January 2011 Archives

Sports radio on the weekend is a vast wasteland of crap. In fact, it is the single biggest reason why I wanted SiriusXM in the first place. Unfortunately, my car is not advanced enough to include it automatically, so I had to get one of those contraptions that plays it through a random FM station on my own radio. Of course, it charges the IPhone at the same time, but static and other factors don't...

The month of January has been stellar for our President.  His approval ratings have hovered between 46-55%, depending on the political leanings of the pollsters, all month long.A large contributor to this boost was the shooting in Tucson, of course, and the President's handling of the situation.  He found a way to diffuse the tension in most people, while still calling for all of us to look within and try to tone down the political...

Comedy Central used to run a show called "The Man Show" with Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corrola. One of their many bits was a segment they called Manovations. The idea was a simple invention that men would use. Of course, most weren't practical at all and none of them actually existed. So, in the spirit of the Man Show I'm going to offer up three such manovations some friends of mine and I developed (ie...

Dear Daily Hurricaners, For the last 3 years, blogging has pretty much been my life, either here or at that place that shall remain nameless. Whether looking for what to write about today, or reading and responding to comments, or looking for something to write about tomorrow, it's been time consuming and pushed aside other things. So I'm going to take a few steps back starting today and take some time away from the daily...

I'm not reflexively against consumption. I consume things. I discard things.I own a car. When I am done with my car--After I drive it as long as it will run--I will discard the car.People need jobs making and selling things. There are many valid reasons that people want to make use of material things.I'm not looking to make a softball point that our Texas and United States flags stand in large part for our right...

In two non-political news items of the day, another good reason to watch the games at home:"Almost one in 10 sports fans has a blood alcohol content above the legal limit as they exit the stadium after football and baseball games, a study found...The research, which involved giving breath tests to 362 attendees of 13 baseball and 3 football games, also found that 40 percent had been drinking, according to the report in the journal....

We've heard proponents of drastic spending cuts to our state's education system justify these cuts by using the old adage that "throwing money at the problem won't help anything" and that "we need to spend smarter."Ok, fine.  Yes, yes yes, you are correct.  Throwing money at anything without a plan of improvement will fail.  That's a cop out that doesn't require much thought or effort, and I'm tired of hearing it.   I live in the...

To distract Texans from the massive cuts ahead due to the Republican-caused budget deficit, Governor Rick Perry has declared a number of "emergency" subjects for the upcoming Texas Legislative session to consider.This emergency status allows topics deemed of great importance by the Governor to be rushed to the front of the regular legislative calendar. The Texas political blog Capitol Annex has more details on emergency declarations by the Governor.Governor Perry's emergency topics so far are--* Legislation that will allow...

First of all, I wanted to thank Voice for publishing the letter that the HISD superintendent mailed home to parents. It deals with the huge budget shortfall in the state of Texas. The state legislature may be attempting to scare citizens with these cuts. Who knows, maybe they want to coerce people to accept property tax increases. Maybe they will come in at the last minute and suggest smaller cuts to education. Then, they look...

Speaking of 'just do it': "The bipartisan panel appointed by Congress to investigate the financial crisis has concluded that several financial industry figures appear to have broken the law and has referred multiple cases to state or federal authorities for potential prosecution, according to two sources directly involved in the deliberations. The sources, who spoke on condition they not be named, declined to identify the people implicated or the names of their institutions. But they...