Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• The Tarrant County Jail is now releasing its total inmate population on a daily basis. Yesterday:  4,247. Wise County had 183. For bordering counties, that really is a mind-boggling difference.
• This would be legal in Texas.
  
  
• I stumbled upon this information on the Montague/Young/Archer County DA yesterday which I didn't know. She was 30 when elected, graduated from Texas Wesleyan Law School in 2012, got a job as assistant DA but was let go once the position was eliminated, and then decided to run against the DA who hired her. And she, according to the two year old story, is married to a Wise County Sheriff's deputy. This is the margin she won by:
  
• Pretty crazy story of a guy with a gun who "was off his medication" and hid in "between the walls" of a locker room at Paradise High School yesterday evening. Messenger story here.  (I noticed that the school superintendent referred to the guy as a "perp." I've never met the guy but now I'm picturing Joe Friday.)
  
• In my continuing rant about people being criminally prosecuted for traffic accidents, the subject of the Texas Monthly story I've written about before was just released from prison after the appellate court granted him a new punishment trial and allowed bond. His case could still could go higher in an attempt to wipe out the conviction. (On a related note, yesterday a different appellate court in San Antonio threw out a criminal-conviction-because-of-an-accident case.)  
  
• Trump went to Toledo Dayton and El Paso yesterday in a somber mission of healing. Let's check and see how it worked out. 
• This is in between cities when I'm sure he was emotionally shaken.
  
  
  
• I didn't think he could possibly screw up a hospital visit, but he did. Official White House photo: 

What the hell is wrong with everybody?

• The rest of us . . . .
  
• Trump barred the press from being with him in the hospitals because "it wasn't a photo op" but was able to produce a slickly produced campaign video of his visit in Dayton in less than an hour after he left.
  
• Senator John Cornyn probably didn't think about Matthew 6:5 when he campaigned with Trump in El Paso later in the day.  "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others."
  
• "My rhetoric is very—it brings people together.” - Trump on the White House Lawn yesterday morning. Later:
  
  
• And while you weren't watching, ICE rounded up 680 people at Mississippi food processing plants yesterday.
  
• This photograph for the legendary album cover was taken 50 years ago today.  Today is also the 50th anniversary of the murders directed by Charles Manson. 
  
• We were probably too hard on Fox News' Tucker Carlson for saying the White Supremacy is a hoax. David Duke has come to his defense. 
  
• I can't envision a "Red Flag" law that could be written without getting into the impossibility of predicting future crimes. How would it begin? "After notice and hearing, a person found by a preponderance of evidence to be likely to commit a crime of violence using a firearm in the future . . . . " Good lord. Unless a person has past history of convictions -- and sometimes even then -- that can never be done. And if a person has any prior serious convictions he can't carry a gun any way. Then you've got the practical problem of trying to keep guns away from a now very pissed off guy if a judge were to make that finding.

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• Those who watch Fox 4 News will get a kick out of this. (I wonder what happened to Brandy, though.)
  
• I saw these photos out of Galveston yesterday right before I hit the "publish" button, thought it should be a big deal, but then decided I was over-reacting. Nope, it turned out to be a big deal. The guy was homeless and arrested for trespassing but the Galveston PD turned it into a scene right out of Django. Kudos to their Chief:  "I believe our officers showed poor judgement in this instance and could have waited for a transport unit at the location of the arrest."
  
  
• It seems like any school bus provider would have an app which allows the tracking of school buses by parents. 
• There was more than just one date?
  
  
• Collin County got a new district court after the last legislative session, and Greg Abbott just appointed Andrea Bouressa as judge. She ran for 416th district judgeship in that county in 2016 and finished last in a four man Republican primary with 12.06% of the vote. 
• I'll admit I wasn't familiar with the work of Toni Morrison, who died yesterday, but this is great from her: "When your child walks into a room, does your face light up?" Here she explains to Oprah in 2000 (in under a minute) why that's important. 
  
• A Paradise boy drowned at a small lake at the Grasslands yesterday morning. I thought this from the Messenger was odd: "Using side scan sonar, [the game warden] said they were able to find him almost immediately. The Flower Mound Fire Department responded and used a submersible remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with video to confirm they had found the boy." Despite no chance of the boy being alive by the time any law enforcement arrived, why wait for the ROV since he was only in eight feet of water?
• Texas Christian University will now sell beer at Amon Carter this fall for football games. The school joins other Big 12 schools of Texas, Texas Tech, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and West Virginia. There is no way Baylor ever approves beer sales in my lifetime. 
• Watch people run in terror last night after a motorcycle backfires near Times Square.
  
• This Texas House Speaker story is crazy and does not bode well for Republicans at the state level. This is what happened: The head of a conservative oil money and religion super PAC, Michael Quinn Sullivan, met with the Speaker Dennis Bonnen and the subject of giving the PAC (amazingly) press passes for the House Floor came up. Sullivan claims The Speaker said OK if the Super PAC would help target ten Republicans who weren't team players. That meeting occurred in the Speakers office, Sullivan secretly tape-recorded it,  and is now playing it for other Texas lawmakers to try to get Bonnen to quit or get ousted because he never liked Bonnen in the first place. But Sullivan won't release the tape to the public.

When mommy and daddy fight.

• Anyone have a copy of this laying around? It was published for Bridgeport's centennial in 1973 (and sold for $3 a copy -- down from $5 when they didn't sell too well.) 
  
• Then I went down a rabbit trail of the Bridgeport Index in 1973 and ran across this ad.  Hartsell Farm Supply was doing my Random Thoughts Girl bit before I even thought of it.
  
  
• Twenty-four hours ago, Trump was forced to say this off of a teleprompter: "Now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside, so destructive, and find the courage to answer hatred with unity, devotion, and love." Now, hours before heading to El Paso to help heal a community that any functioning adult president should be able to do, he does this to the city's favorite son: 
  
• Uh, a White Supremacist just murdered 22 people.
  
•  Messenger: Above the Fold. 

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Your life can change pretty quickly by simply being a jerk in a public. I'm fine with that. (Original post by family.)

  

  This is from the home page of the Star-Telegram.

• The State Bar of Texas reminded the public to be on the lookout for money-sucking vampires (who are also lawyers) after the El Paso shooting. I'm sure someone one will solicit a victim's family to sue Wal-Mart because the legal profession is full of people like that.
  
• Count the number of ways this proposal by a Democratic presidential candidate makes no sense.
  
  
• The department of Homeland Security needs to issue a travel warning by the U.S. against the U.S.  
• More details on a former Texas elected DA.
  
• I saw a service dog in the Wise County Courthouse yesterday. That's the first time I can recall ever seeing one. I addressed it as a "good puppy dog" (which is what I do even if a dog is 50 pounds and 10 years old.) 
• He had one job: To read from a teleprompter, in a monotone voice, the words others had written. He had time to prepare at his golf resort. But he couldn't handle it. "May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo . . . ." 
  
• For some reason, this morning Trump retweeted a commemoration of D-Day from June 6th. Today is August 6th. 
  
• And he threatened Google this morning but misspelled his own name when referring to himself in the third person.  He's fine, right? Totally fine. 
  
• The Cowboys released former Baylor basketball player Rico Gathers yesterday after four years. That was the weirdest and longest experiments in team history.  You almost wondered if he had secret tapes of Jerry Jones in some Moscow hotel. 
• Yesterday I read somewhere that 85% of the Texas population lives east of I-35. I have no idea if that's true, but it sounds right.
• I'm counting over 75 subpoenas having been issued in a murder case in Wise County tentatively set for next week. 
• Sometimes you just get fed up. 
  
• Former Tarrant County prosecutor Richard Alpert made the cover of the Wichita Falls paper (although he was named "Albert" under his photo.)

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• What a bloody weekend with the most bloodshed in Texas. Twenty dead at a Walmart shooting in El Paso climbs to the third worst mass shooting in our state's history.  It ranks only behind Luby's (25) and Sutherland (23) and right in front of the University of Texas tower (18). 
• The killing was the result of White Nationalist Terrorism. Heck, it's such an epidemic and so obvious that even Ted Cruz had to go on record as admitting it. 
  
• The shooter said the mass murder was going to be about about illegal immigration and the "Hispanic Invasion" (his words - and Trump's.) I'm not so sure. He murdered people without asking where they were from, without asking to see their papers, and not asking if the were at U.S. citizens. No. This was about killing brown people. 
• Good lord. This morning Trump not only failed to call out White Supremacists but basically gave them a call to arms. He might as well say, "When I say 'Fake News' in the future, guys, that's your cue." (Note: The El Pasoshooter wrote in his manifesto, "The media is infamous for fake news.")
  
• Lt. Dan Patrick said that the shooting was because "we won't let our kids pray in our schools." (Not only is that dumb even for him, but who's stopping kids from praying in school?)

• The Texas Lieutenant Governor says it's not firearms or white supremacy that caused yesterday's massacre in El Paso, it's that kids don't pray in school anymore pic.twitter.com/lNedl0rg7U

  — Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 4, 2019

• At least Trump in the past was horrified at the suggestion that someone shoot illegal immigrants. No? Of course not. He is their leader. 

• Here’s Trump NOT stopping a rally goer after they yelled “shoot them” in response to immigration taking point
  
  Here’s Trump NOT saying “NO, absolutely not, that’s not who we are”
  
  Here’s Trump NOT having security escort that despicable person out pic.twitter.com/3SvTIDpqeq

  — Danny Ocean (@The_UnSilent_) August 4, 2019

• After the Dayton mass murder within hours after El Paso, you would expect in normal times for the President of the United States to address the nation. But that didn't happen because he's not capable of speaking without screwing it up or telling us to tap the brakes because there were "good people on both sides." Instead, he was yukking it up at one of his golf courses Saturday night and crashing another wedding.
  
• Greg Abbott, who is scared to utter the words "white supremacy terrorism" and will never refuse gun lobby money, has a tweet for everything:
  
• And remember this not-so-subtle tweet by Cornyn earlier this year?
  
• Add a section for Walmart.
  
• Clever.
  
• The El Paso shooter was arrested without incident. Compare and contrast a guy who was arrested (and died) for being arrested for selling single cigarettes. 
  
• Changing gears . . . 
• Five were killed in a fiery car wreck on Northside Drive in Fort Worth last night.
• The a fourth Republican Congressman, Ken Marchant, has announced he is leaving office. He's the third one to get out of Dodge after winning by less than 5%.
• Trump had to withdraw the nomination of another Texas congressman, John Ratcliffe, as Director of National Intelligence because he lied about his resume. It's amazing that you can lie in plain sight and get away with it so long as you don't seek a position higher than Congressman. 
• I saw Once Upon A Time In Hollywood over the weekend. Thumbs up. (But I'm hugely biased as a Tarantino fan.)
• Big thumbs up to the HBO documentary I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter.  It's great and provides so much background that you had no idea about. (Throw in teenage dating by text, anti-depressants, Glee, and domestic abuse and you've got a wild ride.)
• This weekend sure took the Arlington cop who accidentally killed a woman after shooting at her dog off the front page. 
• Mitch McConnell, who of late has become very angry with the nickname "Moscow Mitch", tripped outside his home and broke his shoulder yesterday morning. 
• A Republican district judge in Denton County won't seek re-election because “I do not like the direction the Republican Party is heading in."
• Incredible picture a split second after fan gets hit by a foul ball at yesterday's Rangers' game. 
  
• Messenger: Above The Fold.