7.18.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, United States, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. Dressed in tactical clothing, James Holmes set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. Twelve people were killed and 70 others were injured, 58 of them from gunfire. In August of that year, the jury deadlocked on whether to impose the death penalty and he was given a life sentence.

  • Yesterday the Texas House released its report on the Uvalde shooting. It was as critical as you expected. But the Texas Tribune might have had the perfect line in summarizing it:

    • There was also new Uvalde video released late yesterday.  Here's an edited version which will suck you in. 

    • Someone tell him he's not the victim. Video.

  • You've already seen it, but . . . 

    • . . . I did notice this when I looked up at the TV last night. Ugh. 

  • Wise County authorities were involved in some kind of car chase/standoff yesterday morning on 287.

  • So how can you determine it to be an accident by simply looking at injuries on a body? Wouldn't the injuries be exactly the same if she had been pushed? (I'm not saying she was. I'm saying no one can make that determination by looking at a body.)

  • Wise County's Congressional representative is a certifiable nutcase. And in the 15 second video, he even managed to screw up the "come and take it" line.

  • I’m fine with this. If you style yourself a combatant in a war to destroy democracy and if your movement is an ongoing mortal threat, then yeah, 15 years . . . that’s fine.  He's from Wylie, Texas.




  • Say what?

  • Say what again.  Actually this one makes a little sense.  Johnson lost in the Republican primary. Now he is hiring the Democrat who will be facing off against the guy who beat him.  

  • Fox Sports graphics department: "Hey, since the Yankees/Red Sox game is being played in New York City, let's create a graphic superimposing the teams' logos on the 9/11 reflecting pools at Ground Zero!"

  • Talk about a late Friday news dump. And how did all the women settle so quickly with the Houston Texans unless they were all hit over the head with a big bag of money?

  • It was one of the last great deals in streaming, but now ESPN+ will go up to $9.99 a month beginning in time for football season. 

at 8:31 AM

7.15.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




This is a "nerdy legal stuff" flashback, but that law review article still holds up. 
  • Is no one going to call out the NTSB for originally being the source of the wild allegation about the 13 year old driving who they quickly reported as fact? They are the ones who started the whole false story to begin with.




    • And also buried in that news story yesterday was that the NTSB also retracted another huge fact they initially reported: There is no evidence that a blowout tire caused the wreck. 

  • The Republicans went from "Abortion is a state rights issue" to "let's have the federal government outlaw abortion nationwide" in record time. 

  • There is something not right about the Secret Service's over-the-top loyalty to Trump. The Inspector General "accused the U.S. Secret Service of erasing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capitol attack . . . .indicating that the text messages have vanished and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hindered."

  • Who wrote this for him?

  • An outfit protesting gun violence in schools is sending a ton of school buses to Ted Cruz's home.  And to promote it, they are sending out the photo below.  It's creative. 


  • Oh, man! Source.

  • You would think this is The Onion instead of The Wall Street Journal. (I continue to think crypto is the 2020s version of Beanie Babies if Beanie Babies had cost $10,000 a piece back then.) 

  • Random Texas COVID look. This is the hospitalizations chart. It's still low but currently trending up at a rate which looks familiar to past surges. I have no idea what happens this time, but it's worth watching. 

     
  • The NFL continues to print money.

  • And another.

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office, despite having a full male DNA profile, has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 1,106 ,days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:30 AM

7.14.2022

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




The spot for the new Fuzzy's was getting a paint job 10 years ago. I don't ever remember it being that bright -- it doesn't look that way now. 

  • We flirted with it darkness and no a/c for a bit yesterday, but made it another day. Texas!

  • The fact that so many people were so naïve that they couldn't believe the 10 year old pregnancy/travel to another state to get an abortion story is really amazing.  And even if that particular story turned out to be untrue (we learned yesterday it wasn't), the exact same thing will happen again somewhere this week or this month. Guaranteed.

    •  Earlier yesterday, before the story broke, the Wall Street Journal declared it false:

    • Congressman Jim Jordan had to delete this.

    • ESPN's Clay Travis had a hot sports opinion about it to (below) which he completely retracted yesterday.

  • The Hood County Sheriff's Office tells us we need to turn to Jesus in an official Facebook post.  I know so many people that see nothing wrong with this, and it blows my mind. 

  • Hey, I'm no defender of Trump but just attempting to call a witness, but not making contact, is not witness tampering.  It's not even attempted witness tampering.   I wouldn't recommend it, but people are getting way too bent out of shape about it.

  • I don't think I've ever posted anything from the right wing Daily Caller, but they reported yesterday that, in fact, Mexico was going to pay for it.

  • I'm still watching that mysterious mass death at a bar in South Africa. The bar owner was arrested yesterday but it wasn't for causing the deaths, but just for providing alcohol to minors.  The "poisoning" angle is still out there because "South African investigators have since ruled out the stampede theory." But the more I read it seems like you can rule out the phenomenon where people get so packed in together that their chests can's expand and they suffocate. In that scenario, the bodies show no signs of being "trampled" at all. 


  • Well this is awful.  A camal walking on Chisholm Trail Parkway south of Fort Worth was hit and killed by a car.  No one knows exactly where it came from.

  • I just finished this book which was peculiarly different but good.  It's really three short books in one: A guy killing multiple people in Alabama in a crazy insurance scam, the liberal Southern lawyer who represented him, and Harper Lee going back home to spend years researching a book about it all which was never written (or at least published).

  • I'm proclaiming yesterday as one of the slowest news days of the year.

at 8:29 AM
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