Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Wise County now has a coronavirus death. No details were provided. I suppose we can look at the Update funeral service notices and speculate. 
  
• The Board. New cases on Tuesday: 26,942. Wednesday: 30,206
  
• Deaths on Tuesday: 2,407. Wednesday: 2,482. 
  
• Texas:
  
• Wise County: 7 cases total. 1 death.
• Tarrant: 61 new cases yesterday.
  
• Yesterday I said I thought Wise County would open up no earlier than May 1st and no later than May 15th.  Like I've done throughout the pandemic, I've rethought that -- primarily because I considered the Wise County Courthouse. You ever been in there on docket days? It's packed. There is no room, and you're inevitably standing shoulder to shoulder with someone. Everyone is touching the same doorknobs, step rails, pens and paper.  And then I thought about juries being called in where you have 75 people sitting shoulder to shoulder.  Yep, I'm not so sure about my window any longer. 
• I guess there could be some type of "gradual opening", but I don't know how you could pull it off. 
• Am I going to win some type of award for predicting the Rural Uprising™ drawn along political lines? 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  Museum worthy.  

• New Hampshire is next. What's keeping the South from doing this? That's where you would think these protests would be the most likely to occur.
  
  
• Per The Wall Street Journal, in Trump's conference call with business leaders yesterday about reopening the country, they told him "that his administration needed to dramatically increase the availability of coronavirus testing before the public would be confident enough to return to work, eat at restaurants or shop in retail establishments." I think that's also code for "we've got liability out the arse unless there some way we can prove we took steps to insure our employees on the floor didn't have the coronavirus." 
  
• Are the political conventions going to happen this summer? 
• There was a hearing yesterday in the 353rd District Court in Travis County where the issue was whether Texas voters should be allowed to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. The Zoom conference was broadcast on Youtube so I tuned in just to see the logistical cluster. Amazingly, it went off very well. (That's the court reporter's hands you see there. The oldest guy on the screen did a bit with a background of a snowy mountain.)
  
• The position of Ken Paxton was that the government should be able to lock you up for even applying for a mail-in ballot. The district court ruled against them so, for now, mail-in balloting is a legal way to go. 
  
• The Republicans always use the fear of "fraud" as the reason they are against mail-in ballots although there's no proof of that whatsoever. Somehow we can send a $1,200 check to everyone in the country but we fear fraud for mail-in voting? 
• "A Crowley woman has sued Princess Cruise Lines this week, alleging the company knowingly exposed her and her husband to the novel coronavirus in February, which resulted in his death." I found it interesting that her attorney is Houston's Rusty Hardin. He's most famous for representing Roger Clemens who was accused of obstructed justice and lying to Congress during the steroid hysteria. I didn't know he did PI work.
• As I continue to watch The Staircase -- which is absolutely fantastic -- I was reminded of how much I truly despise Nancy Grace. I love how her Wikipedia page breaks down into sections all the crazy things she's said. 
  
• I didn't know someone named Big Mama Thornton was the first to record Hound Dog. (Youtube.) That's a better version than Elvis'.