6.10.2019

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • That was a heck of a storm that went through Dallas yesterday afternoon, but we also learned that every local television station is ill-prepared to cover any major local news on a Sunday afternoon when they only have a skeleton crew.  I'm not sure Fox 4 had a producer on a staff. Here's a tip: When a massive crane falls on an apartment complex, show shots of the damage.

  • And there was amazing footage on Twitter immediately after it happened. Since I'm the hardest working man in news, here's a compilation:
    • Panes of glass from a skyscraper under construction crashed into an existing high rise.
    • Great footage of the velocity of the wind taken from inside a building in Addison.
    • Video of the crane collapsing in the distance
    • People scrambling to get off a boat ramp on Lake Grapevine.
    • Billboard crashing on car. (With a bad narrator.)
    • Photo of windows broken out in Fountain Place in downtown.
  • There was a hiker in Fort Worth who got lost in Arkansas but was found late Friday. When I see a story written like this, I wonder if the reporter is trying to say something without saying it. Can text but can't make calls. Most hikers lost in the area are found quickly. Roommate set up a GoFundMe account.
  • There was a Lamborghini wreck in Dallas over the weekend where the driver was killed. Speaking of GoFundMe, his family already has over $100,000.
  • Southlake Carroll's baseball team won a state title with a 17-0 victory this weekend. But the other team had, uh, issues.
  • The City of Dallas will settle the Exxxotica lawsuit which started a few years back when the City denied them use of the convention center.   Do you know which simple country lawyer from Decatur said that the legal position of the City of Dallas was on "shaky ground" way back in 2015 when all this began? This guy. My free legal advice would have saved Dallas not only the $650,000 settlement but also legal fees which had already reached $675,000 way back in 2017. 
  • Eric and Don Jr., who took a side trip to Ireland last week at your expense so daddy could look at his hotel, went on a "pub crawl' and ordered a round of drinks for everyone at one bar. They left without paying. But the owner said she was OK because "I don’t think we’ve to worry about getting paid for that." She doesn't know the Trumps.
  • Fort Worth police shot and killed a guy last night. This is in addition to the fatal shooting on June 1st by the SWAT team and a June 5th shooting where a cop fired at a guy but didn't hit anyone.
  • Tech won the men's NCAA Men's Track Championship this weekend and punched their ticket to the World Series. This is after playing in the NCAA Basketball Championship a couple of months back. (And I note a way-too-early death of a woman from Runaway Bay who has "Guns Up" in her obituary.)
  • Guess which world "leader" signed this D-Day Proclamation at the top?
  • The Texas Tribune has a story on the abuses of civil forfeitures by DA offices across the state. Here is the way the Texas County and District Attorney's Association read it: 

  • Trump continues to let us know he's not mentally well: 
    "of which the Moon is a part"

    Less than one month ago
  • More proof of instability as he was watching Fox News on Saturday afternoon. He misspelled basketball and referenced the wrong Rick Barry.
  • A former NFL player is on trial and this is the note the jury sent out on Friday. 
  • Messenger: Above The Fold

at 8:29 AM

6.07.2019

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







at 2:00 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts





  • That may not be the best RTG above, but that has to be the most interesting skyline ever. With doing no research, I'm guessing it's Dubai or somewhere in Qatar or some such?  And that one building in the middle under construction appears to be leaning to our right. 
  • Yes.
    And do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder in Paris?
  • I mentioned the other day about the deputy city manager out of Wichita Falls who had his trash searched by cops who then raided his house looking for weed. He was fired from his $180,000 a year job after  31 years. How much marijuana did the find? "[A]n inventory of seized items filed with the 78th District Court did not specify the amount of marijuana investigators found when they served the search warrant." Translation: They weren't proud of what they found. It wouldn't surprise me if it is a misdemeanor amount.  Story.
  • I'm no business genius, but when the Shell station in Decatur by James Wood's is selling gas at $2.59 and the new QuikTrip has it priced at $2.12, I think I know which one will win. 
  • For one to be a personal campaign account and one to be a government account, there are a lot of similarities between these two posts three minutes apart yesterday. (But there are a million ways how you could explain that a taxpayer paid PR person did not create the campaign post on taxpayer time.)

  • Heck, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett was always blatantly posting on his personal account during government work hours and no one cared. Trump even made him a federal judge. 
  • Some group has created a text based search engine of past tax returns of non-profit organizations. I found NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's $34 million salary from 2014 here. (Yep, the NFL was non-profit until the last couple of years when they changed it so people can't find their salaries.)
  • We've come a long way from the report being a "complete and total exoneration." 
  • Alabama's Roy Moore's lawyer has been arrested for DUI and weed. And he has a pretty intimidating mug shot in a I-Might-Do-Something-Crazy-At-Any-Moment/Full Metal Jacket kind of way. 
  • Fourteen minutes after the D-Day remembrance ceremony was to begin, Trump decided to give an interview with Fox News where, with crosses in the background,  he decided it would be a good time to call Robert Mueller a "fool." Mueller has a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart Medal.
  • The length of time from the end of Civil War to D-Day is roughly equivalent to the length of time from D-Day until now. (Four years off).   And that's today's fun fact. 
  • Hot World War II opinion: Hitler would have won but for the Russians. (That's probably more of a common knowledge opinion.) Dead Russian soldiers: Over 20 million. Dead American soldiers: 405,000
  • Fox 4's Good Day this morning. It's a hot female Caucasian traffic light.
  • A sheikh who wants to be president of Iraq, and who wants the U.S. to strike Iran, has paid to stay twenty-six nights in a suite in Trump's Emoluments International Hotel.
  • I'll put her close to the top of my Evil Women List. Quick loading interview.

  • Want to see a Russian destroyer taunt a U.S.S. cruiser in the Philippine Sea within the last 24 hours?




at 8:31 AM

6.06.2019

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



  • I'm really torn about the criminal prosecution of the deputy at Parkland who didn't enter the building to stop the school shooter. Fire him. Take his commission. Humiliate him. But we are really getting out there when a bunch of guys in suits want to put a cop in a cage because they second guess his bravery. 
  • I don't know why I think is sounds so cool when I hear a college football player has "entered the Transfer Portal."
  • Nerdy stuff: After I read this about a federal appellate opinion that came down yesterday, I wanted to know about the judge who bizarrely authored it. Guess what? A Trump appointed judge who was confirmed 49-46.
  • I'm always stunned by how those who complain of courts filled with "liberal activist judges" who "don't interpret the constitution but re-write the constitution" are actually full of judges which, for all my life, have whittled away at the Fourth Amendment to such an extent that there isn't much left. Judge Lee Ann Daughinot out of Fort Worth, now retired, once referred to it as the Salami Theory: "You may slice the salami often, but if you slice it thin each time, no one notices until the salami is mostly or entirely gone." See Williams v. State, 172 S.W.3d 730, 738 (Tex. App.-Fort Worth 2005, pet. ref'd)(J. Dauphinot, dissenting).
  • Random weird memory: I've never forgotten when I a friend told me, "I don't think Ferris Bueller had that much fun on his day off." It's always made me contemplate the definition of "fun" and whether he was right or not. 
  • I didn't know about the website which tracks posts of police officers who make racists post on social media. 
  • I had no idea about this either. It makes sense.
    (Cue Cartman's "No kitty! That's my pot pie!")
  • If a draft dodging Democratic president ever so much as stepped foot at Normandy, Fox News would condemn him every day for the next six months. Even moreso if he minimized this anniversary with a hashtag.
  • Getting reports that some moron ran over a huge turtle in Decatur. That could have been avoided. It's not like he darted out in front of them. 
  • Bad Fox Graphics has a great bit of monitoring how the producers react when Sean Hannity puts on his reading glasses. Those guys have strict orders to not show Hannity and cut to graphics or other guests. Every now and then they screw up. Here's an example.
  • I can't wait to find out who it is. I hope it's a Civil-War-Was-Really-About-State's-Rights lawyer who can't come up with the money.
  • The Star-Telegram might want to put the note that the couple is from Fort Worth either in the headline or the lede. (It didn't show up until paragraph 11.)


at 8:31 AM

6.05.2019

Random Wednesday Morning Thought



  • The Dallas Murder County went up last night after a killing in Pleasant Grove. (I think this is #91 for the year.)   A separate drive by shooting in Oak Cliff and a shooting into a car just caused injuries. 
  • My continuing bit of "Are there too many cops" also needs to be supplemented with "Are there two many lawyers?" Yesterday I learned there are 91,244 active lawyers in Texas. 
  • One of those folks who goes to government buildings to try and draw government employees offsides (you know, by just walking into a police station and start filming to see if they'll get pissed off) tried it at a Tarrant County "Facilities Management" office but found it empty. No one was there, however, but they had forgotten to lock the door when they went home.  But she decided to sit down and do a little comedy by pulling up her youtube channel on a government computer (which also hadn't been locked down).  In an over-the-top government crackdown, she was later arrested for the felony on an overly broad computer hacking law. 
  • Hey, I just looked at her website and found she posted a video four days ago about her visit to Rhome PD. (After watching it, I don't feel so bad that Tarrant County is picking on her. That's a bad bit she's got going.)
  • A couple in Southlake is alleged to new have stolen a woman's purse while she was shopping and then purchase $18,000 in gift cards in less than an hour. (How do you pull that off?) I'm normally not a fan of cops doing comedy, but Southlake has a pretty funny twitter thread in order to try and capture the two. 
  • We've got an new Wise County speed record case for 2019. (It was a DPS stop in Precinct 1) :
  • How they heck have we forgotten about this case?: "A South Carolina father accused of brutally slaying his five children then driving their bodies around for more than a week was found guilty of murder on Tuesday. Timothy Jones Jr., 37, was found guilty on five counts of murder for killing his children, who ranged in age from 1 to 8, inside their Lexington mobile home on August 28, 2014, before burying them in Alabama a week later."
  • The murder-for-hire trial involving a dentist and Uptown was broadcast live by Fox 4 on their website yesterday. That got me thinking.  There's is no reason why every court shouldn't have a live feed running at all times. The cost would be next to nothing these days.
  • Trump, during an important state visit to our most important ally and in the middle of the night, finally took the dramatic step of calling out Putin and Kim Jong Un.  Oops. I got that wrong. It was someone else:
  • Emails now reveal who was behind the Lets-Purge-Some-Voters-In-Texas-With-Hispanic-Surnames-With-A-Hoax-Voter-Fraud-Scandal: Gov. Greg Abbott. (You may recall that the Secretary of State took the fall last month once he the legislature didn't confirm him after the fiasco. Where is he now? Abbott just hired him to work in the Governor's office at a salary of $205,000. There is no greater swamp than than the Abbott/Patrick/Paxton/Sid Miller crowd.)
    Photo Credit: The great AP photographer Eric Gay.
  • If you haven't seen the helicopter rescue video, you have to. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold. 


at 8:31 AM

6.04.2019

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts





  • This was a headline from four days ago. Since that time they've had three shot and one  killed at a car wash, a body found in White Rock lake, and a guy shot dead in his car in downtown Dallas last night. 
  • Happy 30th anniversary to the guy in this photo which has been hanging on my office wall for more than half of that time. 
  • I can almost forgive this teacher for not knowing how private messaging works. I can't forgive her for being so dumb that she thought she expected to have a personal private conversation with Trump online.
  • Baylor isn't telling the truth in an era when they especially need to tell the truth. That "Final Four" win and "College World Series" win ain't right. 
  • It's been a rough UK trip for Trump. Baby Trump is back along with new projections on the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud's:


  • And what's up with that tux?
  • This year's Dave Campbell's Texas Football is out. High expectations for Texas is the best Texas:
  • The Fort Worth SWAT team shot and killed a man holding a flashlight on Saturday. I've had questions about their SWAT team ever since I noticed that  they show up at every evading arrest scene like its a war zone.
  • I saw a couple of stories this morning out of Houston that the "Zone d'Erotica in Galleria area to be replaced with restaurant." That reminded me of the Dallas Morning News story last year which had this disturbing tidbit about a business with the same name: "On July 10, an undercover Dallas Police Department officer visited Zone d’Erotica, according to another affidavit. The officer said he approached the sales counter at the store and asked the employee if he could rent a porn video and watch it there . . . . .While speaking with the employee, the officer said he was approached by a male customer who was with a young female. The man offered the female to the officer and said she would accompany the officer in one of the private rooms and perform any sex act for $50, according to the affidavit." Now that's trafficking.
  • A murder case out of Bridgeport starts today in Wise County. I don't think there will be any surprises. (Here's the original report in the Messenger and the follow-up.)

at 8:30 AM
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