11.11.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




When the Messenger took on the War on Drugs. 

  • Not sure what the update is on this . . .

  • Senate update:
    • Nevada: Republican leads by 8,988 with 130,035 left to count. 

    • Arizona: Democrat leads by 115,037 with 527,715 left to count

  • This occurred last night by a the same Trump district judge in Fort Worth who who is always making the news because of his wild decisions.   This one will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit which is also full of Trump judges. Opinion is here.

    • On a related note of the sad state of our judiciary, watch a smiling Justice Alito, author of Dobbs, appear before the right wing Federalist Society at a dinner last night as the crowd gave him a rousing ovation.  This is really disturbing. 

  • Elon Musk's decision to allow any account to get a "verified" check mark for $8, is going really well. Examples below (all which went live -- and then Twitter can't ban them fast enough because everyone has been fired or quit): 



  • Inflation might have tailed off just a bit yesterday, but I really liked this chart showing inflation over the years.  The period of 1973-1985 was wild, and then we had a generation that didn't even know what inflation was. 

  • We have a winner in the Dallas County district judge's race which required voters to write-in a name. So how many votes does it take? 38,865 is number it took to win over two other write-in candidates. In the other "normal" judicial races on Tuesday in Dallas County, there were around 400,000 votes cast in each which meant you needed 200,000+ to win. 

  • Trump declared war on fellow Republican Ron DeSantis last night.  The first sentence of the statement was 88 words. It's the kind of thing that would cause an immediate family intervention to be called if your crazy uncle posted it. 

    • Seriously, what are the Republicans going to do with Trump? He may be about to destroy the party's best chance to win the Presidency in 2024.  And the Republican primaries and the debates would a wheels off circus. Let's do it! 

  • I present to you a very confusing photo posted on the Messenger's twitter account last night as they covered the Alvord playoff game. (Click to enlarge.) I love this so much. 


  • Remember yesterday when I made fun of 300,000 in Tennessee for voting to approve slavery for prisoners?  I missed a very big related story: 

  • College NIL flashback and news: 
    • I said this the day after NIL payments were authorized:

    • Yesterday we had the equivalent of a SuperPAC (or probably a combo of already existing SuperPACs):

  • I've got a bad feeling about TCU on Saturday. 
  • Cyrptocurrency exchange FTX just declared for bankruptcy. 
  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 3 years, 129 days.
  • Messenger - Above the Fold

Remember, the have gun boats!


at 8:31 AM

11.10.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



That was in reference to Roanoke, Texas, and I was right. There's even a Wikipedia entry about the odd number of crashes and fatalities there "between 22 September and 3 November 2012."  Since then, I had forgotten that Roanoke even had an airport. (Oh, I can't find the video I referenced.)

  • Liberally Lean Weather Bulletin: My crack and highly compensated staff has issued a Wise County alert that it's about to get cold. It will be 63 degrees at midnight and then get ready: 
    • When you wake up: 50 degrees
    • By 10:00 a.m.: 47 degrees
    • By 2:00 p.m.: 46 degrees
    • By 7:00 p.m.: 42 degrees
    • By midnight: 39 degrees
    • Saturday morning: 33 degrees
  • Counties won by Beto:

  • Senate update: Three states are left and both parties need to win two of three for control. Arizona and Nevada are up in the air, and Georgia is headed to the run-off.  I don't think any of them can be safely predicted right now. As of this morning:
    • In Arizona, the Democrat has a 95,318 lead with an estimated 595,483 still to be counted.

    • In Nevada, the Republican has a 15,812 lead with an estimated 165,713 still to be counted. 

  • Quacking? (By the way, she won re-election with 66% of the vote. Incredible.)

    • Her crazy cohort is in a barn-burner. She's behind by 64 votes with 5% still to be counted. 

  • We will never hear about "rainbow fentanyl" again. 
  • The biggest loser on Tuesday must have been Trump because the conservatives are dog-piling him . . . 
    • The conservative Wall Street Journal:

    • The very conservative and Murdock owned New York Post. Ouch:  

    • Drudge (who has always hated Trump): 

    • The obnoxious Mark Levin (who started as a never-Trumper but then transitioned to a Trump suck-up): 

  • For the life of me, I don't know why the Republicans in the Senate didn't go along with the impeachment of Trump after January 6th. Not only was it well deserved, but that would have triggered a life-time ban from federal office. They would be done with him.  But I pray he runs. And he still has a "big announcement" scheduled for next Tuesday.

  • Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn's jail hands down the death penalty far more than Texas juries:

     
  • The U.S. Constitution actually expressly permits slavery for those incarcerated. Some states want to prevent that by amending their own state constitutions to prohibit slavery of prisoners. Tennessee did that on Tuesday. But just think about the 318,000 people who looked at the ballot and thought "Slavery? Good idea!"

  • I listened to WBAP this morning for a sec and heard Hal Jay and Ernie Brown spending a segment discussing whether Brittney Griner "hates America" because she once took a knee during the national anthem. Neanderthals. 

  • Something is going on in the seedy crypto market. Bitcoin plummeted 25% on the news of the implosion of FTX (who, by the way, has multi-million naming rights contract for the Miami Heat's arena and Cal's stadium.)  And that's about all I know of crypto -- other than it is snake oil.

  • Legal nerdy stuff: Most of the newly approved Denton pot ordinance is a big bag of nothing because they can't legally do anything which contradicts state law. But one provision of the ordinance (according to this article) is that Denton Police can no longer use the odor of marijuana as probable cause to search a vehicle. You know, that might be OK.  State and federal law certainly allows the odor of marijuana to be probable cause but that's not the same as mandating a search based on the odor. 

at 8:29 AM

11.09.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Although Democrats then took a "shellacking" in the mid-terms.

  • But there was no shellacking last night. I'm pretty sure the Republicans will win control of the House as expected, but it will be just barely. And this was with all the gerrymandering to help them. There's still 63 races to count. And there definitely was no Red Wave. 

    • To be clear, these are the projections from NBC News from just seconds ago: 

  • The Senate is leaning to staying with Democrats. Stay with me here. Yesterday I said it came down to Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona. Democrats needed to win 2 of 3 to keep the Senate. So here we go:
    • Fetterman beat Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania. That's one. 

    • Arizona has a long way to go, but looks safe for Democrats. That would be two of three. 

    • Georgia almost certainly goes to a run off. But with Arizona and Pennsylvania wins above, it won't matter

    • But wait! Nevada somewhat unexpectedly is becoming a problem for Democrats. If Masto loses this one,  the Georgia run-off will be back in play for all the marbles:
    • UNLESS: Republicans unexpectedly lose Wisconsin then Georgia doesn't matter again and Democrats maintain control.  I think this is unlikely. 
  • Texas is still Texas. In fact, I think the trend of moving towards Blue has hit a wall if not regressing.


    • I'm not sure when we next see a Democrat win a state wide race in Texas. Twenty years ago, I would have thought it would happen by now. Now I'm not sure it will happen in the next twenty years. 

  • Wise County is still very much Wise County. (Complete final results here.) 

  • The most shocking result of the night comes from Uvalde County.  The man told you that it "could have been worse" than the 19 dead children you had to bury in small coffins. This is jaw-dropping:

  • Arizona's version of Trump-cloned-as-a-polished woman is having trouble at the moment:


  • Trump and his Insurrectionists are also having nightmares for other reasons:
    • Nightmare #1:


    • Nightmare #2:

       
    • And for icing on the cake. 

  • Oh, please let this happen.  

    • You might remember Boebert from posing in a silly picture with our own Rep. Ronny Jackson (who overwhelming won again last night meaning most voters don't know of his history or don't care -- probably the latter.)

  • Even Tarrant County is far from going Blue and has hit a wall. Across the board, this Republican margin of victory up and down the county's ballot is almost uniform to the results of the county judge's race. And it's all straight ticket voting (even though you can no longer just vote straight ticket with one vote.) 


  • Changing subjects to end this. A new Texas Monthly reading. 

  • Messenger - Above the Fold


at 8:34 AM
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