Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

 

• Texas hospitalizations: +138.
  
  
  
• This wave seems to be more aggressive in North Texas (Wise County included) than the first two surges. Despite this, Alvord ISD is ending virtual learning as of November 10th. But, surprisingly, that only impacts 4% of the students. 
  
  
  
• Scary.
  
  
  
• Fox News is turning into QAnon. This was unbelievably comical last night. His producer put the original "damning" documents into a box, without scanning or making copies, and mailed them to Tucker across the country. Along the way, someone (probably Hillary) stole the documents and left the box behind. This has to be some kind of bit, right?  Seriously, is he going to announce he has "found" them today to boost his ratings for tonight? His viewers cannot be that dumb. 
  
  
  
• I never thought I'd see the day that the Republican Party uses the power of the federal government to accuse a private business -- which was built using the sacred cow of almighty Capitalism, no less -- with violating another sacred cow, the First Amendment, which does not apply to that business. Up is down. Down is up. 
  
  
  
• Amarillo got 4.5" of snow last night. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I promise you in some big city there has been a defendant who has pulled this off. If you can trick a judge into signing a Motion to Dismiss  -- which is not as hard as it seems because they get dropped on their desk every day with no fanfare -- your 99% of the way there. The next routine step is for a court clerk to get the Order from the judge's office (happens every day) which will then cause the case to never again appear on the computer generated docket. The only remaining step is for a staff member of the prosecutor to get a routine copy of the Order of Dismissal (happens every day) and then go pull the physical file out of the filing cabinets. Then it is out of sight, out of mind. It's getting the Motion on the judge's desk which would be the hard part.
  
  
  
• Free legal advice: Don't even think about pulling off the above bullet point. 
• If you saw this yesterday, please be advised she was doing a bit. 
  
  
  
• There are so many Lincoln Project-like ads that I really don't look at many of them any longer. But if I was in charge of designing an anti-Trump ad, this new one by a group I have never heard of is exactly what I would produce. 
  
  
  
• New joy in my life: Wearing a mask outside when it is cold. Who knew they were so warm?
• A couple of months ago I went to Denton and came back complaining about how getting on and off I-35 was a death wish.  One of the craziest things I witnessed was the backlog of cars to get off northbound I-35 to get on 380 in order to head back to the "humble confines of Wise County"™. You have about a two second chance to get in line to exit. Most people just slow down in the right hand lane of I-35 looking for a place to get in line and are just asking to be rear-ended. That problem is on the front page of today's Denton Record Chronicle. (But that's a lousy picture to try and demonstrate the problem.)

Copyright 2020 Liberally Lean Graphics Department

• Gotta admit, I'm not sure I've ever heard a Billy Joe Shaver song. (But I'm a self-proclaimed music idiot.) 

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

 

• Texas hospitalizations: +234. That's a pretty big daily jump. (The Update says the local Wise County hospital has hit a record with 21 COVID patients, and that Wise County has had 57 new COVID cases in the last seven days. Oh, my.)
  
  
  
• The man who once declared "all businesses are essential" so let's open 'em all up has caught the COVID.
  
  
  
• We had a weird thing happen in the Wise County Courthouse yesterday: Someone was arrested by the Sheriff's Office for cussing. I can't say more because my source invoked "blog immunity" before he would give me the details. 
• I get hit with "blog immunity" invocations a lot. 
• Rob Manfred Justin Turner was removed from the World Series game last night in the eighth inning after his COVID results game back positive. That's him, in the beard and without a mask, after the game.
  
  
  
• And here . . .
  
  
  
• Fun fact: Nebraska is one of only two states that doesn't have a winner-take-all-electoral-votes situation. They do it by dividing up their 5 electoral votes by their 5 congressional district lines. So here's Trump last night in one Nebraska district campaigning for the one electoral vote. And there was a problem afterwards.
  
  
  

  

  From the Omaha World-Herald
  

• I learned TopGolf, which I went to once and had a blast, is booming. This story says it "generated $1.1 billion in revenue last year at 63 locations that drew more than 23 million customers. And it has plans or letters of intent to build another 33 facilities and designs on growing outside the United States . . . . " And COVID doesn't touch it. It's bays have social distancing built in. 
  
  
  
• Quick: Who is this "celebrity guest picker" on last weekend's College GameDay. Answer below.
  
  
  
• In watching the West Wing on Netflix, a big question mark formed over my head when the episode timeline was seemingly interrupted by an out of place episode called "Isaac and Ishmael" -- named after  the sons Abraham from the Bible.  Turns out, it was the first episode after 9/11 and was specifically shot because of the attack and then broadcast before the series resumed.  Being a Biblical scholar, I was surprised that I didn't know much, if anything, about Ishmael. I figured out why with a little research: Although Isaac got all the headlines in Sunday School, Ishmael was actually his older brother but was the product of Abraham hooking up with the maid!  We Southern Baptists kind of keep stories like that on the down low. 

  

  He filled it in with "KKK" by the way.
  

  
  
• Answer: Vince Vaughn. 
• June Cleaver heard some good news about Ward yesterday. 
  
  
  
• I've never seen this photo before. "Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1957 Arlington Heights High School [in Fort Worth] yearbook. This must have been taken in September, 1956 because Oswald quit Arlington Heights to join the marines in October of that year."
  
  
  
• New magazine cover Dirty Lib alert. (Now seems to be a good time to repost the link to her pre-election dance video.)
  
  
  
• I bet DFW TV stations get 25% or more of their ad revenue just from this campaign season. It's incredible the number of ads we see, and the TV stations have to jack up their rates because of the demand. But you know who is getting screwed? The Wise County Messenger which is situated in a one-party dominated county leading to uncontested November races. They are missing out on  so may dollars, and we are missing out on so much fun. 
• Messenger: Above the Fold. Edit: Link fixed.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

 

• Texas hospitalizations: +72.  It's way too early to project out, but this rise isn't as sharp as the last peak.  But I wonder if that means it will just last longer. And it doesn't mean we won't hit or surpass 10,000 a day again. 
  
  
  
• Never mind. I've just learned that it's all a hoax that will go away in a week. 
  
  
  
• Sports and COVID: Wisconsin started a redshirt freshman quarterback on Saturday, Graham Mertz, who played lights out. Get this: He went 20 of 21 with 5 touchdowns.  After the game, he tested positive for COVID and now has a confirmation test scheduled this morning. If he has it, the Big 10 rules says he must sit out the next 21 days. (The second stringer has a broken ankle and the third string QB tested positive yesterday as well.)
• He's not doing well this morning. And he sure doesn't feel good about the early vote. Change "it to me."
  
  
  
• Actually, before Trump's tweet, the graph below shows a search for "can I change my vote" briefly surpassed a search for "chicken", but I suppose that's a trend. (Actually, Trump is referring to an article he saw from the right wing propaganda site The Gateway Pundit which started promoting this false narrative two days ago as part of their Hunter Biden fetish. ) 
  
  
  
• You can't change your vote in "most" states but you can do so in seven of them. I did not know that before this morning. And I bet it is a royal pain. 
• Everything is fine. 
  
  
  
• "Election Day" is now a bit of a misnomer. We have an "election period" with next Tuesday being "the last day to vote." No day to vote is more important than the other. 
• Due to ice, Wichita Falls closed schools today. Below is downtown Amarillo this morning with the stadium of the Amarillo Sod Poodles is in the background. (I just like typing "Sod Poodles.") As for us, we might hit a record LOW high today.  You know, "it's the lowest high temperature we've ever had."   The metroplex record was a high of only 46 in 1936.  That's in jeopardy.
  
  
  
• The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is just doing bits about death row where inmates had to listen to other prisoners get electrocuted.  The only ghouls are those running that Twitter account.
  
  
  
• This is a good photo when you look at Melania. Click to enlarge.
  
  
  
• There been a lot of criticism of how rest of the Cowboys just stood around after the attempted murder of Andy Dalton on Sunday.  Check out this video of how the 49ers responded after a cheap shot on Joe Montana Steve Young back in the day. 
  
  
  
• Despite my super Internet skills, I can't find out what was said at the Weatherford "Monster Bash" which prompted the public statement below. (But there seems to be a clear constitutional issue here: Can a city ban certain speech just because the city "hosts" an event? Don't think so. Sayin it was "not approved" is one thing. Saying it is "not allowed" is another.)
  
  
  
• It really is amazing. But to the victor belongs the spoils. 
  
  
  
• Man, you guys really liked my hot sports opinions on "tired" yesterday. I was surprised by the number of emails/texts I received in support of it. I might put it on a throw pillow.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Texas Hospitalizations: 5,206.
  
  
  
• I probably shouldn't be talking about the Third Surge of COVID-19 or people in the hospital or people dying. Probably an election law violation. 
  
  
  
• There's something about saying you don't want to give any effort because you're "tired" of something really sets me off for some reason. It first struck me when, during the protests after the George Floyd killing, I saw an old Wise County friend post online that was "tired" of hearing about social injustice. Really? Well, boo-hoo. Now people are "tired" of wearing masks, and "tired" of hearing about COVID. You know how you separate yourself from the spares of the world? It's how you react when you are "tired." 
• We've got record early voting going on. Fox News brings us the breakdown:
  
  
  
• If Trump goes down and flames and the Republican Party has to take years to recover from his train wreck, the GOP might still say it was all worth it. It's kind of like the question of "Would you win a Super Bowl if it meant going the next ten years with a losing record?" Although this might be more akin to three Super Bowls and 20 years of a losing record. 
  
  
  
• I've got the strangest Century Link problem this morning in the office: The Internet through Wifi is working but access via the hard lines to the computers and phone is down. 
• This Texas Monthly article about yet another DNA exoneration (although it is kind of in court limbo at the current time) is really, really good and has a striking similarity to the Wise County Lauren Whitener/Aric Maxwell case: There was a DNA “mixture” report that no one understood. But the problem in this case was that “no one” also included the defense lawyer, and his client got got wrongfully convicted.
  
  
  
• There was this great line in the story: "What is scary is how tenaciously police and prosecutors cling to their initial assumptions—and how much this reflects basic human tendencies." True that. 
• Really? The NFL has never cared about head injuries. It's all lip service and sometimes it doesn't even get that. 
  
  
  
  
  
• College football:
• I loved this final play in the Michigan Penn State/Indiana game.  I think the tip of the ball crosses the plane of the goal line before it even gets to the pylon. Here is a great video of it. The photo below is fantastic as well. Click to enlarge.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Rice losing a game because a field goal attempt which resulted in the ball hitting the uprights and crossbar a total of four times. Watch it. 
  
  
  
• Baylor's top two senior running backs "opted out" of the remainder of the season last night. I wonder if the head coach deciding to punt from the Evil Empire's 30 yard line had anything to do with it. Edit: The punt was still dumb but the two players may still be with the team. 
  
• The New York Post (the same Post that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and the only media outlet reckless enough to run the Hunter Biden laptop story) has made an endorsement after, I'm sure, hours of internal deliberations . . .