12.21.2021

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




Yes, that's an awful reminder from ten years ago, but I may tear up again because this 
was the headline yesterday:


   
  • The unvaccinated who insist on "taking their chances" will certainly get that opportunity as Omicron has just been added to their schedule.  Everyone is going to be exposed to it. (It's still yet to explode in Texas, but it will.)

  • The kid involved in the wrong way driver crash out of Rhome lives in Northlake, but he must have some kind of Wise County connection. He was previously arrested by the Sheriff's office for "Minor in Consumption - Alcohol" on March 27, 2021.

  • We've got three juries deliberating right now in three high profile cases all involving female defendants: The tazer/gun case of Kim Potter, the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, and the Elizabeth Holmes case.
    © 2021 Liberally Lean Graphics Department

  • Watch Kyle Rittenhouse get introduced last night at the crazy Turning Point USA event. Video. We live in strange days. 

  • Oh, come on. 

  • The "autopsy results ruled out any obvious trauma as the cause of death." I'm guessing carbon monoxide poisoning, but I'm no ME. 


  • I wasn't familiar with this story. 

  • I've been seeing headlines about this for a week. I keep promising myself to take a deep dive into it because there must be something else to it beside "brakes failing." At least I hope there's more. Meanwhile, the prosecutors (one of whom graduated from law school two years ago) are getting roasted online for their post verdict celebrating. 



  • As the year comes to a close, I think I found this year's Wise County speeding winner in cause no. CR-21-00816-3.

  • It's the shortest day of the year. Sunset is at 5:28 p.m. 
  • We had our refrigerator go out last week, went a week without one, and when the new one was delivered and being installed yesterday some water connection got snapped which prompted an explanation of "we gotta call a plumber because we're not authorized to fix that", so the new krillion dollar fridge (that's what they cost these days) is now set up temporarily in the garage. Merry Christmas to me. 
    • Edit: I wrote that before I found the "Ten Years Ago" subject at the top. I don't think I have anything to complain about now. 
  • Baylor is getting a new basketball arena along the Brazos to go on the opposite side of I-35 across from the football stadium. 

  • You know what that "money laundering" story is about on the front page below? Gambling. Yep, gambling in East Texas.  It's a regular Casa Blanca in the piney woods. And they got hit with $1 million bonds.  (The criminal justice system is the real crook here.)

at 8:30 AM

12.20.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




This was about a shooting by then Palo Pinto County Sheriff Ira Mercer that had me worked up. (Original post on 12/21/11.)  It looks like the deceased's family sued the Sheriff but, as is normally the case, the lawsuit was thrown out years later based upon qualified immunity. I did note that the Sheriff was later indicted on an unrelated case of "improper use of [an audio or electronic] recording device" where his ex-girlfriend was alleged to be a victim. I can't figure out what happened to it.


  • This is the guy that was in the run-off against David Spiller in the Texas House race earlier this year. There's not a lot of details. 

  • Democrat Joe Manchin killed the Build Back Better bill yesterday with a surprise announcement on Fox News. And the White House and Democrats were royally P.O.'d about it.

     
    • This kind of reminds me of John McCain single handedly killing the repeal of Obamacare with then Speaker McConnell looking on in amazement. (Video.)

    • Some suggest that Manchin just become a Republican since West Virginia, who he represents, is deeply Red.  But, without him, the confirmation of President Biden's appointment of federal judges would grind to a halt. Instead, with Manchin's approval, Biden just had his near-record 40th federal judge approved in his first year. 

  • I haven't written much about the case involving the officer who grabbed her pistol instead of her Taser and killed a man. And that's primarily because I'm so conflicted about it. I believe it was a horrible, horrible accident. She deserves to be fired. She deserves to be sued. She deserves some public ridicule. But I always tap the brakes when the criminal justice goes after someone for acts which were not intended. 

  • Abbott celebrated Christmas week by doing a publicity stunt over his own Wall which will never be built. 

  • For the life of me, I never dreamed I'd see a Southern Baptist church allow a Christmas service to be hijacked by, and the pulpit turned over to, a man by the likes of Donald Trump. If Jesus wept over Lazarus, he must have broken down over this. 


  • The generals ain't wrong, 

  • The anti-vaxxers haven't been treated very gently over the last couple of days. By both sides.
    • From the White House:

    • From the Trump rally at the AAC in Dallas yesterday afternoon:

  • We almost had a huge war between Google and the Disney empire.  On Saturday, the two giants announced that they couldn't reach a deal to keep Disney programing (including ESPN and ABC) on YoutubeTV (owned by Google.) It lasted one day. 

  • I think I was one of the very first ones to give this story attention and, since then, everyone has been going off on civil forfeiture laws. Now Dallas Police are trying to justify their legalized theft by invoking the force field of drugs and dogs. First, no drugs were found. Secondly, this use of "drug dogs" is one of the biggest scams every sold to Americans.  

  • Here's another story of DNA exonerating a guy who served prison time on a sentence of life without parole.

     

    • Here's the money line.

    • Nerdy stuff: I've learned a lot about DNA over the last two years, so I tracked down the earlier appellate court  opinion to see what it said. The key was footnote 3.  Let me tell you, something is seriously wrong here. If the defendant truly matched on 13 of 13 markers, the odds wouldn't have been "only" 1 in 763. It would be more like 1 in a billion. I'm guessing the was a mixture of DNA involving multiple persons and with odds calculated by an algorithm method which is no longer used. What DNA labs had been doing with mixture analysis over the last 15 years has now been seriously overhauled after being questioned by the courts.
  • QAnon at a random bowl game over the weekend. There are some scary people out there.  

  • I saw this on Friday of last week.  (The Jesus fish was a nice touch.) 

    • It's a play on this:  

  • Cowboys castoff Jaylon Smith seemed to be really excited that he was familiar with the "Landry Shift" at the end of the game yesterday. Video. 

  • The Cotton Bowl, which will host the semi-final game between Alabama and Cincinnati, is advertising on The Ticket a lot. Are they having trouble selling that out? 

at 8:31 AM

12.17.2021

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts





Fox News dropped this bit after a while. The jobless rate would drop to to 3.1% 
by the time Obama left office. 

  • I can't get a handle on this omicron variant. It seems to be exploding everywhere, but not yet in Texas.  And although the symptoms or milder, it seems to spread faster than anything we've seen before. To make it more confusing, it also seems that any surge won't last long -- cases are surprisingly already falling in South Africa where it started.
  • You really can't be shooting into the car of a thief as he drives away, but I wonder if anyone gets worked up about this story.


  • The following, like the current weather, are not conducive to the Christmas spirit:
  • One of the two people the Clay County sheriff kept in jail after a JP found no probable cause to keep her in jail has been awarded a big bag of cash because her topless club employer ripped her off as an employee.

  • We had two people get Me Too'd yesterday. Merry Christmas, again.  


  • Home page of the Dallas Morning News.  "Dozens"?

  • Trump's wife is going to try and con people out of their money with NFTs. (There is no way that either her or Trump know what "leveraging blockchain technology" means.)  Grifters gonna grift. 

  • Proof that Congress has always been screwed up: Author Truman Capote somehow became an expert on the implications on the Miranda warnings simply because he wrote In Cold Blood even before the Supreme Court decision was handed down. Spoiler alert: He cared more about Senators not reading his book, and those dang Miranda warnings might have kept him from even writing it.

  • TV watching: (1) I can actually get Bally's Sports so I'm watching way too much of every game played in the Texas high school playoffs over this four day period, (2) I'm going back and watching HBO's much acclaimed John Adams mini-series and it has the pace of Lonesome Dove. I'm dying here. (3) Excited about Righteous Gemstones coming back. 

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 896 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:31 AM
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