5.14.2024

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




Ten years ago, Decatur's high school principal became the superintendent for Eastland ISD. I looked him up and learned he's now the superintendent for Krum ISD as of 2022.

  • Speaking of school boards, the open forum for Decatur ISD is getting feisty. All the board meetings are archived by video here. 
  • Trump trial quick hits:
    • Day 17: Michael Cohen should be cross-examined today. 
    • Anderson Cooper on CNN always has a panel show covering the day in Trump's trial, and I was proud to see last night this New York criminal defense lawyer saying exactly what I have been saying: Trump needs to argue that "legal expense" isn't a false entry at all. 

    • We are beginning to see some Trump sycophants showing up to support Trump.  Yesterday is was J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville were in the courtroom. Today it will be House Speaker Johnson in the gallery. Already spotted are Vivek Ramaswamy and Byron Donalds.

    • Buddy, welcome to the typical day in criminal court. 

  • Gov. Abbott was lying yesterday as he tried to defend the cutting of funding for Texas public schools. The school funding bill was killed because it included a voucher provision which would have even further gutted public education -- especially in rural areas.



  • Is he talking about regular Christianity or MAGA Christianity? 

  • I didn't mention Trump's weird Hannibal Lecter rant from this weekend, but they took note of it overseas.

  • Google is rolling out a new results page with AI generated answers to search questions at the top. 


  • The Business Second™: Highway 287 around Bonds Ranch Road is about to get busier.


  • The Business Second Second™.  Someone explain all of this to me. The debtor defaults on a $13 million note for a property in downtown Fort Worth valued at $104.5 million on the tax rolls, and the bank is able to now own the whole building by buying it at their forced foreclosure auction on the courthouse steps for $12.3 million?  



  • So if the Cowboys decide to extend Dak, what's it going to cost now?

  • I mentioned this Northwest ISD kid a couple of weeks ago but never followed up. At just 15 years old, he won the 800 meters in 5A as a freshman at the state meet. Here's the video of the last 200 meters. The Star-Telegram has him on their home page this morning. 

  • If you've got 10 minutes, you have to watch the commencement speaker for Ohio State University. I can't get over it. Link.

  • I made a huge typo yesterday (surprise!). I should have written that Gov. Abbott is in a commercial saying he can't trust Andy Hopper.

at 8:30 AM

5.13.2024

Ramdom Monday Morning Thought




Now he's in a run-off for Sheriff. 

  • Michael Cohen takes the stand this morning in Trump's business records case. This will be a disaster.
     

  • This happened in Fort Worth last week. The  video is insane.

  • A Decatur teenager is turning heads in the bull riding circuit -- especially after this weekend in Fort Worth. 

  • Wise County Judge J.D. Clark got royally complemented in this opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News.

  • No way Melania was going to let him do it once she found out about it. 

  • Heck of a photo.


  • The Dallas Morning News has a long feature on tollways, and had this graphic. Although it focuses on Texas, how does Oklahoma have so many toll road miles?

  • This new New York Times poll is both relevant and concerning as it looks at the battleground states. 

  • Pop culture deaths:
    • It is one of the greatest scenes in cinema history. Video.

    • In 1968, when protestors took over the president's office of Columbia University, this guy's photograph appeared in Life magazine. 


  • Legal quick hits: 
    • Holy witchcraft! In one of the craziest indictments you will ever see, the Collin County D.A.'s office charged a person with aggravated assault by "soliciting an unknown individual to put a  spell" on someone and used his hands as a "deadly weapon" while doing it.  And the defendant pled guilty to it! Thread.

    • The Fifth Circuit's far right wing judge James Ho is now just casually citing to the Bible.

    • On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled against a "wrongful life" claim -- suing a doctor when he screws up a sterilization procedure and a healthy child results. Opinion

  • I saw a TV ad of Gov. Greg Abbott telling me that "he cannot trust Andy Hopper" and telling me to vote for Dr. Lynn Stucky in Wise County's run-off race. 

at 8:30 AM

5.10.2024

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




The "inappropriate relationship" surge might have peaked at Odessa Permian 
when there were five allegations within one year.

  • Those storms went across the top of Wise County just missing Bridgeport and Decatur yesterday afternoon.
  • The testimony is now over. I still think it did more harm than good. 


    • The reason I hate this Trump prosecution is because the New York law is dumb. It's a crime to make a "false entry" in an internal business record even if (1) I don't present it, or intend to present it, to any third person and (2) there is no intent to deceive a third person.  That's silly. 
    • And the entries were false, the prosecution says, because they went down as "legal expenses" internally. To me, all Trump would have to say is that "the reimbursement to Cohen, plus payment for his work on the matter, was all legal expense it seemed to me. I routinely reimburse lawyers for any and all expenses they incur when paying their bills. So for everyone in my world, we called it a 'legal expense'. It wasn't false at all. We all knew what it meant." Then he's home free.
    • Side note: Today is Day 14 of the trial. It wouldn't have taken more than two days in Texas. For some reason, we have a different definition of "relevant evidence" down her. 
    • New this morning: The judge just denied Trump's request to subpoena Mark Pomerantz, the former prosecutor for the DA who wrote in People vs. Trump: An Inside Account that the Stormy Daniels file was referred to as the "Zombie case" while he was there since no one wanted to pursue the prosecution of it.
  • Ronny Jackson has embarrassed us again. No details have been released yet but the "committee has until June 24 to release more information on the Hunt and Jackson investigations."

  • This looks like a fascinating story ("dark web", "bitcoin", etc.), but all the news stories about it just quote the press release from the prosecutor's office. Back in the day, local media would have been all over something like this. Now we just learn about it directly from, and from the prospective of, the government once the case is over. 


  • Luka's post-game press conference last night was derailed with unexpected audio of, well, let's just say it could have come from Stormy Daniels in her prime. His expression was golden.  Video

  • I couldn't help but focus on the John Wayne picture on the wall. They realize he was just an actor, right? And that he lived in Beverly Hills and not Dodge City in the 1880s?


  • It's just an $11 million accounting error that ended up as bonuses. 

  • Cuban might want to be careful with this.


  • 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 311 days.



at 8:30 AM
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