12.23.2024

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Ghosts from Christmas past.

  • Texas Christmas mall chaos:
    • Killeen on Saturday:




    • Northeast mall last night with a scare yesterday afternoon as two men pulled guns out at the food court:

  • There is a video of this, but it's obviously disturbing. 

  • Drone attack!  Here's video of it, and that last one was coming down like a rocket.

  • .President Biden was busy overnight.


    • Only three people, all involved in high profile cases, did not have their death sentences commuted.

  • Trump went a little nutty over the weekend, and threaten to take back the Panama Canal by force.

    • When the President of Panama objected, Trump responded and proved we are now all just living in a cartoon. 

  • In the continuing saga of the U.S. military losing their own aircraft due to their own mistakes . . . 
    • We got creative by shooting down one of our own jets. 

    • But did the more traditional thing by crashing a helicopter in California.

  • On Friday, the House was able to pass an emergency spending bill after the Speaker consulted with both of our President-Elects. Video.


  • There was a ton of misinformation about Fort Worth Congresswoman Kay Granger this weekend. (Her term ends in a few days and she did not run for re-election.)

  • The Business Second™. 

  • The twelve team college football playoffs got underway this weekend which proved only that there are not close to twelve teams worthy of contending for a national title.  As a side note, it sounds like a bunch of private planes were not able to land at the tiny airport at State College, Pennsylvania including these high tone folks from SMU:
    But at least they got to miss seeing SMU throw two pick-sixes.

  • Very legal nerdy stuff: The Fort Worth Court of Appeals has reinstated the prosecution of a Denton murder case after the trial judge dismissed the case due to the State not disclosing evidence timely. 
  • The House Ethics report on Trump's first attempt at AG, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, was just unofficially released as Gaetz files a lawsuit this morning to stop it. 

at 8:30 AM

12.20.2024

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Little did he, or the rest of us, know that Trump would be coming. 

  • Mangione was flown back to New York to face state and federal murder charges. Someone needs to tell the authorities that if you already fear someone is becoming a martyr, don't create a photo-op which will feed that narrative.  But this is one fantastic photo.

    • Another angle show that New York mayor, Eric Adams, who himself is under federal indictment, is part of the escort party.

       
  • I feel sorry for the lawyers in Paxton's office who have to do all of his needless work to support his publicity stunts. Roberson was supposed to testify before the legislative committee today.

  • Oh, my. 

  • The only Trump case which had any life left was probably dealt a death blow yesterday when an appellate court said that the DA shouldn't have named an unqualified special prosecutor who was sleeping with the DA and taking her on exotic trips.   The Atlanta DA's office is a trainwreck.

  • Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist who met with the publicity arm of the West Texas Oilman PAC in Fort Worth last year, almost got killed the other night. Door cam video here. And it looks like the guy actually killed others that same night. He had a gun and a crossbow.


  • I like the pictures chosen to go with that headline. 

  • United States Oligarchy update:

  • Gift link: The Washington Post has a great multi-media story of the cost to the taxpayer for simply "maintaining" a Russian oligarch's $325 million super yacht after it was seized by the U.S. while in Fiji two years ago.


    • Example from the story: 

  • Legal nerdy stuff. I don't practice federal criminal law, but the most serious charge brought by the feds yesterday against the health insurance executive killer contains an element that seems impossible to prove when someone gets shot in the back and killed and never sees it coming. 


  • This is great: Last night's NFL game saw the successful use of the Free-Field-Goal-Attempt-After-A-Fair-Catch rule.  And it involved former Evil Empire player, Dicker the Kicker. The last time the rule was invoked and successfully executed was in 1976.

  • There's a college football playoff game tonight at Notre Dame and the team just checked in online:

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 5 years and 169 days.

at 8:30 AM

12.19.2024

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




I was still posting old Bridgeport Indexes. This one, from 1969, included a Cottondale woman who killed a bobcat, and a story of the 30 year incumbent Wise County Clerk suddenly dying while in New Mexico. 

  • Through Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Congress worked out a spending bill to avoid a federal government shutdown on Saturday  -- it was a done deal. Then yesterday Elon Musk single handedly killed the bill by tweeting about it 100 times.  Somehow an unelected carmaker and man-child now runs the country as a shadow president via Twitter. Amazing.  



  • We now know the victims of the Wisconsin shooting.
    • A social media search by authorities revealed an odd little twist in the case: "Alexander Paffendorf, of Carlsbad, exchanged messages with Natalie Rupnow, 15, about targeting a local government building while she shot up the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, according to a gun violence restraining order . . . . During an FBI interview, Paffendorf admitted to the FBI agents that he told Rupnow that he would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building.”
  • That eight day mission in space has now been turned into at nine month stint of being stranded. How do they not go crazy?   

  • We are going to find out why Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Trump's AG.

    • His response to the news was, uh, interesting. 

  • Tik Tok has one last chance to avoid having to shut down on January 19th. It lost in the district court, it lost in the appellate court, but now it has a convinced the Supreme Court to at least consider saving it. Interestingly, the court yesterday did not grant a stay of the deadline to shutdown, but left open that it could issue the stay after oral arguments on January 10th. That's important because there won't be a final decision until June. 

  • The Dallas DA recused herself in 2019 because of an unknow reason. A special prosecutor was then appointed and somehow almost a decade passed by before it was just plea bargained for 10 years deferred adjudication probation.  The victim's family is not happy. 


  • Never let Trump ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange again. He did so one week ago: 

  • The "Perfect Predator" story about a north Texas police officer on the front page of The Washington Post (below) is quite the amazing multi-media story.  Gift link.
  • Messenger - Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM
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