5.02.2023

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




Dueling headlines 10 years ago out of Denton.

  • The PAC behind the two candidates for Decatur School Board which has caused a small uproar over their joint "woke" campaign is some outfit named "Decatur Parents Unite." It sent out mailers over the last two days. We'll figure out who is behind it. 

    • Early voting: 

  • Oh, my.  And this was in Henryetta, Oklahoma -- hometown of Troy Aikman. 


  • We have a writer's strike. The last one was in 2007 and lasted for 100 days. 

  • Cancun Cruz will have an opponent. Allred is a moderate Democrat out of of Dallas, and a former Baylor great. 

    • I just looked at his current Congressional district. I didn't realize it was so wonky:

  • Gov. Abbott had to apologize for characterizing all the victims of the mass murders in Cleveland, Texas as "illegal immigrants." He's still a miserable and hateful human being. 

  • The great Gordon Lightfoot has passed away. It was a mainstream hit, but I always loved "If You Could Read My Mind."

    • Fun Fact: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was released in 1976. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in 1975.
  • I don't know much about the Met Gala from last night, but it was hard not to do a double take at Jared Leto.

  • This is amazing. In 1982, The Love Boat had an episode which featured a transgendered character and how they should be treated.  Here are two minutes worth of excerpts. We knew back then it wasn't hard to just be kind. 

  • Shot:

    • Chaser:


  • A reminder that the kid who shot and killed three teens at a Garland convenience store in 2021 is still on the loose. As is . . . 

at 8:30 AM

5.01.2023

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Then-Gov. Rick Perry used this 33 second video as his "walk up" music. It showed him firing an AR-15 as Ted Nugent's Stranglehold played. 

  •  We've got a massacre in Houston -- execution style -- with the youngest being 8 years old. The gun was an AR-15. 


  • "The Texas A&M University-Texarkana player was hit once in the chest as he sat in the left field bullpen during an Eagles game [on Saturday], said Shawn Vaughn, Texarkana Texas Police Department spokesman. The player was taken to a local hospital for emergency surgery."


  • The Wise County School Board controversy  -- two of the candidates sending out the joint text message wanting "to get the WOKE POLITICS out" and "NOT indoctrinate" the students -- got a little weirder when it was acknowledged that the text was sent out by an unnamed "General Political Action Committee."  What PAC was it?

  • It's getting wacky out there with some candidates. Example Denton: 

  • This story (free link) out of Houston was all over the place this weekend.

    . 
    • Maybe he did it. Maybe he didn't. But this seems like a very important fact:

       
  • Just a guy giving his parrot some air in the Walmart parking lot in Decatur yesterday.

  • Bank failure news this morning.

  • The NFL Draft was held at Union Station in Kansas City which is a beautiful venue if they hadn't completely covered it up. 


  • I'm still bugged about Trump hugging the January 6th Insurrection Gal and signing her backpack. But I'm not the only one.  Liz isn't wrong. She knows where this is headed 

  •  There's the faces of the grieving and a dead mother and child: 
at 8:31 AM

4.28.2023

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




If a case was a dog back in the day, I just killed it. 

  • Not related to above. I think.  

  • The brouhaha over "woke" in the Decatur ISD school board elections got people fired up yesterday in early voting. 

  • It wasn't the guests on the Jerry Springer Show that convinced me we were headed towards Idiocracy, it was his live audience. They might have represented the real America all along.


  • And then he posed for a picture with her and signed her backpack that she had with her at the Capitol. “Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump told the woman. “You guys are gonna be okay.”   It's just all so inconceivable.

  • I don't know how or why schools put up with nutty parents. And I don't know why they are so scared of loud-mouths who think they are the arbiters of all of standards and the rulers of all other parents. 

  • And then there are times I just stare at my screen in amazement. 

  • Nerdy political stuff which I find kind of interesting. 

  • Random photo published today by the Jimmy Carter National Library this morning. 

  • Other than the Cowboys drafting someone named "Mazi", the only other interesting thing was watching Kentucky's QB all evening fail to get drafted while his girlfriend, who dressed like she was going to the Academy Awards, grew concerned. 

  • 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: 3 years, 297 days.


at 8:31 AM

4.27.2023

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




Out of Weatherford 10 years ago.

  • Oh, my! (In a good way). The Superintendent of Decatur ISD has fired back against "a mass text message accusing Decatur ISD of teaching 'WOKE POLITICS'" which was the feature of my first bullet point yesterday.  He writes: "I want every staff member and citizen of Decatur to know that they have a superintendent who will back them when they are unjustly called out as a group for actions or activities that are false and damaging to their personal reputations and that of Decatur ISD." (PDF link.)

  • Early voting in Decatur's school and bond (and city) elections remains heavy.

  • Ok, this verdict in the "crane case" in Dallas seems ridiculous. According to this story, the mother got $340 million (that's silly) and the dad got $20 million. The biggest hit was in punitive damages which were $500 million (also silly.)  I don't know if state damage caps effect the verdict at all.  The lead attorney for the defendant which got hit was a guy named Christopher White but I'm not sure which Chris White.

  • The Wise County Sheriff's Office jail and courts website remains down. This is day four. Let's fix this!!
  • It was hard to miss this video of hail coming down in Dublin, Texas around 5:30 yesterday. If you did, here ya go.  

  • We've got some inmates on the run in Mississippi. 


    • Side note: I don't think near enough was made of the Texas inmate which escaped last year and hid out under the noses of law enforcement for three weeks as he slaughtered a man his four grandsons, ages 11 to 18 who had gone to their vacation cabin.



  • Hey, I'm no fan of Trump, but I'm not so sure about this lady's claim. She testified yesterday on day two of the defamation trial which included her (damage-control) admission that she didn't now if the assault occurred in 1994, 1995 or 1996. On opening, Trump's lawyer, who has yet to cross-exam her, had said, “She can’t tell you the date that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the month that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the season. She can’t even tell you the year that she claims to have been raped by Donald Trump.” 

  • Disney finally sued the governor of Florida for targeting them based upon speech.  I don't know what took them so long. This is a slam dunk for Disney. It's government targeting free speech. 


  • I've never seen so many people so scared of people who are simply different than them. 

  • Legal nerdy stuff: The Houston DA sent out a press release press release which contains something which I think is not true. There's no question that a grand jury only needs nine votes in order to return an indictment. And it's true that they only need to find "probable cause" (not "probably cause" as seen below). When they do, that's called a "true bill." But if the grand jury has a vote on a case and does not have the nine votes, that should be a "no bill." This press release says that a person is no-billed only if nine members find there was not probable cause.   Hey, there's nothing to prevent a DA from referring a no-billed case to another grand jury -- there should be a law, but there's not -- but a vote without nine votes to indict is a "no-bill".

  • Other kind of legal nerdy stuff. The top three scorers from the February Texas bar exam were announced and all of them graduated from out-of-state law schools.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:31 AM
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