Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• The Board. It finally happened. 
  
• Texas. (I have reclaimed the title of Dr. Fauci of Wise County. Just as I predicted, we have a massive two day increase after the holiday weekend.)
  
• Wise County: Total 45. Active 11.
• There has been an arrest. All we know is that it is a juvenile. 
  
• I'll never understand rioting, but I understand history. And this is right out of the 1960s. Well, the 1960s without the mask. 
  
• The destruction of property bugs me to death.   Then again, where did the conservative Tea Party get its name? 
  
• I'm old enough to remember when the federal government threatening to shutter free political speech would send shock waves throughout the country. It was way back in, oh, 2016 and every year before that. (Side note: Any executive order limiting how Twitter runs their private company won't be worth the paper it is written on. The First Amendment doesn't protect Trump from Twitter -- it protects Twitter from Trump.)
  
• I'm seeing rumors that he'll try to modify section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which provides protection from silly lawsuits. Am I missing something, or didn't Congress used to have a say in lawmaking? Does that not matter any longer? Heck, who needs Congress when you have a wannabe Führer, right?
• Trump threatening Twitter is like an addict threatening his drug dealer. And, buddy, if you didn't lie all the time this wouldn't even be an issue. 
  

  

  Did they notice that 100,000 number yesterday?

• The headlines of a ruling late yesterday by the Texas Supreme Court drove me nuts. "Texas Supreme Court Blocks Absentee Voting."  That's not true at all. Let me explain. 
  
• All you need to do in order to get an absentee ballot is to check a box. Are you 65 years old or more? Check the box and you get a ballot. Going to be out of town of election day? Check a box and you get a ballot. Do you suffer from a disability? Check box. Get ballot.  (Get your application here.)
  
• So what did the court rule? That you don't suffer a disability just because, without more, you fear getting the coronavirus. Ok, fine. (This is a good time to note that all the judges are working from home because they fear going to the office.) 
• But that doesn't mean you have to lie about a disability to get the ballot. The court made it real easy to justify requesting the ballot: If you fear the coronavirus and there's anything else (i.e. any pre-existing condition of any type and of any degree which in your mind qualifies as a disability) you get the ballot you can legally get the ballot.  
  
• And here's an additional kicker: When you check the disability box, you don't have to say what your disability is and officials don't have the responsibility of questioning it. You check. You get. You vote. The State conceded that, and the court acknowledged it. 
  
• The Texas Tribune is the best at getting the headline right. 
  
  
  
  
  
• As Texas turns Blue, those in power sure do fear making it easy to vote.
• This is an odd twist on  "Let them eat cake."  And isn't it a hallmark of modern day America that we don't stand in line for anything? It better be immediately available or we want it delivered to our door.
  
• I've learned the Decatur graduation ceremony, like Southlake's, will begin at 8:20 p.m. That's still too late, but at least they don't have a million diplomas to handout. 
• The Tarrant County Sheriff, the same one who referred to undocumented immigrants released from his jail as "these drunks who will run over your children", doesn't know how to run a jail -- and that's his main job. Over the last month, an inmate committed suicide on April 26th, a coronavirus death occurred on May 23rd which the Sheriff didn't bother voluntarily disclosing, and an inmate had a baby last week without anyone noticing. Oh, and the State of Texas just temporarily revoked the jail's certification. Look at this twitter thread and related story by the Star-Telegram's Nichol Manna who is doing a great job trying to pry information out of the Sheriff. 
  
• They just keep coming despite the court shutdown: 20 new Class A and B misdemeanors filed yesterday. 

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• The Board. (A month ago I didn't think the number would ever get to 100,000.):
  
• Texas. (My prediction from yesterday that the numbers would dramatically spike after the holidays came true yesterday but not enough to impact the seven day average yet): 
  
• Wise County: Positive 45. Active 12.  My cries from yesterday have been heard:
  
• Cops in Minnesota decided to kill a guy, and four of them were immediately fired because of it. If you haven't seen the video, here it is. It's hard to argue with this meme that circulated yesterday: 
  
• I completely dropped the ball on the Waco lawyers murder-for-hire story I posted on Monday. A faithful reader told me I was an idiot for not remembering that the female actually worked in Decatur right out of law school for about a year with an office on the courthouse square.  She was even on the court appointed criminal defense list. Note to self: Get out more. 
  
• Twitter finally decided to label a tweet by Trump a lie when it is a lie. (That means there should be a lot of labels forthcoming.)  
  
• This, of course, made him mad so he demonstrated it by revealing he has the understanding of a Fourth Grader when it comes to First Amendment. Twitter is not capable of violating the Free Speech Clause, and you as President, and as the government, would violate the First Amendment if you tried to do anything about it. 
  
• The Central Park Imma-Gonna-Report-You lady was fired yesterday.  I don't know how much she made, but I'm guessing it was a pretty penny.  But I hope someone checked on her good puppy dog. 
  
  
• My random post about "good writing" yesterday had me making fun of the sentence, "The ability to say a thing clearly and directly is rather to be chosen than great riches." A faithful reader pointed out Proverbs 22:1 which reads “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches . . . . "   Getting past the fact I overlooked a scriptural reference despite being a Bible expert, am I to understand that the verse is supposed to be so well know to the masses that the author of the article in The Wall Street Journal thought he could paraphrase it without attribution? 
• I was just kidding when six days ago I wrote that her husband's $1 million donation to a Trump SuperPAC should be called a donation to the "Please Don't Let Your Lapdog Justice Department Indict Me PAC."
  
• This has Dateline written all over it.  
  
• Southlake Carroll will hold it's graduation ceremony on Friday beginning at 8:20 p.m. to coincide with military time of 2020.  Never do a bit where the payoff is more of beating than the bit itself.  That's too late to start. 
• Something seems very weird about this: Trump appointed U.S. Attorney Joseph Brown of the Eastern District of Texas will abruptly quit on May 31st. He was the Grayson County district attorney from 2000 to 2018. And his father was a state district judge in Sherman, and his uncle was federal judge in Sherman. So what's up? 
• Good lord, he just did this. The widow of Lori Klausutis has begged him to stop this. The Atlantic had is right yesterday. Trump is cruel. The Wall Street Journal has it right today. "Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so."
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The Board:
  
• Texas: Although the overall trend will be downward, I bet we have a huge spike over the next two days because of a backlog of numbers due to the holiday weekend. 
  
• Wise County: I don't know what our numbers are. Heck, even the numbers I posted yesterday were outdated because I didn't notice this:
  
• From national to local, all of the lack of up to the minute data certainly gives the impression we aren't that particularly interested any longer.
• Hey, I'm all for exposing jerks in this world, and the Karen-of-the-Moment is this lady who went viral over the last couple of days. By late yesterday, her name and place of employment had been exposed. Call me nuts, but can we at least hold off on the high tech lynching before we find out what happened before the video started running?
  
• Trump's denying that he's laying the ground work to move the Republican Convention to his club in Doral even though no one had mentioned Doral by name. (I don't know what they do about the Republican Convention. There will be a huge push to pack the venue for a "back to normal" message even when no other event will take that risk. This will be fascinating to watch.)
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• This headline short circuited me over the weekend. Then I felt sorry for the alligator. Hitler's been dead since 1945, and he's still only known as "Hitler's pet alligator." 
  
• Not a bad look. 
  
• "[Trump] has taken something that does not belong to him - the memory of my dead wife - and perverted it for perceived political gain." - widow of Lori Kaye Klausutis, who was the subject of Trump's deranged tweet accusing Joe Scarborough of murder, requesting Twitter to take it down.   Edit: Good lord. Trump just did it again and then deleted it.  Double edit: He reposted it in full form and double downed. 
  
• I railed on Lake Bridgeport being closed on Saturday.  With the lake rising even more, closing it as of yesterday would at least be arguably justifiable. But not on Saturday. (It's 2.64 feet high this morning.) 
• Nothing drives me quite as nuts as the "good writing" snob. I think it first started in law school when the professor in my "Legal Writing and Research" class would pronounce "literature" in an extremely Harvard sounding way despite the fact he was from Texas. (He put a haughty "chuhr" on the end of it.) Anyway, I saw the following post and clicked on the article out of curiosity. You know what the second sentence was in this "good writing" article?: "The ability to say a thing clearly and directly is rather to be chosen than great riches." Yep, "rather to be chosen." Here's a more efficient sentence: "Kill me." 
  
• I bought a gallon of paint over the weekend and came away with these observations: (1) Man, paint expensive, and (2) the whole process - from type, color, and quantity - is way too intimidating.  
• Legal: Here is  "virtual grand jury" article from below.  

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• It's an official holiday. I'm officially the hardest working man in show business.
• The Board:
  
• Texas. While away it turned into a serious downward trend then we had an uptick on the 7 day average line. 
  
• Wise County. 43 total. 11 active.  (Despite some questionable number crunching by officials for one day, my prediction of no more than 12 active cases -- at least until Fall -- is holding steady.)
• As much as Trump is a master politician of keeping his 43% base fired up and loyal, he's completely clueless in trying to expand that base. Case in point: Golfing on Memorial Day weekend -- a  weekend as the country trends towards 100,000 deaths and 20% unemployment. Any way you slice it, that is a horrible, horrible look. 
  
• Joe Biden's campaign immediately jumped on it with an ad.
  
• And he deserves the grief he catches.
  
• With regards to social distancing, a video of a pool by Lake of the Ozarks was all over social media this weekend. I'd be worried about catching more than just the coronavirus.
  
• I didn't realize this was a problem. 
  
• Lake Bridgeport, which was right at one foot above conservation level, was closed indefinitily late Saturday on this holiday weekend. That's dumb. You close the lake when there has been a rapid increase in the water level which has caused floating debris to be everywhere and/or boat wakes could cause damage to already flooding property. Neither of those are happening. 
• We learned Trump's bank account and routing numbers. 
  
  
  
  
• The wind damage in Bowie was very bad on Friday night, but the size the hail in Burkburnett was the eye-opener.
  
• This occurred on sunny Friday afternoon. How in the world did that happen? 
  
• aTm used the opportunity to announced that athletes could start returning to school for workouts on a limited bases to take a shot at Texas. 
  
• If you would have asked me if I regularly see and speak to a lawyer in the Wise County courthouse that had personally argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, I would have bet big money on the answer of "absolutely not." I would have lost. I learned on Friday that Richard Gladden did just that in 1992 when he was just three years out of law school. And he did a good job. And won. (You can listen to it here with a cool interactive transcript.)  
  
• Oh, my.
  
  
  
  
• Crap like this would get a regular person banned from Twitter. (Yes, I'm especially hard on Trump this morning, but he proved once again over the last three days that he is a despicable and miserable human being. And I haven't even mentioned his disgusting retweets on this, of all things, Memorial Day weekend. ) 
  
  
  
  
• Jacksboro made the front page of The Dallas Morning News over the weekend. 
  
• Dateline Midland. This is ridiculous. (Video) He was being detained in the most bizarre of ways for, wait for it, rolling through a stop sign and a turn signal violation. Is anyone trained in de-escalating a situation? (Spoiler alert: When the camera pans to the right so you can see the person who it the object of the officers' attention, it is not Shelley Luther.)
  
• I finally got around to watching Yesterday -- the movie about the Beatles being wiped from the memories of almost everyone except one small time musician. My verdict is the same as almost everyone else's: What a great concept and great movie for the first half that seriously lost its way down the back stretch.  And Kate McKinnon's over-the-top character had absolutely no place in Danny Boyle film.
  
• I had never seen Band of Brothers so I made it through four episodes over the last couple of days.  I actually ended up wanting more of the veterans briefly talking before each episode and less extended fight scenes. (Side note: Band of Brothers came up on MSNBC this morning and one guest actually said we should also go back and watch Pearl Harbor. Huh?! They aren't even in the same ballpark.)