5.06.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts



  • The Board:
    Total cases: 1,237,633

    Total deaths: 72,271
  • Texas (If you could go back in time and were then forced to guess where along the timeline we would begin to "open up", would you have guessed right now?)
  • Metroplex (Dallas: Blue + New daily record / Tarrant: Red / Collins: Yellow / Denton: Purple.): 
  • Wise County: 28 cases, 4 active. (Our number of total cases keeps going up but our active cases mysteriously stay low. It's almost like antibody tests results are coming in: You had it, but you don't now -- so let's add a number to the total cases column and the total recoveries column. That's just a wild and reckless guess on my part.) 
  • The big news yesterday was Shelley Luther of Salon A la Mode was sentenced to seven days in jail and $7,000 fine for violating the order to not open her hair salon. Ok, there's a lot to unpack here.
    • First, the judge would have let her go without a fine or incarceration if she agreed to shut down and apologize.  Heck, she can get out of jail right now if she'll agree to that. 
    • Listen to him give her that ultimatum here. Listen to her defiant response here.
    • To ask for an apology from her is ridiculous. The judge even wanted her to apologize to government officials who imposed the order. Heck, I wouldn't have demanded it, but it wouldn't have surprised me if she would have acknowledged she violated the Order and expected to be punished. But even I'd say "screw that" if a judge told me to apologize to Clay Jenkins and Greg Abbott. No way. That's a whole lot of bow-before-me attitude from the judge.
    • On the other hand, she asked for this. She wanted to be a martyr and now she gets to be a martyr. If she had just opened her shop up without appearing at rallies and tearing up the tickets, going on TV, and going on radio shows, she would have been under the radar and the government would have left her alone. 
    • Her attorney could have helped her out a little bit if he wasn't so concerned about showboating. 
    • This is a gut check for the "law and order" crowd out there. Do you get to pick and choose which laws you want to follow? Haven't you scoffed at those who have yelled about marijuana laws being unfair? Supported cops shoving a black man face down in the pavement because "he didn't follow orders"? Is this somehow different because it infringes on your unique definition of "freedom"? 
    • The usual suspects came to her defense.

    • I've got a question: Why were the lawyers and Luther holding up a cell phone to their mouths when they were talking? Although the hearing was in person, was that done so the audio could be picked up on the simultaneous Zoom broadcast?
    • When the judge came out wearing a mask, Shelley Luther had to feel like Nathan R. Johnson in The Jerk when he noticed the judge was cross-eyed from wearing his Optigrab™ glasses. (Obscure reference, but funny to handful of you out there.)
  • Unrelated to the hearing, we had two far-right winger Texas legislators showing their respect for the law as well: 
    It should be a crime to have that mustache.
  • And just when those guys caused me roll my eyes, law enforcement in Ector County decided to lose their minds and go into Full Nazi Mode. Incredible. And what's up with that ridiculous vehicle of war? Watch it. 


  • And throw in the Wisconsin Supreme Court acting like children as they heard oral arguments on the legality of some stay at home laws. This one minute clip is not a good look.
  • He's not joking. Paul McCartney and Wings was blaring in the background. 
  • I'm still trying to figure out what's going on here. It looks like some DA was dragging his feet but at least has been shamed enough to get the case to a grand jury. 
  • More (but mundane) legal stuff: I've complained before about license plate readers being used by cops to track a car coming from Colorado and then coming up with a pretext reason to stop the vehicle to see if it contains legally purchased weed.  There are now legal challenges beginning which are pretty creative. 
  • There is no greater train wreck of county government and law enforcement than Williamson County. That place is always making the news. 
  • I stumbled upon this article from an Oklahoma State news site about a recent Bridgeport High School valedictorian who attempted suicide.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:33 AM

5.05.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts


  • The Board:
    New yesterday: +24,713

    Total deaths: 69,921
  • Texas (we continue to head the wrong way):
  • Tarrant (red - down) / Dallas (blue - up) /Denton (purple -down). Dallas County had a record day of 237 new cases:
  • Wise County: 27 total. 5 active. You know, the total number of cases has been sneakily on the uptick lately. 
  • Here's an interesting twist: What are the national numbers if you back out New York state which is now seeing a reduction in new cases? Here ya go: 
  • The big news yesterday was the revised projections for total deaths. For a while, the projections were at 100,000 deaths and then they were revised downward in April to 60,000. That changed dramatically yesterday. That same model, which Trump had trumpeted before, "nearly doubled its prediction Monday for how many people will die from the virus in the U.S. by August – primarily because states are reopening too soon. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine is now projecting 134,000 coronavirus-related fatalities . . . ."  Oh, my.
  • There are good bits, and there are bad bits. 
  • We had new guidelines issued by the state of Texas yesterday for any in-person court proceedings in June and beyond. Presiding judges must submit a plan for approval before anything can happen. And that plan must include how the following will be handled:
    • Have you ever been in the Wise County Courthouse? The elevator is smaller than a hotel closet, the stairwell is narrow, and "common areas" are few and therefore packed during any dockets. I don't know how you pull this off because "social distancing" isn't physically possible. Not that I'm for it or against it, but the county might have to rent the big conference room of the Decatur Convention Center. 
    • Wait, there's more. How do you pull the following off? Seriously, say you've got a misdemeanor case pending and have a court date. Is court security going to ask if you have a headache, and if you answer "yes" you will not be allowed to enter? And someone is going to be taking peoples' temperatures? The submitted plan must explain: 
  • The mayor and mayor pro tem in the city of New Fairview (Wise County's version) were yelling at each other last night.  Expect more of that in the future. 
  • I championed this photo by Tom Fox of the Dallas Morning News from last year from the moment I saw it, and now it is a finalist for a Pulitzer.  (Side note: There are a million stories on the home page of the News this morning, and this is not one of them.)
  • A couple of faithful readers pointed out the Texas sales tax numbers I posted yesterday were for March and not April. The big dip will be April.  
  • They are fighting in Hood County. Apparently, the County Attorney announced he would not prosecute those which violated coronavirus orders and allegedly went to work out in a gym that should have been closed. This made the county judge mad. (h/t Bud Kennedy.)
  • The Thirsty Armadillo in the Stockyards and the Katy Trail Ice House in Dallas received citations after opening up. 
  • My very unofficial observation of the restaurants on the courthouse square around 6:00 p.m. yesterday: Not that busy at all. 
  • There are absolutely no details about this other than the arrest was at 2:15 a.m. But the "while on duty" got my attention. 
  • I didn't expect Jason Witten, the hero of the common man, to have a 8,841 square foot house in Westlake that he is selling for $4.6 million.  And why sell it? He'll play one or two years in Las Vegas at the most. 
  • I'm predicting something crazy out of Trump today -- a fairly easy prediction on any given day. But he'll be on Air Force 1 for a long time to get back and forth to Phoenix just to tour a mask production line.  Once there, he'll get to free style in front of the cameras.

at 8:34 AM

5.04.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • The Board.
    Total cases: 1,188,122

    Total deaths: 68,598
  • Texas (we headed in the right direction?)
  • Tarrant (red), Dallas (blue), Denton (purple)
  • Wise County: 24 total but with only 4 active cases. Have I missed it, or have none of the 24 agreed to be identified and interviewed? If I caught it, I'd talk about it in a New York minute just to let people know what it was like. Side note: As the most trusted newsman in the southwest proper, I'm going to need more updated stats than this: 
  • He's a punk, but he doesn't need to be locked up (assuming he'll now say the right things.) Although even my first reaction is to have him sit in the hoosegow for a little while. Video.
  • If you want to vote by mail because you fear contracting the 'rona, Texas AG Ken Paxton says you can't because you're just being an emotional big baby.
  • I appreciate a young reporter actually handing the mic over to the Grim Reaper on a Florida beach. (The guy in the outfit is some lawyer who likes bits.)

  • These "very good people" showed up to protect the hair salon in Dallas which opened in violation of state and county orders. Is there some kind of Dog Protective Services that we can call to check on the welfare of the good puppy dog? 
  • Texas sales tax collections were down 9% from April compared to a year ago. And although that's a heck of a blow to the budgets of governmental entities, I'm stunned it's only 9%.
  • How do the airlines survive this?
  • The Grab Em By The P crowd was pretty excited about the sexual assault allegations made by Tara Reade against Joe Biden. However, that seemed to have petered out over the weekend after Biden's appearance on Morning Joe and Reade's cancellation of her interview on Fox News. Oh, by the way, this tweet below which was shared thousands and thousands of times, shows Biden with Zoe Baird. (Side note: I had completely forgotten about Zoe Baird, but her claim to fame was the first Nanny-gate.)
  • The family of Otto Warmbier probably doesn't feel the same way. 
  • It's the anniversary of the Kent State Massacre. We've all seen the famous photo, but I don't think I had ever seen the pictures of all the victims. 
  • A Houston PD helicopter crashed and killed one. Video. No one knows the cause, but the police chief wouldn't rule out the aircraft being shot down by saying, "It is not commonly known that law enforcement aviation comes under fire on a regular basis across our country." 
  • Andy Dalton is now the backup quarterback for the Cowboys. Flashback: I'm still amazed Dalton wasn't scarred for life.
  • It's May 4th and time for my sporadic reminder that I've always thought Star Wars was a boring dud. And I actually saw it the first time in a theater. Give me any TV episode of Captain Kirk looking at the big video screen plotting his strategy any day of the week.
  • I'm sorry, but I think Vernon's thermometer is on the fritz. There's no way it was 108 on Saturday.
  • Very random thing I watched this weekend: Texas losing to Kansas (which had lost 19 Big 12 games in a row) in Charlie Strong's last year in 2016. Odd notes: Texas scored on the first play of the game with a 75 yard touchdown pass, and they had a running back that carried the ball 51 times for 251 yards.  And lost.
  • I'm not particularly stressed by the Coronavirus Problems, but I've been dreaming like nobody's business lately. And although they aren't my usual back-in-school-and-unprepared dream, in all of them I'm in a situation facing a massive problem that I can't solve. 
  • The Blue Angels will waste your taxpayer dollars in Fort Worth on Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold
(Yeah, I know.)

at 8:35 AM

5.01.2020

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here






at 2:30 PM
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