Liberally Lean From The Land Of Dairy Queen

8.24.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

This guy, with his talk of civil war, was just ahead of his time. By the way, the voters of Lubbock County re-elected him two years later.

The funeral homes in Uvalde wouldn't take him, but a funeral home in Crystal City, about 30 miles away, finally handled the burial. In the defense of Uvalde funeral homes, they kind of had their hands full.
Something weird is going on with the prosecution of the mass shooting in El Paso. The two lead prosecutors are suddenly gone. One of the assistant DA's was "let go on Monday." The only explanation was a statement by the DA which simply read, "Following recent events, a change was necessary. We wish Mr. Briggs the best." The other prosecutor "had just started her position July 11 under the grant funding provided to secure special prosecutors on the case." Her only comment was that it "had been a pleasure to work on behalf of the citizens of El Paso."
Here's a hot prediction: I bet the jury finds him not guilty. But I'm at a disadvantage because I don't know the lawyers. Prosecutors are Tim Rodgers and Sam Williams. Defense lawyers are Kathy Lowthorp and Rafael Sierra.
I kept seeing this headline everywhere yesterday and it's incredibly misleading. He'll also have to do three years probation which is a relatively harsh sentence. In Texas, the probation term for a misdemeanor DWI can't exceed two years.
The Colleyville Grapevine ISD school board has now been taken over by Trump Republicans. And because of this, they are passing very Trumpy policies and having meetings which have turned into circuses. If you watch any public speaker from Monday's meeting, check out this guy who, I'm pretty sure, doesn't support any trans-friendly rules. He was there to celebrate.
Being a part of a union, or at least the equivalent of a union, is very helpful.
Trump's lawyers are always morons, but they were incredibly smart drafting the "motion" they filed in connection with the Mar-a-lago search. File a motion which serves as a press release and the media will eat it up. It always works, and most lawyers never use this technique when there are basically no rules against it. (But the judge did issue an order yesterday which can only be interpreted to mean, "Why don't you try again before I dismiss this.")
This guy is a great 4th Amendment follow
Federal judge's Order
$11.7 million a year. And that doesn't even include the amount side gigs he has which brings in a fortune.
Legal nerdy stuff: A new case out of Houston says that if the trial judge incorrectly gives the defendant more jail time credit against his sentence than he actually had, there's nothing the State can do about it. The misdemeanor assault case actually arises out of incident where a fan slugged a New Orleans Pelicans coach at a Houston Rockets' game. Side note: The defendant won that battle but lost the war. Because of the same incident, he had a probation revoked in a separate case and received four years in prison.
Messenger: Above the Fold

8.23.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

There had been a rash of teen deaths in Alvord which prompted a story in the Star-Telegram.

Final rain totals from yesterday. I'm just as amazed that McKinney airport measured only a trace as I am that the White Rock lake area of Dallas got 10.4". I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before. They are about 20 miles apart.
Lake Bridgeport, which is seven feet low, didn't even rise six inches. Most of the rain just missed the watershed.
A buddy from down south who is a big time insurance defense lawyer told me yesterday that whenever there is flooding in Houston there will be a rash of fraudulent car insurance claims. Folks who are about to get their cars repossessed just happen to drive them into high water and abandon them.
SMU's turf is not doing well. I'm guessing that's an air bubble.
At the Keller school board meeting last night. Clever.
From Friday Night Light's fame. Fun fact: He was head coach at Odessa for only four years. And when he took over in 1986, he inherited a team that had gone to the state finals two years in a row.
In Aledo, a kid who is a Senior and a big Dolly Parton fan proved why we can't have nice things after he painted his parking spot in her honor.

Before.
After.

Regarding the Wise County criminal case last week (the Rex Richie shooting case where the defendant got a life sentence), I finally got to see the the video which was played for the jury. I'm not saying it was a slam dunk case for the State, but it was pretty close. Throw in the fact that the password for the defendant's Facebook account was eff-the-police, a life sentence was almost a guarantee. Oh, and when arrested over a week later, the defendant still had the gun on him with a reloaded magazine. He didn't give his defense team anything to work with.
The Fox News graphics department really is horrible:

The big story from last night:
Fox News this morning ("300K+"):

Trump filed a press release as a motion yesterday in connection with the search of Mar-a-Lago. And in it, for a reason that isn't clear, Trump confirmed the message below to the Justice Department. This bugs me. What exactly is he asking for here?
Dueling Texas criminal justice stories:

Maybe the biggest COVID story in the last few months is the story that the recent wave suddenly petered out. This is the hospitalizations graph is below. COVID might finally officially be under control:
Dak Prescott is hawking cryptocurrency this morning. Shameful.

8.22.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

I didn't remember this at all, and I'm not sure I heard any remembrances about him when the sequel was released this summer. Tony Scott directed lots of blockbusters.

By last night, it seemed like the forecast for flooding was a massive miss. But it looks like it is hitting us now.

It first fired up overnight with parts of the metroplex being hit with around six inches of rain by 2:00 a.m. Most of the other areas at that time, including Fort Worth and Wise County, were still basically dry at that time. This is the screenshot at 1:59 a.m. with the flash flood warnings:
This was I-30 near downtown Dallas earlier:
The numbers at 6:00 a.m.:
And those will change dramatically. DFW airport is already officially over 7 inches.

I will never be more torn in my life than if Trump becomes a champion for the Fourth Amendment (which he apparently just discovered once the conduct of law enforcement actually impacted him.) But he might want to pick a better test case than one involving a search warrant signed off on by a federal magistrate. A "major motion" won't get far in his case.
Good grief.
I'm absolutely convinced that your average juror doesn't know how big $1 billion really is.
Kim Jong-un loves Rodman. Putin? Not so sure about that.
This got a Florida state house candidate permanently banned from Twitter. It might appeal to his base, but we can't normalize these nutcases.
But isn't limited to small time state politicians. “Are they [IRA agents] going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s . . . ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa?” -Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) (Video). Even the old guard is saying crazy stuff. America has changed so much in just five years. And what's an AK-15?
I normally don't mention traffic accidents in other countries, but what happened in Turkey on Saturday was wild. They had two different incidents, 150 mile apart, where someone plowed into emergency vehicles and people which had gathered at a previous wreck. Fifteen people were killed in one and 20 in the other. Video caught one of the them as it it happened. (Graphic warning.)
St. Jo is a little town in Montague County. We don't know much about this murder other than the lady was beaten to death in her own home. She was actually found alive on August 5th but died late last week. It doesn't sound like they have a suspect.
I missed on Friday that a bestie of the The Little Ball of Insurrection™ who was on the same private jet pled guilty for her part in the January 6th Insurrection.
She's not wrong.
Fox News has reservations about the Republicans chance of taking control of the Senate based upon some of the primary selections.
Heck of a paragraph in this story about the death of a veterinarian in a Fort Worth.
If I see this meme one more time I might pull my hair out. However, here's the back story about the people in the pic if you are interested.
A national sports broadcaster and sometime Ticket fill in host confirmed this picture was taken in a backyard in Irving on Friday. That thing's big. s
I think I'm one of the few people who can't stand Jordan Speith. In this week's tournament, he received unwanted attention for ignoring his caddy's advice to lay up and ended up putting his ball in the water instead. But that's not what bugs me about him in the video. It's his constant talking. Sheesh. Say all that stuff in your head. And just shut up and hit the ball. Video
Since everyone is praising it, I watched the Netflix Manti Te'o documentary over the weekend. Huge thumbs up. I might even call it a "must see." And while most docs save a big bombshell for the middle or late part of it, this one hits you over the head in the first five minutes with a sledgehammer.
I'm not sure the caption under the photo of the home is correct under this front page . . .