11.28.2022

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




I don't know where I found this in 2012, but it got my attention enough to post it. Notably, an incident between biker groups at the event in 2014 was reported to have been a precursor to the Twin Peaks shootout in Waco in 2015.

  • Late yesterday a plane carrying a pilot and one passenger hit and got stuck in an electrical tower in Maryland. After seven hours, they were rescued.

  • The City of Houston (pop. 2.2 million) issued a boil water notice. In response, the Houston ISD (195,000 students and 250 campuses) shut down for Monday.


  • A chase of a motorcycle in White Settlement had the police mad that he got away. Video.

  • The Aaron Dean/Anatiana Jefferson police shooting trial is set to start today. I don't think they were expecting Jim Lane, who died yesterday, to do anything in the trial anyway since his health had been failing. If a continuance is granted this morning, it's out of respect for Lane in Fort Worth and not because the defense team has found itself in an unusual situation. 

  • Someone caught on video two deer swimming across Lake Bridgeport.

  • It turns out that I wasn't the only one disturbed with Trump meeting with White Supremacist's for Thanksgiving dinner. Even right wing Breitbart took notice.

    • Trump spent all weekend doing damage control but, as he has always refused to do, he never condemned the white supremacists.

  • He's a strange guy. 

    • Unrelated but over the weekend we learned Musk wasn't familiar with the 2018 event of conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group forcing all of its affiliates to ironically read a script railing against "Fake News." (Deadspin created a viral video synching up all the affiliates reading the script word for word which the New York Times profiled.) 
  • The new Twitter is getting spammed by the Chinese right now to prevent news about the civil uprising against new COVID lockdowns.   

  • Kevin McCarthy, who may or may not be the next Speaker of the Republican controlled House, declared this over the holidays:

    • Someone quickly made a counter-point. I wonder who will be selected to read this provision?

  • This case is setting up to be one of the all time great mysteries.

  • So why did ESPN pay Joe Buck, $65 million over five years, and (especially) Troy Aikman, $95 million over the same period, all that money? It didn't matter one iota that they weren't there on Fox on Thanksgiving.

  • College football:
    • TCU went unbeaten and that's hard to do, and they are the favorite over K-State in the championship game on Saturday. And I think they need to win to get in the playoffs. It will be the most consequential game in the history of TCU.

    • Texas Tech fun fact:

    • Not fun fact: This fine event happened when Baylor was an its own 18 yard line, and triggered me to have an extreme case of Slumped Shoulders. UT scored in two plays and went up 14-9.

  • No one talking about gas being around $2.75?


at 8:31 AM

11.25.2022

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




I had forgotten about Obama and McKayla Maroney.

  • All county offices are closed, the courthouse is closed, the Messenger is closed, but here I am. THWMISB™.
  • The Washington Post has a long article (link here as my gift to you since I have a subscription) about Jerry Jones and race, but most of the attention is about a photograph it included. It shows a 14 year old Jerry in a crowd blocking a small group of young black men trying to go to school at North Little Rock High School in 1957.  From my sense of the current reaction, it sounds like the vast majority of people are cutting him a break on this. After all, he was a white kid raised in the South in the 1950s. 

  • Now this kid, on the other hand, makes you want to punch him regardless of his circumstances. 

  • Oh, hell no.

  • Didn't see this on any of the local news channels.

  • This really is incredible. 

  • Senator John Cornyn had a very odd sign-off to a tweet last night. 

  • The team's protest was in response to the "One Love" rainbow armbands being prohibit. I respect the gesture, but then they went out and were upset by Japan 2-1. You gotta win after something like that.

  • In crazy Kanye news, he posted a video last night saying that Trump yelled at him at Mar-a-Lago during dinner. But, more importantly to me, he also said Trump was "most impressed" with Nick Fuentes who also dined with them. (Fuentes is a neo-Nazi and is a Holocaust denier and marched in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. It's 1930s Germany all over again, folks.)

  • OK, that's funny.

  • An image captured by Fox yesterday showed that Dak's phone has an image of himself for the wallpaper. I think I would, too. 


  • Very, very legal nerdy alert: The Court of Criminal Appeals gave the defense bar a rare victory on Wednesday on an issue which comes up quite a bit. It decided that a consensual encounter morphed into an investigative detention.   And they also did something in the opinion which I've started doing in recent years in motions -- including video screenshots. 

    • But it wasn't a total win -- they didn't rule on whether there was no reasonable suspicion to justify the detention. That would make the stop illegal. Instead they remanded the case back to the lower court to make that determination.
    • And I always shake my head when the facts laid out by a court include a description of an area as they did here: "an area of southwest Houston purportedly associated with gang violence and narcotics trafficking" in describing where the cops stopped someone walking down the street. Whenever you see words like "a high crime neighborhood", it's just coded language.
  • World Cup: In the group that the U.S. is in, Iran upset Wales by a score of 2-0 early this morning with two goals after the 8th minute of added time (something I have never understood.). That first goal was even appreciated by my untrained eyes. Video. England (1-0) and the U.S. (0-0-1) play at 1:00 p.m. today although, hopefully, I'll still be interested in Baylor vs. The Evil Empire at that point. That game starts at 11:00 a.m. 

    • Jared Kushner looked on. I'm sure he is not talking about how a Qatar firm bailed out his $1.8 billion troubled investment in his 666 5th Avenue property, or discussing how to invest  the $2 billion he got from the Saudis after he left his White House job. 
      "Hey, have you heard about crooked Hunter Biden?"

  • 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, 143 days.
  • Messenger - Above the Fold

at 8:26 AM

11.24.2022

Random Thanksgiving Day Thought

 


Always a crowd pleaser. 

at 8:29 AM

11.23.2022

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




Story. I was curious what the lawyer was doing these days, and I saw one article where he was still at it.

  • While you were sleeping: America reaffirmed you cannot even go to Walmart during the holidays without fear of being gunned down. 

  • Star-Telegram reporters are becoming more and more vocal about low wages. They are now protesting during their lunch hour as they threaten to strike.

  • I honestly haven't been able to keep up with what's going on with the D.A. in charge of the El Paso Walmart shooting, but it seems to be an absolutely chaotic situation.

  • He's been promising to turn over his tax returns for years, but the Supreme Court is finally making him do it. He threw a tantrum in response. (They are going to drive that Hunter Biden bus and Big Lie bus right off the cliff into an abyss of oblivion. They'll never learn.)

  • Meanwhile, they've got other battles to fight, too.

  • Random fun (?) facts: Cowboy's Thanksgiving game halftime performers over the years:

  • Business news: It really is a weird economy. I saw both headlines this morning.


  • Very random price of silver discussion. When I was a senior in high school (1980), I remember the strange occurrence of more than one outfit coming to Bridgeport and setting up shop at a local motel for the sole reason of buying your silver. And townspeople flocked there -- most in possession of real silver half-dollars that were still fairly common back then. They were rewarded with a handful of cash for their efforts.  Why? There was a silver rush at that moment brought on the the Hunt Brother "trying to corner the market" in silver.  It turns out, those simple townsfolk were the brilliant ones. The price was never higher than for a few days in February of 1980. I think $49/oz (or $177/oz in today's dollars) was the peak price. It currently sells for around $20 an ounce. Look at the price of silver over the years and that crazy peak:

  • Kanye, fresh off his anti-Semitic controversy, is hanging out with Trump before the holidays.

  • Monday Night Football in Mexico City fallout. Oh, my. 

  • Random college football nugget:

  • Messenger - Above the Fold

at 8:31 AM
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