Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Mini Coronavirus Outbreak in Decatur update:
• When we last left off, we had three people in one office near the courthouse diagnosed last week plus one other unrelated person. To clarify, the "other person" works within the courthouse.
• New: A family member of one of the three is now hospitalized. Diagnosis is pending.
• New: A front line Wise County Clerk's office employee has been diagnosed with the virus. 
• New: A courthouse employee had mild symptoms and was able to get tested late last week with the results pending. (The results probably came back over the weekend, but I don't know them yet.)
• We've got a mess on our hands. 
• Edit: Getting plenty of rumors of a local insurance agency with six confirmed cases. Developing . . . 
• Edit with breaking news: County Clerk's office closing at noon
• The Texas dashboard is showing 11 active cases in Wise County. Our local dashboard doesn't get numbers from the weekend. I'm beginning to think the reported numbers might be worthless.
• Texas: Hospitalizations continued to rise over the weekend. Total cases continue to skyrocket as well. 
  
  
• Random Coronavirus news: The New PR's in the stockyards is in the process of being shut down by TABC, 32 TCU students have tested positive, Clemson had 23 players test positive, 30 LSU players have been quarantined and 100 people were diagnosed after hitting the "Tigerland" bars near campus, and K-State has stopped voluntary workouts after 14 athletes test positive. You guys think we'll have college football this fall? 
• Trump had a horrible turnout in Tulsa on Saturday night for a rally that was meant to kickoff his campaign. You probably heard most of the angles, but . . . 
  
• Why the low turnout? The trolling by the K-pop of free tickets of which there are an unlimited supply wouldn't do it, and the claim of protesters blocking entrances is laughable. If you wanted to go, you could have gotten in. His fans just didn't turn out. 
• If anything, Oklahoma might be smarter than we gave them credit for. Who would want to go to what they thought would be a packed house in the midst of a Coronavirus update? 
• But that was a political disaster. You know what it reminded me off? A new non-denominational hipster church whose newness has worn off. 
• Or it kind of reminded me of this. 
  
• The weirdest thing was that Trump spent 17 valuable minutes trying to do damage control about his walk down a 3 degree ramp at West Point and his drinking a glass of water there. He thought that was a good idea to spend time on? (Transcript)
• He didn't mention George Floyd by name. He doesn't care. But he continues his not so veiled desire for a Civil War as he talked about the protesters:  "Our people are not nearly as violent, but if they ever were, it would be a terrible, terrible day for the other side."
• And his staff had to scramble to say Trump was just joking about the deaths of over 100,000 people. "When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please. They test and they test." Good lord. 
• I couldn't believe Trump would allow himself to be caught looking so beaten down coming off the helicopter once he returned home. He's all about optics, but at that moment he didn't care. That was a beaten down man. (The video with Charlie Brown Christmas music is perfect.)
  
• He's laying the groundwork this morning to claim his re-election loss is illegitimate.
  
• Here's a hot sports opinion: There is something fishy about this.
  
• There was so much going on this weekend I didn't even have a chance to go down this rabbit trail. But it sounds like a good one. 
  
• In what would otherwise be a Watergate-like scandal, we had a Friday Night Massacre where AG Bill Barr lied about the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (the one investigating Trump for all sorts of things) resigning and would immediately be replaced by an interim hand-picked successor. From there it got crazy. The U.S. Attorney said he wasn't resigning, Barr told him that, well, Trump fired him, Trump then said he wasn't involved in it at all, and then the U.S. Attorney agreed to leave but only once his second in command would continue his investigations until his successor was approved by the Senate. It'a amazing this is already off the front pages. 
  
• The oil money and morally corrupt Empower Texans got in trouble after a hot mic got two of its stooges (including its general counsel) profanely bad mouthing Gov. Abbott after they thought a podcast had ended.
• What do I always say about government contracts? This is the group which handles civil and criminal database information (and more) for most Texas counties. 
  
• Dak Prescott signing his Franchise Tag offer is the biggest bunch of nothing news ever. There was 0% chance he wouldn't. The only question is why did it take him so long? 
• For you local talk radio fans, Mark Davis was livid this morning over a Twitter war he had this weekend. He got his feelings hurt because someone called him out over his die-on-that-hill hypocritical devotion to Trump. He calls it a "friendship destroyed." Anyone know who he was talking about?