6.10.2016

Random Friday Morning Thoughts



  • Mark Cuban was on CNN last night and Fox News this morning giving his opinions about the Presidential campaign. Why not have Jerry Jones on? They are equally qualified.
  • A name of a person who attended Ali's memorial service yesterday which I had not heard of in quite some time: Louis Farrakhan.
  • I had to swerve to miss hitting a huge feral hog this morning on 380.
  • Heck of a fire yesterday in a high tone Dallas neighborhood:

  • I wrote about this yesterday: "On Wednesday, a Tarrant County grand jury declined to indict McIver on the attempted capital murder and drug possession charges. Prosecutors quickly refiled the same two charges against McIver." One thing I didn't mention is the odd statement that prosecutors had "refiled" the charges.  True, they can get the case before a grand jury again but there is no "refiling" to be done.  To get a case initially started, 99 times out of 100 law enforcement just hands their report over to the DA. It becomes nothing more than a physical file in the DA's office and not available to the public and no "charges" are filed with any clerk at that time. It can be presented to the grand jury, but it doesn't have to be "filed" anywhere first. If a grand jury indicts the case, it is then "filed" with the district clerk and the case receives a public cause number. So if a case is no-billed, how exactly is the case "re-filed" by the DA? (The guy is still in jail by the way even thought the grand jury said the evidence was insufficient.)
  • Texas man says he was choked because he smiled during a book in photo. Ok, buddy. You got any proof? . . . 
  • OK.
  • With all this talk about Ali, I recalled an equally famous boxer during his day: Galveston's own Jack Johnson. Ken Burns did a fantastic documentary on him once called "Unforgivable Blackness." He was married three times -- all to white women, and was sentenced to prison for a trumped up violation of the Mann Act (" The Mann Act prohibited the transfer of women across state lines for immoral purposes" which I presume means more than taking a girlfriend to Vegas.) And look at this crowd at a match in 1908 -- in Australia.
  • Last night I watched the first 40 minutes of Episode 1, Season 1 of Game of Thrones. Pretty, pretty good.
  • Disturbing: A 42 year old guy at a Shell Station near DFW Airport sees some guys trying to steal his rent car, he tries to stop them, and ends up kidnapped and murdered. Intriguing: He was followed to the gas station.
  • Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released thirty years ago tomorrow. (Other big films of 1986: Top Gun, Stand By Me, Platoon, Pretty In Pink, Peggy Sue Got Married, 9 1/2 Weeks, The Money Pit, and Three Amigos. Notice the lack of super heroes and explosions.)
  • Idiocracy: The fact the WFAA has a cop in full uniform named "Sgt. Nick" doing the traffic in the mornings.
  • Arlington PD seized 72,000 pills of Xanax.  They wanted to know "what you could do" with them. 
  • Big story yesterday: "Officials within the Obama administration believe that at least a dozen former detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba are responsible for attacks that killed roughly six Americans in Afghanistan." Buried within the story: "[A]ll the former detainees involved were released during the George W. Bush administration."