Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The manufacturer of Roundup, the greatest weedkiller in the history of weedkillers, was hit with a $289 million jury verdict in San Francisco based upon an allegation that the product caused cancer in a man. That award will never hold up. Well, it would never hold up in Texas.
• I mentioned these drawings a couple of weeks back. I can't wait to look at them to see how things have changed -- and they have definitely changed with impromptu remodeling projects over the years.
  
  
  
  
• Fair and balanced: Fox News' Sean Hannity turned his entire radio show over to Trump's two lawyers on Friday. Amazingly, those two didn't say anything crazy.
  
  
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• The guy who stole the plane out of Seattle and went on a suicidal mission demonstrated two things: (1) He's the calmest craziest guy ever, and (2) that man, for not being a pilot, can fly a plane like nobody's business.
  
   
• You think everything is going well for Trump when he tweets, from his New Jersey golf course no less, that his own attorney general is "scared and Missing in Action"?
  
• The Teen Choice Awards, for whatever reason, was on the Family Unit TV last night.  I took some comfort in not knowing a single person on the screen while thinking, "The nation is doomed" for most of the show.
• The office microwave is on fritz which, in my life, is like going to DEFCON 1. 
• I'm not sure Omarosa's new book has much credibility.  But the jury is still out since Trump promised us he would "hire only the best people." 
  
• No-Longer-Sheriff Joe decided to campaign by pointing out he loved Trump during his presidential campaign while the former Sheriff's current Republican senate opponent hung out with that Never-Trumper Ted Cruz.  I need a program to keep all of this straight. It's like an episode of Modern Dysfunctional Family.
  
• I've been warning about the Proud Boys, a group of White Nationalists who refuse to call themselves White Nationalists, for a long time. Twitter finally banned them on Friday. 
• The neo-Nazi rally in D.C. turned out to be a big bag yesterday. It was planned for months but only a couple of dozen Unite The Righters showed up. So sad.
  
• It looks like one of the players on Bridgeport's state basketball championship team who went to aTm has transferred to a Division II team in Oklahoma. 
• I saw a Crown Royal commercial yesterday while watching the the PGA Championship and thought to myself that it was the first liquor commercial I had seen on TV in decades. Quick research reveals there was a "voluntary ban" of liquor ads on TV in 1948 but it has very slowly gone to the wayside beginning in the last 1990s. I must have missed a few.
• Some bikers "visiting" Trump this weekend gave us one of the greatest photos of his presidency.
• Messenger: Above The Fold.

It's Friday. Let's Get Out Of Here.

I think I'll do this tonight. But with me in the shrink wrap.

Ariel is all grown up.

"I told you I want to stay in the jungle in Costa Rica!"

Some Idiocracy is quality Idiocracy.

 Like the deleted scene from The Exorcist. (Look it up.)

File that under the "Why didn't I think of that?" category.

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• The craziest story you'll hear all day: An assistant Wake Forest basketball coach has been arrested for punching a tourist on Sunday after the tourist thought he was his Uber driver. The punch caused the tourist to fall and hit his head on the concrete. He's dead.
• Yesterday Justice Sotomayor strongly dissented to the Court not staying a death sentence out of Tennessee. I would link to the facts of the case but that would cause any inclination you have to agree with her to quite probably vanish.
  
• Like clockwork, I tried to give Trump credit yesterday for not tweeting about the "Witch Hunt" for three days and within three hours he did it.
  
• I picture him in pajamas and jumping on his bed when he fired this one off:

                                       

• The government will let you pick the logo for Space Force! Logos which appear to have been designed by a Fifth Grade class from Muleshoe. (No offense to the Fifth Graders of Muleshoe.)
  
• And Space Force ($8 billion), just like The Wall ($25 billion), will never happen.
• That Manafort case just got weirder. The prosecutor asked the judge to instruct the jury to not hold it against them that the judge scolded them yesterday. The judge amazingly did so and told the jury that he was wrong when he did it. So odd -- especially for a federal court. I don't think I've ever seen that even in state court. 

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  I want a courtroom sketch of me!

• Laura Ingraham stepped into it a couple of days back by showing (again) she's a racist on Fox News. You know you've done a fine, fine job when America's best known Klan member, David Duke, backs you up. (I hadn't heard from Duke since he backed Trump for saying there was blame "on both sides" in Charlottesville.)
  
  
• I understand how grand juries work. They don't work this way. That many indictments in one day is ridiculous.
  
• Woodward and Bernstein watch Nixon's resignation: 
  
• Nerdy college football stuff: A fantastic interactive graph showing which teams go for it the most on fourth down and their success rates. 
•  Put down your phone! (Better quality.)
  
• More random college football stuff: Since 2000, the number of true non-conference road games (not a neutral site) played by Alabama is six. That's amazing. 
• I'm insane now: 
  
• I'm "hip" enough to know Weezer covered Toto's Africa, but now I learn we have Weird Al joining Weezer on stage yet not changing the lyrics. (It's like a Twilight Zone episode.)
• Add this to the list of Dumb Texas Laws: Gaming machines. (We had a raid in Bridgeport where ten were seized.)

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Every weather forecast is basically: "Over the next few days, you may get rain or you may not. If you do, it might be heavy or it might be light." That's basically no forecast at all. 
  
• I'm still trying to track it down, but there was a cop and a mayor of a small town near Waco who was one of the first to call 911 at the Twin Peaks biker incident. I think he is now the pastor of a church in Decatur. (It certainly is the same name, I'm just not sure it is the same person.)
• Trump hasn't tweeted "Witch Hunt" in three days. And, other than complaining that rivers in California run into the Pacific Ocean, he's been pretty calm on Twitter. 
• "As Reagor-Dykes employees are being 'placed on leave' following the dealerships’ legal troubles, workers are wondering what is the next step for them."
• There was news yesterday of an alleged sexual assault in a bathroom in a bar/club in Dallas, and cops put out a sketch of the so-called Person of Interest. I looked up the club online and it had a photo gallery. I feel sorry for the DJ depicted in the photo gallery who certainly is not a suspect. 
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• It was very weird yesterday for Southlake PD to highlight two DWI arrests of females who allegedly hit each other while driving different vehicles.  The "thread" had a bit of glee and satisfaction to it. 
  
• I also thought it was odd that the Star-Telegram picked up the story and called the ladies "drunk" without using "alleged."
  
• Speaking of, this is a very weird Star-Telegram story. At the end of it, it lists twelve products by name (with links) that comprise this gal's make-up.  Prescotte Stokes III is the author.
  
• I watched the first episode of Hard Knocks. It is easy to tell why the Cleveland Browns are so bad and the finger points at an entire coaching staff that is sleep-walking. 
• Some serious hail in Colorado Springs.
• I wrote about Kobach's scam a few days ago. He just won the Kansas race for Republican nominee for governor a couple of days ago by only 191 votes, and his opponent has demanded a recount. Since Kobach is Secretary of State, he will oversee the recount and refuses to recuse himself. 
  
• Nixon walked out of the White House for the last time on this day in 1974. 
  
• "There are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us.” - To Kill a Mockingbird

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• I talked to someone who went to the Civil War Museum in Fort Worth. You know, that one on west 820 around Lake Worth which you've driven by a thousand times? Verdict: Pretty, pretty good. 
• There was a shooting death in Forest Hill over the weekend where the 25 year old victim, Roderick Brunswick, listed his hometown as Bridgeport. 
• Tell me this can't possibly be true:
  
• Here's Trump's lawyer acting crazy again. (1) He got mad at that?, (2) He didn't deny worrying about Trump's tweet?, and (3) And what does "Law School" have to do with any of this? 
  
• We've got another security guard killing a guy at a strip club. A few weeks back it happened at Roxy Showgirl in north Fort Worth, and last night it happened off of Regal Road and Stemmons in Dallas (it sounds like in the area of Zona Rosa Cabaret.)
  
• What a crazy race last night for a Ohio Congressional seat -- a district that is 86% white and which has been strongly Republican for decades There are still 5,038 absentee ballots and 3,435 provisional ballots outstanding. 
  
• In women's professional basketball, the team from Las Vegas, after 25 hours of travel due to delayed and cancelled flights, decided they were too tired to play.
  
  
• Man, if this is real, it is shocking: That's alleged audio of embattled car salesman Bart Reagor addressing his employees with a ton of F Bombs. It definitely sounds like him, and you've got to love him bragging about having a mansion on 19th Street in Lubbock. (And he makes Alec Baldwin speaking to the salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross look like a choir boy.)
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• We've found the dumbest school board in America. The school board for Parkland, Florida (where the mass shooting occurred) was ordered to release some documents to the press but was allowed to make certain redactions. After the documents were provided, someone on Facebook told the paper, "Hey, if you'll just copy and paste that electronic document into Microsoft Word you'll be able to see the redacted text." (Paraphrased.) It worked. Now the school board is urging the court to find the paper in contempt for publishing the text that was supposed to be redacted. Good luck with all that. 
• The officer in the story below rejected an odd plea bargain offer of, "Admit to hurting the dog and give up you officer certification and we will dismiss the case." At this point, the only thing that will save his career is a Not Guilty verdict. And it's not the strongest of cases against him. 
  
• Greg Abbott's "bail bond reform" proposal was nothing more than trying to advance his own political career by using the death of a DPS Trooper. It won't change a thing. And the head of DPS, Steve McCraw, was right by his side when he did it. 
  
• I'm telling you, that Manafort trial is getting weird. The judge and the prosecutor continue to fight, and the judge even accused him of crying in court.
• Messenger: Above The Fold (Today's paper lists the new teachers in the districts around the county, and I noticed Bridgeport has a "Drone teacher.")

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Drive in on 287 from Decatur to Fort Worth and right before you get to I-35 you'll see a left lane exit to get on an tollway.  The sign that goes across the roadway to notify you has three license plate scanners for the three lanes that go underneath it. The two right-most lanes are simply going onto the "regular" I-35 where you don't have to pay toll. Why does TxDot have those readers for those two lanes? 
• A Texas state senator, Don Huffines, went to Russia to warn the Russians not to meddle in our elections. I bet that scared them. (Any maybe he tried to put them in an American made car from his family's dealership.) 
  
• Our governor just made up a quote in the middle of the night. Churchill never said such a thing.: 
  
• Speaking of Abbott, I was excited when I heard he would announce a proposal for "bail bond reform" today in Waco. The current trend is to eliminate discrimination against the poor in the bail bond system where indigent folks stay in jail pending trial simply because they don't have the money to get out. Alas, Abbott intends to make it harder to make bail in some cases. 
  
• That Paul Manafort trial might be taking a wrong term. The prosecutor and the judge have been getting into it in front of the jury and there is no better way to turn off a jury than for a judge to give the impression he is not neutral. 
• Notice to the ladies working the counter out at the DPS office in Decatur: 
  
• A graduating Aggie decided to do a bit. I just wished they played the Florida Gators this Fall so we could see this picture photoshopped in all sorts of ways. 
  
• The stadium arms race continues: The Evil Empire will begin a $175 million renovation project to DKR Stadium.  It is "unclear" if they will add more seats but my money says yes. Texas' current capacity is 100,119. Aggie is 102,733.
• Sheriff Joe, who is about to be crushed in a U.S. Senate election just like Sacha Baron Cohen crushed him on Sunday night, decided it would be a good idea to trot out Ted Nugent. 
  
  
• As high school football ramps up, do you think your little Johnny will play in the NFL? Consider the case of Johnathan Gray out of Aledo -- easily an all-time top five Texas high school running back. After playing for UT, he went undrafted. "He went to the rookie camp for the New York Giants; and then camps for the Calgary Stampeders, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders. He never played a game for any of those teams."
• So Sad! (Although I'm not sure why they are wasting time on it if it is "not their call."):
  
• WFAA's John McCaa has announced his upcoming retirement. I heard someone call him a "great journalist" this morning. He is very good at what he does which is read news, but I've never considered local anchors "journalists."
• Nutcase Alex Jones was banned from almost all of the leading social media sites yesterday. (If you aren't familiar with him, he makes claims like "Sandy Hook was staged.") The far right wing was clutching its collective pearls yesterday yelling "Free speech!" and "First Amendment!" Hey, take a civics class. Oh, and Jones also sells supplements which are supposed to make you lose weight but apparently only make you tan: 
  
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• Ticket fans: Netflix must have paid for the constant segments dedicated to "Last Chance U."