Headline Writer
Great job by the Chron headline writer for today’s front page of the Business section about the chip cheater. See the featured photo. A kind of smart aleck take on “An Affair to Remember,” the 1957 flick starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.
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From the Chron:
Props to another Houston lawmaker, state Sen. Carol Alvarado, for filing bills that would finally establish a regulatory framework for legalizing marijuana. Alvarado’s Senate Bill 237 would legalize and regulate marijuana much like alcohol: limited to adults 21 and older, and allowing for possession of up to 2.5 ounces. We particularly like that Alvarado’s bill gives a measure of local control over the legalization process. Counties would have the authority to order elections to approve the operations of retailers, growers and testing facilities. This is a sensible approach for a state as large as ours, where attitudes towards smoking weed in Borden County may differ from Harris County.
Nice.
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MAGA blowhard State Sen. Paul Bettencourt has a take on how to get MAGA off the mat after last week’s obliteration. See this from the Chron:
As bad as the November election was for Texas Republicans, it is not a permanent realignment so long as the party makes some changes, according to a key voice of the new GOP resistance.
“This is not an extinction-level event for Republicans,” state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said during an interview on the Texas Take Podcast released on Thursday.
He said the Republican Party has to be self-reflective and learn that it simply can’t cater to white men during election season and hope to win in Texas. He pointed to Republicans like defeated Railroad Commission candidate Bo French, who railed against non-white University of Texas football fans, and others who used harsh language toward minority communities. He didn’t name anyone else. But the state’s top Republican leaders, from Gov. Greg Abbott to U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, spent much of the last year targeting Muslims in their push against Sharia law. And in Houston’s Hindu community, voters have said the party has been pushing them away.
“We’ve got to get away from that,” Bettencourt said. “The only way that the Republicans come back is you’ve got to recognize the demographics have changed.”
Non-Hispanic white residents make up less than 40% of the state’s 31 million residents. And about three of every four high school graduates in Texas this year will be Hispanic, Black, and Asian – a trend that has been developing over the last five years and shows no signs of changing.
It means the only way forward is being open to Texans of varying backgrounds who are more conservative in their thinking on taxes, regulations, and other government policies, Bettencourt said.
“You have to be able to work with basically everybody,” he said. “Because I’ve always said, I don’t care what you look like, where you’re from, who you sleep with. I’m trying to have one litmus test, which is the value of work performed. And we’ve got to get back to that because we have to build that multiracial coalition.”
But whether that’s possible in Donald Trump’s Republican party remains to be seen. He has built his political brand off antagonizing immigrants, and has two more years left in the White House.
More immediately, Bettencourt said Republicans in Texas aren’t defenseless despite the blowout elections. The GOP still has the majority in the Texas Senate and can block the worst Democratic ideas from becoming law. He said he’ll work with Democrats where he can, but he and others returning to the Senate will make sure the GOP can’t be run over.
It’s definitely a different environment for him and his colleagues in the Senate, he said.
“The days of there being a big freight train of bills passing that were Republican priorities, that’s not gonna happen in this new legislature,” he said. “Everybody needs to recognize that obvious fact too.”
Let me translate for you since this blowhard won’t fully fess up. First and foremost, stop the hating. That is how you build a coalition. Bettencourt needs to call out the MAGA hate cheerleaders like Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for starters. Also stop the bullying, a Bettencourt hallmark. This blowhard bullied local government.
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On a kind of related note, here is a Fort Bend County MAGA state representative who got beat last week admitting he doesn’t have huevos. See this from the Chron:
(State Rep. Gary) Gates, who runs a small empire of apartment complexes for low-income residents in the Houston area, said Republicans had been punished for Trump’s war with Iran, which sent gas prices soaring, and the president’s inability to bring down costs.
But he said Republicans also torpedoed any good faith they had earned with minority voters in 2024 as they went along with Trump’s redistricting plan, which reduced Houston’s Black representation in Congress, and his aggressive immigration crackdown.
“I was always for closing the border and deporting the criminals, but I never bought into what ICE turned out to be and neither did the Latino community,” Gates said. “When we were forced to do redistricting and cut out Black representation to make it more Republican, I can see why the Blacks got upset, because they’ve been fighting that for hundreds of years.”
In a meeting with an Asian community group that endorsed him, Gates said he had to explain why he voted for a bill that barred Chinese and other Asian noncitizens from buying land in Texas, even while he represents a county as diverse as Fort Bend.
“I explained to them the reality of why I had to vote for something like that, even though I don’t really buy into it,” Gates said. “When the people that elect me in the primary believe a certain way, and I can’t convince them, I’m sort of stuck.”
That tension lies at the heart of the GOP’s struggles, Gates said. People who dared speak out against Trump were promptly put in their place.
“It got so bad that you could never even stand up to what was happening or you would be massacred within the Republican Party,” Gates said. “That was getting so toxic, and we were doing things that were so bad for the country… but the Republicans that did try to stand up got their heads sliced off.”
Here is the entire Chron read: Outgoing state Rep. Gary Gates says Texas GOP ‘deserved’ election loss.
Pathetic. Gutless. Coward. Arsehole. Good riddance
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This was expected. See this from the Astros:
Yordan Alvarez has been named the 2026 American League Most Valuable Player, becoming just the third player in Astros history to earn BBWAA MVP honors, joining Jeff Bagwell (1994) and Jose Altuve (2017).
Alvarez delivered a historic season, leading the American League with a .316 batting average and a 1.033 OPS while also pacing the league in on-base percentage (.432), slugging percentage (.601), total bases (341), walks (109), and extra-base hits (77). He totaled 42 home runs, 106 RBI, 105 runs scored, and 179 hits across 158 games, becoming the only player in Major League Baseball to post an OPS above 1.000 in 2026.
The 29-year-old captured both the American League and Major League batting titles, becoming just the third player in franchise history to win a batting crown. He also became only the third AL player since 1970 to win a batting title while hitting at least 40 home runs in the same season.
Alvarez set an Astros franchise record with 33 intentional walks and was recognized throughout the season with three AL Player of the Week awards, two AL Player of the Month honors, and his fourth career All-Star selection.
With his MVP victory, Alvarez adds another milestone to an already remarkable career and further cements his place among the greatest players in Astros history.
Yordan was a unanimous choice. He received all 30 first place votes.
Brad Ausmus will be officially named manager this morning.