President Donald Trump will speak at the NRA national convention happening at the Kay Baily Hutchison convention center this weekend.
Alas, I will not be attending, but Dwight will. Hopefully he can obtain for me a Trump-signed MAGA hat…
Posts Tagged ‘Texas’
President Trump to Attend Dallas NRA Convention
Monday, April 30th, 2018Texas Emergency Prep Supplies Sales Tax Holiday
Saturday, April 28th, 2018This weekend is the Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday the Texas legislature passed last year.
The following items qualify:
Less than $3000
Less than $300
Less than $75
The sales tax holiday lasts through Monday. At the very least make this your weekend to buy batteries…
(Hat tip: Dwight for the reminder.)
LinkSwarm for April 27, 2018
Friday, April 27th, 2018I foolishly thought I would have time to get more done this week…
LinkSwarm for April 20, 2018
Friday, April 20th, 2018Finished my taxes! Now I need to go back and do all the stuff I let slide while I was doing my taxes…
The attack on April 13th went up against a 21st-century Russian superweapon–the S-400 Triumf air-defense system, a mobile state-of-the-art anti-aircraft and missile network featuring four distinct missile types targeting aircraft in any performance envelope from treetop level to high altitude – including stealth aircraft (at a range of 150 miles, yet). For a decade we have been assured by military analysts that the S-400 is a game-changer – a system that could rend the heavens in twain and call into question the very concept of air power under battlefield conditions.
And yet, last Friday, the epoch-making Triumf failed to let out so much as a peep as 105 cruise missiles trashed Bashar Assad’s chemical warfare plants. Not a single SAM left the rack while the attack was proceeding. (The Syrians did fire over 40 missiles at nothing, but only after the attack was completed. This is standard behavior among Arab armed forces – the Libyans and Iraqis did the same thing.) The Russians claim to have shot down over 70 of the attacking cruise missiles. How do we know this isn’t true? First, because the targets were utterly destroyed, and second, because the French were involved. If the Russians had shot down any U.S. missiles at all we would be hearing from Paris that American “missiles de croisière” are useless, and that’s why we had to turn to the French, who invented the cruise missile in 1689. (This is scarcely an exaggeration – Emmanuel Macron has gone on record to state that it was he, le président de la France, who persuaded Donald Trump to carry out the strike.)
Some might argue that the new AGM-158 JASSM stealth missile foxed the S-400, but half the missiles launched were actually thirty-year-old BGM-109 Tomahawks, the equivalent of Colt Peacemakers as far as the world of missile development is concerned. If the mighty S-400 can’t shoot down a thirty-year-old missile, what can it do?
Also this: “Russia today is what it always was – a Potemkin village hiding a nation in a state of suspended collapse.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network’s platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of shady activities, including spamming, wire fraud, account takeovers, phony tax refunds, 419 scams, denial-of-service attack-for-hire services and botnet creation tools. The average age of these groups on Facebook’s platform was two years.
Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin owes his former campaign staff members tens of thousands of dollars and most believe he has no intention of ever paying them, a former campaign worker tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Right before McMullin’s failed bid for president in 2016 as the conservative alternative to President Donald Trump, the campaign was inundated with debt. The disastrous fiscal situation was a combination of frivolous spending by McMullin and his campaign manager Joel Searby, according to the former staffer.
McMullin received news weeks before Election Day 2016 about how dire the campaign’s finances were, and he had “no remorse” and said “I have qualms about this thing ending badly in debt,” the former staffer claimed. McMullin’s cavalier attitude towards the campaign’s spending struck many as a surprise, particularly because he billed himself as a fiscal conservative, he added.
The staffer also claims the campaign never paid him somewhere between 12-15 thousand dollars on top of a few thousand dollars in reimbursements. While he has since recovered, he expressed concern about former staffers with “families and children.”
I’ll never forget the first time I went to a steakhouse here. I thought I’d eaten steak before. I was expecting this small, flat circle of meat, maybe a couple of fries on the side. Fine. C’est bon.
So in Texas, steak is a different thing. I’m at this restaurant and they put this plate in front of me, and, well, there was barely any plate visible — all I saw was this was this big, big piece of meat. I look around, maybe I had been mistaken in what I ordered. Maybe this waiter was playing a prank on me. It looked like a whole farm animal in front of me. But everyone with me laughed and nodded and told me that in Texas, this is a steak.
Then I was introduced to these other foods I’d never seen before but were totally amazing. Mac and cheese, man. Guys, you are blessed for having mac and cheese here. It’s a work of art. Bravo, guys.
And that was the first time I thought, O.K. O.K., I think I can get used to this place.
But if he really wants to be “King of Books,” he should know that road runs through me…
In the Southern California's high desert, people are calling 911 for help because of an invasion of tumbleweeds. Read the story: https://t.co/LafXGcRPoz pic.twitter.com/X1KSj0VYdn
— AP West Region (@APWestRegion) April 18, 2018
Colonel demoted, immediately retired from Air National Guard over dinosaur puppet video https://t.co/IXp9yqn2SM pic.twitter.com/HhFdQp2arK
— Air Force Times (@AirForceTimes) April 18, 2018
Seems an overreaction. Let he who has never taken a sacred oath using a dinosaur handpuppet cast the first stone…
Hurst, Texas House Explodes on Dashcam
Thursday, April 19th, 2018And sometimes blogging is just “Whoa! I’ve got to post that!”
Story here. Thankfully, no one was killed, though one woman remains in the hospital.
Also this: “The driver was not hurt, but was taken into custody for not having a license, then transferred to federal custody on an immigration hold.”
Texas Pregnancy Mortality Rates Double Due to Bad UI Design
Saturday, April 14th, 2018Here’s a cautionary tale.
Two years ago, you may have heard that Texas’ maternal mortality rate had just doubled. No one was quite sure why—some blamed a recent shuttering of family-planning services, others a lack of concern for women’s health generally—but it seemed most were confident Texas was a cautionary tale. The U.S. maternal mortality rate overall had been rising for years, even as nearly every other developed country saw declines. Surely, the new numbers out of Texas portended what could happen across the country if we didn’t change soon.
It turns out that the numbers in Texas were wrong. The extent to which they were incorrect was just published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, as investigated by several researchers who went back and double-checked the cause-of-death for 147 total deaths in Texas in 2012.
Though we only now realize how flawed the data were, this isn’t entirely a recent revelation. Experts suspected that something was wrong with the data, they just weren’t sure what. The authors of that original study noted that “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a 2-year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely.” Their suspicions turned out to be right. Instead of roughly 36 deaths per 100,000 births, the mortality rate was more like 14.6 deaths per 100,000 births.
Texas is, in fact, a cautionary tale, just not in the way we all thought. It’s been collecting data poorly for years now, and they’re not alone—maternal mortality rates could be wrong all over the U.S. Ever since some states introduced a checkbox to their death certificates asking about pregnancy back in 2003, the stats on maternal mortality have been skewed. A 2017 study concluded that this addition “appears to be the main driver of the increases in [maternal mortality rates] during the last decade.” States with and without the checkbox differ so much in reported data that we haven’t published an official national maternal mortality rate since 2007. The data just haven’t been good enough.
But they have to be better. Maternal mortality rates are still high nationally by many estimates, and understanding the extent of the problem is crucial if America is going to save mothers’ lives.
When researchers found that twofold increase in maternal mortality in Texas two years ago, they suspected it was so extreme as to be an error. Texas was one of the states that implemented a new checkbox on death certificates that asked about the pregnancy status of the deceased, and as mentioned before it was already known that states with that checkbox tend to report higher maternal death rates. This is in part because asking about whether the deceased was pregnant increases the rate at which it’s reported—when you start looking for pregnancy-related deaths, you’ll tend to find more. But it’s also because people make mistakes.
The recent paper notes that it may be a simple design problem that’s contributed significantly to the apparent rise in maternal mortality: “Texas’ current electronic death registration system displays pregnancy status options as a dropdown list. The “pregnant at the time of death” option is directly below the “not pregnant within the past year” option; this could have led to erroneous selection and could explain why pregnancy at the time of death was reported for nearly 76% of the 74 obstetric-coded deaths with no evidence of pregnancy on review.”
The authors also note that the number of death certificates being submitted electronically in Texas jumped from 63 to 91 percent from 2010 to 2012. Having a bunch of new users entering information into death certificate software may have exacerbated the misreporting.
They suggest two main solutions: better training for workers who report death information, and instead of a drop-down menu, try buttons. Separate buttons for “pregnant” and “not pregnant” force the user to move the mouse to totally different areas to make a selection, rather than clicking in a small drop-down menu where it’s easy to make a mistake and not realize it before moving on to the next question.
Texas may have had a double-whammy situation, but the problems they ran into are true of all checkbox states.
Those states that chose to implement a pregnancy checkbox on their death certificates have seen a 149.8 percent in maternal mortality (as of 2012 data). But a study from last year estimated that a whopping 90.3 percent of that change was likely due to the checkbox issues alone.
“Because pregnancy-related deaths are so uncommon, the frequency of the box being checked in error can significantly impact the maternal mortality rate reported,” Elliott Main, medical director of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, told the Washington Post.
If we assumed that the non-checkbox-adopting states showed the true rate, the study authors reasoned, the true rate would be 14.4 percent.
Lesson: Bad UI design kills! Or at least fools you into thinking someone’s been killed…
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Texas Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides Sentenced to 80 Years in Prison for Sex Trafficking
Sunday, April 8th, 2018Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides may be a small fish (he lost his only district court race), but his crimes stand out for their sheer depravity:
A Wilson County jury on Friday sentenced a former San Antonio attorney to 80 years in prison on each of the six counts he faced for coercing clients into sex.
Mark Henry Benavides will have to serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.
Snip.
“This is human trafficking,” Chacon said. “He transported, coerced, threatened and made them feel they had no choice. This jury understood that.”
Benavides was convicted Tuesday of continuous trafficking of persons and faces 25 to 99 years or life in prison. Six women he had represented in prostitution or drug cases testified he coerced them into having sex to keep them out of jail or lessen their legal troubles, and videotaped the encounters, which were shown to the jury.
Investigators seized 246 mini DVDs that contained hundreds of videos of Benavides and the former clients engaged in various sex acts, in which he could be heard directing the women and telling them what to do and say.
During the trial, San Antonio Police Department detective Manual Morales testified that police found a filing cabinet at Benavides’ home containing 246 of what the detective called “pornographic DVDs” that showed Benavides having sex with women who police said were Benavides’ clients.
Some of the graphic and sexually explicit videos were played for jurors. A video was so graphic that a female juror fainted as the panel left the courtroom last Tuesday.
The women testified that in addition to recordings made in a motel, Benavides also had sex with them in jury and witness rooms at the courthouse.
At least one of the victims in the indictment was a minor.
I’m seeing various reports that Benavides’ coerced sex acts involved torture, but I am unable to find any mainstream media reports confirming those allegations, despite the fainting juror. Might have to wait for the official trial transcript…
Waco Biker Trials Update Update
Thursday, April 5th, 2018Somehow, when compiling the info for this piece on Waco biker trial news, I missed this update, which notes the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office dismissed cases against Cody Ledbetter and George Bergman.
Ledbetter, who has said he has been ready to go to trial for almost three years because he didn’t commit a crime, witnessed his stepfather, Daniel Boyett, get shot during the May 2015 brawl at the former Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco between two rival biker groups. Boyett died from his wounds.
“Give me a break,” [Ledbetter’s attorney Paul] Looney said Monday after learning of the dismissal. “Cody never should have been filed on in the first place. He has had this case hanging over his head for three years and when we finally get a trial setting, they say never mind. That is just cruel beyond description. My client has lived with the thought of 15 years to life in prison for nearly three years on a case I guess they never prepared for trial or never intended to prepare for trial.”
Neither McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna nor Jarrett returned phone messages Monday.
Looney, who called the Twin Peaks cases “the most bizarre saga in the history of American criminal law,” added that he is happy for Ledbetter but “just repulsed at the system.”
“It looks like they have mishandled this case to the point that nine people died and nobody gets prosecuted. How bizarre. This is an impossible outcome. That can’t be the case, but it looks like they are going to end up there,” he said.
In other Waco biker trial news, “Senior U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, of Austin, conducted a status conference Monday in a portion of the 133 Twin Peaks civil rights suits and extended by at least 90 days a stay that has been in place for almost two years.”
Meanwhile, in San Antonio, Bandidos members John Xavier Portillo and Jeffrey Fay Pike are on trial for federal racketeering charges.
LinkSwarm for March 30, 2018
Friday, March 30th, 2018Happy Good Friday! Spring has sprung and I’m knee-deep in my taxes.
When a media source such as Mother Jones or Everytown for Gun Safety implies that “we have a gun problem,” they are making exactly the same reasoning error as if they said, “we have a black people problem.”
And black population was six times more predictive than gun ownership was.
In an extensive report from BuzzFeed, cartoonist John Kricfalusi—the creator of iconic Nickelodeon series Ren & Stimpy—has been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, promising them careers in animation at his studio Spumco while allegedly grooming them for sexual relationships. One of the women, Robyn Byrd, says it all began in 1994 when she was only 13, after she sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about how she wanted a career in animation and how important Ren & Stimpy was to her. Kricfalusi, who was 39 at the time, responded by sending her packages of toys and art supplies, and eventually he helped her set up an AOL account so they could communicate more regularly.
Kricfalusi visited Byrd at her home and told her that she could “become a great artist,” and later he invited her out to Los Angeles, where she says he “touched her genitals through her pajamas” while they were at his house. She was 16. In 1997, Kricfalusi gave Byrd an internship at Spumco; she lived with him during this period, prompting him to allegedly call her “his 16-year-old girlfriend.” Convinced that he was helping her launch the career of her dreams, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi once she graduated from high school.
Apparently, this was all an open secret in the animation world at the time, partly due to an interview Kricfalusi gave with Howard Stern in which he creepily noted that a “hot chick with big cans and nice legs” he had drawn for a comic book was “underage, too.” People working at Spumco allegedly shrugged off the relationship between Byrd and Kricfalusi, with another former intern noting that Kricfalusi once “left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her.”
