The State of Texas: November 6, 2014

Video Of The Day

As it always seems to happen, you go to your favorite Mediterranean place in Houston, and mid-meal an SUV plows through the restaurant. As it happens, such an incident was caught on tape. At least nine people were injured, but reportedly, “the injuries were minor.”

Daily Roundup

There Will Be Lawsuits — It’s nice to know that when a whole town decides it doesn’t want an oil and gas company pillaging its land, that the state will come in and protect the energy industry’s interests. Less than 28 hours after Denton passed its fracking ban, “The Texas Oil and Gas Association filed for an injunction in state court in Denton Wednesday morning to stop the ban from being implemented,” reports the Dallas Morning News. This isn’t entirely surprisingly. But as a pile-on, “the Texas General Land Office, which controls oil and gas leases that fund public education, has sued the town too, calling the ban, ‘arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.'” What’s sad is that Denton pretty much saw this coming (at least the lawsuits from energy companies), and “city officials have said they are prepared to defend the ordinance in court.” Perhaps if oil and gas wasn’t such a money maker, Denton would have better luck. Unfortunately, the money just keeps rolling in. “Texas led the nation in the number of new oil and gas production jobs last year, adding 19,000 private positions in the field such as drilling, oil and natural gas extraction and support services,” reports Fuel Fix. “That was nearly six times the number added in New Mexico, which had the second highest job creation rate in the nation. And those numbers don’t take into account the new jobs created in the corporate headquarters of oil and gas companies in Houston and other cities far removed from the shale plays.”

Midterm Recovery — Now that the basic obituaries of Texas Democrats have been written, the real conservitive bragging begins. The National Review notes that “no Democrat hit 39 percent in any statewide race,” with Wendy Davis’s 38.8 percent being the best Battleground Texas could do. It doesn’t help that Democrats helped to bury themselves, even on election day. Twitchy, the online equivolent of those kids who just sit around at recess taunting everyone, notes that a Battleground Texas organizer for Davis, had a meltdown on Twitter basically bashing every single demographic, separately, for not voting for Davis. One example includes, “If you’re Hispanic and you voted Republican in this election, I strongly suggest you reevaluate your life.” Not classic liberal condescension at all! As for real panics, the one over the totally unnecessary voter ID law seems to have been somewhat overblown. Organizations did not receive nearly as many Election Day complaints about the new law as they expected and “early indications suggest that while some voters ran into roadblocks, the effects were perhaps less dire than the law’s harshest critics predicted,” reports Al Jazeera America.

Hot Fuzz From S.A. — The Internet is in love with Texans. “A photo of [a] cute cop [from the San Antonio Police Department], only referred to as ‘Mike’ in the comments, escorting alleged murderer Adam Morales was posted on the agency’s Facebook Wednesday and fans with their heart-filled and hot-lipped emojis are calling for his badge number, stat,” reports the San Antonio Express-News. The Facebook page is now filled with plenty of people saying things along the lines of “he can give me a pat-down any time he wants.” Despite the police department’s sudden popularity, “a request to the police department to identify the mystery man were not immediately returned.” At least we know the cop is real, unlike this ridiculous Alex From Target mess, which zig-zagged in another direction yet again. After three days of it’s real!-it’s fake! Alex is saying the incident was not really created by a marketing company and that company, Breakr, appears to be backing away from the extremely gloating comments it made yesterday. The post in which they originally took credit for the photo’s virality “has since been edited to backtrack some of [the owners] initial claims,” reports Business Insider. The company said Alex gave permission for the photo to be taken and spread, while Alex denied even knowing about the company. “Breakr now claims that it promoted the hashtag #AlexfromTarget using its army of followers. But that seems unlikely, considering Breakr only has 1,291 followers on Twitter.” So is AlexFromTarget even a real, organic thing? The lesson here seems to be: don’t trust the Internet. Ever. Or the New York Times, for that matter. Trying to get in on the story, the Times reported that other people passed around a similar #AlexFromTarget memes, including “Kel from Good Burger.” The only problem with that is that Kel from Good Burger is an entirely fake character.

Ivory Tower Construction — With the Texas miracle and all the construction happening, it should come as no surprise that universities in the state want a piece of the action. A very big piece. Just about every major university in Texas is “pursuing bonds known as tuition revenue bonds in which the universities agree to pay back the principal and interest with tuition,” reports CBS DFW. It’s a $100 million here, a $100 million there for UT, Texas State, and Texas A&M, with most of them seeking funds to construct or upgrade science-related buildings. How’s the request likely to go? Put it this way: the school might not want to depend on this test to keep their GPAs afloat. “The last time state legislators approved a major round of such bonds was in 2006 for nearly $2 billion. But it’s unclear whether state legislators will be in the mood to distribute funds when the legislative session starts next year. During last year’s session, a package of about $2.7 billion in bonds failed because lawmakers couldn’t agree on how much should be allocated to various universities.” The scientists might have to convert that old basement, but least the football teams have awesome stadiums.