Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• The Board. Beginning: 68,211 Added: 17,224 New Total: 85,435
  
• Deaths. Beginning: 1,027 Added: 268 New Total: 1,295
  
• Man, I got buried in emails yesterday for taking the Devil's Advocate position. There are lots of hots sports opinions out there, on both sides, about how bad, or not, this thing is.
• On Monday, in a soon to be awarding winning edition of Random Thoughts, I conceived of the topic of the Rural Uprising™. I also said the resistance to social distancing will be drawn along political lines. Anyone notice how the current coronavirus map looks a lot like the Red vs. Blue counties map? 
  
  
  
  
• Here's a wild stat: As of this yesterday in Texas, there have been 21,424  people tested with only 1,396 testing positive. That 6.5%  (Remember that you have to show signs to even get tested in the first place.)
• Hot prediction: There is no way Wise County doesn't go 100% back to normal by May 1st, and I'm not sure we can even hold out that long. Second hot opinion (which might cause the county judge to walk across the street and hit me over the head with his guitar): Until then, there's also no way Wise County ever becomes a Shelter-In-Place county.  As with everything else related to the virus, I might feel 100% different in a week. 

  

  Wise County churches back in business by Easter?

• Then again, maybe I need to rethink that. (From New Braunfels.)
  
• What ever happened to that Google website we were promised that would direct us to the nearest testing station and "is going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past"?
  
• Followup from yesterday: A faithful reader, who also is a researching fool, sent me the latest tax return for Wise County's W.A.R.M. food bank. Another faithful reader advised me that two other food banks in the county also receive contributions from people on probation, and that the exchange rate is $6.25 to satisfy one hour of imposed community service. (I had thought it was $8.)
• The Ticket, since there are no sports, was reviewing the 1980 playoff game between the Cowboys and the Falcons yesterday which is available in its entirety on YouTube.  I watched part of it last night because I had never seen it. It's great. You know why I've never seen it? Because the game was played on a Saturday afternoon during Christmas season which means I was working in my dad's department store. I've been the hardest working man in show business since I was a teenager. 

  

  Now you know why the current Cowboys' doctor
  wears a cowboy hat. It's a throwback look. 

• The great Curly Neal died yesterday. For those wondering, Meadowlark Lemon passed away in 2015.  
  
• Last night at midnight Neil Young Bob Dylan released a 17 minute song about the JFK assassination, and I might be insane now. 
  
• An editorial in the Dallas Morning News yesterday began, "On Monday, a cadre of law enforcement — a prosecutor, two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, at least five deputy U.S. marshals, and a U.S. magistrate judge — showed up to court to hold a detention hearing for a convicted felon who had been arrested with a handgun concealed inside his jacket." Oh my gosh! What's the back story?! What did he really do to get all of this attention? Is the gun charge just a way to get to him just like tax evasion got us Al Capone? Nope. We never even got an explanation about that guy. The whole piece was just the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District getting space in a major daily to promote how here office is still hard at work. But the lede told us about eight law enforcement officials showing up for a routine hearing? Too many cops. Too many prosecutors. 
• As I write this, not a single person was arrested in Wise County in the last 24 hours. The  average is around eight to ten. 
• The news about the shocking rise in unemployment claims was disturbing, but The New York Times had a great way of reporting it this morning. (Yep, that graph is accurate.)