4.24.2020

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






at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts



  • The Board:
    Total cases: 886,442

    Total deaths: 50,236
  • Texas:
  • Tarrant County has had 1,559 total cases and 45 deaths. They had a new daily record yesterday but their daily reporting is so sporadic you don't know if someone finally got around to doing past paperwork. Also, dispersed in the chart are 132 cases which have occurred at the federal prison. 
  • Wise County: Holding at 14.
  • If you find far right wingers in depression this morning, it's because Trump went Full Crazy yesterday when he suggested we need to inject Lysol into our bodies to cure the cornavirus: "The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs." I was in the car when I heard it, and I now wish I had a photo of my face at that moment.
  • Even the Drudge Report couldn't handle it. 
  • The makers of Lysol actually had to issue a statement in the Year of our Lord 2020 to not follow Trump's advice. 
  • Poor Dr. Birx.  (You can the Sound of Silence version or the Curb Your Enthusiasm version as well.)
  • Tucker Carlson is now talking about the "rural" threat making my Rural Uprising™ prediction even more prophetic. (Once again, I'm not saying the basis of the Rural Uprising™ was correct, I just said it would happen.) 
  • The governor of Georgia might want to open up the state, but the followers of Insane Clown Posse don't feel safe having their annual gathering in Ohio.  "The bottom line is simply that we REFUSE to risk even ONE Juggalo life by hosting a Gathering during these troubling times." Yes, America, that's where we are now. 
  • The Cowboys drafted CeeDee Lamb last night in the first round. During last year's OU/Texas game, Mrs. LL was actually watching it and remarked, "That guy is good."  As a reminder, he somehow scored on this play: 
  • Coach Bro drafting from his home in Phoenix was a power move. 
  • Jerry Jones drafting from his yacht was a bigger power move. 

  • Legal stuff. This probably won't interest most of you, but the DA's office in Houston is at war with a misdemeanor judge. If you want to see an online hearing where the judge basically chews out the DA's office for the last half of it, it's here. Background on the case (including a subsequent Motion to Recuse) is here. One of the assistant DAs hardly said a word in the hearing, and I only got a glimpse of him for a brief second. I grabbed a screenshot. It is mind-boggling to me that he was wearing a cap - much less a backwards cap. I don't care if it is a Zoom conference and you're at home, show a little respect.
  • I saw a random pic of Crovie, North East Scotland, and it made me realize I need to get out more. 
  • There's something about the phrase "the Hot Pocket heiress" that makes her incredibly attractive to me. 
  • The Wichita Falls Police continue to pick on the downtrodden by writing Stay at Home tickets. "Police said Joshua Johnson, also known as 'Klepto' Johnson, went into Stripes on Broad Tuesday and told a clerk he wanted to go to jail, then took a beer and went outside and sat on a curb drinking it waiting for police to arrive." 
  • I didn't know that the Wichita County Sheriff was named David Duke. (He's been there forever.)

at 8:27 AM

4.23.2020

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts


  • Let me start off by sending condolences to the family of James Wood who passed away yesterday. There may be no better obituary for any man other than to be referred to as a really good guy. And Mr. Wood was a really, really good guy. 
  • The Board:
    Total cases: 848,717

    Total deaths: 47,659
  • Texas:
  • Tarrant (I'm using the same source as I always do, but this chart looks to have been significantly revised from yesterday.):
  • Wise: Another new one that gets us to 14 cases (with 1.15% of our population tested.) 
  • For the first time since 1956, Miami has gone six weeks without a homicide.  There's a lot to be said for not being forced to hang out with people. 
  • I'm no government financial planner, but this seems like a huge waste of money for a financially strapped Treasury. 
  • The mayor of Las Vegas wants to open everything up, and wouldn't mind the city being a "control group" for the impact of coronavirus on the population. This is an actual screenshot of Anderson Cooper's reaction: 
  • Let's check in on Hood County. (Credit.)
     
  • She ain't wrong. (But that was a heck of an attempted recovery). 
  • It was announced this morning that 4.4 million people applied for unemployment last week. That brings the pandemic five week total to 26 million. I don't think we are even close to comprehending how bad this is all going to get in the coming months (years?). Just look at that chart:
  • 50,000 dead and 26 million out of work is one heck of a way to start 2020. 
  • I don't know anything about Ohio's handling of the coronavirus, but I appreciate this attitude:
  • Trump had a bad day at his press conference yesterday. First, we got this concerning his CDC director's Robert Redfield's  comments to The Washington Post where he said: “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through." Trump, right off the bat, complained that: "He was misquoted. He was entirely misquoted." So he brought Redfield up to the podium who was then confronted by a reporter who, after reading him his quote, asked if it was accurate. His response: “I’m accurately quoted in The Washington Post.” Ooof.
  • So Trump then pivoted to say the coronavirus "might not come back at all this Fall" because "I've spoken to ten different people." So Dr. Fauci takes the spotlight and says: "There will be corona virus in the Fall." Double ooof. 
  • I don't know why we take advice from a guy who has managed to turn $3 billion into $3 billion over a period of 20 years. (I wish I had the audio of him saying that Google would never buy Youtube because they "would be sued into oblivion" because of copyright issues or that video over the Internet would never become commonplace because of limited bandwith.) And this is a medical question anyway. 
  • I'll watch the NFL draft for technological meltdown. (Fun fact: I got blocked in the early days of Twitter by Gil Brandt because I reminded him he drafted Rod Hill and Billy Cannon, Jr. Edit: He was bragging about what a draft genius he is.) 
  • In response to my post yesterday regarding the fancy stadium of six-man school Hermleigh ISD, I had a couple of faithful readers explain why: Taxes from wind farms. The school was dirt poor before they came in. 

at 8:33 AM

4.22.2020

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts



  • The Board:
    Total cases: 818,744

    Total deaths: 45,318
  • Texas:
  • Tarrant (the roller coaster continues):
  • Wise County: We've got another new one bringing us to 13. (And check out this page dedicated to Wise County.)
  • "You get a car! And you get a car!" 
  • "Everyone gets a car!"
  • Now this is what I expected with my Rural Uprising™ prediction. This is from a bar in the Stockyards.  Prediction: TABC will be there like the Sturmabteilung.
  • Other than the fact he's going to kill us all one way or another, how do you "shoot down" a boat? (To show you how his mind works, before he tweeted that this morning Fox and Friends had a segment on Iranian boats harassing U.S. ships.)
    Who gets to define "harass"?
  • I'm so glad that I'm much closer to retirement than I am fresh out of college. The future doesn't look particularly bright for all of us. 
  • I wonder if the Senior Class of 2020 will always get a little bit of special treatment for the rest of their lives. I mean, ten years from now if they dropped a line of, "You know, I graduated in 2020 and I never got to [insert event you were deprived of]", it ought to get you at least something in any give-and-take situation. 
  • Dan Patrick is in the news again. He qualified this by saying:  "[E]very life is valuable but 500 people [have died so far] out of 29 million and we're locked down and we're crushing the average worker, we're crushing small business, we're crushing the markets, we're crushing this country."  I've struggled with the concept from the get-go, but whenever you insert "but" after "every life is precious", things get a little tricky. 
  • Ticket fans: Julie Dobbs was furloughed. And it sounds like it is going to be a long one.
  • The Jacksboro Herald-Gazette has the story on the hunting accident that occurred last week. 
  • This West Texas school bragged on social media yesterday about having its new track installed. Look closely: That's a six man field. I was not familiar with Hermleigh ISD (which is southeast of Snyder.)
  • The crazy prices for May futures oil prices are now over with. We've now moved on to normalcy since the pricing is now for June contracts. This morning, the new normal for a barrel of oil is $13.57 a barrel.  That won't cut it. 
  • Messenger: Above the Fold


at 8:33 AM

4.21.2020

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts



  • The Board:

  • Tarrant County (that's the lowest Monday number in quite some time.):
  • Wise County: 12 cases. We had an increase of 33% yesterday! (That's three more cases to you non-math majors out there.) 
  • I won't begin to tell you I understand how the price can go to -$35 for a barrel of oil, but I did have someone tell me yesterday it was all because "May [futures] contracts [are] expiring tomorrow", and Trump said at his press conference that "a lot of people got squeezed."  I think it was the equivalent of a bunch of traders having previously agreed to buy oil at $x a barrel on a certain date and yesterday it all became real. Either actually buy the oil at that previously agreed upon price or sell your contract. For those people who had no place to actually store the oil, they were willing to pay people to take it off their hands. It still makes no sense to me. The June futures contract are up next. They fell from $20 a barrel to $16 a barrel this morning. None of this is good news. 
  • The Art of the Oil Deal from nine days ago:
  • It would be a good gig to be a photographer at one of these protests.
    Note the mask.
    Spellcheck malfunction
    Some hard selling of Jesus thrown in there.
  • The governor of Maryland throwing shade. 
  • Of course he did. But who exactly wants to come here with unemployment moving to 30%? (I'm not sure that  "Invisible Enemy" label is as catchy as he thinks it is.)
  • Having to wear masks in our now open Texas state parks makes absolutely no sense. 
  • Of all states "opening up", it looks like Georgia will be the most ambitious with restaurants opening up on Monday. Then again, it was just a couple of weeks ago that its governor stated he had "just learned" that the coronavirus could be transmitted with people with no symptoms. That state deserves to be the guinea pig. (Cue John Mayer's "Why Georgia".)
  • Despite Trump being obsessed with his "great ratings" for his daily coronavirus updates (he tweeted about it again this morning), few people are watching. But I want you to. It is Bizarro World every day. 
  • Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for a state to allow a person to be convicted of a crime by a non-unanimous jury verdict. Seems like a pretty simple proposition, but those boys have to make everything complicated: 
  • Tom Lester, Ed Eb of Green Acres fame, has died. I saw that he was also a Baptist minister and made the circuit for most of his life. I'll have to confirm it, but I have a very vague memory of him speaking at the First Baptist of Bridgeport when I was a boy. (Side note: There's nothing wrong with Green Acres. Mrs. LL and I actually got sucked into it a couple of years back.)
  • Legal nerd stuff: Speaking of Georgia, a jury sent a note to a judge saying one juror had decided to vote not guilty because he didn't believe any of the State's witnesses so they wanted to know if that constituted a hung jury. Instead of saying "yep, it sure does", the judge removed that juror from the jury and the remainder of them convicted the defendant. It was reversed yesterday. (That link has the opinion and even video of the poor assistant DA trying to argue on appeal everything was kosher.) 
  • I always monitor the list of criminal cases (from Class C to Felonies) filed in Wise County every day. The list is normally thirty or more cases which are dominated, of course, with traffic tickets. Until now. Nothing is being filed including traffic tickets. These are strange days.

at 8:33 AM
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