Liberally Lean From The Land Of Dairy Queen

7.06.2023

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

A red Ferrari vs. orange Lamborghini crash on I-30 back in the day.

Decatur has had an armed robbery. This actually happened on Monday but was amazingly off the radar until yesterday. Messenger story here. No paywall.
Random weird arrests I noticed which were made by Wise County deputies last night. Both are Class Cs which are normally just citations.
Lake Lewisville has had three drownings in three days, and there hasn't been a whole lot of news about it. Ages: 19, 19, and "man in 40s."
Oh, my.
Trump news:

He's losing it. Did Hitler ever have these kind of rants? Seriously.
He's going to get someone killed. (Federal pleading in support of pre-trial detention here.)
And attorney Lin Wood's fake elector scheme finally cost him his law license yesterday in lieu of disbarment. And he might get indicted by the time it is all over. And he should be.
Speaking of fake electors and certification. In Iowa, Mike Pence had to defend himself, the basic concept of democracy, and reality to ultra-MAGA folks. The amount of damage that Trump's propaganda has done is unfathomable. Democracy remains on the brink.

Do yourself a favor an google for the videos of the new Sphere in Vegas which is a concert venue adjacent to The Venetian. They are wild. U2 will do a residency there beginning this fall. Interested.
The boy in a famous photograph is now a member of Cuba's Congress.
A cameraman got absolutely rocked by an errant throw in the the Orioles-Yankees game last night. Video.
Messenger - Above the Fold

7.05.2023

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

A horrible murder case out of Saginaw dominated metroplex headlines. An arrest would finally be made and the case would come to a conclusion the following years.

An "officer involved shooting" seems to happen all the time, but in Fort Worth last night officer(s) shot and killed two people last night after responding to a call. "FORT WORTH, Texas - Fort Worth police said officers shot and killed two men overnight while investigating a call about illegal fireworks activity. Chief Neil Noakes said a police officer and an arson investigator with the fire department spotted some kind of fight around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday in a neighborhood near Main Street and Long Avenue." A little weird.
Fort Worth PD has been busy because the night before three people were killed and eight injured in a shooting in the Como area which made national news. Here's a security video of everyone scrambling for cover.

This lady sure was in front of the cameras a lot, and it struck me as odd. In less than 18 hours after he son died, she set up shop to watch the 4th of July parade on the spot where he son was killed. She gave TV interviews and her photo is on the front pages of both the Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News today.

This is a pic out of Runaway Bay on Tuesday evening. "Two houses on fire in the 200 block of Lakeview Drive" after "a loud boom" was heard from a mile away. (Facebook is the source.)
Ken Paxton impeachment news:

I guess this is not surprising.
This got buried before the holiday, and it is impeachable on its own.

Trump didn't campaign yesterday but instead sat around posting on social media. In addition to an obscene one about President Biden, he posted this strange one. That's not patriotic, that his part of his "I will be your retribution" campaign. These are dangerous days.
Meta, the parent of Facebook, will release a Twitter rival tomorrow.
This certainly is an attention grabbing headline, but it's also interesting how the press found out about it: By listening to a police scanner. A transmission of “We have a yellow bar stating cocaine hydrochloride” by a DC firefighter went out over the airwaves after they were called due to a "suspicious package" being found. It's also just a "presumptive test" which are wrong all the time, but it still wouldn't surprise me if there hasn't been cocaine somewhere in the White House almost every day for decades.
This might have been one of the funnier (?) passenger meltdowns we've seen in a while. Language warning. And it was "purportedly" taken at DFW Airport on an American Airlines flight that was preparing to depart. Video.
This is brutal.
BYU unveiled a photo of the Big 12 logos now being painted on its field after the school officially joined the conference on July 1st. But there was a slight problem.
I hate the hot dog eating contest.

7.04.2023

Random 4th of July Thoughts

Tonight marks the four year anniversary of Lauren's Whitener's death at her Lake Bridgeport home. It didn't seem right to wait to acknowledge it until the normal Friday sign-off.
From the Wise County Messenger's two year anniversary story written by Brian Knox and published in July of 2021.

7.03.2023

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

The fast moving "Yarnell Hill Fire" that trapped and killed 19 specialized firefighters.

Israel bombed the West Bank overnight. Eight dead. The song remains the same.
Oh, man. Story published this morning. There's a nine second video in the story link that shows the crack expanding once the coaster goes by.
Quick hits on the You-Don't-Have-To-Design-A-Wedding-Website-For-Gay-People Supreme Court case.

My legal analysis on the 6-3 decision:
The issue of "standing" is a strange one. This might be the first time I've seen where someone was allowed to sue the state because they were "worried" about the state taking action against them if they went into business and if, once they did, someone would ask them to do something they found offensive. The majority just glosses over it:
This case is sneaky weird. The would-be website designer said she would sell her skills, in a general sense, to same-sex couples, and the state mysteriously stipulated that fact to be true. So the issue was limited to whether the "compelled design" of same-sex wedding website, which she said she had religious objections to, violated her Free Speech rights. The dissent smoked that out with dripping sarcasm:

In other Supreme Court news, they agreed on Friday to hear a Fifth Circuit case that struck down a Texas law that disarms people who have been subjected to a domestic violence protective order. Who knows what they'll do.
On the campaign trail:

Watching Sen. Lindsey getting booed in his home state at a Trump rally on Saturday was something. And entertaining.
This video is one of the strangest DeSantis ads you'll ever see as he tries to paint Trump as gay-friendly. It was released over the weekend.

What a train wreck: "SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter owner Elon Musk has limited the number of tweets that users can view each day — restrictions he described as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform." (However, some think it's because he refused to pay a third party hosting bill to Amazon web services.)

And this comes on the heels of announcing you can no longer look at Twitter unless you have an account.

Fox4Terry was on the job this weekend. "A North Dallas crash leaves a family badly shaken & 2 men seriously injured. This when the [man's] Viper crashed into the family's Camaro." Check out the license plate.
The City of Southlake must have piles of cash laying around.
Last week I mentioned the story about Brookshire's expanding into DFW and how great their store was in Bridgeport. Well, my bad. I learned there are actually two Brookshire chains and the one in Bridgeport is not the chain that was part of the Dallas Morning News story.

I was tipped off once I looked the map accompanying the story which showed no store in Decatur.

This photo of the quarterbacks on the roster for the Longhorns was floating around this weekend. The guy on the left, Maalik Murphy, makes the others looks like kids. And he actually played better than Ewers or Manning in the spring game.
As expected, Decatur's Bryce Elder was named to the All-Star game.
I fully support replacing fireworks shows with drone shows . . .