Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

I still think about this. At the bottom of the Update there would be an entry like: "Admitted to Decatur Community Hospital: Joe Blow, 67; Mary Decker, 23; James Bond, 80. Released: Jim Smith, 50; Janie Rubble, 18, and baby girl."  I think the practice ended sometime in the 1990s.   

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• Small increase from yesterday. At some point, it will abruptly do a U-turn and head back down, but we just don't know when that is. 
  
  
  
• Vaccine "passport" developments:
• San Antonio ISD has cancelled football scrimmages until its players show vaccination proof.
• A federal judge requires a person released on bond to be vaccinated.
• Fox News is requiring all employees to enter their "vaccination status" into a company database.
• The federal government is requiring all nursing home employees to get the vaccine or lose Medicare and Medicaid funding.
• Booster shots will be available on September 20th. Where do I get in line? 
• President Biden's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos which aired this morning didn't go well. And you can criticize the "liberal media" all you want, but George started with a haymaker.
  
  
  
• Just own that it was a screw-up, but point out that now the airport is under control and we are getting people out there with flights every hour. 
• The guy which allegedly shot a Clay County deputy in his bulletproof vest was arrested in Arlington. 
  
  
  
• Lake Bridgeport is on the rise. It was about two feet low due to the Water Board opening up the spillway gates in mid-July to release water to Eagle Mountain Lake, but it's up a foot and a half and rising. Rain got dumped on the watershed above Jacksboro and is still pouring in. 
  
  
  
• There was big news last year when an arrest was made in a murder case from 1977 of a girl who was abducted in a bowling alley parking near the Benbrook traffic circle. It was unique because the case was solved using familial DNA research. For some reason, the case is actually going to trial today. The defendant is 78 years old. You would have thought it could have been worked out. 
  
  
  
• Facebook has a "major announcement" this morning. I don't know if Facebook will be the one to pull it off, but virtual reality will be the major technological advancement in the future. Our grandparents would have thought a crystal clear Facetime call on a handheld device from across the country was witchcraft. So what's life going to be like in 50 years? (Heck, how about just 10 or 20?)
  
  
  
• Edit: This announcement turned out to be stupid. Facebook will use avatars instead of a life-like holograms of the users.  
  
  
  
• Official traffic "stop" numbers for 2020 in Wise County:
• Decatur PD 7,587
• Bridgeport PD 5,272
• Boyd PD 3,398
• Rhome PD 2963
• WCSO 2,501
• That site didn't give me the number of traffic stops by DPS, but my own tracking shows DPS wrote 3,442 actual tickets in Wise County in 2021. That number is misleading low because it excludes "warning only" stops, stops which resulted in arrests but with no tickets/citations, and stops where the person was just let go
• I'm insane now.
  
  
  
• I was all set to make this a bullet point until the coach and a snarky AD showed up in the comments of this Twitter post and said it wasn't true.  (Runge ISD is between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.)
  

  

  
  
  
• I finally finished Deadwood. Thumbs up. I think that Al Swearengen is one of TV's all-time great characters.
• I've moved on to Billions. After two episodes, it's a little cliched and corny, but I'll give it a chance. 
• I finished the book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. The first half on Texas history should be required reading for every Texan. 

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

This ended up being a pretty wild case out of Paradise where the guy, Mark Schomburg, eventually pled to a 40 year sentence.    There isn't as much online about the case as you would expect but, if I remember correctly, a woman's body was found rolled up in carpet in his garage. (A little bizarre side note is that Schomburg sued his home insurance company for failing to cover the items which eventually went missing from his unprotected home while he was awaiting trial. A pro se pleading in the Fort Worth Court of Appeals revealed he had a ton of guns, Rolexes, and gold coins. The list begins at p. 27)

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• The surge is surging.
  
  
  
• It's the Confederacy.
  
  
  
• Gov. Abbott has tested positive for COVID. He got special treatment of being tested every day, had a third booster shot, and immediately had access to Regeneron's drug. All at government expense. All the while, he does nothing to prevent the spread of the virus. This is him on Tuesday evening in Collin County. He's going to be fine, but he might have killed someone who is unvaccinated in that maskless crowd.
  
  
   
• Radar estimates of rainfall, and this was before last night's storms. Wise County got drenched.
  
  
  
• Regarding the guy on the loose for shooting the Clay County deputy, check out that final quote from the Sheriff. (Thanks to my far North Texas correspondent who sent me this.)
  
  
  
• Wreck yesterday near Heritage Trace Parkway in north Fort Worth yesterday. Explain that one to your boss. 
  
  
  
• We had a broadcaster deciding to throw out some Asian Accent Humor during a game last night. I'm not sure he needs to be cancelled for this (audio), but what was he thinking?
  
  
  
• Regarding things you can't say any longer, I saw this Bug Bunny clip a couple of months ago and I've thought about it ever since. 
  
  
  
• Decatur's own was promoted to Triple A ball by the Atlanta Braves yesterday.
  
  
  
• Flashback: 35 year ago today. Man, this was a big deal. 
  
  
  
• If these guys on the special teams for the Longhorns aren't shamed into oblivion today for allowing this video to be released, it's going to be a long season.
  
  
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

The soon to be convicted, and then pardoned, sheriff thought so much of himself back in the day.   (You really haven't heard much of Michelle Bachmann since that failed presidential campaign. Herman Cain died of COVID after being diagnosed with it nine days after attending Trump's Tulsa rally last summer.) 

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• COVID. We had 1,428 in hospitals on June 27th. By my count, since then we have increased to a total of 10,363 people over 50 consecutive days of increases. The first two surges can't match that. Focus on the steepness of the current slope. 
  
  
  
• DPS sending out a "Blue Alert" at 11:30 p.m. to all of Texas cellphones with absolutely no information was dumb.
  
  
  
• It was actually prompted by a deputy being shot in Clay County with was "caught" by his bulletproof vest.  (I understand why you might want to issue the alert for Clay and surrounding counties, but I doubt people in El Paso, Texarkana, and Corpus Christi locked their doors.)
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Edit: Car has been found. 
• This is an amazing. 
  
  
  
• Taliban news: The Taliban workout video in the Presidential Palace might overtake Jane Fonda's as a bestseller.
  

  
  
• The non-Talibans weren't having as much fun. 
  
  
  
• Flashback: She, too, was an "Afghan refugee" when she fled during the Soviet invasion in the early 1980s. 
  
  
  
• The Star-Telegram has a story today about a murder warrant issued out in Parker County for a 73 year old man accused of killing his new wife.  What makes the story wild is that his former wife ended up dead, and her family in Florida has a no-holds barred website detailing the relationship up until her death. (Pure, unsubstantiated speculation: Is there any chance that this guy, who is on the run, is the man who shot at the Clay County deputy?)
  
  
  
• We had a new meme develop yesterday around this lady who instigated a crazy brawl in the stands of a Charger game.  Here's the fight from above. Here's a close up angle. And here's what she did.  
  
  
  
• Meant to mention this lady yesterday. These people are all around you. Watch.
  
  
  
• The AP Preseason Poll came out yesterday, and I noticed Louisiana-Lafayette was at #23. I had to check them out to even figure out what conference they were in. Instead I learned the Evil Empire has an interesting pre-conference game with the Ragin Cajuns to open the season -- a game which I suspect they didn't expect to be interesting when they scheduled it. The Longhorns are a 9.5 points favorite at home for the game on 9/5. 
  
  
  
• After years of hearing complaints, someone told me about an absolutely positive experience while getting their DL renewed in person at the Decatur DPS office.  Adequately staffed with friendly workers. Good job. 

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

It's true.

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• On Friday, we eclipsed the total hospitalizations number of the first surge. The daily increases over the weekend weren't major, but they were still on the rise. This week will be interesting. 
  
  
  
• Decatur COVID related news. 
  
  
  
• It almost did turn into Saigon yesterday, but as bad as the optics were -- and they were really bad --  the Americans got out. It's been 20 years of bad decisions, and all are to blame.
  
  
  
• Those bad decisions: Bush going in initially, Obama doubling down, Trump meeting with and giving credibility to the Taliban, and Biden completely wrong that Afghanistan would fall at all.
  
  
  
• But let's not revise history: 90% of Americans supported the invasion in 2001.
• We spent more than $88 billion to train and equip Afghanistan's army. And the only result was that the private sector of the Military Industrial Complex got rich  -- which seems to be the only modern purpose of war. 
• I didn't understand everyone wanting to hang all of Afghanistan around Biden's neck yesterday. Blaming a guy who was ending a 20 year old nightmare doesn't make sense. Do you know who was President when Saigon happened? LBJ? Nope. Nixon? Nope. It was Gerald Ford. 
• I bet this is right:
  
  
  
  
• On second thought, maybe it is an actual Saigon. This happened after we went to bed.  Video.  
  
  
  
• This is a wild ass video. And if this video is accurate, at least one person who hung onto the plane fell out of the sky. Oh, my. 
  
  
  
• Legal nerd stuff. The state of masks in schools is very confusing in Texas. Ultimately, no school will able to legally implements a mask policy, but that's no the case at this moment. Here is an explanation as to what is going on right now:
• Dallas County:  It's important to note that Dallas County government (think Clay Jenkins and not the ISD) sued the Governor over his no-masks emergency order. Jenkins won at the district court and at the Dallas Court of Appeals, and a TRO was issued against the Governor's order. The Texas Supreme Court overturned those decisions late yesterday but here is the limited ruling: The underlying order enjoining the Governor's order as it applied to Dallas County government was set aside. Dallas County government must comply.
• Dallas ISD, however, then announced they would continue to implement it's no mask policy. How? There's been no court order to tell them to the contrary. They weren't a party to the Clay Jenkins lawsuit. The Texas Supreme Court ruling applied to Dallas County government and, technically, no one else. 
• Now would the Texas Supreme Court rule the same as to any case brought by or against Dallas ISD or any other ISD? Sure. But it hasn't happened yet.
• Compare Fort Worth ISD. There some private individuals sued the school district and won in district court on Friday. The result: Fort Worth ISD was enjoined from enforcing it's put on a mask policy. The school appealed it to the Fort Worth Court of Appeals but that court didn't rule over the weekend. 
• I've got to make a quick comment about the Fort Worth ISD case because I actually watched the hearing by Zoom on Friday afternoon before Judge John Chupp.  That guy was clueless. He didn't care about the text of the emergency order, he didn't care about statutory construction, and he didn't care that the Plaintiffs had to show irreparable harm if they were forced to wear a mask. Nope. Instead he acted like Judge Judy if Judge Judy was a simpleton. It was amazing. Here's an excerpt:
  
  
  
• A metaphor for Texas:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• County Judge J.D. Clark told me that we've got a heck of a find as the courthouse renovation begins to take shape. A metallurgist/restoration expert has found that a vault door in front of the current district judge's office has an oil painting and a gold inlet around the edges. It was, for some unknown reason, painted over decades ago. The guy will restore it like he did in Navarro County which is probably pretty close to what the door will look like:
  
  
  
• Decatur's own Bryce Elder continues to dominate in Double AA for the Mississippi Braves. He's now 7-1 with a 3.21 ERA. In his last start, he went six innings and gave up no runs, no walks, and struck out nine. 
  
  
  
• I saw the Internet from Vyve in action at a home in Bridgeport this weekend, and I can't believe what I saw. It's amazing. It uses, surprisingly, Bridgeport's old cable TV lines. An old fashioned coaxial cable goes into the back of the modem/router.