Texas

Thursday

Michael Moorcock

Here in Texas, Hell has frozen over

Austin ‘If I owned Texas and Hell,’ General Phil Sheridan famously said, ‘I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.’ Although the weather was unusually warm for the season in central Texas we guessed something was up when, in broad daylight with hawks about, our normally crepuscular attic mice risked running down a porch pillar and gathering the spilled seed from bird feeders. They vanished completely days before the snowstorm struck. Sadly, some of our birds were not so prescient. We watched a bewildered Audubon’s warbler, which could no longer fly, hopping about in the snow. Either it had lost the main flock continuing south, or good weather had persuaded it to stay. Trying not to frighten it, my wife made sure it was fed.

Saturday

Roger Kimball

Is America still a democratic republic?

From our US edition

‘Disappointed but not surprised.’ I suppose that describes my initial feeling about the summary dismissal by the Supreme Court last night of the ‘audacious’ (the New York Times) lawsuit brought by the state of Texas against Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan on December 8. In essence, Texas argued that those four states had trespassed on the civil rights of citizens by favoring some voters over others in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The amusing and perspicacious commentator known as Ace of Spades added a bit of hot sauce in his response to the news of the Court’s ruling. ‘The ultimate Friday Night News Dump,’ he wrote.

supreme court democratic republic

Sunday

James Jeffrey

Pita Shack flashback

From our US edition

Friday afternoon in the Pita Shack diner in the northern suburbs of Austin, Texas and I was surrounded by Iraqis. There was even a picture of a sweet-looking Marsh Arab girl in her papyrus boat hanging on the wall. It was all unexpected but strangely familiar, stirring memories of Delta-30’s turret-scanning the junction of Red 11 in downtown Al Amarah back in 2004. During the first Gulf War in 1991, the Maysan province around Al Amarah was the site of local uprisings against Saddam Hussein. In retaliation he drained the region’s marshes to deprive the local Marsh Arabs of the waters on which their livelihoods and 6,000-year-old culture depended.

pita shack

Thursday

Michael Moorcock

We’re spending lockdown defending a family of mice

Austin My first Independence Day in the US for many years. Usually I’d be in Paris avoiding Texas heat. My wife and I are self-isolating with much more square feet and wildlife to enjoy. Our garden is lush and green, full of flowers, owls, hawks, possums, squirrels, skunks, armadillos and snakes. Recent wild fires drove more animals into town. Joyously athletic with the recklessness of youth, squirrels and redbirds chase each other through our oaks and pecans and it’s pretty good to sit on the front porch with a cooling drink and the rich scent of magnolias in the evening air. The young hawks are in heaven. They have discovered our bird feeders. We have become very defensive of our bluejays, cardinals, chickadees, wrens, woodpeckers, mockingbirds and others.

Friday

Heather Mac Donald

Where are the deaths?

From our US edition

The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts.

deaths

Friday

Saurabh Sharma

Texas’s traveling economic militias are done with lockdown

From our US edition

TexasAs lockdowns began across America, Texans did what Texans do best. They emptied the shelves of every firearm store in the state.Urban progressives and the pundit class were quick to scorn. But those firearms, and the millions more owned by the people of Texas, are now proving useful. Texans want to reopen their economy and are turning to amateur armed guards in order to do so.A recent piece in the New York Times focused on a tattoo shop in Shepherd, Texas, about an hour outside of Houston. When Jamie Williams’s business was passed over for the first wave of permitted re-openings by Gov. Greg Abbott, she called one of what can only be described as Texas’s traveling economic militias.

texas militias

Thursday

Michael Hann

Joyous and very, very funny: Beastie Boys Story reviewed

The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on to record everything that amused them. And early on, in their teens-get-drunk debut album, Licensed To Ill, that resulted in obnoxiousness. But mostly they were kinetic and colourful, which is why the new Apple TV+ film about them works so well. The format suits the story. Beastie Boys Story simply documents a stage show where winningly they talk the audience through their personal history. It’s much like Netflix’s Springsteen on Broadway. But since the third Beastie, Adam Yauch, died in 2012, the band no longer perform, so where Springsteen punctuated his memories with songs, the Beasties do it with film clips.

Monday

James Jeffrey

Texas or Hell

From our US edition

The first time I saw Texas, I was more than ready for it. I crossed the state line in the middle of a month-long, coast-to-coast road trip after a hellish tour in Afghanistan. ‘You can go to Hell, but I am going to Texas,’ said Davy Crockett. I think he had a point. Texas is better, though it’s nearly as hot come summertime. My wingman and I did our best to honor Hunter S. Thompson’s advice to embrace ‘madness in any direction, at any hour’. Well, of a sort. We were both still subject to the army’s random drug tests, plus it was hard to entirely forget the chivalrous officer code drilled into us at Sandhurst, the West Point of Britain.

texas

Tuesday

Lauren Chen

The trouble with designating ‘incels’ a terror threat

From our US edition

The Texas Department of Public Safety has designated incels, or ‘involuntary celibates’, as an ‘emerging domestic terror threat’. What began online with what the Department’s report calls a ‘a personal grievance due to perceived rejection by women’ may already, the report claims, have morphed into ‘allegiance to, and attempts to further, an Incel Rebellion’.Incels have quickly become one of the few groups whose mockery and derision is deemed universally acceptable. The term has become a go-to insult for men who are merely undesirable or unpopular. The idea that some men are misogynists, embittered because they can’t get women’s attention, is now used to explain all manner of male behavior.

Tuesday

James Jeffrey

Buttigieg at home as he ranges into Texas

From our US edition

Austin, TexasShortly after Pete Buttigieg took to the stage at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden in downtown Austin, I heard a loud thud from off to my right. A small circle of people crowded around a woman lying passed out on the ground.'She went down like a felled tree,' remarked a journalist next to me. Up front, Buttigieg was in full flow listing America’s many woes that need sorting. People crouched down to help — 'Give her space!

buttigieg texas

Friday

Caroline McCarthy

A marketer’s request: Make SXSW exciting again

From our US edition

This year at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW), an impressive lineup of 2020 presidential candidates (and possible candidates) like Amy Klobuchar, Julián Castro, and John Kasich will take the stage for ‘Conversations About America’s Future,’ a series of one-on-one interviews with prominent media figures. Too bad everybody’s talking about Game of Thrones instead. In building its ‘Bleed for the Throne’ setup at the annual digital confab, HBO had to live up to the hype of last year’s SXSW stunt, where they surprised pretty much everybody by building an actual Westworld.

sxsw

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The scariest news for Trump isn’t about a border wall

From our US edition

It’s classic Trump. A president who knows the virtues of suspense is not going to render a final verdict on the congressional spending deal – which Fox News host Sean Hannity deemed ‘garbage’ – until the very last moment, trying to make it look as though he’s the Decider, when he really has little choice about whether to sign off on it. El Paso, where he ranted last night about the need to finish a wall he never even started, was his personal Alamo.After the 35-day government shutdown, which tanked his favorability ratings, Trump can hardly afford to create déjà vu all over again with a fresh one.

donald trump border
trump beto border
Freddy Gray

How Trump could monster Beto O’Rourke in 2020

From our US edition

It will be a delicious irony when the 2020 Democratic nominee ends up being another rich white dude. Picture the scene in July next year, at the party’s National Convention in Milwaukee. After all the talk of a new, rich diversity, after all the noisy women candidates have canceled each other, after Cory Booker’s self-righteousness sets itself on fire, and after the superdelegates figured out another way to block Bernie Sanders, the Democrats have done the dumb thing and plumped for Beto O’Rourke. He gives a tiresome, Obama-lite oration on the need to put history back on track and rediscover a spirit of open-borderness. He gives the second half of the speech in Spanish. The media sings his praises.

Wednesday

William Murchison

Beto O’Rourke may be the opposite of Trump – but is that what Texas wants?

From our US edition

Donald Trump’s dominance of the US political scene shows up in surprising ways, at surprising moments. For instance, in the retort of an exuberant Democratic senatorial candidate striving for headway in a televised debate with his incumbent Republican opponent. ‘He’s dishonest,’ says Congressman Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, assailing Sen, Ted Cruz. It’s why the president called him Lyin’ Ted, and it’s why the nickname stuck.’ Oh, boy, the Dems are looking to Donald Trump for character references? As I keep saying – and you’ve probably had the same thought – it’s a weird time we live in, getting weirder by the minute.

beto O’Rourke

Wednesday

Leann Davis Alspaugh

A changing climate on the Texas Gulf Coast

From our US edition

It’s 9 a.m. on Sunday morning and my mother and I arrive at her church for Mass. Inside, I greet the mother of one of my oldest friends, ‘Buenos días, Señora, cómo está?’ ‘M’hija!’ she exclaims, and we embrace. My Spanish is serviceable, but it gets a real workout when I attend my mother’s church. At the Catholic church in my Texas Gulf Coast hometown, the Spanish Mass has the largest attendance. Everyone there, except my mother and me, is Hispanic. The altar servers are Hispanic. The middle-aged deacon is Hispanic. The only other exception is the parish priest, Father C., who is from India.

beto o'rourke texas gulf coast church

Monday

Daniel DePetris

Why Ted Cruz is craving a Team Trump trip to Texas

From our US edition

They were the words of a presidential candidate who had enough of the taunts and the insults. ‘This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth...The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist — a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.’ ‘This man’ was none other than Donald Trump. And the person doing the ranting was none other than Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas who at the time was engaged in a nasty, divisive, and childish Republican presidential primary contest with the New York billionaire celebrity. How times have changed.

ted cruz