who scored a perfect one hundred in the next two sessions and quickly amassed power: Rinaldi now serves as the combative and divisive chair of the state GOP. According to several sources involved in Texas politics, what Dunn demands from his candidates, even more than electoral victory, is fealty. He tends to win, sooner or later, one way or another. Sometimes his preferred candidates win the primary and, given the gerrymandering that favors Republicans in most districts in Texas, waltz into office. But even when his candidates lose, the reelected incumbents have been battered by negative rhetoric and have begged and borrowed to raise funds to counter the attacks. Many are left wondering if it’s worth fighting back. Some have chosen to get out of politics entirely. Notable recent retirements include former state senator Kel Seliger and Representative Andrew Murr, both of whom were centrist Republicans who commanded respect from colleagues in both parties and acted as brakes on Dunn’s agenda. Dunn’s influence goes well beyond campaigns and politics. His résumé is lengthy. He is vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank located a couple of blocks south of the Capitol. TPPF generates policy proposals—from severe property tax cuts to bills that impede the growth of renewable energy—that are often taken up by the Texas Legislature and emulated in other red states. He has served for years on the board of the First Liberty Institute, a legal powerhouse that has won Supreme Court cases to advance Christianity’s role in public life. As his wealth has grown, Dunn has used it to support private companies that align with his goals. Through his financial vehicle Hexagon Partners, he recently invested in Christian Halls, whose chief executive says his vision is to create Christian community colleges and trade schools “in every county of the nation in the next ten years.” Also through Hexagon Partners, Dunn invested $7.5 million in a company affiliated with Brad Parscale, who worked in San Antonio targeting swing voters with digital advertising before he became manager of Donald Trump’s failed 2020 presidential campaign. That firm plans to build a “Christian-based” advertising agency that will use artificial intelligence to precisely target consumers with commercial and political messages. In the past several years Dunn has become involved with multiple online media operations. “You can’t trust the newspapers,” he wrote in a 2018 letter to voters. But apparently you can trust Texas Scorecard, a political website that is often critical of politicians who don’t support his agenda. Texas Scorecard was published by Empower Texans, a group largely funded by Dunn that then became a separate organization in 2020. It continues to publish articles that are generally critical of candidates Dunn opposes. He has also been an officer with Chicago-based Pipeline Media, which maintains a network of websites designed to look like independent local media outlets but that churn out often-partisan articles that amplify stances taken by special interest groups. The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found that this network has attacked renewable energy and advocated for property tax cuts. Further, Dunn is a longtime board member of the Lucy Burns Institute, publisher of the website Ballotpedia, which provides information on federal, state, and local elections. It recently launched an “ultra-local” initiative, publishing updates on candidate positions and endorsements in areas that have become news deserts after the closures of local newspapers. The site reported more than a quarter billion page views in 2022. . Dunn generally steers clear of news outlets he doesn’t control. He did not respond to multiple requests for interviews with Texas Monthly, nor did he or his attorney respond to a detailed list of questions. Many of those closest to Dunn declined to be interviewed, and many elected officials refused to speak about him, often out of fear of reprisal. To report this story, I spoke with more than thirty people who know him or work in his orbit; listened to hundreds of hours of his sermons, speeches, and Sunday school lessons; and conducted an exhaustive search of corporate records and tax filings, among other documents. Dunn’s voluminous political enterprises are all sidelines to what has long been his main gig. He is chief executive of CrownQuest Operating. While not well-known outside oil-industry circles, it controls a significant portion of the Permian Basin. In 2022 it was the eighth-largest oil producer in Texas. It operated wells that pumped out about 35 million barrels that year, worth more than $3 billion. In December, Occidental Petroleum agreed to purchase the company’s wells and oil reserves for $12 billion, including assumption of debt. Dunn and his family own about 20 percent of these assets. They stand to collect a windfall worth a couple billion dollars. Once the sale is completed, Dunn presumably will have more time—and more money—for his political interests. Some of Dunn’s critics are quick to note that he and the candidates he backs have posted a poor overall record of electoral success. While there’s some truth to that claim, it misses the point. Yes, Dunn has, in essence, single-handedly financed the campaigns of inexperienced, extremist candidates who have failed to connect with voters. Nonetheless, these campaigns—and the promise of future, amply bankrolled, mudslinging challengers—have led incumbents to either acquiesce to his agenda or retire. Even when Dunn loses, he often wins. Moreover, he is a major donor to some of the most prominent politicians in Texas. He was instrumental in helping Dan Patrick get elected lieutenant governor, arguably the most powerful office in the state. When Patrick first ran for that office, in 2014, he entered a runoff against incumbent David Dewhurst. In the final days before the election, Empower Texans gave Patrick $350,000 and secured for him a $300,000 loan from a Houston bank. The money helped pay for a last-minute blitz of advertising on television and on Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Dunn is also a longtime backer of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and helped him escape impeachment last year for abuse of public trust and other corruption-related charges. Prior to Paxton’s trial, Jonathan Stickland, the head of Defend Texas Liberty, made it clear he was ready to spend Dunn’s money to go after any official who voted to oust the attorney general. “There will be one helluva price to pay,” he warned in a tweet, and then added: “Wait till you see my PAC budget.” That wasn’t the only step Dunn took to protect his ally. Before the impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, Defend Texas Liberty gave Patrick—who chose to preside as judge in the proceeding—$1 million in campaign donations and a $2 million forgivable loan. This is thirty times more than Defend Texas Liberty gave Patrick in 2022, when he was running for reelection. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a bribe—it was all perfectly legal under state law—and Patrick has denied any quid pro quo. Still, as soon as the final votes to acquit the attorney general were cast, Patrick discarded his veil of impartiality and delivered a caustic rebuke to the House leadership for wasting everyone’s time. Despite abundant evidence of Paxton’s corruption, Patrick argued that the House should never have impeached the attorney general. Representative Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat who served as an impeachment manager, told Texas Monthly that this tirade made it clear the fix had been in from the moment Patrick grabbed the gavel. Later, the Texas Tribune reported on a meeting between infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Stickland, who prior to leading Defend Texas Liberty was a state representative to whom Dunn had contributed handsomely. Patrick was quick to condemn Fuentes but slow to criticize Stickland and the PAC. He never returned the money he’d received from the group. Instead he invested it in Israeli bonds, which his campaign treasurer could presumably sell at a later date or simply collect interest payments on for years. . This wasn’t the first time Dunn had opined on Jews. In 2010 he attended a private breakfast meeting with Joe Straus, the first Jewish Speaker of the House in the Texas Legislature. According to Straus insiders, Dunn told him that only Christians should hold leadership positions. When Texas Monthly first reported that encounter, in 2018, it shocked many in Austin’s political class. Dunn’s influence has grown since then, and his worldview has sunk even deeper roots in Texas. Dunn’s sermon that August day came at a crucial juncture in Texas politics. A few months before, a bipartisan majority in the state’s House of Representatives had voted to impeach the attorney general for abusing the power of his office. Dunn had responded in late June by donating $150,000 to Paxton and $1.8 million to Defend Texas Liberty, which turned around and gave Patrick that infamous seven-figure donation and loan. It’s not clear whether the events unfolding in Austin were on Dunn’s mind as he drafted his sermon, but one of his principal messages involved a religious and political battle… . Parts of his message can be heard in churches across Texas every Sunday. But how many such sermons are delivered by lay preachers who write $1 million checks to politicians and political action committees? How many are delivered by billionaires who are building an army of influence? Whose power and connections make them insiders even as they see themselves as outsiders trying to overthrow entrenched interests? How many believe that only Christians should lead Texas, to the exclusion of millions of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and secular Texans? Dunn holds several views that veer outside the mainstream. In late 2022 he delivered a sermon titled “How to Truly Love Your Spouse.” Before he began speaking, he played a brief video quoting from the First Epistle of Peter. It advises women, who are “the weaker vessel,” not to braid their hair or wear too much gold jewelry. They should “adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands.” When the video ended, Dunn was at the pulpit. He praised the narrator’s deep bass voice, noting it was that of his eldest son. “Don’t you love Lee’s voice? Sounds like God reading us scripture, doesn’t it?” He later talked about his view that men’s brains are structured differently from women’s: men are superior problem solvers, while women tend to be more articulate. , Dunn advised men to invite their wives into their professional lives. His wife, Terri, homeschooled their children for sixteen years. When their youngest was in college, playing basketball for Texas Tech University, they would take long trips to watch his games. She would read Dunn’s emails to him as he drove. She liked feeling involved, Dunn said, so he gave her the password to his email account. She also listens to political talk shows, something he doesn’t like to do, and keeps him up to speed on what pundits are saying. This “helps her feel like a part of everything I’m doing,” Dunn explained. “Women were designed as helpers.” Chris Tackett neverintended to become the foremost chronicler of Dunn’s political influence. But sometimes curiosity charts an unexpected course. On a cool fall day, I met Tackett at a hip coffee shop a few blocks south of downtown Fort Worth. He wore blue jeans and a maroon T-shirt from a New York City bookstore and carried a MacBook Air loosely with one hand. In his early fifties, Tackett is fit, with thick, graying hair. By day, he works in human resources for a food processing company. In his spare time he has built a tool to track how a rising flood of money is reshaping Texas politics. . Chris Tackett neverintended to become the foremost chronicler of Dunn’s political influence. But sometimes curiosity charts an unexpected course. On a cool fall day, I met Tackett at a hip coffee shop a few blocks south of downtown Fort Worth. He wore blue jeans and a maroon T-shirt from a New York City bookstore and carried a MacBook Air loosely with one hand. In his early fifties, Tackett is fit, with thick, graying hair. By day, he works in human resources for a food processing company. In his spare time he has built a tool to track how a rising flood of money is reshaping Texas politics. Just a few years ago, he was the volunteer director of a youth baseball league in Granbury, about forty miles southwest of where we met, when he decided he could do more for his community. So he ran for a school board seat. It was one of those life decisions that seemed innocuous at the time but turned out to be momentous. He won the nonpartisan election and, by dint of his new responsibilities, became more involved in state education issues. The board communicated its priorities to Mike Lang, Granbury’s state representative, and Tackett assumed that Lang would be an ally. But when the school board asked Lang to vote for certain bills that protected the district’s funding, Tackett says Lang took the opposite position. Lang took other votes that Tackett felt were not in the best interest of local public schools. The board opposed vouchers, for example, which would allow taxpayer money to be used for private schools, potentially diverting needed revenue from the public school system. Yet Lang supported pro-voucher amendments. Curious about why, Tackett decided to look at the sources of Lang’s campaign contributions. “I mean, what else would it be other than money?” he recalled thinking. I asked Tackett to guide me through what he’d found. We started by looking at who has given the most money to Texas politicians since 2000. The answer, surprisingly, was Tony Sanchez, a Laredo oilman who largely self-financed a quixotic $58 million run for governor two decades ago, creating a feckless orgy of political spending in a few months. After him, there’s a drop and then three more names: grocery magnate Charles Butt, an avid proponent of public education, and Houston homebuilder Bob Perry—and then Tim Dunn. (Pennsylvania billionaire financier Jeff Yass, a school voucher advocate, gave $6 million to Abbott in December, but he still falls far behind the cumulative spending of these four and others.) Perry died a decade ago, and Butt has reserved most of his political contributions for his education PAC. Meanwhile, Dunn has sped up. We looked up Dunn’s contributions since 2000 and found he had given $14.3 million, a figure that struck me as low. Tackett told me to wait. He plugged in name variations: Tim Dunn, Timothy Dunn, Tim M. Dunn, TIM DUNN, Timothy M. Dunn, and so on. The number kept rising until it topped $24.5 million. He gave nearly $11 million—nearly half his total—just between January 2022 and the end of 2023. Under state law, contributions to nonjudicial candidates and PACs aren’t capped but must be disclosed to the Texas Ethics Commission. But there’s another category of expenditure, to “social welfare organizations,” that is called dark money because the donors can remain invisible. These groups cannot give money to a candidate, but they can produce “voter guides” that explicitly point out that only one candidate is, say, a “strong Christian conservative” (however that may be defined). In other words, there are means to push voters’ buttons in ways that are hard to track. As in cosmology, what we can see in the night sky is only part of what’s out there. Still, what was visible told a story. From 2000 until 2015, the big donors in Texas politics tended to be pro-business. They wanted to make it harder to sue corporations—Texans for Lawsuit Reform was still at the height of its power—and they lobbied to spend taxpayer dollars to attract out-of-state companies. The business of Texas, these donors believed, was business. Dunn and other megadonors shared those views, but they had other priorities. The schism came to a head over the 2017 “bathroom bill,” which would have targeted transgender Texans by requiring them in some instances to use restrooms associated with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Dunn backed the bill, but the business lobby opposed it, fearing a backlash that would’ve harmed their companies’ profits. The old guard prevailed. Since then, though, Dunn and his allies have racked up victories, including passing a ban on abortions (before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision) and another bill prohibiting minors from receiving gender-affirming care. Nowadays, the business of Texas is to promote not just business but also a right-wing Christian worldview. “There’s a handful of billionaires trying to pull the strings across the state and pull Texas all the way to the right,” Tackett said. Dunn has deviated from the pro-business camp in other ways. The previous generation of big donors often supported public schools in the interest of training the future workforce. Dunn has long advocated for drastically cutting property taxes, which are the major source of funding for public schools, police, and other essential services in a state that collects no income tax. He backs private Christian schooling and was involved in a recent failed effort to defeat a $1.4 billion bond for Midland public schools. The fight over school vouchers became perhaps the most contentious policy issue during the 2023 legislative session, a key reason why Abbott called four special sessions. Dunn recently said he is “basically uninvolved” in the effort to pass voucher legislation, but he’s underplaying his influence. He gave $37,500 to the Texas Federation for Children PAC, a leading proponent of vouchers. Advocates from the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the America First Policy Institute, organizations for which Dunn has served as a board member, testified last year in favor of voucher bills, as did Matt Rinaldi, whom Dunn backed as a state house candidate and leader of the Texas GOP. What’s more, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, the Dunn-affiliated lawmaker scorecard, has consistently given high marks for votes that allow use of public money to help pay private school tuition. (These grades are not just given after the fact; a lawsuit turned up extensive evidence that longtime Dunn ally Michael Quinn Sullivan communicated to lawmakers before the votes how each would be scored, arguably telling them how to vote if they wished to avoid a well-funded backlash when the score came out.) Tackett sees the voucher push as an attempt to undercut public schools and bolster Christian education. “This was all part of this broader agenda that was to inject religion into our government and erode trust in the government,” Tackett said. He and Mendi are six years into this project and have no plans to stop. “There are days we feel burned out,” he said. But then he uncovers more evidence that Dunn is leading an effort to buy public officials, subvert the state’s democracy, and bend it to his ideology, and that energizes him to keep going. “Democracy is much more at risk than I think most people realize,” he said. In January Tackett texted me an update. A new PAC, Texans United for a Conservative Majority, had been created. The first donation it received was $700,000 from the Dunn-controlled Hexagon Partners. A few days later, Farris Wilks chipped in $1.29 million. The money was being used to unseat incumbent Republicans who scored relatively low on the Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s index. Tackett surmised that after the backlash surrounding the meeting between Stickland and the white supremacist Fuentes, Defend Texas Liberty had become too toxic. So Dunn had simply created a new PAC with less baggage. A month before Tim and Terri married, he wrote a letter to the Texas Tech student newspaper about the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed change to the U.S. Constitution that would enshrine equal protection for men and women under American law. The letter is remarkable for its certainty, and it appears to be Dunn’s first public airing of his political views. He opposed the ERA, writing that the amendment would give “homosexuals equal protection under the law . . . Public schools and, yes, even private Christian schools will not be able to refuse to hire a teacher because he is a homosexual.” (His desire to keep private Christian schools free of government regulations remains intact, as does his animosity toward LGBTQ rights.) After graduating from Tech, Dunn worked at Exxon for two years, in Houston. In 1980 he was hired by First City Bancorp, which traced its lineage to 1866 and was one of the largest banks in Texas. In the mid-eighties the bank moved Dunn to Midland, where he served as the head of commercial lending. In December 1984, First City ran a nearly full-page ad in the business section of the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “We Know Oil & Gas,” it read. “We know Midland!” It featured a drawing of several bankers. Prominently positioned in the middle was a confident, smiling Dunn. Like many Texas banks, First City boomed when strong oil prices buoyed the state economy. But during the final months of 1985 global oil prices began souring. Texas saw massive job losses and a surge in bankruptcies. First City had “aggressively expanded during the early eighties to capitalize on the energy-driven Texas boom and found itself particularly vulnerable,” said Sorin Sorescu, a professor of finance at Texas A&M University who has studied regional banks. In September 1987, First City needed a nearly $1 billion bailout from the federal government. It was, at the time, the second-largest bank rescue ever. Dunn appears to have left the troubled institution right before the bailout; the bank’s financial condition couldn’t have been a surprise to anyone paying attention. In July, two months before the bailout, a new oil firm was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Based in Midland, it was focused on drilling in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. It was called Parker & Parsley Development Partners, and Dunn was a general partner. He remained a top executive as the company grew. By 1995, however, it was foundering and announced a series of belt-tightening measures and a shuffling of its management. Dunn stepped down from the board and took on the role of managing operations in two of the company’s most productive regions. Only one executive remained on the board: Scott Sheffield, who would go on to lead the company for years. Parker & Parsley later renamed itself Pioneer Natural Resources and became a top oil company in the Permian. Last year Exxon Mobil agreed to purchase it for $59.5 billion, in one of the largest oil field deals in two decades. A year after leaving the board, Dunn cofounded his own Midland-based oil company, which would become one of the largest producers in Texas, although one fourth the size of Pioneer. As he built his company, Dunn inched into politics. In 1996 he served as a delegate to the state Republican convention. By this time he and Terri were beginning to construct a private cocoon around their family. They homeschooled their children, developing a curriculum that emphasized reading great books from the Western canon. The Dunns approached like-minded families, recruiting the parents of fifteen students and founding a new school, Midland Classical Academy, that met behind their church. Students attended classes two days a week and studied at home the other three. Ron Miller, the dean of students, told a reporter in 2001 that Christianity was incorporated into every classroom and lesson. “Here, I’m allowed to speak my mind about Jesus Christ,” he said. “Everything we do is centered around the role God has in our life.” The school eventually moved to a new multimillion-dollar building on the north side of Midland, where the homes give way to scrubland dotted by an occasional pump jack. Parents were encouraged to volunteer. Dunn served as the assistant girls’ basketball coach. Today the Dunns’ compound is bisected by a private road named Happy Trails Drive and has been landscaped to look like a rolling prairie. Dunn and Terri live there in a six-thousand-square-foot house. They conveyed plots to three of their sons as well as to a son-in-law, who have built million-dollar homes. A fifth plot was deeded to a daughter and her husband, but they still live a ten-minute drive across town, and another son lives with his wife in Nashville. More than a dozen of the Dunns’ grandchildren live behind the gates. The first substantial campaign check Dunn wrote was in February 2002: ten thousand dollars to Free Enterprise PAC. Its legislative wish list, according to a report it printed at the time, included bills that would “prohibit homosexual marriages and adoptions” and “require a super majority to increase taxes.” The PAC printed a ranking of most-to-least conservative legislators, a strategy later adopted by Dunn-backed groups such as Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. In the period when Dunn contributed, Free Enterprise PAC spent nearly $66,000 supporting Republican candidates for the state House, with most of that going to those it deemed most conservative. The biggest beneficiary was a little-known lawyer running in a five-way contest for an open seat in Collin County. It was his first electoral victory. His name was Ken Paxton. Free Enterprise spent even more on mailings attacking six Republican incumbents—half in the House and half in the Senate—each of whom scored low in the group’s rankings. Several days before the primary election, acting lieutenant governor Bill Ratliff, one of the six, denounced Free Enterprise PAC. Its mailings, which featured a photograph of two men kissing and another of two grooms cutting a wedding cake, claimed Ratliff supported a “radical homosexual agenda.” His alleged sin was voting for a hate crimes bill named after James Byrd Jr., a Black man who in 1998 was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck by three white men in the East Texas town of Jasper. The bill allowed heightened penalties for crimes motivated by the victim’s identity, including race or sexual orientation. All six of the incumbents targeted by the PAC won reelection, but Ratliff was incensed by the group’s tactics. “This type of hate-mongering is reminiscent of the Nazis. This type of hate-mongering is reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. “This type of hate-mongering is now being practiced by the al Qaeda and the Taliban.” The negative press and attention from prominent Republicans didn’t deter Dunn. In 2006 he gave another $10,000 to the group right before the general election. Since that first check in 2002, he has made more than 225 donations of at least $10,000. Dunn’s campaign cash washes through multiple political action committees and helps support various bands of right-wing political activists. The Texas Voice reported that shortly after Thanksgiving a little-known group called the Texas Family Project blasted out text messages that attacked select Republican lawmakers. The messages claimed that those legislators voted in favor of funding to help transgender Texans transition from the gender they were assigned at birth. This was hogwash. All of the targeted Republicans voted for Senate Bill 14, a law passed last year and signed by Abbott that banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth; further, it required Texas to revoke medical licenses for doctors who didn’t comply. Their apparent transgression was not voting for an anti-transgender amendment on an unrelated bill, creating a gossamer thread of truth to the text message’s claim. In reality, these Republicans were singled out and castigated not for their position on transgender Texans but for having the gall to vote independently. (In late January, the same outfit sent anti-Muslim mailers assailing several Republicans in the Legislature.) Dunn’s connection to Texas Family Project is labyrinthine and apparent only after some digging. The group was created in 2022 by Brady Gray, a pastor turned political activist from Weatherford, about thirty miles west of Fort Worth. On the same day in April, he founded two groups: Texas Family Project and Texas Family Project Foundation. One is a nonprofit charity and the other is a dark-money “social welfare group.” Both can keep their donors anonymous, making it nearly impossible to determine who is funding the organizations. Before running these outfits full time, Gray was chief executive of Pale Horse Strategies, a Fort Worth political-consulting firm run by Stickland, who was simultaneously leading Defend Texas Liberty. Pale Horse, named after the line from the book of Revelation in which Death rides a pale horse, thrived on contracts from Defend Texas Liberty. In 2022 and 2023, Defend Texas Liberty paid Pale Horse $829,260 for consulting services. Gray also runs a political action committee called the Texas Pastors Coalition, which was created in May 2022 and has so far been inactive, neither raising nor spending any money, according to state campaign-disclosure documents. But it shares a Fort Worth post office box with the Tarrant County Patriots PAC, which is run by Cary Cheshire, a former Pale Horse adviser who has worked for Dunn-supported groups on and off since 2014. This PAC has raised $80,000 in the last couple of years—all of it from Defend Texas Liberty. This is a typical pattern in Dunn’s orbit. A new organization emerges that attacks Republicans who are conservative but not sufficiently obedient to Dunn and Defend Texas Liberty. The groups, which spread misinformation and sow division, share the same pool of political operatives and funding. Among the lawmakers targeted by the Texas Family Project’s text messages was Stephanie Klick, a longtime nurse and Republican who has represented the northeast Fort Worth suburbs since 2013. In the 2022 election, a former military policeman and Republican Party operative named David Lowe ran against her, claiming she was too moderate. He described himself in campaign material as “an army veteran, a constitutional conservative, [and] follower of Christ.” When Lowe made it into a runoff against Klick, Defend Texas Liberty gave him $177,608—the majority of the $269,467 he raised during the head-to-head campaigning. When I reached Lowe, who is running against Klick again, I asked him what he believes Dunn and Defend Texas Liberty want and why they are supporting him. “I think they’re strong Christians,” he replied. “They’re trying to lay the foundation to make Texas more conservative.” What that means, he said, is not yet clear—even to him. “The truth is, you don’t really know what they want until Texas is conservative,” he said. I replied that it was already quite conservative. He ticked off a list of additional legislative goals: increased militarization of the border, preventing abortions that are accomplished through medications received in the mail, punishing anyone who helps a transgender child receive gender-affirming care, and abolishing property taxes.
  6. https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/theyre-burning-books-in-tennessee/article_1f8c631e-850f-11ec-bc9f-dbd44d7e14d7.html I cited this at an official ISD committee meeting of which I was a member of and was screamed at by parents for being too political. If you want, I can send you my credentials and the meeting minutes off-line, but this absolutely happened. And it's going to happen more and more. As I've oft-cited, when I was younger---my father sat me down to watch a documentary on the Nuremberg Trials. I was like 6 or 7. His father and some other relatives fought for the United States. Still others in his extended family fought with the Nazis. They were recent German immigrants, not unique to just our brood. And I watched footage of bodies being burned in industrial ovens, and London bombings, and French occupation. And I will always remember his silence, he was maybe the most well-read military historian I ever knew and I've literally sat with credentialed military historians. And when they showed the book burnings in the Reich buildup years to the War. He pointed to the 24" Sony Trinitron and said, "That was the worst thing they ever did." And I said, in utter awe and shock at the human horrors I had just watched as opposed to some random novels being tossed into a fire, physically harming nobody in the process. And I remember asking, "Why is that the worst, Dad?" And he coldly and boldly replied (and he was a Cold War veteran himself from the North Atlantic to the Cuban Missile Crisis blockade to Vietnam), "They burned the books because they gave people ideas. Once you take that away, everything after that is easy..." We've gone through this 1000 times in human history. The blueprint is always the same. We don't do it because we particularly like it. We don't do it because it's fun. We do it because it works and we start with the ones that think they're going to be on the winning team. The liquidation of undesired populations is the carrot we dangle. The stick is we start with our own to prove allegiance. The Final Solution came about not years later in Auschwitz. It came about with the their own citizens who thought they'd be protected by the Reich. We always, always, always throughout human history send the Stupids into harm's way first. It's called beta-testing for a reason. There is one more cycle of this left to get through in American History and I, for one, cannot wait to turn over enemies of the state. God is not just, he was just merely on your side. He has made a new covenant and the man thought to bring about America's saving is the devil in disguise. The evils of the world have the decency to come in overt evil form like genocide and torture and pillaging and occupation. The true horror, the true trick your Devil plays is smiling and pretending to be your savior. He will protect your gun rights, save the unborn, and keep bad people from crossing our borders. But before he can launch his battle against his true enemies, he must first send his legion of stupids into the vanguard of certain death to test the battlefield. The troubling part that should keep MAGAts up a night is, yes they can wage a civil war. But they genuinely won't know who to shoot at. Let's arrange it so they shoot one another...
  7. Jesus. He explained after the game how he met with the analytics staff before the playoffs to figure out what to do if they got into overtime in the playoffs. There have been countless articles explaining it. The fact the information was out immediately after the game and is in print all over the place and you somehow decide in your head that Shanahan didn’t know the rules is really an incredible accomplishment. I don’t expect you to actually read and understand, but here you go: "It's just something we talked about," Shanahan said in his postgame news conference. "None of us have a ton of experience with [the new overtime rules]. But we went through all the analytics and talked to those guys. We just thought it would be better. We wanted the ball third. If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the ones who had the chance to go win. So got that field goal, so knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal and if we did, we thought it was in our hands after that." https://vms.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2024-super-bowl-49ers-kyle-shanahan-explains-decision-to-take-the-ball-first-to-start-overtime-vs-chiefs/ Here’s another: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/02/12/super-bowl-overtime-kyle-shanahan/ You and any other folks claiming there is a right or wrong decision are just simply ignoring the facts. Which sums up my point. The internet allows dumbshits to spread their stupidity to other dumbshits and nod their heads in affirmation thinking they’re right.
  8. Sure, but enthusiasm still seems to favor Dems. We saw warning signs for Dems leading up to 2016 and 2022. We saw similar signs for GOP leading up to 2018, 2020 and now 2024. Regardless of election - who is going to turn out every single election? High propensity, college-educated voters (and WOMEN ESPECIALLY) in the suburbs. We saw quite a few big suburban swings last night - Bucks County especially and Souzzi winning Nassau (he currently leads in Nassau 53-47). Polling is what it is - you get who answers and stays on the phone and try to deduce what that is representative of. Elections are actual voters casting votes, not just saying something on the phone.
  9. While y'all are chuckling at the GQP Civil War, I just want to offer the sobering truth: this Civil War was over before it began. MAGA will win. It will win completely, and totally. And, knowing what we know of the fortitude and integrity of the remainder of the GQP....they'll fall in line. It's going to be a Civil War that has few lasting casualties and results in a unified MAGA party with complete and total control, with NOTHING left to even provide a minimal brake against their breakneck hurtling towards full-on treasonous insanity. You think that shit like Trump in his 3rd term launching a military strike against California cities is impossible. It's not.
  10. Boy, those guys think we care a lot more about Micah Hudson than any of us do. That guy said he could write a book about that recruitment, and I think he just did. Geez. I stopped reading that section in order to avoid nap time. Otherwise, there were some interesting snippets. I'll add some more color to a few of the names: -Texas would have had their pick of any QB in the 2024 cycle had they not landed Manning in the 2023 cycle. I think it worked out better for Texas. Manning is a better prospect than any of the guys in the 2024 cycle and Owens is a damned good recruit for this cycle and the QB room. -Once Texas felt like Clark was a legitimate candidate for the class, their work was done with TB and they effectively stopped trying to do much with the in-state guys. -Missouri tried all kinds of shit to land Wingo, from guilt, to lying about NIL capabilities, you name it. That family absolutely made it interesting in the end, no matter what the 247 guys are saying. -Livingstone is the guy that visited an ATM practice and then spent time with the players and saw all of the guys, led by Stewart, smoking weed and skipping classes while the coaches openly fought on the field. -Calhoun was a legitimate target for Texas and Georgia shut that down before the visit by playing the old school bag game. The one spot where it can still win out is when someone puts 6 figures into a gym bag and hands it to the family or handler and says "take it now and shut things down or we're giving this to someone else". Doesn't work in every recruitment, it's illegal as hell, and there's only so much of that to go around, but Georgia still will do with a local and Auburn seems like that's they're preferred approach. -The story I told about Kibble at the time is refreshingly straightforward in their report. Texas basically said "take this spot or we need to part ways" and the dude locked in. -Carter thought he should have the same NIL outlook as his teammate, Baker, and ultimately only Auburn was valuing IOL that way.
  11. This is very important to me. Here are the FA DTs available. As far as stopping the run and based on what the Texans need and (hopefully, value), I'd go with Christian Wilkins: 1. DI CHRIS JONES, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS 2024 Free agency rank: 1 It’s rare for a player of Jones’ caliber to reach unrestricted free agency, and Kansas City did not give up the right to franchise tag him for a second time when the two sides agreed to a reworked contract this past offseason. A tag for Jones would land north of $33 million, which perhaps helps him test the open market for the first time in his career. Jones is not only one of the best interior pass rushers in the game right now; he’s one of the best ever. He is also capable of lining up outside of tackles as a five-technique, bending around the edge and getting home. Top free agent comparison: Ndamukong Suh, 2015 Player Run-defense grade Pass-rush grade True pass set pass-rush grade Pass-rush win rate APY as % of Cap at signing Chris Jones 59.9 90.3 92.3 18.5% ? Ndamukong Suh 80.0 83.0 82.5 11.2% 13.3% *All data in tables reflects two years prior to UFA contract signing Contract projection: Available in PFF's free agency rankings 2. DI JUSTIN MADUBUIKE, BALTIMORE RAVENS 2024 Free agency rank: 6 Madubuike has a strong case for being the player to earn himself the most money in 2023. With at least half a sack in 13 of 17 games this season, Madubuike more than doubled his prior season high. He also exactly doubled his total pressure output. His effort and intensity on backside pursuit plays have always been there, and now an improved arsenal of moves with a more explosive first step has Madubuike set to cash in big time. Top free agent comparison: Javon Hargrave, 2020 Player Run-defense grade Pass-rush grade True pass set pass-rush grade Pass-rush win rate APY as % of Cap at signing Justin Madubuike 66.1 73.6 81.9 11.2% ? Javon Hargrave 81.3 77.5 79.8 12.2% 6.5% *All data in tables reflects two years prior to UFA contract signing Contract projection: Available in PFF's free agency rankings 3. DI CHRISTIAN WILKINS, MIAMI DOLPHINS 2024 Free agency rank: 7 Wilkins hoped to get an extension done before the 2023 season but didn't let the lack of one amid many at the position slow him down. Wilkins is as good a run defender as any interior defensive lineman in the NFL, setting career highs in every pass-rushing category this season — including pass-rush win rate, pressure rate, sacks, quarterback hits and pressures. Top free agent comparison: Malik Jackson, 2016 Player Run-defense grade Pass-rush grade True pass set pass-rush grade Run-stop rate APY as % of Cap at signing Christian Wilkins 78.5 74.5 75.7 10.0% ? Malik Jackson 81.5 74.1 78.1 9.7% 9.2% *All data in tables reflects two years prior to UFA contract signing Contract projection: Available in PFF's free agency rankings 4. DI LEONARD WILLIAMS, SEATTLE SEAHAWKS 2024 Free agency rank: 16 Williams' three-year, $63 million pact with the New York Giants in 2021 after he received a second franchise tag is one of the strongest contracts for a player in recent history. The leverage is strongly in his favor once again after the Giants traded him to the Seattle Seahawks at the deadline for second- and fifth-round picks. After being labeled as a stout run defender with limitations as a pass rusher, Williams backed up his career-high 74.8 pass-rush grade in 2022 with an even better 76.2 mark in 2023. His pressure rate is above 10% for the first time since 2020. Top free agent comparison: Fletcher Cox, 2022 Player Run-defense grade Pass-rush grade True pass set pass-rush grade Pass-rush win rate APY as % of Cap at signing Leonard Williams 66.0 76.2 84.2 11.8% ? Fletcher Cox 63.1 75.1 81.8 12.0% 6.7% *All data in tables reflects two years prior to UFA contract signing Contract projection: Available in PFF's free agency rankings 5. DI D.J. READER, CINCINNATI BENGALS 2024 Free agency rank: 19 Only injuries slowed Reader down in Cincinnati. Otherwise, he was a dominant force on the interior of a talented defensive line that was able to control the line of scrimmage and win big games up front over the past few seasons. The eighth-year pro was the anchor in the middle. Reader is as stout as they come and nearly impossible to displace by just one blocker. And while he’ll never fill up the stat sheet with sacks, he can push the pocket and free up teammates as well as any nose tackle. Reader, unfortunately, suffered a torn quadriceps injury in Week 15 that knocked him out for the remainder of the season. We will await more details on the recovery process before changing his projection, but the injury could obviously impact his market. Top free agent comparison: Dalvin Tomlinson, 2023 Player Run-defense grade Pass-rush grade True pass set pass-rush grade Run-stop rate APY as % of Cap at signing D.J. Reader 76.1 85.6 86.8 9.5% ? Dalvin Tomlinson 67.4 79.1 85.8 7.6% 6.3% *All data in tables reflects two years prior to UFA contract signing Contract projection: Available in PFF's free agency rankings 6. DI GROVER STEWART, INDIANAPOLIS COLTS 2024 Free agency rank: 51 Stewart served a six-game suspension this season for performance-enhancing drugs but returned in Week 14 for the stretch run. On/off splits are largely noise, but Indianapolis ranked in the top half of the NFL in expected points allowed per rush with Stewart and dead last in the games without him in the lineup. Stewart’s presence frees up rushers around him because he takes on double teams and clogs up the middle. Top free agent comparison: Terrance Knighton, 2016 Player Run-defense grade Pass-rush grade True pass set pass-rush grade Run-stop rate APY as % of Cap at signing Grover Stewart 72.8 60.2 62.6 8.9% ? Terrance Knighton 77.3 57.1 55.9 7.4% 1.3% *All data in tables reflects two years prior to UFA contract signing Contract projection: Available in PFF's free agency rankings
  12. I got on my FB for the first time in a couple of months to see the reactions from the small-town West Texas people I grew up with. Pleasantly surprised. I'll start with this meme a guy posted. Others: Some Guns Up by guys for Mahomes for the Tech connection. A very liberal woman was concerned for Taylor, discussing how Kelce's sideline blow-up might be a red flag about him being an abuser. Another woman pondered what Taylor was going to do last night to celebrate with another saying provocatively, "I know what I would be doing...hoping my bag is getting packed." One made this comment: "Blake Lively’s hair is what we Gen X girls were trying to do in the ‘80s. We just got a little carried away. Thanks for understanding. We’re mostly ok now." Another said "When you lose HULU and resort to SpongeBob!!! SpongeBob coming in clutch" One had a photo of herself with a bedazzled cap with "87" and "KC" on it. The caption reads, "Let’s Go, Taylor’s Boyfriend’s Team!" One guy said, "The halftime winning performer!! AKeys!!" A gal posted a photo with Usher taking his shirt off and said, "Is was at that moment when I said….DAMN USHER!!!! Like I was out with my friends." Another posed with his acoustic guitar in a Kelce jersey. One posted a meme about "Jesus approving his weird foot commercial." One guy sarcastically posted, "Looks like Taylor's team won, which will surprise no one who knows the truth about Taylor Swift and the government plan to use her for their agenda. That sentence will either make perfect sense to you or it will come across as sarcasm, depending on what you believe, and what you believe I believe." A guy posted a cake his wife baked saying this "And once again the Chiefs prevail in the end, and with the cake." My sister reposted a Texas Tech "From here, it's possible" caption with Mahomes celebrating. One guy posted, "Harpo Marx gets all the chicks" with this photoshop. The only negative one read, "CHIEFS #1 What a fkng disrespectful immature liberal man child." All in all, the corner of West Texas where I grew up seemed pretty pleased with the outcome, but there's apparently a brewing controversy about a drag show being hosted at a local hang-out spot. Just the fact that this conservative small town of 25,000 is hosting one at all is a definite sign of progress.
  13. a)i declared it before any of these highlight plays happened (the game was 4-2) and b)i absolutely stand by what i said. i am out on believing that this team will be anything but a disappointment. and it’s not the players’ fault. as i said, there are singular plays where a team shows you who they are, and that lack of effort and competency would never ever ever happen under beard, or barnes, or probably even tom goddamn penders. that type of pathetic effort and competency is why we lost to this shitty team already this year. i’m still going to watch the games and enjoy the wins, but i am done believing that this coaching staff is anything other than incompetent, and every team they coach will be completely hamstrung because of it.
  14. Yeah, nothing terribly insightful about running a campaign on winning the Electoral College which boils down to just a handful of states. I don't need a U.S. Senator to 'splain to me. Economy is quickly becoming a toss-up issue, or even bonus for Biden. I get the border thing, that ain't going away from the news for the next 9 months. Like it or not, no matter the actual facts, it's gonna be an issue that may actually drive folks to the polls---sorry that's the reality we live in. But yeah---what in the ever living fuck on gun violence? Is there some October surprise coming I don't know about? And then what's the play, what's the angle after that? Hahaha, Biden sent money to illegals to hustle guns in or shoot people or what the fuck? I come up with twisted scenarios for a living, but what in the shit is the narrative here?
  15. Putin says he's open to peace talks. So let's change the status quo that brought him to this point. In fact, had we not supported Ukraine at all, I'm sure Putin would have asked for peace even before his dying army confronted such furiuos opposition. The time to turn down the pressure is just before you will get what you want. When you're going in for the winning touchdown, punt! The other team will concede after you do so. Fucking bent idiot.
  16. I think Massey's odds are pretty reasonable. Odds are 78% that we will beat ONE of Baylor, Tech, Kansas, or Houston. But... the odds are only 28% that we will win out at home. So my guess is that we go 4-4 to close the year with a surprise win on the road and a surprise loss at home.
  17. Biden should have been elected, got all the shit he needed done, and then a year in should have said he's not running. This would have given the Dems a chance to go through the election/debates and use it as an opportunity to talk about all the shit they were getting done and how they would fine tune things and we would have had multiple forums of taking brutal pot shots at Trump. So I get the idea of him winning now and stepping back. it would have been a risky strategy for him to step back in the first term but it would have been a heck of an anti-Trump message for him to say he wanted to put everything he had into this one term and take age-ist shots at Trump. We all knew deep down that it would come down to this. It's not the same thing as what Ruth Bader G did to the Dems but it sure as shit may turn out that way.
  18. Played Big O tournament at Lodge on Monday. With 16 people left I had 800k in chips out of 3.7 million, no one else had $200k. Don’t win a hand for an hour, enter the final table with about 250k. Limp along for a bit, one guy refuses to chop and we’re down to 5 when I go on a run and end up knocking two out and we’re down to 3 and a have 3.3 million of the chips. I end up losing 5 all ins in a row, getting scooped each time and each time I was a huge favorite after the flop. I have AA234, villain KJ985, flop J65, two bricks. Next hand I have J6432 he has AAKT8, flop J65, turn 5, river brick. End up chopping and I got $1334. Went to bullets to play big o on Thursday and got slaughtered. came to TCH for the plo tournament, was chip leader with 4 left and we chopped and I won $730. playing plo bomb pot now
  19. Maybe 3. That doesn't change the fact that I felt better on January 2, 2005 about the upcoming season than I did on January 2, 2006 about the upcoming season and I feel better today about the upcoming season than I did in the winter of 2006 after winning it all. I got well actually'd and when that happens I need the person to actually be correct and me wrong or I push back. I think OSU over Texas is a stupid and terrible idea, but whatever- you are probably right it might well happen. Oregon over us would be legit dumb. I think Texas has the best roster in CFB going into the 2024 season (and we fuck Georgia's shit up in Austin as a bonus prediction), especially if something interesting shakes loose on the interior DL like you've basically promised us was going to happen (I know- you didn't- I'm putting words in your mouth and wish casting a bit).
  20. I said trajectory dude. VY announced he was gone- what did that do to program trajectory (percieved) on the day he left. Put another way- we are going to enter the season ranked #2, probably, in the preseason poll with the idea we have answer at all the skill positions for 3 years at least. You couldn't say that a week after winning the national title. Trajectory is a forward looking thing- you are looking backward.
  21. I don't know what to tell you guys who keep bringing up the bogeymen of the 80's or even the recent bag game. The game is no longer the same. It's not just more fierce. It's changed. OU can wish their way into cheating with an extra million on the side whatever dumb reason you guys imagine in this example. If that means they're pushing $5M through a roster instead of $4M, while Texas is X times that total, why do we give a fuck? and how is that harming us? Is it some unwillingness from a bunch of you to understand what's happening? Texas is the bogeyman, the one who knocks, the entity with the biggest chip stack, the person you get scared of seeing enter the chat, the name you don't say three times in a row, etc. We're no longer in there with the bad guys. The bad guys are now locked in here with us, on our terms. You can stop being scared of LSU, Bama, and Oklahoma. They'll still sign good classes and win guys we wanted, but Texas is going to get what Texas wants and needs.
  22. I don't get the logic of these victims. Some dude tells you the cartel is after you and you need to pay them off. Why don't you go straight to the police/FBI? AAS doesn't ask the right question: what shady shit were these victims involved with that it made sense not to immediately contact to law enforcement? https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/02/09/wealthy-austin-tx-residents-scam-millions-alleged-con-man-saint-jovite-kota-youngblood-feds-say/72399667007/ 'It almost felt like you could trust him.' How feds say an Austin con man stole millions Tony Plohetski Austin American-Statesman Eric Perardi rolled over from a night of fitful sleep, waiting for the phone call from a friend that finally came at 6:15 a.m. Perardi, an Austin real estate developer, had been warned the night before that the call from Saint Jovite Youngblood would arrive from a blocked number. Youngblood, whom Perardi had known for five years, told the developer that he’d be there within the hour with urgent, troubling news that had to be delivered in person. Clad in his signature all-black cargo pants, dark-colored T-shirt and Crocs, Youngblood bounded into Perardi’s Steiner Ranch home. Against the chirping of the birds, the two men paced back and forth on Perardi’s balcony that June 2022 morning against the backdrop of a majestic Hill Country overlook. “Look, I found out a really frightening piece of information,” said Youngblood, who Perardi believed was a top-secret federal agent with high-level CIA clearance. He explained that Los Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel known for its viciousness and even beheading rivals, had put out a hit on Perardi and his children — that they could be kidnapped and killed as soon as that day. Perardi, whose projects include the Crossover in Cedar Park and medical office parks, sank in a chair, still in his pajamas, with head-to-toe terror. “They believe I had all this money from projects I’ve done,” he remembers Youngblood telling him. He also said the cartel knew that Perardi had a multimillion-dollar life insurance policy. Eric Perardi, a developer of the Crossover, a sports and entertainment facility in Cedar Park, sits in its lobby. Federal investigators say Perardi funneled Saint Jovite Youngblood $900,000 that Youngblood claimed he used to fend off cartel threats. Federal documents say it was an epic fraud, and that Youngblood used the false threats as a ruse to get money he squandered at posh Las Vegas casinos. In further describing the encounter, Perardi said Youngblood offered instant protection: Perardi could give him $70,000 that he’d use to pay off the cartel. Perardi wrote him a check right then and there. And over the next several months, Perardi and federal investigators say, he funneled Youngblood up to $900,000 that he had believed Youngblood used to satisfy cartel demands. Federal documents say it was an epic fraud — a magistrate judge called the crimes “the most massive pattern of intimidation of threats and violence and death I have ever seen” — that ensnared at least 20 victims in Austin and across the nation. FBI agents say in court documents that Youngblood — a 51-year-old husband and father living in a 4,000-square-foot Manor home with no documented employment — scammed millions of dollars in recent years, including from victims who believed their safety depended on high-dollar payoffs. They say Youngblood used the threats as a ruse to get money that he squandered at posh Las Vegas casinos. “All I can say is, ‘wow,’” U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane told Youngblood in an August detention hearing. “The number of lies, the depth of those lies, is beyond anything I have ever heard. Absolutely incredible. ... The weight of the evidence is absolutely against you, Mr. Youngblood.” Saint Jovite Youngblood, 51, appears in court in August. A federal magistrate judge has described Youngblood's case as “the most massive pattern of intimidation of threats and violence and death I have ever seen.” In the hearing, FBI special agent Lindsey Wilkinson rattled off a sprawling range of victims — old and young, wealthy and middle-class: A manager and bartender at the ShadowGlen golf course. A seatmate on a Vegas-bound flight. A fellow estate sale customer, and a man who sold exotic fish for Youngblood’s aquarium. “Friends of friends” and others he met from his children’s extracurricular activities, Wilkinson added. Ricky and Rebecca Kumar of Cedar Park are among them. They say they wanted to help their friend — they called him “Kota” — twice with loans to pay for family heirlooms, settling an estate dispute, and to handle blackmail involving his wife. They gave him $200,000 — a fraction of which he returned, they said. “It kind of sounds unbelievable that we would do that,” Rebecca Kumar said. “You have to understand how he molds his relationships with people and how he just tries to continue to build this trust. He is a master storyteller and a fantastic con man." Investigators say Youngblood left a trail of financial devastation and monetary ruin. In an FBI victims’ meeting, Perardi recounted, some tearfully admitted surrendering their life savings and homes to Youngblood. Wilkinson testified that one victim was so terrified of a cartel hit that he and his family abandoned their home and lives in the middle of the night and secluded themselves in an extended stay in Florida for months, all the while paying Youngblood. Perardi sold his home, unable to pay the mortgage. The Kumars — Ricky is an engineer, and Rebecca operates a small gym in Cedar Park — gave Youngblood their son’s college tuition savings. Youngblood remains in a federal detention facility near Waco charged with wire fraud, aiding and abetting and engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property — crimes for which he faces up to 40 years in prison. A trial is set for April. His court-appointed attorney, Charlotte Herring, declined to comment. In the end, Perardi and court documents say Perardi relied on internet sleuthing and a series of phone calls to break through the deception. In a made-for-TV moment, federal investigators teamed up with Perardi to set up an undercover operation at a North Austin Carrabba's Italian Grill. They wired him with a hidden microphone that let the feds record Youngblood perpetuating the cartel threat and monetary demands, documents say. With $18,000 in his front pocket that he told investigators was from a casino win, Youngblood was nabbed by agents two months later boarding a flight on his latest Las Vegas junket. “Call it a higher power — somebody put me in this position to bring him down,” Perardi said. The Delta Force, hockey and friendships Perardi, 52, moved to Austin in 2006 after playing college ice hockey and working in the Hollywood entertainment industry. He thought it would be a family-friendly area to raise his children. Over the past 15 years, he founded and built Perardi Development, constructing 12 medical office buildings regionwide. His most ambitious and prized project is the Crossover, a 240,000-square-foot entertainment, sports and wellness expanse off U.S. 183. Beginning in 2010, when his son was 4, Perardi served as a volunteer coach for his son’s ice hockey league. That’s how he met Youngblood and his family in 2018. Youngblood’s son joined Perardi’s son’s team. Perardi saw immediate talent. “I took the kid under my wing and just tried to help teach him the game and skate better,” he said. Eric Perardi watches his son's hockey game at the Crossover sports and entertainment facility in Cedar Park. Perardi first met Saint Jovite Youngblood and his family in 2018 while serving as a volunteer ice hockey league coach after Youngblood’s son joined Perardi’s son’s team. The Kumars' son also played hockey. The families cheered together in the stands, passed practice time at the Pond Hockey Club and the Chaparral Ice rink, and traveled to regional competitions. Saint Jovite Youngblood became a constant — and captivating — presence. Perardi and the Kumars recall how he told fellow parents he had served in the Army, describing daring adventures as part of the elite Delta Force. He said he spoke multiple languages and had lived in Japan and Russia. He drew sympathy with a story that his parents had been killed when he was a child — and intellectual intrigue by claiming he had a master’s degree in quantum physics. He kept his work intensely confidential, they recalled, insisting secrecy was required for his classified government job. He seldom carried a cellphone and resoundingly rejected being photographed. "He was extremely generous, and he would throw a bunch of money at purchasing dinners and doing events with people and giving fancy gifts to whoever would accept something like that from him," Rebecca Kumar said. "He seemed very loving, very attentive, and you just feel like he's going to protect you," she said. “You almost felt like you could trust him with anything.” "He would rent out a whole movie theater and take you and your family to the movies,” Perardi added. “Always paying for things on road trips. Buying the team dinner for kids. He was an extremely likable person, always talking about geopolitical things.” But looking back, Rebecca Kumar says she had a back-of-mind suspicion that she never allowed herself to voice. At times, Youngblood was almost overly friendly. She said he encroached on personal space during conversations, talking too closely face-to-face. Kumar added that he seemed manic — always. “I have a really strong gut feeling, and something about him threw me off,” she said. The alleged scams On the witness stand in the summer detention hearing, Wilkinson, the FBI agent who spent months uncovering his alleged crimes, unfurled what she described as Youngblood’s multilayered, sometimes difficult-to-follow patterns of deceit. She told the judge that Youngblood relied on a combination of investment schemes and extortion, sometimes offering purported antique clocks, a Confederate flag and sports memorabilia, including baseball bats he claimed belonged to Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth, as investment collateral. “Among other claims, Youngblood told investors that he had access to a large number of gold bars and that Youngblood was going to then sell and share profits with the investor,” a six-page federal complaint said. Saint Jovite Youngblood remains in a federal detention facility near Waco, and his trial is set for April. In Wilkinson's testimony, she traced victims back more than a dozen years, including cases that the Los Angeles-area media reported in 2011. Police in California arrested Youngblood on theft charges after investigators said he wrote a fraudulent check for $94,000 in gold coins, sold them and gambled the money, according to published reports. At the time, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that other victims said Youngblood told them that he had earned a Purple Heart in the war on terror, that he had served as a U.S. Navy SEAL, and that a drunken driver had killed his wife and children. Federal officials said in court that he was convicted, and records show he was sentenced to the time he had already served. Wilkinson said that, as in Perardi’s case, Youngblood often used fears of cartels. Perardi said that, at first, Youngblood did not ask for money, only mentioning in April 2022 that his family might be under threat based on preliminary covert intelligence he said he had received. “He was just, ‘Be careful; watch where you are going,’” Perardi said. Two months later, Perardi got the alarming call from a mutual friend traveling with Youngblood in Las Vegas. The friend said Youngblood was extremely concerned about Perardi’s safety and was urgently flying back to Austin to meet with Perardi. After the initial $70,000 that day, Perardi’s payments to Youngblood continued over the next six months. Perardi said he faced growing pressure from Youngblood. The indictment lists two transactions of a combined $86,000 in July and August 2022 “for payment to provide protection against threats to E.P. and his family.” Wilkinson testified that Youngblood also told Perardi he would receive an “exorbitant” return on the money and offered him a tattered Civil War flag, supposedly valued at $2.5 million, as collateral. In the following months, Perardi said he was the victim of several property crimes and social media harassment that Youngblood told him were the cartel’s work. An online Nov. 6, 2022, review of the Crossover said it is a haven for “a few folks that are creepy and say they know the owner … sad that the owner, Mr. Perardi, can’t get his ‘friends’ in line.” Perardi said, and Wilkinson testified, that the posts coincided with Youngblood’s increasingly urgent demands for more money. Perardi said he sold business entities, took out lines of credit and borrowed money from friends and family — some of whom met with Youngblood and were also convinced Perardi and his family were in danger. Eric Perardi orders from a food truck at the Crossover in Cedar Park. After internet sleuthing helped confirm some of Perardi's suspicions about Saint Jovite Youngblood, he went to the FBI. The FBI then set up an operation at a North Austin restaurant with Perardi, Youngblood and an undercover agent. The first time Youngblood asked for a loan, the Kumars said he told them that a family friend needed money to pay for nostalgic items that belonged to his father to prevent other family members from selling them at an estate sale. Months later, they gave Youngblood $100,000 after he told them his wife was being accused of arson, but a person had a recording that vindicated her, and he needed the money to purchase the recording, the Kumars recalled. “We are grateful that is all it was, because the other victims lost more, and that’s heartbreaking,” Rebecca Kumar said. “And we are grateful we were not led by fear because other victims were — for their lives and for their families’ lives.” Last summer, Perardi and the Kumars independently grew suspicious. Perardi reached out in April 2023 to an out-of-state antique flag dealer. Perardi said the dealer told him the supposedly $2.5 million flag was actually valued at $85,000 — and coincidentally, that he had recently sold it to Youngblood for $75,000 but had not been paid in full. That revelation prompted him to hire Austin attorney Steve Toland. Together, they went to the FBI. Rebecca Kumar decided to investigate Youngblood’s background and paid $30 for an online criminal history search. “What I found was shocking,” she said. The search showed the previous arrest in San Bernardino, Calif., and related newspaper articles. She found through those articles that Youngblood had allegedly told victims a decade earlier the same stories about himself. “Every word out of his mouth was a lie,” she said. “Every word.” Perardi began asking other mutual friends if they had loaned or given Youngblood money. When the Kumars confirmed they had, he asked them to speak to an FBI agent as quickly as possible. On May 1, the FBI set up the Carrabba’s operation with Perardi, Youngblood and a third man whom investigators staged as Perardi's wealthy friend who could loan him more money. Instead, the man was an undercover FBI agent. At a round table outside, and over a shared meal of green salad and pasta with shrimp that Youngblood ordered, Youngblood told the men that the cartel was becoming impatient and needed $77,000 immediately. “There are agents inside the building, agents outside the building, just like you would see in a movie,” Perardi said. What’s next? With the incriminating audio in hand, the FBI stepped up its investigation into Youngblood. They searched his home, where they found five guns and a note in his wife’s purse that included a script to law enforcement if they showed up, Wilkinson testified. Youngblood’s wife, Gloria, declined an interview with the American-Statesman. It is not clear what she knew about Saint Jovite Youngblood’s alleged crimes. Wilkinson also set out to perform months of forensic accounting, poring over transaction logs from the Aria Casino & Resort in Las Vegas showing Youngblood lost more than $700,000 in 2023 alone and gained only about $200,000 through winnings, she said. She said she traced the $18,000 Youngblood had with him during his arrest to several victims — one of whom had taken out a loan to pay him. Some of the alleged victims packed the courtroom to hear the prosecutors' case, with several of them in tears. “It was such a mixed reaction,” Perardi said of the crowd. “You feel foolish, like ‘How did I let this person dominate my life for so long?’ But then I was just disgusted. Just the lies and destruction.” “You feel foolish, like ‘How did I let this person dominate my life for so long?’ But then I was just disgusted. Just the lies and destruction,” Eric Perardi says of the alleged fraud schemes he and many other people in the Austin area got caught up in with Saint Jovite Youngblood. By then, they said they had learned nearly everything about Youngblood was untrue. His birth name was Dennis Schuler Jr., and he was born and raised outside Cleveland. His parents were not killed in an accident but were alive and well. “I spoke with them last week at least,” Wilkinson testified. (A woman with the same name as his mother told the Statesman that the two have been estranged for 30 years before ending the call.) Wilkinson told the court Youngblood had never served in the military — much less in the Delta Force or 82nd Airborne Division. The only international destination he had visited was Mexico. Investigators said the only documented employment Youngblood ever had was as a used car salesman. His highest level of education was a high school diploma, not a master’s degree in physics, Wilkinson said. “I was astonished,” Perardi said. “To be able to construct that level of detail about his life, and the way he knew things to the level of detail, yet he had never done any of those things.” Perardi said he is trying to rebuild his life and finances. “I just think to myself, I am financially devastated right now, but I am still hopefully young enough to make it back,” he said. The Kumars said they have slashed their spending, and their son might need to take out student loans. They also are healing emotionally — that a man they once thought was a trusted friend utterly betrayed them. “There are some days I don’t think about it, and others when I am extremely angry,” Rebecca Kumar said, tears forming in her eyes. “We are hurt in so many ways.”
  23. same. i’ve said it before, but his idiotic series of decisions which let to his termination is the worst moment(s) of my sports following life. worse than colt’s injury, worse than the 2008 TTU game, even worse than Black Jesus being drafted by a team with jeff fisher as its head coach. i was explaining it to my mom the other day and i put it to her like this: think about how hard it is to land a truly great player. aside from zach edey and maybe a couple other guys this year, there’s just not many of them around, and the ones that are around only consider going to a select few schools. now multiply that x100 and you’ve got how hard it is to land a truly great coach. they are very few and far between, and they tend to stay put for 2-3 decades once they get a great job, usually only leaving for their alma mater. that was us with beard. we had our bill self, roy williams, jay wright type of coach- the kind that you normally only dream of having. the kind who brings you 20, 25, 30 years of winning 7-8/10 of your games, signing the best recruits, sending guys to the nba, and winning championships. there is no other position in the entire world of sports like “elite cbb coach”. they win big, they do it forever, and they don’t go anywhere. we had that guy, and you don’t get that guy more than once. not if you aren’t kansas or unc. we had that guy, and as quickly as he gave us all a taste of what was coming, he got himself fired and then immediately hired by one of our new rivals. it still doesn’t seem real. shit is cruel and tragic. so yeah- i’m not going to stop thinking about this one for a while. he’s in my head.
  24. Yes I’m done with it. I fundamentally disagree on what he thinks the Democratic Party/left stands for, but we are united in making sure Trump doesn’t win again. Let’s fight it out after November if things go our way
  25. I will repeat it. We have an election coming up that may very well be for the soul and survival of this nation. We have a poster who had already said he is voting for the guy I think most here would agree is the candidate who isn't going to destroy this country. And some of you are arguing with him over ideology, policy whatever. I guarantee you this is what Aaron Sorkin meant when he had Jeff Daniels utter, "If liberals are so fucking smart how come they lose so goddamn always." It's THIS right here. It's more important to be right than to fucking win. I get it..... more intellectual people like to play chess, they want to turn over angles, probe weakness, engage in combat of the mind, BUT sometimes you gotta play checkers and jump a motherfucker. If we were on SEC Rant and Dixonhur said, "I'm voting for Trump even though I'm more of a centrist and don't support his direction on all the issues" the gumps over there would say "damn straight, Trump's the man" and that's it. TAKE THE WIN
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