11.09.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




The scandal at Penn State broke out 10 years ago this week.  I had forgotten that Joe Paterno announced he would retire at the end of the season only to actually get fired two days later.    Jerry Sandusky, who is now 77, is still in prison. 

  • You can watch it here. It's probably more stupid than it is offensive. 

  • Bridgeport hired a new City Manager (from Westworth Village) and a new Fire Chief (from Highland Village) last night. Lots of changes going on over there. 
  • Breaking Tarrant County news: District Attorney Sharen Wilson will not run for re-election. Wow.

  • For people placed on probation for misdemeanors in Denton County, at least some judges allow for all the required community service hours to be wiped out if the person provides proof of a COVID vaccination. Wise County should do that. 
  • I hadn't looked at the Wise County vaccination numbers in a while: 

  • The attire of the prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is getting attention. A tie clip and a pocket square is a little over the top. And it that some kind of Star Wars lapel pin?


  • I also watched a little bit of the Ahmaud Arbery trial yesterday which is a cluster since the State decided to try three men in one trial. (Why??!!) But I'm also worried a little about the prosecution when I saw them call a police officer, Adam Jackson, to the stand as their last "quick witness." The prosecutor asked him, in a very routine manner, "You've reviewed your bodycam footage since then, right?" Answer: "No." Question (with a bit of surprise in her voice): "You've not seen your bodycam video?" Answer: "No."  Uh, does anyone there want to prepare in a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trial?

  • Missed this last month: Of the 17 million registered Texas voters, 2 million have registered in the last four years. 
  • Put me in the group of people who think federal district judges shouldn't try to be cute. From yesterday:

  • If this report is correct, 52 out of 58 Texas local school bonds failed in last week's election. (I don't know if it is true because it comes from The Texan which is run by Konni Burton and constantly screwing things up.) 
  • MSNBC's Willie Geist ran the New York City Marathon on Sunday to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation and saw Fox, who had a cane and is looking pretty fragile these days, along the course and stopped to give him a hug. Video.

     
  • This seems like it should be a bigger deal. We knew about the big Dallas PD "loss of data" scandal but it now has a new twist where the the deleted data actually ended up  in the hands of hackers.  (If you want to download 1.8 terabytes of helicopter footage, here's a link.) What else do they have? 

  • Rest assured, no one has asked him that.   Side note: Any boss who thinks it's a good look to announce he would be "wearing [his staff] out" is a horrible boss. (He's a former U.S. Attorney appointed by Trump, Dan Patrick's son, and apparently loved to stick the Fed's nose in what would otherwise be a state investigation.)


  • An "encounter with SWAT" is a weird way to word this headline. 

    • Legal nerd stuff: This was actually a pretty crazy case out of Montague County which I had been following. It's a growing trend where prosecutors can't legally prove someone was intoxicated so they use the fall back charge of regular manslaughter and claim the defendant was reckless for drinking and driving even without being intoxicated. It worked here.

    • More legal nerd stuff: The "SWAT team" got involved in the arrest after the mandate was issued by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals once the PDR was refused by the Court of Criminal Appeals in August. She was out on bond and then allegedly on the run when the appeal failed. 
  • Did Dennis Prager sleep through the 1980s?  

  • It's kind of sad that the Pole Assassin and her monkey are already old news. 



at 8:33 AM

11.08.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Dr. Conrad Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson ten years ago yesterday. He ended up serving two years of a four year sentence, and wrote a book about the whole ordeal in 2016.

  • Just last week I was talking to someone about how people were all most crushed to death in the concourse area at the Rolling Stones concert at the Cotton Bowl in 1989 but hardly anyone has ever heard about it. Then the exact same thing happened in Houston on Friday night at the Travis Scott concert but with tragic results. The video of this girl pleading with one of the cameramen is chilling. 

    • It's still early in the investigation in Houston, but it appears the people weren't trampled but instead died because their chests got compressed so tightly that their lungs couldn't expand. That's exactly what happened at the The Who show in 1979. We didn't hear much about it, but 21 people died that way at the "Love Parade" music festival in Germany in 2010.
    • Those barriers towards the stage in Houston look pretty stout. 

  • President Biden's $1.9 trillion Infrastructure Bill passed late Friday night and is headed to his desk for signing. With nine Democrats voting against it, it took 16 Republican votes to pass it. Without the GOP members, it would have failed. 

  • Cancun can't survive with publicity like this. "The attorney general’s office for the state of Quintana Roo said in a statement that two men died in a confrontation between 19 to 20 gang members over drug dealing territory that borders the Hyatt Ziva Riviera CancĂșn and the Azul Beach Resort. Another person identified as a hotel guest was hospitalized for a head injury. AP reported 15 attackers arrived by boat in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, wearing ski masks and left the scene on the water." I've walked that stretch of beach.  
     

  • COVID:
    • Aaron Rodgers is actually weirder than we thought he was. We learned he lied about being vaccinated, took a horse dewormer instead, oddly quoted MLK in his defense, and blamed the "woke mob" for coming after him. And he is flat out making this part up: 

      • I noticed that the State Farm commercials featuring Rodgers noticeably disappeared yesterday. 
    • Ted Cruz got offended by Big Bird on Saturday. 

      • I wonder if Cruz thinks his own comic book qualifies as propaganda directed towards children.

  • On Saturday afternoon, QAnon was at it again:



  • Good lord. Look at that picture and that headline. And if her father is telling the truth, he and his wife lived in the same apartment with the children and were there when the fire broke out at 3:00 a.m.  Prosecutors allege the children were "unattended" and charged the mother who was not at home. 


  • And another: "For the past two years, the identity of the individual to whom the skeletal remains belonged was shrouded in mystery. Genetic material recovered from the site led investigators to some of Seitz's possible relatives; this discovery, which came with the assistance of a private laboratory and the FBI, ultimately helped identify the victim in recent weeks."

  • Bill Belichick fashion on display before yesterday's game. We should all aspire to have that attitude. 

  • The "Steel House" outside of Lubbock is on the market for $1.75 million. I had never heard of it before this weekend.  

  • During the Cowboy stinker yesterday, a blocked punt ended up in a first down for Denver yesterday.  I guess the rule is very simple when you think about it: If a punt goes past the line of scrimmage, it doesn't matter if it was blocked or not. If the receiving team then touches it without recovering it, it's a live ball.  (And the same applies for a field goal that doesn't make it to the end zone: See Leon Lett vs. Packers Dolphins on Thanksgiving back in the day.)

  • Texas Tech will be hiring a Baylor assistant as its next head coach. He's a huge fan favorite in Waco. 
at 8:30 AM

11.05.2021

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




I had forgotten that Herman Cain (R.I.P.) was running for President a decade ago, forgot that he got caught up in a sexual harassment scandal right in the middle of it, and forgot that he broke out into song to get the press off his back. (Video.)   

  •  The Kyle Rittenhouse trial is bizarre because every witness the prosecution calls is hostile. They aren't outright saying that Rittenhouse was justified, but they might as well be. It's just the best witnesses the prosecution has. One witness yesterday was a "journalist" for the right wing The Daily Caller, and the other was a guy who had driven to Kenosha armed with his own AR-15 and pistol while wearing body armor in order to try to stop “rioting and looting and what not.”


    • And even when the trial is not going on in the courtroom, things aren't going well for the prosecutor. 

  • This case never made sense to me. (Background.) It was just so cold-blooded. And it happened right off Harmon Road as you are headed into Fort Worth. 


  • The Little Ball of Insurrection got 60 days to do. That's not nearly enough.


  • This got a lot of play yesterday.  Perhaps this struggling family used the milk to fill up their pool in the background. (Not to mention milk hasn't been $1.99 a gallon since 1979.) 

  • I might embroider this on a throw pillow. 

  • Breaking: Unemployment numbers just released show it is down to 4.6% (it was 6.3% in January.)   Throw in the stock market being at an all time high and we are finally out of Afghanistan, are things really that bad? Trump would be running to the Rose Garden right now to get in front of the cameras. Biden should, too.

  • New Texas Tribune/UT poll just released. I think this is just about right. 

    • And I think Abbott will win the Republican primary, but I'm surprised that the new poll shows this:

  • How much do you think they had to pay Kate Hudson to promote some kind of cryptocurrency? I'll tell you one thing, I guarantee that she demanded to be paid in U.S. currency. 

  • I read this one over the last couple of weeks.  It's a about a serial axe killer in Austin in the 1880s written by the famed Texas Monthly writer.  Good stuff. And you'll learn that prosecutors could be pretty wild with their accusations even back then. 

  • I'm two episodes into Maid on Netflix. Everyone needs this dose of reality. 

  • 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: 854 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:29 AM
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