Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Coronavirus Texas: The explosion in hospitalizations -- the gold standard for monitoring the severity of the virus -- continues. And the rate of the daily increases (275 added yesterday alone) has taken off as well. It's about time to face a painful truth: All those snooty experts and their school-book learnin' opinions about the need to social distance and stay at home were exactly right. And when we abandoned those rules in late April we are now seeing the consequences. 

  

  Source

  

  Total cases. (The spike two days ago included
  some new prison numbers. Yesterday's numbers do not.)
• Remember Sen. John Cornyn's initial response to those experts? Let's just all yuk it up. 
  
• Wise County: Active cases are at 10. (+3 from the last report). The Texas dashboard of estimated cases has us a 11.  
• Saginaw ISD and Southlake ISD are the newest schools to shut down summer workouts after a positive test of a student/athlete. That brings the number of metroplex schools to halt their programs to nine.  SMU reported yesterday that five athletes have tested positive. UT reported six cases. Those schools are still going forward with workouts. 
• Everyone still think we are going to have full school classes in the fall? It's already mid-June. Fort Worth ISD has begun to hedge its bets by offering the option of in person or virtual learning. That alone seems to be a logistical nightmare.
  
• Gov. Greg Abbott continues to botch this, and his actions yesterday were mind boggling. After previously taking full charge of the coronavirus and proclaiming his orders trumped any edict by any county judge or mayor, he said the following during a interview to a Waco TV station about masks: A county judge can't mandate that citizens wear masks, but the county can order private businesses to order its customers to wear masks. Huh? What? He said that was in his order all along and that one county judge "finally figured it out." So his order was some kind of mysterious board game? Far right wingers weren't happy.  Look at this word salad from our inept governor during the interview:
  
• Proof of Abbott's incompetence: On April 27th, he used the outlier date of April 19 (a day with unusually high numbers) as a bench mark in order to proclaim “the COVID-19 infection rate has been on the decline over the past 17 days" and Texas was safe to reopen that weekend. (Look at those paltry numbers back then. Yesterday we had 3,511 new cases.)
  
• I don't want to believe the McMuffin Cop video is real. But it is. She's a deputy with a Georgia county sheriff's office. Yes, a deputy who will emotionally break down over a slow McMuffin order by McDonald's (and immediately begin to speculate that it might be being tampered with) gets to carry a gun and make a split second decision as to whether her life is in danger before she kills you. 
  
• Aunt Jemima got the axe yesterday. That would have been a timely decision -- in 1980. Heck, I cringed at the image on the product when I was a kid. They updated it in 1989, but the inspiration for the original imagine is definitely an "Oh, my!" 
  
• This sheriff also made news earlier this year "when he said he wouldn't enforce Gov. Doug Ducey's stay-at-home order." 
  
• Trump's press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked about the wisdom of having a campaign rally in Tulsa this weekend. If she is talking about the spread of the virus, someone want to tell her there won't be baseball games with fans in the stands this year? If she is talking about the chance of being killed by a foul ball, some want to tell her there are nets? 
  
• Art work in the new NFL stadium in Las Vegas is better than at Jerry World (save and except Star Sky Mirror. I love Star Sky Mirror.) 
  
  
  
  
• John Bolton's new book has enough information to get Trump arrested in a civilized country. I'm sure all his stories are true, but Bolton is traitor to his country who put potential book sales over service to the nation when he declined to voluntarily testify in the impeachment trial. He deserves to be ignored. 
  
• Have you ever had a timing belt on your car snap? Ever learn for the first time that you also have something called an "interference engine"? Ever learn the hard way what happens when a timing belt breaks on that interference engine? I have. 
• When bad stuff like that happens I'll spend a day trying to convince myself that "Well, it could be worse."