7.19.2019

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




  • I haven't mention much about the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 this week, but I am old enough to remember it. Sorta. I don't remember the launch at all, but I do remember hurrying home from Vacation Bible School commencement to watch the moon walk. (But it's all a little fuzzy.) One memory is clear: Staring up at the moon that week and trying to wrap my head around how we were there
  • As Michael Collins watched Armstrong and Aldrin leave to go to the moon's surface, you know it crossed his mind multiple times that he might have to go home alone. He had to have been trained for such an event since every scenario had been considered. Even Nixon had a speech written in case all three men died on the journey. It's here
  • It looks like Wendy Davis will run for Chip Roy's congressional seat which covers an area near Austin. She'll beat him. Each of the last three Republican vs. Democrat race in that district has gone to the Republican but the margin has been shrinking each year. Roy won last time by a margin of 50.3% to 47.5%. She has name recognition and will benefit from the anti-Trump wave. 
  • How do you get away from a storm of controversy of being a racist and news that you used to party with Jeffrey Epstein? Start a war with Iran.  
  • There was a shooting at Fort Worth Buck's Cabaret in north Fort Worth last week. Now police have made some public lewdness arrests (names and ages in link.) 
  • When you've lost The Mooch, you've lost America.
  • Sports or Sports-like: (1) Former Aggie coach Jackie Sherrill has settled a lawsuit against the NCAA that he filed in 2004. (2) David Duval shot a 15 on one hole at the British Open. Then it was changed to a 13. Nope. They changed it to a 14. Explained. (3) The open weekend of college football season has College GameDay coming back to Sundance Square. 
  • Here's a followup on The Washington Post's opiod/pain pill analysis of DEA data because I can't believe it is this detailed: "From 2006 to 2012 there were 14,175,520 prescription pain pills supplied to Wise County, Tex." Below are the top five pharmacies, ranked. (For any county in the U.S. go here and scroll down until you see "Find the data for where you live.")
  • More proof of Idiocracy.  (For those who aren't has hip as me, A$AP Rocky is a rapper who got in a brawl in Stockholm.)
  • So you  think "Go back home!" or "Send her back!" yelled by a white crowd in North Carolina isn't racist?  Or Lindsey Graham using the shortcut code word of "communist" isn't racist? The Klan in North Carolina would like a word with you.   
  • He lied. Again. He let it go for 13 seconds and never told them to stop. Watch the exchange here (it has a split screen of the 13 seconds with a timer which makes you realize 13 seconds is a long time in that context.) 
  • This is fascinating. Bob Sturm of the Ticket was watching the 1977 NFC Championship Game of the Cowboys/Vikings played at Texas Stadium because he's a nerd. Out of the blue, the broadcast cut to a guy on fire in the stands. (Watch that portion here.) Sturm posted it on Twitter and the Irving Fire Department saw it. Yesterday, two guys from the department who had researched the case went up to the studio for a couple of segments. They explained that the guy who caught on fire was in a snowman outfit which the department still has (photo below of the snowman head.) The guy caught on fire when a sixteen year old high school student, who was involved in a concession fund raiser but was walking up the aisle carrying a lit container of Sterno to keep warm on the very cold day, bumped the snowman. 
  • That Cowboys' clip begins with Tony Dorsett being run out of bounds. Dorsett, who might be my favorite running back of all time, could look cool even on a play like that. (The Cowboys won that game which was actually played on January 1, 1978.)
  • Also on The Ticket yesterday, this guy called in. 
  • Former left winger and now Fox News golden boy Alan Dershowitz has been linked to Jeffrey Esptein and he's fighting back in the weirdest of ways. (David Boies is a famous lawyer who is representing one of the victims in a civil case): 
  • A 24 year old inmate in Bexar County has died after two weeks in jail. He was incarcerated on a possession under a gram charge which requires mandatory probation for first time offenders. But he didn't have the money to make bail. 
  • Greg Abbott, who doesn't know the first thing about criminal law, instructed locally elected prosecutors to go ahead and file marijuana cases without a lab report even thought proving the case requires a lab report. Incredible. He will be ignored by DAs and CAs. Stay in your lane, bro.