10.26.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • Texas Hospitalizations: 5,206.

  • I probably shouldn't be talking about the Third Surge of COVID-19 or people in the hospital or people dying. Probably an election law violation. 

  • There's something about saying you don't want to give any effort because you're "tired" of something really sets me off for some reason. It first struck me when, during the protests after the George Floyd killing, I saw an old Wise County friend post online that was "tired" of hearing about social injustice. Really? Well, boo-hoo. Now people are "tired" of wearing masks, and "tired" of hearing about COVID. You know how you separate yourself from the spares of the world? It's how you react when you are "tired." 
  • We've got record early voting going on. Fox News brings us the breakdown:

  • If Trump goes down and flames and the Republican Party has to take years to recover from his train wreck, the GOP might still say it was all worth it. It's kind of like the question of "Would you win a Super Bowl if it meant going the next ten years with a losing record?" Although this might be more akin to three Super Bowls and 20 years of a losing record. 

  • I've got the strangest Century Link problem this morning in the office: The Internet through Wifi is working but access via the hard lines to the computers and phone is down. 
  • This Texas Monthly article about yet another DNA exoneration (although it is kind of in court limbo at the current time) is really, really good and has a striking similarity to the Wise County Lauren Whitener/Aric Maxwell case: There was a DNA “mixture” report that no one understood. But the problem in this case was that “no one” also included the defense lawyer, and his client got got wrongfully convicted.

  • There was this great line in the story: "What is scary is how tenaciously police and prosecutors cling to their initial assumptions—and how much this reflects basic human tendencies." True that. 
  • Really? The NFL has never cared about head injuries. It's all lip service and sometimes it doesn't even get that. 


  • College football:
    • I loved this final play in the Michigan Penn State/Indiana game.  I think the tip of the ball crosses the plane of the goal line before it even gets to the pylon. Here is a great video of it. The photo below is fantastic as well. Click to enlarge.


    • Rice losing a game because a field goal attempt which resulted in the ball hitting the uprights and crossbar a total of four times. Watch it. 

    • Baylor's top two senior running backs "opted out" of the remainder of the season last night. I wonder if the head coach deciding to punt from the Evil Empire's 30 yard line had anything to do with it. Edit: The punt was still dumb but the two players may still be with the team. 
  • The New York Post (the same Post that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and the only media outlet reckless enough to run the Hunter Biden laptop story) has made an endorsement after, I'm sure, hours of internal deliberations . . . 


at 8:32 AM

10.23.2020

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Texas hospitalizations: +149. It was sixteen days ago when Gov. Abbott put the wheels in motion for almost all bars across the state to open to larger capacities. I'm not saying it's related, but that seemed odd timing even then. 

  • Jury trials were supposed to begin again across Texas on December 1st. Let me tell you something, that ain't happening with the number of cases on the uptick -- especially after this development: 

  • Man, this threw me off this morning. The Ticket's Gordon Keith reported on this story and said twice, "And it happened in Decatur." I was disappointed in myself for not having heard about it. Then the Google told me it was in Decatur, Illinois.

  • Minor debate observations: 
    • #1: Trump said that only immigrants "with low IQs" show up at their scheduled hearings. So only dumb people follow the law?
    • #2: We all learned for the first time that your income tax returns requires a heretofore little known "filing fee." 

    • #3: It didn't have anything to do with the fact that the U.S. doesn't know the identify of the parents of  525 immigrant children, but Trump didn't mean this kind of coyote. 

    • #4: John Daly and Kid Rock were in the audience looking at their masks as if they had never seen one before. They probably hadn't. 

  • The presidential election in 1968 was the closest one in Texas voting history. Once you get past how close it was, you then have to scratch your head over the fact that Humphrey actually beat Nixon in this state. (Wise County even went 47% for Humphrey, 33% for Nixon, and 18% for Wallace.)

  • Here's the full Rudy clip from Borat 2.

  • [Insert record scratch sound effect]. But they were kind enough to pick him up at DFW Airport and drive him to their secluded cabin in Oklahoma. Story.

  • Expert Weather Observation: If you walk outside at this moment, it won't get any warmer.  By 4:00 p.m., it will have dropped to 45 degrees.
  • "On this day" from the New York Times for October 23, 1934: "Pretty Boy" Floyd was killed which caused George "Baby Face" Nelson to rise to the top of the FBI's most wanted list. What was up with those facial-feature nicknames back in the day? Then again, J. Edgar Hoover had become the head of the FBI ten years earlier. 

  • Now this just popped into my head:

  • Does anyone else automatically see a negative sign on the new Fox graphics this year?

  • If you didn't see the laughingly tragic ending to Daniel Jones' 80 yard run last night, you have to. Spoiler alert: He didn't score.  (Baylor fans had a flashback to this.)

  • A penny-ante drug conviction out of Wise County was affirmed yesterday by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals. The most interesting thing is that the State's brief utilizes hyperlinks. I very rarely see that. I give it a big technological thumbs up.
  • Time that has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener at Lake Bridgeport: 1 year, 3 months, 18 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:34 AM

10.22.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

 


  • Texas hospitalizations: +194.

    • Four new cases at Decatur High this week. 
    • COVID seems to be hitting Wichita Falls hard. Its local hospital is headed towards ICU capacity, and the entire Midwestern State football team is in quarantine. 
    • That Everman police officer I mentioned the other day has died. 
  • I love Borat (and, for that matter, Ali G).

    • One of the biggest takeaways from that Rudy segment in the upcoming Borat movie (released Friday) is that how dumb and gullible that Giuliani is. If he can be duped by the filmmakers, he's been a sitting duck for the Russians as he runs around the Ukraine.
    • Flashback to Rudy's "Communications Director" from July. Uh, not so much:


  • If you haven't seen the 24 second video of Biden hugging the son of a man killed in the Parkland School Shooting you need to. This election is a good man vs. a bad man, and it is as simple as that. 

  • Hot opinion from President Obama on local races. He ain't wrong. 

  • I'm a big fan of the Traces of Texas twitter account because of all of the old photos it posts. Yesterday they gave us one from Jacksboro "circa late 1930s."

  • This morning:


  • It will soon be forgotten (if it hasn't been already) but Andy Dalton avoiding a safety and actually completing a pass after this moment is really incredible: 

  • Trouble continues to brew on the 40 Acres over the Eyes of Texas. Yesterday, The Daily Texan ran a story that said the Longhorn Band would not play at Saturday's UT/Baylor game after an internal survey of band members, which asked if they were willing to play the song, revealed there wouldn't be enough "necessary instrumentation" left over to participate. UT President Jay Hartzell response is here. 
  • Burnt Orange Nation, which has 25,000 Twitter followers, just put up a poll about the song. I have no idea what the results will be. (You have to vote at the link in order to see the current results.)

  • Every police force within Tarrant County now have the means to get a search warrant for blood in every DWI case (even first time offenders).  It's always been a murky question for me: When do the neutral judges' cooperation in signing the warrants become so complete that they become a 24 hour arm of the police? 


at 8:34 AM

10.21.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Texas Hospitalizations: +269. Look out. (The Update says the last available data from local Wise Regional indicates it has an all time high of 16 COVID patients.)

  • Doesn't Big 10 football start up this week? How are the Wolverines going to navigate through this? 

  • Trump walked out of a 60 Minutes interview yesterday because he didn't like Leslie Stahl's "tone."  It sounds like the interview had gone on for about 45 minutes when he just finally got frustrated by the questions. The only question now is whether we will have to wait until Sunday before CBS releases the segment. Note: His Chief of Staff this morning denied Trump "walked out." 

  • NBC Dateline was in Decatur yesterday filming about the unsolved murder of Lauren Whitener. Multiple interviews were done at Veteran's Park in Decatur. 
    • Man, they have been all over this case from the start, even before it entered the Innocence Project stage. The producer assigned to the segment first paid a visit to town to see all the major players on December 20, 2019. 
    • These were just "moment in time" interviews. They intend to come back for much more. 
    • Remember when I bragged about my CBS 11 interview on how I knew how to pull my jacket down in the back just like in Broadcast News? This time I completely forgot and the Dateline cameraman -- and I'm not making this up -- came over to me in the beginning and told me to "raise up" as he jerked my jacket down from behind.
  • This story was in the Washington Post yesterday. Soon -- and I mean very soon -- we won't have any confidence that any video or photo we see is actually real. 

  • I had completely forgot Trump refused to commit to this four years ago: 

  • Best photo from the Cowboy game Monday night.

  • I'm constantly hearing from people who should know that the amount of "Human Trafficking" might be more hype than reality. There's now some data to support it: In 2019, there were only 79 arrests made in all of Texas for that offense. Additionally, for the underlying offense of prostitution, there were only 7 arrests of people under 17 years of age. Yes, any one case is bad but those are pretty small numbers for the state. 
  • If the NFL season ended today, Dallas (2-4) would host a playoff game against Green Bay.
    Photo posted because I like it. (Before you get good-ol'-day syndrome, you
    should know Dallas lost, 54-13, on 10/18/70)

  • Let me hit you with pop culture overload: The lead singer for The Outfield has died which led to the following discovery. (And I wasn't familiar as I should have been with all of the fine work of David Fincher.)

  • My nephew always raves about The West Wing, and wanted me to watch it.  I've slowly made my through the first two seasons (which is 40+ episodes.)  Yep, it's really, really good, but do I dare make this observation: It is incredibly educational. And I'm dead serious about that. But at the same time, if you watch it now you'll also feel like you are watching something that no longer exists. 
  • Let me give another thumbs up to a TV series which I really enjoyed: Rectify. DNA exonerates (kind of) a man and he then returns to his family in a small Southern town. A sheriff, a prosecutor, an Innocence Project lawyer, religion, and small town gossip all have big roles. 

  • The Justice Department sued Google yesterday over alleged anti-trust violations. Who do you want to bet on? Google's team of lawyers or Justice Department lawyers (who all might have a new boss in three months.)
  • Messenger: Above the fold

at 8:33 AM
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