8.06.2021

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




The video is still up, and it's still glorious.   

  • Add the new numbers for August 5th of 8,130. The Pandemic of the Unvaccinated is soaring.  

  • If you want an insight into the anti-vaxxers, just listen to a conservative locally based talk show on WBAP or 660 The Answer during the day when they take calls. It's insane. And the real crazies get absolutely no push back from the hosts. Heard one caller say yesterday that one co-worker got Bell's palsy from the vaccine and another got the shingles.
  • As I predicted, former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger's conviction was affirmed on appeal late yesterday. Quick observations:
    • Here's what I said in April after oral arguments: 

    • I was dead on. Of all the complicated issues in the case, it boiled down to this on appeal: The key is that the jury rejected the defense that Amber's use of deadly force was necessary even if the jury believed she actually thought she had entered her own apartment. Bottom line: The jury rejected self-defense  -- which means they found there were options she had other than killing him -- and the evidence supports that conclusion. 

    • I was always 100% right that this was not a criminal negligence case instead of a murder case, and the appellate court said the trial court was 100% right on not giving the jury that option. Amber intended to kill him (that's a murder charge) instead of accidentally killing him while doing something incredibly stupid (criminal negligence.)

    • I was always confused why some experts were calling the case a "mistake of fact" legal defense situation. It was not, and the court said so. Mistake of fact would be a situation where, say, you were on your ranch and fired your rifle into what you truly thought was a fallen tree trunk. Turns out, it was actually a person who had entered your land and was asleep. You were mistaken about a critical fact (you thought it was a log) and that mistake "negated your culpable mental state" (intent to kill a human being.) 
    • Now whether she was mistaken about being her apartment was relevant as to whether she reasonably thought she needed to used self-defense. And, if she was truly mistaken, it would have justified some use of self-defense. Once again, the jury just rejected her assertion of self-defense that the reasonable option for her was to kill him. 
    • Back when I read Amber's lawyer's brief when it was filed, I made fun of him spending multiple pages on some case he found from a court in England. It didn't escape the court's notice either, and they took a mild shot at it in a footnote. My flashback bullet point and the court's footnote: 


    • Legal nerd stuff: I went nuts about how the jury instructions were actually so wrongly worded in favor of Amber that I couldn't believe no on caught it at trial. On appeal, the State did catch it and tried to get the court to say the instruction shouldn't have been worded that way. My post about that is here.  The appellate court, as expected, didn't address the issue because they jury ignored the instruction and the State just doesn't get a free advisory appellate opinion on what is now an irrelevant matter. (Footnote 4.)
  • Here's a pretty good legal question for you: Is deadly force justified when someone who has stole beer from you is in the process of running away?

  • If you ever wanted to see what the inside of a "chop shop" looks like, we got pictures from one in Dallas County yesterday.

  • The No-Big-Government-Conservative-Republicans are very difficult to figure out. So not only do they not want local school district making the decisions, they don't even want the individual states to tell the districts what to do. No, they want the federal government to control local school districts. 

  • Back to COVID: Bexar County (San Antonio) has halted all jury trials. Jefferson County joined the halt as well.
  • Breaking: Unemployment rate drops from 5.9% in June to 5.4% in July.
  • I've got serious questions about this. It is 100% undisputed that Fentanyl overdose by exposure is a myth. He may have fainted, but it wasn't Fentanyl related.

  • It would be a perfect circle if these boys had been the ones who had written Idiocracy.

  • This would have been a fantastic picture last night but they had Jerry and Troy's trophies in the wrong places. 

  • 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: 763 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:33 AM

8.05.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




One thing I did back then that I never do now is throw in a random bullet point about home life. But I came across this from 10 years ago which made me smile. She's a college freshman now.   

  • The August 3rd number came in at 7,685. Place your bets as to whether we beat last summer's surge record of 10,893. 

  • I love how the owner of the missing Grand Prairie cobra agreed to go on TV but didn't want to give his name. Ummmkay. Side note: Police said he had a license from the Texas Parks and Wildlife for the snake. I had to look it up: It seems you can get a permit for $20.


     
  • I also watched this story on Fox 4 News and having the standard what-a-headache reaction when this was kind of snuck in at the end: "My husband is not working right now due to an accident." 

  • Anyone else not hear about a plane crash a week ago which killed six people? 

  • Nope, this isn't good. And there have been a quite a few stories like this littering the news lately.

  • This seems ridiculously high. Wouldn't the majority of hotels be owned by corporate chains anyway? (Dallas Morning News story.)

  • The Denton Record Chronicle posted about 30 minutes of Rep. Michael Burgess "town-hall" which was basically far right wingers ranting at him.  What a beating. China. The Big Lie. COVID numbers "cooked". Even Hunter Biden's laptop.  They were all brought up, and they all got big cheers. Sheesh. People are crazy. (And the congressman might want to cut back on the cheeseburgers.)


     
  • Man, this guy was really a hard core anti-vaxxing and COVID-mocking guy.

  • Hot sports opinion by former gold medalist Carl Lewis. Here's a quick video of the men's relay performance (The U.S. is in the next to outside lane.)  In addition to the handoffs, we just look slow. 

  • After the OU/Texas sabotage of the Big 12, how do you think this guy will vote this fall if the final fourth spot is a toss-up between Oklahoma and some other team?

  • Former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson was on The Ticket this week and he randomly brought up a story of cutting a player you never heard of. He always does that and strangely seems to get great joy in it. I've always thought that there was a lot of sorriness within him. 
  • You won't have to become a dirty socialist and root for Luka Doncic in the Olympics championship game against the God-fearing and freedom loving U.S. of A. because Slovenia  just lost to France because of a last second French resistance block. 
  • Man, the New York Post has dogged this man for months and they finally smell blood. 



at 8:33 AM

8.04.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Ten years later the stock market has tripled as is sits at 35,000, and 512 point swings will barely be a news blip. And that morning in August of 2011, the Dow plummeted even further:




  • Texas hospitalizations: To be updated to 7,305 for August 2nd as soon as they get around to it.

  • Here's Florida's chart:

  • COVID quick hits:
    • Travis County has shutdown jury trials. 
    • Williamson County has imposed a mask mandate in the courthouse. 
    • This was breaking news yesterday and is a pretty big deal. 

  • Airplane fights (with video):
    • "Frontier passenger allegedly touched 2 flight attendants breasts, then screamed his parents are worth $2 million, before punching a flight attendant." The ending is very satisfying. Video. 

    • "Fists were flying Sunday on an American Airlines flight from NOLA to Austin Texas over a reclined seat." Video.

  • I'm hearing one of the death notices in the Update was due to a rattlesnake bite. 
  • To be fair, shouldn't the medal count ranking be calculated with 3 points for gold, 2 for silver, and 1 for bronze? Or does that make me a commie? China would have 154 and the U.S. would have 146.

  • Spoiler alert: This 17 year old just finished fourth in the 200 meters. 

  • I knew that a poker game would be illegal if the house took a cut from the game, but apparently there's a loophole where you can run one as part of a private club which charges a membership fee.   (I'm not sure I knew that. I haven't seen a gambling criminal case in Wise County filed since the 1990s -- eight-liners excepted.)

  • I've said that the policy of every politician in the modern world should be just to "ride out" any scandal because it seems like anything can be ridden out these days. That theory will really be put to the test in New York. 

  • Good lord. 

  • This is a crazy story. Last summer, this ship below had a massive explosion off of San Diego causing it to burn for a several days. The damage was so bad that the Navy has said it will scrap the ship because the repair costs would be $3.2 billion.   Now Ryan Sawyer Mays has been charged as having caused the blast. The reason?: 

     

  • No one want to mention that photo? The only thing missing is his chin resting gently on his thumb of a closed fist. 

  • It's behind a paywall so you can't read the story, but it is literally about the dead body of Houston Lawyer John O’Quinn. That's clever headline writing. (His alleged common law wife is trying to move the body from Louisiana to Texas for burial. He was killed in 2009 in a car wreck and it's been a wild ride ever since. ) 

  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:30 AM

8.03.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




The days of the Wise County Tea Party as they were preparing to go to Houston for 
Gov. Perry's "Day of Prayer."   But, although they are long gone, the  the Tea Party basically 
became the Texas Republican Party.

  •  6,853 is the new August 1 number not yet reflected. This is about the number last summer when Abbott imposed a mask mandate statewide. Politics won't let him do that this time. 

  • Wise County's vaccination rate is 30.4%. Denton is 50.4%. Collin County is 55.4%. Jack County is 27.9%  and Montague County is 26.2%.   I see a pattern. (Just to be clear, that is a percentage of the entire population, including children which can't be vaccinated.)

  • Admittedly, not a good look. 

  • Wait a second. ZZ Top played a show on Friday after Dusty Hill died last Tuesday? Too soon?

  • State representatives took pointed shots at the President of UT yesterday for the school's decision to go to the SEC. But it was all for show. Here's TCU's attack. Here's Baylor's attack. But the Big 12 Commissioner in the background is how all of those left behind feel.

  • This is the senior from Southlake Carroll who thinks he can earn big money in NIL endorsements over the next year if he enrolls at Ohio State and skips his final season as the Dragons' quarterback. He's probably right. (For those interested, Luke 17:21 says, "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." KJV).

  • I've lauded the great book Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers before, and look what arrived in the mail yesterday! The author sent me a copy of his previous book. 

  • Wise County has open jail space and it looks like the Sheriff has imported some inmates from  from overcrowded Smith County to earn a buck.
  • The Fox News Twitter feed adopted my old Random Thought Girl bit yesterday.


  • I thought we didn't call them "ozone action days" any longer? As I always say, all that means is that it will be hot today but with little to no wind. Wind is the key.

  • The main part of Decatur's rain deluge on Sunday was down 380 towards Denton. 

  • DPS just added 145 new troopers -- the largest class ever. 

  • The con worked like this: People would fall for the Nigerian email scheme and ultimately reveal their login information for their teacher's retirement account. The account was then changed by the scammer to route retirement payments away from the employee's bank account and into a debit card held by the crook. 

  • People often ask how someone could fall for a Nigerian email because it is so obviously fake. Did you know that the scammers intentionally make the email poorly worded in order to suck in only the most gullible? They don't want to waste time having to weed out those who will likely eventually figure out the fraud. After all, if you send out millions of scam emails, it's too much work to try and pull off the con if you have a 50% response rate.   You'd rather have a tiny response rate of those absolutely ready to be conned. (Microsoft even had a statistician with a big brain research this who produced this work.)
  • They just keep coming. I swear I see a headline like this every couple of months. (By the way, in 1990 Celina's population was 1,893.)

  • Simone Biles won a bronze model in the balance beam this morning. 



at 8:32 AM
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