5.20.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Good grief. That's still harsh 10 years later.

  • Rhome politics is a mess. A council member is suing the new mayor over her Facebook comments (No. CV22-04-251), and at this week's council meeting the mayor and the city administrator went at each other.   The council meeting is on YouTube and it gets pretty entertaining if you have a few minutes, and I've got it cued up for most relevant parts here. (There is a bizarre "You got served" audio that comes from somewhere around 1:05.00, then the audio gets bad for about 60 seconds before getting better. The best part of the argument is at 1.18.00 or so. But it's all entertaining if you like train wreck meetings.)

  • He is still at it. A liar, and a clear and present danger to democracy.

  • I'm no political consultant but, if I'm Chuck Schumer, I'd have my sign maker increase the size of the font of the word "for" in his sign yesterday.

  • A Play In Three Acts
    • Act I: Get ahead of a bad story that is coming by calling it "political."

    • Act II: Decide that wasn't good enough. Call something coming an attack specifically by Democrats and that the attack is imminent. Get Republicans on my side.

    • Act III: Next day the story breaks which otherwise would have nothing to do with politics.

    • Encore after Elon has left the building: She says he offered to buy her a horse?
  • The President is in South Korea right now in case you didn't know. 

  • A couple of not guilty verdicts in Tarrant County felony cases this week. 

  • The January 6th Committee now wants an audience with a Georgia Republican who they believe led a tour of the Capitol building on January 5th -- something which he previously denied under oath. 

  • Defeated freshman Congressman Madison Cawthorn posted a rambling threat yesterday, but what the heck is "Dark MAGA?" They worse than regular MAGA?

  • Random killing on a house boat near Galveston seems fairly interesting. Rest of story here.

  • Don't forget that the TDC escaped inmate is still on the run.

  • Sports quick hits:
    • The fight between Alabama Nick Saban and Aggie's Jimbo Fisher is great, and Jimbo is a genius for calling a press conference yesterday just to go on the attack. That only endears him to Good Ags everywhere. (Although Jimbo does sound a lot like King of the Hill's Boomhauer when he speaks.)

    • College football is breaking right before our eyes. One of the best receivers in the country quit his school to go play for USC and a big bag of cash. 

    • No way!

    • Once Tiger Woods has a couple of bogies, he suddenly starts to limp. But it seems to only happen once his wheels start to shoot off. 

  • 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: 1,050 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:32 AM

5.19.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts





I've been in the accurate criminal justice prediction business for a long time. 

  • Deadly shooting this morning at the gates of Lockheed Martin (where lots of people from Wise County work.)  Edit/Update: It was suicide. 


  • Trump continues to be a clear and present danger to the United States.  Yesterday, with mail-in votes in Pennsylvania having to be counted before we know the results of their Senate election, he did exactly what he tried to do in his last weeks in office when he attempted to overthrow our government.  He explained the exact same game plan that he used: Lie about the facts - call it an attempted stolen election without evidence -- and try to seize power. 

    • He doesn't even care or realize that this time he's lying about other Republicans "stealing an election." 
    • That should be an exhibit in a trial against Trump for the January Insurrection if we had an AG who cared about enforcing treason laws. He has always admitted his crimes in plain sight. 
  • The New Yorker pegged the new governor-elect in Pennsylvania's rise to power over a year ago and explained how he's part of the new Christian Nationalist moment. This excerpt is perfect. 


  • Former Ticket host and Boyd's own, Greg "The Hammer" Williams, has apparently had a heart attack.

  • Amazingly, last night nine Republicans voted against allowing low-income parents to use WIC benefits to have more options to buy baby formula.  The final vote in favor of the proposal to help the poor was 413-9. The nine was composed of a who's-who of nutcases.


  • Of Tarrant County interest: Below is a list of the top contributors to Matt "I Ban Books" Krause who is in a run-off for Tarrant County DA. A spreadsheet of all his contributors should be here.
    Highlighted is West Texas rich man oil money

    • Here is a link to the PDF of opponent Phil Sorrells' most recent campaign financial filing.
  • This was both pretty funny and awkward from yesterday. The moment he said "Iraq" he recognized the irony but he tried to lean into it. Video.

  • I could have saved them a lot of money for the time they spent on that poll.

  • And we wonder where people learn to hate.

  • I'm tempted to go down a rabbit trail. I glanced at a rather innocent looking story in the Dallas Morning News about Fort Worth's Fred’s Texas Cafe new location on Camp Bowie West. Then I learned it sits on the property of an old Steak and Ale -- the same restaurant location of a capital murder crime scene in 1989. And a link in the story led to an article from 2012 was about a court temporarily stopping the defendant in that crime from being executed because the State was medicating him in order to make him competent so they could legally kill him.  I had to stop for the time being at that point, but I didn't want to.  

  • I had Bridgeport childhood flashbacks when I saw this yesterday. I climbed up in that thing many a time. 

  • Say what? She Hulk - Attorney at Law? It's real and part of the Disney and Marvel series which presumably means it is made by people who know what they are doing.  Trailer. It looks horrible.

  • He got lucky yesterday, but so far we were supposed to be on our way to "EIGHT" possible record highs. We've had only one (Sunday).

  • Sound of Music news.

  • Legal nerdy stuff that I don't understand: Did the Fifth Circuit just dismantle the SEC yesterday? Have they gone that crazy?
  • I chose it because of the picture and the Cruz headline . . .  



at 8:31 AM

5.18.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




This was about a softball game for little girls. How weird were those rules?

  •  Election results:
    • Trump backed Dr. Oz will have to wait for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania to be counted before he will know if he won. Obviously, if he loses there was extreme mail-in voter fraud. If he wins, everything is copacetic. (And Sean Hannity's effort two days ago to sabotage Kathy Barnette worked.)

    • The Republican nominee for Pennsylvania Governor will be a full blooded QAnon and White Christian Nationalist.  He also marched on the Capitol as a Trump Insurrectionist and was so involved in the "Fake Electors" plot that he was subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee.


    • MAGA Man Down: Madison Cawthorn lost the Republican nomination in North Carolina. Being an Insurrectionist wasn't enough to bring him down, but once he started bragging about Republican sex parties and cocaine use, the party turned on him. You can't cross that line. 

  • After a video of the incident appeared online, Coppell ISD seems to have found itself in hot water for suspending a victim of an assault for three days but the bully only for one day. And the school district deleting its Twitter account in the midst of the outrage is not a good look. 



  • A jury panel was called up to the Wise County Courthouse yesterday for a criminal case involving a Chico man, but something went wrong during jury selection and 12 people couldn't be selected.  I still haven't received the details. 
  • Twitter and Elon musk traded barbs yesterday.  I told you I didn't think this deal would ever go through, and it will never go through. 


  • As an award winning self-proclaimed political expert, let me give Beto a little advice: Get off the guns. You want to be pro-weed, pro-legalized gambling, or even pro-choice? Jump on it. But being anti-gun is not a winning issue in Texas. 

  • Two cave-ins involving sand killing kids in two different parts of the country. 


  • It could be behind a paywall, but here is McCartney's 36 song set list, a review, and some quick loading videos from his concert last night. (Nope, I didn't go. Gordon Keith on The Ticket said this morning that he bought tickets yesterday on the secondary market - sounded like Stubhub or something similar -- for $750 a ticket before fees.)
    Arriving at Dickie's Arena yesterday.

  • Delkus update. The point of this was to prove 10 day forecasts are silly and usually have some fear built into them for ratings. Such is the case here. (Although he might get lucky over the next couple of days before the cool weekend hits.)

  • This will only be relevant to people my age, by the character who played Charlene Darling of the Darling Mountain Family from the Andy Griffith Show has passed away.  It's amazing how well-written that show was (along with The Dick Van Dyke Show and Green Acres and the like) even though television was just in its early stages.  And after watching Being the Ricardos the other day, I've even got a new appreciation even for the subtleties of I Love Lucy. Compare all of those to the cringy writing and over-acting of, say, Three's Company, Happy Days, and other shows of the 1970s.

  • Even Jerry knows there's money in warehouses.

  • I like this photo on the cover of the Abilene paper today.

  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)