Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Alvord had quite the storm last night. This is the graphic from Fox 4 showing unusually high winds with Alvord right in the cross-hairs. Shout out to fellow weatherman Dan Henry who pronounced the town's name the old school way: "Alvoid."  Channel 5's Rick Mitchell had a weird pronounciation of "AL-verd." 
  
• The storm first passed by Chico where a tornado on the ground was confirmed. I don't know "Aaron Jayjack" but he posted a great video on Twitter where you could clearly see the tornado when lightning caused it to be visible.  That's a big time twister.
  
• And now to the board. Oh, my! We closed out yesterday with 2,548 new cases bringing the total to 9,259. Yep, 27% of that total came from yesterday alone. And get ready. It's only going to get worse. Much worse.
  
• The district court in Wise County announced yesterday that it is shutting down until May 4th. That's probably an optomistic date. As for inmates with pending charges, I think, but I'm not sure, that if a deal can be worked out to get inmates out that they'll still be processed.
• Gov. Abbott is just tearing up laws left and right whether or not he has the authority to do so. And no one complains. Expecially about this. 
  
• And another law by Abbott: Your expiring driver's license remains valid. This was done because DPS is closing its offices. That makes sense: If there is any place in Texas where a large mass of people gather due to a complete disregard for efficiency and concern for the public, it is a DPS driver's license office. 
  
• The Permian Basin has been rocked: Oil dropped below $20 a barrel yesterday before ending at $21.10. It was $51 a month ago. (And this isn't all coronavirus related. Our friends in Saudi Arabia, when they are not cutting up American journalists and producing the 9/11 terrorists, is in a price war with Russia.)
• Incompetency Update. (A Pandemic Team, if it had been allowed to remain in existence, would have corrected this.)
  
  
  
• Have a seat, grandpa. MERS and the Swine Flu had nothing to do with China. Google is your friend although it's not as much fun as bashing the Chinese. And I wonder if he knows anyone who has eaten a frog, snake, deer, squirrel, turtle, alligator, rabbit, or "rocky mountain oysters."
  
• This video has been everywhere, but it is a must see. I think my favorite is the gal -- and her voice -- who says, "We're just trying to get drunk before everything cloooooooosssseeeeessssss."

  

  If that looks like the mark from a punch
  on ol' Brady, it would be understandable.

• Is the Fort Worth PD rightfully no longer arresting anyone for Class C offenses (punishable by fine only)? Yes. Is this the worst denial in the history of ever about the new policy? Yes. Seriously, I don't understand this. Just admit you're not willing to do something stupid that might infect an entire jail. It's OK to be smart and reasonable instead of Tough on Crime all the time. 
  
• And on to other things ever so briefly . . . 
• Lake Bridgeport is now a full and rising. Keep a watch on this. With the ground saturated and more rains to come over the next couple of months, you could see unusual flooding. Remember the time the 380 bridge at Runaway Bay had to be shut down? 
• If you want to become mega-rich in the NFL, be either a great quarterback or a quarterback who is slightly under average but can throw in a brief stretch of "very good" from time to time. If you are the latter, you only sign short term big deals because no team trusts you despite wanting you, and there will always another team waiting in line when they give up on you. Cousins and Foles are exhibits A and B.  Phillip Rivers, who because of age is now average, might be able to pull this off again next year -- his $25 million deal with the Colts is only for one year.
  
  
• Sports talk radio news: The ESPN affilliate in Waco which employs DFW's Matt Mosley and local fav David Smoak fired everyone and announced they would just air the national feed. 

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• Before we get to the daily update of coronavirus cases, you must first be aware of something a faithful reader has shared with me. It shall be remembered as the greatest Wise County Coronavirus Pic of All Time. This was allegedly in Boyd yesterday. Frame it. Put it in the Wise County Historical Museum. Heck, put it in the Smithsonian.  
  
• Now to the board. There were 1,748 new cases reported yesterday. When I first started posting this graph on March 5th, the most recent bar represented 63 new cases.
  
  
  
• For a Republican anti-big government, no socialism, no bail out, Administration, we are about to see government handouts of Biblical proportions.  The dirty words of "government assistance" doesn't sound like that bad of an idea now, right? This ain't Oprah (although it is wild everyone might just get a check for $1,000.) But this is going to be brutal for all of us. 
  
• I don't like this: Greg Abbott has suspended critical portions of the Open Meetings Act. (Which he can't legally do, but no one particularly cares about the legalities anymore.)
• If today's Wise County court docket is any indication, Justice of the Peace #3 is the only one going full steam ahead. That's a big 2:30 p.m. docket. 
• I can't believe I turned on Dennis Prager yesterday, but he didn't disappoint. He's against the shutting down of America. Yes, he knows people will die but the number is, in his opinion, relatively few.  "At what number of deaths is it not worth shutting down the economy?" he asked.  In other news, I thought "every life is precious." 
• That looks like some real suffering right there. 
  
• His ability to lie knows no bounds. This tweet is from this morning. (He must have seen the new, and already viral, video from yesterday.)
  
• It looks like it was Jared Kushner who steered Trump down the It's-Just-The-Flu path and to treat it like a PR problem. The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The Washington Post all have independent stories on it today. Let that be a lesson to you: Never listen to a son-in-law.

  

  ****Nine Days Ago****

• A buddy told me yesterday that my new attitude about the coronavirus on this, the most read blog in the southwest proper, is very Trumpesque. I told him that's true but with one major exception: I put in writing that I had been completely wrong.
• Speaking of 180 degree turns, this video split-screening what Fox News hosts were saying one week ago and what they are saying now is fantastic. It's 1:42 long. 
  
• Breaking news. Heck, it might be End of Days. 
  
• Changing gears . . . 
• I saw this pic yesterday. Man, what a flashback. 
  
• Speaking of flashbacks, Lyle Waggoner, famous for The Carol Burnett Show, died yesterday. Fun fact: He once did a screen test for the 1960s Batman TV series. (If he had won the role, Adam West would have been absolutely fantastic in the Carol Burnett gig if he got it.)
  
• I know nothing about art, but I cannot get this painting I stumbled across three months ago in the National Portrait Museum in D.C. out of my head.  It's called The Recital depicting Denyce Graves -- an opera singer who I had never heard of but is actually even famous in pop culture circles. (She's been a guest on 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.) This photo, as can be expected, does not do it justice. First, even without the frame, it's a massive 7.5' x 4.5' work of art. It's also an oil on canvas with the detail -- especially of her expression which is mysteriously haunting -- is incredible. And the vibrant red dress contrasted with the drab background just exploded across the room when I saw it. 
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The board:
  
  
• A faithful reader directed me to this coronavirus site which has a great layout with reliable data. It even has a total aggregate graph. We are at the very beginning of the "curve's" upward trend.  
  
• The only state to report zero cases of the coronavirus is West Virginia. That's right. That backwoods state in the heart of Appalachia and the home of The Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, no less, doesn't have a single case. Is there anyone in their right mind who thinks that's due to a mysterious state-wide great immune system instead of perhaps, just perhaps, a lack of testing? Let's see: 
  

  

  Yes, I'm burying the lede: "Chinese Virus." He always shows his true colors.

• As in Dallas, can a county judge legally "shut down" private businesses across the board? No. And, practically, what can you do to them if they, and their customers, ignored the ban? The only real hammer the government has is at the state level with its liquor license authority. That's something a business would want to lose going forward.
• What percentage of people in the U.S. have never heard of the coronavirus? 1%? 1/10th or 1%? There has to be someone. 
• Something seems wrong with the announcement yesterday is compared to the visual of how it was presented.
  
• At the risk of stating the obvious, hasn't this been the craziest past week we've ever seen? Go back to last Wednesday and try to predict what was about to happen. 
• Clever.
  
• I thought about this place this weekend. If there was ever a location to contract a virus, that seems like a pretty good place. Lots of people touching lots of things.
  
• I wouldn't watch it, but I agree with this guy. And what if the movie producers try it? Heck, they could sell it at $20 a pop and might gross more than a theatrical release. Going forward, these strange times might change the way things have always been done
  
• Side note: I can't begin to describe how long some of those escalators are. It's like you are traveling to the center of the Earth to get to the subway platform.
  
• Of all things being closed or suspended, the postponing of primary elections (I'm looking at you, Ohio)  makes me very, very uncomfortable. 
• And just like a movie, we are about to have weather befitting for an end-of-days feel. It'll begin in earnest later this evening.
  
• I re-watched the 1995 film Outbreak this weekend. With the exception of the camera work of the virus spreading in the theater and going through the air ducts in the hospital (after which Dustin Hoffman shouts, "It's airborne!"), that is a horrible, horrible movie. The script is insult to all scripts. 
  
• A good Black Mirror plot: In the future you can digitized your dreams and then go back and watch them. 

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Let's check the board. Remember when I started doing this 11 days ago and those bars way back then looked disturbing? It continues, and will continue, to get way worse.
  
• Our current embracing of "social-distancing" will last, what, a week? Two weeks? 
• The CDC recommended last night that we don't gather in groups of 50 or more.  Uh, did you see what our Federal Government caused by not thinking about the logistics of how they would screen international travelers on Saturday night?: 

  

  DFW Airport

  
  

  

  Chicago's O'Hare

• Let's also check in on some far right wingers who still think the coronavirus is a Liberal Media Hoax. And make no mistake, there are a ton of Wise Countians out there who are right there with them. You know some of them.

  

  This from the over-meddled and Fox News multi-time guest, "Sheriff Clarke"

  

  He's yukking it up. He's Texas' own Mike Huckabee.

  
  

  

  This from the Oklahoma governor. He deleted it. 

• Fox News is going to get people in their major demographic killed. I thought Hannity had come around, but he was at it again this weekend.
  

  

  From March 10th.

  
  

  

  From Saturday

• So true. Video.
  
  
• If the coronavirus doesn't kill us, the irony will.  (Stolen joke.)
  
• When the Texas Governor declared a state emergency on Friday, that kicked in some criminal laws that no one knows about. Relevant to felony docket over-crowding is that every misdemeanor assault (i.e. simply causing pain to someone by making contact with them), now becomes a State Jail Felony.  Anyone want to place any bets on the number of domestic violence cases which are about to become felonies? 
• Other than tweeting about Hillary's emails over the weekend (really), Trump also celebrated the Stock Market going up 2,000 points on Friday (ditto) despite the Dow being down 10.4% for the week. He either doesn't understand the big picture or wishes to mislead you. Take your pick.  (Breaking: The stock market just opened with the Dow dropping 2,250 points.)
  
  
  
  
• I'm not going to let it go that the White House lied to you about Google on Friday. 
• Trump said, "“Google is going to develop a website — it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past — to determine if a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location." Google immediately said, by a tweet and through a spokesperson, that one of its sister companies had only been working on a "triage website" which was to be available to health care workers and was only going to be released to "pilot sites" in the San Francisco area.
  
• Despite there not being any nationwide website immediately available to the public being developed by Google, The White House still had Dr. Deborah Birx display a cute graphic to show how the fake website would work for the public. ("They would move down this and be told where the drive-thru options would be for them to receive this test.")
  
• After being blind-sided with the false website claim and then disputing it, the next day Google said, as expected, that that it was willing to help in anyway it could including its current triage website project. What company wouldn't? But how did Trump spin his blatant lie from Friday? 
  
• Some jokes were made about the comparison of the image of Dr. Birx holding up the flowchart at the press conference to the character, Valery Legasov, in the HBO mini-series Chernobyl using a prop to explain how a national disaster had been allowed to happen. But you know what else Legasov did? He exposed how the government's lies during a crisis only makes things worse. 
  
  
• No one will ever remember the Google lie, and I know I'm wasting my time. But people might remember this because Biden will run it on a loop until election day:
  
  
• It's all fine. 
  
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