Random Monday Morning Thoughts

It was the third presidential debate with lots of folks still hanging around. 

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• Breaking:
  
  
  
• The school says this recommendation was made by a third party attorney-investigator so as to not impede the investigation, but . . .
  
  
  
• . . . it also happened the day after a publicity seeking legislator stuck his nose into the situation instead of letting the police handle everything. 
  
  
  
  
• Jamaica, especially the west side, is in big trouble.  
  
  
  
• We continue to crash high dollar aircraft. "South China Sea – On October 26, 2025 at approximately 2:45 p.m. local time, a U.S. Navy MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter, assigned to the 'Battle Cats' of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 73 went down in the waters of the South China Sea while conducting routine operations."
  
  
  
• We now live in a country where a man can single handily impose tariffs (a Congressional power) because he gets mad at a truthful TV ad and then tries to justify it by falsely claiming the ad "was AI."
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Trump has begun a weeklong trip overseas.  It began with him dancing on the tarmac in Malaysia, but the first stop was in Qatar to refuel and invite his buddies, who gave him a  Boeing 747-8 luxury jumbo jet, inside Air Force One. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Moments ago.   
  
  
  
• America. 
  
  
  
  
• With thinly-veiled payoffs like this, does anyone even know where all this "donated" money is being held and under whose control?
  

  

  
  
  
  
• The Business (Longer Than A) Second™. Gift link. Quietly, it has become legal to bet on sports, and almost anything else, in Texas and every other state. The company, Kalishi, has successfully argued that they aren't accepting bets but are instead using "event contracts as financial instruments, similar to futures or swaps." The Trump Administration is no longer challenging them. Side note: "To help navigate the regulatory environment, Kalshi employs Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic adviser."
  
  
  
• Extremely nerdy criminal law legal stuff: A Wise County woman, representing herself pro se, tried to appeal a plea bargained sentence on a Motion to Adjudicate. On Thursday the Fort Worth court of appeal dismissed the appeal because of the rule that says you can't appeal a negotiated plea bargain without the trial court's permission.  On Friday they withdrew that opinion (after they realized that rule doesn't apply to plea bargains on an MTA) but dismissed the appeal on the basis of a written waiver of appeal existed in the MTA plea bargain papers. That's a pretty big screw-up. 
• The front page of the USA Today today is an ad.