8.16.2019

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







at 2:00 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts


  • The murder trial going on in Wise County has a jury composed of 11 women and 1 man. I'm not sure I've ever seen that make-up before. The defendant is female.  And, no, I would never think to myself, "When's the last time eleven women agreed on anything?" 
  • Trump "fat shamed" the wrong person last night at a rally.
  • There was a 70 year sentence handed down out of Parker County for a guy convicted of branding his girlfriend with a belt. (I tried to research him to see if he had any Wise County connections but couldn't find any. But I did find a prior appellate opinion where he was convicted of domestic violence even with the testimony of a very uncooperative girlfriend. And I even found the trial transcript that a lawyer posted here and here. It would be very interesting to learn if the victim in that case, who was named in the transcript, was the same one in this week's trial, whose name I can't find.)
  • Another chapter in the "militarization of police":
  • I'm as confused as anyone else about Plano Senor High cancelling the upcoming game with El Paso Eastwood because of unnamed "safety concerns" in light of the El Paso shootings. Plano P.D. says there have been no threats. Whomever made the decision (superintendent, athletic director, etc.) is waking up this morning with the realization of, "I didn't really think this through, did I?"   
  • This is unusual: A day after the Philadelphia cop shootings, the U.S. Attorney in Philly issued a statement where he blamed, and went scorched earth upon, the local elected D.A. "There is a new culture of disrespect for law enforcement in this City that is promoted and championed by District Attorney Larry Krasner – and I am fed up with it." And that's the mild part. 
  • There will be no greater justice than this guy ending up like Ted Haggard.  And how the First Baptist of Dallas survives him is a testament to the state of organized religion these days. 
  • There's a new breed of politically active Christian out there who believes that no matter how vile you are or someone else is, they can be "chosen" by God to lead.  And if you're "chosen", or more importantly you believe you are chosen, nothing else matters. I first noticed this in the bizarre Evangelical support of Trump, and it seems to be the theme of the new documentary "The Family" that I just started on Netflix. 
  • Trump has inquired about the U.S. buying Greenland? No one's told him that Iceland is the green one and Greenland is the ice one, right? (Fun fact: Did you know this isn't the first the buying of Greenland has been floated? Harry Truman actually offered to buy the country for $100 million in gold in 1946.)
  • Ex-Rangers made some very odd news last night: Yu Darvish pitched seven scoreless innings and struck out 10 only to have reliever Derek Holland come in to get the loss by giving up a grand slam. In a different game, Ian Kinsler pitched a shutout inning (with two walks and a hit batsman even) and then hit a home run. 

at 8:31 AM

8.15.2019

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts


  • Remember that federal court decision that said "marking tires" for potential parking violations was an unconstitutional search and seizure? Well, some municipalities have turned it into a consensual search. 
  • When you rip off the taxpayers for family gain so much you soon don't even realize it when others point it out.  It's not about the protection, Junior.
  • Bridgeport's Colin Jones just signed a two year and $2.6 million contract with the Carolina Panthers. This will be his ninth NFL season. That's a long NFL career.
  • Fans of the Evil Empire are very excited about this year's football season. They are on the verge of selling 63,000 season tickets. That's incredible.  And there's nothing better when Texas has high expectations. 
  • And if Bevo was never prosecuted for going after the Georgia bulldog, I don't see why they are going after this cat: 
    Side note: Methamphetamine is never plural.
  • Based on the headlines, I thought were had a horrific crime of this lady killing her child with boiling water. Instead we have a very bizarre story of  a four year old pulling "a large pot of boiling water off the stove, scalding her head, torso and arms, [and the] woman said she didn't seek medical attention and treated the girl herself." 
  • Greg Abbott has solved the problem of mass shootings in Texas since three of the worst four in our history have occurred under his watch: He has formed a task force which will meet every three months. "Good job. Good effort." (I wonder if he will use the victims' families in El Paso as campaign commercial props like he did after Sutherland Springs?)
  • No, I don't want a receipt emailed to me after I make a purchase at a register. Who in the world is going to take the time to enter an email address? And the ulterior motive is clear anyway. 
  • A Fox News poll yesterday had this negative number for Trump. Well, it's possibly negative. His hard core base probably wants it that way -- you know, in a modern day North vs. South kind of way.
  • I bought a Devour TV dinner at Brookshires by ironically using the high tone Apple-Pay app on my phone. I went home and, within an hour, glanced at my Twitter feed and saw a promoted ad for Devour. 
  • I had already forgotten that 2011 was that hot. 
  • It was a weird day for certain right wingers.
    • Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro said "If you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough. That'd be a you problem."
    • Congressman Steve King picked an unusual topic to support by saying, "What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?"
    • And they're buddies.
  • Tell me we will all look back at the late 2010s and remember when the nation sunk to just a brief moment of Idiocracy before it came to its senses. Trump is laser focused on the country this morning:
  • Remember them?
  • Walking on the sidewalk yesterday I heard someone yell, "It must be awful to have to get up and go to work every morning!"  It was coming from a retired Wise County criminal investigator driving by in a 4x4 extended cab. I got scoreboarded by a government worker who retired relatively early. 


at 8:29 AM

8.14.2019

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts



  • I thought it was an error that caused the UNT logo to appear on the field graphic during the Cowboys game last week. Nope. A faithful reader tells me I'm wrong. The school and the team have entered into some type of partnership. 
  • Jerry Jones is a national treasure as he explained yesterday why he is not worried about Zeke's hold-out.
  • Trump doesn't understand that his base fears Red Flag laws, and he was Exhibit A yesterday of why. The government (Trump) wanting to take the guns away from someone based upon one instance where that person became angry or, worse, because he is perceived to be a political enemy.
  • This is an amazing and disturbing fact: There are 179 full time federal appeal court judges in America. Trump, in a little over two years, has now appointed almost one-fourth of them. 
  • I've mentioned the Dr. Death podcast before about the Dallas surgeon. Now it's going Hollywood  with Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater. (Here's the original D Magazine article that started it all.)
  • Did you know you know you can download your entire Amazon purchase history (or at least from 2006) in spreadsheet form? Sum a column and you get to learn how much you've spent.
  • I have a typo every morning. The Update rarely does. But they had one yesterday that confused me. At first I thought it had to be with the "million" or "billion" reference but that didn't make sense. The problem ended up being the existence of the word "from" which was later deleted.
  • Odd thing about the two car wreck on Saturday night on 380 according to the Messenger: "Both drivers were from Shubuta, MS."  I heard one of the witnesses said, "They were acting a fool with one another." 
  • Also according to the Messenger: The massive Vinson family property off of 287 in Rhome (that's the Bridgeport Vinsons) is getting close to becoming a residential development with some big time investors in negotiations. A family member of mine told me over 25 years ago: "He bought that place by the acre and he's going to end up selling it by the foot." 
  • I've made it a point to proclaim over the years that Yahoo! is the dumbest company ever. They had the chance to be Google in the 1990s and screwed it up. They made Mark Cuban rich by buying a company that turned out to be worthless. And you know what company this headline is referring to that bought Tumblr at one time for $1.1 billion? Yep, Yahoo! (Tumblr just sold for $3 million. My Bridgeport High School math skills tell me that's like buying something for $1,100 and it later being sold for $3.)
  • The crazy website 4Chan had a message board post about Jeffrey Epstein's death before anyone else and before the news had been officially released by authorities.
  • I should have referenced this yesterday in my continuing rant of "How does Uber have expenses that are so large?" This helps answer it: 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:30 AM

8.13.2019

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts


  • So the Cowboys offered $30 million but Dak wants $40 million per year? It probably doesn't matter where in that range they settle on because I bet the sticking point will be the amount of guaranteed money. (Carzon Wentz recently signed for four years and $128 million -- $32 million a year on average - with a little over $107 million guaranteed.) 
  • I saw a guy who showed up for court yesterday only to find out that his bondsman "had gone off his bond" and a warrant had been issued.  I hope there was a real good reason from the bondsman. 
  • A faithful reader was also on the scene of the wreck on Saturday where Mrs. LL jumped out and got involved. He sent me these two pictures of the guy's car. He also was concerned enough to get an update on the driver's condition the next day where he learned he was in remarkably good shape. Then again, anything other than dead after being thrown from that car qualifies as "remarkably good shape." 

  • An (administrative) county judge -- every Texas county has one -- can get his salary supplemented by the state by well over $25,000 if, instead of his normal duties, he has to dedicate 40% of his time to "judicial duties."  It's been called into question before as to how many judges improperly claim that money. The county judge in Wichita County is being subjected to a "court of inquiry" right now because of it. 
  • Want to see inside Celina's new locker room and weight room that is part of their new $25 million stadium? And we're talking Celina.
  • This is outside the DPS "supercenter" in Carrollton yesterday. Do I need to remind you of the heat? Do I need to remind you that DPS doesn't care one iota about providing drivers license services?
  • It just dawned on me that the monstrosities depicted in the photos of the last two bullet points are government buildings. One caters to a high school kid. One is ill equipped to help a guy get a license so he can get back to work.
  • CNN's Chris Cuomo dang near whipped a guy who called him "Fredo."  I'm impressed. Fox News' Sean Hannity even came to his defense. 
  • Decatur won the state championship in volleyball last year, and yesterday Bridgeport moved to #1 in the Texas Girls Coaches Association’s 4A poll for the current season. Decatur had been #1 in the previous week's poll. What's in the Big Sandy water?
  • I still can't get over Trump smiling and doing a thumbs up with the baby whose parents were murdered in El Paso.  Seriously, what would your reaction be if you were handed a baby and told, "His parents were just slaughtered." You'd look in the baby's eyes and cry, right? Trump and his third wife's reaction is best described as one thing: Obscene. 

  • So let me get this straight, the Republicans control Austin but now they've called in the Texas Rangers to investigate a backroom meeting between the Republican Speaker of the House and the head of right wing lobbying group who acts like a mob boss? Are they trying to turn Texas blue?
  • On days like this, is there any difference between keeping a thermostat at 74 vs. 79 degrees? Won't the unit run basically the entire time anyway? 
  • "I watched this video last night and it's still freaking me out. A deep fake where Bill Hader turns into Tom Cruise and Seth Rogan while impersonating them."
  • I've installed two smart switches that control outdoor lights in an effort to experiment on having a "smart house."  It was amazingly easy. (I'm not so lazy that I got tired of turning them off and on  -- it's the sunset/sunrise timer that almost all of the manufacturers let you set.) 


at 8:30 AM

8.12.2019

Random Monday Morning Thoughts



  • There was a bad two car wreck between Bridgeport and Decatur on Saturday night that Mrs. LL came up on right after it happened. There was still dust in the air. 
    • She stopped, got out and ran over to one of the cars which was off the road and had rolled several times. There wasn't anyone in it. She saw someone else pointing and she found the driver 40 feet away who was basically unconscious. She held his head still and tried to talk to him as he slowly came to. EMS arrived very quickly. 
    • "When I touched his shoulders one of them wasn't where it was supposed to be."
    • She ended up with blood all over her arms. 
    • Why'd she get so involved? She's a former paramedic. And, trust me, she will tell you she's a former paramedic.
    • This is the car that rolled and ended up on a cross road.
  • I asked on Friday how does Uber burn through so much cash. Later that day I saw this story where Dallas is in the running to get an Uber "major office" which will employ 3,000.   Uh, 3,000? To do what? 
  • Never did I think all sides in this country could come together over anything but I've found it: Having a conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein. 
  • But Trump, suggesting a former president murdered Epstein, settled it once and for all: He's a certifiable nutjob. 
  • He doth protest too much.
  • Brittney Griner went after a gal on Saturday night and if you see fear in her eyes, you're right. She ran like a rabbit, and it's pretty funny. (Video.)
  • Remember the Wichita Falls case where the parents of a guy accused of sexual assault won the $15 million Texas Lotto? She testified last week that she has spent $400,000 "to hire defense attorneys Heather Barbieri and Katherine Devlin of Plano, according to testimony and court records." Then the "tab" grew to $600,000.  Good lord. 
  • The only interesting thing about the Cowboys preseason game was an unexplained appearance by the University of North Texas. 

  • If you remember the Lasalle River Boat ride at Six Flags, this is a 100% must see. It will flood you with memories because you get to hear and see the whole thing without a narrator or voice over.  And three things: (1) Some of it is now very politically incorrect, (2) I had forgotten about seeing two guys dead from hanging, and (3) I promise you my family road it once when I was a kid and the secret doors shown at 5:40 did not open, we smashed into them, and then the waterfall opened up on top of the boat.  It was insane.
  • He's no Anton Dotson, but he's pretty close. I present Billy Tatum. (Video.)
  • I saw that this attorney in Waco is running for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. I don't know if she's qualified or not, but I'd get rid of the Uncle Rico pose. (Side note: This is another person I went to law school with who I have no memory of whatsoever. But she's score-boarded me: She married a doctor,  and "she also has owned Dental Creations since 2001, a company that manufactures products for use in dental labs and offices.")

  • If you want to go down local sports media memory lane, watch the new documentary (full version in that link) produced by the Cowboys on Barry Switzer. You won't learn anything new, but it is still great.  (When the Cowboys held the first press conference introducing Switzer, I went over to the now closed Mattie's in the middle of the afternoon because they had the only TV I could find.) 
    You get to see Switzer punch Hansen in the shoulder.
  • Thanks to a suggestion from the courthouse, I watched HBO's Who Killed Garrett Phillips. It's really, really good, and I have a lot of hot opinion on the prosecutors involved. But since probably less than 5% of you have seen it, I'll st
  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:31 AM
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