10.25.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




I'm not sure why I posted this pic of a scruffy Pete Delkus 10 years ago. 

  • The Star-Telegram continues it's coverage of Runaway Bay letting raw sewage run into Lake Bridgeport. And I'll say this again: This problem didn't catch them off guard. They knew about it for years. 


  • We had a surprising number of early voters yesterday in Wise County: 1,645.  On the first day of early voting last March -- for the primaries where, let's be real, that's where the only contested races really happen -- Wise County had only 436 voters.  By the way, we have 50,026 registered voters right now. 
    Source: Sabra Srader CERA, Election Administrator

  • A new update regarding the DPS fallout over Uvalde.


  • Another day in America.


  • A play in two acts.
    • The wife of a Supreme Court justice is nutty and wouldn't mind overthrowing an election.

    • Yesterday that Supreme Court justice stopped a state government from investigating whether federal officials tried to overthrow its state election. Incredible. 


  • It's not supposed to work this way.

  • Adidas should have done it last week but they finally did it this morning. This is a big financial hit to Kanye but maybe more for Adidas. Have I mentioned it's beginning to feel a lot like pre-WWII Germany around here? 


  • Britney Griner's had her appeal predictably denied moments ago by a Russian appellate court on the spot. She got to attend by video feed from her prison cell. 

  • I just learned that a former Decatur High School graduate ('66) is going into the Texas Tech Hall of Fame this weekend. Edit: I was wrong. He was a Decatur resident but married a Decatur graduate -- Lynn Smith. Reuther graduated Tech in 1966. 

  • Former Texas great Sam Ehlinger gets the start on Sunday for the Colts, and the job is his to keep for the rest of the season. He's never thrown a pass in an NFL game. 
  • Trouble in Aggieland. 

  • The NFL is reviewing two refs getting an autograph from Tampa Bay's Mike Evans.  They aren't supposed to do that. Video.

  • Re: The Rangers hiring Bruce Bochy. Compared to the hiring of a football coach, the hiring of a major league baseball manager is basically inconsequential.
at 8:29 AM

10.24.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




"Space shuttle Endeavour's final journey was a 12-mile ride from LAX, through Inglewood, to the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Here it is in time lapse." Which was really cool.

  • This is awful, and isn't getting near enough press from the weekend skeleton news crews.

    • The shooter entered the hospital on Saturday morning, went to the maternity wing, struck his girlfriend who was there to deliver a baby in the head with a handgun, and then shot two workers dead who had come into the room to help. 
    • The workers were probably nurses, but we don't know for sure -- the hospital has basically gone into a communications lock-down. Something is going on, and I'm guessing they are scared of being sued (and Fox 4 had a story last night about how employees have complained about security for years.)
    • And the shooter is a poster child for guys who need to be locked up.
      • He had been to prison once before on a two year sentence for robbing a guy he had met in a convenience store.
      • And he went back to prison on an eight year sentence for robbing a woman as she walked into her apartment, leaving her duct taped in her bathroom. 

      • And his picture is like he had been cast for the role for a TV movie. 

    • And this shooting will cause all sorts of knee-jerk reactions about "law changes." Hey, his second crime was a first degree felony (5 years to life) where he was subject to serving 1/2 of his sentence by law.  He got 8 years so he got out in 4. If he had gotten 40, he would have had to have served 20.  The problem isn't with the laws, it's that his case gets lumped in an avalanche of penny-ante crimes that shouldn't be felonies to begin with. 
    • He also had an ankle monitor as a condition of parole. Almost all parolee's don't have an ankle monitor, and the fact that he had one tells you that TDC considered him high risk.  
  • The Runaway Bay cluster of dumping raw sewage into Lake Bridgeport is finally getting some metroplex press -- although this was page 23A of the Star-Telegram. This problem has been developing for years but . . . 


  • DPS finally fired a trooper in connection with Uvalde. But it was quietly done on Friday in a late day news dump.

    • Remember that the $300,000 Man said he would resign under these circumstances. 

  • This is a weird story.  The dad thinks people are "after him" so he disappeared with his wife and two autistic sons. The family hadn't been heard from in a week until they surfaced over the weekend. They left behind an elderly family member they were "taking care of" and "was found [last] Monday walking the neighborhood."

  • More trouble for the Clay County sheriff.

  • Trump was in Texas on Saturday. Remember a couple of months ago I mentioned how the Nazis began to make a martyr out of the date of Hitler's first coup attempt? And how I said we need to watch and see if ultra-MAGA did the same thing over January 6th? We didn't have to wait long. Video.

    • Related: On Friday in the trial of the leader of the Oath Keepers, we learned that the Brown Shirts were coordinating with each other.


  • The El Paso DA is probably in over her head, but you never -- I mean never -- ask for the Texas AG's office to help you in a criminal prosecution because they will screw it up. They aren't in the business of prosecuting. And they'll send in Austin lawyers who are bad at it while all the while being oblivious to the nature and customs of the jurisdiction they've walked into. She actually lucked out here.

  • How strangely worded is this from the Wall Street Journal? Ordered? Who would have known that you can't always trust an illegal drug courier. 

  • The wildest thing out of the college football weekend is that four snaps sailed over the punter for Weber State's head and all four resulted in safeties. I didn't think that's possible. All four quick loading videos are here.

  • The Cowboys had a 52 yard punt return to the Lion's 42 yards and then -- had to punt after not getting a first down.  That's hard to do. 

at 8:30 AM

10.21.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




It was the great Kountze, Texas cheerleaders Bible verse controversy of 2012. The case went on to the Texas Supreme Court on a procedural issue (mootness and standing) where the cheerleaders won, but after that everyone seems to have lost interest. The last court ruling I can find is just an appellate court referring it back to the trial court for further proceedings. 

  • The greatest 44 days of work as Prime Minister ever.

     
  • I saw this story out of  Mississippi last week but finally tracked down and watched the video yesterday. It's about a million times worse that I imagined. In fact, it's horrifying. And I don't know how the parents didn't go all vigilante on the daycare workers after they saw it. 

  • A new and respected UT poll for Texas politics was released this morning. Nothing will ever change. Range of error is +/-3.3%
    • Governor:

    • Lt. Governor:

    • And, incredibly, Attorney General:

  • A local headline out of Wichita Falls I saw yesterday which seems to be worthy of more, if not national, attention.

  • A random press release which confused me. I Googled the place to see if it actually was in Bridgeport, and it came back to an address in the strip center by the new Scooter's coffee shop. 

  • A reminder that Runaway Bay is dumping raw sewage into Lake Bridgeport and the city doesn't plan to do anything about it unless others pay for it: 

  • All of this would have been so much easier if DPS would just have come clean about their screw-ups from Uvalde from the start. Story.

  • Steve Bannon is scheduled to be sentenced this morning for defying a subpoena to testify before Congress about the January 6th Trump Insurrection. He was convicted earlier this year.  The Justice Department wants six months. He wants probation. And he was fired up this morning:

  • I'm surprised that #2 is still Southern Baptist. I thought they it was independent. Story.

  • I've long said that school vouchers are nothing more than a ruse to use taxpayer money to fund private religious schools. Now Texas Monthly has a new article on how it would go down, and how it is trying to be implemented behind the scenes. It's money laundering:

  • Legal nerdy stuff that I don't understand which I'm posting because isn't really legal nerdy stuff: This footnote from a civil case decided yesterday by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals in Stedfast Baptist Church v. Fellowship of the Sword, Inc.:

  • I love this image from the NFL game last night. The guy in the background is starting a backflip as he completes his TD via interception. Andy Dalton, who threw it, is in the foreground. Video of the play.

  • Northwest ISD football was committing a crime last night. 

  • 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, 108 days.
  • Messenger - Above the Fold

at 8:29 AM
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