Well, That Wasn’t Nice!

I heard this last night:

“This rain event is of historic proportion,” from Bill Balleza of KPRC-TV.

It was pretty intense as I was keeping up with last night’s flood tweets, like:

Houston Chronicle retweeted
mike mcguff ‏@mikemcguff 21m21 minutes ago
Every #Houston TV station is in live weather coverage currently except #KHOU.

#KHOU did finally get off their arse and come back on.

Then this funny one:

Houston Chronicle ‏@HoustonChron 1m1 minute ago
Harris County rainfall for 24 hours. http://www.harriscountyfws.org/ Yep, this qualifies as a toad strangler. #houwx #hounews

In the middle of last night’s flood evvent I fired off a couple that got some response:

Marc Campos‏@MarcCommentary 8h8 hours ago
@DwightHoward still hanging with #RedNation fans at #ToyotaCenter during #houstonflood. #Rockets @HoustonChron pic.twitter.com/m1gjQQX8NO
77 retweets 59 favorites

Marc Campos‏@MarcCommentary 7h7 hours ago
Now @KPRC2 Houston loses power during #houstonflood. pic.twitter.com/c72WMtC1J1
6 retweets 3 favorites

The gizmo kept going off with emergency alert tweets.

Name the MLB club with the best road record?

More on the color of gravitas with a tweet and a Kuffer take:

Sue Davis @suedavis1974 · 8h 8 hours ago
New sheriff replaces women, minorities w/white men. What did Garcia think would happen when he let Republican become sheriff?

And Kuffer:

Let’s stipulate up front that the new guy gets to put in his people. That’s expected and understood. Garcia’s people had to know this was coming, and Campos is correct that none of this happens if he had stayed put. And he still has some slots to fill, so this isn’t the end of the story. But come on, you can’t have an all-white-guy command staff at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in 2015. Anyone who claims that the best-qualified candidates in every case so far just happen to be white guys is not in touch with reality. I mean, we all know this, right? Give Sheriff Hickman the benefit of the doubt for now, but let’s keep an eye on this. In the meantime, I agree with Stace: It would be nice to have a Democratic candidate or two announce their intention to run. This is the marquee race now, let’s get it going.

Here is all of Kuffer: http://offthekuff.com/wp/?p=67407

I recently drove the North Rail Line and the East End Rail Line. There sure are quite a few boarded up businesses right next to the tracks. I wonder if folks will reinvest in those sites.

The ‘Stros at 14-7 of course have the best road record in MLB.

Good thing we are on the road. It would not have been pretty with another 17,000 plus in Downtown H-Town last night.

Read Full Post »

More Discussion

I think I have mentioned before that future City of H-Town court and police facilities changes ought to be left up to the next administration. It is a big ticket item that needs a lot more discussion. In today’s hard copy of the Chron there is a story about what the current administration knew and when they knew it when it comes to the latest on the idea of moving court and police operations to the Exxon Building. Here is a little bit from the Chron story:

The Houston Chronicle, however, has obtained a memorandum dated in 2014 showing top city officials discussed cost estimates for the renovation and lease of the tower, contradicting claims that the idea was entirely in its infancy before being announced in late January. The document also renews questions about why Parker did not present leasing space as an option when City Council discussed the future of the city’s justice facilities on Jan. 14. The mayor then offered only the options of repairing the city’s current buildings or building new ones, saying there was no formal lease proposal to present.

The memo estimates the city could lease the building for $25.2 million per year for 30 years, and includes figures on what it could cost to upgrade heating and air conditioning systems, restrooms and other areas of the 1.2-million-square-foot tower, as well as the estimated fees the developers would receive.

Councilman Dave Martin said he was disappointed the estimates in the memo were not shared with the council, but said more pressing is whether the city could afford $25 million in annual lease payments.

“You’re going to have to have some serious budget cuts to make this thing happen,” Martin said. “Where are you going to make them?”

You kind of have to agree with CM Martin and that’s why I say it needs a lot more discussion. I say again to leave it up to the next administration. Here is a bit more from the Chron:

The memo was not among the papers (Mayor Parker spokeswoman Janice) Evans produced in response to a January open records request by the Chronicle seeking documents related to the lease proposal. Those records showed city officials had understated the extent of the lease talks and the timeline on which they occurred, but revealed little about the deal itself and contained nothing as detailed as the memo.

The memo did appear, however, when Evans was asked to produce the records again after it became clear the Chronicle had paid for more pages of documents than had been provided.

Evans said she believed she had produced the document the first time, saying any omission was a “copying error” and that she had no motive to skirt open records laws.

“That’s all I can say,” Evans said. “Because that’s silly. Why would we do that and then two weeks later give it to you? If we wanted to withhold it, we would have withheld it the second time, too.”

I know Janice didn’t really want it to come out the way it sounded. She would never want to “withhold” anything at any time from the public. Here is the entire article that is behind the paywall: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Questions-surround-mayor-s-lease-proposal-6115710.php.

Way to go Chron for finally getting all the documents you requested!

New ‘Stro Luis Valbuena will start at third base today. He will be competing with Matt Dominguez this spring for starting position. Of the two, who has the highest career batting average?

Did you see this from the Chron’s Ericka Mellon yesterday?

Zeph Capo, vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, will replace longtime union president Gayle Fallon on June 1.

Fallon, 70, is retiring after 32 years of leading the Houston school district’s largest teacher group.

“I was very proud to nominate Zeph Capo as my replacement,” Fallon said in a statement. “He is extremely qualified for the job, and the HFT will go far under his leadership.”

Capo, elected to the Houston Community College board of trustees in 2013, was elected by his peers as that board’s chairman this year.

Congrats to Zeph!

Matt Dominguez has a .233 career batting average and Luis Valbuena a .229 career batting average of course.

This tweet came out yesterday:

Brian McTaggart ⚾️ ‏@brianmctaggart 2h2 hours ago
#Astros GM Jeff Luhnow at Matt Dominguez: “He’s got to win himself a job.” http://m.astros.mlb.com/news/article/111183386/matt-dominguez-welcoming-opportunity-to-evolve-as-ballplayer …

The ‘Stros start Spring Training play today and I have some concerns. I don’t know if we are a .500 club today. On paper our pitching has improved but I am concerned with our offense and position players. I am OK with our second base, shortstop, catcher, DH and right field (George Springer). We need better production from our third baseman. I don’t know if Jon Singleton will do what we want him to do a first. I don’t know about putting a catcher in left field and I am not sold on Colby Rasmus in center. I hope Spring Training sorts some of this out – I hope!

Read Full Post »

Anatomy of a Tweet

This past Saturday I checked my mailbox and I found a mailer that included skeletons and it was an attack mailer on Ben Hall.  I don’t have a problem with this because that is the name of the game.  I thought the skeletons were kind of creative it being 17 days from trick or treat and the skeletons referenced Ben Hall’s closet.

I checked the disclaimer and it said Houston Turnout Project.  I could not find them on the City’s political action committee list or with the Texas Ethics Commission so I put them in the google run and found a not so fresh website.  On one page was a generic message to vote in the 2009 elections and on another was touting the H-Town Mayor running for Mayor before she became a Mayor back in 2009.  I just made the assumption that this was one of those so called independent expenditures not so aligned – wink-wink – with The Mayor’s campaign.  According to the website, it certainly didn’t look like the IE had been doing a whole lot of turning out voters since 2009.

Here is what I tweeted:

@anniseparker to @Benhallforall: “Dem bones, Dem bones, Dem dry bones!”. pic.twitter.com/sLwYxY26yF

The “Dem bones” was a reference to the song “the foot bone connected to the ankle bone” tune to kind of inject a little humor into the mailer and tweet.

If Commentary had seen or heard of Houston Turnout Project activity over the past four years, my tweet probably would have looked different.

Name the Red Sox with the most dingers in a season?

Let’s get back to my Saturday night tweet.  The Chron and a few others retweeted my tweet and called it a negative mailer and it brought a quick denial and pushback from The Mayor’s Campaign.  They said to check out the disclaimer.  The Chron immediately tweeted a correction and Commentary kind of clarified a correction via tweet.

I guess the Mayor’s Campaign had to point out the disclaimer on the attack. Of course all they have done on TV is go negative so stay tuned.

The Chron E-Board as expected endorsed The Mayor yesterday.  They also had a lengthy piece on her.

I would hope that Dems would have enough sense to make sure The Kinkhole isn’t on next year’s ticket.

Some of the Texans players were not happy with some fans booing Matt Schaub when he went down yesterday.  I don’t want to defend the fans that booed but you have to expect this when a whole frenzy is created over a football team and just about everyone in H-Town contributes to the frenzy.

In 2006, Big Papi hit 54 dingers and is the top Red Sox of course for most dingers in a season.

Big Papi hit a game tying grand salami last night as the Red Sox went on to beat the Tigers in Game 2 of the ALCS at Fenway.  It was a Salty and Papi night.

The only thing to say about the Texans is scoreboard.  I wonder when the ‘Stros report to training camp?

 

Read Full Post »