3.08.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts





That second bullet point might have been my worst political take ever. 

  • War video of the day. Sound up.

  • Shell tries to get some good PR while at the same time having an excuse to excessively jack up their prices. (We get about 3% of oil from Russia.)

    • And, based upon this Bloomberg report this morning, they are just getting ahead of what they are about to be forced to do. Edit: An announcement from the White House is now expected at 9:45 a.m.:

    • I just noticed Drudge getting all excited:

  • I screwed up my graphic and part of my bullet point yesterday in the election fight in a JP race in Clay County. It was Candidate C, not Candidate B, who had previously been disqualified. But there is still a legal dispute as to whether Candidate A won outright or needs a runoff. 

  • Yesterday in Wise County, the following cases were all filed in JP #1. The same agency, DPS, just happened to file speeding tickets against ten different people who just all happen to be going exactly 80 in a 70. 

  • I've been curious as to what ever happened to the silly criminal prosecution of Netflix in Tyler County over the broadcast of Cuties.  Well, the Netflix lawyers have now gone to federal court to try and stop (the very handsome) D.A. Lucas Babin, calling him crazy. They didn't exactly use that term "crazy", but that was the gist of it. They are, of course, right on that point as well as that pesky Free Speech defense they've got, but I'm not sure they can get a federal court to stop the state prosecution. 


  • The QAnon Congress person never disappoints

    . 
  • This little-reported Dallas story from the weekend rang a bell.

    • Yep, that was it from late last month: 

  • For those, like me, who have an interest in the metroplex murder story involving Candice Montgomery coming to Hulu:
    • Jessica Biel was spotted in Georgia filming the mini-series. She'll play Montgomery. 

    • CBS Channel 11 has a good feature a couple of days ago on an eyewitness to the bloody murder aftermath who is still in the area.


    • A faithful reader sent me this Above the Fold shot of the defunct Dallas Times Herald from back in the day: 

  • I might put this on a throw pillow.

  • Legal nerd stuff from yesterday: Justice Kavanaugh tried to argue a point and cited himself as authority on why he is correct. 

  • An building's management company in Toronto welcomed workers back to the office with these posters. They took them down. Quickly. That would have made me want to quit on the spot. 


  • I saw someone refer to the anti-CRT crowd as "the CRT Straw Men" yesterday, and I might just steal it. 

at 8:29 AM

3.07.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Remember Kony 2012? 

  • Those prices at the pump are about to get worse based upon futures prices this morning:

  • How in the world did Brittney Griner get arrested in Russia in February and we just now hear about it?

    Baylor game on Saturday

  • This is from the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States during his appearance in New Orleans over the weekend: 

  • My uneducated random Ukraine/Russia thoughts -- which make more sense than Trump's:
    • The Russian attacks are more brutal than I expected (or maybe it is just that we actually get to see videos/images of what war in real time which makes it seem that way.)



    • You can kind of understand the whole Franz Ferdinand thing now -- how small wars can get out of hand in a hurry and escalate. 

    • We might want to rethink those "red areas" on the maps showing the locations of the Russians and exactly what the red means.   As America knows, it is easy to invade a county, but it is quite another to occupy those areas after that invasion. So you just can't easily map out what areas Russia "has conquered" or "occupies" or "controls." 


  • The story of the February cold water rescue, of the couple who were in a car that went over a bridge and into the Trinity River at County Road 4757 near Newark, got my attention when it happened.  Fox 4 had a follow-up story on Friday of trying to find a mystery man who was the first one there (although it is very murky on the details of exactly what he did.) But the Boyd Fire Department got some good press, too.


  • Our DA was appointed as a special prosecutor in a road rage case against a Wichita Falls man, Bubba McDaniel. The case was a little unique because McDaniel just happened to be the father of a two year old child who was a murder victim, allegedly at the hands of another man, in a current high profile case up there. The road rage case was worked out last week.

  • $300,000? Don't be dumb people: "A scammer is calling older men and accusing them of committing a crime by contacting massage- or sex-related websites. The scammer demands the men pay a fine through a bitcoin machine or designated kiosk. If they do not pay the fine, they are told they will be prosecuted."
  • The Little Ball of Insurrection, who says she would invade the Capitol again, is also trying to use a different name. 

  • We've got a great election results fight in Clay County.  They had three candidates for Justice of the Peace, candidates A, B, and C.  Candidate B was officially disqualified and ruled ineligible before the election but stayed on the ballot because it was too late to take him off. The results were Candidate A with 43%, Ineligible Candidate B still got 38%, and Candidate C got 19%.  So the question: Did Candidate A win outright? Or does there need to be a runoff between A and C because A didn't get more than 50%? They are trying to figure it out. 

  • Great topic for you and your co-workers: Are there more wheels or doors in the world? (Things like cabinet doors are included in the definition of "doors", and "wheels" can include small wheels so long as they are attached to the item the are used to move it.) The answer appears to be evenly split:

  • If you can get it to work (or the horrible Star-Telegram's website to ever work these days), here is a database which lists the salary of every Tarrant County or City of Fort Worth employee. That includes assistant district attorneys and law enforcement. 

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at 8:33 AM

3.04.2022

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

(There is a back story on the last one.)
at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




What a difference a decade makes. Unemployment falling to 8.3% was actually great news, and I thought Trump was absolutely irrelevant. 

  • Breaking news this morning is that unemployment has fallen to 3.8%. 

  • For about 45 minutes last night, we thought the world was about to implode. Literally. 

  • It's over. A guy whose mom won the lottery and paid her son's lawyers at least $600,000 to defend him -- lawyers which then made the strategic decision to sit silent in trial and do nothing, will now spend the rest of his life in prison without even presenting a defense or challenging the State's evidence. (I last outlined that case here.) "They questioned no witnesses, made no opening or closing statements, and registered no objections with the judge." There's a Texas Monthly story worthy of being written about all of this. 

  • An apartment building blew up in a D.C. suburb yesterday, injuring ten and leaving "several" unaccounted for. And it was caught on video.

  • This seems like a very big deal. Less Democrats voted in the Texas primary than four years ago while Republican numbers were up significantly. 

  • I don't know, but if I guy is trying to hit on you with this type of text exchange, I think you should be able to figure out that something is amiss.

    Click to enlarge

  • Thought I would check in on our familiar COVID graph.

  • Pointing out alleged "gaffes and blunders" while not knowing how apostrophes work. 

  • "Sure thing, I'm available for an interview . . . as long as we can do it at dusk while I stand in my front yard holding a horse."

  • I still can't get over how close this was. 



  • The NFL combine is going on which I will casually pay attention to, and this caught my eye yesterday. That guy weights 336? I remember when William "The Refrigerator" Perry was the only guy in the NFL over 300 pounds, and even then he was a big blob of goo. Look at this guy.

     
  • Extremely legal nerd stuff: A couple of months back I highlighted a search and seizure case out of Fort Worth. Not only had the defendant been charged with a new crime, that offense was used to revoke his current probation (he'd run into a bit of "rough patch" in his life).  Anyway, because of the illegal search, the court killed the new offense and, likewise, held it couldn't be used to revoke the guy's probation. Well, the court issued an opinion on rehearing yesterday which, although still holding that the police engaged in an illegal search, now allowed the defendant's probation could be revoked but for a different reason. 
    • It's pretty simple: The state filed a Motion to Revoke because of (1) committing a new offense and (2) failing to report to his probation officer. As stated, the court held it was a bad search on the new offense so it couldn't be used to revoke his probation. But what about failure to report? Can't he be revoked for that violation alone even if the new offense couldn't be used? Sure. And that's what the State argued in it's original brief and even cited to the record to support it:

    • In its original opinion, the Court, in a footnote, said "nope, you didn't offer any evidence proving he failed to report. You lose on that ground, too!"  (Paraphrased.)

    • Now, after stringent urging by the State, the appellate court has decided in a revised opinion that the State did offer evidence on failure to report (which they most certainly did), but still tried to blame the State in a footnote for originally saying they had not. 

  • 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: 974 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:31 AM
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