11.02.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • Texas Hospitalizations: 5,691. It's been a little flat over the last four days. I'm beginning to think this isn't going to be as dramatic as late June, but it's still trending up.

  • Early voting is over. Here's a handy map showing, in green, counties where early voting exceeded the entire voting total of 2016. It's almost entirely big cities and their suburbs. But look at little Wise County sneaking in there. (My crackerjack Graphics Department added the "x" on us.) I have no idea what this means.

  • The Tarrant County Republican Party, which is understandably scared the entire county will turn Blue after Beto beat Cruz there two years ago, is sending these flyer out in the mail in support of Republican judges who are up for election. Not only do they fall back on scare techniques ("dangerous criminals"),  they are lying here: Only three of the judges pictured have criminal jurisdiction. All the others are civil or family court judges. 

  • The Trump vendor was out in Bridgeport yesterday at 101/380 selling Trump flags . . . and Confederate flags. 

  • It's finally here tomorrow. 

  • The Trump rolling caravans (affectionately referred to as “Y’all Qaeda” by some) were all over the place this weekend, but it was wild on I-35 when a Bubba Truck went to the shoulder and forced a Biden bus-trailing car out of the far right lane. Trump approved of the conduct even though both the FBI and Texas DPS said they would investigate. 



  • Someone needs to tell the Dallas Morning News that one week before Saturday's game against TCU, Baylor played Texas.  (Unless this is some glitch in the Matrix.) 
    Yesterday's TCU game recap story

    From Saturday's preview story

  • Saw stuff like this a lot last night, and it was all funny. (GIF, which is even funnier, is here.)

  • Remember young ladies, there's a "place for you in America" if you meet certain conditions. Video.

  • Halloween comedy.


  • Legal technical stuff: We had an appellate court ruling last week that, under the standing COVID Emergency Orders issued by the Texas Supreme Court, if a criminal defendant and the trial judge want to proceed to a trial before a court without a jury, they can force the State to do it. 
  • I finally watched Taxi Driver for the first time this weekend. It's basically Joker. And both are equally disturbing for their day in time. 
  • A federal judge will now rule on the Republicans effort to boot 127,000 Texas votes today (he'll throw it out like the Texas Supreme Court did yesterday) . . . 


at 8:32 AM

10.30.2020

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

 


  • Texas Hospitalizations: -63. A rare negative day during this rise.

  • Just announced after yesterday's numbers were tabulated: More people have voted early this year in Texas than in all of 2016. (9,009,850 to 8,969,226.) And we still have today and November 3rd to go. 
  • The Texas Republican Party finally released its official platform this week. Some wild things in their for the GOP: They called for the abolishment of CPS, that all consents to search obtained by police by video recorded, allow anyone to sit for the Texas Bar Exam regardless of whether they went to law school, abolish civil forfeiture, limit the use of "no knock" search warrants by police, and ban collective bargaining with police unions.
  • Just like I predicted it would happen. I must have some sort of gift:

  • The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has deleted all of its "Spooky Week" posts where they thought it would be a good idea to make light of the places where people are held in cages. 
  • There was a crazy story in the Star-Telegram of a Dallas man selling a teenager he met on the Internet to another guy in South Carolina.  If that's not nuts enough, all three signed a contract for the $5,000 sale.  

  • Every. Single. Year. Once again, there is no one giving away their edibles. 

  • Still quality Halloween humor: 

  • Google's parent company released quarterly earnings yesterday. It's just mind-boggling: $46.2 billion in revenues with a net profit of $11 billion. Once again, that's for three months. But they aren't the only tech company doing well:

  • Jerry Falwell Jr. is suing Liberty University for terminating him without "properly investigating" the scandalous claims against him. He's out of his mind. Now he and his wife will have to sit down in a deposition and talk about the pool boy. You don't' want to talk about the pool boy. 

  • Ticket Fans and or Decatur Fans: The guest football prediction picker this morning was a "Kyle" who identified himself as a 1993 graduate of Decatur High and football player, went to Texas Tech, and now resides in Keller. He said his qualifications for picking games were two catches for six yards. (Funny). 
  • Just a random pic of the Lt. Gov. of Idaho. Everyone loves bits. 

  • A county employee out of Falls County won $4 million in a products liability suit after he basically lost his foot while working. I found it interesting because the large verdict was in federal court (instead of state court) where you normally don't see such large numbers in personal injury cases.  The story also says he was offered $500,000 to settle before trial. I always like to find out who the losing lawyers are in cases like that because an experience like that is a complete beat down. The two were out of Thompson, Coe in Dallas with one going to Baylor Law and the other UT Law. 

  • Say what?

  • Remember this case? A shooting near Greenville at a Halloween party led to the false arrest of a man who spent nine days in jail before the case was dropped. He told the cops he had nothing to do with it but they wouldn't listen. His lawyer now wants $3.1 million.  Just spit-balling here,  but since the same thing happened to Aric Maxwell in Wise County, except he spent six months in jail, how much is his case worth?

  • Speaking of -- 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, 25 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold (I didn't screw up the link this time.)



at 8:31 AM

10.29.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts


 

  • Texas hospitalizations: +138.

  • This wave seems to be more aggressive in North Texas (Wise County included) than the first two surges. Despite this, Alvord ISD is ending virtual learning as of November 10th. But, surprisingly, that only impacts 4% of the students. 

  • Scary.

  • Fox News is turning into QAnon. This was unbelievably comical last night. His producer put the original "damning" documents into a box, without scanning or making copies, and mailed them to Tucker across the country. Along the way, someone (probably Hillary) stole the documents and left the box behind. This has to be some kind of bit, right?  Seriously, is he going to announce he has "found" them today to boost his ratings for tonight? His viewers cannot be that dumb. 

  • I never thought I'd see the day that the Republican Party uses the power of the federal government to accuse a private business -- which was built using the sacred cow of almighty Capitalism, no less -- with violating another sacred cow, the First Amendment, which does not apply to that business. Up is down. Down is up. 

  • Amarillo got 4.5" of snow last night. 


  • I promise you in some big city there has been a defendant who has pulled this off. If you can trick a judge into signing a Motion to Dismiss  -- which is not as hard as it seems because they get dropped on their desk every day with no fanfare -- your 99% of the way there. The next routine step is for a court clerk to get the Order from the judge's office (happens every day) which will then cause the case to never again appear on the computer generated docket. The only remaining step is for a staff member of the prosecutor to get a routine copy of the Order of Dismissal (happens every day) and then go pull the physical file out of the filing cabinets. Then it is out of sight, out of mind. It's getting the Motion on the judge's desk which would be the hard part.

  • Free legal advice: Don't even think about pulling off the above bullet point. 
  • If you saw this yesterday, please be advised she was doing a bit. 

  • There are so many Lincoln Project-like ads that I really don't look at many of them any longer. But if I was in charge of designing an anti-Trump ad, this new one by a group I have never heard of is exactly what I would produce. 

  • New joy in my life: Wearing a mask outside when it is cold. Who knew they were so warm?
  • A couple of months ago I went to Denton and came back complaining about how getting on and off I-35 was a death wish.  One of the craziest things I witnessed was the backlog of cars to get off northbound I-35 to get on 380 in order to head back to the "humble confines of Wise County"™. You have about a two second chance to get in line to exit. Most people just slow down in the right hand lane of I-35 looking for a place to get in line and are just asking to be rear-ended. That problem is on the front page of today's Denton Record Chronicle. (But that's a lousy picture to try and demonstrate the problem.)

Copyright 2020 Liberally Lean Graphics Department

  • Gotta admit, I'm not sure I've ever heard a Billy Joe Shaver song. (But I'm a self-proclaimed music idiot.) 



at 8:34 AM

10.28.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 

  • Texas hospitalizations: +234. That's a pretty big daily jump. (The Update says the local Wise County hospital has hit a record with 21 COVID patients, and that Wise County has had 57 new COVID cases in the last seven days. Oh, my.)

  • The man who once declared "all businesses are essential" so let's open 'em all up has caught the COVID.

  • We had a weird thing happen in the Wise County Courthouse yesterday: Someone was arrested by the Sheriff's Office for cussing. I can't say more because my source invoked "blog immunity" before he would give me the details. 
  • I get hit with "blog immunity" invocations a lot. 
  • Rob Manfred Justin Turner was removed from the World Series game last night in the eighth inning after his COVID results game back positive. That's him, in the beard and without a mask, after the game.

  • And here . . .

  • Fun fact: Nebraska is one of only two states that doesn't have a winner-take-all-electoral-votes situation. They do it by dividing up their 5 electoral votes by their 5 congressional district lines. So here's Trump last night in one Nebraska district campaigning for the one electoral vote. And there was a problem afterwards.

    From the Omaha World-Herald
  • I learned TopGolf, which I went to once and had a blast, is booming. This story says it "generated $1.1 billion in revenue last year at 63 locations that drew more than 23 million customers. And it has plans or letters of intent to build another 33 facilities and designs on growing outside the United States . . . . " And COVID doesn't touch it. It's bays have social distancing built in. 

  • Quick: Who is this "celebrity guest picker" on last weekend's College GameDay. Answer below.

  • In watching the West Wing on Netflix, a big question mark formed over my head when the episode timeline was seemingly interrupted by an out of place episode called "Isaac and Ishmael" -- named after  the sons Abraham from the Bible.  Turns out, it was the first episode after 9/11 and was specifically shot because of the attack and then broadcast before the series resumed.  Being a Biblical scholar, I was surprised that I didn't know much, if anything, about Ishmael. I figured out why with a little research: Although Isaac got all the headlines in Sunday School, Ishmael was actually his older brother but was the product of Abraham hooking up with the maid!  We Southern Baptists kind of keep stories like that on the down low. 
    He filled it in with "KKK" by the way.

  • Answer: Vince Vaughn. 
  • June Cleaver heard some good news about Ward yesterday. 

  • I've never seen this photo before. "Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1957 Arlington Heights High School [in Fort Worth] yearbook. This must have been taken in September, 1956 because Oswald quit Arlington Heights to join the marines in October of that year."

  • New magazine cover Dirty Lib alert. (Now seems to be a good time to repost the link to her pre-election dance video.)

  • I bet DFW TV stations get 25% or more of their ad revenue just from this campaign season. It's incredible the number of ads we see, and the TV stations have to jack up their rates because of the demand. But you know who is getting screwed? The Wise County Messenger which is situated in a one-party dominated county leading to uncontested November races. They are missing out on  so may dollars, and we are missing out on so much fun. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold. Edit: Link fixed.



at 8:33 AM
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