Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Trump can't screw up much more than he did this weekend -- from the Stephanopoulos interview to tweets - - but it doesn't seem to matter with his supporters. Nevertheless, Ted Cruz must just sit back these days, smile, and say "I told ya so."
  
• KRLD's weather guy "resigned" after posting on Facebook during the Democratic National Convention that the slain sons of the Mothers of the Movement were “thugs.” (I've said for years that I don't know how those guys over at WBAP keep their jobs based upon what they say on the air.) 
• Kill me . . . 
  
• I understand that ads on web sites, the Star-Telegram, for example, uses your location but what exactly am I looking at here?
  
• Open Carry hits Texas universities today.  There are 37 private Texas universities and only one will allow it: Abilene Christian.
• “Quit hiring cowards, they are hiring cowards… my partner says they are hiring cowards . . . .They are hiring ex-military and they don’t see people as human.” -- Dallas police officer calling into a live podcast as the shooting was going on that left five dead.
• Mrs. LL dreamed we had a "vacation home" in the Hamptons. This from the girl who claims she grew up without a dishwasher. 
• A phrase I heard that I don't think I've ever heard before: "Blood libel." 
• The Star-Telegram had a big story of the "millions" raised by Texas Legislators this year. But when you look at it, most candidates weren't impressive at all. For example, "State Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, raised $4,360 this year and has $47,446.81 in cash on hand." That was pretty typical.
• If you thought Fox 4's Clarice Tinsley's broadcasting Facebook comments was an all time low for local media, their bits on Facebook are worse. Throw in a few "warnings" and the time honored click bait phrase of "you won't believe" and there you have it. I used to think Steve Eagar was better than this. 
  
• Sixteen people were killed in a hot air balloon in Lockhart, Texas on Saturday. I had no idea those things could carry sixteen people. (The pilot had the same name as a former editor of the Messenger.)
• I actually saw The Last Picture Show for the first time over the weekend. Pretty racy for back in the day. I looked it up and learned that at least a couple of places tried to ban it as pornography. (But for the life of me, the group's reaction to seeing the dead boy in the street -- played by Sam Bottoms who died a few years back at the age of 53 --  was so out of place and weird for a depiction of small town Texas.)
• "At a quarry in Bridgeport, Texas, where rock is crushed, sorted and cleaned, it’s hard to tell that the nation’s construction boom may be hitting a wall." - The opening line to a Bloomberg.com story today on construction and the only reference to Bridgeport.