Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Wise County active cases: 39 (-1 from Thursday).
• Texas: All we got yesterday were the lower weekend numbers, but the death numbers really plummeted even factoring that in. 
  
• This is consistent with the TEA guidelines issued in the first week of July, and all schools will require it. 
  
• But, man, the bigger news is that Decatur voted last night in a 4-3 vote to prohibit those kids who opt for virtual learning to participate in extracurricular activities. 
• Since the UIL has given all 4A schools and below the OK to play football beginning at the end of August, do they have to wear masks since they have to do so in the classroom? Anyone else see a little bit of a problem here? 
• None of the restrictions in Texas issued on July 2nd apply to counties with less than 20 active cases. Right now, there are 53 counties on the list (which includes bordering Jack and Montague counties.)
• After the PAC 10 and Big 10 rocked college football by announcing conference only football schedules, the Big 12, SEC, and ACC are still planning on playing full football schedules. Opening games are set for 30 days from now. Man, that's bold.
• Me to Mrs. LL this weekend: "This planet has too much gravity. It could be reduced by 50% and we'd be just fine and life would be more pleasant."  Think about it. 
• Trump quick hits:
• Is he trying to lose? 
  
• How many times do people in the West Wing look at each every day and utter the question, "He just said what?"
  
• No, in the America you want it to be illegal to say negative things about you. 
  
• There was a widely circulated false video claiming a cure for the coronavirus. It was so bad that even Facebook had to ban it. Then, last night, Trump found it and retweeted it on Twitter.  Twitter had to delete it from Trump's feed.   
  
• Look what I got in the mail! And please note the word "executive." (And that's some credit card quality plastic they used.)
  
  
• It's not for everyone, but CNN is doing a four part series on this last term at the Supreme Court with insider information. We are hearing stuff we normally don't. Remember we oddly just learned of Justice Roberts fall that put him in the hospital in June when it wasn't publicly released? Someone's talking.  Part 1. Part 2. 
• I finally watched the first Coen brothers film, Blood Simple, over the weekend. It's good stuff. It stars the very young Frances McDormand (the female cop from Fargo), Dan Hedaya (Mr. Butabi from A Night at the Roxbury ), and the great M. Emmet Walsh (who I will always remember from Raising Arizona with the line "No, not that mother-scratcher! Bill Parker!")
  
• I'm now into Season 3 of The Leftovers, and I'm waiting for the end before a give a smokin' hot TV opinion about it. But in the first episode of the season, it opened with an extended mysterious scene accompanied with the background song of I Wished We'd All Been Ready.  I was giddy. I was able to mouth every single word of one of the darkest, fear-jolting Christian songs I ever learned as a kid. 
• Below: Not surprisingly for that guy, but the Denton County Sheriff may not know how to run a jail. (Side note: Have we not had one reported case of the coronavirus at the Wise County Jail? If no one has asked, I'm asking.)

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Wise County: Who knows. It was 30 active cases the last time we got any numbers.
• Texas: 
• I'm pretty sure we've peaked with new cases this time around, but deaths are still at a new high. (Deaths always trail new cases so we should see those go down over the next two weeks at well.) 
• This decline all corresponds with the mask mandate on July 2nd: Wear a mask and close things like bars, and then the cases go down.  
• Even if we see a steady decrease in all of the charts over the next four weeks, every daily number dwarfs what was happening in April and May.
• If schools reopen, we'll find out pretty quickly if that was a good idea or not. 

• 

  Deaths

  
  

  

  Hospitalizations (probably 15% under-reported due to the new rules.)

  
  

  

  New cases.

• Breaking minutes ago: MLB's season is in big trouble after one week.  We've got a cancellation. (Maybe I was too optimistic.)  Uh, Canada, knew better after all. 
  
• It finally dawned on me what a bind parents are in if they have elementary school children if schools don't open up this Fall.  
• Financial: Let's face it, schools serve as daycare for elementary school kids. Two-earner families make up almost all of America. Those families with elementary age children get by with no school in the summer by forking over dollars they don't have for daycare and then relying upon camps and extended family for the other weeks. Then when school comes, they can get their feet back underneath them. That is, unless there is no in-person school.
• Practical: It's one thing to plop a high schooler in front of a computer to do their thing for online learning, but if you've seen the new expectations on elementary school kids for virtual learning, it's a whole different ballgame. At least one of the parents is going to have to go to computer school with them everyday.  This isn't the same virtual learning "program" that we had in the Spring when schools were caught off guard and just winged it for a couple of months. This will be a regimented schedule. So if the already financially strapped parent thought they had a work around by working from home, that idea just got harpooned. 
• I don't know if in-person school is a good health decision or not. I'm just saying we've got a ton of Americans who are going to be in dire straights if we don't go back, and we might have a ton of deaths if we do. We might want to cut those in responsible for having to make these decisions a bit of break. 
• A judge on the Dallas Court of Appeals was killed in a wrong way driver on I-30 east of Dallas. A car in front of him had a dashcam rolling. If you haven't seen it, it is chilling. 
  
  
• I've always thought the "open carry" guy with the itchy trigger finger is likely to kill someone one of these days, but I've never really thought about how that guy was putting his own life in danger, too. If he were to make an aggressive move towards someone, even if the gun remains at his side, and ends up dead,  the shooter is always going to have a pretty good "I felt my life was threatened" defense.
• That happened this week in Austin when a car first moved aggressively into a BLM protest and one of the marchers ended up dead as he quickly approached the vehicle while holding what he had called an "AK-47."  Video. (Everyone is analyzing it like the Zapruder film because you hear five shots, then a pause, then three shots.)
  
  
  
  
• Speaking of Zapruder films, a Weatherford "good old boy" slugged a BLM protester (video) in the streets near the courthouse but, as can be expected, it turned into a cesspool of "they started it!" online. Here another angle of it which, regardless of what happened before, sure looks like the implementation of the  ol' sucker-punch-and-run technique. The "counter-protesters" (I've never understood what they are counter-protesting) weren't exactly welcoming of people different than them. 

  

  The guy in yellow shirt is the center of controversy.

  
  

  

  Lots of Confederate flags showed up.

  
  

  

  We're all doomed.

• Seems like a good time to mention that the worst painter in the world released a new one last week. 
  
• Speaking of the Open Carry craze, take a look at it when a bunch of black guys figured out it was perfectly legal in Kentucky. It shouldn't make you feel one bit of difference if you're part of the Come and Take It crowd. 
  
• The Supreme Court on Friday, in a 5-4 vote, refused to strike down a Nevada coronavirus order  that was more restrictive of churches than casinos. I'm with the conservatives on this one. I've always thought, without any case to really back me up, that the the Free Exercise Clause was as about as close to an absolute right as anything we have. (That's my Libertarian streak coming out in me - "shall make no law respecting" seems pretty absolute to me.) Gorsuch, who I like, wrote his own dissent, but I thought he got a little petty. 
  
• Mike Huckabee wrote that Chief John Roberts should "repent" for being in the majority in that case.
• He's too busy.
  
• A crazy picture from the weekend. 
  
• The Messenger's  history columnist, Joy Burgess-Carrico,  focused last weekend on the Klan's activity in the 1920s in Wise County. Man, they were big players. She teased that her next column will concern Klan activity in the 1990s.  I can remember a Klan rally in Bridgeport around 1995, and then there was the Klan connection to bizarre bombing plot around the same time. Texas Monthly had a story about the the latter. 

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

Hold my beer while I do a flip.
(🎥 via @Dumbsheat ) pic.twitter.com/4SdqckwAfr

— Hold My Beer (@holdmyale) July 17, 2020

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Moment sunbathing mum narrowly escapes being crushed as tree collapses on her lounger pic.twitter.com/Fc1FmTC7gx

— The Sun (@TheSun) July 17, 2020

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Hold my beer while I ride this bike.
(🎥 via @HockeyCrazed11) pic.twitter.com/5xD131kdrf

— Hold My Beer (@holdmyale) July 17, 2020

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Because you want to see a dog eating a burrito on his human’s lap, who is also eating a burrito. pic.twitter.com/h6UCBMT5Bb

— Danny Deraney (@DannyDeraney) July 19, 2020

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Hold my beer while I show the kids this magic trick. 😂 pic.twitter.com/IDfjRzYBqA

— Hold My Beer (@holdmyale) July 21, 2020

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Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• Wise County: 34 active cases. 332 pending. 
• Texas: For the first time, due to Trump's new requirement that hospitals report to HHS instead of the CDC, we are now seeing wonky numbers on hospitalizations. Notice how they magically had a mysterious drop yesterday? That's one way to solve the pandemic problem. (If you know where to look, HHS will admit that yesterday's numbers represent just 85%-90% of hospitals reporting in Texas. That's not 85%-90% of the total number of people in the hospital, but 85% to 90% of hospitals. So we can't even estimate what the real number is. It shouldn't be this hard to get information in America.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I've got a theory on this one, and I feel bad even for saying that much. 
  
• This seems obvious. (But, I'll be dang, that's exactly what the order says.)
  
  
• I kind of poked fun at Bridgeport PD Chief Steve Stanford yesterday for a new picture I had seen on his Twitter profile. It just seemed a little, uh, different to me. He was a good sport and reached out to me and told me he enjoyed the mention. Then he hit me with an "Oh, by the way" message to let me know he actually had been re-creating a photo of his grandfather, Doc Whitehead.  
  
  
• I knew better than that. Whenever we see anything not fitting perfectly into our view of what "normal" should be, there's always a story behind it. I've preached that for years. #Beartrap
• I need someone to explain to me how Michael Cohen can get released from prison and placed back on home release after filing a lawsuit claiming a violation of free speech rights. From a legal standpoint, I have no idea what is going on. 
  
• The front page of the Wichita Falls paper is primarily dedicated to a high school junior who was taken off life support after a horrific traffic accident. 
  
• One of these days I'm go to take a deep dive into the conspiracy theory that The Official Liberally Lean Girl is being held against her will and medicated. 
  
• Housewives. He said, "Housewives." (And I haven't even mentioned his "Biden is going to destroy the suburbs!" campaign talking point is code for "The black man will move to your neighborhood!")
  
• If I wasn't so cheap, it would have been fun to be a DoppleRanger (at least if they would have allowed you to trick it up a bit more than they did.)
  
• I found out this morning that Jennifer Aniston's dad is the evil Victor Kiriakis from Days of Our Lives! (But I'm having a weird memory problem since Wikipedia tells me he played that character beginning in 1985, yet I would swear that I only watched the show way before that in high school during my lunch break.)
  
• Here's Dr. Fauci's first pitch in case you haven't seen it.
• Messenger: Above the Fold 

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Wise County: 32 active.
• Texas is a weird mix. Record hospitalizations. Record deaths. But new cases seem to have leveled off (at a very high level.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." One of the little talked about aspects of this entire crazy monologue is that he thinks "person" would even be in a list like that. 
  
  
• Correction from yesterday: It is Paradise ISD, not Chico ISD, who has voted not to allow extracurricular participation by students who have elected the option of virtual learning. Chico votes next week. My research department regrets this error.
• Local SWAT teams were doing what SWAT teams normally do in Fort Worth and Arlington yesterday.
  
  
  
  
• Who would have guessed that Jade Helm was really named Operation Legend and run by Republicans?
  
• The only House Republicans from Texas voting yesterday to remove Confederate statues from the capitol (which passed on a vote of 305-113 were): Reps. William Hurd, Michael Burgess, Van Taylor, Dan Crenshaw, Michael McCaul and Pete Olson.
• Name this Chief of Police in Wise County: 

  

  (I'm just funnin' with him. I like the guy.)

• Speaking of chiefs of police, who is going to replace Rex Hoskins once he leaves that position in Decatur after a krillion years to become Constable of Precinct 2? (Oh, and I like him, too.)
• Mookie Betts of the Dodgers got a 13 year $392 million contract yesterday. As in all baseball contracts, because they have a union which knows what it is doing, every dime is guaranteed. 
• Random Music Thing I Learned Yesterday: Tainted Love by Soft Cell was a cover. 
• Random legal stuff: Earlier this year the Supreme Court struck down any state law that allowed someone to be convicted of a crime by a jury which was not unanimous. Louisiana was the only state still remaining which allowed it. Now the question is whether the new decision is to be applied retroactively. (How can it not be?) Anyway, yesterday I learned of the number of people who are still locked up in Louisiana because of a non-unanimous verdicts: 1,677. Good lord. 
• Random legal stuff #2: The Texas Supreme Court sent out new rules to district court judges regarding how they should round up a new grand jury in the world of the coronavirus. This is a very curious one of them: Although there has always been a fine for failing to respond to a summons to show up as a potential grand juror, judges are "encouraged" not to threaten anyone with it on the face of the summons. 
  
• The baseball season officially begins today which is a good time to remind everyone that Field of Dreams was ultimately about turning a magical baseball field in a cornfield into a tourist attraction/commercial enterprise so Ray could pay his mortgage.
  
• My radio show this morning asked this question: "Is Texas part of the South?" I think East Texas is but the rest of Texas isn't.