4.03.2020

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out Of Here


















at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts


  • I only mention that I had what the common man would refer to Major (Essential) Oral Surgery yesterday which even further cements me in as The Hardest Working Man in Show Business (if I don't pass out before I get to the end of this.)
  • The Board. Wednesday's new cases: 24,742. Yesterday's new cases: 29,874 (a new record). Total Wise County cases: 3.
  • Deaths. Wednesday's 573. Yesterday: 968. Total: 5,102.
  • Hobby Lobby thought it was God's will that they remained open. County Law didn't agree. Counter-point: Liquor stores remain open. 
  • Gov. Abbott's "no personal" bond order got roasted today in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
  • Dallas County's Clay Jenkins makes $180,000. I haven't heard him mention a pay cut. 
  • I've been proclaiming Uber to be a House of Cards for over half a year now. This current situation won'd help. 
  • Dez and Dak not social distancing 
  • I haven't checked in on the Longhorn Channel lately but I presume that it is showing the 2006 Championship Game against USC. Heck they play that non-stop in the middle of an ongoing football season. 
  • He had kind of a rocky gig in Dallas but he's moving up to a rockier gig.
  • A faithful reader told me the property value assessment date state and local taxes is always January 1. There are some murky exceptions for things like Hurricane Harvey, but it looks like your upcoming proposed property tax bill as already been locked in regardless the the coronavirus. 
  • Don't you have be at least and "adequate thinker" in order to be able to locate "great thinkers"? And freakin' Jared Kusher is going to lead us? Seriously, how does he even get to be behind a mic?
  • Yep, this edition is a little abbreviated. My mouth hurts. 

at 8:30 AM

4.02.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts



  • The Board. Tuesday's new cases: 24,742. Yesterday's new cases: 26,473 (a new record). Total Wise County cases: 3.
  • Deaths. Tuesday's deaths: 573. Yesterday: 1,049 (a new record). Total: 5,102.
  • After they mayor of Los Angelas said that all residents "should" wear masks, Larado went with a bigger government slap down:

  • I think I'd go with a full jihab to make it as confusing as possible.
  • After a 24 hour respite, Trump went back to the old Trump yesterday as the U.S. death count from the coronavirus topped 5,000. 
  • And the daily briefing began with an unrelated, tired, and failed update on the War on Drugs. And it went on for over an hour. I can't tell you how much I've been worried about cocaine lately. They are laser focused up there. 
  • Which kind of begs the question of: Why are nonviolent people ever required to make any stop at the jail whatsoever. Just right 'em a citation and tell them the court will contact them for a court date.
  • Why is the South always so hellbent on acting like the South?  Texas finally-maybe-kinda has a shelter-in-pace order, and Florida finally bit the bullet an ordered one yesterday.  Georgia at least gave us insight when it's governor, Brian Kemp, ordered shelter-in-place when he said in yesterday's news conference that he just learned on Tuesday that the disease could be transmitted by people showing no symptoms. “We didn’t know that until the last 24 hours” he said.  Watch it. 
  • An update on a recent scandal while you were worried about paying your rent yesterday. 
  • DPS Troopers are now having to get off their gunboats on the Rio Grande in order to man the U.S. version of Checkpoint Charlie. I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. 
  • There was a heck of an ending to police chase in Detroit yesterday. Quick loading video here. No one died simply because there was no one sitting in the back seat.
  • The nemeisis of the Tiger King is a the type of witness every trial lawyer wants to strangle. 
  • Things that are happening that most of us don't think about: City governments are run off sales taxes which will plummet this year. They've never had to deal with something like this.  And Texas schools are funded by property values which will have to plummet once this thing finally peaks. To that end, the date of when the property is "appraised" this year will be important for next year's schools' budgets.



at 8:30 AM

4.01.2020

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



at 8:30 AM

3.31.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts


  • The Board. Sunday's new cases: 18,882. Yesterday: 20,353 (a daily record). Total 163,844.
  • Deaths. Sunday's new cases: 363. Yesterday: 573 (a daily record). Total: 3,156
  • Will someone frame this for me? 
  • If my information is correct, the lone Wise County coronavirus case is a long-time resident from the Bridgeport area. 
  • It's getting awkward in Collin County. Recall that the Collin County Judge won't impose shelter-in-place and then the McKinney mayor, perhaps illegally - perhaps not, tried to impose greater restrictions on the city than the judge wanted. 
  • Macy's won't survive this. And they are just the tip of the iceberg of companies that won't make it. 
  • If the Coronavirus Pandamic didn't exist at all, what is happening in the oil patch would cause Texas to be in full scale panic right now.   As the Midland mayor said in The Washington Post this weekend, "It was like a switch flipped.We woke up to the industry shutting down, and that’s not exaggeration." And here's this morning's Wall Street Journal as oil closed at $20.09: 

  • So we had a My Pillow commercial during the coronavirus press conference yesterday? 
    It's like a Good Contractor's List radio commercial.
  • Make no mistake about it, the My Pillow guy is nothing more than a guy who runs a SuperPAC who takes a cut.  He floods right wing media with money via ads to spread the pro-Trump message, those who listen to that echo chamber buy My Pillows, and then My Pillow turns around and dumps more money with more ads into the right wing media all the while legally skimming money off the top as a for profit company. The product doesn't matter. See e.g. Relief Factor.
  • That "God gave us grace on November 8, 2016"? 
  • So we shut down everything but won't do testing because of a little rain?
  • Call me crazy, but unless we are under martial law with troops in the streets and all hell breaking loose, arresting a pastor for holding a church service is one of the most shocking things I've ever seen. And a Sheriff bragging about it on social media is downright disturbing. The way Americans have just cowered down like scared children to any government edict, issued oftentimes on what seems to be a whim, is really surprising to me. But I feel like I'm in a tiny minority with this view.

    "If he had just opened up a liquor store, we wouldn't mess with him."
  • Bag of Nothing said something yesterday I agree with 100% : We throw the term "hero" around was too loosely these days.  It does mean "doing your job." 
  • For those who have seen Netflix's Tiger King, here's a shot of the Official Liberally Lean Girl with Doc Antle of South Carolina in the background.  Here's the performance on YouTube.
  • With almost all of the local news anchors broadcasting at home, I've noticed how they all try to get a background shot to make their home seem as opulent as possible. Come on, show me a recliner with cords strung every which way. 
  • Good question I heard this morning: How did Skype lose out to Zoom in the videoconferencing world?
  • Wise County Jail population this morning: 119. That's about as low as I've seen in the last several years. 

at 8:29 AM
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