3.10.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • I wrote the bullet point below on January 24th. I now feel like I created Republican talking points because that is all I heard yesterday. Every talking head on Fox News and Far Right Wing Radio compared the coronavirus to the flu.  Please send your thoughts and prayers as I seek counseling during this difficult time. 
  • There are now 729 cases of the coronavirus with 26 deaths in the U.S. as of this morning. (I continue to love this data-tracking page from The New York Times.)
  • Would ya?
  • I tend to voluntarily "self-quarantine" whenever I can just so I don't have to deal with people. 
  • To Protect and to Serve: A former Chief of Police in Olney just got sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for doing such things as making a couple he arrested have sex in front of him at gunpoint, and suggesting a woman send him nude pics in exchange for letting her husband out of jail. 
  • Remember when I told you less than three ago that the upcoming days would change the landscape in the race for the Democratic nominee in a blink of an eye? Even I never thought it would shake out this quickly and this dramatically. In a course of just a few days, it's now over. 
                                               
  • Wichita Falls crime blotter this morning: "The victim was able to strike Bolf a couple of times before he pulled out a knife and threatened to stab him." I should say so. 
  • I noticed BagOfNothing is taking his first whack at coaching his kid's baseball team. I just saw that he wrote this: "I’m hesitant to do such things for several reasons – my back doesn’t make it easy, I’m impatient with kids, I never played the sport, and with similar situations, relationships get damaged."  Uh, oh. (For you Ticket Fans, they use to play an old bleeped CNN Bernard Shaw drop which might need to be inserted at this point.)
  • I always look at the Tech Section of the Sunday Dallas Morning News because there is always something good in it. This week, their resident columnist was asked "What is 5G?" Get this: There is actually a spot over by the Hospital District where 5G is available right now so he took his new Samsung phone over to it. He clocked a download speed of 975 Mbps. Did I say he got that right now? You're lucky to get 10 Mbps at your home or office which is hard wired. And the speed of 975 Mpbps is just a fraction of what is coming over the next 2 to 10 years when all of the 5G network should be widespread. If you thought dial-up Internet was from ancient times, what he have now will seem equally laughable in a decade.
  • Random TV flashback: We all remember the power NBC Thursday night lineup in the 1990s of Mad About You, Friends, Seinfeld,  and Cheers. But do you remember the network tried to replace Cheers, which ended in 1993, with something called Hope & Gloria? It was cancelled after a year and half. How bad did it have to be to not survive in the lineup?
  • There's certainly a tone of a redneck-making-fun-of-black-people here, but his "Wait for it" in a a country voice has a pretty good visual payoff. Video. (But nothing will ever surpass the Mobile Leprechaun video.)
  • Whenever I use Apple Pay at Brookshires in Bridgeport I always feel like I'm getting the side eye from someone who thinks I'm being just a bit too highfalutin. 

at 8:32 AM

3.09.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts



  • At the moment I publish this, the stock market is down 2,005 points, and the price of oil has plummeted to $32 a barrel.  Good morning to ya. 
  • I'm not sure what happened while someone was launching a boat near the old Lake Bridgeport dam over the weekend, but it went horribly wrong. 

(I have no idea if that boat was the one that was launched at the time of the mishap.
I mention this just in case a boat owner is yelling, "Hey, that wasn't me!" right now)
  • Remember that chart I posted on Friday which showed the number of coronavirus cases diagnosed. Let's add three days to it. And, note, this shows new cases per day and not a cumulative chart. 
  • No worries. Trump decided to tell everyone on Friday that everyone who "needs a test gets a test." (No, you can't.) And then he somehow managed to bring this whole crisis back to his call to the Urkaine president that got him impeached. This was bizarre.  Then he went golfing for the weekend. 
    And what "letter"?
  • In an effort to never cease to amaze us, a post from yesterday proved he had never heard of Nero and Rome burning. 
  • Trump said on Friday that he wanted the infected cruise ship off the coast of California to remain at see. The plan then changed to bring the ship into port, but I say "plan" loosely. This gave us all confidence yesterday, right? (Video). Incredible. 
  • Remember this guy? Well a person died in his district from the coronavirus this weekend. He issued a statement that he was "extremely saddened."

  • Twitter invoked its new "This Is A Fake Video" warning over the weekend for the first time. It just happened to be a video altering what Joe Biden had really said. Trump had retweeted the fake video.
  • Long time readers will know nothing drives me more nuts than when the ME constantly getting out of his lane and offering opinions outside his area of expertise. You are a doctor. All you can tell me, medically speaking, is what caused a person to die. (i.e. an artery was severed, a heart was punctured, a trachea was collapsed.) Yet any time someone dies "at the hands of another" they slap the "homicide" label on an incident regardless of whether the death was the result of intentional or negligent conduct or whether is was by a simple accident -- all mental states that an ME is in absolutely no position to offer an opinion on.
  • I have a lot of questions about this story. 
  • This was in the recent Texas Bar Journal and has a Wise County connection. I can't believe I hadn't heard about this.
  • Random photo I had never seen before: First photo of the Alamo taken 1849.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold




at 8:33 AM

3.06.2020

It's Friday. Let's Get Out Of Here.








at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts


  • Blue Tide Rising: If you think Texas can't turn blue, the final numbers from Tuesday's voting should send a shock wave through you. Look at these primary numbers since 2010. This is a bombshell of a big reveal, and is what we political experts call a "trend." 

  • Now is it possible, or even probable, that more Republicans than Democrats will vote in the general election in Texas this Fall? Sure. There wasn't a contested presidential primary on the Republican side on Tuesday which maybe suppressed the numbers.  But it will very, very likely be the last time for Texas to be Red at the state-wide level for at least the next couple of decades. We all knew it was coming some day, and 2024 and beyond will be a different story. And a Republican presidential nominee can't win without all of Texas' electoral votes. (How's that electoral college thing sounding now?) 
  • The New York Times has a great up-to-the-minute tracker of new confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. Uh, speaking of trends. And look at yesterday: 
  • Breaking: Five new coronavirus cases confirmed in Houston.  
  • And remember last Saturday when Trump held the emergency press conference and (incorrectly) told us "we have a total of fifteen" people who had the virus in the U.S. and that "within a couple of days [that number] is going to be down close to zero." Transcript.

  • Look, I completely stand by my original position that the coronavirus in the grand scheme of things is no big deal. But if I were President, I would have never of said that publicly. 
  • There were lots of headlines that read "Blue Bell Ice Cream Licker Receives 30 Days in Jail" yesterday. But when I read the stories, they referred to him as a 24 year old male. Wasn't the person involved in this whole brohaha a girl? The is answer is yes.  He was just a copycat ice cream licker following the lead of juvenile female out of San Antonio. 
    This is the guy who got 30 days

    This is the original licker
  • Chris Putnam, who couldn't beat Kay Granger despite drowning in special interest money to do so, finally spoke. He bowed at the feet of Trump and signaled he'll try again in two years. (Which makes you realize what a beating it would be to be a congressperson and have to run for re-election every two years.)
  • Stay with me here -- this has a big payoff. What if the SuperPACs who supported Putnam would have had this strategy: He can't beat Granger head to head but if they could get another candidate to join the the race to just siphon off enough votes to force a run-off between Granger and Putnan, he might take her.
    • But what if they couldn't find someone else to run? What other options would they have? 
    • What if they invented someone? Or, more specifically, what if they went out and registered a third person  who actually exists with a great Republican sounding name without his consent.  You know, like "Bubba Alamo Green?" 
    • They didn't need Bubba to campaign. They just needed his name on the ballot to steal some votes by people voting for a cool sounding name. It's the runoff between Granger and Putnam that they want. 
    • And what if Bubba on Tuesday did in fact siphon off enough votes to force a runoff between Granger and Putnam.
    • Sound crazy? That may have exactly happened near Houston where long term State Rep. Harold Dutton now faces a run-off.  The name of "Natasha Ruiz" appeared on the ballot in a district which just happens to have quite a few Hispanic voters. Ruiz, who didn't campaign, spend any money, and was never seen, still received 20% of the vote! And guess what? Dutton is now forced into a runoff with another guy. 
    • Here's the kicker: "On Wednesday night, ABC13 reported that the candidate in question, Natasha Ruiz, identified herself as 'Natasha Demming' when reached by phone and said she worked as a truck driver in Colorado. Ruiz told the Houston television station she did not know why her name would have been used to sign up to run for the House seat."
    • “The more and more I’ve gotten into this, the more and more it sounds like something criminal went on, which bothers me a little bit,” Dutton told The Texas Tribune.
  • Dear MSNBC, I don't think that's correct. (Watch it.)
  • The NFL players will follow the lead of their inept and in-the-pocket-of-NFL-owners player reps and vote to approve the new collective bargaining agreement.  They were given the full 456 pages of the proposed agreement yesterday.  Go ahead, read all of it here.  
  • Let me suggest this might be a trap.
  • Hmmm. Exxon announced that it anticipates "reducing the number of rigs in 2020 by more than 20%" in the Permian Basin. 



at 8:34 AM

3.05.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



  • Well, I'll be. After all the returns for the Primary Elections came in, there were more Democrats who voted than Republicans in Texas. 2,076,046 to 2,008,385, (h/t Bud Kennedy.)
  • Nothing like a congressman doing bits. (Yep, this is real.)
  • Oh, the comments. 
  • Hey, I dog the Tarrant County DA's office all the time, but they deserve high praise for this. For years, I've been ranting against charging people with crimes because of traffic accidents. 
  • But because people over the past 10 years have been persecuted for having traffic accidents, you now have folks too scared to stop because of what the government might do to them. Case in point:
  • And Another. Offered with out comment. 
  • In case you missed it, Dairy Protesters (yep, they exist) rushed the stage that Joe Biden was on Tuesday night. In a fantastic photo, here's Jill Biden going on the offensive.
  • Fake Weatherman, unlike myself, have now resorted to using the term "embedded thunderstorms" to distract from their erroneous forecasts which predicted the heavy rains yesterday would be centralized to the south of the metroplex. 

  • This was pretty funny. Here's the quick video.
  • She lost, 52% to 48%, but she will always love that photo. 
  • Well, this is a cluster. These two guys were running for seat on the Court of Appeals in Amarillo. The final vote had Denny with 46,002 and Doss with 45,683. Hey, that's close. Really close. But wait. The entire race was left off the ballot in Cochran County and Collingsworth County. What do you do now?
  • Hey, it's about time for the Liberally Lean March Madness Pick 'Em Tournament, and I want everyone to know I'm tricking it up this year. Big time. Every tournament has the same old boring scoring system, so I'm turning mine into a bit. Here's what I'm looking at: A system which will massively reward you for picking upsets in the first two rounds. After that, you get a massive point reward (40 points) for picking the lone winner but not much else. Heck, upset picks in the first two rounds are worth more than correctly picking a team to reach the final four. (I screwed up the sign-up link last year but this link should work.)
  • Pudge Rodriguez unveiled his statue at the new Rangers' ballpark yesterday. Bizarre fact since we all consider him to be a humble guy:  Rodriguez "actually commissioned a statue of himself years ago that once decorated his house in Miami." 

  • Breaking: The coronavirus was just confirmed in Africa. Please panic accordingly. 


at 8:32 AM
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