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TexPx

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  1. It’s interesting the silence from our resident gun nuts in this thread.

    No gun nuts on Surly. Just Gun Owners
    You do have Truck Nuts.
    If you want Fanatics you have:
    Boat
    Watch
    New Car
    Art
    Airplane
    Motorcycle
    Night Vision
    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Haha 1
  2. US Congressman Keith Self ® of that area is an utter dumbfuck. 
    US Congressman Keith Self ® of that area is an utter dumbfuck. 

    That CNN interview was disgusting and embarrassing.
    • Hook 'Em 2
  3. CRIME

    Fear is cited in rise in gunfire
    Experts: Shootings of strangers, neighbors due to mixture of factors
    By DANIELLE PAQUETTE, JOHN D. HARDEN and SCOTT CLEMENT
    The Washington Post
    Steve Bridges had just parked his pickup at the Texas Boot Factory when he saw a man — white, maybe 55 or 60 — step out of the car beside him and slip a gun under his belt.

    It was a Friday afternoon, three days after two cheerleaders opened the wrong car door in a supermarket parking lot nearby and were shot. Bridges, a 63-year-old contractor, had tried to picture how that could happen in Elgin, where eruptions of violence are rare.

    “It all goes back to the fear,” he said. “Why are cheerleaders getting shot for opening the wrong door? Why is a grown man scared to go into a boot store without carrying his weapon? Why are these people so afraid?”


    Across the country last month, at least four men opened fire on someone who’d stumbled upon their space, resulting in one death, two injuries and a car pocked with bullet holes. The apparent acts of snap-aggression have reinvigorated the debate around the prevalence of stand-your-ground laws in the United States and a pressing question: Why are people so quick to pull the trigger on strangers?

    Why did a 65-year-old man kill a 20-year-old woman who had accidentally pulled into his upstate New York driveway? Why did an 84-year-old man fire two bullets into a 16-year-old boy who had mistakenly knocked on his door in Kansas City, Mo.? Why did a 43-year-old man in South Florida allegedly shoot at a 19-year-old Instacart delivery driver and his 18-year-old girlfriend who had arrived at the wrong address?

    Experts blame a cocktail of factors: the easy availability of guns, misconceptions around stand-your-ground laws, the marketing of firearms for self-defense — and a growing sense among Americans, particularly Republicans, that safety in their backyard is deteriorating.

    Since 2020, the share of Republicans who say crime is rising in their community has jumped from 38% to 73%, according to the latest Gallup numbers from last fall. Among Democrats, that same concern rose only 5 percentage points to 42%, marking the widest partisan perception gap since the polling firm first asked the question a half-century ago.

    What data shows

    Reality is more complicated. A Washington Post crime analysis of 80 major police departments’ records found that reported violence across the country in 2022 was lower than the five-year average.

    And over the longer term, the National Criminal Victimization Survey showed the number of people reporting sexual assault, robbery and other physical attacks is overall much lower now than in the 1990s and has not increased in recent years.

    Homicides and thefts, however, rose during the pandemic, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data — though not to the levels of the 1990s.

    A Post analysis, meanwhile, found that states with stand-your-ground laws had a 55% higher homicide-by-firearm rate in the last two years than the states that didn’t have these laws, which remove the duty to retreat from an attacker before responding with potentially deadly force.

    The perception that life is getting more dangerous has spread on the right as GOP leaders and pundits repeatedly argued, without evidence, that immigrants and protesters are jeopardizing American peace. Conservative news channels have devoted more airtime to violence than their center- and left-leaning competitors. Over the last three years, for instance, Fox News anchors and guests spotlighted crime 79% more often than those on MSNBC and twice as much as voices on CNN, according to a Washington Post analysis of closed captioning provided by the GDELT AI Television Explorer and the Internet Archive.

    Fear, paranoia and misunderstandings of the laws governing self-defense and use of force is a recipe for tragedy, said Geoffrey Corn, chair of criminal law at Texas Tech University Law School.

    “We don’t demand any education for people who own firearms,” he said. “I was a soldier, and we couldn’t touch a live round without completing weeks of basic training.”

    Paranoia and fear

    In Bastrop County, Bridges, the chair of the local Democratic Party, said the tension has been climbing for years.

    Crime in the Central Texas county has ticked up in recent years, though less so than the national average. In 2021, according to the most recent data available, the small city of Elgin reported 13 violent offenses, up from 10 in 2020.

    Bridges kept his pistol at home and his door unlocked. Did crime seem worse to him? No.

    Did it seem worse to the head of the local Republican Party?

    “Crime has gotten worse,” said Curtis Courtney, a retired publisher. “It probably has. We have more illegals up here. We have a lot of people coming from Austin.”

    Courtney, 70, said he didn’t know why that man had shot the cheerleaders. It was either a grave human error or a criminal act, or both, he figured. But it did not shake his belief that Americans should arm themselves wherever they saw fit.

    “You have demonstrations in Portland and Chicago getting out of control,” he said.

    Democrats who say crime isn’t getting worse, he said, “live on a river in Egypt. The de-Nile.”

    That, he said, is why people carry a gun.

    “We don’t have a problem,” he said. “The ones who try to bring it against us would have a problem.”

    Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, told officers he was “scared to death” last month when he shot Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old Black boy who had been looking for his siblings and knocked on his door in Kansas City.

    “It’s the paranoia and fear,” said Lester’s 28-year-old grandson, Klint Ludwig. “It was the 24-hour news cycle — Fox News, OAN, all that stuff — pushing the civil division. Everybody is just so scared all the time.”

    ‘A detrimental force’

    Over the years, he said, his grandfather had become hooked on those channels, echoing talking points that Ludwig, who describes himself as “left-leaning,” found disturbing. He recalled Lester describing migrant children detained at the border as a threat to national security.

    “Minority groups get scapegoated,” Ludwig said. “The propaganda we see all day, every day was a detrimental force in his life.”

    The Clay County, Mo., sheriff’s office reported that, according to the latest data, both violent and property offenses in the area dipped from 2017 to 2021. Jerry Nolte, 67, the Republican presiding commissioner of the county and a lifelong Kansas City resident, said he couldn’t tell if crime was up or down — only that people seemed more sensitive to it.

    “Anybody who watches the news and sees nationwide the kind of crime stories reported are naturally going to be affected by that,” he said.

    In rural Hebron, N.Y., where Kevin Monahan gunned down Kaylin Gillis last month after she and her friends accidentally pulled into his driveway, residents of the dairy town had gathered in shock.

    “I blame all this crap on TV,” said George Flint, 70, a Republican councilman. “The fact that you think you can chase somebody off your property like that in this day and age — when you don’t even know who they are — is absurd.”

    Especially in Washington County, where, from 2019 to 2021, authorities reported just one homicide and four robberies.

    “My client was involved in a series of tragic mistakes, made by more than one person, that resulted in the death of a young lady,” Monahan’s lawyer told reporters. “He feels terrible that a life was lost.”

    • Rage+1 4
  4. I’ve got a recording of the show that inspired that song. I’ve been meaning to post about it in the Zappa thread. I’ll try to get to that soon.
    Frank has a good number of songs that mention other artists. He references the band Angel in Punky’s Whips. I used to have one of their albums. I’ll skip that one.
    He mentions the Vanilla Fudge in Mud Shark. That’s allegedly based on a true story. And it’s a great groove.
    [/url] He mentions the Dead.
    Here the Dead reference is less explicit but it’s there.
    Here he doesn’t mention anyone specifically. San Francisco psychedelic bands in general and there’s a musical reference.
    There’s a Peter Frampton reference here (plus a bonus Jimi Hendrix reference).
     

    Fillmore East recording?
  5. "(Let's All) Turn On"

    Shake some action, psychotic reaction
    No satisfaction, sky pilot, sky Saxon
    That's what I like
    That's what I like
    Blitzkrieg bop to the jailhouse rock
    Stop, stop at the hop, do the bluejean bop
    That's what I like
    That's what I like

    Better get off my cloud 'cause two's a crowd
    Better get off the phone, there's nobody at home
    I'm gonna work it on out, I'm gonna twist and shout
    I'm gonna ride a white swan and get it on
    Let's all turn on

    Born to lose those summertime blues
    In blue suede shoes, le Hoodoo Gurus
    That's what I like
    That's what I like
    Waiting for my man, baby, can the can
    I wanna hold your hand, remember Sam the sham?
    That's what I like
    That's what I like

    Better get off my cloud 'cause two's a crowd
    Better get off the phone, there's nobody at home
    I'm gonna work it on out, I'm gonna twist and shout
    I'm gonna ride a white swan and get it on
    Let's all turn on

    When you walk in the room, sunny afternoon
    A-wop-bop a-loo-bop, a-lop-bam-boom
    That's what I like
    That's what I like
    Sugar, sugar, talk, talk, money, honey, boardwalk
    Who wears short shorts? (we wear short shorts)
    That's what I like
    That's what I like
    That's what I like

    • Hook 'Em 1


  6. Who?

    Introducing this song in concerts, Williams has explained that she wrote it about her friend Blaze Foley, a songwriter who was shot and killed in a bar over a senseless argument. Townes Van Zandt, who was also a friend of Foley's, wrote a song about him called "Blaze's Blues."
    • Hook 'Em 1
  7. Up on Cripple Creek (The Band)
    Spike Jones

    Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
    Zappa

    I Dig Rock and Roll Music (Peter, Paul & Mary)
    Mamas & Papas, Beatles, Donavan

    From Hank to Hendrix (N. Young)

    Faron Young (Prefab Sprout)

    Hey 19(Steely Dan)
    Aretha

    Bob Wills is still the King (Waylon)

    Drunken Angel (Lucinda)
    Doesn’t say a name but you know who

    Blaze’s Blues(Townes Van Zandt)
    Same as above

    • Like 1
  8. These are all really good ideas but nothing is going to change until there is a shift at the top and sadly don't think Hot Wheels, or the man who is really stopping most of these things from happening Lt Dan are going anywhere anytime soon. Wheels might try to run for El Prez again but don't see his peen measuring contest with the Florida Meatball or Trump going very well and highly doubtful he wins so will keep rolling around Texas. Lt Dan is more interesting in that I think he wants Wheels job but won't actually challenge him straight up for it because he is a cuck. Until the Lt Dan shaped roadblock is removed in the Texas Senate don't see any sort of positive movement on these state wide issues such as gambling, marijuana, medicaid, any sniff of common sense firearms restrictions, school funding formula, etc.  
    Eventually there will be enough of the olds and rural folk (sorry to resident blue hairs and country bumpkins) being removed from the voter rolls (6 feet under) that the state-wide races will flip and give more state-wide control back to the cities and population centers despite voter suppression efforts in said areas, but flipping individual representatives/senators and local officials will take longer. Just hope by the time these things start to occur and give more encouragement for some more rational voters to show up regularly and vote that it isn't too late. 

    TL;DR: Fuck Abbott and Lt Dan 
     

    FWIW
    Our city straddles two house districts. According to Balotpedia the combined candidate’s expenditures of the last election were:
    Rs-1,247,280
    Ds-151,378
  9. I am for a lot of these, but I’m out on the legalized gambling. Way out. I don’t think the idea ever works out as it is promised. 
     
    In the first place, we’re pointing to Oklahoma and Louisiana, which are if anything shittier and more poorly run than Texas.  What has the industry done there? When I’m in Shreveport, I never have the thought that Texas needs to be more like that. 
     
    With the maybe minor exception of Las Vegas, I have never once seen gambling as an industry do things like fund schools and make the cities that host them nicer places to live. Nearly every gambling destination is a shithole. I’ve also seen article after article show that the “out of state/town” funds they bring in come close to counter-balancing the social issues they create in local communities from problem gambling.  We see this story every time, like any industry this will kick off an incentive war between communities that most need the tax revenue, driven mostly by wealthy property owners who want to sell their land. The casino developers will get all sorts of tax breaks and maybe even get paid to build and they’ll claim that the jobs give back to the community are enough. “We will do it differently, this time” isn’t convincing. 
     
    And I’ll freely admit to being a super NIMBY on this one, as a part-time South Padre resident, I don’t want it there and I don’t want the people it would bring. One of the few things Texas does mostly right is public beaches and casinos will not be a value-added to those. 

    In short, if you can point to me somewhere outside of Las Vegas where legal gambling has helped lead to better schools, nicer parks and public spaces, better public services, boosted local wages, lower crime, good affordable housing, developed public transport, and all the things that make a city or region a nice place to live— l will hang up and listen. But I think it’s a chimera. 

    Don’t know about anyplace else but I know someone on the Oaklawn Foundation in Hot Springs. They have pumped a bunch of money into the community.
    4b2fd0b18d8d7524c3c960b6288d0d0b.jpg

    As far as our public beaches, we are trying to fuck them up too.

    https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/letter-lawmaker-tries-to-grab-public-beaches-for-private-owners/article_4d65e004-d4d1-11ed-941c-6f1965ddb8c9.html
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