2.02.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Romney won Florida this week and the Republican nomination was sealed.  Things happen
 fast in the first two months of an election year.

  • Plummeting (seven day average): 
    Correction: I screwed up my "modified" chart on Monday by
    superimposing a single day total on a seven day average graph.

  • Weather: My award winning weather prediction from yesterday still stands with one exception: The start of the drop in temperatures was delayed by about two hours.  We will now hit freezing at around 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. today which means we wont see the freezing rain start until after that. Snow won't begin until around 5:00 a.m. but will still taper off at noon. The net result is that this will be a slightly larger ice event than expected. I'm lowering the snow predictions to 1.8 inches. All of Wise County is going to be shut down. 
    • School districts were announcing yesterday that they would be closed for Thursday and/or Friday, including Lancaster, Dallas and Garland.  I can't remember school cancellations happening two days in advance of a winter storm. 
    • Delkus' projections as of this morning:

  • It's Ground Hog Day.  To be honest, I'm not sure I knew about the time that a mayor literally killed a ground hog by dropping him. Yep, he died a few days later. Story and video.

     
  • The (under indictment) Clay County sheriff is doing a Valentine's Day bit.

  • Tarrant County DA candidate Matt Krause, who has never tried a criminal case before a jury, has released a TV commercial. It is just as bad as his experience, and it has an extreme car salesman feel to it.

  • You've got to spend a second to figure out how it works, but this is a great website of searchable campaign contributions for candidates in Texas, and it is up to date. Here's a screenshot for a search of Rep. David Spiller (R-Jacksboro).

  • The West Texas oilmen who used to run the Empower Texans PAC, Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn, have money to burn. They have given governor candidate Don Huffines, who stands no chance, $1 million.  They are now funneling the money through a PAC called "Defend Texas Liberty" which they have donated $4.3 million to since January 1st.  That PAC has given $50,000 to Texas House candidate Shelly Luther. 


  • If you seen the billboard in Decatur for little known governor candidate Kandy Horn, you aren't the only one.  

  • Today's Messenger pays a lot of attention to a recent Rhome City Council meeting where at least one audience member was thrown out. I haven't watched it, but the whole video is here. (Thanks emailer.)

  • The Washington Football team, moments ago, announced their new name, but yesterday a television helicopter with a fantastic zoom lens was able to peer in a window at FedEx Field to spoil the announcement.   Video.

  • Kinda legal nerdy stuff: There was a major legal error yesterday in the pleading of Brian Flores, the fired Dolphins coach who has sued the NFL for discrimination. 

  • Criminal justice guru Grits for Breakfast is spot on with this observation:

  • I'm really surprised Texas or Florida hasn't passed a law to ban Black History Month. Seriously. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM

2.01.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




This was a pretty funny video. A guy was holding a press conference about a casino accident,
and a bus driver just pulls up and shuts it down because they were blocking her
way. I've got it cued up for you. 

  • Everybody listen up. I've got my preliminary weather projections from the Liberally Lean Weather Lab beginning tomorrow:
    • The temperature never goes up. It will be 56 degrees at midnight tonight and goes down from there.
    • We hit the freezing mark at around 4:30 p.m. tomorrow.
    • The rain begins early in the afternoon. I think freezing rain and sleet begins around 6:00 p.m. That will continue four hours until around 3:30 a.m. when it turns to snow. It'll continue to snow until it tapers off around noon on Thursday. I'll put amount of snow at 2.2 inches. 
    • Thursday morning, as it is snowing, it will be 17 degrees. Our high will be 22 degrees with no sun at all that day. 
    • Conduct yourselves accordingly. 
  • The trickiest part is trying to figure out how much will be snow and how much will be ice.  Delkus thinks this:
    • Ice:

    • Snow:

  • I guess this works. They sprayed 287 on Sunday. 

  • Is this trial just going to be a swearing match? Here is the key sentence: "The accuser, who is now an adult, told police the abuse happened on three occasions between 2004 and 2006. They were between 4 and 6 years old at the time." The alleged victim came forward in 2019. 

  • Wise County is in a new House District which it shares with Denton, and we have inherited an incumbent named Dr. Lynn Stucky. The Dallas Morning News has endorsed him calling him a "serious" and "effective" conservative, and says bluntly: "Republicans have a clear choice here. They should vote for the serious conservative who has shown he can do the job. That is Dr. Lynn Stucky."  As to his opponent, they pointed out that one of his ideas for border security "was somehow engineering the Rio Grande to increase its water depth."

  • Cancel culture? In a sample of 100 school districts in Texas, they reported they had one total request to ban a book all last year. Through the first four months of this school year, that number is 75.

  • A former Texas prosecutor and Baylor Law School graduate, Katie Nielsen, has been "publicly reprimanded" for hiding evidence. She was fired in 2019 as outlined in this pretty scathing story. I'm a little more concerned about the fact she was prosecuting and innocent man: 

  • Trump is ranting about something this morning, but it's interesting he is now putting January 6th in quotes. 

  • In Copperas Cove near Waco, seven students were arrested for "riot participation" after a basketball game on-court brawl a couple of weeks ago. Now fans have been banned for the rest of the year.  The video is not that bad. 

  • Man, I've been preaching this for a while.  DPS acts like a campaign lapdog for Gov. Abbott.  

  • Tech fans greeted the UT bus last night ahead of tonight's game. Video. (Warning: Tech mother's would not be pleased with the language of those young men.)

  • While listening to CBS News at the top of the hour on radio, one of their top stories was a "brawl" at a Golden Corral involving 40 people in Erie, Pennsylvania. Here's the video. 



at 8:33 AM

1.31.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




I discovered Rhome tricked up its water tower ten years ago. It's still there. 

  • 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. 

at 8:31 AM

1.28.2022

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

at 2:30 PM
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