7.16.2016

Above The Fold


Readable full page.
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7.15.2016

It's Friday. Let's Get Out Of Here.







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14 Year Old Kid Tells You Why You Are Poor



You know kid, you kind of make sense.

And, you know what else kid, in seven years you'll wake up on that day that comes after the weekend and say to yourself, "Oh, crap. It's Monday."
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Official Liberally Lean Girl Has New Song






Go buy it. Support her. Give her your money.
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Random Friday Morning Thoughts



  • Wise County is in a flash flood warning until 10:15 a.m. after this morning's storm. Man, it got dark out there during that deluge.
  • Newt yesterday after the tragedy in Nice: “We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported."  I'm more fearful of the Simpletons amongst us than any Muslim who just happens to not have "Holy, Holy, Holy" in the beginning of his hymnal.
  • Presumptive Trump VP nominee Mike Prince from last December: "Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional."
  • Ann Coulter thinks Prince is a bad choice for Trump (who "has twice the IQ of Bush", she said). She would have preferred convicted rapist Mike Tyson as the VP choice. Maybe she didn't understand "Prince" meant Mike Prince instead of the dead Prince. Edit: Another screw up. I'm going back to bed. 
  • Bridgeport High School played Nice, Florida in football in Texas Stadium one time. I don't know how to pronounce that Nice. Edit: I've been promptly chastised because the Bulls played Niceville instead of Nice. Yep. That's true. I went to that game. And then I drove through Niceville about three years ago. And I still screwed this up.
  • White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick; "“Well, I think this does underscore the risk of electing a right-wing radio host to elected statewide office.”
  • I don't even know . . . 
  • TCU was voted second in the media Big 12 poll released yesterday. That's high expectations.
  • No one pays to have an ad disguised as a news story more than Blue Bell. Here's Fox 4 and WBAP's just-happen-to-tweet-about-it contributions this morning. (The Star-Telegram joined in as well.) 
  • Ages of local deaths in today's Update: 55, 44, 55, 53, and 59.


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Firing It Up: Photograph Edition



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7.14.2016

Flashback




Considering that this is 1979 and the fact there was massive destruction everywhere, this looks like a staged photograph by the local paper or some such. I doubt troopers would be micro inspecting limb and property damage on their own.

(It also feels like a moment from Mystery Science 3000 but I'm not clever enough to come up with something funny.)


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Tour De France Leader Crashes -- Then Runs




Almost as impressive as . . .



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Modern Day Smooth Criminal



She actually leans the wrong direction but still well executed.




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Random Thursday Morning Thoughts


  • Overheard during criminal jury selection in Wise County this week: "I don't think we need to have a trial so long as there is one witness."
  • All Peter King does on Twitter is link to articles on his own SI website and calls them a "great read", "fascinating read", or the "the best thing I've ever read on . . . ." 
  • Watched a little bit of Bill O'Reilly last night and was hit with a NRA commercial. Why are they spending money preaching to the choir?
  • Donald Trump will announce his VP choice on Friday. My dream choice would be pastor Robert Jeffress. After all, Jeffress said he would vote for Trump over Jesus because "the Sermon on the Mount was not given as a governing principle for this nation."
  • "Pornography, with its harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the life of millions. We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace and pledge our commitment to children's safety and well-being." - 2016 Republican Platform. Whenever you see someone having to invoke "the children" to make their argument, there's normally some substantive deficiency. 
  • UT has now finalized their handgun rules. You can bring them on campus if (1) it's concealed and not open carried, (2) you have a CHL, (3) you can have a bullet in the chamber to give you one extra round, (4) you can't take it in an office without his permission of the "occupant" unless there are more than one occupant using the office whereby all you need is one occupant say it is OK to bring the weapon in, and  (5) you can't take your concealed weapon in a dorm. Got it? Sounds easy to understand and easy to enforce. Oh, and those rules only apply to the Austin campus. Campuses in Arlington, San Antonio, El Paso, etc. might have different rules.
  • Heard at the courthouse yesterday: "I've got an idea for a Random Thought girl. Have you seen those pictures of girls who are topless but cover up by holding in front of them a big fish they've caught?"
  • I had forgotten that President Obama called out Donald Trump at the 2011 Correspondents' Dinner: “But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice — at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled.”
  • Republican National Convention speakers: Tim Tebow in. Sarah Palin out.
  • The Fort Worth Mounted Patrol unit is heading to Cleveland today to help with security for the Republican National Convention. The only horses are 1,200 miles away?
  • The SMU cop who reportedly was swept away in Turtle Creek has still not been found. (Someone yesterday compared the event to the flood in Wimberley where two children are still missing after over a year. I suppose if you want to compare the Blanco River rising by 36' and sweeping houses off their foundations to Turtle Creek rising after a brief downpour in Highland Park, you have a valid point.)
  • I'm worried about our county records. The Update says who the jail inmate who died in early May died from methamphetamine usage. The official web site of Wise County shows that he entered a plea of no contest to a charge of Public Intoxication after his death. 
  • Tonight: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is heading to the White House to participate in a televised town hall discussion on race relations with President Barack Obama. This has disaster written all over it for Patrick.
  • Underrated town name: Lacy Lakeview.

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7.13.2016

Hang On, Baby! I'm Coming To Help!



I'm going to have to invoke the legal scholar Jackie Chiles on this one: "Yeah that's going to be a problem. It's gonna be a problem for them. This a clear violation of your rights as a consumer. It's an infringement on your constitutional rights. It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous."

Story.
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Your No-Big-Government-State-Rights-Loving Politicians Are Grandstanding Again


Current law in Texas: The killer of a police officer in the line of duty may be prosecuted by your local DA who may seek the death penalty in your state funded district court in your county seat presided over by a locally elected judge with county residents serving as jurors. Any appeal goes to state elected judges and then, and only then, to the federal courts.

The proposal: Make the killing of any police officer (heck, they are all "federally-funded" in some way) a federal crime to be tried by an appointed federal prosecutor in front of a life-time appointed judge in a federal courthouse in the metroplex with jurors coming from any county within the federal district. Appeals would go directly to the federal courts bypassing any state courts.

So . . .  what is the purpose of this proposed law?
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Above The Fold


Readable full page.
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Pokeman Go (One Last Time)

Yesterday at the courthouse I heard someone say: "How can you see those things through your phone but not in real life?"  After pausing, smiling, smirking, and then giving that sweet friend of mine a ton of grief (in Christian love), this shows up in real life yesterday afternoon:


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Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts



  • The silly tweeting Texas Supreme Court judge lets his interns play Pokeman Go in the supreme court building.
  • "Auschwitz: Please stop playing Pokemon Go at our death camp memorial."  
  • "Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions." - George W. Bush yesterday delivering a really great line. (Edit: Just checked BagOfNothing.com. He really liked that line.)
  • Cool photo: Air Force One and Air Force Two at Love Field:
  • New Quinnipiac University Poll (which is pretty reliable): "[Trump] is [now] on the upside of too-close to call races in Florida and Pennsylvania and is locked in a dead heat in Ohio." Good lord. Those states are the election.
  • 538.com still has Hillary with a 77.4% chance of winning, but I bet that should be skewed down somewhat once they factor in the new polling numbers. By how much depends on whether other data shows similar movement.
  • Random bullet point: (1) Someone sent me a link back in May on Twitter to a country music video featuring "local guys", (2) I actually watched it and came to the conclusion that for some reason I'm always jazzed by a female fiddle player, (3) For some reason the tweet was "liked" by two hookers.
  • Speaking of (hot fiddle player - not hooker):
  • Is this a killer robot reference with a Banksy flowers-not-violence influence? . . .
  • Note to self: I need a haircut.
  • I've always said Wall-E was a rip off of the Short Circuit robot (but this important cause never gained traction.)

  • 107 degrees predicted in Amarillo and Dalhart today.
  • Mark Cuban on the new "deliberate foul" rule: ""Rewarding incompetence is never a good business strategy." Someone on Twitter added for him, "Now excuse me. I've got to go give Harrison Barnes $95 million."
  • Shout out to Craig Miller on The Ticket today going off on Chewbacca Mom's new music video that I went off on two days ago. 
  • Thirty-three people had to be hospitalized in Brooklyn after a bad batch of K2 got out there. That's the direct result of making illegal a plant which grows in dirt. 
  • The body of the SMU officer who reportedly drowned in Turtle Creek has still not been found.
  • "Texas Congressman Ted Poe announces he’s been diagnosed with leukemia." I presume there are varying degrees of leukemia.
  • Have we heard what type of gun was used in the Dallas shooting?


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7.12.2016

Dallas Service For Fallen Office




Texas AG Paxton sitting with Lt. Gov. Patrick. Paxton brought iPad.
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CNN Going All Hipster On Us




Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary this morning.

For all you non-cool kids out there, "tfw" stands for "The feeling when".
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Great Moments In Tour De France

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Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • "What To Do When You Get Pulled Over - Coffey Anderson PSA"  He sure makes it sound like we should be on pins and needles when we see a cop walking up during a traffic stop. (Admission: I've never heard of Coffey Anderson.) 
  • President Obama heads to Dallas today. History will treat him well. There will always be a segment of the population which is on the wrong side of history. Remember that ad in the Dallas paper and the handbill before JFK's fatal visit?:
  • Photo in Star-Telegram accompanying a story on Open Carry makes me believe that shorts and a handgun is a bad look:
  • In reading the Killing Reagan book, I had completely confused my memory about the Falkland Islands and Grenada. (Quickly: Which one did the U.S invade? Which one did Great Britain invade? Fun fact: Both are off the coast of South America yet are over 4,300 miles apart.)
  • And I had no idea that Fox News head, and possible Gretchen Carlson predator, Roger Ailes came up with Reagan's line of, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." (The book said, however, that Reagan was coached to use a Bob Hope-like pause when delivering it. He didn't.)
  • Trump this morning: "Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse." Does he just makes stuff up on the fly?
  • From the Washington Post: "The new ads . . .  are being launched by the pro-Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA, and combine footage of Trump [in his own words] with animation and a [literal] 'WTF' theme, which suggest a particular focus on young voters." Here they are: Chauvinist, Choice, Deportation Force, Climate Change, and Minimum Wage.
  • If Trump picks Newt as VP they, in combination with their wives and ex-wives, will be one short of fielding a baseball team. 
  • A phrase you don't hear any longer: "Just rub some monkey blood on it."
  • I had to take two links out of a new watch and couldn't do it to say my life. (A youtube clip demo'd doing it with a regular hammer and a paperclip. Sheesh.) I finally bought a $6.99 "Watch Band Link Pin Tool Kit" and the job was done in three minutes. A buddy once told me: 90% of any project is having the right tools. True that.
  • "Not enough mental health funding, let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, let’s give it to the cops. Here in Dallas we have a loose dog problem. Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. 70 percent of the African-American community is being raised by single women, let’s give it to the cops to solve as well. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems." -- Dallas Police Chief Brown who is spot on. 
  • Random stat: This is my 19,121 post. (Not bullet points but total posts.) I'm either disciplined or OCD.

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7.11.2016

Two Bailiffs Killed

Story.

Edit: Oh, and for those wondering what the alleged killer looked like, here ya go . . .


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Death and Politics






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Reese Witherspoon Cloned Herself


Or has a daughter.
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The 10,000 Hour Rule?*



Edit: From the same game . . .


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*The "10,000 Hour Rule" principle holds that 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" are needed to become world-class in any field.
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From The Official Twitter Account of the Texas Prosecutors Association


Someone explain this to me.

Open carry = Legal. Argue with police = Legal.  Yet no matter what the police do, "no jury" will disapprove?
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Random Monday Morning Thoughts




  • Dan Patrick wasted no time in embarrassing us all on Friday by calling the Black Lives Matter protesters in Dallas "hypocrites".  (Patrick's son is a judge in Houston and faces re-election from some guy named Robert Johnson. I don't know if the son is a good or bad judge, but I'd be concerned that he grew up with Dan Patrick as a role model.)
  • Radio talk show host Mark Davis continues his disturbing trend to the very, very far right. His contempt for the Black Lives Matter movement is over the top even going so far as to tweet, "'Peaceful' rallies spewing hatred of blacks, Jews, Muslims would be condemned for their content. Yet #BLM rallies are coddled, encouraged."
  • At Northpark Mall yesterday, some anti-Black Lives Matters protesters showed up. They looked like the "Git-Er-Done" movement. 
  • I don't exactly know what Pokeman Go is but it sounds like that strange game of geocache that Mrs. LL has been playing for years. 
  • The Baton Rouge police might want to throttle back a bit.
  • Lost in the Dallas tragedy: They still haven't found the SMU officer who reportedly drowned in Turtle Creek. 
  • "Chewbacca mom sings Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’ in wake of shootings."  There have been a lot of tributes to the fallen Dallas officers but many are getting perilously close to "look at me". 
  • This is pretty amazing - Parker County inmates "break" out of their cell to help a jailer who looked as if he was suffering a heart attack. Video. 

  • Read somewhere on Friday: "I don't want black men killed by cops. I don't want cops killed by black men. I don't want kids killed in schools." 



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7.10.2016

Sunday Morning


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