News I Don't Care About, But You Might

But it is worth remembering the Seinfeld episode where Kramer appeared on the show to promote his coffee table book about coffee tables. And if you didn't have a coffee table, it turned into one. (Clip.)

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• I couldn't help but watch the Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin lovefest last night on the Fox News Channel. She seemed a little down.  
• But it also seemed she was seriously hinting at running for president. Please, please, please.
• And then I got to see the story about the Reagan boys feuding. (One claims Reagan's Alzheimer's began while he was still in office.) One things for sure: The believe in capitalism as both of them ho themselves out to sell their books.
• I felt like I was jacked up on caffeine all day yesterday -- I tried to jog it out of me in the evening but that didn't even seem to work. 
• A restaurant on the square in Waxahachie went up in flames this morning three weeks after it was purchased. 
• The Family Cat likes to knock over a potted plant onto the carpet. This leads to an ugly exchange between the two of us -- me yelling and her ignoring. Cats can't show remorse? None? 
• The outside of Cowboys Stadium has a huge screen looking thing that I don't think is a screen. What's it for? (Other than to put the Super Bowl logo on it this week.)
• This isn't for everyone, but last week's This American Life podcast was fascinating: "The Invention of Money."  The second segment dealt with the Federal Reserve (in understandable English) and even had a sound bite from Ron Paul. (Jarhead would have gone crazy with glee.)
• A Fort Worth man was electrocuted yesterday near Chico.  (He passed away but can you be "electrocuted" and survive? Or does it necessarily mean death.)
• I had a radio in the bathroom that would shock me as a kid -- and I don't mean a spark on my finger -- I'm talking about a blast that would run up my arm and cause excruciating pain. I remember telling my parents "that radio shocks me sometimes," but I think they thought I was just talking about static electricity. 
• The Dallas Morning News has a new look today (better), but I haven't run into any "paid only" content as promised.
• I don't think the Dallas mayor has a chance in the world of winning Kay Bailey's Senate seat. And if I had to bet, I put money on the despicable David Dewhurst (who will be sure to feature campaign commercials showing him on a horse.)
• Dick Cheney has a heart pump that "leaves [him] without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart’s own beat." Wow. 
• This was very political today. 

The Sarah Palin Battle Hymn

Drunk? Nope.

It's a weird phenomenon, but some people can't handle the feedback over the the loud speakers.

The Ticket made famous a bowl representative at a North Texas game who strung out "invitation" for about ten seconds once in a similar situation.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Mrs. LL and I have decided that our memories are so bad that we are very much like the movie "50 First Dates."
• I whip her so much with sports that I turned to her on Saturday (while a conversation about Cam Newton entering the draft was on the radio) and said, "You pretty proud of yourself for knowing who Cam Newton is?" Her response, "Who is Cam Newton?" Maybe she doesn't listen as much as I thought. 
• Having a 7th Grader in the house reminds me how much I hated 7th Grade. There's a lot of drama going on at that age. 
• Steeler QB Ben Roethlisberger wears a glove on his throwing hand. 
• Mrs LL actually said, "You're wearing that shirt?" before we went out on Saturday.  I guess "But it's comfortable" is not the best justification in the world. 
• I don't know who is running HBO, but they know what they are doing.
• Mrs. LL loved Temple Grandin. Me? Not so much.
• Apple's Steve Jobs announced he was taking a "medical leave" this morning. Just a hunch, but I think something very bad is going on. 
• "Don't Stop Believing" has become so pop culturally iconic, I'm kinda happy I saw Journey perform it live at Reunion Arena back in the day.
• We ate at the sushi place near the Sam Moon in North Fort Worth on Friday.  Are sushi places popping up everywhere?
• It may be a good thing that the Runaway Bay police chief keeps such a low profile that I didn't even know his name after four years of service. 
• "Teachers in Tarrant and surrounding counties make an average of $51,370, the highest of any region in Texas."
• I'm a big fan of the Messenger, but its decision to print incendiary Ken Hughes letters and then fill up the paper with anti-Ken Hughes letters the following week seems like a failed bit to me. 
• Former Denton Sheriff Weldon Lucas has died. I met him once when I was DA and was strongly considering backing out of the Drug Task Force which he supported. I was way ahead of my time. 
• "There has to be an easier way to get a standing ovation" - Michael Douglas (at the Golden Globes last night as he implicitly acknowledged that the crowd was supporting him as he battles cancer.)
• "I wished I had Johnny Depp's look." -- Me watching the Golden Globes last night which got the strangest look from Mrs. LL. 
• Foot fetish coach Rex Ryan in the Super Bowl would be fantastic. (And Dallas just hired his long haired brother as defensive coordinator).

The Five Finalists For Miss America Last Night

And the winner is: The one who is seventeen. Wait. What?

Edit: Wordkyle dutifully points out Miss Arkansas' talent:

This Should Make For Some Uncomfortable Footage

PHOENIX (AP) — One of the Arizona shooting victims was arrested Saturday and then taken for a psychiatric evaluation after authorities said he took a picture of a tea party leader at televised town hall meeting and yelled: "you're dead."

James Eric Fuller, 63, objected to something Trent Humphries said during the forum taped for a special edition of ABC's "This Week" with Christiane Amanpour, Pima County sheriff's spokesman Jason Ogan said. Fuller was in the front row and apparently became upset when Humphries suggested that any conversations about gun control should be delayed until all the dead were buried, KGUN-TV in Tucson reported.

More.

It has to be on youtube.com soon.

Funny

Toddlers & Tiaras

Everyone talks about how the moms on that show are crazy.

Baloney. We all know it's perfectly normal to have the eyebrows waxed of a five year old.

Friday Afternoon Pick Me Up

Kim Kardashian twitpic'd herself, and the Internets are abuzz about it. There's actually more to it.

Sorriness

Fiona at Fox 4 posted this on Facebook as she quotes from a friend:

from ---Casey Wilkinson Daugherty:
These pups were found in my friend's ditch this morning. She lives in the Cedar Creek Lake Area Kemp/Tool TX . Please cross post. She cant keep them and doesnt want to take them to the shelter. Contact me for more info as I can get with her. tdavis9970[at]yahoo.com 
I found these puppies outside of my gate in our drainage ditch. They look like pit pups but I'm not sure. They are too cute but we can't keep them. We already have Scout (our dog) and she is a handful. Someone just dropped them off. Here is a pic I took of them. They are really scared. I left some food and water outside the ditch so they could eat. There are about 4 or 5 of them for sure. Someone tell me where to take them.


I assume they were dumped there although I guess there could be another explanation.

And Explain This

This was in the "Public Notices" section of the Messenger.   "nation Texas"? "Sark province?"

Somebody Explain This To Me

"Downed" not "crashed"? And they throw in the reference to the tank firing range?

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• Fiddler on the Roof ended up on my TV last night --- I didn't know the guy from Starsky and Hutch was in it. 
• "After 25 years, it's nice to know." -- The leading mother and father acknowledging that they love each other after all those years. You know, I almost teared up.
• Did I entertain kids and friends by pretending the Family Pup was singing "If I Were A Rich Pup"? Guilty. 
• The Dallas DA wants the legislature to require all confessions be videotaped. Just when I don't like the guy he redeems himself. 
• When I posted the silly Mavs video below, I was fearful as to how many people knew what "rick rolled" meant. 
• North or South out of San Fran? You guys have me confused so I bought a travel book. 
• For an audience that goes crazy against full body scans at airports, you guys sure didn't care much about checkpoints.
• The bagofnothing.com guy posted a funny video of a guy falling off a roof. 
• Boy, the NFL Network guys sure did think it was funny when Patriot Danny Woodhead's name was mispronounced. 
• Had an out of town lawyer ask me yesterday if someone in the courthouse was crazy.
• Flashback:  There was a S\ports Illustrated cover in August that told us the Evil Empire had the capability to win it all. 
• Pretty shocking story in the Update today. I'm surprised that doesn't happen on Facebook all the time. Maybe it does.
• We might already have the mugshot of the year.
• A lot of those condos in the converted Montgomery Ward on 7th Street in Fort Worth are in trouble -- 144 of the unsold ones are going to foreclosure. (And the holder of the note is the same guy that bought the Lake Bridgeport property from the Boys Scouts for development. I wonder how that is going?)
• I'm now a Capricorn. You?

I'm Going To Create The Liberally Lean Bowl

The Executive will be me.

Source.

(The data was obtained for those bowls because the are run by nonprofit organizations. Twelve bowls are privately owned including (wow) seven by ESPN.)

Is This Funny?

I can't stand Carlisle so much that my judgment might be all whopperjawed.

Why Don't No-Big-Government Conservatives Scream About This?

Yesterday, Texas' highest criminal court took more of your civil rights away.  Roadblocks to check for drivers license and insurance have always been legal so long as the sole purpose of the stop was to check for drivers license and insurance.  That's why you never see them. If the purpose was truly to check for DWI or crime in general, they were illegal.  That's what made the checkpoints no fun, and that's why the cops didn't do them. They could never establish, with a straight face, that they weren't setting the checkpoint up to look for other crime.

But yesterday the Court ruled that those checkpoints are legal even if the cops stopping the cars was a unit of six to seven officers including a drug dog! And so what if one of the deputies testified that they were "there for any violations they came across"! The trial judge, when asked to declare the checkpoint illegal, obviously didn't believe him and must have believed the other deputy that testified they were there solely to check for DL and insurance. At least that's what your highest court said.

So how did this guy get in trouble? He didn't have a license, had an outstanding warrant, and cocaine in the car. Ah ha!!! You say! Big deal. He deserved to get caught!

But you're missing the big picture. It is you they will be stopping next. And an attitude of "I don't care because I have nothing to hide" is exactly why we are in the sorry state we're in.

Only Girl Known To Date Arizona Nutcase Shooter

Link.