Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• The Board (that's kind of beginning to flatten out a bit -- in the bad way.):
  
• Texas (the new downward trend is still holding):
  
• Wise County: 38 total. 10 active.
• Call in Q!: A faithful reader has pointed out a discrepancy about the numbers. The above figures for Wise County are from a site provided to me by county officials. The official Texas site, however, shows Wise County has 15 active cases. 
  
• Edit: A high ranking official just explained: "The dashboard is not updated as quickly as our daily line chart, as they want local officials to have data before it shows up on the public DSHS dashboard.  The DSHS dashboard is also way behind on number of tests conducted in Wise County, because we require the local clinics to also report that to us locally each day so we have a real-time daily count.  Also important to note that DSHS dashboard has 'estimates' whereas our daily report from regional  medical director is actual confirmed cases."
• There was a pretty good video yesterday of Costco refusing service to a guy who wouldn't wear a a mask. The underrated part of it was Mr. I'm No Sheep bragging about having "3,000 followers on my Instagram feed." Video here. Language warning. 

  

  "Welp, see ya later."

• Jerry would be welcomed in Costco.

  

  "And you can't see it, but I'm smiling when I say that."

• Good question brought up yesterday: Once professional teams start playing again, what percentage rate of positive tests would be enough to shut a team down? 1 person? 5%? 10%? How do you set that number?
  
• Pier 1 is gone. It was on life support even before the pandemic. 
• Johnson & Johnson's baby powder is gone. You can either blame or thank the lawyers. 
  
• A Texas federal judge ruled late yesterday Texas' mail-in voting law, which allows it for anyone over 65 but illegal for those under 65 unless special conditions exist, to be unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit will probably knock it down because they now vote as predictably as a crowd at at Trump rally asking if they believe the Fake News. And also because the judge has a ridiculous writing style. Ken Paxton has already filed an appeal
  
• The opposition to mail-in voting is a bad look. They aren't scared about voter fraud, they are scared about more people voting. It's that simple. 
• And Trump, moments ago, just proved that point and demonstrated he is willing to openly extort a state to stop it. (Spoiler alert: There was nothing illegal about it. And an application is being sent out pursuant to a 2018 Michigan constitutional amendment approved by 67% of the voters. He lies every day.):  
  
• And you would have at least thought he would thrown out at least one thought or prayer for Michigan while he was at it: 
  
  
  
  
  
• Stephen F. Austin got crushed by the NCAA yesterday which banned it from post season play in football, baseball and basketball for one year. Why? Academics. I don't know what an "APR score" is, but SFA failed to meet that academic standard. But this weird explanation by administration officials makes me wonder what happened: “Beginning in 2013, an athletic department administrative error in the academic certification process resulted in the miscalculation of SFA’s reported APR scores,” said SFA athletic director Ryan Ivey in a statement. “Once the administrative error was identified and corrected, the APR scores of these three programs fell below the [minimum] threshold." 
• Sports: He's worth a bonus of a few millions because the guy never gets hurt. Seriously.
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold (I suppose, "The Roost! The Roost! The Roost is on Fire" would have been a tacky headline.) 

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The Board (we cracked 90,000):
  
• Texas (is that peak a few days ago truly the peak?):
  
• Wise County: Total 38. Active 10. (If my prediction that we will never clear more than 12 active cases again holds true, I'll declare myself the Dr. Fauci of Wise County.) 
• So even though he doesn't have the 'rona, Trump said yesterday that he is taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure. He's either lying or crazy. But I guess we all agree he should take as much as he wants. 
  
• Trump got mad at Cavuto and all of Fox News because of that. 
  
• After Trump just blurted out that he was taking the drug, the the White House scrambled to have Trump's doctor issue a statement. The problem is that it neither confirmed Trump is actually taking the medication or that the doctor prescribed it. 
  
• Now that's an interesting plan in order to avoid the heart of flu season: 
  
• Gov. Abbott said yesterday that almost everything can open at either 25% or 50% capacity . What that really means is that everything is now open 100%. No one is going to regulate the capacity of any business. It's now a free-for-all as Abbott said we need to "find ways to coexist with COVID-19 as safely as possible."

  

  Clever.

• One of the many questions I have is: What will college football stadiums look like this Fall? And Fall will be here in no time. Man, school presidents are in a pickle. 

  

  Worst College Game Day ever. 

• I'm telling you, Mark Cuban has got a lot of Trump con man in him. There is absolutely no way to end up on the ballot now as an Independent. (And did you see he now thinks every American should get a $1,000 government check every two weeks and that it must be spent within 10 days. Why he keeps getting interviewed as an expert during these times is beyond me.) 
  
• Just create a "task force" and it solves every problem, right? 
  
• A guy who pled guilty in 2014 and sentenced to three years in TDC to a law which had been declared unconstitutional almost a year earlier is now entitled to restitution from the State per the Texas Supreme Court.  I still think the bigger story is that the defense lawyer, prosecutor, and judge were too dumb to know that the law had been struck down and let the guy get screwed over  Heck, I wrote about the law being stuck down on the morning it happened, and I wasn't' even handling a case involving that statute.  (He also sued his lawyer - here's the Petition. The case is really even crazier than I describe: He got deferred adjudication because of his plea and no one caught the problem again when he was revoked and sent to prison two years later. )
• Ransomware Update: Texas appellate courts still held hostage this morning. This makes 12 days.
• Moment of silence for an American Hero of my generation. 

  

  "My, you look lovely today Mrs. Cleaver." 

• I've predicted Uber's demise, but the pandemic might have expedited the situation.  Are they still going full throttle on their construction project in Deep Ellum?
  
• Oil has made a comeback but is still well below oil field viability. And anyone feel comfortable it will be there a month from now? 
  
• Yesterday I posted the front page of the "topless" jeep run in Beaumont. Oh, man, you need to take a look at the local news footage covering the event. Other than the wheels off people, let's just say the ladies have access to a lot of cheeseburgers down there. (And by that, of course, I mean no disrespect.)
  
• I've gone back and started watching Community which I completely missed when it came out. It's pretty funny, but I could do without Chevy Chase. 

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The Board:
  
• Texas (after a record breaking daily high on Friday, the next two days still bring the 7 day average to a downward trend for the first time in a while):
  
• Wise County: 36 total. 11 active.  Hot prediction wild guess: I bet we won't see more than our record of 12 active cases for the rest of the summer. 
• That Texas big bump was primarily due to 734 cases out by Amarillo way. 
  
• Junior in the House: "Hey, Rooster's in Decatur is on fire." Me: "Go find me a picture." Her: "Huh?" Me: "There's one out there somewhere." Her:
  
• Back to 'Rona news, we we learned over the weekend that the virus will be wiped out of the United States after November 3rd.
  
• The other idiot son was spreading Joe-Biden-is-a-pedophile propaganda over the weekend. Somehow this is now acceptable.
  
• Trump fired the Inspector General of the State Department on Friday. Tell me about "draining the swamp" again.  Even Fox News knows it smells. 
  
  
• Space Force update!!! The new flag was unveiled and we learned about some of its super duper technology. 
  
  
• I missed Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's Morning News op-ed piece on Friday. Let me quote one sentence from it which will give you a pretty good feel about whether he is a trusted leader in this area: "We can speed up Zambonis to clean the ice."
  
  
  
  
• "What you should have done was land your plane! You don't own that plane, the tax payers do!" (Estimated cost: $150 million.)
  
• Ransomware update #1: Texas courts still held hostage this morning. Ransomware #2: They've now have hit TxDot. 
  
• Moment of silence for the great Fred Willard and Denton's own Phyllis George. 
  
  
• I finished all nine episodes of Netflix's Innocence Files.   Bap cops. Bad prosecutors. Even when I didn't think I could be shocked any more about the criminal justice system, I'm shocked again. (The last one is a great episode about the Alfred Brown case out of Houston and prosecutor Dan Rizzo.) 
  
  
• I finally got around to watching Joker. My review: Oh, my. It certainly isn't the feel good movie of the year, is it? 
• The "shopping cart theory" made the rounds this weekend.  I believe in it because I passed it. 
  
• Messenger: Above The Fold
• I was trying to figure out what "Go Topless" was in this headline and then got distracted by the sentence: "When the women were fighting, a husky male discharged a firearm."  Husky.