7.15.2022

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







Random Friday Morning Thoughts




This is a "nerdy legal stuff" flashback, but that law review article still holds up. 

  • Is no one going to call out the NTSB for originally being the source of the wild allegation about the 13 year old driving who they quickly reported as fact? They are the ones who started the whole false story to begin with.




    • And also buried in that news story yesterday was that the NTSB also retracted another huge fact they initially reported: There is no evidence that a blowout tire caused the wreck. 

  • The Republicans went from "Abortion is a state rights issue" to "let's have the federal government outlaw abortion nationwide" in record time. 

  • There is something not right about the Secret Service's over-the-top loyalty to Trump. The Inspector General "accused the U.S. Secret Service of erasing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capitol attack . . . .indicating that the text messages have vanished and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hindered."

  • Who wrote this for him?

  • An outfit protesting gun violence in schools is sending a ton of school buses to Ted Cruz's home.  And to promote it, they are sending out the photo below.  It's creative. 


  • Oh, man! Source.

  • You would think this is The Onion instead of The Wall Street Journal. (I continue to think crypto is the 2020s version of Beanie Babies if Beanie Babies had cost $10,000 a piece back then.) 

  • Random Texas COVID look. This is the hospitalizations chart. It's still low but currently trending up at a rate which looks familiar to past surges. I have no idea what happens this time, but it's worth watching. 

     
  • The NFL continues to print money.

  • And another.

  • 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: 1,106 ,days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

7.14.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




The spot for the new Fuzzy's was getting a paint job 10 years ago. I don't ever remember it being that bright -- it doesn't look that way now. 


  • We flirted with it darkness and no a/c for a bit yesterday, but made it another day. Texas!

  • The fact that so many people were so naïve that they couldn't believe the 10 year old pregnancy/travel to another state to get an abortion story is really amazing.  And even if that particular story turned out to be untrue (we learned yesterday it wasn't), the exact same thing will happen again somewhere this week or this month. Guaranteed.

    •  Earlier yesterday, before the story broke, the Wall Street Journal declared it false:

    • Congressman Jim Jordan had to delete this.

    • ESPN's Clay Travis had a hot sports opinion about it to (below) which he completely retracted yesterday.

  • The Hood County Sheriff's Office tells us we need to turn to Jesus in an official Facebook post.  I know so many people that see nothing wrong with this, and it blows my mind. 

  • Hey, I'm no defender of Trump but just attempting to call a witness, but not making contact, is not witness tampering.  It's not even attempted witness tampering.   I wouldn't recommend it, but people are getting way too bent out of shape about it.

  • I don't think I've ever posted anything from the right wing Daily Caller, but they reported yesterday that, in fact, Mexico was going to pay for it.

  • I'm still watching that mysterious mass death at a bar in South Africa. The bar owner was arrested yesterday but it wasn't for causing the deaths, but just for providing alcohol to minors.  The "poisoning" angle is still out there because "South African investigators have since ruled out the stampede theory." But the more I read it seems like you can rule out the phenomenon where people get so packed in together that their chests can's expand and they suffocate. In that scenario, the bodies show no signs of being "trampled" at all. 


  • Well this is awful.  A camal walking on Chisholm Trail Parkway south of Fort Worth was hit and killed by a car.  No one knows exactly where it came from.

  • I just finished this book which was peculiarly different but good.  It's really three short books in one: A guy killing multiple people in Alabama in a crazy insurance scam, the liberal Southern lawyer who represented him, and Harper Lee going back home to spend years researching a book about it all which was never written (or at least published).

  • I'm proclaiming yesterday as one of the slowest news days of the year.

7.13.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts





I ended up being wrong about it being a murder. The name was John Rodman Steele if you want to go down that rabbit hole.


  • Moments ago. Ugh. 

  • More video was released late yesterday from the debacle in Uvalde, and it was worse than what you expected.  A four minute edit is here. The full 1 hour and 22 minute video is here


    • I think this frame from the beginning of the video might stick with me forever. Good gawd. 

    • The reaction and response of police was shown to be, like we knew, horrible. It doesn't look like anyone was in charge, and certainly no one was willing to act. Hand sanitizer should not be on your priority list. 


    • Looking at the lock screen of the Punisher while children are being slaughtered is not a good look. 

  • The January 6th hearing yesterday revealed that Trump had planned all along for the mob to march to the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes. It was a pre-planned coup.
    • A tweet announcing the planned march down Pennsylvania Avenue was drafted but not sent. 

    • Why was it not sent? It was decided that an announcement during Trump's speech would have more of an impact. The My Pillow guy was in on the plan. "Kremer" below is Kyle Kremer who was a major organizer of the rally. 

    • And why did Steve Bannon announce to his podcast audience on January 5th that "all hell was going to break loose" the next day? He had inside information. Trump and Bannon talked on the phone at 8:53 a.m. for 11 minutes on January 5th according to phone logs.

    • And this nutcase actually believed she was appointed as Special Counsel to Trump. And from the way the unhinged meeting sounds, she just might have been. 

      Worst Dr. Pepper commercial ever. 

    • Random throw away thought:  I'm going to end up buying that panda art in the background before all is said and done. It has really grown on me. Or maybe it's just the feeling I get from hearing this guy talk about all the lunacy that was surrounding Trump in the final days. 

  • Twitter officially sued Elon Musk yesterday. And, as predicted, they don't want the $1 billion penalty fee but, instead, they want him to buy the company for the $44 billion he promised. 


  • I wondered about this possibility when those fires broke out.  Teenagers and houses under construction can be a bad mix. 

  • These are the faces of new federal judge nominees announced yesterday. And they will all be confirmed. 

  • Very nerdy legal stuff: This excerpt from a concurrence in an otherwise forgettable Fifth Circuit opinion from two days ago is 100% true. 

  • I'm coming back to this quote but in this form. I might print it and frame it. 

  • Messenger: Above the Fold