Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• The Board: We started the day with 9,259 total cases and added a whopping 4,530 cases to bring the total to 13,789.  
  
• The total death numbers went from 150 to 207.
• While the rest of us are about to take a financial hit unlike anything we've seen, some members of Congress were focusing on becoming rich(er) instead of protecting us. The following should piss you off to no end. Let me introduce Senators Richard Burr and Kelley Loeffler. I'll break this down seperately for both of them: 
• Rep. Richard Burr (R-NC) 
• First, he is Chairman of the Senate Intellegence Committee making him a member of the "Gang of 8" allowing him to have access to secrets and get a heads up to information only a handful of people in country know. In any event, even that Committee was receiving daily closed door briefings on the coronavirus beginning in January.
• But there was nothing to worry about, he told us. On February 7, he wrote an opinion piece for Fox News saying  the U.S. is “is better prepared than ever before” to deal with a potential health crisis like the coronavirus. 
• However, on February 13th, he dumped over $1 million in stock. His timing was impecable. And it took 33 transactions to get it done. 
  
• Based upon his secret information, did he believe something he wasn't saying publically? Of course. Behind closed doors, and secretly recorded, he told his donors on February 27th:  “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history. It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
• How bad is all this? Even Fox News Tucker Carlson went after him last night saying he better have an "honest explanation" or resign. 
  
• Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA)
• She seems innocent enough. And she's a newbie. She was just sworn in on January 6th after being appointed to become a senator after the incumbent in her state of Georgia, Sen. Johnny Isakson, resigned.
  
• Loeffler immediately became a member of a committee who received a closed door private briefing on the coronavirus on January 24th. Here's her tweet about it. 
  
• Since you know what's coming, let's make this even juicier: She is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and the chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, which is NYSE's parent company.
• Here comes the payoff: After receiving the closed door briefing and over the next three weeks, through February 14th, Loeffler made 27 sales of stock worth between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000. Once again, all coming before the market crashed. 
• But she did buy some stock: One purchase was worth between $100,000 and $250,000 in Citrix, a technology company that offers teleworking software. It has gone up just the stock market crash.
• Let me wrap this up with a nice little drawing. On January 22nd, Sen. Burr changed his Twitter profile pic to the one below. Who's that lady in the drawing with him?  Amazingly, it is Sen. Loeffler.  It's from the impeachment trial where they were being asked to judge whether Trump acted corruptly in his dealings with the Ukraine. 
  
• This looks like the opening scene of Vanilla Sky where Tom Cruise is very confused about the emptiness.
  
  
  
  
• Trump made sure to get the important points out yesterday. Sheesh. 
  
  
  
  
• I've said before that Fox News is the equivalent of State TV. Let me revise that: The little watched OANN (the One America News Network) is actually State TV. Get a load of these two questions asked to Trump yesterday during the latest coronavirus briefing by OANN's Chanel Rion: 
• “Mr. President, do you consider the term ‘Chinese food’ to be racist because it is food that originated from China?” Trump: "I don’t think that’s racist at all.”
• After Trump paused to let her continue (as if he knew what was coming), the following question was asked that she read from notes: “On that note, major left-wing media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese communist party narratives, and they are claiming you are racist for making these claims about ‘Chinese virus.’ Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals, and Latin gangs and cartels and they work right here out of the White House with direct access to you and your team?” Good lord. Video.
  
• Uh, Rion previously reported that the coronavirus was created in a lab in North Carolina. But go ahead and give her White House press credentials. 
• Denton County has nine reported cases with the City of Denton getting its first yesterday.  You know, it's a really good question as to when Wise County officially reports its first case. I'm placing a bet sometime next week. And I'll go with Thursday.
• There was a double rainbow over Dallas yesterday evening. So we've got that going for us. 
  
• The Cowboys signed HaHa Clinton-Dix so that's another positive.