12.17.2018

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • I looked up and saw the Miss Universe pageant was on TV last night, and this morning I realized I missed this: 
                                         
  • This is our world today. CNN screws up and is called out by James Wood who also screws up and is called out by Yashar Ali of New York Magazine.
                                           
  • "A former federal prosecutor has been disbarred for posting anonymous online comments about cases being handled by himself or by his office . . . . [He] had posted more than 2,600 comments on nola.com, the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, between November 2007 and March 2012. Between 100 and 200 comments related to matters being prosecuted by [his] office."
  • Quick loading sports videos: (1) Decatur's QB getting killed on Friday, (2) The ol' I-Can't-Make-The-Interception-On-The-Sideline-So-I'll-Knock-It-To-A-Teammate-Trick gone wrong, and (3) Funny turnover from last night's Eagles win.
  • Of all the football games on TV this weekend the most entertaining was Allen vs. Duncanville at Jerry World. (All of the Texas high school finals are on Channel 21 this week starting on Wednesday.)
  • Trump, who is having trouble finding a Chief of Staff, picked Mick Mulvaney as an "acting" Chief of Staff. Within hours, a video surfaced of him calling Trump "a terrible human being." 
  • Who could have predicted all of this could have gone so wrong?
  • We've got another case now being decided by Texas highest criminal court where a trial judge shocked a defendant with a 50,000 volt stun belt, not for being a threat, but because he wouldn't show respect. I love this quote from Judge Elsa Alcala during oral arguments: "Believe me, I was a trial judge, I had all kinds of crazy people in front of me. And I was as frustrated as all get out. But, the remedy is not to put a shock device on him and shock him when they don't stand up. That is just, they even know of black and white, you don't do that." The judge was Jack Skeen out of back woods Smith County who has a pathetic history of injustice.
  • I'm finally getting around to watching Ken Burn's The Vietnam War. I'm about three hours into the seventeen hour documentary, and it's fascinating. And it makes me realize how little I know.  
  • Sometimes Christmas decorations make you do a double take.
                                      
  • The Weekly Standard , the very conservative and intellectually driven publication (and, thus, not surprisingly, anti-Trump), has gone out of business. "They were trying to get it to hire AM radio jocks to be the writers because they wanted sensational dumbness."
  • I'm seeing lots of stories this morning that Texas has a law requiring contractors with the state to sign contracts which  basically have a "promise not to do or say anything which hurts Israel" provision. Yep, it's a state law introduced by Rep. Phil King. It's unconstitutional and stupid. 
  • He just misspelled border again:
  • Messenger: Above The Fold