6.23.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts


  • Wise County/Courthouse Square Coronavirus Update:
    • We have a second employee with the County Clerk's office confirmed to have the virus. The office was understandably shut down yesterday.
    • That brings the Courthouse Square Outbreak of the past week to a total of 6 (three in a law office, a worker in the courthouse, and two in the County Clerk's Office.)
    • So how many people in Wise County have it altogether? We have no idea. The numbers coming from DSHS were questionable at best and, as of yesterday, we learned we won't even get those any longer!  
    • As I understand it, Wise County had been keeping its own website updated with numbers received from DSHS from its regional office. We will no longer get those numbers (and the site hasn't been updated since last Thursday.) Instead the only numbers we have or from the DSHS "state" website which, amazingly, is only an "estimate" and was less reliable than the unreliable regional numbers. (The state site is showing 11 active cases this morning.) Why is the lack of information happening?
    • Heck with the six people around the courthouse and the half dozen from a Decatur insurance agency, I know of 12 cases myself.  How is it possible we don't have an official count? How can we have official statewide numbers without a county breakdown? 
    • We are headed into the heavily attended Wise County Reunion with statewide coronavirus numbers going through the roof and yet we no idea how it is impacting Wise County other than word of mouth and piecemeal information circulated through goofballs like me. 
  • Those Texas statewide numbers:
    Hospitalizations (another record day)

    Daily new cases
  • Greg Abbott continues to lead like a scared child. Yesterday he said that "COVID-19 is spreading at an unacceptable rate", and finally decided that "Wearing a mask will help us to keep Texas open." But he'll implement no changes to our current "let's open up Texas!" policy. 
  • Mask Confusion: How screwed up is Texas? At the very moment that Abbott was giving his "update", the Texas AG was posting the request for an official opinion he had he received from Harris County asking whether a county can require people to wear masks in county buildings. How insane it that? 
  • Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen has some harsh words for those who don't wear a mask:
  • Just when his enablers tried to support him with the "he was just joking" defense, Trump continues to tell us why he hates testing because of his mentally-challenged reasoning. 
  • Trump is headed to Arizona today and will be in a church which has discovered a Coronavirus miracle cure. 
  • I'm sorry, but my famous Skepticism Alert is really going off on this Noose Story and NASCAR. No, I don't think it is a Jussie Smollett situation, and I don't think Bubba Wallace had anything to do with it. However, I'm not ruling out this being a money based NASCAR publicity stunt. NASCAR, which has been dying on the vine, is in dire straits. It desperately needed a Hail Mary with some good and free press. And, boy, did it get it yesterday. After NASCAR oddly revealed and promoted the noose story via a press release, it then orchestrated a made-for-TV moment on the track yesterday. There's something not right about all of this.  (Not to mention, there's no photo of the noose. Bubba Wallace didn't even "see" it. I'm not sure who even "found" it in the secured area. And no arrests -- assuming there's even a crime here -- have been made.)
  • I very rarely watch The Twilight Zone but stumbled on a very timely White Supremacy episode a couple of nights ago. I kept thinking the lead character looked familiar, and then it hit me: That's a young Dennis Hopper!
  • I probably shouldn't have shut down my Expert Weather Lab a couple of weeks ago.

at 8:31 AM

6.22.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • Mini Coronavirus Outbreak in Decatur update:
    • When we last left off, we had three people in one office near the courthouse diagnosed last week plus one other unrelated person. To clarify, the "other person" works within the courthouse.
    • New: A family member of one of the three is now hospitalized. Diagnosis is pending.
    • New: A front line Wise County Clerk's office employee has been diagnosed with the virus. 
    • New: A courthouse employee had mild symptoms and was able to get tested late last week with the results pending. (The results probably came back over the weekend, but I don't know them yet.)
    • We've got a mess on our hands. 
    • Edit: Getting plenty of rumors of a local insurance agency with six confirmed cases. Developing . . . 
    • Edit with breaking news: County Clerk's office closing at noon
    • The Texas dashboard is showing 11 active cases in Wise County. Our local dashboard doesn't get numbers from the weekend. I'm beginning to think the reported numbers might be worthless.
  • Texas: Hospitalizations continued to rise over the weekend. Total cases continue to skyrocket as well. 
  • Random Coronavirus news: The New PR's in the stockyards is in the process of being shut down by TABC, 32 TCU students have tested positive, Clemson had 23 players test positive, 30 LSU players have been quarantined and 100 people were diagnosed after hitting the "Tigerland" bars near campus, and K-State has stopped voluntary workouts after 14 athletes test positive. You guys think we'll have college football this fall? 
  • Trump had a horrible turnout in Tulsa on Saturday night for a rally that was meant to kickoff his campaign. You probably heard most of the angles, but . . . 
    • Why the low turnout? The trolling by the K-pop of free tickets of which there are an unlimited supply wouldn't do it, and the claim of protesters blocking entrances is laughable. If you wanted to go, you could have gotten in. His fans just didn't turn out. 
    • If anything, Oklahoma might be smarter than we gave them credit for. Who would want to go to what they thought would be a packed house in the midst of a Coronavirus update? 
    • But that was a political disaster. You know what it reminded me off? A new non-denominational hipster church whose newness has worn off. 
    • Or it kind of reminded me of this. 
    • The weirdest thing was that Trump spent 17 valuable minutes trying to do damage control about his walk down a 3 degree ramp at West Point and his drinking a glass of water there. He thought that was a good idea to spend time on? (Transcript)
    • He didn't mention George Floyd by name. He doesn't care. But he continues his not so veiled desire for a Civil War as he talked about the protesters:  "Our people are not nearly as violent, but if they ever were, it would be a terrible, terrible day for the other side."
    • And his staff had to scramble to say Trump was just joking about the deaths of over 100,000 people. "When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please. They test and they test." Good lord. 
    • I couldn't believe Trump would allow himself to be caught looking so beaten down coming off the helicopter once he returned home. He's all about optics, but at that moment he didn't care. That was a beaten down man. (The video with Charlie Brown Christmas music is perfect.)
  • He's laying the groundwork this morning to claim his re-election loss is illegitimate.
  • Here's a hot sports opinion: There is something fishy about this.
  • There was so much going on this weekend I didn't even have a chance to go down this rabbit trail. But it sounds like a good one. 
  • In what would otherwise be a Watergate-like scandal, we had a Friday Night Massacre where AG Bill Barr lied about the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (the one investigating Trump for all sorts of things) resigning and would immediately be replaced by an interim hand-picked successor. From there it got crazy. The U.S. Attorney said he wasn't resigning, Barr told him that, well, Trump fired him, Trump then said he wasn't involved in it at all, and then the U.S. Attorney agreed to leave but only once his second in command would continue his investigations until his successor was approved by the Senate. It'a amazing this is already off the front pages. 
  • The oil money and morally corrupt Empower Texans got in trouble after a hot mic got two of its stooges (including its general counsel) profanely bad mouthing Gov. Abbott after they thought a podcast had ended.
  • What do I always say about government contracts? This is the group which handles civil and criminal database information (and more) for most Texas counties. 
  • Dak Prescott signing his Franchise Tag offer is the biggest bunch of nothing news ever. There was 0% chance he wouldn't. The only question is why did it take him so long? 
  • For you local talk radio fans, Mark Davis was livid this morning over a Twitter war he had this weekend. He got his feelings hurt because someone called him out over his die-on-that-hill hypocritical devotion to Trump. He calls it a "friendship destroyed." Anyone know who he was talking about? 


at 8:36 AM

6.19.2020

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







at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts


  • Breaking Wise County coronavirus news. (And I'm serious.) 
    • We've got a full blown mini-coronavirus outbreak in Decatur. 
    • Over the last three days, there have been four new confirmed cases all in close proximity to the courthouse. These cases have yet to show up in the "official numbers" but they are real. (I'm not writing this otherwise.)
    • Three of the individuals worked together and at least one of the three would have crossed paths with the fourth. This thing moved quickly and easily among them.
    • My hard-hitting investigation revealed this:  Those who contracted the virus were asymptomatic for about seven days, and they had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong. Then it hit them -- and they knew it. One went from "feeling kinda funny" in the morning to "I've got to get home" by noon.  
    • That period of being asymptomatic led to this: At the minimum, the Wise County Courthouse was exposed. 
    • In highly technical medical terms, those in proximity to all of this and who may have been also been exposed are "freaking out." 
    • Wise County official stats are showing 9 active cases this morning. That's one less than yesterday. Like I said, you can definitely add four to that. And we are waiting to see where it went from those four. 
    • There's another aspect to this story which, if true, is shocking, But I can't confirm it. 
  • Texas: We set a new record in hospitalizations yesterday. And it was the third highest day ever in new confirmed cases. Think about this: The four people in Decatur I wrote about in the first bullet point are not in the hospital. You only do that if you're having trouble staying alive. Otherwise, you just ride it out. And how many people without insurance never go to a doctor, never get tested, and are just try to handle it on their own?

  • Also notable Wise County news: We had an attempted suicide by hanging in the jail. 
  • Someone asked me if the courthouse was shut down because of the coronavirus exposure. I don't think it is. Then that person reminded me it was shut down for cleaning in 2007 when the The Great Wise County Courthouse STD Crab Scare occurred. 
  • "That's a bold statement." Story.
  • Thirteen UT football players have the 'Rona. 
  • A couple of people asked me to explain to the Supreme Court's DACA decision yesterday. I don't think I'm smart enough. The best I can tell is that the Court said Trump had the authority to shut down DACA but he had to do it through the Department of Homeland Security which originated the program. He did. But since DHS must do it, they must follow the Administrative Procedures Act which requires an agency to at least make a minimal effort to explain why it is doing what it is doing. Those reasons don't have to be much. Just say something that makes the decision anything other than "arbitrary and capricious" (that's easy to do), then the decision will stand. Trump's DHS failed to do so here. So basically, DHS was so bad at its job and made so little effort in trying to boot 700,000 innocent people out of the country, that this effort was declared invalid. Can they try again? Sure. Will they? I bet they don't with an election of the horizon. Killing a program which is popular with most Americans probably wasn't that good of an idea to start with.
  • It ain't always about you, hoss.
  • But since you are curious about how many people like you, we have a new Fox News poll.
  • I'm no "data integrity" expert, but these multiple ways to enter the same charge in the Wise County court database doesn't seem to be it if consistency is a desired goal. All were filed yesterday.
  • There was a weird and funny moment in the White House yesterday when a reporter was able to hold up John Bolton's book and ask Trump about why he was trying to block its publication. You see, if she's holding up the book then that means . . . . (Unrelated: Trump would later be caught playing with his phone while guests were speaking. Video.)
  • This was so weird yesterday that I almost think it is some kind of trap Gaetz is setting. He isn't married. His "son" is 19.

  • With all the Confederate statues going down, I was reminded that I wrote this five years ago.
  • I'm still working my way through Watchmen on HBO, and I can't look away. It won't be every one's cup of tea, but there's something about it which I just love. All episodes are being aired for free this weekend by HBO. The Tulsa Massacre inspired series will be shown as Trump is speaking in Tulsa. 
  • Sports: Alabama added a future home-and-home against Ohio State yesterday. Say what you want about Alabama, their voluntary upcoming non-conference schedules are crazy impressive.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold

at 8:29 AM

6.18.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



  • Coronavirus Texas: The explosion in hospitalizations -- the gold standard for monitoring the severity of the virus -- continues. And the rate of the daily increases (275 added yesterday alone) has taken off as well. It's about time to face a painful truth: All those snooty experts and their school-book learnin' opinions about the need to social distance and stay at home were exactly right. And when we abandoned those rules in late April we are now seeing the consequences. 
    Source
    Total cases. (The spike two days ago included
    some new prison numbers. Yesterday's numbers do not.)
  • Remember Sen. John Cornyn's initial response to those experts? Let's just all yuk it up. 
  • Wise County: Active cases are at 10. (+3 from the last report). The Texas dashboard of estimated cases has us a 11.  
  • Saginaw ISD and Southlake ISD are the newest schools to shut down summer workouts after a positive test of a student/athlete. That brings the number of metroplex schools to halt their programs to nine.  SMU reported yesterday that five athletes have tested positive. UT reported six cases. Those schools are still going forward with workouts. 
  • Everyone still think we are going to have full school classes in the fall? It's already mid-June. Fort Worth ISD has begun to hedge its bets by offering the option of in person or virtual learning. That alone seems to be a logistical nightmare.
  • Gov. Greg Abbott continues to botch this, and his actions yesterday were mind boggling. After previously taking full charge of the coronavirus and proclaiming his orders trumped any edict by any county judge or mayor, he said the following during a interview to a Waco TV station about masks: A county judge can't mandate that citizens wear masks, but the county can order private businesses to order its customers to wear masks. Huh? What? He said that was in his order all along and that one county judge "finally figured it out." So his order was some kind of mysterious board game? Far right wingers weren't happy.  Look at this word salad from our inept governor during the interview:
  • Proof of Abbott's incompetence: On April 27th, he used the outlier date of April 19 (a day with unusually high numbers) as a bench mark in order to proclaim “the COVID-19 infection rate has been on the decline over the past 17 days" and Texas was safe to reopen that weekend. (Look at those paltry numbers back then. Yesterday we had 3,511 new cases.)
  • I don't want to believe the McMuffin Cop video is real. But it is. She's a deputy with a Georgia county sheriff's office. Yes, a deputy who will emotionally break down over a slow McMuffin order by McDonald's (and immediately begin to speculate that it might be being tampered with) gets to carry a gun and make a split second decision as to whether her life is in danger before she kills you. 
  • Aunt Jemima got the axe yesterday. That would have been a timely decision -- in 1980. Heck, I cringed at the image on the product when I was a kid. They updated it in 1989, but the inspiration for the original imagine is definitely an "Oh, my!" 
  • This sheriff also made news earlier this year "when he said he wouldn't enforce Gov. Doug Ducey's stay-at-home order." 
  • Trump's press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked about the wisdom of having a campaign rally in Tulsa this weekend. If she is talking about the spread of the virus, someone want to tell her there won't be baseball games with fans in the stands this year? If she is talking about the chance of being killed by a foul ball, some want to tell her there are nets? 
  • Art work in the new NFL stadium in Las Vegas is better than at Jerry World (save and except Star Sky Mirror. I love Star Sky Mirror.) 

  • John Bolton's new book has enough information to get Trump arrested in a civilized country. I'm sure all his stories are true, but Bolton is traitor to his country who put potential book sales over service to the nation when he declined to voluntarily testify in the impeachment trial. He deserves to be ignored. 
  • Have you ever had a timing belt on your car snap? Ever learn for the first time that you also have something called an "interference engine"? Ever learn the hard way what happens when a timing belt breaks on that interference engine? I have. 
  • When bad stuff like that happens I'll spend a day trying to convince myself that "Well, it could be worse." 


at 8:36 AM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)