I voted really early in Texas

It’s election time, and I voted around 8 A.M.  By the way, there were about a dozen people already there voting.

As you can guess, I voted for Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz, the two candidates who have received national coverage.

My vote for Governor Abbott was a no-brainer.  He has done a masterful job of managing the state without making anyone angry.  In that respect, he is a lot more like former Governor George W. Bush than Governor Rick Perry. 

His re-election message gets a lot of help from the Texas economy: job growth is very strong.  Our cities can’t add enough highways to keep up with the population growth and business expansion.  It’s a good time to be in Texas, especially for an incumbent governor asking voters for re-election.

Mark my words: Governor Abbott will run for president in 2024.  His numbers with Hispanics were strong in 2014, another indication that Texas Hispanics are interested in more than DACA or immigration.  According to exit polls, Abbott got 44% of the Hispanic vote in Texas.  In 2014, abortion hurt Wendy Davis.  In 2018, the issue is Lupe Valdez, who has been running on mute mode since the primary.

Abbott projects executive confidence, an important trait for a future president.  Keep an eye on him.

My vote for Senator Cruz was more ideological.  He is a reliable conservative vote in the U.S. Senate, and we need more of them.

To be honest, I am not sure that the Texas GOP is madly in love with Cruz.  There are still many wounds from the 2012 primary, when then-solicitor general Cruz was the rebel against Lt. Governor David Dewhurst from the political establishment.  It was a bitter fight, with Governor Perry supporting Dewhurst and the Tea Party going with Cruz.  It got ugly, and I can still feel the anger.

My vote is in, so I can wait until election night and see the results.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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Monday's show: My early vote is in plus the caravan and more stories

Early voting in Texas and my vote is in.......
The caravan at the Mexico-Guatemala border................
and more stories........
Click to listen:

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Tags: I voted early, Caravan from Central America, President Kennedy and the Missile Crisis, President Trump in Texas To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Monday's video: I "early" voted this morning

Monday's video:   

I "early" voted this morning

I voted today: https://t.co/gcL4ORX6K2 via @YouTube

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) October 22, 2018

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Tags: Texas 2018 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Everybody’s talking about Texas these days

Let’s say this for Beto — we have not seen so much focus on Texas since Miss Wendy Davis was the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor.  (As you may remember, she lost to current Governor Greg Abbott by 20 points despite getting lots of dollars from every left-wing corner in the U.S.)

The latest is that President Trump will be in Houston for a big rally for Senator Ted Cruz.  According to news reports, 70,000 people signed up to attend.  Where is the Astrodome when we really need it?

The other bit of news is that the Democrats are allegedly looking for votes in all the wrong places, such as encouraging illegals to register and vote.  On this story, I’ve heard anecdotal evidence of Democrats using churches to sign up illegals.  In other words, this is more than a partisan shot at Beto O’Rourke.  I believe that it’s true.

Then there is Beto’s campaign driving everybody crazy with too much texting.  There is a lawsuit from angry Texans sick and tired being reminded about early voting for Beto starting October 21st.  Frankly, I have not received such a text but I keep getting these calls to my landline that are not recorded political messages.   It’s blank when I answer the phone.  I try to call back and get a busy signal or nothing at all.  Maybe the Beto people have too much money and keep looking for creative ways of spending it.

And then we hear of burnout or just too much Beto on TV.  Beto has turned into one of those Top 40 hits that AM stations would play every 15 minutes.  Beto is like “Maggie Mae” or “Stayin’ Alive” if you’re old enough to remember the 1970s.  Beto’s “Here, there and everywhere”, with all due respect to The Beatles.  Maybe some local DJ will schedule a “Beto night” and burn all of those yard signs at halftime between the Cowboys vs. Texans game.

It will be nice on Wednesday after the election.  We can go back to being a red state again.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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Tags: Texas 2018  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Who else but Jorge Ramos?

The “caravan” has a new voice and it’s Jorge Ramos.  This is what Mr. Ramos said today:

Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos said reports of an “invasion” of migrants toward the United States are being overblown by people like President Donald Trump.

Ramos, who reported from Tapachula in the Mexican state of Chiapas — bordering Guatemala, said he watched migrants come by after crossing into Mexico.

He said that at the border with Guatemala, the Mexican authorities tried — mostly unsuccessfully — to stop the thousands from crossing the few bridges between the two countries.

Ramos said Mexican law enforcement has been acting as “Trump’s police” in trying to stem the migrant tide.

“They are not criminals, they are not terrorists,” he said of the migrants. “We have to choose what kind of nation we are.”

Ramos is wrong.  First, we don’t know who is in the caravan.  Did Jorge talk to all of the 4,000 or so marchers?  Second, it’s a insult to refer to Mexico’s armed forces as “Trump’s army”.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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Tags: Jorge Ramos To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Obama goes to Nevada and ends up talking about himself

We have seen this before. President Obama shows up to support a Democrat and ends up talking about himself.

Over the weekend, Mr. Obama was in Nevada to support the Democrats. Instead, it was the same old song: “Obama tells voters to ‘remember who started’ economic recovery at Nevada rally.”

I’m sure that his guests were delighted to hear all of that self promotion.  He mentioned himself 92 times.  In other words, he set up the recovery and President Trump was in the right place at the right time.

PS:  You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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Tags: Obama goes to Nevada and ends up talking about himself To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Sunday's show: The week in review with Bill Katz, the editor of Urgent Agenda

Sunday's show:  

The week in review with Bill Katz, the editor of Urgent Agenda

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Tags: Midterms and President Trump, Russia and the US To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Will we ever see a 3-hour postseason baseball game again?

Have you been staying up a bit late these days?  In my case, the answer is yes, watching postseason games that take between 3:30 and 4 hours.  It’s frankly insane, and I love baseball.

We remember today the 43rd anniversary of Game 6 of the 1975 Word Series.  It ended in the bottom of the 12th when Carlton Fisk hit that famous home run. 

The game had everything that makes baseball great.  The Reds had a 6-3 lead in the 7th and couldn’t run out the clock.  The Red Sox tied the game in a dramatic Bernie Carbo pinch-hit H.R. in the bottom of the 8th.  Boston loaded the bases in the bottom of the 9th but couldn’t score because of an amazing double-play from left-fielder George Foster to catcher Johnny Bench.  The next three innings saw baseball drama until Fisk ended it.

Here is the amazing part: the game took 4:01.  Again, that was a 12-inning game with lots of runners on base and even a few of Sparky Anderson’s famous pitching changes.

In 1951, the Dodgers and Giants played a playoff game to decide the National League pennant.  They scored nine runs, including the four-run bottom-of-the-9th home run called “the shot heard around the world.”

Here is another amazing fact: the game took 2:27.

Over the last few years, every postseason seems to take four hours.  I’m talking about nine-inning games.  What in the world is going on?

Even Nate Silver is asking the question, and his group wrote this after the wonderful Cubs-Indians series:

Baseball usually reserves its longest games for October, with the average game length jumping precipitously in the final month of each of the past five seasons.  But even keeping that in mind, this year has been extraordinary: The last 27 games have featured an average game length of three hours and 24 minutes, the highest average for any continuous block of 27 games in the past five years (and far above the overall 2016 season average of three hours, two minutes).  The only block of games that even comes close to the one we’re in now came in 2014 – and 2014 was before baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced new rules designed to speed up the games.  That this year’s games are surpassing the heights of 2014 even with those pace-of-play rules in place is extraordinary.

Let me suggest a couple of things to the commissioner:

1. Forget the idea of a clock.

2. Something has to be done about batters doing meditation between pitches.  The umpire needs to tell the batter to get in the box or get an automatic strike call.  On the other hand, pitchers can’t take forever, either.  It’s up to the umpire to stop this.

3. Instant replay is great, but there must be a two-minute rule.  You can see the replay and call it one way or the other.

I’m sure a lot of fans have other ideas.  The commissioner needs to know that four-hour postseason games are driving a lot of us to catch the highlights (or even the score) on phone the next morning.

Let’s face it: four-hour baseball games are not good for postgame shows or the advertisers who hope we are watching.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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Saturday's show: The midterms, very long post-season baseball games and the caravan

Saturday's show:  

The midterms, very long post-season baseball games and the caravan

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Tags: The caravan,  The midterms, 4-hour baseball games,  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Saturday's video: The politics of the caravan is good news for President Trump

Saturday's video:   

The politics of the caravan is good news for President Trump

The politics of the caravan: https://t.co/WgEVSyjZYS via @YouTube

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) October 20, 2018

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Tags: The politics of the caravan  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!