6.12.2024

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




That investigation concerned UT regent Wallace Hall who was ultimately never impeached. Rusty Hardin also represented the State in the failed Ken Paxton impeachment trial. I don't think we ever learned how much he made off of either.

  • Hunter Biden was found guilty yesterday.  This really throws a kink in the theory of "Biden has weaponized the Justice Department" and is also a little tricky for the Second Amendment worshipers who don't think you should have to fill out any forms to buy a gun. 

    • And this is how you respond if you are a president, a father, a decent human being, and a lover of democracy. 


    • The ink was hardly dry on the verdict form and a juror was already talking to CNN about it.

  • Oh, my.  A stolen van last night had a body inside. 

  • We had a modified Speed situation in Atlanta yesterday.


  • This is both disturbing yet predictable: I saw this story in the Texas Tribune this morning about the True Texas Project which is about to in Fort Worth . . . 

    • . . .  which led me to this reference to the West Texas Oilman Pac and the origin of the True Texas Project. . . 

    • . . . which led me to this reference to a True Texas podcast episode which got me curious . . . 

    • . . . so I looked at that video podcast and, sure enough, I found Wise County's state-rep-elect Andy Hopper whose election was funded by the West Texas Oilman PAC.


  • Legal Nerdy Stuff Update: Just when you thought the fiasco involving the ex parte meeting by the judge, prosecutor and witness in the Young Thug trial in Atlanta couldn't get any crazier, now the judge is ordering a hearing for all those who attended the (unethical) meeting because he wants to find out which one of them leaked the news about it.

  • I saw this headline and thought, "That kind of sounds like an old movie I saw." Sure enough, it inspired the 1995 movie To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.  She was 22 at the time of the murder. 

  • The Baltimore shipping channel has now reopened to ship traffic, but repairing the bridge will take a great deal longer. The bridge collapsed on March 30th after being hit by an outgoing cargo ship.

  • From the What-Could-Go-Wrong-Department, I saw this note from for Texas Monthly crime author Pamela Colloff:

  • More playoff teams -- as if we didn't have enough.


  • Collin County has a new online judicial record search, and it's great.



at 8:30 AM

6.11.2024

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts






The ground suddenly collapsed under a house on Lake Whitney. So what did they do later in the week? They intentionally set it on fire. 

  • I think I'll stay out of the prediction business this time.

  • Journalism is dying. The Tarrant County D.A.'s office puts out this brief press release and KXAS,  Fox 4 News, and other outlets just regurgitate it word for word. There has to be a back story to this and much more to the story, but no one asks any questions 


  • This video is wild. No one died, although I was really worried about the guy at the end.


  • A good guy with a gun, no doubt. 

  • OK, let's reign this in a little. They've gone a little lawsuit-happy.  

  • Legal nerdy stuff: I'll periodically check in on the "Young Thug" trial in Atlanta because is so wheels off. Well, yesterday, all four wheels came off because the defense lawyer found out about an unethical closed door secret meeting between a reluctant witness, the State, and the judge in order to convince the witness to testify.  I can't tell you how bad this is. 

    • But then the he judge, acting like it is perfectly fine to have a secret meeting, wanted to know how the defense lawyer found out about it and uttered this damning sentence: "“It’s disturbing that somehow you have surreptitiously gotten information concerning this Courts ex parte communication with a party.” Nothing quite like admitting to the secret meeting on the record. Video.
    • The lawyer -- I love this guy -- wouldn't tell the judge how he learned about, so the judge threw him in jail. Video. 
    • This was day #88 of the trial. It's a complete circus. 
  • The President Biden's campaign ten released a great ten second ad.  All they have to is just play clips of Trump saying crazy stuff. This was from Sunday when he held a rally in extreme heat. "Do you feel the breeze? I don't want anybody going [meaning dying] on me. We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care."

  • The Business Second™. 

  • Apple is now all in on AI. "SAN FRANCISCO — Apple officially launched itself into the artificial intelligence arms race, announcing a deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI to use the company’s technology in its products and showing off a slew of its own new AI features." Even OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman was at the event yesterday. 


  • We are about to be inundated with significant Supreme Court decisions. It's already June 11th, and there are have been basically nothing released so far. The public won't know what hit them, and that just might be the plan. 

  • A list of non-conventional national championships won this year.


  • A tremendous and entertaining history lesson documentary is is Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War on Netflix. It was released this year.


at 8:30 AM

6.10.2024

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




Ten years ago, a great viral video was making waves on the Internet as "good-looking couple recreates song from Frozen."  I was stunned this weekend to learn they would go on to become big players in a new Netflix documentary called Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal.

  • I'm guessing the Update will have this story which happened Friday evening:

  • Hey, Wise County Sheriff's Office, your PDF jail list hasn't been updated in five days.
  • Israel conducted a raid in Gaza to free four hostages. It also killed as many as 270 civilians in the process. 


  • Four people were shot in Deep Ellum over the weekend but none died. Fox4Terry was on the scene. 

  • Oh, my. 

  • Let's see, what lake stands out?

  • The main road between Idaho and Wyoming collapsed.



  • Look at the gobbledygook  quote in this story:


  • Carrizo Springs, Texas.

  • Trump's teleprompters went out yesterday in Nevada, and he went on a 1:24 second rant about electric boats, sharks, batteries, and recent shark attacks in the news. It's insane. Video.

  • It's behind a paywall, but the Rolling Stone has a feature on the man behind the West Texas Oilman Pac -- the same guy who single handedly elected Andy Hopper to represent Wise County in the Texas legislature by donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. 


  • I like the Star-Telegram but their web presence is gawd-awful. Case in point: Right now the same headline appears three times on its home page.  And it's a story out of Houston.

  • Random sports oddity: The Aggies are headed to the college world series by scoring five runs in one inning to take the lead and only required one single to do it. 



at 8:30 AM

6.07.2024

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

at 2:30 PM
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