Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

I was still posting old Bridgeport Indexes. This one, from 1969, included a Cottondale woman who killed a bobcat, and a story of the 30 year incumbent Wise County Clerk suddenly dying while in New Mexico. 

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• Through Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Congress worked out a spending bill to avoid a federal government shutdown on Saturday  -- it was a done deal. Then yesterday Elon Musk single handedly killed the bill by tweeting about it 100 times.  Somehow an unelected carmaker and man-child now runs the country as a shadow president via Twitter. Amazing.  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  

  
  
  
• We now know the victims of the Wisconsin shooting.
  
  
• A social media search by authorities revealed an odd little twist in the case: "Alexander Paffendorf, of Carlsbad, exchanged messages with Natalie Rupnow, 15, about targeting a local government building while she shot up the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, according to a gun violence restraining order . . . . During an FBI interview, Paffendorf admitted to the FBI agents that he told Rupnow that he would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building.”

• That eight day mission in space has now been turned into at nine month stint of being stranded. How do they not go crazy?   
  
  
  
• We are going to find out why Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Trump's AG.
  
  
  
• His response to the news was, uh, interesting. 
  
  
  
• Tik Tok has one last chance to avoid having to shut down on January 19th. It lost in the district court, it lost in the appellate court, but now it has a convinced the Supreme Court to at least consider saving it. Interestingly, the court yesterday did not grant a stay of the deadline to shutdown, but left open that it could issue the stay after oral arguments on January 10th. That's important because there won't be a final decision until June. 
  
  
  
• The Dallas DA recused herself in 2019 because of an unknow reason. A special prosecutor was then appointed and somehow almost a decade passed by before it was just plea bargained for 10 years deferred adjudication probation.  The victim's family is not happy. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Never let Trump ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange again. He did so one week ago: 
  
  
  
• The "Perfect Predator" story about a north Texas police officer on the front page of The Washington Post (below) is quite the amazing multi-media story.  Gift link.
• Messenger - Above the Fold