Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• TCU won last night in the Poinsettia Bowl but the game recorded its smallest crowd in its seven year history: 24,607. I don't blame anyone for that. If it is not a BCS bowl, the game better be in driving distance.
• The placement of the traffic signal by the Sheriff's office on 380 is dumb. Any traffic signal erected on a highway is there because people in the past is due to a driver not being  patient at a stop sign on an adjoining road. (In Paradise and at Tater Junction restaurant on 114; Pleasant View road on 380.) 
• "If you don't learn from the past, it could come back to bite you." - WBAP's Steve Lamb this morning. (Dumbing down a famous saying.)
• Sounds like they are backing off the "White Christmas" forecast.  But I've noticed that the National Weather Service is beginning to act like Pete Delkus in its early alarmist forecasts. 
• Man, I've got to say this about the comments in the Palo Pinto Sheriff post below: If you hold the the belief that it is fine for your government to kill a citizen simply because he is committing a crime, you are 100% nuts.
• Baylor cheerleader gallery.Kind of disappointing. 
• I've always liked December 23rd and 24th more than Christmas Day.
• Magazine opinion: Over the past two years, Time has become immeasurable better than Newsweek. (And I actually subscribe to both.)
• Legal folks: Do you think this question posted on a Texas criminal defense lawyer message board made me slap my forehead?: "Has anyone had success in suppressing the results of a mandatory blood draw? Do you have a motion you could share?"  (For the non-legal folks, that's kind of like asking, "Does anyone have a good generic closing argument to get a not guilty verdict? Could you share it?")
• I'm always the first to get up in my quiet house in the mornings, and I could have sworn I heard the faint sounds of "Silent Night" this morning coming from a clock radio. I stopped and looked at the Christmas tree for a moment. Nice moment.
• Then I saw a Christmas ball on the other side of living room -- presumably due to The Family Cat who does not acknowledge the concept of a silent night. 
• WBAP question of the day: "If the world did end one year from today, how would you spend that year?" That's not a novel question, but it occurred to me that no matter what you did you would have in the back of your mind:  "This will all end soon."
• At least sixty dead in Iraq this morning due to 14 bombs detonating. That has to be just the beginning. He may be a good man, but that invasion and mess that was left behind in Iraq will be George W. Bush's legacy.
• Remember how I said the Tarrant County DA's office new press relations gal (former Star-Telegram employee) was a genius hire? She tweeted this morning: "DA's office warns of door-to-door scams. See Star-Telegram article today: http://bit.ly/w0FFSB"  Any bets on whether she basically wrote the article for the newspaper?
• If I were forced to place a bet in Vegas right now on the winner of the next presidential election, I'd take Obama. And, if they were honest, I think most Republicans would make the same bet.
• I listened to a podcast yesterday that explained that Christmas in America as we know it basically started in the 1820s. Regardless of the subject, we are all guilty of believing that "now" represents how "it" has always been.