Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• This is one odd way to refer to a convenience store parking lot at what turned out to be a  convenience store at Calmont Avenue and Las Vegas Trail in Fort Worth. (One guy ended up dead after being shot in the head and the other one ended up at hospital with gunshot wounds. That's one heck of an "altercation.") If the parking lot is "well known" for crime then I'll admit I'm not in the know about it.
  
  
• What!? Watch. The mascot gets fired for this, right?
  
• The definition of the Swamp: Rick Perry went to the inauguration of the President of the Ukraine and handed him a list of potential "energy advisors." Less than a month later, one of them gets a 50 year lease to drill on Ukrainian government lands. That guy just happened to be Michael Bleyzer -- a long time backer of Perry who gave him $30,000 the last time he ran for election. Logs show that Bleyzer visited Perry's office two weeks before Perry attended the inauguration. And of the nine oil and gas grants by Ukraine on July 1, Bleyzer and his partner's "bid was the only one of the winners that didn't include the participation of a Ukrainian company."  That swamp ain't drained -- it's being restocked. 

  

  Bleyzer and Perry

• How weird is Trump? He posted the following tweet last night to get the nation to vote for Sean Spicer on Dancing With The Stars last night and then deleted it when Spicer was booted off.
  
• Speaking of press secretaries, Spicer's predecessor, Stephanie Grisham, has not held a single press conference -- something that  used to be an almost daily occurrence with other presidents. Now she just appears on the safe confines of Fox News.
  
• Yesterday, in watching a video of an "interrogation" of some guy with no criminal history who was stopped in Wise County for speeding but investigated for possibly possessing weed products purchased legally in Colorado, the investigator told him: "At some point you are going to have to sit down in front of a judge and jury and tell them what happened," and "I'm here to help you help yourself out."  First, unless the Fifth Amendment has been repealed, he doesn't have to tell a judge or a jury anything. Secondly, that's a flat out lie that you are there to "help." (It didn't work, by the way.)
• Alabama gonna Alabama. A guy stabbed the Trump Baby Balloon at the the LSU/Alabama game and then tried to get a GoFundMe campaign going to pay for his legal defense. GoFundMe shut it down. 
  
• I should have mentioned yesterday that when I first explored with Mrs. LL my Master's thesis on The Butterfuly Effect and Whether The Game Would Have Turned Out The Same, which I set forth at length yesterday, that her first reaction was in the Kip Dynamite voice of, "Like anyone can even know that." Really.
• For those who read the thread I linked to the other day about the lawyer who told a federal district judge that he missed a hearing because his grandfather had died, we have an update. 
• Also an update, the Houston prosecutor who asked if a victim was "legal" as a condition of accepting a case has been fired.
• I normally wouldn't promote someone promoting themselves, but J.D. Clark has done a fantastic job as county judge. He's right. (But the picture of the late Judge Fostel just five years ago was a kick in the gut this morning.) 
  
• A first run Jeopardy episode had Alex Trebeck getting chocked up last night. Watch.
  
• Trump Jr. got booed off the stage by the alt-right at UCLA, but not before his ex-Fox News girlfriend fired off the very odd put down of, "I bet you engage and go on online dating because you are impressing no one here in person." Have I said we live in strange days?
  
• The impeachment transcripts are damning (and just wait to you hear it live and in person in the upcoming days.) The following Orwellian quote, which we all thought was a fantasy, is now 100% reality. These aren't just strange days. They are frightening days. The good news is that his rants of a madman are becoming increasingly ignored.
  
  
  
  
• The Cowboys are making it unnecessarily difficult to reach my locked and loaded prediction of over 9 regular season wins this year. And I stress the word "unnecessarily."