10.05.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts





There was a bomb threat at Decatur ISD ten years ago which turned out to be a false alarm. The picture of the kids who evacuated wasn't posted by the school -- someone sent it to me that day.  Interestingly, the note that caused the commotion actually made its way to Facebook. I think it had been written on a door:


  • I'm trying to confirm that an insufficient number of jurors showing up for service caused a murder trial in Decatur to get derailed yesterday.  
  • There were lots of funny comments about Facebook being down. 

  • And another DFW company. That's 54,000 employees.

  • The gerrymandering for State Senate District 10 in order to get rid of Democrat Beverly Powell is really amazing. It is currently 413 square miles but will increase to 6,233.


  • I don't know how you can do a story like this and simply say, "The cause of death was not released."  The Dallas Morning News was quiet about it as well in their story. 

  • George Floyd had a drug conviction out of Harris County, but it was one of the many cases handled by an officer who ended up being disgraced and charged because of the infamous "Pecan Park Raid" in 2019.  Now the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole has approved a posthumous pardon for Floyd, but it has to be approved by Greg Abbott. Here's a hot prediction: He won't approve it. 


  • Funny chryno this morning on CNN reviewing former VP Mike Pence appearing on Fox News last night. 

  • Never heard a thing about whether these two were related. Both were posted early Sunday morning. 


  • Officials at the Collin County Courthouse forgot to pay attention to its "emergency power transfer switch" yesterday morning.  

  • Three valets of the ages of 18, 22 and 23, who worked at the restaurant pictured below, were killed in Houston on Friday night after a car driven by a 17 year old struck them. He was being chased by police for doing doughnuts in a parking lot. Sheesh. And there's a weird twist: The 17 year old was another valet from a different restaurant across the street who was in a customer's car. 

  • Didn't I tell you the richest guy I know once told me he began investing in warehouses? This from the Dallas Morning News today:

  • We got to take care of a dog at the office for a couple of days.  Office dogs should officially be a thing. 

  • Legal nerd stuff: The Twitter bot which tracks laughter during arguments at the Supreme Court. (It had  a rough year due to COVID induced Zoom hearings, but it's back.) 



at 8:30 AM

10.04.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts






It was October 3, 2011 when Mrs. LL actually saw this on Highway 287 and snapped a few pictures. That's wild.  

  • I've got a (personal) update from the proposed Texas House redistricting map from Friday. If Wise County joins the northwest portion of Denton County as the newly released map shows, we already have an incumbent. Uh, I basically failed to mention that on Friday. Well guess who tracked down my super secret cell phone number and called me on Saturday morning? That would be the incumbent, Rep. Lynn Stucky. I'll say this about him: What a nice guy. I figured he was going to chew me out for giving him short shrift on Friday, but nothing could be further from the truth. He just wanted to let me know he would be honored to represent Wise County if the new map holds. (One interesting thing that I learned was that even he didn't know what the new map would look until a day or so before it came out.) 

  • Considering the background between the (now deceased) man and a Decatur lawyer who was quoted in the story, this is a heck of a story.

  • Watch a small plane crash on a town street in Winnie, Texas on Saturday morning.

  • So a NASCAR crowd at Talladega shouts an expletive about President Biden and the same thing happens at a TCU game as well? And Fox News celebrates it? And Don Jr. encourages it? This is what it has come to? We've sunk this low? Have we no decency?



  • There was a weird story buried in the Messenger (which I still can't access despite being logged in!!!) where you could pay $50 or more to attend a Doomsday Preppers seminar in Bridgeport. I kind of wanted to hear more about the motivation behind it. 
  • Those vaccine passports just keep on coming!

  • Hood County may be the most backwoods county in the State. They were in the news for a while for having a some Oath Keepers as part of their law enforcement, and now they are back in it for almost firing their by-the-book Elections Coordinator.


  • Got him. He seems concerned. 

  • These are two great photos out of the Wichita Falls paper for a wreck on Friday night. A Christopher Walker was noted as the photographer. 


  • Just the other day I wrote about how "we don't hear anymore" about the Feds finding some smuck online and baiting him into a plot that he otherwise doesn't have the brains to be pull off. Well, it looks like I was wrong. They just aren't targeting Muslims any longer. "Tried to blow up" is a reach here. 

  • I've said it before, if you listen to any of the news talk radio stations in DFW on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you are hearing scam after scam in paid programming. This from the the Morning News this weekend (the show was on KRLD):

  • UT had a horrible start against TCU which led to this Twitter post within 11 minutes of kickoff. UT, however, quickly got it together.  (And I'm not sure Texas doesn't beat OU straight up on Saturday.)

  • Sam Elliott showing up in Weatherford. 

  • Any bets on whether he's vaccinated?

  • My only Cowboy observation: As the game got slightly dicey in the Fourth Quarter, tell me there was some reason other than "player management" that kept CB Trevon Diggs on the sideline? If not, that is really, really weird. 



at 8:31 AM

10.01.2021

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




The last day of the regular season in 2011. The Rangers would end up facing those same Cardinals in the World Series where they would end up "one strike away." Twice.   

  • We have a new Texas House redistricting map released. Oh, my!  I thought we would go to David Spiller's 68th but we've almost got our own in the 64th. Once again, stay with me here. 

    • So the question is, who will control it? Denton voters or Wise County voters?
    • Below is what the 64th used to look like and for which data is readily available. It was all in Denton County. The new map cuts out a lot of that Denton County population that had been in it.   So how many voters will it have out of Denton now? And did redistricting cut out Denton Republicans or Denton Democrats? The less Denton voters, and the more Democratic they are, the more that helps the Wise County GOP power.   It looks like the old district, as it was then constructed, had 88,000 voters with 48,000 voting Republican. For comparison, Wise County had 32,000 voters in that last election.


      Old lines of the 64th which were all in Denton County

    • Here's my "Graphics Department - Political Division" attempt to compare the new parts of Denton County (which joins us) with the old lines of the district in Denton County. I think the new district lines follow Loop 288 around Denton.  (My red line tries to track the new boundary.) Corinth is cut out. Lake Dallas is cut out. The retirement community of Robson Ranch is cut out. A ton of the population is cut out. If I'm right, the universities and inner Denton, which probably votes heavily Democratic, go with us. I think the new map gives Wise County Republicans enormous power in picking the GOP nominee (and eventual winner). 
      Old District / New portion in Denton County

    • Edit: The Denton Record Chronicle kindly did this morning what I just tried to do. New lines on left. Old lines on right. 

    • And this lady (who is a Democrat who ran against Beth Van Duyne for Congress) agrees that the new district lines will make the remaining Denton County voters irrelevant:

    • This number-crunching guy and this guy put our new district as 60.2% Republican  - which means Denton's part of the newly drawn district is indeed filled with Dirty Libs. (By the way, they also say David Spiller's district is the very most conservative in the entire state at 85.6%.)
    • So why did I spend so much time on this?: If any Wise County Republicans ever wanted to be a state rep, now's the time to try. It is the first time in history you can win. Heck, the last Wise Countian standing will win. 
  • Just hit the news wires:

  • Also just breaking. (That's not going to help with trying get a huge infrastructure spending bill passed today.)  

  • This sanction was because of hiding evidence during the discovery phase of the lawsuit against him. You have to be really, really bad to get hammered in this way by a judge.  Now the jury just gets to fill in a blank after a dollar sign. But he deserves every bad thing that can happen to him. 

  • Mavericks fans have no freedom!

  • I've never heard of this guy, but the story says he is known as the "Hips Whisperer."

  • I've noticed this on my Twitter timeline on multiple occasions lately and saw it again last night. If Delkus posts something that begins with "Severe Thunderstorm Warning . . . " then the Fox 4 weather guy immediately tweets the same thing. Notice how the wording is the same including the spacing of "8:15pm". It would be easy to have it automated by Fox 4's IT guys to instantaneously copy Delkus tweets that begin with certain key words and add "Stay tuned to FOX4" after it.  Heck, I could program that. 

  • Per the Washington Post this morning, there is a new drug for treating COVID on the horizon.  But unless it is safe for horses, some people won't use it. 

  • Very, very legal nerd stuff: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeal released one of the dumbest opinions I have ever read on Wednesday. Feel free to skip this and not stay with me here. 
    • The State charged someone with first time DWI but added the language that the guy had a blood-alcohol concentration greater than 0.15 to make it a Class A misdemeanor (up to a year in jail) instead of a the typical Class B misdemeanor for a DWI charge (up to 180 days in jail.) So far, so good. 
    • But at trial, the State started it, as required, by reading the charge, but they didn't read the 0.15 language, the defendant didn't enter a plea to the 0.15 allegation, and the jury was ultimately only asked if he guilty of DWI with no reference to whether his BAC was 0.15. or more.
    • So the jury found him guilty of the Class B misdemeanor -- the only thing that was asked of them. 
    • But when it came time for the judge to assess punishment, the prosecutor asked the judge to find that his alcohol concentration of 0.15 to be true beyond a reasonable doubt, the judge did, and found him guilty, and punished him, with a Class A misdemeanor! Say what?!
    • Held: Defendant should have objected to the charge to the jury that didn't ask about the 0.15 part of the charge (What??!!!!!!) , and it was harmless error that the judge found the 0.15 allegation to be true although the defendant had an absolute constitutional right to have the jury determine that issue. Good lord. 
    • The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals might has well have "A Division of Every Local District Attorney's Office" on its door. 
  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 821 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold.  (Once again, I can only get a thumbnail.  Hey, Messenger IT guys! This is what I'm seeing. I am 100% logged in, but I can't get paper access nor can I access online stories behind the paywall.)



at 8:29 AM
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