11.01.2022

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts





That was way before Trump's attempted wall. 

  • The conspiracy theories promoted by the nutcases out there were tossed to the side yesterday after the FBI released the details on the political attack on Paul Pelosi. Always remember that the most gullible people in society are all around you.  

  • This is not in my old-man-wheelhouse, but a lot of people seem very upset over this breaking news this morning. 


  • I hardly ever see stories about big medical malpractice verdicts, but today each of the local papers have the headlines below. The plaintiffs lawyers listed are Seth McCloskey in the Fort Worth case and "Charla Aldous and Brent Walker [who] worked with Bruce Steckler and Austin Smith" in the Dallas case.


  • Four days left in early voting. Wise County has now had 10,354 people vote which is around 20% of all registered voters. 
  • Tarrant county criminal case:
    • 2018 headline:

    • Last week was the murder trial:

  • Let's check in on Elon Musk.
    • He wants to charge $20 for a blue checkmark.


    • He got rid of the board of directors.

  • Grapevine is getting another hotel waterpark but . . . 

    • . . . Timeshares?

  • Greg Abbott is as close to Wise County as he's going to get this morning. He's at Tarrant Parkway and Beach Street in North Fort Worth beginning right now. It sounds like a big crowd. 


  • Bias training: A video depicting a mock trial, produced by Texas Justice Court Training Center, was formally shown to Justices of the Peace in Texas to teach them how to handle those kind of cases. The fictional defendant in the case was named "Danny Deadbeat." Uh, you see a problem here? The video has now been taken down but, of course, it was saved. (Dallas Observer story.)



at 8:31 AM

10.31.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




It was a pretty bad one. 

  • It's Halloween so be on the look out for Beto skateboarding through your neighborhood and handing out rainbow colored fentanyl to your children.
  • I've mentioned this before: It's not trampling which cause people to die in these situation. No.  People die because they get so packed in that their chests and abdomens can't expand to get air. Here's a video taken from within the crowd just as it was beginning.


  • We learned that the attacked of Nancy Pelosi's husband, who underwent surgery on Friday, was most certainly looking for her, had zip ties, was an election denier, COVID denier, QAnon supporter, and ranted about "Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people" in his blog.

    • The reaction was at least normal in the beginning. 


    • But it didn't even take the weekend for the nutcases to start a lie that these days now runs quicker than the truth.  I heard a WBAP talk show on Friday afternoon irresponsibly speculating that it was staged, but the crazies found a new leader when Elon Musk responded to Hillary Clinton on Sunday morning supporting the conspiracy/fantasy/lie. And his reply spread like wildfire. This is crazy. 





    • Hit with criticism, Musk deleted his conspiracy tweet within a few hours. 

    • Reality can’t exist anymore because it can’t keep up with the lies on the internet. Musk will now contribute to this. And how is he a man who doesn't hate baseless rumors?

    • But proving there is no bottom, Junior weighed in with a "joke" about the violent attack on the 82 year old man.  This is the new fascist playbook: Invite the violence, muddy the truth when said violence occurs, and then parody it to make it seem less important. Incredible. 

       
  • Meanwhile, a text scroll was projected onto the side of the stadium during the Florida/Georgia game that said, “Kanye was right about the Jews.” Here's the video.  It later moved to a downtown building. Video. 

  • I hate to break this to you, folks, but I don't think America is going to make it.
  • As democracy dies, early voting in Wise County is trailing off. Total so far is 9,017 or around 18% of total registered voters. That's normal, though. 

  • Re: Last Friday's Heavy Rain. How much raw sewage did the City of Runaway Bay dump into Lake Bridgeport?
  • All the political ads make my head hurt, but one of them which most people don't notice is the one that begins with a scare tactic about crime, and then urges you to vote for Republican Texas Supreme Court judges.  But the Texas Supreme Court doesn't hear any criminal cases.


  • In Dallas, there are three "declared write-in candidates" who will appear on the ballot for the 301st Judicial District Court and that's it. For the life of me I don't know why. 
  • Another edition of Laws Don't Matter Any Longer.

  • OK, I believe in TCU. 
  • From a Ticket host who just saw the birth of his second child. This hurts my heart.

    • This is what he posted in the hours after the birth.

  • Brazil had a presidential election yesterday where Trump's far-right candidate was thrown out of office. 


at 8:31 AM

10.28.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Natalie Portman at Baylor/Texas. And the game looked entertaining. 

  • Re: Yesterday's weather prediction. Here is the radar as you woke up this morning. I've once again proven to be the Most Trusted Man in Weather™.

  •  This is most heat I've seen on the $300,000 Man so far. 





    • I've decided that the powers-at-be made the decision that McCraw wouldn't be fired or resign until after the election.  Abbott's campaign probably thought that his exit would give Beto a talking point so keeping the status quo was the safest court of action. 
  • New this morning. 

  • Trump will be back by Monday, right?


    • Twitter is now a private company. If you owned a share as of the close of business yesterday, you'll be paid the amount Musk upon which agreed to buy you out: $54.20 a share. Five days ago, people still weren't sure the sale would go through. You could have bought it for $50 on Monday.

    • I find it almost inconceivable that some merger and acquisitions lawyer pushed a button last night and $44 billion was electronically transferred. But that is what happened. 
  • Meta's (Facebook's) stock plummeted yesterday. It is down a jaw-dripping 70% this year. 

  • Good. And what a weird name.

  • Dateline: Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. They think the fire was set to cover up a homicide. 

  • I like hot mics in general. 

  • Pageant drama.

  • Man, that's a wild jump.

     

  • Very legal nerdy stuff: This perjury case was reversed yesterday by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals because of a jury instruction was given about a specific section of the law that is on the books but which most criminal lawyers, including me, have never heard of. (CCP 38.22 §4.) And it had absolutely no application to the trial. How screwed up was the trial?: (1) There was "expert testimony" before the jury as to whether the language of the that law applied to the case. That's bizarre. And the court of appeals didn't exactly like it. See footnote 23. (2) And the jury was given a "special issue" on that law in addition to the guilty/not guilty verdict form. Say what? 


     
    • Here are the players. There were special prosecutors brought in. 

    • For those of you who take a deep-dive into that case, that's a heck of a probation disqualification provision buried in the statute which governs the admissibility of written confessions, isn't it? 
  • 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: 3 years, 115 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:32 AM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)