2.02.2024

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Well, that was awful and depressing. It happened in Depoy, Kentucky.

  • District re-alignment for Wise County schools in football was announced.   Decatur has become part of Fort Worth - and I think almost all those teams are historically awful. As far Bridgeport, I wasn't familiar with "Eagle Mountain" High School. And for good reason -- it opens this Fall.




  • The Liberally Lean Weather Team forecasts rain beginning late this afternoon with the heaviest downpour at 10:00 p.m. 
  • Crazy good national job numbers (yet again) were just released.
  • Here's dashcam video of the car going over the Woodall Rogers flyover killing four. "The two women have been identified as Sabria Lacey and Raejon Aubert while the two men have been identified as Alexander Gowans and Isaiah Lisbon." All are in their early 20s, and the car was stolen. 

  • Not sure what's going on here. The Alert was "issued [yesterday] for 37-year-old Lacey Lyn Overby after police said she was abducted from a fast food restaurant in Lancaster while buying a meal for a man believed to be homeless." She was "found" in Laredo. That's all we know. 


  • I think they are going to convict the mass shooter's mom in Michigan. I like her testifying yesterday, but I didn't like the way she testified. Cross-examination begins this morning, and you can watch it on YouTube. (And I've come around a little on her defense lawyer. She's still in over her head but, man, she takes the case personally. I appreciate that.) 

  • There's a wacky case going on in Waco where a lady is charged with manslaughter and failure to stop and render aid of a Baylor student. She didn't get arrested until an anyonoums tip was sent in two years later. Good details here.



  • Put me in the group.

  • Two days ago there was great fanfare as tech company heads appeared before Congress so Congressman could get their sound-bites.  Lindsey Graham was one of them. You could say the same thing to AR-15 manufacturers, right?

  • Mar-a-Largo post-trial party pic.

  • Tech stuff
    • This New York Times article praises the use of Perplexity as a Google search replacement. It's pretty cool. 

    • Apple's first shot at VR is expensive and a little clunky, but this concept is fantastic. We can go anywhere in the world and visit in person with anyone we want without leaving our chair. 

  • The Business of Warehouses Second™.

  • Fun college football fact: The following are conference games that all occur on the same weekend (October 26th) this Fall. Try to explain that to yourself two years ago.

  • 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 221 days.

at 8:31 AM

2.01.2024

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




Forgot about that.

  • A little excitement at Decatur High yesterday.
  • "Early this morning: Irving police chased the suspected stolen vehicle approximately 12 miles to the 35/Woodall Rodgers interchange [in downtown Dallas]. They say the driver lost control and plunged off the flyover to the ground below killing the 4 inside."


  • The front page of the Messenger has a story of how the Texas Oilman PAC, which was recently embroiled in a White Supremacy controversy, has donated $5,000 to one of the Wise County Sheriff candidates.  That's noteworthy but nothing like the $155,000 (here and here) given to the opponent of incumbent Texas House Rep. Dr. Lynn Stucky -- a blatant attempt to buy our election by outsiders. 
  • TxDOT is advertising in the Messenger about a public hearing regarding a new interchange for highway 287 and 1810 just north of Decatur.  That looks like a new segment of a highway they are proposing.  
    Red arrows added by my Graphics Department.

  • Is Ken Paxton trying to make everyone hate him?


  • Insurrection update. (Video of the moment.)


  • Police say that folks were dealing meth out of a Dairy Queen in Clifton, Texas.


  • No one crashes jets for no apparent reason like the U.S. military.

  • This is at the Northpoint development right at the Wise/Tarrant County line. Story.

  • Messenger - Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM

1.31.2024

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




From a post of mine on 2/1/14.

  • Last day of January, 2024.

  • Woah. This was a case out of White Settlement and handled by the Tarrant County DA's office. Defense lawyers were Brett Boone and Blake Burns. Prosecutors were Matt Rivers and Jasmine Banks.

  • Uh.



  • To review, Paxton admitted in his pleadings in a Whistleblower suit that he did all the bad things the plaintiffs said that he did. That, he says, should prevent him from having to give a deposition. The trial judge said no, he must testify. Paxton immediately went to an appellate court who ruled against him. Then he went to the Texas Supreme Court who bailed him out yesterday, for now. 

    • Very legal nerdy stuff: The plaintiffs' response has a really interesting discussion of what in the heck is supposed to happen when a defendant answers a lawsuit but then "admits"  (kind of) the allegations. Basically, this has never happened and there's no clean cut procedural rules in Texas as to what to do next.
  • As a recognized political expert, I don't think this seems to be a winning strategy. And if you think their war isn't real, watch this incredible Fox News compilation where MAGA is obsessed with their conspiracy filled Taylor Swift fantasies. 

  • If these money grabbing trumped up trials lead to Roundup being taken off the market, I'll scream. I've used a ton of it for 25 years and will continue to use it. 

  • I've got a DPS story.
    • My license is set to expire and I've had a appointment, scheduled online, for several weeks. It's been scheduled for several weeks because DPS is apparently so busy that it takes that long to get the first available appointment. 
    • But I had some time yesterday so I thought I would go down early to the Decatur DPS office to see if I could get a walk-in appointment. I was told online that there would be a "kiosk" there where I could see if they could get me in.
    • As I walk in, there's a piece of paper taped to the door that says walk-in appointments can be scheduled online beginning at 7:45 a.m.   It was 8:15.  I scanned the QR code on the sign (there is no "kiosk") and walked in.
    • A very nice lady asked me if I had an appointment, and I said I didn't. She told me the same thing that the sign did: Go online to see if any slots were available.
    • I told her I was doing that right now on my phone as, thinking of sitting down, I looked at a ton of empty seats. At that point she told me, "OK, but you can't hang out in a public building." 
    • [Insert extreme record scratch sound going off in my head.]
    • The best retort I had was, "Really,? You can't 'hang out' in public building?" To her credit, she remained pleasant, but she maintained her unique interpretation of "public."
    • So I walked outside  -- I thought about asking if it was permissible to "hang out in a public parking lot" but I didn't want to risk a trooper putting me on the ground -- and continued to check online for a walk-in appointment. Which, come to think of it, is an oxymoron.
    • But get this. After entering my basic data, the DPS website tells me, correctly, that I already had an appointment for a future date, and that by merely continuing to see if a current walk-in appointment is available I risked losing my appointment which I had scheduled weeks earlier. There's no way I'm taking that risk. 
    • So I headed to my car and glanced around. I found solace in seeing a bunch of people in the parking lot just as beaten down as I was by the experience at DPS because, they too, couldn't solve a simple problem. 
    • And you know what I thought of next? That this man makes $345,250.

  • I bet the special prosecutor in the Georgia election tampering case paid a fortune just so he could shut the divorce proceedings down -- since doing so prevents him, or the D.A., from having to testify about their affair. At least for now. This is all such a mess which really perturbs me. 

  • That seems like a lot of money until . . . 

    • . . . you put it in perspective.

  • Very legal nerdy stuff: Because prosecutors didn't know how to handle a Motion for Summary Judgment properly, yesterday it lost a ton of money it was trying to "legally" steal in four civil forfeiture cases.

  • Coin flip talk: I distinctly remember that before any NFL game that the ref would tell a player to "call it in the air" for the initial coin toss.  Now they have the player choose heads or tails before it is flipped. That seems wrong. 



at 8:31 AM
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