Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• The Board. Monday's new cases: 20,353. Yesterday's new cases: 24,742 (a new record). Total Wise County cases: 3.
  
• Deaths. Monday's deaths: 573. Yesterday: 912 (a new record - by far). Total: 4,053.
  
• But this big news came from the White House briefing yesterday afternoon, and it was shocking: 100,000 to 240,000 people are projected to die even if social distancing occurs. That should stop everyone in their tracks. The death total for the entire world stands at 43,000 this morning. How does this happen to the "Greatest Country in the World"? How did we screw this up so badly? 

  

  "GOALS"

• Trump seemed like a different guy yesterday in that he seemed genuinely concerned. And he should feel differently if he's now listening to the medical experts giving those dire predictions. Just look at this from earlier in the month:
  
• Even before Trump's announcement, the Collin County judge backed down to public pressure. 
  
• Gov. Abbott continued to being wishy-washy yesterday by handing down a Shelter-In-Place edict but didn't want to call it that. In what might be the most confusing word salad sentence of all time, Abbott said that his order does not "have top, side or bottom any relationship whatsoever to the concept" of the orders of others which  are being labeled "shelter-in-place." Huh? 
• I noticed the gas price at Brookshire's dropped to $1.59 a gallon yesterday, and when I got home Mrs. LL provided proof that she filled up with a $1.00 discount off of that amount because of her shopping points. I think this means we spent a fortune buying groceries last month. Nevertheless, I never thought I'd see gas purchased at 59 cents a gallon. Yep, this is real and its spectacular:
  
• Noticed this little discussed blurb in the Messenger this weekend. A lot is going on here:
  
• Let's check in on some responsible students from the University of Texas: 
  
• I wonder how the oil patch bust will impact the SuperPAC Empower Texans which is funded by the West Texas Wilks Brothers. The answer is probably not much since they still have their money -- it's the guys who have busting their arse in the field who are out of a job.
• And everything kind of fell into place for me yesterday when I learned the Wilks Brothers are big donors or the PragerU. I came upon that tidbit in a great thread explaining how Diamond and Silk went from supporting Black Lives Matters to Trump sycophants. Everything is a circle.
  
• Legal stuff: The Texas Supreme Court mistook itself as the Texas legislature a couple of weeks ago and issued an order that said, "All courts in Texas may extend the statute of limitations in any civil case for a stated period ending no later than 30 days after the governor’s state of disaster has been lifted.” See a problem there? That word "may." So every Texas county can have a different law regarding the deadline for filing a lawsuit? And an individual judge could do it for one case but not another? Lawyers see a problem. Heck, a high school Junior could see a problem. 
• Other legal stuff: We might have the cockiest new federal judge in the history of federal judges in the Northern District of Texas. For those interested in this kind of stuff, look at this opinion from yesterday, described by others as"unnecessarily snarky", from 41 year old Judge Brantley Starr as he slapped down the federal government over bump stocks. (There might be a reason he's a big "state's rights" guy: Before being appointed last year by Trump, he had never held a private legal job and had always been paid by the State of Texas as a lawyer.)
• More Tiger King news below. Pet Safari was apparently some kind of pet store (which I momentarily confused with the old Lion Country Safari that I remember hearing about as a kid.) Other fun facts: Mr. Exotic graduated from Pilot Point High School in 1982 and immediately "became a police officer in nearby Eastvale. At age nineteen, he was promoted to chief of police."
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold