2.03.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 


  • That photo was posted on 2/2/2011. I knew that the ice storm on Super Bowl week was bad in the metroplex, but I had forgotten how it was even worse here. That's a WFAA reporter who was doing a live shot across from Taco Casa on Business 380 in Decatur.
  • Texas hospitalizations:

  • The Wise County Conservatives held their first meeting Monday night. 
    • There was a really big crowd and looked liked what you would expect.

    • I didn't see any local elected officials in the audience, and I'm not exactly sure what they think about this group.
    • There was a lot of  "Texas Secede!" thrown around.  
    • There was some anti-Republican rhetoric which makes me think those people would rather be part of a Trump Patriot Party. From today's Messenger:

    • I think the keynote speaker, Texas GOP Chairmen Allen West, was a disappointment only because it seems like the state Republican power brokers have told him to tone it down. He wasn't his normal flame thrower self and instead told the group to stop talking about secession and to not fall for QAnon conspiracies. I'm not sure that's what that fired up crowd came to hear. 

    • The next meeting might have a double meaning including secessionist theme. 
                   
  • A staffer in the Texas GOP office run by Allen West was fired last week when a video surfaced.  Here it is. It's 100% crazy. Spoiler alert: He went to the pizza restaurant in D.C. at the heart of the looney Pizzagate. 

  • Last night, the remains of the police officer who was murdered by the Trump Insurrectionist on January 6th were delivered to the Capitol to lie in state.


  • Meanwhile, at that exact same moment on Fox News: 

  • If you haven't seen yesterday's appearance on Newsmax by the MyPillow guy, you have to. He started firing off Dominion conspiracy theories but the Newsmax host, already having been warned by his bosses that they are about to be sued into oblivion, immediately began talking over him and started reading a defamation retraction the station had already aired. The host then gets so frustrated that he walks off the set when the MyPillow guy won't shut up. "Can I ask our producers -- can we get out of here please!?"

  • Trump's new lawyers filed their legal brief for the upcoming Impeachment trial. It is only fitting that they didn't know how to spell "United States." 


  • DPS mistakenly emailed this alert out three times on Friday. Really.
  • The White House Press Secretary openly mocked Space Force yesterday. Thank you. 

  • If you want become rich by shooting a hog, those Wise County boys over at The Hunting Game are offering big money this year. (They've got a heck of a scene going on.)  Oh, and they have a promotional video for the contest which involves some quality comedy. 

  • Nothing say "conservatism" and "America" like government imposing a fine on a private company for exercising its First Amendment rights in a way the government doesn't like. 

  • Messenger: Above the Fold
"Mixed"?!?!?!



at 8:31 AM

2.02.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thought

 

  • I posted the above on Monday afternoon 10 years ago. As Super Bowl weekend began, the forecast changed in the blink of an eye.  By the afternoon, the forecast had been revised to "up to 10 inches" of snow. 
  • Texas hospitalizations:

  • Truly horrible news about the family of Craig Carter who is in the run-off with Jacksboro's David Spiller for a Texas House District seat: "WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL)— Nocona businessman Craig Carter and his wife are devastated and mourning the loss of their 4-year-old daughter Lux after a horrible car accident Sunday. In a Facebook post, Carter said his mother-in-law Rose was also killed, and his son Rex is fighting to survive."

  • Not sure what is going on, but both ways of Central Expressway in Dallas were shut down moments ago due to a "police incident." This isn't a car wreck. Edit: DPD says they shut it down because they are dealing with a "distressed individual."

  • If you don't think Marjorie Taylor Greene is certifiably crazy, consider this video unearthed where she actually talks about the person named "Q". 

  • Yesterday Mitch McConnell called Greene's views  "looney" and a "cancer for the Republican Party." Good for him. 

  • That "cancer on" line has become a go-to phrase.  It was coined during the Nixon Administration and Rick Perry rolled it out not too long ago:

  • This gal got kicked out of a Lakers game last night for mouthing at Lebron. Here's her post game selfie-interview giving her side of the story. Extreme language warning, and I do mean extreme. Good lord, lady.  She's straight out of Real Housewives. But the biggest twist came when she says she's 25. 




  • If you haven't seen Rochester Police officers pepper spray a nine year old girl, you need to. 

  • In other pepper spray news which is closer to home:

  • One under-appreciated aspect of all the arrest warrants for the Trump Insurrectionists is that they have used screenshots from social media. That is, they just don't describe the posts with words but they just reproduce them in the body of the affidavit. This one from yesterday is one of my favorites. Somehow, they were able to identify Mr. Faulkner.

  • Unrelated deaths but odd. 

  • Jason Witten announced he'll coach at nearby Argyle Christian. Here's a hot sports opinion: That won't work out at all. Plus, I'm bugged that he releases a written statement but still decided to use "positive impact" twice in one sentence. 

  • And to think that the Democrats never once stormed the capitol in an attempt to overthrow the U.S. because they didn't like the electoral college. 

  • I saw this post yesterday about the labor of black men used to build the Texas Capitol building in 1882. They should have just labeled them "slaves" instead of "convict laborers"  because that's what they were. In the Post Civil War South, a work-around to the abolition of slavery was found so long as the slaves were technically labeled convicts. That loophole wasn't hard to find. It was, and still is, right there in the 13th Amendment:  “Except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

  • Moment of silence for Screech and Hal Holbrook.



at 8:32 AM

2.01.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • Look at that weather forecast I posted on Sunday, January 30, 2011. You know what day that  was? It was the beginning of Super Bowl week at Jerry World. And that forecast by the National Weather Service didn't remotely predict what was about to it hit. 
  • Texas hospitalizations: Plummeting. 

  • Trump found himself without a legal team on Saturday.  Why? He wanted the defense to the Impeachment Articles alleging he caused the insurrection to be election fraud (aka "The Big Lie.")  That's right. He didn't want the defense to be that he didn't cause the attempted overthrow of America, but instead that it was justified.  No wonder they quit en masse. 


  • This Texas Monthly story from last year is great, and there was a tremendous update to it on Friday: She was finally released after a judge's ruling in Austin. So after 18 years incarcerated for a crime she didn't commit, she walked out of jail. But there was a huge kicker: Then ICE showed up, threw her in a van, and headed for the border. 

  • Badly needed.

  • Here's the dust storm on Saturday:

  • I saw this and thought "what a great idea." If you've ever been to a marathon or half-marathon, the organizers are absolute masters of directing thousands of people converging on one spot.

  • I've seen a few reports asking or demanding Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene apologize and acknowledge that the Parkland shooting was real, the Sandy Shooting was real, that 9/11 was not and inside job, and that the  California forest fires were not caused by Jewish Laser Beams.  The heck with that. You don't get to apologize for being bat crap crazy. It's over. You need to be banished to a trash heap of insignificance. 

  • I've slowly began to realize just how many people believe QAnon theories. And they are all around you -- from Walmart to Brookshires to Allsups. I can't explain it, but America has normalized crazy. How did it happen? It's not like we elected someone who agreed to go on a show hosted by someone who had already said time and time again there was a pedophile ring headed by Hillary Clinton holding children in the basement of a pizza restaurant in D.C.  Oh, wait. We did and he did. (You can watch a great Frontline documentary on Alex Jones here.)
    "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” - Trump to Alex Jones

  • There's a lot of weird things that happen on military bases in Texas. 

  • Happy Days (premiered 1974) depicted life 20 years earlier as well so the same could be said for it.  

  • Stay with me here: 
    • September 12,1932: "The [German] Reichstag passed a motion of no confidence against the Franz von Papen cabinet by an overwhelming vote of 513 to 32, though von Papen called the vote illegal because he was entitled to the floor and had already placed the decree on the speaker's desk dissolving parliament."  
    • Ok, that's a really, really obscure fact about German history and Hitler's rise to power, right? I mean, you probably wouldn't even know it had anything to do with Hitler unless I had not told you. Heck, it's so obscure that it wouldn't even be on a Jeopardy final answer.  
    • Well, yesterday morning I read about that event for the first time as I'm nearing the end of a very good book I'm reading on Hitler's rise to power.

    • Well, get this: Yesterday afternoon I walked in my dad's house, and he is watching a PBS documentary which, at that very moment, was discussing that September 12th moment in Germany. It even was even showing a photo of the no-confidence vote in the Reichstag. 

    • I understand coincidences. But that's a very weird coincidence, right? We haven't even so much as mentioned Hitler to each other. Is there a word for very extreme coincidences?
    • (Now I'm thinking about this Seinfeld scene.)
  • I watched the Night Stalker on Netflix. Verdict: That four hours could have been condensed into one hour, and it sure did spend a lot of time glorifying a couple of detectives who weren't that great.  (And I may be one of the very few who thinks about a 1972 TV movie with Darren McGavin whenever they hear "Night Stalker.")


at 8:31 AM

1.29.2021

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

at 2:30 PM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)