4.28.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • The Board:
    Total cases: 1,010,356

    Total deaths: 56,797
  • Texas:
  • Tarrant County:
  • Wise County: 15 total cases, 10 have recovered, 2 have died, and 3 active.
  • Greg Abbott's unusual "we can open at 25% capacity" order yesterday was was actually for 50% for rural counties with "five or fewer cases."  I presumed that meant "active" cases and the fine print confirmed it. Wise County qualifies so long as it holds the line on Friday.
  • Whether it be an imaginary 25% or 50%, everything can go back to normal on Friday - or, practically, even right now. With 254 counties and thousands of towns and cities, there will not be any compliance police looking at every restaurant for being over capacity. Like all of these "orders" from the start, it will be based upon voluntary compliance. Now the question is: What will the public reaction be? Will the public flock to restaurants? I don't think so. 
  • I heard a rumor that there was a restaurant on the courthouse square in Decatur was already open for business. I haven't confirmed it, and I didn't see anything open for early breakfast this morning.
  • The real wild card: Wise County churches.
  • The 25% number is dumb. A restaurant can't survive at 25% capacity. Heck, it wouldn't be worth opening up. And getting employees to come back is a little tricky. Coming back means you forego an unemployment check for the risk of living on tips from a half empty restaurant. 
  • Baylor says it will resume classes and open dorms in the fall. 
  • That's what moved in from the northwest at 3:00 a.m. last night:
  • I don't understand why any company returns a PPP loan -- the kind you don't have to pay back -- which they legally qualified for. Blame Congress for writing a stupid law. Don't blame a company for taking advantage of a stupid law.   Should a company avoid taking advantage of a tax loophole, too?  (That being said, here is an amazing list of publicly trades companies who have received a PPP loan and the amount received.)
  • A moment of silence for Diamond and Silk. When you are too crazy for Fox News, you're just too flat out crazy.  But can I place a bet somewhere of them ending up on OAN? 
  • Every year after the NFL Draft I think the same thing: How in the world do we accept that? A bunch of white rich owners "drafting" predominately African-Americans who will be obligated to work for them for a minimum of four years at a contract rate which they can no longer negotiate. It's insane. For a sport which caters to the common man, that's about as un-American of a system that you can get. (Post 1865, at least.) Why not just have every player go to the highest bidder?
  • Little did I know that back in the day Tucker Carson interviewed the Official Liberally Lean Girl about the Iraq War. (16 second clip here.)
  • I've heard a few people reference the "new" Netflix miniseries Waco. It's not new at all. I watched it in January and February of 2018 when it was on the Paramount Network. (It's pretty good.) 
  • Once you get your $1,200 check from the government (a concept I still can't wrap my head around), you'll also get a letter from Trump in addition to having his name on that check. 
  • I've smiled about this since I saw it:
  • It's peak 2020 when the Pentagon can release a video of a UFO and no one cares. 
  • A Jerry Jones interview from the 1960s. He was born in 1942. Do the math. And I'm smiling when I say that. 
  • I finally finished The Staircase -- all 13 episodes -- and I cannot recommend it enough. It  might be the best criminal law documentary I've ever seen. And I was jumping up and down with glee when one episode focused on, and even showed a witness testifying about, my long time pet peeve: Medical examiners guessing at the manner of death instead of limiting their testimony to the area of their expertise -- the cause of death.  In that case, an ME could say a lady died from blows to her head. Whether those blows came from falling down a staircase or due to a blunt instrument is something that a doctor cannot possibly know by simply looking at a body.