6.12.2020

Random Friday Morning Thoughts



  • 'Rona in Texas: Both hospitalizations and active cases are lower than the day before but both were near all time highs: 
  • Wise County update: No new data was reported yesterday for the county website, but the official Texas site puts us at 11 active cases up from 6 yesterday. Edit after clarification from local official: There was a technical malfunction with the normally updated data but it should show 6 active cases. Why the confusion? "Notice we are also reporting 57 total cases, which is what DSHS reports to us, yet DSHS dashboard shows 55.  Also note that their active cases on DSHS dashboard are 'estimated' - they have had us 'estimated' at 11 since May 20, but that does not correlate with what they report to us daily."
  • If you want to go to Trump's Tulsa rally, you'll have to sign a coronavirus waiver.  As long as you cheer, they don't care if you die. It's like a Jim Jones Liability Waiver.
  • Sunday's "rally" at the the Wise County Courthouse on Sunday should be a calm affair that we all should want to take part in. Who could be against a peaceful gathering of people exercising their First Amendment protected rights in support of equality for all? It should be encouraged.  But some social media chatter makes me feel like I'm living in Selma in the the 1960s.
  • Trump came to Dallas yesterday and held court at a church.  Dr. Robert Jeffress, however, was left on the sideline as a different pastor of a feel-good-gospel-mega-church was chosen by Trump to sit next to him instead.  Someone needs to check on Jeffress this morning.
  • Trump said at the gathering in the church that he throws so much money at Texas that we are hoping for another hurricane. Note: Two days earlier the federal government denied Dallas' appeal to federal funds because of the tornado that wiped out a large part of the city last year. 
  • Conspiracy theory! (Here's a pretty fun thread trying to figure out what the image over his left shoulder was.)
  • According to the Messenger, the coronavirus shutdown in April didn't impact Wise County cities' sales tax receipts at all. In fact, they went up. Color me confused. 2020: The year where nothing makes sense to me. 
  • Life comes at you fast.

  • I just finished reading this book about a murder in Houston which occurred in 2013.  The author said the case received "international attention", but I don't remember a single thing about it back then. (But my memory is so bad it's probably one of my bullet point somewhere.)
  • I just started this one. "In 2019, Hulu began developing a series based on the book. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will executive produce the project."
  • Apology or not, that was extremely poor judgment for Gen. Milley to take part in Trump's street clearing photo-op in order to use the Bible as a prop. Milley says he considered resigning. He still should.
    "I should not have been there."
  • Of course, he doesn't. 
  • Whatever happened to that "task force" on gun violence that Greg Abbott formed after the mass shooting in El Paso? It couldn't have possibly have been all for show in order to give the impression you care about an issue when you don't, right?  (Compare and contrast Trump's visit to Dallas yesterday.)
  • Messenger: Above the Fold