Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Well it turns out Mitt Romney jumped the gun yesterday when he criticized the "Obama Administration's first response" to the Libyian crisis. It was a statement from the American Embassy in Libya that was issued before the killing that Romney attacked. What a screw up. Game over?
• And that political genius Rick Perry also issued a statement attacking the President even before our Ambassador's body was cold. Is the Chinese Ad guy still also running the Perry spin machine?
• You guys realize that several Libyans were killed trying to protect our embassy, don't you? And I bet they were Muslims. 
• There are a couple of murder-for-hire cases in the local news. Those things always seem to go wrong. Or are some murders actual "for hire" crimes that we never know about?
• Academic nugget: Former SMU dean Geoffrey Orsak fired after 74 days as University of Tulsa president. I don't know why but that wasn't even long enough to be considered an academic honeymoon. 
• Cowboys nugget: Only 8 of 24 starters - kicker and punter included - remain from the 1-7 team Jason Garrett took over 25 games ago.
• I'm proud of the landscaping in the front yard of my house. A ton of hours were spent on it. 
• The official organization of Texas District Attorney's and County Attorney's has issued a report saying prosecutorial  misconduct is "exceedingly rare." What a relief!!!!  Now I want to know what DPS believes about trooper misconduct. 
• I was listening to the radio last weekend on the way to LSU and heard a rundown of college football injuries. It was lengthy list of young men "out for the season" with destroyed knees, ankles, and concussions. For the first time, I began to wonder is a sport I love can be justified. 
• A radio commercial compared some product to the "cool side of a pillow at night."  I know exactly what that means but I had never heard anyone mention it before. 
• Someone tweeted this picture of a "massive car explosion" in Irving this morning. 

iPhone 5 Announced Today

The reviews have been less than stellar:

(Thanks, John.)

Decatur Woman Wins Contest To Be On Anderson Cooper

Lets cut to Anderson to see if he is giddy about this news!

Completely Self Indulgent Post

RG3 makes the cover of Sports Illustrated this week.

And the Redskins vs. Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day is now on my radar.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the Redskins darn near ran Baylor's offense last Sunday.  Those crazy quick passes to the wideouts with blockers in front is Baylor 101.  And they've got him running basically an option to hand off or pass on every play. If you're in to that sort of thing, it's broken down by Grantland today. I'll give Mike Shanahan huge credit for totally retooling an offense to fit a player instead of forcing a player into an offense.

The Wonders Of Nature

Just stick with it until she opens the freezer.

Legal Stuff Updated

This lady got sent to prison for 35 years by a Wise County jury for dope. The Fort Worth Court Of Appeals reversed the case because of an allegedly faulty instruction to the jury.

I wrote about the decision and said this: "This case may go further up the appellate chain. I think the big issue is whether there is a factual dispute about whether the officer was reasonable in thinking she was lying." If there were no "factual dispute", the judge's instructions to the jury were proper.

Moments ago, the highest criminal court in Texas reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the 35 year sentence. The reason? The evidence "fails to raise a fact issue."

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• While you were sleeping: Our ambassador to Libya was killed by "folks" who were upset by a (horribly made) movie made in America which is disrespectful to Mohammed. And a picture of his dead body being paraded through the streets has now surfaced.
• Mitt Romney has already made the murder political by criticizing the White House's response. 
• I've spent the year highlighting how cops have ramped up their "self defense killings" in the metroplex this year and specifically pointed out one a couple of weeks ago after a car chase by a Garland officer. Oh, you guys took me to task because the suspect had tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against the officer. Well, it turns out that's not true. It was the officer who rammed the fleeing vehicle and then, shockingly, shot at the suspect at least 41 times killing the unarmed man. Hello, murder charge. 
• And there are dashcam videos of the incident which have not been released. Oh, my.
• Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its highest point since 2007.  Once again, more good economic news. 
• If you've never seen 102 Minutes That Changed America on the History Channel, you must do so.  "The film depicts, in virtually real time, the New York-based events of the 9/11 attacks primarily using raw footage from mostly amateur citizen journalists." There is no voice over commentary which gives it an eery, eery feel.
• Something I learned on the 9/11 "Timeline Page" on Wikipedia: At 10:49 a.m., CNN began a news ticker at the bottom of the screen with supplementary information. Fox followed shortly thereafter and then MSNBC.  Those tickers are still with us today. 
• Mrs. LL and I have started a "code word" system to short circuit potential arguments. That is, if either one of us feels an argument is about to spiral out of control, that word is spoken and both of us must stop speaking or completely change the subject. Is that crazy?
• Random Radio Thought: I had never heard of Dennis Prager until a month or so ago. Kind of a strange guy. 
• Did you see Ranger reliever Joe Nathan dressed up as Tony Romo after losing a bet? Here's a picture without the helmet. I'll tell you, that is one authentic uniform. There is no question the Cowboys helped the Rangers out with that one. 
• BagOfNothing.com has a "High School Streaker Escape" which is high entertainment. 

Messenger Above The Fold

9/11

I saw this last year, but it has been rebroadcast on ESPN and on the Internet a lot today. Very good stuff. Even if if is 13 minutes in our ADD society. And if 13 minutes is too long for you, on this day you should at least watch the opening of Love, Actually.

Drops Of Jupiter

An amateur astronomer out of Dallas grabbed video of something smashing into Jupiter on Monday morning. I didn't bring my slide rule with me, but that was big.

Stage Diver Bites It: Real Or Fake?

There are very few people calling this fake, but something doesn't seem right.

Bison v. Kid

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• 9/11 snuck up on me this year. I didn't even realize it until yesterday. And eleven years has raced by.
• That 9/11 Flight Crew Memorial  on Texas Trail in Grapevine is in a strange place. (Both to be in Texas and, since it is, not to be in the airport.)
• I really want to see the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan.  
• If you haven't seen United 93, you need to.
• Flying on Southwest this weekend reminded me how the attitudes of the flight attendants of Southwest and American are polar opposites.
• Forgot to mention that I bought the LSU tickets on Stubhub at not so cheap of a price. Once there, I was stunned to see the number of tickets for sale by ordinary folks outside the stadium. These weren't scalpers -- just ordinary folks trying to unload them. One lady who was in line to go into the stadium held up one ticket and yelled "$5". 
• I read an old Texas Monthly article on the UT Tower Shooting. I didn't realize that the cops who initially responded were only armed with pistols and shotguns so many college kids went and got their rifles. They unloaded on the tower to keep Charles Whitman from having free reign. 
• That whole episode, including the ending, would make a fantastic movie. (A TV movie was made of it in the 1970s.)
• Here's a youtube clip of the first Austin "breaking news" television announcement.
• How in the world can a Dallas cop end up dead by cleaning his gun?
• I'm a couple of days late on this, but that story on the guy in Dallas who killed the 16 year old girl who was about to testify against him in a sexual assault case is shocking. 
• According to the U.S. Census, 1 in 4 Wise Countians don't have health insurance. 
• Heard there was something going down about an Erath sheriff's deputy to be charged with a sexual assault of another sheriff's office employee, but I haven't seen anything about it in the news.
• I drove through the construction at FM 51 and 114 the other day. What a mess. 
• Speaking of, has anyone driven 114 out of Grapevine towards the airport and either looked for signs to go up to 635 or into the airport. Whichever way you want to go, I promise you'll be routed in the opposite direction. 
• Griffining is the new Tebowing.
• Anyone know who was in the wreck that leads the Update this morning?

Above The Fold

Rookie QB Brandon Weeden Got Attacked By The American Flag

And that might have been his best play all day.

Caught My Attention Last Week

It was a picture of cops in Waco "raiding" an 8-liners joint.   SWAT team just might be a tad bit on the side of overkill.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The French Quarter needs a bath every morning. Anyone who walks through the French Quarter needs a bath immediately thereafter. 
• Man, people act a fool down there. 
• The highway to from New Orleans to Baton Rouge may be "boring" but it's efficient. Seventy miles per hour without on and off ramps (because not many people want to exit into a swamp.)
• The tailgating scene at LSU borders on the bizarre. RVs as far as the eye can see, and the campus itself was full of tables and tents everywhere you could look.
• We saw Shaq!  No matter how huge you envision he might be, that's not big enough.
• Everyone always told me to go to a "night game" at LSU. I expected a drunken - borderline violent - crowd like you would see at a European soccer game. It was far from it. They were loud and it was a scene to behold, but it wasn't over the top.
• And, man, I forgot how boring LSU's four-yards-at-a-time offense is. 
• It was Washington bizarro for me. LSU played the University of Washington which is the same team that Baylor played in the Alamo Bowl I went to in December. And the Saints played Washington (D.C.). 
• I saw a Segway tour in New Orleans. Those things must be the easiest things to learn to ride in the history of ever. 
• I'm mad I missed the weather here on Saturday. It sounded fantastic. 
• Of all the football I saw in person, nothing stopped me down like hearing over the radio on Saturday that a Tulane player had been so severely injured that a tracheotomy had to be performed on the field. After I Google it when I got home, I found out those reports were not true.
• I didn't go to the Ninth Ward, but I saw almost no evidence of the aftermath of Katrina.
• Man, there was a lot of trash talking between Saints and Redskins fans. I don't understand how grown men can get so passionate about a professional team.
• I'm a neutral fan at these "football road trip games" so I never cheer. There's always at least one guy in the stands eyeing me trying to figure out what's wrong with me. 
• RG3 was fantastic. Yeah, it's only one game, but he looks like he's the real deal. And it's kind of fun to say I saw his last college TD and his first pro TD in person. 
• We walked to the cemetery I mentioned last week and the journey didn't seem bad at all. Although we did get close to one drunk white guy who couldn't hang on to his lighter to save his life. (And he had a hard time picking it up.) Of all the 100+ year old graves in there, I was surprised to find one tomb with "2011" added to it. 
• Mrs. LL walked into a VooDoo shop.  Not me. I'm keeping my sweet, clean karma.. 
• In general, I think I've lost my appetite. Is that a symptom of something?

Morning In New Orleans

I've been posting some pictures over on my Twitter thingy at @bsg. The link is over there on the side. ----->

Today is the Saints/Redskins game to watch RG3. (Last night at the LSU game I heard a guy give a hot sports opinion about 'RG3 the third'). Funny. Prediction: Like all rookie quarterbacks, this is gonna be ugly. (Cam Newton exclusion is duly noted)