2.01.2019

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












at 2:00 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts


  • The boys on the morning show on the Ticket went to the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta and told about this: They found the "lunch counter simulation" exhibit and followed the instructions below. They got hear a crowd taunt them. Oh, my. And get this: Your chair will randomly vibrate to simulate it being kicked from behind. Double, oh my!
  • I appreciate anyone walking away from that job but most of his press release was self-aggrandizing . However, I did relate to this: “Much has changed in the past quarter century. Society has changed. My profession has changed. I have changed."
  • This "voter fraud" scare that the Republicans at the top of government in Texas trying to pull off is turning into a bigger fraud than the B.S. they are peddling.  I hope the Messenger continues to follow as Wise County tries to verify how many, if any, non-citizens are on the voter roll per the State's revised list. (The State's "initial list" turned out to be riddled with errors and was completely wrong in Waco.)
  • Good grief, Baylor. We don't know much about this from the story, but this line is confusing because of the plural "individuals": "The reports involved the same individuals and are believed to be connected . . . . "  In any event, what's going on down there?
  • I don't run in half marathons any longer, but I still get emails inviting me. Yesterday I noticed that the price for the Cowtown race was now $120. Boys, that's getting really pricey.
  • Right before the following Tweet he told the press his "Intel team" had been "misquoted." They were broadcast live and unedited you dolt!  Every day that quote from 1984 becomes more and more prophetic: "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
    No way they "told" him that. 
  • The lone remaining misdemeanor case in Tarrant County this week ended in a mistrial. So they had five trials in misdemeanor courts and zero convictions. 
  •  Here's a headline that got my attention until I found out it wasn't Bridgeport, Texas. It did, however, involve a Texas man. (And how about that "Hardest-Working Paper" motto? This was tailor made for me. )
  • Nutcase Roger Stone gave a press conference broadcast exclusively by conspiracy crazed InfoWars yesterday. Yep, InfoWars. (And it was interesting that Mueller filed a court pleading that said his office seized  "multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information" from Stone. Terabytes? That ain't Word documents and emails. That's a ton of audio and video.)
  • One more Stone note: It's bizarre the law-and-order Republicans in Washington or upset at the FBI for the way Stone was arrested. In that regard, this is funny:

    Stone with a press conference yesterday
    broadcast exclusively the crazed Infowars 
  • Here's New York media's reaction to the trade that sent some white guy with a blown Achilles who is supposed to be really good to Dallas (and that's my extent of knowledge about the NBA): 

at 8:31 AM

1.31.2019

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts


  • News broke late yesterday that a former Wise County deputy, who served 16 months in federal prison for convincing registered sex offenders that he needed to take pictures of them naked, was arrested in Denton in a child solicitation sting. The mind boggles.
  • The head of the police union in Houston was not happy with people suggesting they might have screwed up in the failed drug raid which left a married couple dead: "We're going to be keeping track on all of y'all, and we're going to make sure to hold you accountable every time you stir the pot on our police officers." What the heck does that mean?
  • This is from yesterday. I still need to see Vice.
  • Let's check on Trump's mental stability this morning. (He has fired off at least ten tweets since waking up including one proclaiming "A WALL is a WALL!"). 
                  
  • Speaking of so much winning, FoxConn announced yesterday that all that hoopla from 2018 would not come true. For a con man, Trump sure does get conned a lot:
  • I knew American Airlines basically controlled DFW, but I didn't know it was this much: 69 million people flew in an out of the airport last year. Of those, over 58 million flew American. 
  • The dumbest show on TV, The Masked Singer, has been picked up for a second season.  This country gets what we deserve. (And do people not realize that the "star" -- if you can call people like Tori Spelling a star -- only show up on stage for a few brief moments for the "great reveal"? All the rest of the time its just some spare guy in a costume pretending to be them.)
  • Did the Saints coach wear a NFL commissioner clown shirt yesterday when he finally talked about the blown call in the NFC Championship game?
  • Without even mentioning that this guy is a lap dog for you know who, what exactly does "face the music" mean? As a Southern Baptist who holds a doctorate, he certainly can't mean that you don't get into heaven so does it mean you will just get a stern talking to at the Pearly Gates? (He never explains in the link. He just once again says you'll "face the music".)
         
  • The Tarrant County DA Office's misdemeanor section is having a bad week. You know how this happens? Intake prosecutors and/or trial prosecutors who can't spot a bad case, or who can spot a bad case but have no discretion to reduce the charge. (If CCC#1 comes in with a Not Guilty verdict we will have a clean sweep.)
  • The City of Dallas has a $1,000 per individual campaign limit for donations to City Council candidates. A lawyer's four children in Dallas have given a total of $11,000 to four candidates over two years. So? Uh, the kids are 5 to 11 years old. 

at 8:32 AM

1.30.2019

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts


  • The story behind the shooting wounding/injuring of five officers in Houston is getting weird. It happened during a "drug raid" and so far we've got (1) a man and woman in the house who were married for 21 years are now dead, (2) neither had a criminal history, (3) he was a veteran, (4) the cops busted through the door and shot the couple's dog, (5) it was a search warrant and not an arrest warrant, and (6) the warrant was for heroin and no heroin was found.  
    
These appear to be drivers license photos
since Houston PD didn't have mugshots.
  • The news yesterday about the Las Vegas Strip shootings seems to bug a lot of people. Not me. Charles Whitman in the UT Tower didn't have a reason either. And it really doesn't matter.
  • But Fox News used it to dog the FBI again yesterday. It is very confusing how a network can be pro-Trump and anti-law enforcement and still be the beloved by the far right. 
  • I'm was skeptical about the MAGA reference in this story when I first saw it, and it turned out not to be true. It's OK to be skeptical from the get-go about TMZ and quite another to be skeptical about the New York Times and Washington Post. 
  • I can't get past how Idiocracy it sounds for weatherman to use the "feels like" temperature instead of the "wind chill" temperature. Can the public not understand wind chill?
  • Speaking of the movie, Mrs. LL turned over to some new Ellen DeGeneres game show last night which made me immediately say, "This ain't Jeopardy" followed by the question of, "Why are the contestants spinning around in chairs before they answer?" To the latter she simply said, "Idiocracy."
  • I saw this . . . 
  •  . . . and then laughed (and verified) when I read this: 
  • This isn't a bad theory: No one knows what Trump is talking about when he goes on his immigration rants and references found prayer rugs, women duct taped, and them having far better cars than the border agents. And then you see the movie Sicario and find it has all three.
  • The Starbucks Guy making the political rounds is saying a lot of dumb things. What's a "free job?"
                                         
  • Illiterate Trump tweet of the morning. 
  • This technology is going to make the future bizarre: Here is a Jennifer Lawrence press conference where a Steve Buscemi face has been flawlessly super imposed. Watch it. You literally cannot tell that it is fake. This is all cute and funny until you realize we will have fake videos of anyone saying anything (a president, a mayor, a friend), and we will need someone we believe to tell us it is not real. Or, conversely, there will be people who won't believe any video/audio. (I think BagofNothing once posted a video where audio had been flawlessly changed of Obama and the tech behind it.) Heck, just google "deepfakes".
  • And to think I grew up at a time when technology was so advanced that TV would just "shut down" at night because of lack of content.
  • I don't know why the Update led with a story about Wise County attempting to verify the eligibility 56 voters as requested by the Secretary of State without referencing that originally the state mislead Wise County and other counties about the numbers (in order to grab headlines.) Wise County was initially told last week the number was 77. This "error"/"lie" by the Secretary of State is the top headline in many papers today. (See below.)
  • Messenger: Above The Fold



at 8:34 AM

1.29.2019

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • There's a glitch in Apple's FaceTime app that let's you listen in briefly on the person you call before they answer if you are using the group mode. I plan to go my entire life without every FaceTiming a single soul. 
  • I'm halfway through the Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix. I realized I didn't know anything about him -- college grad, law student, and liked politics. 
  • I need to give credit to Grits for Breakfast for having the link to the Texas database for public defender costs I posted yesterday. (He just casually dropped it the other day when he went after the Texas Association of Counties (TAC) and specifically, Marion County Judge Leward LaFleur who wrote that counties paying for defense costs is an "unfunded mandate" (basically true) but “This used to be paid for — 100 percent — by the state of Texas.” (Which is 100% a bold-faced lie. Counties have always paid for it.)
  • Grits then went after the Cooke County Judge in Gainesville who complained about indigent defense costs in the Dallas Morning News by saying "our indigent defense costs have increased by 80 percent over the past eight years and the criminal caseloads have more than doubled." Grits responded by not focusing on who is paying for the costs but why the cost is rising in the first place. 
  • Then again, there is lots of serious crime out there like this one the Fort Worth PD to trying to crack:
  • I see the Wise County Sheriff's Office has fixed its daily inmate report. A few may use it for gossip, but it provides a tremendous public service in providing public information for people who use it. The vast, vast majority of people in jail are there because of pending charges who cannot afford bail. If you think their lawyer costs are expensive to the taxpayer, take a look at the cost of housing and feeding those people. 
  • What's a gofer?  Edit: That is apparently the way it is spelled. Should have focused on the non-disclosure agreement.
  • Those high tone stationary bike commercials crack me up because they are always in the greatest homes with the greatest views. If it is not some New York penthouse overlooking the skyline, it's something like this. (And who amongst us wouldn't build a custom wooden riser to put the bike on.)
  • Legal nerd stuff: Roger Stone's lawyers were having a hard time getting admitted to appear before a particular federal court yesterday.
                                          
  • Why does he sign letters with the same Sharpie he uses to sign bills? Then again, if you gave the child an option of an ink pen or a magic marker, which would they choose?
  • I did my one-a-month listen to Dennis Prager yesterday, and he's as nutty as ever. He was mad at the Starbucks guy for considering running for president, so he opined (as fact) that the ability to make money is no qualification whatsoever since is just a trait you are born with  "just like Derek Jeter was born with the ability to play baseball." Yep, no difference whatsoever.
  • Baylor brag: Yesterday the womens' team (17-1) ended up ranked #1 in the nation, while the men (14-6) have won five in a row after beating OU last night by 30.
  • No matter what you think about climate change, you should never be this stupid:
                                            
  • It's weird that a Texas PAC named Empower Texas, funded by West Texas oil money who support far right wing candidates, has press passes that gets it on the floor of the Texas Senate. They aren't the press. They are lobbyists. On the floor. But that's what happens when you give millions to the people who control the press passes.
  • That reminds me the time in 1989 that Bo Pilgrim just walked around the Texas Senate floor handing out $10,000 checks. Yep, that actually happened.



at 8:34 AM

1.28.2019

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • In the last five days, a 21 year old white man executed five women in a bank in Florida, and a 21 year old white man murdered five people in Louisiana. And we have a crisis at the border?
  • A cold front will hit Wise Count at 12:15 p.m. today. Book it. 
  • I actually watched most of Rent last night on Fox which was supposed to be live but was mostly recorded from a dress rehearsal after the lead broke his foot a day before. The ending, which was indeed live, was really cool when they brought out the original cast to sing Seasons of Love. Watch it here.
  • Actual shot from the Senate floor on Friday.
  • Another actual shot from the Senate floor. But I support this Arizona senator.

  • Trump caved on the shutdown on Friday and his base wasn't happy. Ann Coulter called him a bigger wimp than George H.W. Bush, and Fox News' Lou Dobbs said Nancy Pelosi "has just whipped the president of the United States." Heck, look what Lindsey Graham said before Trump caved:
  • The national GOP twitter account sent out the following. It is the exact opposite of what happened. This is truly Orwellian.
  • This is an example of exactly did happen:
  • This is interesting and barely reported: A Texas Ranger in Tyler investigating a murder had an affair with the widow while the investigation was ongoing. The audio of his internal affairs interview was released which is something you never see. I'll give the guy credit, he owned up to it. He was demoted but not fired.  
  • There was incredible lazy reporting all across Texas when the Republicans in charge in Texas released a report late Friday with a misleading headline that 58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas. Most media outlets just repeated it as gospel. The Texas Tribune actually took time to read the report and investigate and learned it was based, in language used in the state documentation, "WEAK" data. (Texas actually used "weak" in all caps.)
  • That was a heck of tanker truck wreck in Dallas yesterday. They just let it burn out.
  • Mr. Two Corinthians is tweeting about the Bible literacy this morning. (Finally, in those states kids can have the opportunity to study the Bible. If government didn't give them the option, how would they ever learn? So sad.) Obvious side note: He was watching Fox News. Screenshot from 28 minutes before the tweet..
  • Want to see how much Wise County spends on court appointed criminal defense lawyers broken down by attorney? See here. (You'll have to click on the "View Attorney Caseload Report.") It's actually a statewide database for all counties which even has sort functions. For example, you can quickly learn how many Tarrant County lawyers made more than $100,000 in 2017 via appointment. It's eye opening.
  • Messenger: Above The Fold

at 8:30 AM
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