8.13.2021

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Topical.  


  • Still rising. 

  • If my Bridgeport ISD book-learning hasn't failed me, 44.7% of all Texans vaccinated computes to 53.8% of all eligible Texans being vaccinated. That also equates to 11.1 million Texans who are old enough to get vaccinated but have not. Incredible. 

  • This is wild. The government in Texas, the TABC specifically, is actually threatening a private business with retaliation for requiring its customers to have a vaccination in order to enter. What exactly is a "conservative" these days? 

  • Detailed Census details were released yesterday. Tidbits:
    • Wise County numbers:

    • In Texas, it's dead even between Whites and Hispanics, 39.8% to 39.3%. (10 years ago it  was Whites with 45.3% and Hispanics at 37.6%)
    • The truth behind the shift is that Whites aren't repopulating in Texas very quickly. In Texas, they just increased in numbers in the last 10 years by a measly 187,252.  By comparison, Hispanics increased by 1,980,796 in 10 years.  That's the real story. 
    • But that is not as crazy as the nationwide reproduction rate for Whites. For the first time since 1790, the number of Whites fell overall from the number ten years previously by losing 5.1 million people (despite Texas' modest addition). Simply put, more Whites are dying in America than being born.

    • Where the city limits are drawn has a lot to do with the following numbers. 

    • Wichita Falls lost 10,000 people. That's a trend nationwide as rural areas saw a decrease in population while the big cities and their suburbs rapidly increased.
    • Fun fact:

  • The Taliban has now taken Kandahar in the last 24 hours. They U.S. better get our embassy evacuated or we are going to have another Saigon at best and an Iranian hostage situation at worst. (To be clear, I support the pulling of all troops out of Afghanistan and have been advocating for it for over a decade as evidenced above. This end was inevitable unless we wanted a perpetual occupation.) 
    Yesterday

    Saigon.

  • Handcuffed man in Oklahoma led cops on a chase on a four-wheeler. For a while. Video link.


  • A real estate story in the Morning News today focuses on the rising prices of townhomes and condos which have even outpaced crazy single family home prices. It's in a hip area, but do you want to pay $260,000 for a 590 square foot condo in Uptown? It has a cool view but has a pull down bed. 

  • R.I.P. to the only Official Liberally Lean Baseball Player I have ever had.  What a wild career. An ultimate spare in Texas, traded to the Orioles where he had 4 years which any Hall of Famer would want, became filthy rich with a new contract, and then whose ability just fell off a cliff never to return. 

  • A faithful reader just sent me this which was found while cleaning out his grandmother's house. He thought I'd find it interesting, and I do.  A vaccination passport request back in 1918:

    "Dr. Evans, Smallpox has broken out here in the schools
    and my children have to have a certificate to show that they
    have been vaccinated for smallpox. Roy and Eva Fell. They
    can't go to school without and have to have it by Wednesday so
    please sent it at once and much oblige."
    Mrs. Ada Hoffman
    401 Andrew St.
    Winfield, Kansas

    • Just for fun, I had to look up that address. (I'm pretty sure the address above is 401 and not 408). History in America, with very rare exception, is eventually bulldozed away. 

  • Random Decatur ISD complaint I received yesterday: The air-conditioning in several rooms at Carson Elementary is atrocious and not a single lawn of any school had been mowed for opening day. 
  • Man, a lot of people dogged on Field of Dreams yesterday and it did my heart good. That being said, the players entrance for last night night's game was really great. Video.

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 770 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold (with a pretty wild story of DNA and familial DNA tracing leading to a California killer from 40 years ago found in a grave in Wise County.)