Wendy Davis - Trailer Trash Makes Good; Bob Waller for Kerr County Judge

Wendy Davis campaign going down in flames
Even the New York papers are turning on Wendy Davis. An article today announces 'Wendy Davis has no future in politics.'
Davis has peddled her inspiring underdog overcomes all story. It like she got the idea from watching old movies like Norma Rae, starring Sally Field ('A young single mother and textile worker agrees to help unionize her mill despite the problems and dangers involved'). Now that the truth is coming out, she looks more like gold digging trailer trash made good, say like Sheri Robert Earl Keen's 'The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends.
From the NYT:
'Want to know why Wendy Davis will have trouble winning higher office in Texas or anywhere else in America? It’s not because she stretched the truth in her “from mobile-home-living single mom to Harvard Law grad” campaign biography, nor because her husband paid for her education, nor even because she placed a lot of value on her career.
Nope: It’s because Davis, the Lone Star State senator who became famous for her filibuster of an abortion-limiting bill in Texas, lost custody of her children to her ex-husband. . . .
After [her husband] finished paying off the last of Wendy’s school loans, she filed for divorce and gave up custody of her children. According to Jeff, his wife just decided, “While I’ve been a good mother, it’s not a good time for me right now.”
That line sounds like it was lifted from MTV’s “16 and Pregnant,” but even the girls on that show are probably not self-absorbed or immature enough to utter it. I hope Jeff Davis made it up, but somehow I doubt it.

By the way, my wife of over 36 years and I lived in a 'trailer park' when we started out. Maybe one of us should run for governor.

LI fraudster found guilty of plot to behead judge, prosecutor

New York Post. A Long Island con artist was found guilty by a Brooklyn jury Thursday of plotting to mutilate and murder a federal judge and assistant US attorney.
Joseph Romano, 51, hoped to exact revenge on Judge Joseph Bianco and prosecutor Lara Gatz after he was convicted of a coin-fraud scheme and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Romano, who now faces life in prison, hired an undercover agent posing as a hit man to behead his legal enemies and to preserve their parts in formaldehyde as souvenirs of his vengeance.

Bob Waller for Kerr County Judge
I like both candidates for County Judge, but I believe that Bob Waller is the better candidate. He's spent his career in banking and manages the local branch of Broadway Bank. His skill set - managing people and assets, and analyzing financial data and making decisions are skills that a county judge applies every day, more so than being a 'judge' in the more commonly understood way. In the smaller counties the county judge handles probate, juvenile, and misdemeanor criminal cases. In larger counties, like Kerr, most of that work is handled by the county court at law judge.
Bob volunteered for the Marines during the Vietnam War, and volunteered again for Vietnam, where he was a machine gunner. He's served the community in numerous leadership positions

The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness

The astonishing story of Nick Brown, the British man who began a part-time psychology course in his 50s – and ended up taking on America's academic establishment.

From the Guardian.com  http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/19/mathematics-of-happiness-debunked-nick-brown

This is a good article on how a graduate student exposed the fraud of two leading pysychologists. Not particularly on point for the voodoo 'sciences' in the courtroom, but interesting reading. Before I changed course, my plan was to get a Ph.D. in sociology and be a college professor. That plan got derailed when my father was diagnosed with cancer. Even before that I struggled with the statistics classes. I'm glad I became a lawyer instead. The professors are under constant pressure to publish articles that go to great lengths to say something new about the common place and mundane. No one read 95% of the drivel except the editors who publish them. A former president of the American Psychology Association, Martin Seligman, is a guru in the 'field' of positive psychology. He confines dogs to a pen and shocks them. His great insight is that dogs finally give up hope and quit trying to escape. He calls this 'learned helplessness.' Somehow from that brilliant deduction, he concludes that humans can achieve 'learned optimism.' I would like to see him treated like he treats those dogs. (For the NSA, I'm not saying I'd like to do it, just that I'd like to see him volunteer to be a subject).