12.03.2021

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

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Random Friday Morning Thoughts





  • I'm hearing about all sorts of people running for elected office in Wise County, but the local Republican Party, which is the entity everyone files with, doesn't have a website listing those who will be on the ballot. Fix this!
  • A Decatur murder trial will start next week in Jacksboro on a change of venue due to publicity. It's now getting publicity in Jacksboro: 

  • I'm not sure who decided to have dramatic music running in the background in the interview of Alec Baldwin's by George Stephanopoulos, but that was a horrible decision. 

    • Everyone is jumping on Baldwin for saying he didn't "pull the trigger" pointing out that guns don't go off by themselves. That's true. But he pretty much explained it by saying he was in the process of cocking the gun and “I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off.” That'll do it. 
    • For the life of me, I don't know why live ammo was ever on the set. And why not just have the gun designated permanently as a "prop gun" and to never be loaded with ammo on the site or off.   
  • “Lovell’s public persona in his ‘bless your heart’ commercials portray him as a kind, gentle, caring grandfather. The truth is he is nothing but a dirty old man who preys on young, female employees,” the lawsuit states. Story. (Legal pleadings are getting more and more written for the media these days.)


  • Houston celebrity lawyer Tony Buzbee was on The Ticket's mid-day show yesterday. He's famous for running off  Aggie coach Kevin Sumlin, buying a tank and parking it in front of his house, having a girlfriend destroy $300,000 worth of art after a date, seemingly appearing drunk on election night when he ran for Houston mayor, and currently suing Houston Titans Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson along with everyone and their dog involved in the Astroworld concert tragedy.  Anyway, he said that any lawyer who tells the media "no comment" when asked about any litigation, civil or criminal, is doing his client a disservice. He may be a little crazy, but I agree with that. 

  • "This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process," the judge wrote as she sanctioned Lin Wood and Sidney Powell the amount of $175,250.37 for trying to defraud the court in one of their many bogus "Kraken" election lawsuits.


     
  • Speaking of crazy Lin Wood, he just posted a screenshot showing that, in 2014, Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden to write a letter of recommendation for his son in order to assist in trying to get into Georgetown. 

  • This sentence was buried in the story: "Acquittals are rare in Wichita County district courts." By comparison, Tarrant County has acquittals every week -- and just had two in the last couple of days. 

  • This should have got more attention yesterday. It's the same backwards and forwards even when turned upside down.  

  • For those of you familiar with Ron Jeremy, he does not look like he is doing well. 

  • Always check the x and y axis when those with an agenda -- even the Dirty Libs -- are using a graph. 

  • You'll see lots of photos on the Internet but this one, in a series of four, kind of stuck with me yesterday. Yep, it's floating.

  • There are 84 bowl eligible college football teams but, since there are only 41 bowl games, there's only room for 82 of them. So yesterday the NCAA added one more bowl. It will be played in Texas, but we don't know where. And we don't know when. 
  • Very nerdy legal bullet point for my bail bondsman and prosecutor friends: The Fort Worth Court of Appeals held yesterday that the State failed to provide sufficient summary judgment proof in a bond forfeiture case when it only proved that the defendant's name was called out, after he failed to show for court, at the courtroom door and not the courthouse door 
  • 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: 882 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

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12.02.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts





Baylor beat Texas ten years ago this week, 48-24. I was giddy. But I had forgotten about this photo of Mack Brown and RG3 meeting.   

  • Texas hospitalizations: It could be a blip, but I'm just about ready to call it the beginning of a Winter Surge. We've had five straight days of increases. We've not seen that since August.

  • Add another student has died in the mass shooting at the Michigan high school: Justin Shilling, 17.  

  • I saw the headline earlier yesterday morning about the cop shooting the guy in the wheelchair but decided not to post it. Why? Because I thought "Oh, there has to be something more to it -- he had to be pointing a gun at the cop or something." Nope. The cop unloaded nine shots into a guy in a motorized wheelchair as he was going into Lowe's.  Unedited video here. Graphic. 

    • Sometimes lawyers just need to shut up. (Yes, including me.) 


  • I didn't think you would be able to tell much from the Supreme Court abortion arguments yesterday, but people smarter than me sure think Roe v. Wade is doomed. It is absolutely amazing to me that, if it happens, it can 100% be attributable to Trump. And to think Ruth Bader Ginsberg's died less than two months before the election.  

  • Oh, my.  It was a bond reduction hearing via Zoom and the judge's screen was turned off.  The court coordinator's voice could clearly be heard. The bond was reduced from $100,000 for $25,000. The judge now claims she was actually on a speaker phone and communicating with the coordinator but no one on the Zoom hearing heard her.

  • One of the dumbest laws passed by the Texas legislature regulating the speech of a private company has already been struck down. And it will never survive any appeal because it is so bad. This isn't even close.  (Order here.)
    Then

    Now

    • "Once said?" He should always be saying it, because he's right.  Specifically, Twitter's not restricted ("bound") by it, but the company is certainly protected by it.  

  • I don't want to defend Trump, but there does seem to be a pretty big sentence overlooked by those reporting on the Guardian story about him testing "positive for Covid-19 three days before his first debate against Joe Biden." Sure he probably had COVID before the Tuesday debate (9/29/20) since he was hospitalized on the following Friday (10/2/21), but at least Trump could claim there was a second negative test before that debate -- depending on what "shortly after" means.

  • Ross Perot Jr. gave the Dallas PD a helicopter yesterday.  I hadn't seen him in years, and it reminded me of how we are all getting older. 


     

  • My morning radio show was struggling with the use of Mrs., Miss, and Ms. this morning.  I can't tell you the last time I've used "Mrs." or "Miss" in a formal letter. 
  • It's 90 days until the Texas primary. 
  • "CARLISLE, Iowa — A 17-year-old Carlisle High School basketball player is facing a felony Willful Injury charge after punching a Nevada player following a game Tuesday night." Video. It's pretty bad. 

  • College football preview for next year: Alabama comes to UT for the second game of the season. 
  • I had never heard of lawyer Thomas J. Henry before two months ago, but he has covered DFW in ads since then. He's spent a fortune, and they are pretty slick. I would think that would make guys like Ben Abbott rethink their strategy of doing bits in their commercials. 
    • Edit: A faithful reader just sent me a link where Thomas J. Henry once threw his son a $4 million birthday party. That comes on the heels, according to the story, of spending $6 million on his daughter Maya's quinceañera. Good lord.
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12.01.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Ten years ago to the day four very little children were killed in Bay City, Texas. Remember it? 
  • Another day in America where you send your kids to school and they die. This time in Michigan. Will we remember this one?   

    • Watch this video if you haven't seen it. 

    • And the dead have names and faces.
      17 year old Madisyn Baldwin

      16 year old Tate Myre

      14 year old Hana St. Juliana

  • It almost seems wrong to write about anything else. 
  • The Update has story about a murder in Boyd last night.
  • The Ghislaine Maxwell trial got started off with a bang. 

  • There was a heck of a Republican fight between the Jewish Space Laser representative and a South Carolina representative yesterday.



     
  • Despite what you will hear, we'll learn very little in oral arguments today in the Mississippi abortion case.

  • I'm not saying that it's the beginning of a Winter Surge, but it could be the beginning of a Winter Surge. 

  • A couple of facts have been revealed in the case of the alleged drunk driving death which killed an off duty police office in Lake Worth.  According to an affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram, the driver submitted to a breath test that came back at 0.144, and he "arrived at 11 a.m. Saturday at Fuzzy’s and began drinking, and left about 1 p.m."

  • I can't believe the Elizabeth Holmes trial is still going on -- she's been testifying this week -- and we learned this is an example of how she would write out her schedule. If your schedule is so packed, that seems like a lot of time wasted in writing it all out. (She actually says this was proof of the demands her boyfriend put upon her as he controlled and manipulated her.)


  • Another prosecutor story. "When one woman broke off a relationship with him, he subpoenaed her phone 33 times over two years, according to the indictment. She repeatedly told him to leave her alone, but he persisted." Yep, he was using grand jury subpoenas to spy on his past flings.

  • In this day of college coach turnover, it drives me nuts when people don't understand the term "buyout." Here we go: If a coach decides to leave before his contract ends, his contract "buyout clause", if there is one, will obligated the coach to pay the school a set amount of money (although the tab is often picked up by his new school.)  But if it is the school who fires the coach without cause (almost always the case), he is owed ever dime still left on the contract. Here's an example of a buyout paragraph: 

    • Some people get it absolutely backwards and say, "If there is no buyout clause then he gets no money if they fire him." Nope. If he gets fired, he gets all the money due him.  
  • The revised Big 12 will be on display this weekend in two championship games. 

  • Messenger: Above the Fold 

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