7.18.2023

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




I've got this occurring on the afternoon of 7/16/13, and that's about all I said about it back then. 

  • This headline is everywhere, but I'm a little hesitant to run with it. The story is from the Houston Chronicle which is behind a paywall, and I can't get to it. But everyone quoting the body of the story and the emails have yet to post any excerpts about "order" or "ordering" -- which seems to be a big deal and the crux of the story. I guess it is in there, but I would think people would pull that quote out right away. This bugs me. 

    • But the Houston Chronicle, the publisher of the story,  pulls no punches in its headline whatsoever. 

       
    • But when the paper does give us details on Twitter, they don't mention "ordering" or "being told." Now, make no mistake, what follows  is bad, but it's not lining up with the headline. Being pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers is not the same as DPS being ordered to do that. Am I obsessing to much about this?

    • Note how the Dallas Morning News headline writer softens it up a tad by not using the word "order" or "told" at all. And it cites the Houston Chronicle as its source for their story. It uses "ordered" in the first sentence but that is the only time, and the subject doesn't come up again. Weird. 


    • Edit: Someone was kind enough to send me the Chronicle story. This is as close as the story gets to matching the headline: "In another instance, on June 25, troopers came across a group of 120 people camped out along a fence set up along the river. The group included several small children and babies who were nursing, the trooper wrote. The entire group was exhausted, hungry and tired, the trooper wrote. The shift officer in command ordered the troopers to 'push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,' the email says."
  • This is dumb and probably a free speech violation.  This isn't a criminal trial, it is a political process of impeachment where the public has an inherent interest. 

  • Weather.

  • As of a couple of weeks ago, it finally looks like dust is serious flying with the Wise County courthouse restoration project. I'm a huge fan of this. 

  • Trump news:
    • Edit and breaking: He  just received "a target letter" from Jack Smith for the January 6th Insurrection. That's huge. (But it's only Trump confirming it so far.)


    • There was a setback for him  in trying to avoid being indicted in the "I just want to find 11,780 votes" case by the state prosecutor in Georgia. 



    • Not enough people are paying attention to the Imperial Presidency / Authoritarian government that Trump would bring. It's Mussolini like. (Free link.)




    • DeSantis has an ad using AI to recreate Trump's voice. Our world is about to get very, very weird.

  • Meanwhile in Chicago . . . 

  • Let's check in on Fox News' first show with Jesse Watters official replacing Tucker Carlson:

  • The Hollywood writers and actors strike in a nutshell:

  • Does this mean he'll have more? 

  • Ticket fans only: The Dan and Jake situation sounds very bad. (Ticket subreddit is here although there's lot of unusual moderation going on.)  Edit: They are gone. 

at 8:30 AM

7.17.2023

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




From Wikipedia: "[Corpus Christi District Judge Tom] Greenwell was found in his chambers dead from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. A handwritten will was found near the body. According to Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin, the judge faced financial ruin. He had exhausted spending caps on five credit cards and owed the repayment of loans. Kaelin said that Greenwell earned at least $140,000 annually but did not apparently live extravagantly. " But it was a little messy in the aftermath.

  • "Decatur Fire Department, Wise County EMS, and DPS all responded to the scene on southbound Highway 287 at County Road 4228 [south of Decatur on Saturday afternoon]. Authorities say a vehicle was traveling on County Road 4228 and failed to properly yield to a motorcycle who was traveling southbound on the highway. The vehicle hit the motorcycle, ejecting the rider. An Air Evac Lifeteam was called to the scene and airlifted the motorcyclist to a local hospital where he was pronounced deceased. He has been identified as a 47-year-old man from College Station."

  • There was a 7.2 earthquake in Alaska yesterday. This quick clip of guy grabbing up his kids like ragdolls (I would, too) as his house gets rocked is pretty crazy.

  • After an entire legislative session and two special sessions, and everyone patting themselves on the back for tax "breaks", remember your legislature failed to act on teacher salaries: 

  • This was on the verge of becoming a huge missing person story. That is, until she simply returned home on Saturday night. And we still know nothing as to what happened. 

     
  • There was a January 6th sentencing hearing on Friday which was beyond wild. A reporter was in the courtroom and provided a play-by-play of a defendant's rant at her sentencing hearing. All the posts are here, and it's incredibly entertaining. It begins . . . 
    -----------------------
    -------------------------


  • This murder case is big news in the Northeast but one picture made me wonder how tall that guy is.

    Answer: 6'4"

  • I was curious if the ultra-MAGA extremists would target those who lead the impeachment of Ken Paxton in the House. They are. 


  • He is a 100% certifiable nut-bag. Video.


  • This was all over the place on social media. It's also a lie. 

  • Random wreck in Watauga Friday afternoon. You don't want your Amazon package in a drainage canal.  


  • Legal stuff: You can't be doing that (although apparently two Oklahoma judges say it is okay.)
     

    • I wanted to see the prosecutor but for some reason her identity is worthy of "protection" from the powers at be and the appellate court. Why?

  • Old guy fun stuff: People talk about the heat of the summer of 1980 as well as former KXAS weatherman Harold Taft. Here's a 20 second clip from his weather segment announcing that it hit 113 on one of those afternoons. Love the graphics.

  • Presidential campaigns too long? The first Iowa Caucus is now six months away.



at 8:29 AM

7.14.2023

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




It was never even close to being a slam-dunk case for the State. 

  • In what is probably already the most famous criminal case in Wise County history, a small speedbump has been hit.   Tanner Horner's attorneys have been removed because of an existing  agreement that Wise County had entered into with some entity called the Regional Public Defender Office which, according to that agreement, is solely responsible for defending any death penalty case in the county. It will now take over the case for Horner. 


    • As a consequence, Fort Worth lawyer Bill Ray, who had been appointed to represent Horner,  is out. 

    • The organization has now been listed as attorney of record in the Wise County records..
    • As I understand this, the agreement was signed as a type of "capital murder insurance" to protect small counties, which rarely have death penalty cases, from having to foot the defense bill which can be exorbitant. The following counties in blue have signed similar agreements:

    • Of course, the big question is how no one realized that the agreement would apply to this case from the start. In everyone's defense, I had no idea about it either. The agreement was signed on January 10, 2022.  The murder of Athena Strand occurred in December of 2022. Bill Ray was appointed within two weeks. The State announced it was seeking the death penalty in late February, 2023.

  • We have another Trump Insurrection defendant sentenced. Not enough.



  • While the angst-of-the-day is the elimination of DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) training everywhere, yesterday afternoon a House Republican referred to African-Americans as "colored people" on the House floor. Once again, this happened in the year of our Lord, 2023. Video.

  • Oh, my.

  • Old timers like me will remember him fondly: Long-time WFAA anchor John Criswell has died. 

  • The silly floating balls on the Rio Grande were being installed yesterday.

  • Former NFL great and future Hall of Famer Phillip Rivers must really love kids.

  • One of the Fort Worth road rage incidents made it into The Washington Post this morning. 

  • Let's check in on Fox News.  I had been wondering what "Scotty Potty" and "Princess Lili's gender fluid bike" had been thinking. 

  • Very, very nerdy legal stuff: On Wednesday, we had a court of appeals affirm a trial court's decision to throw out a breath test in a DWI case. After the defendant had agreed to provide a sample, he began to reconsider a bit and start asking questions/advice from the officer. The following responses of the officer resulted in the judge finding that the consent was voluntary. 

  • Business note: I saw this headline so I took a quick look to try and figure out who was going to get rich off this deal.  Basically I learned that Denbury is primarily owned by well known mutual funds. But I really got sidetracked when I learned that Denbury was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy three years ago where they "shedded" $2.1 billion in debt under a court-supervised reorganization. So people got shafted out of $2.1 billion and now it gets sold for $5 billion? We are all suckers.

  • 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 10 days.
at 8:29 AM
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