2.15.2023

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




In one of the all-time weird stories that was quickly forgotten, this week in 2013 a man called 911 saying he had hurt his back falling off of 380 onto Sandy Creek. He was airlifted. Then it was discovered that the same man, a couple of weeks earlier, had called 911 in Tarrant County after reporting he had fallen eight feet off a trail by Lake Worth. But it gets weirder. Less than a month after the Big Sandy Creek 911 call, he will again call 911 reporting he had been bitten by a snake in Jacksboro.

  • "If Sandy Hook didn't change America, nothing will." The faces of the dead at Michigan State: 



  • When seeing stories like this, I used to sometimes wonder if a child had been, perhaps properly, just overly cautious/suspicious and had simply misinterpreted a situation. After Athena Strand, I don't think that any longer.

  • Crane Man finally came down yesterday morning albeit in a harness. He became "more cooperative" after the weather worsened.  



  • Texas Scorecard is a far-right wing website born from money of the same West Texas Oil Men who created the big money Empower Texans PAC. Its big purpose these days is school vouchers which is just an attempt to funnel tax money from public schools to Christian private schools. To do so, lately they've gone on an attack of public schools trying to scare you into believing the aren't safe. Boyd was in their cross-hairs yesterday. Note how they don't even call the accusations as "charges" or "alleged conduct." It states it as fact. They better hope they are right.  (But the story also quotes a go-to source which also blamed "over-sexualized kids.")

  • If you haven't seen the video of a Philadelphia crowd destroying a car -- and celebrating on top of it -- before the Super Bowl game, here you go. Cops are looking for those involved and released their own video of still photos gathered from social media trying to ID as many of them as they can.


  • One of the "very fine people" at the white supremacy rally at Charlottesville is no longer with us. That's him, or was him, in the center of the photo. 


  • Everyone thinking there has been some type of Chernobyl in Ohio might want to to tap the brakes. It's ok to be very cautious about the aftermath of the train derailment over a week ago, but I'd stop there.  All the hysteria seems to have started with this post by an anti-vax documentarian who is big into satanic conspiracy theories as well. 

  • This is on the cover of the San Antonio paper today. I don't know if I could find eight ladies, much less 58, willing to go along with this. 

  • Speaking of wedding bits, I should have used this photo yesterday to go along with my "that's a bad bit" bullet point for the Mavs' game wedding. 

  • Liberally Lean Always Accurate Wise County Forecast: Brief storms peak around 5:30 p.m. today. Cold front comes in at 1:00 a.m.  High temperature tomorrow is 44.



at 8:32 AM

2.14.2023

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts




This was a nutty story of a fired police officer going crazy. And I had forgotten that police opened fire by mistake on two different pick-ups in an effort to try apprehend him. Wiki entry.

  • A typical Monday night in America. 


    • "Run. Hide. Fight." - The actual warning sent out by Michigan State. And they actually did run. We have agreed to live this way. 

  • She's "in" this morning. The more people who run, the greater the chances of Trump getting the nomination due to the screwy primary voting. 

  • We missed?

  • The man on a crane in Dallas is still up there as the storms moved through this morning. Now he will deal with high winds.  This happened on the campus of SMU a few years back. That one didn't end well. 

  • This was a wild ride. Seventy-one seconds into the flight the plane suddenly plummeted towards the ocean but then pulled up with only 775 feet to go.


     
  • This quote from John Kirby, the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, at a White House briefing yesterday seems to explain a lot about the recent UFOs. 

  • Interesting case out of Lubbock involving a defendant from Granbury. He didn't testify during the guilt-not guilt phase but, once found guilty, he took the stand in the punishment phase. From there, he fell on the sword and admitted his guilt and expressed remorse. It worked out for him. 

  • He is such a strange guy. I'm not buying his Tesla. And I'm not getting in one of his rockets. And I'm not sure what this even means.

  • I've made it no secret that I think Mark Cuban is a fraud especially when it comes to technology. He loved NFTs and Crypto, he once said that Google would never buy YouTube because they would be sued "into oblivion" for copyright violations, and, I swear to gawd, he once said that streaming home video would "never go mainstream" because "we will never have enough bandwidth." (I listen to every Ticket interview this guy has given like a hawk.) 
    • But we continue to run to him for his tech thoughts. Here they ask him about ChatGPT and it reveals a trick he always uses. He will throw out just enough terminology to make you think he has tremendous knowledge about a subject.  He doesn't. 


  • That's a bad bit.

  • Best still frame of what prompted the game ending holding call in the Super Bowl. 

  • The headline below about Dan Patrick trying to appease the rabid far right wing base with the unveiling of his 30 Top Priorities -- focusing on issues they love to hate even if they don't exist (CRT, voter fraud etc.), -- seems to a little opinionated in using the word "red meat." They are right, but it's still an odd headline. 

at 8:31 AM

2.13.2023

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




The same man who died a few weeks back.

  • Someone didn't want to go to school today. Southlake Carroll just had a bomb threat. Evacuations occurring. 
  • Edit: Unauthorized man on crane in Dallas right now.

  • So after the Chinese balloon was shot down, the U.S. took down three other "unidentified" objects over the weekend.  Am I the only one who thinks you don't shoot things down unless you know exactly what you are hitting? Then again, I bet we know exactly what they were.


  • Ken Paxton, who we elect time and time again, had a Friday news dump. He once fired four assistant attorneys general after the accused him of committing a crime. They immediately sued. In this employment at will state, it's one of the very few reasons you can't fire someone. Don't worry, you'll pay for both his crookedness and his incompetency to the tune of $3.3 million. 

  • Ask for something ridiculous new perk and then just settle for over a third of a billion dollars for another project. That's how it works. (The total operating budget of DPS last year was already $1.4 billion.)

  • Death toll in Turkey/Syria has risen to at least 34,000.  The rescue area is about the size of Pennsylvania. 

  • Super Precision Forecast: My weather teams me that it will be raining buckets in Wise County at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow, but then it will drop off dramatically with only a sprinkle by 8:00 a.m. It will be brief, but it will be intense. And we'll have high winds all day. 
  • Fox4Terry was working a shooting in Deep Ellum. I've said it before, I love how Dallas detectives show up at crime scenes in white shirts, tie, and jackets. 

  • Super Bowl quick hits unrelated to the actual game:
    • Let's check in on Mr. Sunshine.

    • Let's check in on Mr. Crazy. 

    • The Chiefs' "no one believed in us all year" mantra is about as tiresome as it is untrue. 
    • There was something funny about this moment of Mahomes after he tweaked his ankle.

    • The jack of Damar Hamlin -- the Buffalo Bill who almost died on the field. Not sure what is going on there. 

    • The Fox Pre-Game show, yesterday and all season long, is an absolute beating to watch. It is so bad.

    • Since the game was in Arizona, the Eagles should just refuse to accept the outcome. <rimshot> 

  • There are probably very few people out there who listen to WBAP, but 69 year old Hal Jay has received his heart transplant and will leave the hospital today. 

at 8:31 AM

2.10.2023

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

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




A thirty-four minute delay. 

  • This might be a new tactic in the PR wars. If you get accused of something, just immediately go guns blazin' on the attack. He doesn't care if he collects. This is about damage control. 

  • And it looks like the guy at the top will survive Uvalde as well. Incredible. 

  • This guy got three years in prison yesterday. Not enough.

  • There seems to be a trend of defendants taking the stand in their own defense. In general, I support this strategy since the chances of conviction has always seemed to me to be significantly higher when the defendant sits silent -- despite the jury promising they won't hold that against him. Then again, sometimes the defendant's personality, or his history, gives you no choice but to recommend he not take the stand. Ultimately, it is his choice.

     
  • A faithful reader pointed out to me that the Zillow Gone Wild house in Southlake is owned by Frank Renda, the CEO of Southland Holdings. 
  • Let's check in on our crazy representative. Uh, is this called engaging in a "cancel culture?"

  • The leader of the Republican Party decided this morning that he would deny having an affair with Stormy Daniels. Go ahead, nominate him for 2024.

  • I glanced at this story about the newly elected DA in Waco who has had to recuse his office in several high profile cases currently pending because he worked as a defense lawyer on those cases. But there was one sentence in the story that floored me. The kid to the right of the DA in the photo below is Christopher Weiss. "Weiss has been in the McLennan County Jail since Nov. 8, 2017." Good lord. And now there's not even a prosecutor assigned to the case. 

    • There's something else about that story which bugs me. If the DA has a conflict of interest, that DA shouldn't be the one choosing his replacement. The court should be making that decision. 
  • Random photo of King Charles this week. 

  • It was announced last night that UT and OU would be leaving the Big 12 after the next season. They will either pay, or give up the rights to, $100 million to do so.  And this occurred on the same day that the SEC said it was distributing $49.9 million per school for its annual payout. 

  • Random legal stuff: A Wise County criminal case was affirmed on appeal yesterday by the Fort Worth Court of Appeals.  The argument that "the sentence is too long because it won't rehabiliate me" didn't work. 
  • With the heavy rains earlier this, I suppose the City of Runaway Bay again started dumping raw sewage into Lake Bridgeport . Nothing has changed there to solve that problem they announced a few months back. 
  • I've never once considered DeMarcus Ware a Hall of Famer. Seriously, those guys are suppose to "wow" you. He never wowed me.  

  • 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, 220 days.

at 8:33 AM
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