Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• OK, for all of those who see a truck fatality and mockingly say "ban trucks"; see a stabbing death and say "ban knives"; see a drowning death and say "ban pools", here's a hypothetical: What do you say when you see a heroin death?
• "Stuntman Eddie Braun has secured the funding, the permits and the team. Now all that's left to do is complete a launch across the Snake River Canyon that swallowed his idol, Evel Knievel, in 1974." A Bridgeport man says he spent over a million to secure the rights to make the jump a few years back before the deal fell through.
• Last image of SMU officer as he begins to get out of his car as it is swept away into Turtle Creek:
  
• Decatur really thrives commercially (just go down FM 51) but for those who drive through it on 287 it looks like a wasteland. Restaurants and gas stations have shut down, empty strip malls, and there are multiple slabs where businesses once stood but have now been bulldozed. 
• Lots of comments that Trump's son came across last night as Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. 
  
• You could just see Trump Jr. earnestly believe that that Huey Lewis and the News' "early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically."
• Internet funny:
  
• American Psycho came up in the district courtroom in Decatur the other day when long time friend Elizabeth Berry showed me her business card which is one-of-them-new-fangled "half cards". I tried to come up with the lines from the movie, "Look at that subtle coloring. The tasteful thickness . . . . It even has a watermark" but I botched it.
• A police dog for Arlington PD died yesterday from heat exhaustion after he and his handler searched for a "felony shooting suspect" (a 17 year old, already identified, and wanted for an incident in June). Note to handler: You screwed up. 100% avoidable. And the dog wasn't even needed in the search. 
  
• The Big 12 has announced they want to expand by two to four teams. I go get BYU and Boise State and then go on a campaign to pilfer Arizona and Arizona State from the PAC 12.
• Almost spit out my coffee that I wasn't drinking when I looked up at the Republican National Convention last night and saw this:
  
• The head of DPS, Steve McGraw, continues to deceive us (just google him). He tricked the legislature into pouring millions into his budget to hire new DPS troopers for border security and now says that the plan has flaws because he's still forced to rotate veteran troopers into the border detail. Prediction: He'll ask for a bigger budget next year. (Last year he personally got a salary increase from $183,498 to $214,672.)
• If you want to know about taxpayer waste, talk to a trooper about that border security "work" they are forced to do.