Red Meat For The Masses

By the way: Picture Implying President Is On Vacation There, Too,  But He Ain't

Link.

Separation of Church and State?

Link.

Does a license plate showing three crosses promote Christianity by the State of Texas?  What if a portion of the proceeds from the sale of those plates goes to an organization, the Glory Gang, who helps at risk kids but which refers to itself as a "ministry" and has a Sunday night service which "ends with an age appropriate message about Jesus"? The Glory Gang certainly understands that State money is being used for religious purposes because one of its board members said, “We believe the new plate will appeal to a lot of Texans who believe as we do -- who will like knowing that sharing a Christian message from their cars will also help kids in need."

Would you approve of a plate which promotes Islam?

National Weather Service Has Cancelled Tuesday

The NWS has sent our Sheriff's Office another fancy Powerpoint presentation regarding the expected storms. I think they've hired my proofreader.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The Dallas Morning News reported that five separate motorists were shot at on I-30 near Dallas on Sunday night. Wow. What a story. But the next day they changed the story to "six people" being shot at - four within one car. And details are sketchy at that.
• Mrs. LL had "Love Happens" on yesterday (a Jennifer Aniston film).  I already decided it was horrible and then they actually threw in the "slow clap" at the end of the movie.
• I completed the new flower bed over the weekend. Projects are much easier when you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
• But my neighbor gave me a look like, "Quit trying to scoreboard me." The next day he was out planting flowers with his two kids -- an obvious attempt to scoreboard me. 
• Of the final sixteen teams left in March Madness, four are from Ohio: Ohio State, Ohio University, Cincinnati and Xavier.
• With Craig James, Ted Cruz, and David Dewhurst running for Senate, we have a trifecta of nut case crazy conservatives running. Dewhurst even has a liberal pick'em bracket. 
• The Family Cat sat on my lap for three minutes yesterday. Shocking.
• That Coutney Stodden chick went surfing, and I bet she doesn't know how to surf. But she's still a Hey, Now. 
• The producer of that Kony 2012 video had a very unfortunate weekend. 
• I heard over the weekend that the Kony video/cause took off because it personalized a problem in Uganda.  Just like no one seemed to care about apartheid in South Africa before "free Mandela" became the slogan, Kony was a face that could be associated with Uganda. For some reason, that works with the public. 
• Baylor has a guy who is basically a three point shooter but he's good -- he hit nine of them the other night. But I could do without his making of "three point sign" hand gesture that he puts up to his eye(s) when he is successful. It drives me nuts. 
• I'll flip over to KLIF in the mornings to listen to five minutes to Jeff Bolton's crazy callers. The first one I heard this morning said that "Obama is about to sign a treaty sponsored by the United Nations that will make gun possession illegal in the United States."  And, as always, Bolton never disagrees with any assertion.
• We almost had a news combo: An officer was hit by a wrong way driver in Dallas (but he was off duty.) He'll be OK.
• One of my pet peeves has always been traffic signal lights not being in sync. Before they built the overpass in Wichita Falls, there was the greatest string of in sync lights on 287. I bet there were eight or more that magically turned green as you approached them.  Heck, they may still be there. 
• We've a three woman Random Thought Girl today. The boys on RAGE at The Fan had three behind them at the St. Pat's Greenville Avenue Parade but something isn't quite the same. 

After The First Weekend

Complete. Lots more tied at 10th.


Sponsors:

-All Wise Garden Center in Bridgeport has pledged and delivered a $100 and $50 gift certificate for in-house purchases (counts as two prizes). 

-Bloomoon Pet Resort in Chico has pledged and delivered a $50 Visa Gift Card

-Wise Liquors in Bridgeport has pledged and delivered a 1.75 liter bottle of Crown Royal for the last place finisher. Two caveats: (1) Your bracket must be completely filled out to win, and (2) I need a little Baptist forgiveness for this one. 

-A signed Lebron James jersey with a certificate of authenticity pledged and delivered by attorney Paul Belew

- New: $100 Silpada Designs Gift Certificate pledged by April Cowling (can be used online or through April)

-A $100 Visa Gift Card has been pledged and delivered by Chris Miller's Farmer's Insurance Agency in Bridgeport.

My Annual St. Patrick's Day Tradition Unlike Any Other

"Who else seen the leprechaun? Say yow!!!"

Messenger Above The Fold

Check Your Brackets - Oh, My!

#2 Missouri is out.

#2 Duke is out.

And, finally, here's my National Championship prediction. Welp! See ya later!

VCU Cheerleaders (Only 1 of 2 Upset Winners Yesterday) Taking You Into The Weekend

I Know I'd Like This Guy

Not that guy. This guy:

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• Funny tweet yesterday: "Dow closed above 13,000 Nasdaq above 3000 and SandP 500 above 1400 together for first time ever. MAKE THIS AWFUL SOCIALISM STOP"
• Mrs. LL loves to mow the lawn, and I don't know why. Anyway, I plop down in my chair to watch the Baylor game yesterday evening with a nice breeze blowing in from the open windows to the back yard. And then . . . the violent sounds of a lawnmower firing up. 
• But instead of walking outside and giving her a what-the-heck-are-you-doing look, I paused the game and did something else for a few minutes. (I'm learning. Slowly. But I'm learning.)
• I almost wished I hadn't seen the first part of the game. Baylor was down 12 to a bunch of white boys who couldn't miss.
• Mrs. LL was surprised to learn that the name she heard on TV was the Shockers of Wichita State.
• The best ending in regulation did not come during March Madness but instead in a Tennessee boys high school playoff game.
• "Where's your Green Card? (Clap. Clap. Clap-Clap.Clap.)" -- Members of the Southern Miss band yesterday when K-State's Angel Rodriguez was at the free throw line. 
• There was a media war last night when Fox 4 had footage of a firefighter being arrested and then spent about a minute explaining, "We weren't tipped off! We we just happen to be there when the cops came!"  Channel 8 covered the arrest and spent a segment on "Something's fishy because one media outlet was tipped off."  
• Cops tipping off the media for an arrest or search sounds very familiar.
• Good weather and the 17th falling on a Saturday means potential record crowds for the St. Patrick's Day gathering at Lower Greenville tomorrow. And to think of the irony of the "Drink Responsibly" signs that will be posted above the crowd. 
• One reason the Department of Justice challenged the Texas Voter ID law is because of the large number of Texans that don't have a driver's license. Some folks are suggesting that the high number is attributable to the dumb DPS Surcharge program that has caused thousands of people to lose their license because of non-payment.
• There's a Decatur company that advertises for a Engineering & Maintenance Manager paying $60,000 to $85,000 a year?
• It's amazing that Dallas PD runs undercover prostitution stings on Harry Hines in the middle of the day. But they did manage to snag an elementary school teacher. 

Tourney Results After One Day

Check out the big brain on Shon! A couple of others are tied for second. Complete results. (Over at ESPN.com, there were 13,570 perfect brackets out of 5.9 million entries. That's 0.23%. We had one out of 403, which is some-percentage-that-I-can't-calculate because I don't know how many digits to move the decimal point over.)

Sponsors:

-All Wise Garden Center has pledged and delivered a $100 and $50 gift certificate for in-house purchases (counts as two prizes). 

-Bloomoon Pet Resort in Chico has pledged and delivered a $50 Visa Gift Card

-Wise Liquors in Bridgeport has pledged and delivered a 1.75 liter bottle of Crown Royal for the last place finisher. Two caveats: (1) Your bracket must be completely filled out to win, and (2) I need a little Baptist forgiveness for this one. 

-A signed Lebron James jersey with a certificate of authenticity pledged and delivered by attorney Paul Belew

- New: $100 Silpada Designs Gift Certificate pledged by April Cowling (can be used online or through April)

-A $100 Visa Gift Card has been pledged and delivered by Chris Miller's Farmer's Insurance Agency in Bridgeport.

And A Dose Of Sobering Reality

Saw on Facebook that lots of Bridgeport folks were expressing concern for this man this afternoon.  Tuesday he was alll smiles as he was headed for Vegas and now he is in the hospital after a heart attack.

I hope all is well.

You never know what each day will bring.

Taking A Break For Spring Sports

I'm don't have a doctorate in physics, but once I saw her heading for the springboard I had a pretty good idea this was not going to end well.

We Are All At Work . . .

 . . .  and I'm told The Family Pup just passed out watching Murray State and Colorado State.

(via email.)

My Continued Rant Against Medical Examiner Rulings

 Story

There is nothing more archaic than the language used in rulings by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner.  To call it a "homicide" causes everyone to speculate and rumors to swirl.  But as the DA of Tarrant County has said before about ME rulings, "The word homicide does not mean crime," he said. "It just means that the death involved another person."

Really? So a person could die in an auto accident as a passenger that did not involve any negligence on the part of anyone -- it was simply an accident -- and it would be ruled a homicide? That's ridiculous.

But I've even got a problem with the medical examiner considering that the death involved "another person." There is a 99% chance that the ME did not send out an investigator to the accident scene. The only information the ME has personal knowledge of is what the body tells him through an examination. Yes, he can certainly rule that the death was due to a cerebral injury, but to rule she was a passenger or the victim of a "homicide" has absolutely nothing to do with that medical examination.

Edit: Let me say this again. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner will issue a "homicide" ruling even if a person's death was not the result of someone else's fault, blame or criminal conduct.

And Another - Texas

Story.

And a faithful reader tipped me off to this additional picture.

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Edit: Where is Bacon this week? 
• We have an answer as to whether that Billington guy who received 35 years in prison in Tarrant County last week for felony DWI was the same one who had received prior convictions in Wise County. Yep. And he was headed home to Decatur at the time of his most recent arrest.
• Ex-Cowboys TE Martellus Bennett signed with the NY Giants yesterday for one year at $2.5 million. A lazy, under-achieving, ball dropping tight gets paid an outrageous amount of money and will now play against the team that has already paid him how many millions? That's the NFL. 
• Depressing on many levels: Watermelon smashing comedian Gallagher, who is now playing such hot spots as "Hat Tricks" in Lewisville on Wednesday, has suffered a heart attack.
• Mrs. LL has started a new flower bed in the yard which will be edged by landscaping bricks on all four sides.  I feel my job of leveling those four sides will cause a great deal of frustration. 
• Want to see Blake Griffin airball two consecutive free throws last night?
• I airballed a free throw in a game in high school, and I can remember everything about it like it was yesterday. 
• I keep checking in on a local person on Facebook who I don't know but seems to be a drama queen having a complete emotional breakdown (or might be just seeking attention.) I think that's acceptable viewing on my behalf. 
• Someone commented that having a "last place" prize in the Liberally Lean Pick Em Tournament is silly because someone would intentionally make bad picks. Ya think? But picking who will lose is no easier than picking who will win, and certainly more than one person will try to win last place.
• Oh, some of the bracket names in our tourney are very, very funny. If you missed the chance to be clever, you can change yours. (Although it takes a little searching to figure out how to do it.)
• American Idol has never interested me. At all.
• A building perfectly located and designed to host Quinceaneras seems like a good long term investment.
•  Mrs. LL (who actually has a pretty good voice) would sing "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie all the time a couple of years back. Because I'm sweet, I made it my wake up tone on my phone that I've used as an alarm clock for the last year. Last night Mrs. LL couldn't remember the name of the song or the artist and had to ask me for help. Losing it?
• Something I was completely oblivious to: Hunger Games.