10.20.2023

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




The government shutdown was over funding for Obamacare, but the GOP finally gave up. But look at that young and thin Ted Cruz.  

  • Highway 287, south of Decatur and all the way to the Wise County line, is a disaster these days. There's a wreck seemingly every day. 
    • Early this morning, southbound traffic before and after Rhome was shut down due to a wreck(s) with a traffic backed up for miles as it was diverted off the highway. 
    • Last night around 9:00 p.m. a motorcycle accident south of Decatur on 287 required an emergency airlift. 
  • The cartoon continues. They will vote again today at 9:00 a.m. CST for a House Speaker. There's no way Jordan wins, and I don't even know why they are going through the motions. They might want to try nominating someone who didn't try to overthrow the government. 


  • In the Georgia Election Stealing Attempt case against Trump and 17 of his co-conspirators, one of the biggest (and craziest) fish of all pled guilty yesterday. 

  • The last remaining case against Baylor because of the scandal has gone to trial in Waco. It's a Title IX case, and I'm not sure it is going very well for the Plaintiff.  Interestingly, she's now a Justice of the Peace in Harris County where she was elected as a Democrat. 
    Yep, that's Briles. 

  • Judge shot to death last night at his home in Maryland. Reports this morning are that police are looking for a 49 year old man who had a custody hearing before him yesterday.  


  • It was one of the running bits in the movie Idiocracy that all public signs were misspelled.


  • Buried in the news was a legislative hearing in Austin yesterday which heard from, based upon the far-right's insistence, witnesses regarding a community called Colony Ridge near Houston. The propaganda was that it was an illegal immigration haven where crime runs wild. It all turned out not to be true. 

  • Wannabe stormtroopers for Trump cost taxpayers a bag of cash.  

  • Oh, no! My award wining business investing show on CNBC, It's All About Warehouses, People™, might be in trouble.

  • Random high school score from last night: Mansfield Timberview 90, Dallas Sunset 0.  Sunset had minus 24 in total yards. 
  • Random fact from the Rangers game last night: Astro's pitcher Ryne Stanek threw only one pitch. And he was credited with the official win. 
  • 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 106 days.

at 8:30 AM

10.19.2023

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




I tried to find the source on this old bullet point but the link, which went to a Google Doc, was dead. 

  • It looks like all signs are pointing to is being an errant Hamas missile that hit the Gaza hospital. 

    • There were about six hours on Wednesday where everyone seemed to blame Israel for the blast.  From a journalistic standpoint, lots of eyes have been on the New York Times and how their initial headline led the charge. The first one started the narrative -- and putting "Palestinians Say" at the end of it is almost too late from a psychological standpoint. It then morphed as more information became available.

    • Even if the hospital story report turned out to be wrong, it's kind of a red herring. Israel has still bombed Gaza incessantly since the weekend attack by Hamas and have killed over 3,300 in the process.


    • Protestors in D.C. yesterday don't want Israel to bring the hammer down any further on innocent Palestinians. 

  • The cluster continues.

    • Fort Worth's rep held the line in refusing to vote for a man deep inside the planning of the Insurrection.

    • Wise County's representative went Ultra-MAGA lapdog. And is still committed (or perhaps even married according to his language) to Jordan.

  • I didn't know Northwest ISD had purchased land alongside 287 in Rhome for a future high school -- although it might be 15 years before it is built. 

  • Probably the only Paxton defense lawyer during the impeachment trial who was actually good at his job is now running to become part of the Texas legislature.


  • That's a heck of a screenshot. (Video.)

  • Burt Young, who played Paulie in the Rocky movies, has died. He was age 35 when the first one was released. 

  • So close to the name of a fancy mustard.

  • Extremely legal nerdy stuff: A very odd and extended rant yesterday in a four judge concurrence in the Court of Criminal Appeals about (1) how unethical the State was in the case, and (2) how dumb it is that Texas law requires any legal opinions released in a case to be wiped from the books if the defendant dies before the case becomes final.  Good explainer thread about the opinion here.

  • Messenger - Above the Fold



at 8:20 AM

10.18.2023

Random Wednesday Morning Thought




That's a section of a railroad track on a drawbridge which lifts to allow river traffic in Florida. That's a also a lady who got stuck on it once it began to rise. Story. 

  •  
  • Jonathan Stickland, the head of the West Texas Oil Man PAC who met with a neo-Nazi, is gone. There's no word yet on whether his consulting company, Pale Horse Strategies, which the PAC paid a shocking $828,000 to  in 2022, will still have the PAC as a client.  The meeting with the Nazi happened in its offices. 

  • Israel/Gaza: What a mess.
    • As President Biden was basically on the tarmac to go to Israel, a rocket hit a hospital in Gaza killing hundreds.  That's bad. Real bad. 


    • The initial reaction was that Israel had hit the hospital and, if it were true, the Middle East was about to come a bigger mess.  Arab protests fired up  across the Middle East and a "Day of Anger" was declared.  Who could blame them? 

    • President Biden was to meet with Arab leaders in Jordan after going to Israel, but that country cancelled the visit in light of the hospital bombing. This was getting complicated.
       
    • But then Israel says it wasn't them -- that is was a misfired Hamas rocket that landed on the hospital. And last night they offered some proof, but Israel has been know to fudge the facts in these situations. True or not, President Biden landed in Israel a couple of hours ago and hugged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he stepped off the plane. 

    • So who is responsible for the hospital bombing? President Biden said this in his first public comments about it:  

    • What a mess indeed. Who actually bombed the hospital may no longer matter, because this is dangerously close to spiraling out of control.  The President is in the middle of a powder keg -- a keg which seems much more dangerous than the Ukraine conflict ever was. 
  • Meanwhile, things were normal back in America. We had a courtroom brawl in Houston yesterday. Video.
     

  • The Clown Show continues. 

  • I didn't even know he was required to. Story.

  • Legal nerdy stuff related: On Monday, Trump had a "gag order" issued on him in his Insurrection D.C. case, and I finally tracked down the Order.  Anyone want to define "target" for me?

  • This is an odd story just hitting the news. A Fairfield lady died this summer after getting an "IV therapy" at a spa in Wortham. (Both Fairfield and Wortham are southwest of Dallas.)  It's just now getting press because the doctor from Frisco in charge of the IV treatments, who visited the spa only three times, had his license suspended.



  • Let's check in on Fox News:

  • Man, I love sports shots with clear views of the crowd. 

  • You think we've got a current headache with lawyers in a Capital Murder case here in Wise County, at least we are not Potter County where new lawyers had to appointed when a defendant's current attorney's law license was suspended by the State Bar. 

at 8:30 AM
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