2.28.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




I stand by the proposition of prosecutors attending executions as being weird. In fact, I'm not sure I've heard of it happening since then. 

  • The war continues in Ukraine.  
    • Before everyone starts betting on the Ukraine Resistance, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

    • As I post this, I'm seeing a flood of social media about "images coming out of Kharkiv." I'm guessing something bad has happened.
    • The Snake Island guys are apparently not dead according to a Ukrainian navy Facebook post.  I would tap the brakes on any sensational story you hear in this conflict. 
    • I never thought War Games would be relevant again.
       

    • Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become somewhat of a star by donning fatigues and promising to stay and fight.  I thought this thread was interesting: From a PR standpoint, what exactly is it about this video which so powerful and universally praised?

    • Kind of makes you think against about Trump's telephone call with him (the one which led to Trump's first impeachment), where Zelenskyy  was asking for Javelin missiles but Trump responded with "I would like you to do us a favor, though" in connection with Hunter Biden. 
    • And comparisons were made.

  • Voting day is tomorrow.  Early voting has been reportedly very low, but I can't find the exact numbers to compare it to four years ago. But the final cumulative vote count by the Texas Secretary of State's office shows that Republicans outnumbered Democrats in early voting 5.93% to 3.65%.


  • The Florida man who shot another man in a movie theater was found not guilty late Friday. 

  • The QAnon Congresswoman spoke at a white supremist rally over the weekend.

     

    • Mitt Romney, in response, called her a "moron". 

    • She responded. 

    • It really was a white supremist rally. Watch this when old Sheriff Joe was a little confused at the audience's reaction to something he said:

  • More lawyers coming. (This guy is a professor there.) 

  • This is a nightmare for everyone, especially the victim. Stay with me here:

    • A guy was arrested for domestic violence in January and became one of hundreds of people a magistrate in Tarrant County sees every month for his bond to be set.  
    • Almost anyone can set bonds (from JPs to city judges to mayors), but Tarrant County streamlines the process by giving a lot of that responsibility to a special magistrate appointed by the elected district judges. That's good. The less judges setting bonds means the more consistent bonds will be.  (Plus, the guy is heavily involved in felony cases because he also has the authority to approve tons of plea bargains in felony cases -- he's no novice.)
    • Back to the guy arrested for domestic violence. Actually, he had two charges against the same victim, aggravated assault and unlawful restraint. 
    • The magistrate set the bond in an combined amount of  $15,000.  That actually seems pretty normal. He even added an ankle monitor as a condition. That seems a little unusual, but was justified because the guy had five past felony convictions and a "danger assessment" for the victim came back as "extreme danger."  
    • Pause for a moment. No matter what the bond was set at, how would you feel if you're the magistrate and are holding a piece of paper which says "extreme danger"?
    • The guy makes bond.
    • Then it went from bad to worse: The victim goes missing.
    • The cops obviously suspect the guy out on bond, and they get a search warrant for his house. Her body is found underneath it. Oh, man. 

    • This all got my attention when the lame duck D.A. in Tarrant County did a pretty scathing social media post on Saturday roasting the magistrate who set the bond by name.  You never see that. 

    • Side note: The D.A. needs a headline writer. That reads as if the guy is out on bond again. He's not. He's in jail. 
  • This guy has spent a fortune in an advertising blitz in DFW so the Morning News published an article exploring exactly who he is. I stopped reading and decided I hated the guy once I got to this: "Henry splurges on parties. He threw his daughter a $6 million quinceañera and a $4 million 18th birthday bash for his son. Pitbull and Nick Jonas performed at daughter Maya Henry’s party . . . ."

  • We have our first January 6th trial this week.  It is for a man from Wylie who is a "member of a militia-style group called the Texas Three Percenters."


at 8:32 AM

2.25.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Ted Cruz was not a Texas senator ten years ago. He was running against Craig James and former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert. The rest of that exchange is here.

  • 287 in Rhome seemed to be a dicey proposition yesterday morning. 


  • Russia/Ukraine:
    • For about a week now I've been thinking that "Keeve" in Ukraine must be somewhere different than the city of "Kee-EV" that I had heard about all my life.  Nope. One and the same. I just didn't get the memo that the pronunciation of Kyiv had changed.
    • There were a ton of videos yesterday from the Russian invasion, but the one that stuck with me the most is this one.  Sound up - that's important. That's an incoming plane firing a missile.

    • Wise County has a couple of zip codes which have the highest percentage of Ukrainians in Texas. If my math is correct -- and that's always a crapshoot -- we've got around 80 people in and around Decatur and Bridgeport. I think technically this is people who identified their ancestry as being from the Ukraine in the Census

    • The last couple of days feels like my teen years when we all feared the Russians all the time. They were the threat back in the day. 
    • Pop culture shows that are relevant right now: 
      • The Americans - Russia embedding spies in the U.S. by having them live as a suburban family (and actually loosely based on a true story). I really liked it. 

      • House of Cards - It had a fantastic character who played a big role as Putin, and now that's who I think about whenever I see the real Putin speak.  And I actually felt like I learned something about U.S.-Russian relations.

  • Yeah, you shouldn't be saying that, but take a look at the video. These are just three teachers bs'ing in the hallway while someone records them from at least 30 feet away. It doesn't justify the remarks, but I'd hate to be a teacher where every kid might be a spy.  (Story.)

  • This is the way so many things work. Spot a crisis. Hype it up. And then capitalize on it with the sole intention of just increasing your budget. After all, what legislator is going to vote against fighting, say, "human trafficking" when it is in the news every day?

  • This is funny to watch. "Raise your hand if you believe Joe Biden won the election." George P is not a moron. Louie, as we know, is. And Eva Guzman had to check out both of them before she decided how to answer. (Paxton didn't attend.)

  • Confirmed moments ago, President Biden will announce his Supreme Court nominee to be Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, who is currently on the federal appellate court in D.C. She was confirmed for her current position by this very Senate just last year (on a vote of 13–9 in committee and 52-46 overall.)

  • Former Baylor coach Art Briles has been hired as the offensive coordinator at Grambling State, and he's looking like LBJ in his later years. 

  • 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: 967 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:29 AM

2.24.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




This was a  big story which just quietly went away. A young lady from Frisco claimed she was abducted after a basketball game by a "stranger [who] put a gun in her face, forced her into a car, and drove her to Muskogee, Oklahoma." She described him as "a  black male in his 20s who is about 5-8 to 5-9." She was found 24 hours later after she called 911 (listen to it) from a Braum’s in Muskogee where she told cops she got away from her abductor -- but couldn't tell them the road she was on when she escaped. Cops quietly closed the case oddly calling it, oddly, an "isolated incident", and the girl's father stopped talking to the press calling it a "private issue." 
  • I don't know if Russia invading Ukraine last night is the equivalent of Germany rolling into Poland, but it ain't good. 


    • It was pretty wild a couple of hours ago when CNN cameras captured rocket launches into Ukraine in real time. Video. 

    • Second to the invasion, the other troubling thing is that Putin seems to acting irrationally and talking a little like a madman. He appeared to threaten nuclear retaliation if anyone interferers with Russia's movements.


    • And what's up with Putin calling Ukraine's President a "Nazi"?  President Zelenskyy is  democratically elected and just happens to be Jewish. 

    • I'll say it again, the U.S. would never, ever involve our own troops in this conflict. Not a chance. Heck, no country in NATO  is going to send troops. In the end, Ukraine would probably be better off acting like Austria instead of Poland and just give up in order to avoid loss of life and destruction. It's already over. 
    • And that's about everything I know about this whole mess. 
  • It's not exactly a Winter Blizzard outside, but you'd be nuts to get on the roads.
     
  • The morphing of Greg Abbott continues.  Back in the day (like 12 months ago), he would never comment on a pending case regardless of the subject matter  


  • I think paying big money for color commentary guys is a total waste of money for the networks. If you put some spare in that job, ratings would not change one iota. (Hot sports opinion: And what exactly is so great about Aikman? In addition to having no personality, concentrate on just his words next fall, and tell me exactly what incredible insight he's providing.)

  • The Denton County Sheriff's Office is giving all the tell-tale signs that they are involved in a cover-up. After two years, they still refuse to release bodycams and more related to an incident where a deputy shot a man in the back. No charges were filed, there is no potential criminal case, no potential civil case, but they still won't turn over the records. The Denton Record Chronicle has also been stone-walled and Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree won't return their calls about their own Open Records request. 
    Front page of Record Chronicle today

  • Legal nerdy stuff: I don't quite understand it, but Justice Breyer accidentally let slip during oral arguments yesterday how the Court will decide a case which hasn't been released yet. Transcript.
  • Of all the homes listed for sale in Austin right now, only eleven are under $400,000. Edit: Maybe.

at 8:32 AM
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