Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• If you object to restoring relations with Cuba, you are living in the 1960s. Doing what the President has proposed seems like a no brainer for at least the last 20 years. 
• It will take decades, but Cuba will eventually have a ton of beachfront hotels and casinos which will be huge destinations for Americans. Win-Win. 
• Sony's decision yesterday not to release The Interview came after the top five movie chains announced they would not show the movie. I still think my civil liability theory I proposed yesterday is behind all of this (as opposed to "bowing to terrorists"), but I haven't heard anyone else mention it. 
• A good movie would be one about how the making and releasing of a movie caused an international incident after computer hackers got involved. 
• Mark Davis this morning said that every theater should have released the movie even if it took "six cop cars" around every one of them and if "anyone so much as looked crossways at you they would be taken down." Good grief. Talk about "terrorists winning". 
• Starting today, there will be ten state high school championship games at Cowboys Stadium this weekend.
• It'll probably be in the Update, but southbound 287 out of Decatur was shut down this morning because of a wreck in the construction zone. Completely shut down. 
• The death sentence, even in this era of rare death sentences, was pretty much expected in the trial of the Ex Kaufman JP. 
• I can kind of understand the post verdict "victim impact statements" in that case (although I'd never give one -- what's done is done), but I don't understand a judge grandstanding after the sentencing (which he had no control over.) The judge said, in an effort to pander for the cameras, "You murdered a little old lady, and you would have murdered two other innocent people if you would have had the opportunity. That puts you right there with Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Speck. But the people of Kaufman County know you've been scared for the last couple of years. There's no reason to be scared anymore."
• And I'm not sure those last two sentences make any sense. 
• I suspect most people don't know who Richard Speck was. He's been dead for almost 25 years. 
• And the post verdict prosecutor/investigator photo op drives me nuts. There's a great phrase I've always loved for those engaged in public service: "Do your job and then go home."
• Mrs. LL recorded Survivor and watched it when she finally could last night. I woke up near midnight and she was still downstairs. 
• I have no control over whether that crazy Captcha keyword requirement appears for comment posting, but it sounds like it is gone. 
• Beginning right now in 1983, the metroplex would experience 295 straight hours of temperatures below freezing. Man, I remember that. 
• Hey, I don't care about the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, but how would you like to be a player for the University of Pittsburgh? In the last 24 hours, your coach resigned to go to coach Wisconsin and the school then fired the Athletic Director. Now go out and practice!
• No injuries this morning, but this is a pretty crazy picture after a school bus T-boned a car in Grand Prairie. 
• It snowed on Christmas here about three or four years ago.  I was smart enough to sit back, relax, and watch it realizing I might never see that happen again.