TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalBabe in the Woods: The Cowboys' Color Man and His Son Endure a Black Period
By the time Luke Laufenberg sat down at Mia’s, his life was destined to get worse before it got better.
“I was eating alone, hoping the pain in my bones would just sort of magically disappear,” Luke says of his lunch in December. “But before I could finish, it was excruciating. On a scale of 1 to 10? Eleven.”
The iconic Tex-Mex restaurant on Lemmon Avenue in Oak Lawn served as the unofficial launching pad of the Cowboys’ 1990s dynasty. Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson scarfed enchiladas and sipped margaritas there in 1989, the night before the Arkansas oil tycoon was unveiled as the new owner of America’s Team. At the club’s Valley Ranch headquarters less than 24 hours later, Jones announced he was firing legendary coach Tom Landry and replacing him with Johnson, the bombastic, successful college coach with zero pro experience.
After a tortuous rookie season in which the Cowboys went 1-15, the Jones-Johnson duo eventually grew healthy enough to win consecutive Super Bowls and propel the franchise into an unprecedented three championships in four years.
Read more: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/football-player-luke-laufenberg-battles-rare-cancer-with-help-from-his-extended-cowboys-family-10850775
Luke Laufenberg and his father, Babe, at a Mesa Community College football game.
Twin Peaks shootout forfeitures following path of criminal cases
The anxiety was etched across Marty Lewis’ face as he emerged from the Waco Police Department.
It was clear Lewis was uncomfortable being back in Waco. As he sat for a brief interview, one of the first things he said was that he wanted to get back on the road and out of town. Waco left him with bitterness, he said.
It had to be something important to bring Lewis back to the city where the retired San Antonio police detective was arrested after a shootout between biker groups at a Twin Peaks restaurant in May 2015. The decorated former officer was locked up with 176 other bikers that day on first-degree felony charges. He was jailed for 22 days under $1 million bond before his attorney could negotiate a lower bond.
Lewis’ mugshot was spread across America as the face of the deadly Twin Peaks shootout. Like the half-white, half-black beard he sports, Lewis was a dichotomy, the ex-cop biker. He is a grandfather and family man, the father of three successful children and a second-generation police officer who retired after a distinguished 32-year career in law enforcement.
Read more: https://www.wacotrib.com/news/courts_and_trials/twin-peaks-shootout-forfeitures-following-path-of-criminal-cases/article_5121b3b0-3f2d-5ab4-977f-1fea2aac2f24.html
Texas A&M's newest wind tunnel is a blast
COLLEGE STATION -- Faculty and students from multiple departments at Texas A&M University have teamed up to build the university's fastest wind tunnel yet.
The Texas A&M National Aerothermochemistry and Hypersonics Laboratory are in the last stages of building the Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel, "a large-scale shock tunnel type facility" that generates high temperatures and high pressure. The tunnel is about 0.9 meters in diameter and can solicit speeds up to Mach 15 -- about 11,500 mph. The tunnel was developed with support from the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Rodney Bowersox, head of A&M's aerospace engineering department, said the research will help study the aerodynamics and chemistry of systems such as hypersonic aircrafts.
"The work that we do in the laboratory, it's basic science directed toward understanding and being able to predict hypersonic flow to make hypersonic vehicles safe and reliable," Bowersox said.
Read more: https://www.theeagle.com/news/local/texas-a-m-s-newest-wind-tunnel-is-a-blast/article_f1c5b9f6-d5a3-5961-a9ad-e8bfee5ed10d.html
Judge orders halt of debris removal in Coryell County hospital explosion
A McLennan County judge on Tuesday ordered officials at Coryell Memorial Hospital, a general contractor and others to preserve the scene of last week’s explosion at the Gatesville hospital in anticipation of a lawsuit.
Judge Vicki Menard of Waco’s 414th State District Court granted a temporary restraining order sought Tuesday by the mother of an electrician who was badly burned in the explosion.
The order prohibits hospital officials and workers from “destroying, altering, repairing, removing from the jurisdiction or otherwise failing to preserve the site of the explosion.”
The judge has scheduled a July 16 hearing to determine if she will convert the temporary restraining order into an injunction in the case.
Read more: https://www.wacotrib.com/news/courts_and_trials/judge-orders-halt-of-debris-removal-in-coryell-county-hospital/article_a6f364c2-f233-5fb2-b371-1ba998709631.html
U.S. facing shortage of injected painkillers
Another opioid crisis is happening in the U.S., and it has nothing to do with overdoses: Hospitals in many part of the country are frequently running out of widely used injected painkillers.
Manufacturing shortages are forcing many doctors and pharmacists to sometimes ration injected opioids, reserving them for the patients suffering most. Other patients get slower-acting or less effective pain pills, alternatives with more side effects or even sedation.
-snip-
Earlier this month, the American Medical Association declared drug shortages a public health crisis, saying it will urge federal agencies to examine the problem as a national security threat and perhaps designate medicine factories as critical infrastructure.
Shortages steal time from patient care, increase hospitals’ costs and affect just about every department, including operating rooms, emergency departments and cancer clinics. Doctors occasionally find opioids missing from emergency carts and surgery supply trays, “borrowed” by colleagues needing them for patients.
Read more: https://www.news-journal.com/news/local/u-s-facing-shortage-of-injected-painkillers-but-longview-hospitals/article_ac35d218-7afb-11e8-bd3e-b747cbecae4f.html
Possum makes surprise appearance at Whataburger Field during Hooks game
As the Corpus Christi Hooks and Arkansas Travelers were finishing up their game on Wednesday, a possum came onto the field, delaying the grounds crew and fireworks.
It took the Hooks ground crew about five minutes to track down the critter before Hooks chief field superintendent Andrew Batts and a bat boy were able to corral it in a batting helmet and a jacket near the Hooks on-deck circle.
The possum's appearance delayed the field crew's opportunity to put on the tarp ahead of Wednesday night's expected rain.
The Travelers won, 5-2, and the possum was released outside of Whataburger Field by the grounds crew.
Read more: https://www.caller.com/story/sports/2018/07/04/possum-makes-surprise-appearance-during-corpus-christi-hooks-game/758653002/
https://twitter.com/Caller_Len/status/1014709499863732224
Complaint Details Fraud Allegations Against Kalispell Regional Healthcare
Federal agencies have been investigating allegations of a widespread illegal kickback scheme conducted by Kalispell Regional Healthcare to boost revenues that were used to compensate physicians and executives far above market value, while knowingly defrauding the federal government, according to a 91-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court by the hospital’s physician network chief financial officer.
The allegations say numerous physicians have been improperly compensated based on incentivized referrals, for which the KRH system profits, as opposed to their productivity or services rendered. The scheme has enriched senior executives and specialist physicians, while negatively impacting patient care, the complaint alleges.
The goal of the money-for-referral scheme, the complaint alleges, was to increase the number of Medicare, Medicaid and other patients to KRH hospitals, labs, clinics, and specialists to increase revenues. Certain employees were then excessively compensated for their efforts to lock in patient referrals to KRH, which is Flathead County’s largest employer with more than 4,000 employees.
“At least since 2011, Kalispell Regional has engaged in a scheme to pay excessive compensation to certain employed physicians to reward or induce them to refer patients, including Medicare patients, to Kalispell Regional hospitals and clinics,” states the complaint.
Read more: https://flatheadbeacon.com/2018/07/03/complaint-details-fraud-allegations-kalispell-regional-healthcare/
Competing visions of closing costs at Colstrip
The final week of June began with another dire report on the future of Colstrip’s coal-fired power plant. Prepared by the Missoula-based Bureau of Business and Economic Research and paid for by the Montana Chamber Foundation, the report states that early shuttering of Units 3 and 4 in 2027 would trigger 16 years of devastating impacts to Montana’s economy, from the loss of more than 3,000 jobs statewide to a $1.2 billion slump in state revenues. And NorthWestern Energy customers would likely see electric rates increase, the report continued, due to the costs of remediation and the necessity of replacing roughly 220 megawatts of capacity.
If the report’s image of a Colstrip-free Montana is bleak, the value of keeping it open in the long term is presented as equally unsavory in another study released two days later, on June 27. This one comes from Energy Strategies at the behest of the Sierra Club, and compares the costs of power from Portland-based PacifiCorp’s coal-fired fleet — including its 10 percent ownership of Colstrip Units 3 and 4 — to alternative energy sources. The data reveals that PacifiCorp would pay $1 to $4 less per megawatt hour (MWH) for Utah-produced solar power compared to Colstrip power, and up to $15 less per MWH for Wyoming-produced wind energy.
“Solar and wind, combined with battery storage, the price keeps dropping and becoming a straightforward economic decision,” says David Merrill, senior organizing representative for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Missoula. “Then you have to look at all the other risks for coal-fired electricity — the coal-ash issue, threat of carbon regulations — and it’s just a tightening noose. That creates risk for ratepayers here in Montana.”
The Energy Strategies report mirrors data on NorthWestern electricity rates prepared by the Montana Consumer Counsel in June 2017. In that analysis, the cost of power generated for the utility at Colstrip was more than double what NorthWestern paid for power produced at the Judith Gap wind farm: $73.85 per MWH from 2016 to 2017, versus $30.64. Hydro energy, which constitutes the largest portion of NorthWestern’s supply portfolio at 37 percent, hovered in the middle at $58.17 per MWH.
Read more: https://missoulanews.com/news/competing-visions-of-closing-costs-at-colstrip/article_c432b370-7fbc-11e8-bc03-bb638219aada.html
Republicans aren't optimistic they have votes for special session
A proposal from Republican state lawmakers to come back into a special legislative session July 16 to try to win passage of their own ballot initiatives on mining regulations and Medicaid restrictions is far from a done deal, party leaders said Tuesday.
Democrats and organizing groups have said the special session would be an end run designed to thwart the citizen ballot initiatives on those two topics, both of which appear to have obtained enough signatures to go before voters in November.
The citizen initiatives would require new hard-rock mines in Montana to have reclamation plans that assure they will not require perpetual treatment of water, and would increase the tobacco tax to extend the state's Medicaid expansion program, set to expire next year.
Some Republicans want to use the special session to pass their own initiatives with the goal, they say, of protecting mining and placing additional requirements on Montanans to be eligible for Medicaid coverage.
Read more: https://ravallirepublic.com/news/government-and-politics/article_40ea5374-591a-5783-8608-a2c193fb19a3.html
Montana Sen. Tester 'welcomes' Trump by touting passed bills
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jon Tester gave President Donald Trump a tongue-in-cheek welcome to Montana Thursday by taking out a full-page ad in more than a dozen newspapers thanking him for signing 16 bills the Democrat sponsored or co-sponsored.
Trump was scheduled to hold a rally in Great Falls on Thursday to campaign for Tester’s Republican challenger, State Auditor Matt Rosendale. The president has made the Montana Senate race a priority after he blamed Tester for derailing the nomination of his first Veterans Affairs nominee, White House physician Ronny Jackson.
Tester’s ad, which ran in the Great Falls Tribune and in newspapers across rural northern and eastern Montana, sought to undermine the president’s efforts to boost Rosendale by pointing out that he and the president agree on several issues.
“Welcome to Montana, and thank you President Trump for supporting Jon’s legislation to help veterans and first responders, hold the VA accountable, and get rid of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government,” the ad read.
Read more: https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/ap_news/politics/montana-sen-tester-welcomes-trump-by-touting-passed-bills/article_7a49a91f-2fe4-588e-ae4e-6a5cafc826e7.html
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
Number of posts: 112,160
