You Know It's The Dog Days Of Summer . . .

. . . when Mrs. LL sends me a video of The Family Cat going into daredevil mode.

That's one strange cat. For the first year she simply ran around 100 mph and, if she ever did stop, she'd destroy everything in reach.  These days she just lurks. Half the time I have no idea where the dang thing is.  And she has an "I'll let you pet me mode" which appears every few days and lasts about five seconds.

Dumb cat.

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Zimmerman traffic stop thoughts: (1) I'll give the cop credit for not getting pissy when Zimmerman wouldn't tell him where he was going -- it's none of the cop's business; (2) his Florida CHL notwithstanding, it's not an offense in Texas to have a handgun in your car so long as it is concealed, you are only committing a traffic offense, not a member of a street gang (silly law), and you are "traveling" -- and "traveling" is not defined which makes that whole law pretty tricky, and (3) I'm surprised the cop didn't at least get Zimmerman out of the car once he found out he had a handgun. (Technical Legal Edit: Someone is trying to correct me on my "traveling" point. I'm right. It was moved from a defense to an element a few years back, but it is still does not have a definition.)
• A couple of month's back I told you a huge legal issue was the warrantless blood draw in the Josh Brent case. Yesterday, his lawyer finally filed a motion to get the blood results thrown out for the exact reason I suggested. 
• Shocking footage of expected starting Philadelphia Eagle wide receiver Riley Cooper at a Kenny Chesney concert threatening to "fight every [n word] here." The obvious joke was how many black guys are at a Kenny Chesney concert?  Do that at a Snoop Dogg concert, and it's a different story. Cooper apologized profusely yesterday, but he's got a rocky road ahead of him.
• How does a Bridgeport City Councilman get elected in May and resign less than three months later?
• I had my testosterone tested and I'm low. Now I'm about to find out if the treatment actually works. (And do I know the dog pile I'm about to receive because of this bullet point? Why, yes. Yes, I do.)
• The Rangers had their third walk off home run in a row last night. Fill in sports guy on WBAP today Stubie Doak's said that he thought he had read that such an event had not occurred since the Houston Astros did it in 1841.  And he wasn't joking. 
• Crazy, crazy story: Dallas businessman on vacation in Thailand with his family gets in an argument with a band in a Karaoke bar and ends up getting stabbed to death. Not exactly the wisest move on his part. I wouldn't get into an argument with a band at Bono's. 
• I've said this before: I'm not a fan of music and I hate The Eagles, but the documentary The History on The Eagles on Showtime is fantastic. 
• I can't stop thinking about the  great Johnny Football article in ESPN The Magazine. How his dad allowed a reporter to basically embed himself with them for a week is beyond mind-boggling. And the dad may also may be responsible for allowing his son to become one of the most immature twenty year olds in the history of college football. 
• Ticket Fans only: There's was a famous Ticket drop where former KXAS anchor Mike Snyder is reading a retraction off the teleprompter and says "perons" instead of "persons" because it was misspelled in the text. Although it got accidentally lost in their studio move, I'm the guy who sent it to them in first place. I've still got it on some old hard drive, and I need to get it to them.
• The cops that shot the Florida escapee near Grapevine Lake were cleared by a grand jury yesterday. Yes, shooting a man to death who is armed with a stick is justified. 
• Two weeks ago how much would you have bet that Randy Travis (who was released from the hospital yesterday) would outlive Kidd Kraddick?

Get to that now vacant highway location! And step on it!

	Rebecca Lopez (@rlopezwfaa)
7/31/13, 2:42 PM Headed to Forney where George Zimmerman was reportedly pulled over for speeding.

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Barry

Interesting Time Waste

The Inkernet has a live and active radar for DFW airport. Here.

Sending In The Muscle Men

If you make over the top comments about the Republican Leadership on Twitter (even though you didn't mean to be taken literally), DPS will come for you.

Arkansas Inmate Escape

(Globe) — Surveillance video from a jail in Garland County, Ark. captured an inmate escaping by crawling through a sliding window over a counter, then running out of the building. The inmate, identified as Derrick Estell, was reportedly in jail for charges including aggravated robbery, theft, and fleeing, and a manhunt is underway to return him to jail.

Never since Shawshank Redemption has there been a more discipline and well planned escape. How many years of planning did that take?  Just be on the phone. Jump a counter. And get those hooves a moving.  If that guy isn't on a beach on island of St. Croix, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• This Random Thought Girl hangs out at some Dallas place called Siso Uptown Resort with other chicks. Edit: Link fixed.
• "Yeah," [his dad] says one evening, driving in his car, "it could come unraveled. And when it does, it's gonna be bad. Real bad." He imagines a late-night call, and the cable news ticker, and the next morning's headlines. "It's one night away from the phone ringing," he says, "and [my son is] in jail. And you know what he's gonna say? 'It's better than all the pressure I've been under. This is better than that.'" -- From yesterday's ESPN The Magazine article on Johnny Football that caused quite the stir.
• Breaking Bad's one minute teaser for this Fall's finale taught me about poetry: Walter White recites Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias  It will probably come as no surprise for me to tell you that I was ignorant about the poem, but I had a shockingly good time learning about it.  And White's anger and cadence as he spoke of an empire gone was really, really cool.
• Last night, hours apart, I was over come with a wave of deep and hard yawning attacks. It was weird. Not normal yawns. Like I was being hit with something. 
• That Tongan community in Euless is really tight, isn't it? Yesterday, a Ticket personality who grew up in North Richland Hills said you didn't wrong one of them."Ten of them would show up in ten minutes. And they weren't messing around . . . . And the same thing went for the girls."
• With the news that Cumulus was going to dump Rush Limbaugh, he made a rare appearance on TV last night just to his spew his normal rhetoric (and maybe because he's in panic mode.) . Nor surprisingly, he was on Fox's Greta Van Susteren's show. When he does appear on TV (which is basically never), it will be somewhere cozy and comfortable. You'll never see him on a show where he is challenged. 
• Kidd Kraddick has a heart attack and now I'm overly aware of every chest pain I have. 
• I knew Kidd Kraddick's show was syndicated, but I didn't know he ran the whole company. He didn't contract with a third party to do all the heavy lifting, logistics, and distribution.  I haven't heard a number yet, but it sounds like a ton of people worked for him. 
• Another walk off home run for the Rangers last night, and one of these days I'm actually going to watch it live. (That game took 4 hours and 46 minutes.)

Above The Fold

Tweet from FOX 4 NEWS (@FOX4)

	FOX 4 NEWS (@FOX4)
7/30/13, 1:42 PM Deceased body in the Trinity River north of downtown Fort Worth... seen by people tubing the trinity... near the Rockin' the River stage

Edit: And here's a pic from the Rockin' the River stage . . .

Anthony Wiener's Intern Is A Tuesday Afternoon Pick Me Up

Source.

Dumbest DA In The History Of Ever

Who would have possibly thought it was wrong to hire a private company to train "his task force" about highway drug interdiction and then give 25% of any seized money from a traffic stop to the private company if the traffic stop occurred during "training days"?

Not to mention that the head of the private firm, who isn't a licensed cop, was so excited he started doing his own traffic stops.

Thank goodness that low down and dirty ACLU is after the DA now.

Last Tweet Of Aggie Player Who Died Last Night

Beyond chilling.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Kidd Kraddick apparently died from clogged heart arteries. On that note, I happily took my new cholesterol pill this morning. 
• "Dallas ISD trustees tell [Superintendent] Miles to cooperate with inquiry or risk losing job." I'll continue to say it: The end is near. 
• I try to give Johnny Football every break in the world, but how hard is it to keep a low profile for a few months? (He partied in Austin this weekend.) And in unrelated breaking news: An Aggie football player has died in a car crash.
• The Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana (which makes fruitcakes --- I hate fruitcakes!!!) had an accountant who allegedly embezzled $17 million and is now on the lam. How is that possible? 
• Mrs. LL is locked into The Bachelorette this season. (My take: It's like a bunch of junior highers in good looking bodies.) 
• I came up with an alternative to that show last night: Trade the people for monkeys with funny voice overs. Monkey in bikini. Male monkeys fighting over female monkey. Monkeys kissing. Hello, Emmy!!!!
• Then the Girls In The House said that it would be funny if the show was made with sloths instead of monkeys. I told them they were now being ridiculous. 
• Facebook inspirational posts are anything but inspirational.
• "Bros gone wild in Huntington Beach."  People are stupid. (Multiple videos.)
• Any chance the Update has used the word "vaginal" for first time before this morning. 
• We had new door knob chaos in the house (trust me, it's possible) so Mrs. LL brought in a handyman to figure everything out. (Yeah, I know. It shouldn't be that complicated but it was.)  But now we've got a keypad enabled lock on the front door. Which is both cool and a little unnerving. 
• Mark Davis said this morning that he doesn't mind government spying programs like PRISM until he hears it has been abused. How a man that old can be that naive is shocking. 
• Rangers win it last night on a walk off home run with two out in the ninth on a 2-3 pitch.  In more important news, it's 33 days until college football season. 

Random Government Salaries: Collin County Sheriff's Office

The government employee salary database at the Texas Tribune is a gold mine.

Edit: Or how about a partial list of administrators in the Frisco ISD?

Edit: Holy cow! Look at the top salaries in the Austin PD!

Play Hard. Pray Harder. Sue Hardest.

There's something just odd about people suing over ownership of the phrase "Play Hard. Pray Harder."

And Josh Hamilton being involved makes it even better.

Monday Morning Pick Me Up

NYC Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner's "girlfriend" did a photo shoot for the New York Post.

Animated GIF Of The Day

David Ortiz hates that phone.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The death of Kidd Kraddick, if you've listened to him at all, is beyond shocking. I can't imagine the number of "soccer moms" who have wept over the weekend. What was it he used to say? "Mascara alert"?
• I flipped over and listened to his show this morning. Kellie Rasberry was far more composed than I thought she would be. She has to be in denial.  Shannon was openly grieving, and it was hard to listen to. Edit: Audio here.
• He first got my attention when he was at the Eagle in the late '80s. He was giving away a ticket to some show for any caller who could call in and talk for 15 seconds about why he or she deserved the ticket without saying "uh". Teenagers flooded the airwaves. No one could do it. Kraddick's laugh was infectious as he cut them off one by one after the "uh". 
• I didn't know he was engaged to be married. (Tidbit in first link above.)
• I'm obsessed with the early and untimely death. This death has only ramped it up. 
• The first person to post the news of Kraddick's death on Twitter was Mark Cuban. Kraddick's daughter them responded and told him to take the post down (a post which has now been deleted). How odd. 
• His last photo.
• Big radio news: Cumulus will dump Limbaugh and Hannity at the end of the year. That would mean they would no longer be heard on WBAP.
• Fox 4's Fiona is a "Hey, Now" in a $13 dress.
• Troy Aikman has a new house. Wow.
• Double motorcycle death over the weekend. 
• The Harris County DA's office is now demanding blood draws via a search warrant in every case where a DWI arrestee refuses to voluntarily provide a sample. Sheesh. 
• TV: (1) I'm three episodes into The Bridge. Good but not great. (2) Saw a great documentary on the Alabama/Auburn rivalry named "Roll Tide/War Eagle." Those fans are nuts. (3) Mrs. LL loves Pitch Perfect.
• Saw this sentence a lot this weekend: "Eighty percent of Americans will struggle with joblessness, live on the edge of poverty, or rely on public programs for at least part of their lives, according to an analysis of survey data from the Associated Press." You know, those three prongs are pretty broad.