Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• The new "letter grades" for Texas schools were released moments ago.
• This case is being tried in the Wise County District Court this week.
• Funny:
  
• The Wise County DA's office is getting another clerical position. 
• Ted Cruz has asked Trump to campaign for him in Texas against Beto O'Rourke. Here's a flashback from 2016:
  

  

  Trump on "Lyin' Ted"

• We currently live in Tattooed America. Irving PD had to change its policy by no longer requiring officers to cover up their tattoos. It's simple reality: As the population ages, we now have a ton of middle aged people all tattooed up. 
• Something seems a bit odd about the Pennsylvania "grand jury report" which "implicates" over 300 Catholic clergy in the sexual abuse of what they "believe [to be] ... in the thousands" of individuals. Hey, that kind of abuse certainly exists in the Catholic church, but putting together one case of sexual abuse is a daunting task for police and prosecutors. For a grand jury to just sit in a room and issue such a sweeping report seems to be fraught with peril. (Almost all of the priests names were redacted and will not face charges -- which makes it easier to throw allegations around.)
• I can't keep a bush alive for over three years and there's a tree growing out of the side of the third floor of the Wise County Courthouse. (I had someone take a photo two days ago but she hasn't sent it to me.) 
• Yesterday at the courthouse a young lady walked up to me and asked, "Are you a lawyer?" Me (with Slumped Shoulders), "Yep." Her: "What happens if a lawyer doesn't show up for court?" Me: "If you were in the courtroom just now when the judge called roll, you won't get in trouble . . . " Her (interrupting): "No. What happens to the lawyer?" Me: "I just first wanted to make sure you understood nothing bad was going to happen to you." Her: "Hey, thanks. You are a very good lawyer." Mercy. The standards these days are incredibly low if that's all it took.
• Sarah Huckabee Sanders was par for the course yesterday: (1) She looked like a deer in headlights when she said she couldn't "guarantee" that a tape of Trump using the n-word does not exist, (2) She had to come out late last night and apologize for lying about "President Trump [creating] three times as many jobs for black workers as President Barack Obama did."
  
• I always grip about prosecutors not understanding the intricacies of "recklessness" in Texas criminal law, and here is a "fantastic example." (This guy teaches younger prosecutors in seminars.) Below, in my opinion, is a faulty and simplistic explanation of the term "recklessness" and is certainly not a "fantastic example" of it. Heck, it might not even qualify as criminal negligence if that were part of the Agg Assault statute.
  
• There are new apartments being built in Decatur by Lowe's and some kind of "super tractor supply" type store going in where the old drive-in theater used to be. (That's code for "across the street" for you youngsters.)
• Messenger: Above The Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

•  I've ranted that "movies" are nothing like they used to be. Case in point, Meg made $44,500,000 in its opening weekend.
• Quality comedy from Maury:
  
  
• Trump has, ironically, gone Unhinged on Omarosa. Here is a rant from this morning ("that dog!") followed by a couple from yesterday (once again calling an African American "not smart"):

  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
• So let me get this straight, she was paid $180,000 a year, wouldn't show up for work, but Trump kept her around because she said "GREAT things about me . . . . "
• Completely missed this on Sunday night in the Cubs/Nationals game: Bottom of the ninth, down by three, bases loaded, two outs, 2-2 count. Quick loading Twitter video here. (And to make it Texas relevant: Cole Hamels pitched seven innings and gave up only one hit/one earned run.)
• They don't have a Thunder Truck, but Fox 4 was tooling down the highway yesterday and captured a pickup getting a little loose. 
  
• Whenever there is news of a WWE death, I never have the foggiest idea of who the guy was
• Happy Birthday to the great Gary Larson.
  
• We've got another odd airplane story. A guy in Utah gets arrested for domestic violence, gets released, and decides to fly his small plane into the house where his wife was. He died. She didn't.  
  
  
• Breaking: If you look closely you can see a huge section of a massive bridge is gone. It's in Italy and the death toll has been estimated in the "dozens" but so far the official count is eleven. 
  
• Talked to a lady yesterday who swears by the "grocery pickup" at the Walmart in Haslet. It sounds like there are a million ways for it to get screwed up, but apparently it works like a charm. 
• Dak Prescott's dad got arrested for less than two ounces of weed. Let's all collectively yawn. (the number of news outlets that refer to it as less than "two grams" when it is less than "two ounces" is amazing. Copy and paste. Copy and paste.)

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The manufacturer of Roundup, the greatest weedkiller in the history of weedkillers, was hit with a $289 million jury verdict in San Francisco based upon an allegation that the product caused cancer in a man. That award will never hold up. Well, it would never hold up in Texas.
• I mentioned these drawings a couple of weeks back. I can't wait to look at them to see how things have changed -- and they have definitely changed with impromptu remodeling projects over the years.
  
  
  
  
• Fair and balanced: Fox News' Sean Hannity turned his entire radio show over to Trump's two lawyers on Friday. Amazingly, those two didn't say anything crazy.
  
  
• 
  
• The guy who stole the plane out of Seattle and went on a suicidal mission demonstrated two things: (1) He's the calmest craziest guy ever, and (2) that man, for not being a pilot, can fly a plane like nobody's business.
  
   
• You think everything is going well for Trump when he tweets, from his New Jersey golf course no less, that his own attorney general is "scared and Missing in Action"?
  
• The Teen Choice Awards, for whatever reason, was on the Family Unit TV last night.  I took some comfort in not knowing a single person on the screen while thinking, "The nation is doomed" for most of the show.
• The office microwave is on fritz which, in my life, is like going to DEFCON 1. 
• I'm not sure Omarosa's new book has much credibility.  But the jury is still out since Trump promised us he would "hire only the best people." 
  
• No-Longer-Sheriff Joe decided to campaign by pointing out he loved Trump during his presidential campaign while the former Sheriff's current Republican senate opponent hung out with that Never-Trumper Ted Cruz.  I need a program to keep all of this straight. It's like an episode of Modern Dysfunctional Family.
  
• I've been warning about the Proud Boys, a group of White Nationalists who refuse to call themselves White Nationalists, for a long time. Twitter finally banned them on Friday. 
• The neo-Nazi rally in D.C. turned out to be a big bag yesterday. It was planned for months but only a couple of dozen Unite The Righters showed up. So sad.
  
• It looks like one of the players on Bridgeport's state basketball championship team who went to aTm has transferred to a Division II team in Oklahoma. 
• I saw a Crown Royal commercial yesterday while watching the the PGA Championship and thought to myself that it was the first liquor commercial I had seen on TV in decades. Quick research reveals there was a "voluntary ban" of liquor ads on TV in 1948 but it has very slowly gone to the wayside beginning in the last 1990s. I must have missed a few.
• Some bikers "visiting" Trump this weekend gave us one of the greatest photos of his presidency.
• Messenger: Above The Fold.

It's Friday. Let's Get Out Of Here.

I think I'll do this tonight. But with me in the shrink wrap.

Ariel is all grown up.

"I told you I want to stay in the jungle in Costa Rica!"

Some Idiocracy is quality Idiocracy.

 Like the deleted scene from The Exorcist. (Look it up.)

File that under the "Why didn't I think of that?" category.

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• The craziest story you'll hear all day: An assistant Wake Forest basketball coach has been arrested for punching a tourist on Sunday after the tourist thought he was his Uber driver. The punch caused the tourist to fall and hit his head on the concrete. He's dead.
• Yesterday Justice Sotomayor strongly dissented to the Court not staying a death sentence out of Tennessee. I would link to the facts of the case but that would cause any inclination you have to agree with her to quite probably vanish.
  
• Like clockwork, I tried to give Trump credit yesterday for not tweeting about the "Witch Hunt" for three days and within three hours he did it.
  
• I picture him in pajamas and jumping on his bed when he fired this one off:

                                       

• The government will let you pick the logo for Space Force! Logos which appear to have been designed by a Fifth Grade class from Muleshoe. (No offense to the Fifth Graders of Muleshoe.)
  
• And Space Force ($8 billion), just like The Wall ($25 billion), will never happen.
• That Manafort case just got weirder. The prosecutor asked the judge to instruct the jury to not hold it against them that the judge scolded them yesterday. The judge amazingly did so and told the jury that he was wrong when he did it. So odd -- especially for a federal court. I don't think I've ever seen that even in state court. 

• 

  I want a courtroom sketch of me!

• Laura Ingraham stepped into it a couple of days back by showing (again) she's a racist on Fox News. You know you've done a fine, fine job when America's best known Klan member, David Duke, backs you up. (I hadn't heard from Duke since he backed Trump for saying there was blame "on both sides" in Charlottesville.)
  
  
• I understand how grand juries work. They don't work this way. That many indictments in one day is ridiculous.
  
• Woodward and Bernstein watch Nixon's resignation: 
  
• Nerdy college football stuff: A fantastic interactive graph showing which teams go for it the most on fourth down and their success rates. 
•  Put down your phone! (Better quality.)
  
• More random college football stuff: Since 2000, the number of true non-conference road games (not a neutral site) played by Alabama is six. That's amazing. 
• I'm insane now: 
  
• I'm "hip" enough to know Weezer covered Toto's Africa, but now I learn we have Weird Al joining Weezer on stage yet not changing the lyrics. (It's like a Twilight Zone episode.)
• Add this to the list of Dumb Texas Laws: Gaming machines. (We had a raid in Bridgeport where ten were seized.)

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Every weather forecast is basically: "Over the next few days, you may get rain or you may not. If you do, it might be heavy or it might be light." That's basically no forecast at all. 
  
• I'm still trying to track it down, but there was a cop and a mayor of a small town near Waco who was one of the first to call 911 at the Twin Peaks biker incident. I think he is now the pastor of a church in Decatur. (It certainly is the same name, I'm just not sure it is the same person.)
• Trump hasn't tweeted "Witch Hunt" in three days. And, other than complaining that rivers in California run into the Pacific Ocean, he's been pretty calm on Twitter. 
• "As Reagor-Dykes employees are being 'placed on leave' following the dealerships’ legal troubles, workers are wondering what is the next step for them."
• There was news yesterday of an alleged sexual assault in a bathroom in a bar/club in Dallas, and cops put out a sketch of the so-called Person of Interest. I looked up the club online and it had a photo gallery. I feel sorry for the DJ depicted in the photo gallery who certainly is not a suspect. 
• 
  
  
  
• It was very weird yesterday for Southlake PD to highlight two DWI arrests of females who allegedly hit each other while driving different vehicles.  The "thread" had a bit of glee and satisfaction to it. 
  
• I also thought it was odd that the Star-Telegram picked up the story and called the ladies "drunk" without using "alleged."
  
• Speaking of, this is a very weird Star-Telegram story. At the end of it, it lists twelve products by name (with links) that comprise this gal's make-up.  Prescotte Stokes III is the author.
  
• I watched the first episode of Hard Knocks. It is easy to tell why the Cleveland Browns are so bad and the finger points at an entire coaching staff that is sleep-walking. 
• Some serious hail in Colorado Springs.
• I wrote about Kobach's scam a few days ago. He just won the Kansas race for Republican nominee for governor a couple of days ago by only 191 votes, and his opponent has demanded a recount. Since Kobach is Secretary of State, he will oversee the recount and refuses to recuse himself. 
  
• Nixon walked out of the White House for the last time on this day in 1974. 
  
• "There are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us.” - To Kill a Mockingbird