- Yep, that was real last night.
- These are the early voting totals for the first five days in the ten most populated counties in Texas. Knowing that most of those counties are the most likely to be blue (and turning bluer), it all makes sense. Except for one thing: that 279,255 number in 2008 in the Democratic Primary seems ridiculously high. The Obama effect was that great? Seriously, if that number were only 90,000 the trends would still make sense.
- I don't know it it actually happened, but yesterday morning the plans were to move a jury (and the entire courtroom) to the basement of the Wise County courthouse to accommodate a witness in a wheelchair -- a wheelchair which was too big to get in the tiny elevator.
- You know the craziest thing about the legal smoking age being raised to 21 last year? The statute has an exception for those who turned 18 years of age before the day the law took effect, 9/1/19. What a headache for cops. That didn't happen when they changed the drinking age from 18 to 21 back in the mid-1980s. (At least, I don't think there was an exception back then.)
- I'm interested in following the appeal of the Lottery Winner/No Defense Strategy Sexual Assault case out of Wichita Falls. The current status is below. It may come as a very big surprise to some of you, but unless you are indigent with a court appointed lawyer, you have to pay the court reporter to prepared the transcript (and it ain't cheap). But this is the case where the lawyers were reportedly paid $600,000:
- Speaking of, I'm watching the Amber Guyger appeal, too. I didn't realize she got a court appointed appellate lawyer.
- We had big brouhaha break out yesterday when the Trump Administration said the coronavirus was no big deal while the CDC caused the beginning of a minor panic by saying that the spread of the virus in the U.S. is "inevitable." Mark this day down: I agree with the Trump Administration.
- But, uh, oh. He's talking science today. He does not like the stock market plunge which is reportedly tied to the spread of the disease:
- But he did, oddly, freak out about Ebola a few years back.
- Republican Senator John Kennedy made the news yesterday as he grilled the of Acting Secretary of Homeland Security for not knowing much about the coronavirus. But I paused when Kennedy asked him, "Do we have enough respirators for every American?" Respirators? 320 million of them? Of course not. That's a big and clunky apparatus, right? Nope. Did you know these little thing is called a "particulate respirator."
- A guy in Kay Granger's district sent me a couple of more fliers sent from the Super PAC out to get the incumbent congressman. As he said, there is an "obscene amount of money" being spent. It's truly a Republican on Republican political-murder-for-hire.
- Junior In The House last night: "How long is this debate going to last long?" Me: "I don't know. I'm really not watching it. You an change the channel." Her: "No. That's fine. I was just curious how long they were going to yell at each other."
- I'm not any good at it, but I try to look at old photos from the early 1910s to 1950s in Texas and try to figure out what decade they were taken in based upon the cars and landscape. Here's a photo from downtown Childress. Yesterday a guy on Twitter could peg the photo not only in a decade but in a specific year: 1930. How? He knew that the latest model vehicle in the photo was either 1930 or 1931. But since all license plates dramatically changed in 1931 and none of the cars had the new plates, he could deduce the photo was definitively taken in 1930.
- Sometimes you'll find yourself in an expensive neighborhood in Dallas or Fort Worth and think, "Who are all these people and what do they do?" I thought of that yesterday when I saw the headline below, clicked on the story, and saw this sentence: "Exact Diagnostics was cofounded in 2015 by Richie Petronis and Jerry Boonyaratanakornkit, who met while working at a pharmaceuticals company. They grew their startup without investors, according to a 2018 article in Fort Worth magazine."
- Messenger: Above the Fold
- These days a fight in a middle school which causes only "minor injuries" will cause a bunch of kids to get arrested and becomes a front page story . . .
- The resiliency of the Leaning Tower of Dallas is great entertainment. But of all the questions (i.e. The size of the wrecking ball, hitting at the top instead of the bottom, etc.), I'm most intrigued that the company uses the high tech equipment of a tire to connect the wrecking ball to the crane.
- Kind of fun facts: I kept hearing that building was the former Affiliated Computer Services building so I wondered what that company did. It got started in the late 1980s and hit the big time by providing "data services" to 7-11 stores. It then looks like the company became the pioneers in creating electronic tolls for tollways. Xerox bought the company for $6.4 billion in 2010.
- A better fun fact: Here's the guy who founded it, Darwin Deason.
- Guy in the courthouse hallway yesterday: "Could you get me a cup of water from that room over there? I'm sick." Me: "Sure." (I'm probably going to get the Medal of Freedom based upon my many years of public acts of kindness I've done in that place.) Same guy to me a few minutes later: "I've got the flu and quarantined out here. You might not want to stand by me." At least he warned me.
- I might need to rethink my position that the coronavirus is no big deal. I'm now uncomfortable with people on my side of the room.
- Trump on the Harvey Weinstein verdict this morning:
- I said yesterday the Messenger should check to see if they had any history on the building of the Wise County courthouse. And now someone has put it on a T-shirt. (Or, maybe, just maybe, the T-shirt came first.)
- I've heard a lot about Tyson Fury, the "Gypsy King" and the winner of the heavyweight boxing match on Saturday, coming from a family of Irish Travelers who had a lineage of bare knuckle boxing. Man, this is right out of one of my favorite movies, Snatch, and one of Brad Pitt's greatest (and under-appreciated) characters.
- Trump, while in India, watched a Laura Ingraham segment on Fox News and then went on a rant about Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg. That's how this works. This is the new normal.
- Outside of basketball, Kobe Bryant wasn't an exceptionally better human than millions of Americans, right? I mean, every eulogy is pretty much what you would hear at any funeral in America.
- I was reading this story about a Dallas case and was thinking, "I bet this guy is going to be found 'not guilty'" -- that is, right up until the point I got to the "tearful confession" part.
- I don't know who she is, but I'm sure this is big news to some. I'll be honest, I didn't think that show would survive after Kraddick's death in 2013.
- "Christian Nationalism" is a term that I really wasn't all that familiar with. But it explains a lot.
- The Decatur Lady Eagles and Bridgeport Sissies meeting in the basketball playoffs is delicious. But can we find somewhere closer than Chisholm Trail High School? It's not that far, but it's a pain to get to.
- My favorite headlines from over the weekend:
- Well, we know now that India will get anything they want from us. (And they actually did blast out Macho Man over the speakers).
- It's the last day for this old building who, through some type of black magic, created a Twitter account over the weekend. If it doesn't tweet out things like "Ouch!" and "Hey! That smarts!" when the wrecking ball starts hitting it this morning, I'll be disappointed.
- How about this for police work: A guy gets involved in a minor hit-and-run. Cops want to find him so, in hopes of flushing him out, they lie about the accident by saying a woman had died. The man, hearing the news, commits suicide. To make it even worse, dashcam picks the cops up saying, "It's a lie, but it's fun."
- If you want to watch a Flat Earther take a doomed home-made steam rocket launch from over the weekend, you can.
- Longtime readers know I'm a fan of William McRaven -- a guy of impeccable credentials but who I discovered because of his advice of "Make your bed." He went scorched earth on Trump in the The Washington Post this weekend.
- A faithful reader just happened to have a travel magazine lying around with the answer to Friday's question of whatever happened to Tiffani Amber Thiessen.
- This happens in our home in the middle of the night about four times a year: Me (awaking to Mrs. LL walking out of the room): "Where you going?" Her (groggily): "Bathroom." Me: "Wrong way." Her (doing a 180 degree turn): "Thanks." Last night was the first one for 2020 -- an event which she will learn about for the first time when she reads this.
- I predicted last week, after Elizabeth Warren tore up Bloomberg in the debate, that Trump would begin promoting Bernie Sanders. It didn't take long to prove, yet again, I'm a political genius:
- Here's a project for the Wise County Messenger's history columnist: What's the story about the building of the courthouse? Was there a big dust up over the cost? And what about the renovations which destroyed the grandeur of the district courtroom? Did anyone think twice about it?
- I've jumped back in to The West Wing (which I didn't watch back in the day), and am now into Season Two. Man, that show was so prophetic in so many ways.
- Look, I had no interest in the heavyweight match between Wilder and Fury this weekend, but watching the crowd sing American Pie after the bout will make you smile no matter who you are.
- Messenger: Above the Fold
- This miraculous recovery of NASCAR's Ryan Newman, going from "serious but not life-threatening condition" to walking out of a hospital less than 72 hours later, almost makes my conspiracy theory detector go off. I'm not exactly sure how, but it's softly beeping.
- The Aggies beat Prairie View A＆M last night 30-2. In baseball. It was 27-0 after the second inning.
- The NFL Player's Union distributed a "fact sheet" about the proposed new collective bargaining agreement. Here's an excerpt from page 3 where the less significant aspects of the proposal are set out. But part of it got my attention. For reference, in Colorado the legal limit for DWI under the influence of marijuana is five nanograms.
- The jail sentence: Four days in jail with credit for one day. Not mentioned: How much good conduct time the Sheriff gives in Collin County.
- So how much good conduct time can you get when sentenced to the local county jail for a misdemeanor? I was thrown for a little of a loop this morning. I had always thought the maximum was 3 days credit for one day served But the statute, unless I'm reading it wrong, says that the maximum is one day extra credit for one day served (that's 2 days credit for 1 day served), and the total credit can't be more than 1/3 of the sentence. Someone tell me what I'm missing.
- The Wise County Sheriff's office has always had a weird policy of 2 for 1 credit after 30 real days.
- One oddity is that any Texas sheriff controls the time credit for his jail. A judge can't sentence someone to jail and order it be served "day for day."
- "What the hell was that all about? . . . Can we get like Gone with the Wind back, please?" - Donald Trump ranting last night about Parasite winning Best Picture because it was made in South Korea.
- Whatever happened to Tiffani Amber Thiessen?
- I watched the very short documentary, Long Shot, on Netflix about how an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm filmed at a Dodgers game ended up freeing a man accused of murder. Two things that pleasantly surprised me: (1) California procedure allows a judge to simply throw out a case that the State was foolish enough to bring, and (2) the guy sued the cops for conducting a crappy investigation and settled for six figures.
- The Supreme Court is about to decide whether a 1964 Civil Rights law protects transgendered people because it prohibits discrimination on the bases of "sex." Rumors were floated by right wingers yesterday that Justice Gorsuch would be the swing vote and it might go different than one would think.
- Regarding that case, I wrote the bullet point below earlier this year. When I went to the National Archives in December, they actually had a display of the handwritten alteration of the bill in Congress where "sex" was inserted. I felt pretty good about the fact I was one of the few walking by it who knew why it was on display. (There was no signage about the pending Supreme Court case.)
- As everyone celebrates the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Hockey team beating the Russians in the Olympics, remember (1) the game was shown on TV after it concluded on tape delay -- it was actually played at 4:00 p.m. CST and not during the evening when most people watched it, (2) the game wasn't for the gold medal. The U.S. still had to play Finland. Personal note: I watched a portion of it in Cundiff, Jack County, Texas.
- I would like to withdraw my prediction that Michael Bloomberg would make a surge for the Democratic nomination. Elizabeth Warren murdered him last night.
- New prediction: Now watch Trump start the attacks on Warren this week and start throwing veiled support at Bernie or Pete. He wants no part of Warren on a debate stage.
- Today Roger Stone will be sentenced -- and possibly pardoned -- all in the same morning.
- Side note about the location of Stone's sentencing: I walked right past that federal courthouse in December and didn't really realize it. It's right there between the Capitol and the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue. I remember looking at the statue in front of it, though. I've talked to one Wise County attorney who has actually been in one of the courtrooms. "They take themselves very seriously in there," he told me.
- Legal nerd stuff I thought about while in D.C.: Who prosecutes things like DWI and shoplifting? D.C. isn't a state with counties, so is every little crime a federal crime? The U.S. Attorney can't be in charge of those minor prosecutions, right? The answer turned out to be pretty interesting and kind of wild.
- I saw this photo of LBJ yesterday leaning in towards Kennedy while at the breakfast in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963. I'm not sure I'd seen it before. Compare it to the photo of him leaning into Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas (which I have framed in my office.)
- As expected, Brandon McCall was convicted of capital murder in Collin County yesterday. Is it politically incorrect to admit that I wonder if he was normal based upon the same of his skull?
- The NFL Player's Union and owners are about to reach a new deal on their collective bargaining contract. The weakest union in America is about to become weaker. And as soon as it is signed, the owners will turn around and put the screws to the networks for new TV deals which are already earning them $5 billion a year.
- I previously offered a shout out to the boys at Karl Klement's body shop, but I failed to mention a very sweet lady at the counter. She pointed that out to me yesterday as she told me she had also been reading Liberally Lean for years. I apologize. For both. (Although she did laugh a little too hard when I said, "Oh, I write it all in good fun. That's until, as my mom used to say, 'Someone's gonna whip you one of these days, boy'.")
- Other than gas isn't that cheap anywhere, property taxes are killings me, straw decisions aren't a big player in my life, I don't want to carry a 45, Whataburger is owned by a Chicago investment firm, and our governor is a shameless panderer to the masses, I'm good.
- Heard a branch banking discussion this morning: "Since the peak of more than 1,800 North Texas branches in 2010, almost 200 local banking outlets have closed their doors." Trivia: Most people don't realize that branch banking in Texas was illegal up until around 1986.
- Random Helen Hunt note:
- In watching any TV or or movie drama made before 2000, it just jumps out at you that a character's problem-of-the-moment could be solved today by just pulling out their phone. (I thought about this yesterday when watching a simple scene in The West Wing where Josh was on a pay phone trying to convince the operator to look up the name of a big law firm in a city which he couldn't remember.)
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