Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

The merger of American and United was approved by both boards. American was in a bad way having filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. 

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• And another.  Here is the video of people running for their lives as gunshots rang out last night.
  
  
  
• Yesterday, a man rushed the defendant in the courtroom before the sentencing in a Buffalo mass shooting case, and you've probably seen the video. At first I thought he knew there was no way he could get to the shooter, but he is so big that he might have actually pulled it off if he had lowered his shoulder and gave it the good ol' college try. But I'm not sure his heart was really into it.
  
  
  
• This story came out over the weekend, but I just saw it, and it has some some crazy footage. Below is a still shot of a video of an anti-tank missile traveling horizontal to the ground towards a bunch of aid workers in Ukraine, including an American who was a former marine. The New York Times even has the video which is included in the story. (I was able to "gift" the link since it is normally behind a paywall.)
  
  
  
  
• The chances of military aircraft being involved in any crash on U.S. soil is very high. We had a Blackhawk helicopter go down yesterday in Alabama, killing two. 
  
  
  
  
• A Ring cam capture it go down.
  
  
  
• I ranted about Texas Scorecard yesterday trying to demonize teachers, and now they have new ammunition. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• If he was flying in underage girlfriends, he is going to get away with it. 
  
  
  
• I saw this headline, but it really was somewhat old news. The missed bullet and the autopsy error were discovered many months ago and led to a complete overhaul of the ME's office. This is now the trial that the DA has decided to go forward with. This guy now has to take it in the shorts over someone else's mistake. 
  
  
  
• For a second there I thought this was about the rapper 50 Cent. 
  
  
   
• Rest in Peace to the bombshell of my youth.
  
  
  
• This was amazing. The Rangers posted the tweet below yesterday morning to promote their off-season signing of Jacob deGrom, who they will pay $185,000,000 over five years.  In less than an hour, the team announced that muscle tightness prevented him from throwing on the first day of spring training. 
  
  
  
• Yes, I'm having a talk with my Weather Team.  I don't want to hear any mumbo jumbo about the "the cap." 
• The domestic violence charges against the former UT basketball coach were dismissed yesterday and probably properly so. There was probably no way the DA could win it.  
  
  
  
• But UT made it clear in its dismissal letter that it such a result was not going to change anything. 
  
  
  
• Only one minute of this album is available to listen to, but I want it. 
  
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

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.

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• "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.

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.

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• 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.