- COVID numbers. The chart that I typically use hasn't been updated with yesterday's numbers so I had to improvise. Quite the drop.
- I've got the Liberally Lean Weather Team in the lab right now, but one of my meteorologists tells me, "I wouldn't schedule anything for Thursday." They'll get me the official prediction when they have it.
- UT-Tyler and Dallas Morning News released its Texas primary election poll yesterday.
- The Governor's race: Abbott's lead is so big that every candidate besides him are in single digits and within 5 points of one another.
- AG's race. Paxton might end up in a run-off with one of those once the "not sure" people wake up and decide what they are going to do.
- Abbott's popularity overall is really odd in that he is despised by those in the Trump Cult and the Very Far Right. In that regard, he was booed at the Trump rally in Conroe on Saturday night -- at least until he figured out how to stop it. This video clip is a must see for its sheer awkwardness.
- Speaking of the Trump rally, I'm really burying the lede of his big weekend. Trump went full Fascist this weekend. You never go full Fascist.
- Regarding the January 6th defendants, those who beat cops and/or charged with Sedition, he said: “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
- But he went further. He wants his mob to rise up if he is arrested by any of the "racists" that are investigating him. Video.
- He the word "racist" was in his prepared text. It's there on purpose. Three of the key prosecutors investigating Trump — the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, Fani Willis; New York State Attorney General Letitia James; and new Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg — as well as the chair of the January 6th House committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, are all Black.
- Side note: The My Pillow guy (the guy who had access to the Oval Office after January 6th and was urging Trump to declare "martial law") was there shaking the hands of a QAnon believer. Trump acknowledged him during his speech.
- Back to Trump's big weekend. On Sunday, he released in writing that VP Pence had failed to follow his instructions on January 6th and that "he could have overturned the election!" He's not even hiding it any longer. It was Treason in plain sight.
- We had a Hitler anniversary over the weekend. You might remember that Hitler attempted a coup at the Beer Hall Putsch. Germany arrested him but released him early thinking he'd be a good boy. But he returned and had his own mob of fan boys (the Brown Shirts/Sturmabteilung) to rough people up as he began to rise to power. He used rallies to whip his fans into a frenzy. He invoked race, nationalism, and making Germany great again. He couldn't build a wall to keep the Jews out so he came up with a different plan. He had a propaganda machine of lies led by Joseph Goebbels. And less than 10 years after his attempted coup, Hitler became Chancellor. Today's papers in 1933:
- A couple from Alvord appeared on Good Morning America. The show even sent a correspondent to Wise County for the segment.
- I hate anyone pulling the "do you know who I am" card.
- Man, that was a ton of police officers at the Jason Rivera funeral in New York on Friday. Here's the related video shot from a rooftop which is incredible.
- Remember the overdose of students at Poly Tech in Fort Worth I mentioned last week? Now it happened at Birdville. The latter was part of “Benadryl Overdose Challenge” which sounds like a very dumb challenge since "overdose" is in the actual name of it.
- Not a good campaign strategy.
- Miss USA, Extra correspondent, and lawyer. Jumped for her apartment building in Manhattan.
- A Decatur law firm won a $98 million dollar verdict in 2017 in a banking/lending case which was tried in Dallas. The case was reversed a couple of years ago by the Dallas Court of Appeals, and it was appealed further. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court said it wouldn't get involved.
So 10 years later, is Apple still doing well? Yep, the quarterly report released yesterday showed net income of $34.6 billion. That's "net" income. And that's incredible. (Exxon's record was $14.8 billion set in 2008. In the last 10 years, Apple has now surpassed that in seven different quarters.)
- Told ya.
- Three cops were shot in Houston yesterday afternoon, but their injuries somehow seem to be minor. Here is probably the best video of the incident.
- Man, that's a lot of money donated in the Tarrant County DA's race.
- Matt Krause: $545,900. Phil Sorrells: $495,000. Mollee Westfall: $137,000.
- But get this: One guy makes up 62% ($308,500) of all of Matt Krause's donations. That would be Mayes Middleton -- a Texas legislator out of the Galveston area. That's very weird.
- The Republican nominee will almost certainly win the November election despite all the hubbub of "Tarrant County has turned blue." It's getting close, but it's not there yet when it comes to county-wide offices.
- But Krause is the only one of the three who could possibly be beaten by a Democratic opponent. First, he's 100% unqualified in that he's never tried a criminal case to a jury. And, more importantly, he is the guy who started the current Book Banning craze across the state. Once the Tarrant County populace figures this out, a Democratic opponent would give him a run for "his money."
- I just realized they still haven't caught the kid. Headline from today:
- Anyone watch Fox 4 News last night at 9:00? Steve Eager announced they were having "really bad technical issues" -- so bad that they had to go completely off the air for at least five minutes. They couldn't even go to a commercial. They had to show the Internet feed of something called "Livenow" from the national Fox.
- Ten were injured in a bridge collapse this morning in Pittsburgh. Coincidentally, President Biden is scheduled to be in the city later today to talk about, you guessed it, infrastructure.
- Basically all we know is what is in the headline yesterday afternoon.
- We've got enough problems without having to make 'em up.
- Was the call "perfect"?
- Now another group has bought a bunch of small papers. What's going on out there?
- Jacksboro's head coach and AD is leaving for Sundown, Texas (pop. 1,397).
- Let me tell you, for a private school where the school paper does not have First Amendment rights, this is pretty bold for the Baylor Lariat. That's even the president's name at the top of the report card graphic. The actual opinion piece is harsher: "Baylor administration, your message is clear . . . you have demonstrated an utter disregard for the health and academic success of your students and faculty."
- Old-timers will remember when the same school paper criticized the Baylor administration for threatening to expel any student who appeared in Playboy's "The Girls of the Southwest Conference" issue. The president, in response to the paper's editorial, shut down the paper for three weeks and revoked journalism scholarships. The staff then resigned in protest.
- This was a pretty amazing marketing strategy back in the day. "Call us from anywhere in the world and we'll help you find something to watch."
- 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: 938 days.
- Messenger: Above the Fold
And I was able to find out what happened to the girls. Both got 20 year prison sentences and both are still locked up. (Here and here.) Oddly, both girls just showed up at the Dallas PD the next day to tell the cops what happened. If they tried to justify their actions, they must not have done a very good job of it.
- I'm now interested in the speed of the fall.
- Justice Breyer will retire from the Supreme Court. One of these ladies will replace him.
- What? Limiting your choice to a black female? Last night Sean Hannity said that was "divisive" and "illegal."
- Flashback 1980: Ronald Reagan, while a candidate, also promised to make his first pick a woman. And it wasn't some off-handed comment. He even called a special press conference less than one month before the election to announce it. (He was afraid he wasn't appealing enough to women voters.)
- If this Facebook post is correct, we've got a big brouhaha in Paradise ISD about the resignation of a long-time Ag teacher. (Thanks to the faithful reader for the tip.)
- Clay County seems fun. You may remember its Sheriff, who was affiliated with the Oath Keepers, was indicted for keeping a couple in jail too long. The Sheriff, in a tortured and convoluted press conference, tried to blame the Justice of the Peace. Now some guy in Clay County decided to haul off and file his own lawsuit to have the JP removed. District Judge Jack McGaughey killed the lawsuit on the spot without the JP even having to do a thing.
- The most prominent appellate lawyer in the Dallas D.A.'s office announced his resignation yesterday on Twitter and highlighted his career by pointing out cases he handled, including the Amber Guyger appeal. He's a smart guy. But you know where he is going? He's joining the Barbieri Law Firm in Plano. That's the firm which allegedly charged the lottery winning mother in Wichita Falls the amount of $400,000 to represent her son, and then made the decision to do absolutely nothing at trial -- and I mean nothing -- resulting in two life sentences.
- The plan of getting the case reversed on appeal didn't work. The convictions were affirmed on appeal by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals. An appeal to the court of last resort, which doesn't have to take it, was due yesterday. (A different lawyer is handling the appeal.)
- KingdomLife Church in Frisco got my attention last year when it made national news when its pastor, Brandon Burden, went into Christian White Nationalist mode and prepared his congregation for a civil war. And this occurred on the first Sunday after the January 6th Insurrection.
- Well, he's back in the news and on the front page of the Denton Record Chronicle. He's become a Republican Precinct Chair and led an attempted ouster of the Denton County Republican Chair who just happens to be female.
- Church sure has changed. He preached to his congregation, in Christian love no doubt, that she was a "Jezebel":
- Legal nerdy stuff: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has three times released opinions which concerned video evidence admitted at trial where the court actually uploaded the video files in question for all to see. One of those times was yesterday when they considered the appropriateness of the State's computer animation of vehicle running over another person. The exhibits, three of them, can be seen here.
- You think criminal defense is hard? It is. And one of the reasons is that you are going up against the State which has all the money in the world to hire someone to create things like computer animation. The person they are after normally does not.
- I think this is interesting: Some company called CherryRoad Media is buying up smaller town newspapers in Texas. It just bought the papers in Sherman, Waxahachie, Stephenville, Brownwood and Alice.
- Funny.
- It was announced yesterday "that the I-35 project through Waco is set to be completed early next year -- two years ahead of schedule!" I've heard getting through Waco is beat down.
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