Odd TV Commercial Is A Brilliant Short Film

A scene from the epic 2009 ad for Cullman Liquidation

Believe it or not, the ad you'll watch at the bottom of this post is a real TV commercial. It's also an absolute work of art.

It actually came out a decade ago, but is enjoying some new viral fame out there on social media.

It's an ad for Cullman Liquidation, a purveyor of used mobile homes. I checked, and it IS a real business. 

The proprietor of Cullman Liquidation introduces us to his team, and gives us some intriguing personal biography.  For instance, he tells us, for no apparent reason, "My wife's boyfriend broke my jaw with a fence post."

There's quick cuts to the team looking menacing, a woman smoking a cigarette and a few sound effects. It's really a terrific short film.

Producers of several "reality" shows contacted the company pitching a show, but they turned the idea down, which is probably kind of smart.

Watch:

Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder Gives Us The Moment We Need

The boulder that fell on this Colorado highway
prompted a most glorious Tweet that
made everybody's day. 

This past week on a snowy mountain highway near Telluride, Colorado, a big rock fell off a cliff and landed smack dab on the eastbound lane of Highway 145.

Not exactly a national news story until the San Miguel Sheriff's office Tweeted to the public: "Large boulder the size of a small boulder is completely blocking eastbound lane of Highway 145 mm78 at Silverpick Rd."

Everybody, including me, said, "Huh?"  

This odd tweet went totally viral, as deserved.  The absurdity of it was a winner in a week of grim tweets over impeachment, coronavirus and other lovely developments.

Reactions were classic:

"Did a self-conscious small boulder write this?"

"This is how I want to be described in my obituary."

"Americans really will use any other system of measurement than metric won't they?"

Someone else explained why this incident happened:  "It came off a large mountain the size of a small hill."

One Twitterer helped the sheriff's department by providing this update to the situation on Highway 145: "Road is closed while emergency crews bring in equipment to break it into larger, smaller boulders." 

One person cautioned people on Twitter to "not take these things for granite," to which someone else replied, "I marble at your sense of humor."

That fun tweet also inspired lots of gloriously bad puns.

OK, I love bad puns.

Someone else wanted to delve into the technicalities by asking whether a large boulder the size a small boulder is heavier than a small boulder the size of a large boulder.

Personally, I'm glad that the San Miguel Sheriff's office never deleted the tweet, and only updated motorists about the situation on Highway 145.  

Even better, a woman named Susan Lilly who works in the San Miguel Sheriff's office disclosed she was the one who wrote the now-famous boulder tweet. On Wednesday, she tweeted: "I am the author behind this now viral tweet. I own my mistake and now I rock it."

Which is the second best tweet of the week, behind the original large, small boulder missive.

I love Lilly's attitude.  She explained that she meant to write that it was a "large boulder the size of a small car," but that would have made sense and would have been no fun.

As one person replied to Lilly: "You are the reason that Twitter became a lighthearted place for awhile."

Personally, I hope the Colorado road crews saved that boulder and will put it in a prominent place. It will be labeled the "Susan Lilly Memorial Large Small Boulder."

Fake SNL Macy's Ad Nails What We Hate About Christmas, Especially When There's Children

Things aren't nearly this happy in a fake Macy's Christmas ad
from Saturday Night Live that gives us a dose of reality in the
midst of all the fake Christmas cheer. 

I'm a bah hum-bug kinda guy during the Christmas season, so I really get irritated by those chirpy-voiced ads on TV from those retailers announcing their holiday sales specials.

Most of the narrators sound like they are offering a sippy cup to their toddlers.

I don't know why they're offering me things in that tone of voice. I'm not a toddler and I like to think I'm more mature, smarter and more experienced than a toddler.

But who knows?

Now, Saturday Night Live hasn't been very great this year, but this week, they did a fake commercial from Macy's that is just perfect.

The sippy cup voiced actress touts the latest clothing offerings from the retailer. The first few seconds of the video offer the standard offerings for the adults. You'd easily mistake it for a real Macy's Christmas ad.

Then the bulk of the rest of the ad gets into those cute childrens' outfits that will ultimately be worn by not-so-cute children. And their exasperated parents have to deal with it. Which causes all kinds of stress, such as public embarrassment, hatred toward kids and marital discord, all things that are NOT supposed to happen at Christmas, according to the marketers.

Sample ad copy from this video, which is so like real life:

"All month long, we're taking 25% off boys' merino wool sweaters that won't fit over his head," the sippy cup narrator states.  The video shows a fed-up dad trying to put the sweater on his squirmy young son. "If you'd stop squirming, it would be on already!," the blandly handsome dad hisses at the kid.

As we all know, the stress of Christmas brings all these on more than any other time of year. So yeah, bah-humbug!

I think the video, at least in one sense, brings us the true feeling of Christmas, or at least the aspect of it in which society demands that everything be perfect and happy, but we can't quite live up to reality.

I think a lot of people agree. The video had 4.3 million views within less than 48 hours of when it was posted.

It's a great video for everybody. But I imagine it's fantastic for parents of young children. Watch and enjoy and feel the catharsis:

How Not To Own The Libs: Colin Kaepernick Edition

Colin Kaepernick is in a Nike ad, which is really annoying
some really dumb Trump fans. 

As you heard all over the news, Nike hired Colin Kaepernick for its latest "Just Do It" ad campaign, commemorating 30 years of this theme.

I know the Kaepernick thing pales in comparison to the historic week we're having, but the Nike ad is still a pretty good Rorschach test of what people are thinking.

By the way, the Nike ad is pretty damn good. Watch it at the bottom of this post.

And the people who hate the Nike/Kaepernick ad are really revealing themselves as being, well, not too bright.

Kaepernick, as you might remember, led the "Take The Knee" protests in which NFL players kneel during the National Anthem at games to demonstrate for racial quality and against police brutality.

Many conservatives, including Donald Trump and his cult members supporters insist the kneeling is all about hating the National Anthem, America and veterans. I'm not sure how they leap to that conclusion, but they do leap, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Try as they might to find it, there's no evidence Kaepernick or those kneeling NFL players ever said they "hate America." Plus, peaceful protests such as this fall squarely under First Amendment rights, and people who peacefully demonstrate against real or perceived injustices have long been regarded as patriots.

Not by the Trumpsters, though. Intelligence isn't the strongest suit among many of those Trumpsters.

The backlash against Nike and Kaepernick over the past day or so is a case in point.  Many of them have taken to social media with videos and GIFs of them burning their Nike shoes, shirts, shorts etc. in protest of the Kaepernick campaign.

They're burning items they already own, that they've paid for, that Nike has already collected the money on. So who's "winning"?

These trumpsters have becoming the laughing stock all over social media, especially Twitter.

As in tweet from Tony Posnanski says: "I just wrote "Nike" on twenty dollar bills and burned them to own the libs."

At @Emma_Rafter tweeted: "Republicans are boycotting Nike because of an ad. Some are even riping the logo off from their clothes and are in uproar because they sponsor Colin Kapernick. But liberals are the 'snowflakes'?"

Tea Pain has been great on this issue:

"NARRATOR: 'In the late 1930s, white supremacists burned books they opposed politically. By 2018, racists were mostly illiterate and burned their shoes instead.'"

@DanielWatsonSD tweeted in part. "same group that refused to believe their 'leader' isn't anti-American as he conspired with Russia."

@CoolTrainerEl raised a very good point: "Nike made Kap the face of their campaign. The face of Under Armour told the POTUS he's not visiting the White House. Puma made Jay-Z, who supports Kap, brand ambassador. Adidas has rappers on the payroll who support Kap's message. What are you going to wear, white people?"

I hope something. I'd really hate to see most of these Trumpiters naked.

More comments:  @markloughney tweeted: "Since when did people become stupid enough to set their own stuff on fire?"

Oh, honey, there have been stupid people for a long time. The only difference now is that they seem proud of it.

@mjf1958 : "You know what you should do...go to the store and get more Nike stuff to burn... that'll teach 'em!

A lot of people on social media wondered why these angry Trumpsters didn't just give away their Nike stuff to homeless people, particularly homeless veterans.

Apparently, Nike is going to run the Colin Kaepernick ad during Thursday night NFL. That should be fun to watch. Here's the ad:

 

Corrupt Louisiana School District Arrests Teacher For Criticizing Superintendent's Pay

Photo shows a Louisiana teacher about to be arrested for
the high crime of asking why a superintendent is getting a
pay raise but not teachers. 

What seems to be a corrupt school district in Louisiana really stepped in it last week, and as always, that created its own even more intense firestorm on social media.

Let's back up here.

Recently, the school board in Vermillion Parish, Louisiana agreed to renew Superintendent Jerome Puyau's contract for three years. So far so good. But the school board also decided to give Puyau a pay raise, which didn't necessarily go over terrifically with everyone.

The trouble began when Deyshia Hargrave, a middle school English teacher spoke up during the public comment section of the meeting and asked why Puyau was getting a pay raise while teachers were not. 

Well, you'd think Hargrave was making some sort of terrorist threat by asking that simple question. I guess the question did strike terror into the hearts of the school board because they promptly had her arrested.

Just for asking questions and speaking up at a public meeting. She made no threats, she didn't yell, she didn't get violent.

I guess the public comment section a Vermillion Parish school board meeting can only involve opinions that the school board endorses.

School Board President Anthony Fontana is having none of the outcry. He says you're only supposed to express an opinion during the public comment section, not ask questions. (Every public comment period I've been at during public meetings, and I've been to a lot ot them, often involve lots of people asking lots of questions, so I don't know where Fontana is getting that.)

By the way, when ordered to do so, Hargrave left the room, but was still arrested and tackled to the floor outside the room. The school board later decided not to press charges against her.

Says Fontana "This is not about the board, it's about the teacher and everybody wants to side on the poor little woman who got thrown out.... Well, she made a choice. She could have walked out and nothing would have happened."

Yep, she could have walked out, and not ask any embarrasing questions of the school board, because really, why should a public school board be held accountable? I guess he thinks they should do whatever they want, huh?

I have a feeling that Fontana won't stick to his guns for long. This story took the familiar arc when it went viral. Many of the nation's major news media picked up the story, and it's been rocketing back and forth through social media for a few days now. 

Public opinion, unsurprisingly, has come down with the teacher and not the school board. What most people seem to object to, including me, is this apparent trend among people that have any power to freak out and overreact when somebody questions authority, like Hargrave did.

As Isaac Bailey wrote for CNN:

"She wasn't screaming hysterically or uttering a rapid-fire succession of four letter words. She didn't pull out a gun or knife. She didn't rush the board members or threaten them with bodily harm. In their eyes, and in the eyes of a police officer providing security, she did something worse -- she questioned the rightness of their decision making and the morality of their authority to their faces, for all to see. 

That willingness to question authority, more than anything else, seems to put fear in the hearts of those in power."

As Bailey points out, there's other examples of this mentality as well, the kind in which you question authority and they swat you down like somebody trying to kill a mosquito with a bazooka.

For instance, there was that case in Utah last year when a cop arrested and dragged out of a hospital a nurse who refused to draw blood from an unconscious patient. The cop was demanding it to see if there were drugs or alcohol in the patient's blood. The nurse was following the law, and hospital protocol by not drawing the blood without a warrant. But the cop took that as ignoring his authority, so he cuffed her.

Charges were later dropped, and thankfully, the cop was fired.

With every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, so they say. About as ridiculous as public officials objecting to being held accountable by the, um, public, there's also what some people in the public do when they hear about the latest outrage.

Sure, it's OK to react. I sure as heck don't mind the outcry against this Louisiana  school board, it's totally warranted. What I don't like is, every time somebody does something stupid, or rude, or illegal or tasteless, the perpetrator gets death threats. As if every transgression deserves death. It happens every time. Somebody does something stupid. The response is a bunch of idiotic death threats.

People screw up all the time. Sometimes in small ways. Sometimes in big ways. But if we all deserved death for the times we've screwed up, there would be nobody left on Earth. Logic and proportion, of course, are lost on the legions of death threat trolls on this here internet thingy.

Could somebody explain what the thrill is of issuing death threats against somebody you don't like?  Because I surely don't get it. Maybe I'll get death threats for not understanding the logic of death threats? God forbid.

This school board in Lousiana definitely needs to be held to account. Wouldn't it be cool if for once, we did so without going nuts on the internet?

Can't we just all calm down? The answer to that question, in these divided and stupid times, is definitely not.

Oregon Paper Turns The Tables On Garbage-Sifting Prosecutors, Delight Ensues

A fifteen year old article got new
 life on social media this week, with dumpster diving
reporters going through public officials' trash to
make a point about privacy and rights. 

I'm not sure why this  is making the rounds on social media today, but everybody seems to be reviving an Oregon alt weekly newspaper's turning of the tables on nosy police and prosecutors.

Given that police sometimes tend to be overly nosy, i.e. sans search warrants, this decade and a half old tale is one to remember in case this ever happens again.

At the time, police in prosecutors in Oregon decided it was A-OK to go looking through people's garbage cans at curbside looking for evidence of a crime. That is, without a search warrant.

The logic was the garbage and recycling is abandoned property, so it was fair game to go looking through the refuse.

Since there's a lot of personal and potentially private material in garbage - recepts, notes, documents, evidence of where you shopped and when you shopped and where you were, invading garbage seems pretty invasive.

I come down in favor of police sifting through your garbage - but only if they have a search warrant. Since the Willamette Week knew prosecutors and police and the local mayor thought it was OK to search through garbage without a warrant, the reporters there decided to brilliantly turn the tables.

They sifted through the trash left curbside by the prosecutor, police chief and the mayor. Abandoned property, right?

The police chief and especially the mayor were terribly displeased when the Willamette Week reporters fessed up to sifting through their trash. The local prosecutor had a better sense of humor about it.

The anger by the police chief and mayor seemed a little misplaced, because the reporters, judging from that week's trash, concluded that both officials seemed like fine, upstanding citizens. There was certainly more than a whiff of garbage, but no real whiff of scandal.

Here's how the paper wrote about the Police Chief's Mark Kroeker's reaction at the time:

"'This is very cheap,' he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a receipt with his credit card number, a summary of his wife's investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family" addressed to Mr and Mrs. Mark Kroeker."

With that, the normally accessible and affable police chief abruptly ended the interview and complained to other media about the Willamette Week's invasion of privacy. The paper did not reveal what was in the personal note on the napkin, but it was nothing nefarious, such as an extra-marital affair or illicet activity.

The paper couldn't get to the mayor's garbage. The bin was up against her house, and the reporters would have trespassed if they'd gone on to her property to check it. But the recycling was curbside, so the reporters had a look.

The contents were mostly just newspapers, all mainstream and middle of the road and reputable.

Then-mayor Vera Katz was livid when she got wind of the recycling heist by the paper. She summoned the reporters, and the newspapers from the recycling bin to her office. She also ordered them to bring the name of the newspaper's lawyer.

The mayor's prepared statement read, in part, "I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible....I will consider all my legal options in response to these actions."

Funny, though. The mayor was fine with her police force digging through people's trash. What's the difference?

The local district attorney, possibly sensing a PR mess, didn't get too publicly excited about Willamette Week's dumpster diving. He only asked the reporters, "Do I have to pay for this week's garbage collection?"

However, the paper did detail the findings in the the DA's refuse bin. Again, nothing shady, but the reporters got a LOT of personal information about the guy.

Again, I know this story is 15 years old. But it's a master class for when government or police officials overreach.

I get it. Police have a job to do and we demand that they keep us safe while they conduct their often dangerous work. But it never hurts to keep them in check, though.

Anti-Trump Social Media Junkies Are Getting Scary Pro-Trump Robocalls

It's still unclear if this organization had anything to do with
robocalls threatening people who critcized Donald Trump
on social media. 

Gizmodo earlier this month reported on yet another dark side of social media and the internet.

Some people who are active on social media and are not Donald Trump fans have been getting weird, kind of threatening robocalls on their phones from what appears to be the pro-Trump crowd.

Nobody is quite sure if all this is a joke, a real threat, a harmless prank or just more social media bullcrap. But I have to admit it's unnerving.

Luckily, evidence is pointing toward the "harmless prank" theory, but the fact that this can be done is probably giving the evil alt right ideas even as I write this.

The robocalls warn the anti-Trumpsters to stop making "negative and derogatory posts about President Trump," said Brett Vanderbrook, who was driving for Uber when he got the call a few weeks back.

After Gizmodo first published the story, several readers said they recognized the voice in the recording as being from Ownage Pranks, a service that places automated prank calls. "Citizens for Trump" is a prank offered by the service, says Gizmodo, but the trouble is there is a real organization called "Citizens for Trump" that really are just that and active.

Gizmodo, and pretty much nobody else, is sure whether the real Citizens for Trump is behind these robocalls.

They are kind of cartoonishly scary. Here's part of the script:

A man's voice comes on. "We've been monitoring some of your posts and it does seem that you've beem making some rather negative comments about President Trump. Is that correct?"

Then there's a pause as if the voice is waiting for an answer. Then it continues: "Listen, we're going to have to ask you to lay off on the negative and derogatory posts about President Trump, OK?" Then another pause, then more: "What's your problem, anyway? Don't you want to make America great again? Well, you've been warned. We'll be keeping an eye on you. Have a nice day."

It doesn't sound like a lot of people have received this robocall, but it is chilling, even if meant as a joke.

They say Big Brother is watching you. So is obnoxious brother, apparently.

Trolls And Bots Are Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I got an ugly surprise on my Google News feed on
an ugly news morning the other day. 

Monday morning, I got up early, went to my computer, and went straight to my Twitter feed.

There I saw my first hint that a horror had occured in Las Vegas overnight. I wanted to learn more immediately, so I went to Google News.

Of course, the top story was the atrocity in Las Vegas that claimed 58 lives, plus the despicable gunman, who killed himself.

But this post isn't about Las Vegas. Under "related stories" about the Las Vegas massacre was this "top trending" headline: "Jessica Simpson Nude Pics."

Yep, some awful troll apparently gamed Google's algorithms or something to place that nude pics thing in the top news, for profit, obviously. And I'm sure if anybody was stupid enough to click on that link, they got a computer virus or malware.

We all know now that Russians and maybe some other creeps influenced the 2016 election and very likely help a lot in getting Trump elected by inundating our Facebook and Twitter feeds with fake ads, fake news and all that to boost Trump's chances and hurt Hillary Clinton's.

As The Guardian points out, YouTube had its own problems with trolls and hacks gaming the system. Early this week, if you were on YouTube and searched "Las Vegas shooting" many of the top videos on the subject were posted by wacko conspiracy theorists who said the mass shooting was fake, and a false flag to take our guns and rights away, or something.

So YouTube was giving a platform for all these nutjobs. YouTube says the videos comply with their standards, which may be true, but really. On the bright side, my YouTube search of "Las Vegas shooting" was a little better, with the top hits mostly consisting of reports from legitimate news sources or videos from eyewitnesses.

I don't know how to fix all this,  but that's the big flaw in all these web sites and social media is they're automated, and algorithms, whatever they are, guide us to what we see.

Which is why none of us can ever serendipitously just wander around YouTube or search engines like we would in a book store, seeing what pops out at us.

Nope, we've done a web search, or we've watched a particular YouTube video, and now the algorithms steer us toward similar videos or searches. You can look at something else if you have something specific in mind, but if you're just sort of searching for whatever interesting pops up, you can't just stumble on something cool that's unrelated to your past searches. You can't discover new things. You're stuck.

And what about those ads that follow you around. Say, for example,  I bought some athletic shorts from Under Armour online. Now all I get ads for those very shorts following me around for weeks. Why would I want to buy shorts that I just bought? If an advertiser must advertise, the least they and their algorithms could do is advertise something else from that company that I might be interested in. But no: Buy more shorts! Buy more shorts!

It's why we can't have nice things.

Again, I'm no technology, internet or social media genius. But I like to think for myself. The tech companies think I'm incapable of doing such a thing. And it's terribly insulting.

And in the case of the Russian bots and fake ads and news, very dangerous.

Is Outrage Over United Airlines Assault A Revolt Against Corporate Authoritarianism?

I don't remember the last time an incident blew up so big on social media as that horrible attack by United Airlines on a passenger over the weekend. 

As you probably are well aware of by now, United overbooked a flight from Chicago to Louisville, and tried to get volunteers to leave the plane.

Nobody did, so they picked people are random. One guy who had to get back to Louisville objected, so United called in the Chicago cops to beat the crap out of him and drag him off the plane.

That's not how the Orwellian overlords at United would describe the incident, but anyone who has seen the video knows it's true.

This has been building for some time now: Somewhere along the line, a huge swath of corporate America has decided the customers are the enemy, and they have free reign to cheat them, abuse them.

All with the help of Congress, who have been paid off by corporations to pass laws that favor these rich donors and screw the rest of us.  You can steal a lot more money from the boardroom than robbing a person on the street with a gun.

That's why United and all the other airlines can overbook flights and kick people off. It's more profitable, and screw it if you can't make it to Aunt Matilda's funeral in Des Moines.

The United assault on a passenger was the most egregious example of corporate authoritarianism yet, and the explosion on social media, was a giant collective, "I'm sick and tired of this and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Sure, the extreme public ire was aimed at United. But the force of it was inspired by all of our experiences: Gettting screwed by the 150 pages of legalese in every consumer transaction that only a trademark lawyer can understand. Being forced to wait on hold for three hours or more until somebody at the insurance company deigns to answer the phone, then promptly hangs up on you.

That kind of thing.

And it's all dressed up in Orwellian corporate speak that's enough to make you vomit

The United Airlines assault on this passenger was a master class by United on this PR wording.

First, being beat up and dragged unconscious from a plane is not an assault. It was "re-accommodating," as if United regretfully had to transfer you from one five star hotel to another.

United's hired goons - in the form of the odius Chicago Police - said the man's injuries were because he "fell."  Because being socked in the face enough to knock you over is just your clumsiness, you understand.

Later Monday, United CEO Oscar Munoz blamed the victim, saying he had been "belligerent" for not getting off the plane. In other words, the victim apparently had no right to be upset about being denied something he probably paid hundreds of dollars for - a cramped seat on a flight to Louisville.

You're supposed to be overjoyed to be toyed with by a corporation like United!

As Jimmy Kimmel said last night, imagine going to Applebee's and being forcibly dragged out of the restaurant 20 minutes into your meal because the place was "overbooked." It's the same thing as what happened on United!

Kimmel ran a parody ad from United that was funny because it was so incredibly close to the truth. Not just of what goes on at United but many other grifting large corporations. Here's a quote from Kimmel's United "ad"

"We're United Airlines. You do what we say when we say, and there won't be a problem....If we say you fly, you fly, if not, tough shit. Give us a problem, and we'll drag your ass off the plane. And if you do this we'll beat yo so badly you'll be using your own face as a flotation device. United Airlines: Fuck you."

By the way, check out all the proposed new slogans for United in this link.

I hope the public outrage over United lives on, intensifies and spreads to other corporations who treat the public, the environment and everything else like shit for fun and profit.

People are boiling angry over a lot of things anyway, including how the government is run and how it no longer represents us, but represents corporations.

I'm sounding like Bernie Sanders, but this is exactly why he struck such a chord. He's right. The corporations are running the show, and often doing so in a criminal, morality-free way. The extreme anger at United is a symptom of that.

Let's keep fighting. But not physically, like United does.

In case you need a reminder of how brutal the assault was, here you go:

Trump Troll Who Induced Epileptic Seizure On Journalist Arrested

Journalist Kurt Eichenwald was attacked via a seizure-
inducing strobe light via the internet last December.
The alleged attacker was arrested Friday. 

Back in late December, I talked about a journalist named Kurt Eichenwald, who's been tough on Donald Trump for a long time and also happens to have epilepsy

The form of epilepsy Eichenwald has can result in grand mal seizures trigged by certain types of light patterns.

So, some of the horrible people who are the most ardent Trump supporters sent him emails with strobe lights that trigger the seizures. 

Yeah, real cool. You don't like what somebody is saying about Trump? Make his illness worse, dangerous or even fatal.

Eichenwald's seizure wasn't just a momentary event. It was genuinely scary.  After the seizure, he was incapacitated for several days, lost feeling in his left hand and had trouble speaking for several weeks, reports the New York Times.

Trump is cruel, so are some of his followers. Assholes, to be honest.

Eichenwald fortunately fought back and he contacted the FBI about the people who sent him these emails.

I'm happy to report there's finally been one arrest in this case.

The Dallas Morning News reports that the FBI arrested John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Salisbury, Maryland, on Friday in Maryland.

Few other details of the arrest were immediately available.

Eichenwald tweeted that Rivello faces federal charges and would be indicted by the Dallas (Texas) District Attorney in the coming days.

According to The Verge:

"(Rivello).....allegedly sent a message to Eichenwal saying, 'You deserve a seizure for your post.' That message included the strobe. 

After pursuing a search warrant, police say they found Twitter direct messages in which Rivello discussed Eichenwald and said he hoped his message would send him into a seizure and that he was waiting to see if the writer dies. 

He additionally had a screenshot of a Wikipedia page for Eichenwald in which he altered it to say that the victim died on December, 16, 2016 (the day after he sent the strobe.)"

If all this is true, I hope they make an example out of Rivello. He needs to be in jail for a long, long time.  He could face up to 10 years in prison for the charges against him now, but people rarely serve the maximum sentence.

I also can't wait to learn more details about him.  Rivello is probably a real piece of work.

Rivello is about to be pilloried in the court of public opinion, that's for sure. It'll probably hurt him more than the seizure he induced on Eichenwald.

Good.

Eichenwald said he has forwarded information about 40 other people who have sent him the the strobe light emails to the FBI and other arrests are possible.

I'm sorry to say this, but there is an awful subset of Trump supporters who are both stupid and mean, which isn't a good combination.

Part of the resistance against Trump has to include calling out these rank and file idiots, to humiilate them and force them back under the rocks from which they came.

It's OK to be a fan of Trump. It's not OK to physically attack those who aren't Trump fans  There's a few people out there that don't know the difference.  As Trump himself would tweet, Sad!

There are consequences for that awful crew of wannabe fascists out there.

This Republican Wants Another Kent State To Teach 'Em Good!

This idiot from Michigan was just
wondering if shooting a couple
protesters would help end all those
anti-Trump demonstrations. 

Every once in awhile, a public official accidentally tells us what he or she is really thinking, with disastrous, jaw-dropping results.

Our latest exhibit in this wall of shame is Dan Adamini, the Secretary of the Marquette (Michigan) County Republican Party. And possibly soon to be former Secretary.

Adamini was apparently upset by a demonstration that turned violent in Berkeley, California and forced the cancellation of a talk by odious weird right-winger Milo Yiannopoulos.

Adamini tweeted this gem in response:  "Violent protesters who shut down free speech? Time for another Kent State. Perhaps one bullet stops a lot of thuggery."

He also went on Facebook and said this, grammer issues included:

"The violent protests at universities certainly indicate Portage acacian at the lower level. I'm thinking another Kent State might be the only solution protest stopped after one death. They only do it because there are no consequences at all."

That's quite a bit of word salad there, but you can see what Adamini seems to be suggesting.  Just shoot somebody and that will make people just shut up already.

Kent State, as you might remember, was the 1970 anti-Vietnam protest at Kent State University in Ohio. Some of the protesters threw rocks and such at police and National Guardsmen. The Guard opened fire, killing four of the demonstraters.

So yeah, that's right,  Adamini was suggesting what happened at Kent State back in 1970 was a swell idea.

Of course, if you want demonstrators to quiet down and stop, maybe shooting them isn't the best idea for many reasons, beyond the crime of killing people.

It'll backfire, pardon the awful pun. People were so outraged by Kent State that many believe it hastened the end of the Vietnam War. Which wasn't exactly what the Nixon administration wanted back in 1970.

Would violence against anti-Trump protesters hasten the end of the Trump era? I frankly don't want to find out, and I'm sure most other people feel the same way.

Since posting and taking down those offensive posts in social media, Adamini says he's against violence, too.

He posted this on Twitter, says MLive:

"Taking a lot of heat for a very poorly worded tweet yesterday. Sorry folks, the intent was to try to stop the violence, not encourage more."

Well, maybe, if he considers all demonstrations against Trump and his actions and his minions "violence." It doesn't seem to daw on Adamini that telling people to shut up when the criticize an elected official is also an attempt to squelch First Amendment rights.

I'm being Captain Obvious here, but sometimes, you gotta spell it out.

Calling his bad tweet "poorly worded?" I think the problem here goes way beyond grammar issues.

Woman Somehow Manages To Get Snake Stuck In Her Earlobe

Ashley Glawe got her pet python Bart stuck in her
gauged ear. Both are fine now, though. 

I'm prone to pratfalls.

I'm always tripping, dropping things, losing things, losing my marbles.

My sister Lynn says I'm fun to watch.  

Maybe.

But I was delighted today when I learned I've never got myself in trouble in this weird a fashion: A woman in Oregon managed to get a snake stuck in her earlobe. 

I bet that will never happen to me.

The woman in question, Ashley Glawe, has a rather unique fashion sense. Part of that is her gauged earlobe. That means it's stretched to a large, weird shape, I guess so you can put big earrings in or sonething.

So she has a big hole in her earlobe.

Glawe said her pet python, Bart, decided to slither into that big hole in her earlobe and got stuck. Which meant she had to go to the emergency room to fix the problem.

I'm sure the medical personnel at the hospital had never seen anything quite like that.

Thankfully, everything ended well. Doctors numbed Glawe's ear so they can stretch it more without inflicting a lot of pain so that Bart could slither out.

And, bonus! Bart was not injured during his ordeal. Glawe is fine, too.

Well, as fine as a woman can be with big holes in her ear and a pet python named Bart

Media Spotlight Keeps Racially Charged W. Va. Official Out Of a Job

Pamela Taylor is apparently back on the job as
director of a West Virginia non-profit agency,
despite some recent racist comments she made on Facebook.

12/27/16 UPDATE:

Well, it looks like old Pamela Taylor won't keep her job after all.

Thanks, I believe to that Charleston Gazette-Mail follow up story I describe below, the light of publicity was too much.

As described below, Taylor lost her job at a West Virginia agency for racist comments about Michelle Obama.

When the media spotlight faded, she was quietly reinstated.

But word got out. Now we find out that the West Virginia governor announced that Taylor won't be working at the non-profit center that uses state money and helps the poor.

The move, the gov said, was to ensure Taylor's now former employer follow non-discrimination rules.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

We see this all the time:

Someone is caught on social media,  like Facebook or Twitter, saying something awful, racist, wrong, or anything totally reprehensible.

The scene then plays out in a familiar way: There's a public outcry, the bad person is mocked, and then they lose their job or something else important to them.

Sometimes the reaction is overkill, sometimes it's not. But what happens when the media spotlight goes away?

As a West Virginia case proves, the offending person is often quietly reinstated and things go on as if they never happened.

According to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Pamela Taylor, who last month referred to First Lady Michelle Obama in a Facebook post as "an ape in heels,"  is back on the job as Director at the non-profit Clay County Development Corp.

The Development Corp provides services to seniors and financial aid to low income people in the region.

The entire quote from Taylor on Facebook referred to the incoming First Lady Melania Trump: "It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I'm tired of seeing a (sic) Ape in heels."

I'll leave it to you to decide who is more classy: Melanie Trump or Michelle Obama.

Still, the ape crack was pretty racist, though Taylor later said in an apology she isn't racist.

OK, then.

Anyway, Taylor's reinstatement came even after a stern letter from the West Virginia Bureau of Senior Services warned the Development Corp that "any discrimination of staff or the customers (they) serve" could cause the agency to lose funding from state and federal agencies, the Gazette-Mail reported.

The First Lady remark didn't fit the criteria of discriminating against people they serve, but the Clay County Development Corp is clearly skating on thin ice.

After Taylor made her remarks, a local mayor, Beverly Whaling, responded to Taylor's Facebook post, "You made my day, Pam."

The mayor then resigned amid the outcry.

Before us liberals get too smug, some of us are pretty bad, too. Both Taylor and Whaling received numerous death threats after this news came out, and somebody mailed in a white powder to scare people associated with the two women.

I'm not sure why people send death threats to anyone who does something stupid, racists or wrong, but that's just wrong. At least as wrong or more so than Taylor's ugly racist comments.

As is always the case in these kinds of situations, the Clay County Development Corp refused to respond to any questions from the Gazette-Mail, because of the way their M.O. works: Shut the press, the media and the social media out and we can keep doing what we're doing, no matter how creepy the director is.

I'm sure many of the people the Clay County Development Corp serves are now pretty leery of this organization, especially racial minorities that need or want their help.

Still, I can't wait to read future Facebook posts from Taylor, now that she's back safe in her job.

This Dog Is Champ At "Mannequin Challenge"

This card game mannequin challenge has a great ending
involving a dog.  

The big craze sweeping social media these days is the Mannequin Challenge, in which groups of people are filmed posing absolutely still in the middle of an activity, as if frozen in time.

Even dogs are getting into the act, as there are a few videos out there of Fido mastering the challenge

Yeah, the trend is already overdone, but I couldn't resist one mannequin challenge, in which a group of people in a home freeze while playing cards and having a social gathering.

The scene is frankly unremarkable until the end, when we find a dog who is an absolute master at this game. The dog creates the perfect punch line to this video:

Fight Rages Over Ballot Box Selfies

If these people are taking selfies, they might get in trouble.  

If you're like many Americans, you're proud of voting.

Some of us are so proud that we take selfies of ourselves in the voting booth,  making our selections between candidates. Then we post these photos to social media, natch.

Turns out, such selfies can get you in trouble. They're illegal in a lot of states.

However, maybe not for long, if New Hampshire of all places becomes a trendsetter.

It was illegal to take voting booth selfies in the Granite State. According to Consumerist, the New Hampshire law states:

"No voter shall allow his or her ballot to be seen by any person with the intention of letting it be known how he or she is about to vote or how he or she has voted.

The law was amended in 2014 to include "taking a digital image or photograph of his or her marked ballot and distributing or sharing the image via social media or by any other means.

The New Hampshire attorney general wanted to enforce this law because he figured it could turn into a form of voter intimidation.

But when three New Hampshire voters got in trouble to taking selfies, they sued, and won.

Last year, Consumerist reports, " a U.S. District Court judge said the ban on selfies was an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech that does not further a compelling government interest."

In other words, there was no evidence that people were using ballot booth selfies to force other people to vote a certain way.

The state appealed, saying, in part, that the selfies were tantamount to campaigning in a voting place, which is a no-no.

But a federal court ruled this week that a voter's First Amendment rights to free speech outweighed any concerns over campaigning.

Restrictions on showing other people your ballot harken back to the old days of corrupt union bosses making sure workers voted the way the bosses wanted them to. They had to show the bosses their ballots, until states passed laws banning the practice.

Where I live in Vermont, voting booth selfies are not explicitly banned, Vermont Public Radio said two years ago. But the law here does ban showing other people your ballot with info on how you voted or intend to vote. That would probably include photographs.

However, VPR says there are no known recent cases of anybody in Vermont  getting in trouble for voting booth selfies.

Laws vary from state to state, so you'd better check your law before you take that selfie just in case.

What Was The Deal With All That Sniffling The Donald Was Doing In The Debate?

This coud have been the scene at last night's
debate between Trump and Clinton, what with
The Donald sniffling all the time.  

While everyone talks about the policy issues, the temperament and the performance of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in last night's debate, can we talk about The Sniffles?

All through the evening, between his bluster and his interruptions, The Donald was sniffling. A lot.

Could just be allergies. But the speculation went rampant.  

Former Vermont Governor and former DNC Chair Howard Dean tweeted, "Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?

Now that was probably inappropriate and unfair. Then again, Dean IS a doctor, and maybe he can diagnose these kinds of thing? I don't know.

My theory is that Trump is the petulant man child, who, as we all know, does not do well when criticized, especially when said criticism comes from a woman.

And it's especially frustrating for Trump when he tried to bluster back to put the supposedly fragile woman in her place, but instead, we got someone like a smiling Hillary Clinton standing there, serenely letting Trump dig his own hole.

Anyway, other people had their own take on the Trump Sniffles.

"Is the Trump sniffle the new Hillary cough?," political consultant Jessica Tarlov tweeted, referring to Trump jumping all over Hillary for her recent bout of pneumonia.

"Trump is sniffling because he's allergic to the Constitution," Colin Jost plausibly theorized on Twitter.

The Trump Sniffles are now a big thing. There's already a comedy Twitter account called @TrumpSniff that already had more than 3,000 followers as of 8 a.m Monday.

In any event, if Trump is coming down with a cold or, ahem, pneumonia, I hope Hillary doesn't catch it from being in such close proximity to The Donald last night.

Overdose Photos With Kid In Car Painful For Everybody

Boy, do I have mixed emotions about this.

The now-famous couple in the midst
of a heroin overdose with a four
year old boy in the back seat

According to Reuters and numerous other media outlets, the East Liverpool, Ohio police department distributed photos of a couple in a car, passed out from a heroin overdose, with the woman's scared four year old grandson in the back seat.

The photos went totally viral, and millions of people have seen them. One of the photos is in this post, as you can see.

The point of releasing the photo, says the East Liverpool police department, was to publicize how bad and how sad drug addiction is in Ohio and everywhere else.

"We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry ,but is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis," said East Liverpool police in a Facebook post.

The passed-out couple, James Acord, 50, and Rhonda Pasek, 47, are charged with child endangerment.

The couple had been stopped by police because Acord was driving the Ford Explorer erratically. When the officer got to the car, Pacek was out cold and Acord lost consciousness.

They were given Narcan, the medication that reverses these kind of drug overdoses, and perked back up. 

I think a lot of people, including myself, have strong feelings both approving of the idea of releasing these photos and against it.

On the in favor side, I can understand the exasperation of the East Liverpool, Ohio police department. Every day, both where I live in Vermont, and just about everywhere else, we hear about opioid and heroin addictions running rampant.

In Burlington, Vermont recently, we had a situation that was very similar to that in East Liverpool, but in the Vermont case, police did not share photos on social media.

In Burlington, in early July a couple passed out in a car from heroin on a hot day with a five year old boy inside the vehicle with them. The boy screamed for help, The screams caught the attention of passerby, who called police.

"My mommy and daddy aren't waking up,!" the boy yelled, according to police.

If that doesn't make you both incredibly sad and make your blood boil, you're not human.

The photos from the East Liverpool police department telegraphed the frustration of police and made a stab at creating public awareness. A good thing.

However, I wonder about privacy here. The boy's face is blurred out in the photos, but it would be easy for a local to figure out who he is. 

Plus, the passed out couple is easily identifiable and their names were publicized in many media outlets, including this one.

Of course, what the couple did was dangerous and awful and they deserved to be punished. They ARE in legal trouble, for sure. But I have mixed emotions about having their faces and photos splashed all over the Internet, like I admittedly did here.

The couple's arrest, and the circumstances of it, are a matter of public record. I wonder if this infamous photo will haunt them for the rest of their lives, or maybe help turn it around.

They've already lost the kid, who's had a chaotic life. Just six weeks before the photo was taken, Pacek was granted custody of the boy because his own parents were incapable of raising him, says Fox 8 in Cleveland.  He has since been placed with a great aunt and great uncle in South Carolina.

Maybe I'm having a Pollyanna moment, but it would be nice if the pair are at least as horrified as the rest of us are at the photo and find a way to get clean. It's hard, but I  hope they do it.

Or, at the very least, I  hope other addicts see the photo, and maybe it will inspire them, to try to get clean.

It'll help all of us. Including a couple of terrified little boys in Ohio and Vermont. 

Milo Yiannnopoulos Can Just Shut Up Now, Thank You

Tech guy, all around troll and jerk Milo Yiannopouos
is whining that Twitter finally kicked him out
because of his abusive Tweets and how he
encouraged others to attack people online.  

Poor Milo Yiannopoulos.

He's this weird guy, a former tech startup sort of guy who is gay and seems to hate gays, loves Donald Trump, and is more than a bit of an Internet troll who also has a somewhat shaky background in the tech industry.  

Last week, he launched a Twitter attack against Leslie Jones, the comedian and actor currently starring in the "Ghostbusters" reboot.

That part is unremarkable. People criticize and troll public figures such as actors and politicians on Twitter all the time.

What happened next turned into a big fight over free speech, and how awful you can get with your free speech before somebody tells you to shut up already. Twitter told Yiannopoulos to shut up already.

A lot of people cheered that move. Others didn't.

Yiannopoulos has got a great big posse of fans. A lot of them are trolls, and as Yiannopoulos egged them on, the trolls unleashed a huge and unrelenting racist and sexist attack on Jones, calling her a gorilla, saying she was the source of AIDS, you know, nice things like that.

The "problem" largely stems from Ghostbusters. The misgynistic trolls can't stand the fact the new movie has a female cast. And worse, Jones is African-American. Egads! On top of that, she's not a toothpick skinny supermodel with breast implants the size of watermelons. How dare she!

Also, female comedians are supposedly not funny, according to these idiots. (I'm sure my fellow fans of female comedians starting with Lucille Ball and Phyllis Diller going all the way up to today's Jones, Samantha Bee, Tina Fey and many others would beg to differ.).

In any event, Yiannopoulos and the followers he was encouraging  finally got so odious that Twitter permanently kicked him out, says BuzzFeed News.

"'People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,'  a company spokesperson said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. 'But no on deserved to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rule prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others."

Yiannopoulos and his legions of follows  (almost 400,000 of them before Twitter suspended his account.) are crying foul, saying Twitter is suppressing free speech and squelching comments that don't adhere to a liberal, politically correct skew.

Yiannopoulous was quick to respond that it was just Twitter hating on conservatives. "With the cowardly suspension of my account, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space or Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter exremenists, but a no-go zone for conservatives."

Twitter does make its terms of service pretty clear. "You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others" You could get kicked off Twitter if you incite others to harass another account or if the primary purpose of an account is to send abusive messages to others.

Twitter's terms of service do not say conservative opinions can't be held. There's tons of conservatism on Twitter, actually. Take a look if you don't believe me.

Still, Yiannopoulos said of his banishment: "This is the end for Twitter. Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message You're not welcome on Twitter."

First off all, Yiannopoulos is confusing Twitter with the government. The First Amendment says that the government cannot squelch free speech. Like it or not, a private company can.

Still, the more free speech the better, and it's always a good thing for social media and media in general allow a full-throated airing of diverse opinions.

I generally don't like it when any business or institution, say, cancels a speech because activists don't like the speaker's opinion.  But it's a different thing entirely when the speech becomes harassment. Would you want somebody constantly yelling on your front lawn that they want to kill you? Well you shouldn't be doing that on Twitter either.

If you don't like somebody, you can say so on Twitter. Just don't turn the dislike into threats and harassment. Look, I'm saying here that I don't like Yiannopoulos, and I bet Twitter won't throw me off. Especially since I don't want to see him suffer any harm and I DON'T  want armies of trolls attacking him online.

However, Yiannopoulos forgets that free speech has consequences. Free speech is a right and a responsibility.

When you start massively harassing a person, and get your friends to pile on, there's going to be pushback, and a lot of us will tell you to shut up already, just like Twitter did.

So quicherbitchin' Milo, and remember that just because you're yacking up a storm doesn't mean we have to listen. You don't deserve a special platform any more than the next guy.

Yiannopoulos isn't the first person to whine about not being guaranteed a free public forum to spew garbage and he won't be the last.

According to Tech Dirt, the odious Pamela Geller, she of her virulent, wildly wrong All Muslims Are Murdering Assholes activism, is suing the federal government, and by extention Facebook, I guess.

Pamela Geller is also demanding a guaranteed
platform on social media, but fuhgetaboutit
 n

Geller says that Facebook would take down her page somehow is wrong, and the federal Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment because she says it enables censorship.

Says her lawsuit:  

"Denying a person or organization access to these important social media forums based on the content and viewpoint of the person's or organization's speech on matters of public concern is an effective way of silencing or censoring speech or depriving the person or organization of political influence and business opportunities."

But, again, the First Amendment bars the government from censoring people. All the Communications Decency Act does is allow private companies to take down content they deem "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable."

As noted, I do think major social media outfits like Facebook and Twitter have the responsibility to let people air controversial topics, and they do.  But legally, they can take stuff down. And if the content relentlessly harasses anybody, including Muslims and Jews like Geller, it should be taken down.

Still, we have First Amendment rights, but we don't have a right to use a private platform for whatever we want. Almost all businesses, including Twitter and Facebook, have their own ethics policy and are free to adhere to them, unless they discriminate against a whole class of people based on things like religious affiliation, gender and race.

As Tech Dirt states: "(Geller's) lawsuit is the legal equivalent of that idiot who claims that any company moderating content is violating the First Amendment."

But as we all know, there's a LOT of idiots on social media.

Drone Smacks Guy In Head After Crashing Through Window, Then He Experiences Social Media Weirdness

Dan Perel's office window after a drone accidentally
flew through it and clonked him on the head.  

Earlier this year, Dan Perel was minding his own business on the fifth floor of a Cape Town, South Africa office building when a drone crashed through the window and smacked him in the head.

He wasn't badly hurt and downloaded the video the drone was taking using an attached GoPro.

The video went viral and Perel got a lesson in social media and trolls that was much more painful than getting clonked on the head by a drone.

Writing in Medium, he said he was attacked from all sides for supposedly faking the video to gain money and fame and all that. And maybe to hate on drones.

I understand the suspicion. If you believe everything you see on the internet,  have I got a wealthy Nigerian for you who could make you rich!

A lot of videos and such that go viral later turn out to be fakes.

This drone one seems legit, though. Perel says he made little money off the video, and the amount of vitriol he got online was stunning.

"To this day I am still dumbfounded by the reaction. Why would I go to such great lengths to CGI a fake video of a drone crashing into my head?"

Well, people have done stranger things than that, but I get Perel's point. It does seem like an awful lot of effort to go through to get yourself some fame.

It's well worth reading his essay in Medium before pursuing internet fame and fortune, or just getting a viral video out there.

Here's the drone's view of it crashing through the window and hitting Perel that started this whole thing:

Maybe The Craziest Republican Yet Just Got Elected In Texas

Insane guy Robert Morrow was just elected Travis County,
Texas Republican Party Chairman. And really, he
 takes the concept of crazy politician to a whole new level. 

We seem to be in a season of crazies getting elected to office, so we shoudn't be surprised that one Robert Morrow has been elected chairman of the local Republican Party in Travis County, Texas.

True, that's not the most important political position in the world, but the guy is so -- how should we put this politely? --- completely batshit crazy that you have to wonder what people were thinking, or not thinking, when they voted for him.

Morrow, like many people, is an avid Tweeter. If you don't like bluntness and extreme rudeness, you might not want to read on.

Anyway, according to Texas Tribune, he's really, REALLY fascinated by politicians' sexuality, or at least his theories on their sexuality. He's freaked out because he sees gays and lesbians everywhere. EEEK!!!  He thinks former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is bisexual and has a lot of male lovers. He thinks the same about Marco Rubio. 

Also George H. Bush. Morrow Tweeted this about the former president: "Pretty sure George W. Bush can suck a dick better than Hillary Clinton."

He thinks about Bill Clinton's penis. He thinks Hillary Clinton is an "angry bull dyke."  He doesn't like the Republican National Committee, because its perceived establishment orientation makes it similar to a "gay foam party."

No, I don't understand that, either.

He also thinks Rubio participates in these "gay foam parties." What's the deal with obsession with these stupid foam parties anyway?

When a Texas Tribune reporter asked Morrow about his frequent racial slurs using the "n" word, Morrow sharply took the reporter to task for being a "pathetic excuse for a reporter" for his unwillingness to use that word.

Morrow is apparently proud of his,  um, size, or his perception of it anyway. He once tweeted: "If you Google 'Robert Morrow 11 inch penis confirmed' you get over 11,800,000 hits. I'm just sayin'...."

He does like big things. His Facebook pages has numerous photos of bikini clad women with big boobs.

On the bright side, of sorts, he's not a big fan of Donald Trump. Morrow's reasoning for not liking Trump is a bit shaky, though:

"Donald Trump has actually said that a lone nut Oswald killed JFK, which tells me he is too stupid to be president."

Of course there are a LOT of people just as crazy or worse than Robert Morrow on social media and elsewhere, so normally we would ignore such nonsense.

But remember, Morrow has just been elected as chairman of the Travis County, Texas Republican Party.

He's the guy who's supposed to lead Travis County Republicans in trying to get members of the GOP elected to county positions, which could be a springboard to higher, more influential offices. Travis County has the fifth largest population of any county in Texas, so it does have Lone Star State influence.

Do you think Morrow is going to convince people in relatively liberal Travis County (where the city of Austin is located) to switch allegiances to the Republican Party?

Other members of the Travis County Republican Party are appalled and said they would do everything they can to get rid of Morrow. Which is a smart way of thinking about things.

Travis County Republican Vice Chairman Matt Mackowiak said: "We will explore every single option that exists, whether it be persuading him to resign, trying to force him to resign, constraining his power, removing his ability to spend money or resisting any attempt for him to access data or our social media account."

When the Texas Tribune asked Morrow to respond to Mackowiak's comments, he said, "Tell them they can go fuck themselves."

Nice way for a Republican leader to speak.

But you know what's scarier than Morrow? It's the fact that a majority of Travis County Republicans who participated in local elections this week actually voted for this insane character. And you wonder why the not as insane Donald Trump gets so much support.

I think I will have nightmares tonight.