1.29.2021

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

 


  • I'll need to ask the (now) Senior In the House the details about the pig story if she remembers.
  • Texas hospitalizations: I'll probably keep posting this update through next week. From there, I'll only bring it back it there is another surge. And there shouldn't be unless the new variants of the disease take over.  

  • Ok, I need help figuring this out. I received this high tech "mask" yesterday by UPS. It's addressed to me at my office. I didn't order it. No idea who sent it. The label said "Third party purchaser", and it looks like it was shipped directly from the manufacturer. No note was included. So I went to the website and looked it up to figure out what the heck it was. The cost? $299. If someone is doing a bit, they've got a lot of money for bits. 
    (My office address is no secret)


  • Remember yesterday when I said there's a weird trend over the last few months of high profile crimes being committed in the last few months? Well, right after I hit the "publish" button, this story broke about the murder of the UberEats driver in Haltom City: 

  • Who knew it would take the Robinhood brokerage site screwing over the common man yesterday to bring Ted Cruz and OAC together?:

  • Well, not quite "together":

  • Gamestop stock might have had an unstable day yesterday -- especially in the morning. It finally closed at 193.60. This whole thing is a crazy, crazy story.  (The stock just opened at 379 which is up 96%: Link since who knows where it will go.)


  • And it keeps coming: Elon Musk added Bitcoin to his Twitter bio in the middle of the night and within an hour it jumped $5,000 to $37,299.
  • In the couple of week after the Trump Supporters Storming of the Capitol, it looked like the Republican establishment was going to run away from Trump.  Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Kevin McCarthy said in speeches on the floor, and in unequivocal terms, that it was time to move on. But yesterday, McCarthy went down to Mar-a-Lago to re-enact a scene from a Tom Cruise movie. They are still scared of him. 

  • So it is still Trump's Republican Party. They need his followers. And they know his worshipers still follow him, amazingly, even after this: 

  • And they are equally scared of the QAnon supporters. They need them to. If not, they would either kick Marjorie Taylor Greene out of Congress or, at the very least, censure her. (She thinks Sandy Hook was staged so the GOP just put her on the Education Committee.)

  • The Aggies are keeping the statue of Sul Ross on their campus. If you want a quick history regarding the controversy surrounding this guy, here's a new Texas Monthly article about him. 


  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 573 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:31 AM

1.28.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Ten years later, I'm still wondering about how much money is in that fund. But I did find an update to that bullet point: In 2012, Theadora Ross was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $274,034 in restitution.
  • Texas hospitalizations deaths: Hospitalizations are dropping which mean were are at the end of a cycle of the surge. The end of a surge also brings the apex of deaths. 

  • The Texas GOP is out there lying in trying to say its slogan of "We Are The Storm" is not inspired by QAnon. It's efforts are comical:
    They tell us to look the slogan up.

    This guy did. It's a QAnon slogan.

    That's embarrassing 


  • I'm not sure the last time I kept an eye on a stock price all day just for entertainment, but I did it yesterday with Gamestop which went up 134%.  
    • The story isn't that complicated once you understand short selling. It gets a little more confusing in trying to figure out how the masses are using option trading to fuel the Common Man Uprising.  
    • At its core, it's just like the old organized "flash mob" doing a dance routine at the mall. Except this time there are millions in the mob and they are focused on a stock. 
    • You'll hear many in the mob talk about "how much money they've made" with the stock's price rising. Let me share words of wisdom from my father from years ago: "When it comes to stocks, you haven't made anything until you actually sell it."
    • A side story is how this uprising is fueled by the site Robinhood which allows commission free stock and option trading. So how does it make money? As someone told me, it's like any free site which has people register: They are dealing in commodities as well but the commodity is your data.
    • Edit: Whoa! This morning at around 7:30 a.m., the Robinhood app began preventing customers from selling Gamestop stock and options. I'm not sure what is going on, but the masses are mad as a hornet (and the masses include Trump Jr. and the Barstool guy.) The stock had been up in afterhours trading as much as 40% before the change. The stock just opened down 24% and then trading was halted. This will be a big deal. 
  • Noooooooo!

  • The little town of Stinnett, Texas is having a controversy with a police chief.  From this story on a site which amazingly collected documentation over the whole seedy thing, some women (including his wife) have allegedly discovered each other. Pull up a chair, it's juicy. 




  • I've noticed a trend that has developed over the last year: High profile crimes are being committed by teenagers. I mean, some pretty bad stuff being done by very young people. Keep an eye out for it. (Recall the Indianapolis five-person murder on Sunday was done by a teenager.)

  • Normally I make fun of whenever the cops roll out a picture of a drug bust because it's so insignificant. Not with this one. That's a lot of meth.  But as for the DEA agent saying it was "a big dent" in the cartel's trafficking, he's blowing smoke. That's not even a ding. 

  • See that telephone poll? I took these photos on the square in Decatur after a saw a guy in a cherry-picker installing something on Tuesday. I'm no detective, but I'm pretty sure we've being watched. And I've been told they have automatic license plate reading software hooked up as well. 



     

  • Another Capitol police officer has committed suicide in wake of the Trump Supporters Storming of the Capitol on January 6th. 



at 8:31 AM

1.27.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 


  • Above: The link (from a Star-Telegram story of 1/24/2011) was dead, and a quick Google search didn't turn up anything about it. 
  • Texas hospitalizations: Slight uptick but probably an anomaly. 

  • Dominion is going to own MyPillow. From last night:

  • And another. 

  • The Frisco realtor now wants everyone to know she has an account on the social media platform known for courting neo-Nazis.


  • She's a weird bird -- comparing herself to someone who, as best as I recall, didn't fly in private jets and storm government buildings. 

  • Here's the portion of the bill filed by the Democrats in the House to ease the minimum wage up to $15.00 an hour.  No, it won't kill small businesses.

  • I don't' know if this new book is any good, but I love the title. 

  • See? That's not hard, is it?

  • How it started/How it ended.


  • Remember the Zoom video of the defense attorney acting sassy and unprofessional when the judge wouldn't let her withdraw because her client wouldn't take a plea deal? Well check out this paragraph from a story two weeks ago which has a comment from the lawyer after the judge held her in contempt and fined her $500. How did this not get more attention? (But that was a fantastic Randy Moss callback.)



  • Someone call the Decatur hospital, ask if it's available, and get back to me. 

  • I got into a long discussion yesterday with a guy who was well versed in this bizarre world of GameStop stock and the sub-reddit group "WallStreetBets". It's basically a battle of a massive social media group (with money) who simply wanted to jack with a hedge fund which was betting on GameStop to fail. It's fascinating. (And he also has promised to walk me through short selling with options the next time he does it -- and he does it a lot. I'll walk you through it as well once I understand it.) 

  • Edit: GameStop just doubled in the first five minutes of trading. 
  • Didn't expect to have to say this but I, too, am opposed to "forced monkey labor." 

  • Over 20 years ago I wrote about how an indictment in Jack County against Indian leaders Santana and Big Tree, for a massacre near Fort Richardson around 1871, had the language of "not having the fear of God before their eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil." I thought it was bizarrely funny. Well, yesterday I learned that the indictment against Jefferson Davis used the same language.  And a second ago I learned that so did the indictment against Aaron Burr in 1804.  Let's bring that back.
  • Last night OU beat Texas by one point. Here's the video clip of a Texas player scoring two point for the Sooners.

  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:33 AM

1.26.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

 

Link

  • Ten years ago I though the military vehicle was war related. If I saw it today, I would think it was insurrection related. 
  • Texas hospitalizations: Still high but dropping like a rock.

  • The Frisco pastor speaks! “I am a target of the cancel culture and the establishment media is coming after me. But it is not just about me. People of faith are under attack in this country." No, hoss, people of faith are not under attack -- it is QAnon conspiracy nutcases who are being called out. (In his Youtube statement, for some reason he decided to say there are "rumors of pallet of bricks even being left off right here in Frisco, Texas" by “radical groups like Antifa.” That, of course, is a common false conspiracy theory promoted by QAnon followers. )

  • First, the Texas GOP run by Allen West announces it is joining a neo-Nazi social media platform while using a QAnon slogan ("We Are The Storm") and now the Oregon GOP says that the Attack on The Capitol was a "false flag." Really. The Republicans need to get control over these groups which purport to officially speak for them. 

  • Speaking of Allen West, he is coming to Wise County to speak to a group calling themselves "Wise County Conservatives" at their inaugural meeting.  What's this about?


  • The Wise County Probation Department was shut down late last week and yesterday due to a COVID outbreak. 
  • County benefit war: Wichita County ups the ante. 

  • Let me tell you something, having Patrick Leahy preside over the impeachment trial instead of John Roberts is a bad, bad look. They've got to find someone, maybe a retired federal judge, who will be considered impartial.  The optics of Leahy, a sitting Democrat Senator who can vote on impeachment, are unnecessarily distracting. 

  • The MyPillow guy has been permanently suspended from Twitter. If you describe the Attack on the Capitol as "very peaceful" and blame "undercover Antifa that dressed as Trump people" for the chaos, that will get you banned.

  • I need to someone to explain it to me, but how a bunch of users of a sub-Redditt group were able to impact the price of GameStop stock would seem to be a major story. 


  • What's the deal with that huge American flag and construction below it just west of Runaway Bay? 

  • The producers of Tucker Carlson's show never seem to understand how an out-of-context screenshot will look. Last night:

  • Nerdy legal stuff: Normally, the odor of marijuana (or, more precisely, the claim of smelling marijuana) gives the cops probable cause to search a vehicle. But what happens in a state where marijuana is legalized? Can state cops claim that they have PC to search because marijuana is still technically illegal under federal law? Those questions are coming up more and more with some answers.
  • Legal stuff not so nerdy:

  • Five people, including a pregnant woman, were murdered in a home in Indianapolis on Sunday. Yesterday it was announced that a seventeen year old family member has been arrested. 
  • Two related stories about the same shooting on the front page of the Wichita paper: Deputies Kill Man and Puppy Found In Dead Man's Vehicle:

at 8:31 AM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)