The Boxing Day Wrangle

 It's not as rough on Santa as you might think.

Off the Kuff looked at presidential voting results in two Congressional districts with an eye toward future elections.

Socratic Gadfly punctures bits of East Texas, and general Texas, historical mythology with a look at the history of Nacogdoches. (Part Two this coming Friday.)

Grits for Breakfast watched the video of Fort Worth police officer baiting, and then arresting, the woman who called 911, and wonders right alongside the police chief if it was rudeness or racism.

In a 24-hour period last Thursday, Trump managed a trifecta: antagonize US-Israeli relations, start a nuclear arms race with Russia, and knock Lockheed Martin around for a discount on F-35s by threatening to have Boeing build a 'modified F-18' in its place.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs says that if we don't get his Twitter account suspended, he's going to kill us all.

jobsanger reprints a FWST op-ed that points out that the Texas Lege still plans on defunding Planned Parenthood.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reported on the Texas Education Agency's final school ratings for the year, and quoted some administrators as calling them a crock.

South Texas Chisme says that in the wake of the Corpus Christi public water emergency last week, that city's manager says there's "a lot" of non-compliant users of city water.

Neil at All People Have Value took a picture of Houston's excellent Christmas Tree of Tires.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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And still more Texas news from a variety of contributors!

From space poop to Jupiter, the Houston Press recounted their ten best 2016 stories about NASA.

The Rivard Report spotlights on San Antonio's mental health care network, a national model.

The Longview News Journal exposes the East Texas judges who pay themselves a $25,000 bonus just for showing up for work.

The Texas Observer posts the worst of 2016's social media offerings from the likes of our elected 'representatives' such as Robert Morrow, Konni Burton, and Sid Miller.  Basically all of Sid Miller's Facebook timeline.

Equality Texas sees North Carolina buckling under the economic pressure of their 'bathroom bill', and watches as Texas charts a similar ill-fated course.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers excoriates 'Pantsuit Nation' in his semi-regular series on intersectionality and the problematic white gaze.

And Houstonia has the Texas state park camping trips you need to book now.

Christmas Day Funnies

Christmas Eve Funnies

Trump's 24 hours

It's going to be a long four years, people.

President-elect Donald Trump long ago earned a reputation for being unpredictable in his statements, but he outdid himself on Thursday.

In the span of just a few hours, Trump shook international relations by undercutting the Obama administration over a UN resolution on Israeli settlements, indicated he would ramp up nuclear competition with Russia and then jolted a major defense contractor -- and its shareholders -- by suggesting he would ask Boeing to replace a fighter jet being made by Lockheed Martin.

Here's the best response to that last eruption.

if Trump read his briefings
he would know the huge difference
between the F-18 and F-35
hope someone's getting model airplanes from Santa

— BROKEN PROMISELAND (@VoteAngryNow) December 23, 2016

This is going to spoil my Festivus party.  Although we'll have a few extra grievances to air.

Jake Novak at CNBC suggests Trump's disrupting of the weapons procurement process is going to involve some bilateral back-scratching.

(T)he Air Force is starting the process of replacing America's Minuteman nuclear arsenal. More than 400 of those ICBMs, most built in the 1960s, now sit in missile silos across the U.S.

And, not coincidentally, the three companies bidding to get the replacement contract are Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. Of course, the CEOs of Boeing and Lockheed just met with Trump in Florida yesterday. While Boeing came out of that meeting promising to keep the costs of replacing Air Force One below $4 billion, that's chickenfeed compared to the $60 billion to $86 billion estimated cost of replacing the Minuteman program.

Was some kind of quid pro quo discussed in Mar a Lago Wednesday? Perhaps we'll never know, but if Boeing gets the contract that will be a prevailing suspicion for years to come.

Is this what all those Trumpets meant when they said -- and voted -- for Trump to shake up Washington?  Did "shakeup" include World War III?  Of less concern: how are they going to structure a defense contract so that President Trump gets his kickback without the GSA finding out about it?  And what will the GOP Congress critters do when they find out?  Crap themselves or impeach?

Should we encounter a 'water landing', your seat cushions may be used as a flotation device.