10.30.2020

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

 


  • Texas Hospitalizations: -63. A rare negative day during this rise.

  • Just announced after yesterday's numbers were tabulated: More people have voted early this year in Texas than in all of 2016. (9,009,850 to 8,969,226.) And we still have today and November 3rd to go. 
  • The Texas Republican Party finally released its official platform this week. Some wild things in their for the GOP: They called for the abolishment of CPS, that all consents to search obtained by police by video recorded, allow anyone to sit for the Texas Bar Exam regardless of whether they went to law school, abolish civil forfeiture, limit the use of "no knock" search warrants by police, and ban collective bargaining with police unions.
  • Just like I predicted it would happen. I must have some sort of gift:

  • The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has deleted all of its "Spooky Week" posts where they thought it would be a good idea to make light of the places where people are held in cages. 
  • There was a crazy story in the Star-Telegram of a Dallas man selling a teenager he met on the Internet to another guy in South Carolina.  If that's not nuts enough, all three signed a contract for the $5,000 sale.  

  • Every. Single. Year. Once again, there is no one giving away their edibles. 

  • Still quality Halloween humor: 

  • Google's parent company released quarterly earnings yesterday. It's just mind-boggling: $46.2 billion in revenues with a net profit of $11 billion. Once again, that's for three months. But they aren't the only tech company doing well:

  • Jerry Falwell Jr. is suing Liberty University for terminating him without "properly investigating" the scandalous claims against him. He's out of his mind. Now he and his wife will have to sit down in a deposition and talk about the pool boy. You don't' want to talk about the pool boy. 

  • Ticket Fans and or Decatur Fans: The guest football prediction picker this morning was a "Kyle" who identified himself as a 1993 graduate of Decatur High and football player, went to Texas Tech, and now resides in Keller. He said his qualifications for picking games were two catches for six yards. (Funny). 
  • Just a random pic of the Lt. Gov. of Idaho. Everyone loves bits. 

  • A county employee out of Falls County won $4 million in a products liability suit after he basically lost his foot while working. I found it interesting because the large verdict was in federal court (instead of state court) where you normally don't see such large numbers in personal injury cases.  The story also says he was offered $500,000 to settle before trial. I always like to find out who the losing lawyers are in cases like that because an experience like that is a complete beat down. The two were out of Thompson, Coe in Dallas with one going to Baylor Law and the other UT Law. 

  • Say what?

  • Remember this case? A shooting near Greenville at a Halloween party led to the false arrest of a man who spent nine days in jail before the case was dropped. He told the cops he had nothing to do with it but they wouldn't listen. His lawyer now wants $3.1 million.  Just spit-balling here,  but since the same thing happened to Aric Maxwell in Wise County, except he spent six months in jail, how much is his case worth?

  • Speaking of -- Time that has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener at Lake Bridgeport: 1 year, 3 months, 25 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold (I didn't screw up the link this time.)



at 8:31 AM

10.29.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts


 

  • Texas hospitalizations: +138.

  • This wave seems to be more aggressive in North Texas (Wise County included) than the first two surges. Despite this, Alvord ISD is ending virtual learning as of November 10th. But, surprisingly, that only impacts 4% of the students. 

  • Scary.

  • Fox News is turning into QAnon. This was unbelievably comical last night. His producer put the original "damning" documents into a box, without scanning or making copies, and mailed them to Tucker across the country. Along the way, someone (probably Hillary) stole the documents and left the box behind. This has to be some kind of bit, right?  Seriously, is he going to announce he has "found" them today to boost his ratings for tonight? His viewers cannot be that dumb. 

  • I never thought I'd see the day that the Republican Party uses the power of the federal government to accuse a private business -- which was built using the sacred cow of almighty Capitalism, no less -- with violating another sacred cow, the First Amendment, which does not apply to that business. Up is down. Down is up. 

  • Amarillo got 4.5" of snow last night. 


  • I promise you in some big city there has been a defendant who has pulled this off. If you can trick a judge into signing a Motion to Dismiss  -- which is not as hard as it seems because they get dropped on their desk every day with no fanfare -- your 99% of the way there. The next routine step is for a court clerk to get the Order from the judge's office (happens every day) which will then cause the case to never again appear on the computer generated docket. The only remaining step is for a staff member of the prosecutor to get a routine copy of the Order of Dismissal (happens every day) and then go pull the physical file out of the filing cabinets. Then it is out of sight, out of mind. It's getting the Motion on the judge's desk which would be the hard part.

  • Free legal advice: Don't even think about pulling off the above bullet point. 
  • If you saw this yesterday, please be advised she was doing a bit. 

  • There are so many Lincoln Project-like ads that I really don't look at many of them any longer. But if I was in charge of designing an anti-Trump ad, this new one by a group I have never heard of is exactly what I would produce. 

  • New joy in my life: Wearing a mask outside when it is cold. Who knew they were so warm?
  • A couple of months ago I went to Denton and came back complaining about how getting on and off I-35 was a death wish.  One of the craziest things I witnessed was the backlog of cars to get off northbound I-35 to get on 380 in order to head back to the "humble confines of Wise County"™. You have about a two second chance to get in line to exit. Most people just slow down in the right hand lane of I-35 looking for a place to get in line and are just asking to be rear-ended. That problem is on the front page of today's Denton Record Chronicle. (But that's a lousy picture to try and demonstrate the problem.)

Copyright 2020 Liberally Lean Graphics Department

  • Gotta admit, I'm not sure I've ever heard a Billy Joe Shaver song. (But I'm a self-proclaimed music idiot.) 



at 8:34 AM

10.28.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Texas hospitalizations: +234. That's a pretty big daily jump. (The Update says the local Wise County hospital has hit a record with 21 COVID patients, and that Wise County has had 57 new COVID cases in the last seven days. Oh, my.)

  • The man who once declared "all businesses are essential" so let's open 'em all up has caught the COVID.

  • We had a weird thing happen in the Wise County Courthouse yesterday: Someone was arrested by the Sheriff's Office for cussing. I can't say more because my source invoked "blog immunity" before he would give me the details. 
  • I get hit with "blog immunity" invocations a lot. 
  • Rob Manfred Justin Turner was removed from the World Series game last night in the eighth inning after his COVID results game back positive. That's him, in the beard and without a mask, after the game.

  • And here . . .

  • Fun fact: Nebraska is one of only two states that doesn't have a winner-take-all-electoral-votes situation. They do it by dividing up their 5 electoral votes by their 5 congressional district lines. So here's Trump last night in one Nebraska district campaigning for the one electoral vote. And there was a problem afterwards.

    From the Omaha World-Herald
  • I learned TopGolf, which I went to once and had a blast, is booming. This story says it "generated $1.1 billion in revenue last year at 63 locations that drew more than 23 million customers. And it has plans or letters of intent to build another 33 facilities and designs on growing outside the United States . . . . " And COVID doesn't touch it. It's bays have social distancing built in. 

  • Quick: Who is this "celebrity guest picker" on last weekend's College GameDay. Answer below.

  • In watching the West Wing on Netflix, a big question mark formed over my head when the episode timeline was seemingly interrupted by an out of place episode called "Isaac and Ishmael" -- named after  the sons Abraham from the Bible.  Turns out, it was the first episode after 9/11 and was specifically shot because of the attack and then broadcast before the series resumed.  Being a Biblical scholar, I was surprised that I didn't know much, if anything, about Ishmael. I figured out why with a little research: Although Isaac got all the headlines in Sunday School, Ishmael was actually his older brother but was the product of Abraham hooking up with the maid!  We Southern Baptists kind of keep stories like that on the down low. 
    He filled it in with "KKK" by the way.

  • Answer: Vince Vaughn. 
  • June Cleaver heard some good news about Ward yesterday. 

  • I've never seen this photo before. "Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1957 Arlington Heights High School [in Fort Worth] yearbook. This must have been taken in September, 1956 because Oswald quit Arlington Heights to join the marines in October of that year."

  • New magazine cover Dirty Lib alert. (Now seems to be a good time to repost the link to her pre-election dance video.)

  • I bet DFW TV stations get 25% or more of their ad revenue just from this campaign season. It's incredible the number of ads we see, and the TV stations have to jack up their rates because of the demand. But you know who is getting screwed? The Wise County Messenger which is situated in a one-party dominated county leading to uncontested November races. They are missing out on  so may dollars, and we are missing out on so much fun. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold. Edit: Link fixed.



at 8:33 AM

10.27.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Texas hospitalizations: +72.  It's way too early to project out, but this rise isn't as sharp as the last peak.  But I wonder if that means it will just last longer. And it doesn't mean we won't hit or surpass 10,000 a day again. 

  • Never mind. I've just learned that it's all a hoax that will go away in a week. 

  • Sports and COVID: Wisconsin started a redshirt freshman quarterback on Saturday, Graham Mertz, who played lights out. Get this: He went 20 of 21 with 5 touchdowns.  After the game, he tested positive for COVID and now has a confirmation test scheduled this morning. If he has it, the Big 10 rules says he must sit out the next 21 days. (The second stringer has a broken ankle and the third string QB tested positive yesterday as well.)
  • He's not doing well this morning. And he sure doesn't feel good about the early vote. Change "it to me."

  • Actually, before Trump's tweet, the graph below shows a search for "can I change my vote" briefly surpassed a search for "chicken", but I suppose that's a trend. (Actually, Trump is referring to an article he saw from the right wing propaganda site The Gateway Pundit which started promoting this false narrative two days ago as part of their Hunter Biden fetish. ) 

  • You can't change your vote in "most" states but you can do so in seven of them. I did not know that before this morning. And I bet it is a royal pain. 
  • Everything is fine. 

  • "Election Day" is now a bit of a misnomer. We have an "election period" with next Tuesday being "the last day to vote." No day to vote is more important than the other. 
  • Due to ice, Wichita Falls closed schools today. Below is downtown Amarillo this morning with the stadium of the Amarillo Sod Poodles is in the background. (I just like typing "Sod Poodles.") As for us, we might hit a record LOW high today.  You know, "it's the lowest high temperature we've ever had."   The metroplex record was a high of only 46 in 1936.  That's in jeopardy.

  • The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is just doing bits about death row where inmates had to listen to other prisoners get electrocuted.  The only ghouls are those running that Twitter account.

  • This is a good photo when you look at Melania. Click to enlarge.

  • There been a lot of criticism of how rest of the Cowboys just stood around after the attempted murder of Andy Dalton on Sunday.  Check out this video of how the 49ers responded after a cheap shot on Joe Montana Steve Young back in the day. 

  • Despite my super Internet skills, I can't find out what was said at the Weatherford "Monster Bash" which prompted the public statement below. (But there seems to be a clear constitutional issue here: Can a city ban certain speech just because the city "hosts" an event? Don't think so. Sayin it was "not approved" is one thing. Saying it is "not allowed" is another.)

  • It really is amazing. But to the victor belongs the spoils. 

  • Man, you guys really liked my hot sports opinions on "tired" yesterday. I was surprised by the number of emails/texts I received in support of it. I might put it on a throw pillow.


at 8:35 AM
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