Oh, this is going to be painful. I’ve been trying to prepare myself all weekend by eating a diet of prunes and flax seed, riding a stationary bicycle, doing somewhat Yoga-like stretches according to what I’ve seen in the movies and giving myself drill-sergeant pep talks in the mirror, also…
James Galbraith has a new book out, Inequality and Instability, arguing that … well, you know he’s an economist at the LBJ School at UT Austin, so it’s pretty complicated … I’m trying to boil down what I got out of it … I need to put this into Get-Off-My-Lawn…
On June 13, 2010, Dallas police arrested and jailed Robert Groden, author of best-selling books on the Kennedy assassination and a consultant to the Oliver Stone movie, JFK. The police accused Groden of violating a city law against selling books in Dealey Plaza, where the assassination happened almost a half-century…
Dear Mexican: I work for a major news organization and often have heard the figure of 10 million illegal Mexicans. Unofficially, I have been quoted the number 20 to 25 million illegals, most of them not Mexican. Why the focus on the Mexicans? They are far less alien than the…
Someone with a lot of clout in this town thinks Dallas should clamp down on free speech at Dealey Plaza for the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination coming up next year. There’s only one right way for free Americans to deal with that kind of thinking. Clamp down on…
Want to give yourself a good case of the climate-change willies? Go to climatecentral.org, click on their report on sea level rise and look for Texas. We could be in for it worse than California, depending on how you measure. When national media talk about sea-level rises, they tend to…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we get to know the people behind the scenes in Dallas/Fort Worth music. Lisa McDaniel’s interests are an unlikely duo: metal and math. In all fairness, she likes local music of all different kinds. But when it comes to her faves, she’s as down…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is allowed to ramble on at some length about public schools in a blog piece by Robert Wilonsky on today’s Dallas Morning News web page. It’s a Q&A. Rawlings comes across, as usual, as a smart decent man who cares. But is he the right smart…
You wait. When this whole presidential election gets rolling in earnest, pensions are going to be a whole lot sexier issue than condoms. People just haven’t figured it out yet. Josh Gotbaum, director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., is quoted in a Q&A in The Dallas Morning News today…
Not much sleep last night. Wide awake at 4 a.m., hiding beneath the sheets. A pretty sad state of affairs when a fellow of my years has to hide under his own bedding to avoid being bitten in the face by a dog. But there you have it. Rescue dogs…
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. A huge idea turned up at City Hall yesterday. Huge. This is like a Blue whale beaching itself on the banks of the Trinity River. I’m afraid City Hall is going to send a crew out there and chop it into…
Dear Mexican: I’m so perplexed by my Mexican neighbor. For one, he already has four girls, and I just saw his wife — and she looks like she’s pregnant AGAIN! What really bothers me is that I live in an affordable housing unit. The rent is cheap and based on…
This is a very Harry Potter-like story, and, even though as a writer I shouldn’t telegraph my punches, I’ll go ahead and tell you that it has a happy ending. In fact, I’m so happy about it I’ll go ahead and tell you what the ending is. I obtained a…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we get to know the people behind the scenes in Dallas/Fort Worth music. In 2009, KZPS-FM 92.5 fired Derek Walker from their promotions crew. Unfortunately, he was sorely misunderstood by the marketing department’s then-head honcho, and was let go after going shirtless for a…
Two stories in the news just now offer encouragement on the bullying front. In today’s New York Times is an account of a new policy adopted by a big suburban school district north of Minneapolis. Christian conservatives there had been fighting against an effort to protect gay students from beatings…
Yeah, OK, OK, I get that GCB is going to be a send-up of drunk bitchy Christian women in the Park Cities. I’m all for that. I just hope the comedic voice of the TV series doesn’t serve to obscure the fact that it’s true. Alan Peppard had a funny…
Oh, ouch. That was a liberal ouch, by the way. Even as a liberal, I can see this as the Next Bad Idea snouting its way up over the far horizon: telling the suburbs they have to bail out the cities. Ain’t … gonna … happen. David Firestone, a young…
Today on The Dallas Morning News op-ed page we find a piece by Ethnic Tidying Kompaniechef Tod Robberson demanding that the Bulldozers of Compassion take down a car wash in southern Dallas, putting some poor son of a bitch out of business. And that would be why? The business needs…
Here we are, with the biggest Medicare fraud in history going — so we are told — and The New York Times devotes its front page today to a story about Medicare fraud carried out by organized Russian gangs in … oh, guess where! … New York City! What can…
Dear Mexican: Aunqué soy Boricua, mi corazón está al lado del pueblo mejicano, aquí en Arizona. ¿Porqué no hablas contra “La Bruja Mala del Oeste” Gobernadora Jan Brewer, “El Leon Cobarde” Ex-Senador Russell Pearce, “El Hombre Hecho de Lata” Alguacil del Condado Maricopa Joe Arpaio, “El Hombre Hecho de Paja”…
Last Sunday The Dallas Morning News published a special section designed as a program/brochure for all the parties planned next weekend, anchored by a Lyle Lovett concert, to celebrate the opening of the city’s new Santiago Calatrava bridge over the Trinity River. But the bridge won’t open Friday. It isn’t…
If I were a male cowboy-boot-wearing Republican in Texas, I might feel pretty chapped right now by all the attention paid over the last week to the Virginia ultrasound bill. Talk about some limp legislation. Yesterday those wimps in Virginia voted up a pared-down version that will allow women undergoing…
