Random Monday Morning Thoughts

A massive gator was found in the Trinity River not far from Eagle Mountain Lake, and a controversy ensued as to why it was killed. 

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• Early run-off voting final numbers for Wise County. The 2,458 beat the 2,078 total from two years ago despite having four extra voting days back then.  But we probably have 48,000 registered voters in Wise County, Tomorrow is election day.
  
  
  
• Seen in Decatur this morning.
  
  
  
• The Loving County Judge got arrested for allegedly taking lost cattle for his own instead of selling them at public auction after notice as the law requires. Fun fact: The entire population of Loving County, Texas is 117.
  
  
  
  
  
• I finally got to a Texas Monthly feature article on Gov. Abbott on Saturday. This was the most interesting part: The amount of money he has received over his life from a lawsuit filed because a tree fell on him while jogging in the 1980s. He's still getting payments. 
  
  
  
• In revolution news that Americans just casually brush aside for some reason: 
• From Friday: More proof that we've got a judicially conflicted Supreme Court Justice with a crazy wife. 
  
  
  
• Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend was using his own social media network to repost seven QAnon posts and then went further by specifically reposting one urging a "Civil war."  He and his hardcore followers aren't going away.  (Hitler's Nazi party had just 37% of the vote in 1932, the rest of Germany turned the other cheek to his rantings, and he then relentlessly maneuvered himself into the leader of Germany as a dictator. The comparison is in plain sight.) 
  
  
  
• The Stormtroopers (actually the Hood County constable's office), are now doing a criminal investigation of the "book review committee" of Granbury ISD for not removing "objectionable" books. Note that it's the same constable constable who previously sent out an email instructing deputies to join Oath Keepers -- the same group whose leaders are now under indictment for Seditious Conspiracy related to January 6th. It's all in plain sight.
  
  
  
• From Saturday:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Baylor is getting "woke"?
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The event upon which this story happened in April, but it is now being picked up nationally.  Reading extremely between the lines, it sounds like the police question whether she was "abducted" from the Maverick's bathroom.  Not that it makes any difference -- persuading a 15 year old girl to run away with you is the functional equivalent of abducting her. 
  
  
  
• I've seen billboards in Decatur about "Bitcoin ATMs" and now a Fort Worth firm is expanding the practice in convenience stores. If you want to put paper U.S. Currency into a machine in exchange for "digital money" and pay 11% for your trouble, knock yourself out -- but I ain't joining you.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Dallas SWAT bragging about recklessly blasting through a backyard fence looking for drugs. (They failed to mention what they were looking for or what they did, or didn't, find. It could have been marijuana.)
  
  
  
• Random legal stuff: A federal judge issued a wild order last week in a California case where he recused himself because "I lost the ability to trust the honesty of defense counsel [and] I cannot take anything defense counsel states at face value."  Then it got weirder because he "sealed" the order after he recused himself.  Court watchers were able to grab a screenshot before that. Here's a Twitter thread of someone trying to unravel what happened. 
  
  
  
• Great and shocking thread about how Highland Park ISD was intentionally turned into a white enclave surrounded by Dallas ISD. 
  
  
  
• Tiger Wood's pain apparently really flared up after a string of bogeys on Saturday. He then withdrew. Told ya.