11.17.2023

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




By all reports, it was the first tie vote anyone could remember in Wise County. Of course, they didn't take my advice, it went to a second vote, and Sanders won by a not-so-close 120-34.

  • A misdemeanor assault case tried to a jury in Wise County was affirmed on appeal yesterday. 
    • Legal nerdy stuff: Oral arguments in that case were only 10 days ago. The speed from oral argument to written opinion might be some kind of record, 
  • I clicked on this headline to find out what happened to the dog, and determined that they might have buried the lede: "The Parker County Sheriff's Office says deputies, along with Weatherford police K9 officer Jack, were serving a warrant on Hancock Drive around 7:30 p.m. when the person they were serving fired at the deputies. Officers returned fire, killing the person they were serving."

  • The Texas House could vote today on school vouchers.   It will take a handful of Republicans who care about public schools, along with all the Democrats, to kill it. 

  • Breaking Politics: Attorney General Ken Paxton has endorsed the opponent of Jacksboro's David Spiller.  And he wasn't kind in doing it. Good lord!

  • Formula One is on the streets of the Las Vegas strip this weekend. The practice session, which started at 8:30 p.m. last night, was shutdown after nine minutes when the Ferrari car, driven by Carlos Sainz, hit a drain cover causing significant engine and frame damage." (Video: Driver view. Spectator, in a restaurant, view.)  The practice session didn't begin again until 2:30 a.m. and all fans were banned. It's going great. 

  • The painter (yes, painter) of the Jaws shark and swimmer has died.  The image was first created for the paperback edition of the book and was later used for the movie poster. One of the most iconic images of all time. 

  • The habitually lying Rep. George Santos finally said he won't seek re-election yesterday after a scathing House Report found, among other things, that he used campaign funds on OnlyFans. (He once denied knowing what OnlyFans was on Fox Business where the interviewer responded, in a fantastically funny way, "you just can't tell the truth." Video, 22 seconds long, here.)

  • Something weird is going on here.

  • Back in the day we would have said these guys look like "punks." "Five incidents were reported to police between 10:50 a.m. and 12:37 p.m. The residents said someone with a pellet gun in a grey sedan shot at them. Four residents were hit by the pellets, in another incident the pellet hit and shattered a storm door.  Three people hit by the pellets were taken to the hospital."

  • I didn't expect Osama Bin Laden to make headlines this week.  It all started when some young lady with only 371 followers on TikTok posted a video expressing her surprise at how eye-opining Bin Laden's 2002 Letter to the American People was.  Then things got weird when, with the help of Twitter, the video and comments went viral with people supporting her views and criticizing them. Then things got even weirder when TikTok banned the video, prohibited any similar ones, and The Guardian, which had first printed the letter and kept it on its website for over 20 years, took it down. (Here's a smart article on Slate discussing it all.)



  • Let's check in on Fox News.  I swear, that network spends all day trying to find something to be pissed off about. 

  • Legal nerdy stuff: Dear judges, don't do stuff like this. It doesn't make you "cool."

  • New episode of my show, It's Warehouses, People!™:

  • Idiocracy: "The Big 12 and WWE will introduce a custom-made title belt for this year’s Most Outstanding Player, a co-branded logo in-venue and on-field, and other Championship integrations featuring WWE Superstars." Official press release.

  • Random high school playoff score from last night: Brock won 76-13 over Muleshoe after leading at halftime, 62-0.
  • 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 134 days.


at 8:30 AM

11.16.2023

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



I still can't believe this happened. Full post, with more of the transcript, here.

  • Yep, Wise County on the Web was down yesterday. It's back up now. 
  • The Washington Post has an article/photo essay today of the carnage capabilities of an AR-15, and it includes never before seen photos of Uvalde and other mass shootings. Don't look away.  (Free link.) 


  • Fun fact: When President Biden met with Chinese President Xi yesterday, they did so in the house featured in the opening credits of Dynasty. 



  • My favorite part of this story, other than his head tattoo, is that he told the officers "he could 'order up to a pound of methamphetamine' and 'a bunch of guns' in exchange for letting him go."


  • Speaking of face/head tattoos, this great picture comes out of a trial in Wichita Falls. I love the expression of his public defender in the foreground. (Credit to Trish Choate who I've praised before for her writing up there, but she's also now a great photographer.) 

  • Legal stuff: In the Georgia election-overturn case, videos of prosecutor interviews of Sydney Powell and Jenna Ellis were leaked to the press and yesterday, in a hearing about how it happened, a lawyer fessed up to it so "he could sleep at night."  It's not hard to be honest. (Audio.)

  • Greg Abbott is using your taxpayer dollars to support Trump for a media photo-op in Texas.  Incredible.  

  • Bus drivers needed in Brock. Especially today:

  • It's been slow, but we will finally start seeing more and more of this. 

  • I like my Jesus to be good looking, too. But you think at least one would have a tuxedo t-shirt.

     

  • Messenger - Above the Fold. 

at 8:32 AM

11.15.2023

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




The former Williamson County prosecutor of Michael Morton, who withheld evidence which resulted in the innocent Morton wrongly serving over 20 years in prison, began his punishment of a whopping 10 days in jail.  He served only three and was released ten years ago today. He had finally resigned his position as district judge only two months earlier.

  • A little unusual arrest last night in Wise County. Edit: Oh, my. This is what you think per the Update.

  • So I dedicated a full bullet point to this guy yesterday who had actually announced he would leave Congress and had formally filed for a Texas senate run, and then later in the day he completely changed his mind. Clown move.

  • Inflation numbers came out yesterday and they continue to fall. The stock market, and people's 401(k)s, rallied. Oh, and gas is around $2.69. What's everyone complaining about again?

  • We almost had a fight between a U.S. Senator and the president of the Teamster's Union.  I think I'd bet on the Teamster guy. Here's the full six minute exchange which is wildly entertaining, and is right out of Idiocracy. 



    • This tweet by the Teamster head about the senator earlier this year seems to be the cause of all of this. 

  • David Spiller's (R-Jacksboro) immigration bill finally passed yesterday. It will be struck down in record time, but it finally passed.


  • Trump urging a "citizen's arrest" of the judge and the prosecutor in his civil fraud case is basically asking his mob of MAGA stormtroopers to take them hostage. I don't know how he gets away with that. 


  • Let's check in on the Fox Business Channel. Fabio?!

  • Step aside Delkus! "WASHINGTON POST - A new computer model to predict the weather built by Google and powered by artificial intelligence consistently outperforms and is many times faster than government models that have existed for decades." Of everything AI can do -- and I use it all the time and find it the most fascinating and helpful tool since the invention of the Internet -- weather predicting is perfect. Taking massive amounts of data and applying it against a set of rules. 


  • The Business Second™: I have never heard of this store, but it's opening up at the ever growing shopping area at I-35 and 287 (the Presidio part to be exact.) It has "versatile workwear [for] skilled trade workers in industries like oil, gas, manufacturing and construction." 

  • Kinda Legal Stuff: The new House Speaker is everything you would expect:

  • Random shot of Boyd's stadium. The school indicated last night that it's willing to host playoff games as a neutral site after Thanksgiving since finding stadiums on that Friday and Saturday across the state apparently isn't easy. That's really nice turf. Bright endzones. Alternating green print on the field, too. Thumbs up.

  • (Below.) Rep. Stucky hasn't even said how he would vote on vouchers. But I can't believe he would be in favor of trying to gut public schools by funneling your tax dollars to private schools with no rules or accountability . . . 


at 8:31 AM
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