12.29.2023

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




This Texas case became even more noteworthy when two months later a grand jury declined to indict the man for the shooting. Years later, the New York Times covered the whole thing extensively here.


  • For a second there last night we thought we had another mass shooting as cops swarmed to the mall in Arlington. A spokesman "said shots rang about 7:30 p.m. The gunfire followed a fight between two groups of people on an escalator between Dick’s Sporting Goods and the skating rink."
     

  • Yesterday evening, Trump was barred from Maine's ballot and, unlike Colorado, this one actually goes into effect. (In other news yesterday, Michigan and California decided Trump was not barred by the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment.)

    • I'm really torn by Maine's decision. It just gives so much ammo to the MAGA Extremists. Then again, you read the ending of the opinion and it makes sense.  I'm just not real hip on a Secretary of State getting to make this call.

    • I wondered if there was an actual hearing before the ruling and there was. All eight hours of it are even online here.

  • This is weird. A woman was evicted in a Justice of the Peace court after a hearing -- a hearing she later said she didn't get notice of. She got a lawyer to ask the court for a copy of the notice letter, and he was provided one. But now a clerk has been indicted for creating it after the fact in Microsoft Word. Kind of makes you wonder how many other people were evicted without notice? If it were a one time thing, why not just admit you screwed up?


  • Bold move.


  • Insurrection social media banter yesterday:
    • Her:


    • Also her:


  • Now that's a headline that will get your attention.

  • The great Twitter account Traces of Texas posted this undated photo from Jacksboro. It's a store owned by H.H. McConnell who opened it after writing "Five Years a Cavalryman" in 1888. (Although I question his claim in that book that " I have seen the mercury 13° below zero more than once" in Jacksboro.) 

  • The Business Second in Warehouses™:

  • The greatness of the Pop Tarts Bowl was on full display last night when the mascot came out of a toaster to open the game.  At the end of the game, he went back into it and an edible version then appeared which, was in fact, eaten by the winners. Video.

  • Legal nerdy stuff: A big law firm was sued by another law firm because it claimed it created a copyright violation by copying verbatim its Motion to Dismiss. That's a thing? Apparently yes. There's even demand letter responses in this great thread. 

  • 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: 4 years and 186 days.

at 8:30 AM

12.28.2023

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




I'm not sure what prompted me to do an online poll 10 years ago, and I really couldn't believe the results of this question. 

  • Johnson County wreck update: We now know that six of the dead are from Georgia, and the wreck was caused when a 17 year old driver of the other vehicle was passing in a no passing zone.

  • Police Unnecessary Tools: Houston PD used a massive robot yesterday to destroy the cab of a truck just to to get a guy out of it when about a 1,000 different alternatives existed. Video.


  • That's one way to appeal to the Trump worshippers. Long live Jefferson Davis and the Lost Cause!  Video from last night.



  • The flu has been the reason for 11% of all ER visits in Tarrant County as of yesterday.  I know it is hitting Wise County. 


  • Mark Cuban finally appeared in front of reporters after the sale of the Mavericks was approved. I still say something weird is going on. 
    • Cuban, who has always incorrectly thought he was the smartest man in the room, doesn't think he can handle real estate investing? Jerry Jones has made a fortune in it "on the fly." And why does he think he is "having to invest" in real estate anyway? 


    • And this is just nonsensical rambling for a guy who always loved owning the Mavericks. He's lying.  

  • That's one way to keep from come getting beat. She'll move to the district "next year."


    • `Flashback: But it didn't work out for this guy.

  • The decision banning Trump from the Colorado ballot was officially, and somewhat quietly, appealed to the Supreme Court yesterday. That, and that alone, puts Trump's name back on the ballot, and it will stay that way unless the Supreme Court gets around to saying otherwise.
  • I don't think the arrest is related -- and it sure shouldn't be in this day and time. The guy hasn't played all year, and the Cowboys had to cut someone to make room for an incoming offensive lineman.

  • My recent swim through Mad Men caused me to do a double-take while having Love, Actually on during the holidays and seeing that the Wisconsin bar scene included Mrs. Donald Draper. 

  • Messenger - Above the Fold


at 8:31 AM

12.27.2023

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




A lady with only 170 followers on Twitter fired off what she thought was a throw-away funny line but became a viral sensation -- the bad kind -- in the meantime. It was also kind of the end of "it's just online between us friends" era. Anything can come back to haunt you. 

  • Bad wreck in Johnson County yesterday afternoon. All of the dead were in one vehicle - the one at the bottom of the photo below.




  • An 18 year old who was nine months pregnant and one week overdue was the subject of a missing persons alert earlier this week. Yesterday, she was found dead, along with her boyfriend, in a  hospital parking lot in San Antonio. According to the police chief, "It's a very, very perplexing crime scene. Detectives are looking at this as a possible murder, but we're not sure. We can't say for sure what we have." That's not a good sign. 


  • Let me tell you, I think the renter here is being a bit of a drama queen. I'm not particularly fired up for finding dope in my AirBNB, but I'm not calling the cops.  (Maybe it was when he complained about having to throw out his leftovers from "brunch" because he was moving to a hotel that got me. Or maybe it was the statement of  "They could’ve come back wanting to shoot my family." Settle down, fella.)

     



  • The video of Rep. Jeff Leach turned out to be a pretty big bag of nothing.  He basically went around a road closure, but got out of his vehicle briefly during the event. A right wing group associated with the Texas Oilmen PAC has the video now but just described it instead of releasing it to the public.

    • But I will say Leach acted very weird afterwards when he met the officers involved at a Starbucks and gave them gift cards. We do have have bodycam footage of it. And he comes across as inadvertently being a bit more-holier-than-thou: "This has nothing to do, I want you to hear me here, with me running for office, with me running for re-election, with me being an elected official. This is just me—Jeff Leach as a citizen—feeling really bad about what happened that day and just wanting to make things right with you."

  • Man, this time of year is always a struggle to find news story because all the newsrooms are off for the holidays. I'm dealing with headlines like this telling us that folks who went away do, in fact, have to come back. 

  • Trump posted this word cloud yesterday of what voters think a second Trump term would bring. He thinks "revenge" and "dictatorship" are selling points.  And he's not wrong among the Ultra-MAGA-extremists.   

  • The most annoying non-Trump Republican presidential candidate is all but dropping out of the race. 


  • The Business Second™: Mortgage rateS as of this morning. 

  • Tomorrow's Pop Tart Bowl not only has the greatest name, but it also has the greatest trophy -- complete with two of the pastries at the top.

  • Texas State, who I will always know as Southwest Texas State, won its first game ever last night. They beat Rice, 45-21.

at 8:31 AM
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