This month marks 20 years since I lost my dad. He was the best friend I ever had. We liked each other’s company, we knew the punch lines to each other’s jokes and we both preferred thick, chewy European beers. In light of what’s going on today, 20 years later, one of the things that stands out for me when I remember my dad was how amazingly self-sufficient he was. My father never made more...
We are reminded this week that God made the Earth and all that is in it and that He has dominion over it, the overwrought hand wringing of the Global Warming cabal notwithstanding.
The Texas gubernatorial election fight is on. It will be over in March. The general election in November is a formality. The fight is between Kay Bailey Hutchison, currently the senior senator from Texas and incumbent Rick Perry. Both are Republicans and the two will duke it out for the Republican nomination in the March primary. Whoever wins that primary will be the governor. (The eventual Democratic nominee is roughly analagous to the Washington Generals....
In 1951, a short, round, jolly Greek immigrant named Jack Koustoubardis began cooking hamburgers in a tiny little spot on Hillcrest Avenue in Dallas just down the hill from SMU. The place is still there and it’s called the Burger House. Everybody knew Jack. (His real name was actually Prometheus. Jack is the name he chose to authenticate his new status as an American.) The Burger House opened at 11 in the morning, closed at...
Your comments regarding what we say in this space matter and that’s why we call it “You Tell Me.” The idea is that I take a position and then you tell me what you think. I’m right on. I’m full of beans. You Tell Me. So with that said, let’s revisit some of the things we have talked about in previous weeks and share your comments on them. Let’s start with Roman Polanski. The Swiss...
It was Albert Einstein that said, “When the solution is simple, God is answering.” It was Warren Buffet who said, “The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” I offer these two quotes on simplicity to make a point. Our country’s founding principles and its founding documents are elegant in their straightforward simplicity. The founders believed that if individual liberty could be allowed to flourish, a...
A warning to readers. This post discusses a very serious sexual assault. Discretion is advised. One of these days I’m going to quit being shocked at the hypocrisy of our liberal elites. Maybe. Or maybe not. Because what we are seeing and hearing with respect to the recent arrest of Roman Polanski is truly astonishing. If you’ve missed it, here’s the story. Roman Polanski is a well-known and very successful film producer and director. Chinatown,...
Exactly 220 years ago today, the first Congress of the United States approved twelve articles of amendment to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of those proposed articles were eventually ratified and enshrined as the Bill of Rights. Prior to the birth of the United States, nearly every citizen on earth was to one degree or another under the rule of a czar or a king or a potentate of...
The late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen was of an era of quotable politicians. It was Dirksen who famously said, “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
I was in a waiting room last week and there sat a Texas Monthly magazine with a picture of a horrible looking lizard creature on the cover and a headline that read, “The Struggle to Survive.” Upon seeing this lizard and being told that he’s struggling to survive, I thought to myself, “To hell with him. I’m struggling to survive.” Every single living thing struggles to survive. The key difference is that humans have figured...
As a good friend of mine, a volunteer football coach and altogether good guy said Wednesday afternoon, “Paul, when you married Lee you out-punted your coverage.” For those of you who aren’t football fans, suffice to say, that was the highest compliment he could pay my wife. And he’s right. I married a wonderful woman. For all of my guy friends who complain about how much their wives spend, my problem with my wife is...
Sometimes these pieces just write themselves. My experience of last Friday is an example. In the movie “Baby Boom”, a seriously overwrought Diane Keaton pours out her heart to a man she believes to be a doctor, disclosing among other things her deepest fears, her precarious financial situation and her lack of recent sexual release, only to find out that the “doctor” she’s talking to is a veterinarian. You quickly appreciate from Ms. Keaton’s experience...