7.05.2014

Potential World Cup Serial Killer


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Above The Fold

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7.04.2014

News


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Random Fourth Of July Thoughts


  • "McDonald's
  • Wal-Mart
  • The Gap
  • Baseball
  • NFL
  • Rock and Roll
  • The Internet
  • Slavery
  • Starbucks
  • Disney World
  • Porno
  • Valium
  • Reeboks
  • [Breast Augmentations]
  • Sushi
  • Taco Bell
  • Rodeos
  • Bed Bath and Beyond 
  • Liberty
  • Wax Lips
  • The Alamo
  • Band-Aids
  • Las Vegas
  • Christmas
  • Immigrants
  • Popeye
  • Democrats
  • Republicans (Republicans)
  • Sportsmanship
  • Books"
And it just hit me that it would be really funny to do a Wise County version of this song. In the comments, go.

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7.03.2014

Not A Good Way To Start The Weekend




One person is dead after a fireworks accident in Comanche.

The accident happened on a field at about 8:15 a.m., Thursday, just west of the high school that is usually used for baseball and softball games. More.
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If That Thing Would Sit There For Four Days, Lake Bridgeport Would Fill Up


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Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



  • Two days ago I was jogging and got dive bombed by a big black bird. I never it saw it coming as it smashed into my back (but it didn't use its beak or claws.) Scared me to death. As I returned to running, I looked around for the expected visual: Yep, a different injured bird about ten yards ahead. 
  • The Dallas Morning News did a preview of the quarterback competition this Fall at TCU and didn't mention Decatur's Grayson Muehlstein despite mentioning two other incoming freshmen. 
  • "Tour buses for Styx and Foreigner go up in flames". Tragedy or blessing?
  • The lead item in the Update is about a guy who agreed to a 45 year sentence in a plea bargain. He'll have to serve half of that before even becoming eligible for parole. For a non-murder case, that's about as long of an agreed sentence as I've ever seen in Wise County. I can't think of a longer one. 
  • As my last trial as Wise County DA was about to begin in 2000, my assistant walked up to me and said, "His attorney just told me he'd agree to 30." I remember looking at her somewhat stunned and saying, "Don't tell me you want to turn that down."   She didn't. Deal done. 
  • I said earlier this week that John Wiley Price should tell the Feds who wanted to meet with him to take a flying leap. Yesterday, he did just that. 
  • We've have two little girls from Mrs. LL side of the family stay with us all week. Tranquility, now! Edit: We now have proof that Seinfeld was on a long time ago and that I'm getting senile. Yes, it was "Serenity, now!"
  • The folks that turned away that bus of immigrants being transferred to California should be ashamed of themselves. Such hatred. 
  • Target doesn't want people carrying guns, concealed or not, in their stores. If you think Hobby Lobby has the right not to be compelled to offer certain kinds of contraception, you should have no problem with Target not wanting deadly weapons on its private property. 
  • Mavericks: It was comical that Cuban even thinks he can entice a top tier free agent to come to Dallas (he hosted Carmelo Anthony last night.) Cuban inherited one of the top 10 scorers in NBA history. Of those ten guys, only one was not able to win an NBA title. And Cuban was only able to get one out of Dirk due to lack of support. 
  • Hurricane Arthur is getting way too much press for such a wimpy hurricane. 
  • Maybe the reason for the influx of children from Central America: They learned we have a lot of air-conditioning. I'd swim the Rio Grande for that.
  • A 36 year old Denton High choir director received 10 years probation by a plea bargain in Denton yesterday after pleading guilty to an "improper relationship" with a 17 year old student. That's probably fair. He's been embarrassed to the Nth degree and the case will follow him forever via Google. (And it probably didn't help the criminal case that the parents of the girl sued the school in an attempt to get rich.)
  • I ordered this print of LBJ and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas for my office. I'm intrigued by it because I've listened to some of LBJ presidential phone calls and the man would just strong arm folks to death. And I didn't know near enough about Fortas until I did a little research. He was the lead lawyer in the "right to counsel" case, Gideon v. Wainwright, at the Supreme Court before later joining the court. He resigned after four years due to an ethics scandal involving a prior contract he had signed which paid him $20,000 a year for life for unspecified advice. 
  • Late edit: Hey, Wordkyle, the unemployment rate was just announced at 6.1% and the DOW just cracked 17,000. 


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7.02.2014

This Is Over Alleged Trademark Infringement Of "12th Man"


Loved that headline from Fox Sports.

And I loved this quote from the amputee: "My experience has proven two things: a handicapped person can accomplish just about anything and Texas A&M will sue just about anybody,"
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Hey, Look At Those Hippies




Or "mainstream thinkers" about twenty years ahead of their time.
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Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts



  • Upon reflection, I think the Texas Tech African safari girl is a psycho.
  • I heard that the Wise County Sheriff's Office may have purchased a drone. 
  • NBA Free Agency: On one side are players like Bosh, LeBron, Dirk, Duncan and all the rest who are taking, or have taken, less money than their free market value to get under the salary cap. On the other side are owners whose market value, with no artificial cap, of their NBA franchise is skyrocketing (see Donald Sterling and the Clippers). Conclusion: The players need a better union.
  • World Cup Thoughts (1) I tried to get interested in the World Cup four years ago and failed. This year it was really easy. And pretty dang exciting. (2) Everyone is talking about the beautifully designed but failed penalty kick of the U.S. team yesterday. (Vine if you want to see it.) And man, it was beautiful. But wasn't it lot like a double reverse in football designed to run right up the middle into the arms of a linebacker? The goalie just gets to sit there and then charge you to kill it every time. (3) All first place winners of the eight groups are in the final eight. This may be a very, very pure sport.
  • Mark Davis is excited that his new book is on some of the specialty bestseller lists of Amazon's pre-order lists. I'd tap the brakes. I think I heard The Ticket's Bob Sturm say his book on the Mav's championship season sold 3,000 copies. That's probably a pretty good estimate for Davis' new book.
  • Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who is opening up Dallas schools for 2,000 "illegal" child immigrants, comes across as a doofus. And do they even realize the number of people it will take and the resources it will cost to house that many kids in a school? Think about it. The need for food, security, and health care alone is overwhelming. And the chances for a real life Lord of the Flies are quite high.
  • And those that say we need to put those kids back on a plane to their home countries might want to think about this: You want to be the guy on a runway in Honduras shooing them away when a little kid looks at you and says, "Where do I go?" And if you have half a brain about the history of child trafficking of Central American countries, you'd realize how it's just cannot be done by a civilized society.
  • Fox's Megyn Kelly has been showing an interview with Bill Ayers over the last few days. Why?
  • The headline in the Messenger (below) was a shocker. Tomorrow it will be ten years to the day that I poked fun at him in the now discontinued crowd pleaser called The Spin. 
  • I think I have acted very compassionately in not referencing my Ranger's Baseball Nemesis in the last few weeks. 
  • Speaking of, I'd trade Yu Darvish for as many prospects as I could get. By the time the Rangers get good again, he'll be gone anyway. (By the way, there's a guy in Fort Worth who still remembers how I passionately argued how the Cowboys should trade Hershel Walker back in the day --- months before it happened to everyone's surprise.)
  • Anyone else seen the new water tower under construction on 287 heading into Fort Worth (right past the Saginaw cut off)? It looked like the top of it was about to be raised about three weeks ago -- it had been painted with a fancy Fort Worth logo -- when some crazy incident happened. It looked like it had been hit in the side by a meteor. (Not sure what happened, but I'd love to know.) They are now in the process of having to replace sections of it. And I wouldn't dare mention the company in Decatur which is building it.
  • I asked the other day how many other "semi-weekly" papers the Messenger competes against in those annual awards. In the next issue they listed the competing papers (maybe about eight?). I suspect that the higher ups over there say, "Every year he asks, and every year we tell that idiot the answer."
  • A couple of weeks ago that goofy tweeting Texas Supreme Court justice took his family to Washington D.C. on vacation and posed with Sen. Ted Cruz in his office. There's no way he dreams of an appointment to a federal judgeship by Cruz? Does he?
  • I get a lot of weird stuff in my email, but I got a press release last night from Democratic Congressional hopeful Mark Greene calling for a constitutional amendment restricting the rights of corporations in order to reverse cases like the Hobby Lobby decision. Oh, that will be easy. 
  • Hey, local police agencies: Quit tricking up your video formats!!  Defense lawyers are entitled to any video of an arrest created by a police agency. But even in Wise County, those multiple agencies are creating their videos in weird formats that sometimes require unique software to view.  Hey, keep it in basic DVD format and life will be easier. (One day they'll all go to .wmv which is small enough to email and make everyone's life -- even my favorite government employees in the courthouse -- much easier.)





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7.01.2014

Above The Fold

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That's Quite The Crowd To Watch A Giant TV


Edit: Love the comparisons for this guy

Sherminator:
Prince Harry:
The kid from Breaking Bad:

Scut Farkus from A Christmas Story:

Commentor suggested: The kid from We're The Millers . . .


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News


Edit: At least a couple of reports say he was taken to "Briar Hospital". That's a new one on me.

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Cop An Attitude



This video has been around for a few days, but it really didn't look interesting enough to watch. But I heard someone mention it on the radio this morning so I gave it a shot.

A guy gets passed by a speeding cop, honks at him, so the cop stops him for "unlawful use of the horn." Their initial interaction is a little contentious, but no big deal. Right before the cop leaves to go run the guy through dispatch, he is informed that he is being recorded.   When the cop returns, the attitude change really is amazing. He goes OVERBOARD in being nice. I'm really surprised by that. I figured he'd still issue a ticket and come across as Joe Friday: professional and brief.
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Hot Texas Tech Cheerleader On Killing Spree


Daily Mail - Kendall Jones, 19, is posting the photos on Facebook, where some believe the shots should be taken down…Jones has posted shots of herself posing with dead elephants, hippos and lions among others that she’s killed across Africa
Jones claims her kills come after a ‘fair chase,’ but thousands are demanding that Facebook remove the posts…Jones is a cheerleader at Texas Tech and is gunning for a reality show about her African adventures
Global animal lovers are up in arms over a teenage Texas girl’s love of killing big African game, so much so that they’re even demanding she be banned from posting pictures of herself smiling alongside her trophies online.
Nineteen-year-old Kendall Jones claims photos of dead hippos, elephants, lions and other beasts on Facebook are a testament to her hunting skills and dedication to game preservation.
But critics are appalled by the teen’s beaming social media and are calling Kendall sick and depraved for killing the rare animals and boasting about it online.
Something is either weird about her. Or this story. Something seems fishy.

Edit: Article about her in Cleburne newspaper. (Thanks, commenter.)

Edit: But good grief, girl . . .




Edit:


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Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • Devon continues to move away from natural gas and towards oil. That can't be good for Wise County.
  • Please be real: Johnny Football is now hanging out with Justin Bieber. 
  • D Magazine has a guess as to who is behind the "666" vandalism in Dallas. (And is there graffitti that gets people more worked up than 666 or a swastika?)
  • If the cross stealing lady in Cleburne -- whose image was perfectly captured by a security cam -- is not under arrest by noon today, I'd be surprised. 
  • There's a weird murder case reported in the Update today. The guy was arrested earlier this year in Florida, but I don't know if it was on the murder warrant. (And if you want to read a news story about the arrest which has to be computer generated simply by using the arrest record, see this.)
  • There is a headline in the Star-Telegram today about the family of an inmate suing Tarrant County after that inmate was murdered in jail by another inmate. The background of the two is fascinating. The dead guy, Jonny Holden, was the subject of a very sad Dallas Observer cover story. His alleged killer is on death row for killing a metroplex pastor and may be one of the most violent people to ever live. He went berserk after his death sentence was handed down. 
  • I can't do many impersonations, but I can do a great Kevin Spacey from House of Cards.
  • I listened to five minutes of the Ben and Skin show on 105.3 The Fan yesterday. Who is that yuck monkey in the background who is always screaming? And that show is unlistenable. It's like they have the program director in studio who is holding up a sign that says, "More energy! More energy!"
  • We got new rugs for our fake hardwood floors and, as we were installing them, the Family Cat just sat and stared as if to say, "This must be my new scratch toys. I will destroy them tonight while you sleep." (He didn't.)
  • World Cup fun facts for today . . .
  • Belgium borders Germany and was able to hold them off for a whole 18 days in World War II. 
  • Over twenty Belgiums would fit within Texas. 
  • The only Belgium front page I could find referencing today's game against the U.S.:


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6.30.2014

This Is Equally Bewildering And Funny


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Uh, Oh. The "Speaks Volumes" Guy Might Have A Heart Attack





Developing . . . 

I've also directed [Homeland Security] Secretary Johnson and Attorney General Holder to identify additional actions my administration can take on our own, within my existing legal authorities to do what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our immigration system as we can. If Congress will not do their job, at least we can do ours. I expect the recommendations before the end of the summer, and I intend to adopt those recommendations without further delay.

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"Oww" -- The Normal Reaction When You Almost Died

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Protecting Life?




I seriously need someone to explain that to me.
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That Was A Serious Effort



MICHIGAN – A man believed to be high on some mind altering drug, wielding a three inch pipe and claiming to be from the Planet Zoltran lept onto the hood of a Muskegon County police cruiser and smashed the windshield last Sunday night. Two squad cars responded to a complaint about the man trying to break into a home, and both happened to catch it on their dash cams as the suspect jumped onto the hood of the cruiser.

 It's pretty gutsy just to contemplate launching yourself into a moving police car, but it's insane to actually execute it. With gusto. 

And Planet Zoltran? Where the heck did he get that from? Oh . . . .


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Random Monday Morning Thoughts



  • Adam Sandler has had yet another bomb with tanking of Blended this summer, and I think his comedy officially died two years ago at the People's Choice Awards. I remember his acceptance speech and thinking, "What the heck is he doing?" because it was the most unfunny thing I'd ever seen. (As I went to search for it, I thought it had been at the Teen Choice Awards because that would be the only place it would be accepted -- but it would bomb there as well.)
  • Back in September of 2011, I switched to ASICS running shoes. I finally got a replacement for them this weekend. Oddly, it was the inside and not the outside that finally wore out. 
  • And while jogging yesterday, I came across a momma duck with about eight of the tiniest baby ducks crossing the street. When they got to the curb, there were some that just hopped up while two or three would go tumbling back down. Momma waited patiently until the last one finally made it. It was the best part of my day. 
  • Upon reflection, that Clint Eastwood and Empty Chair bit at the Republican National Convention three years ago was a disaster.
  • The Feds raided John Wiley Price's offices three years ago and he has yet to be charged? And now the want to "meet" with him? I'd tell them to take a flying leap. 
  • The Hobby Lobby opinion from the Supreme Court, which will decided the legality of the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that employers cover contraception, should be released this morning. Man, the Far Right will go nuts if Hobby Lobby doesn't win (which they are predicted to.)
  • The Tea Party is basically the Libertarian Party who want the government to impose Christian values on the masses. I mean, the two just differ wildly on social issues. 
  • The head of the Tea Party in Mississippi committed suicide after that crazy Senate election. 
  • Mrs. LL to the Sixth Grader In The House in a moment of reflection: "If he hadn't married us he would be in Costa Rica right now surrounded by girls in bikinis feeding him grapes." Sixth Grader (confused), "Why would they be feeding him grapes?"  
  • Ann Coulter trolls America with a stupid column about soccer.  But those games over the weekend were pretty dang entertaining. I should hate the concept of a shootout but I loved it (both of them.) 
  • Mark Davis has written his first book. It's about what the rest of America can learn from Texas. That doesn't exactly sound like a subject with mass appeal. 
  • I bet I watched about six episodes of House of Cards this weekend. I think I've decided that a laptop and headphones are the only way to go. 
  • The craziest story of the weekend: An incoming Texas Tech's star freshman football player was kicked out of school for slugging another person during a pickup basketball game. The person he punched was last year's leading scorer on Tech's girl's basketball team. 
  • The Dallas Morning News will oftentimes "feature" a metroplex mansion. Man, this one on Preston Trail is a doozy.   And I love the mortgage calculator option on that page for it.


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6.29.2014

Bridgeport News


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What A Screw Up




Background.
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What Do You See?




I don't know why I subscribe to the Denton Book-In twitter feed, but I do.

This photo popped up yesterday, and I find it hypnotic. 56? That's not that old. But what a hard, hard life this lady looks to have had.

Some, if not most, people will say "Well, that's the result of her life's choices." Perhaps. But no one who is a stranger to this woman knows that for sure.

I used to listen to Dr. Laura Schlessinger's radio show and would get so outraged when she would just lay into some young mother who had screwed up. Schlessinger's basic thesis was that if a mother didn't properly raise her child, then that the child had very little chance to be emotionally happy and stable in adulthood.  And I always thought: What if that mom/caller was one of those kids who didn't have a chance as well? Maybe, just maybe, that's the reason she screwed up. It was as if no matter what your upbringing, Schlessinger hypocritically thought that once you hit 18 years of age you should just magically shed all your baggage and do all the right things. I suppose most of us are able to do that, but I suspect many of us cannot.

I'm not sure what category the above woman falls into. But, man, those eye. Those eyes.
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