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

These the pranks I can get behind 😂 pic.twitter.com/GLz5ExhfKj

— danny ocean 🌊 (@dannypasifika) June 7, 2020

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i cannot stop thinking about her pic.twitter.com/dAwMsncMug

— maddy (@vennicebitch) June 8, 2020

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Let’s take a break from the heavy stuff. Here’s a good old fashioned wave smash pic.twitter.com/meanODiTxs

— influencersinthewild (@influencersitw) June 6, 2020

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That dog is on human mode @icanteven (via ig:pvmal) pic.twitter.com/IkJpoA9yHD

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) June 12, 2020

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Block or charge?🏀🤷‍♂️🐎😱🤭😂 pic.twitter.com/ye4quzglQz

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) June 11, 2020

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Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• 'Rona in Texas: Both hospitalizations and active cases are lower than the day before but both were near all time highs: 
  
  
• Wise County update: No new data was reported yesterday for the county website, but the official Texas site puts us at 11 active cases up from 6 yesterday. Edit after clarification from local official: There was a technical malfunction with the normally updated data but it should show 6 active cases. Why the confusion? "Notice we are also reporting 57 total cases, which is what DSHS reports to us, yet DSHS dashboard shows 55.  Also note that their active cases on DSHS dashboard are 'estimated' - they have had us 'estimated' at 11 since May 20, but that does not correlate with what they report to us daily."
• If you want to go to Trump's Tulsa rally, you'll have to sign a coronavirus waiver.  As long as you cheer, they don't care if you die. It's like a Jim Jones Liability Waiver.
  
• Sunday's "rally" at the the Wise County Courthouse on Sunday should be a calm affair that we all should want to take part in. Who could be against a peaceful gathering of people exercising their First Amendment protected rights in support of equality for all? It should be encouraged.  But some social media chatter makes me feel like I'm living in Selma in the the 1960s.
• Trump came to Dallas yesterday and held court at a church.  Dr. Robert Jeffress, however, was left on the sideline as a different pastor of a feel-good-gospel-mega-church was chosen by Trump to sit next to him instead.  Someone needs to check on Jeffress this morning.
  
• Trump said at the gathering in the church that he throws so much money at Texas that we are hoping for another hurricane. Note: Two days earlier the federal government denied Dallas' appeal to federal funds because of the tornado that wiped out a large part of the city last year. 
  
  
• Conspiracy theory! (Here's a pretty fun thread trying to figure out what the image over his left shoulder was.)
• 
• According to the Messenger, the coronavirus shutdown in April didn't impact Wise County cities' sales tax receipts at all. In fact, they went up. Color me confused. 2020: The year where nothing makes sense to me. 
• Life comes at you fast.
  
  
  
  
  
• I just finished reading this book about a murder in Houston which occurred in 2013.  The author said the case received "international attention", but I don't remember a single thing about it back then. (But my memory is so bad it's probably one of my bullet point somewhere.)
  
• I just started this one. "In 2019, Hulu began developing a series based on the book. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will executive produce the project."
  
  
• Apology or not, that was extremely poor judgment for Gen. Milley to take part in Trump's street clearing photo-op in order to use the Bible as a prop. Milley says he considered resigning. He still should.
  

  

  "I should not have been there."

• Of course, he doesn't. 
  
• Whatever happened to that "task force" on gun violence that Greg Abbott formed after the mass shooting in El Paso? It couldn't have possibly have been all for show in order to give the impression you care about an issue when you don't, right?  (Compare and contrast Trump's visit to Dallas yesterday.)
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Coronavirus - Texas set another record yesterday with an eye-opening 2,504 new cases (previous record was 1,949)  and, more importantly, another record-breaking number of those hospitalized at 2,153. Good grief.
  
• Wise County: 6 active. 57 total.
• "Abbott's staff did not respond to questions about whether the increase . . . would slow or halt the reopening process." 
  
• I never thought I'd see the day that NASCAR banned all Confederate flags.  But in all seriousness, I think you'll see a major revolt from its fan base along with the financial hit that will go with it. And that "sport" was already on shaky footing to begin with.

  

  The Confederacy: Still taking loses in 2020. 

• And with Confederate statues coming down left and right along with military officials saying on Tuesday that they are open to renaming U.S. forts which are currently named after Confederate military commanders, there seemed to be a real awakening going on. But then Trump, as he sat on the porch, sipping a mint julep, and patting his dog Beauregard, came to defend the nation's past sins.  Who is advising him to choose the wrong side here?  I'm not sure I've seen a political implosion like the one that he is going through. 
  
• But wait, there's more. Trump also announced that he will have his first "rally" in Tulsa which is coming up on the 100th anniversary of the Black Wall Street Massacre. Tulsa! On Juneteenth. He's not even trying to hide it any more. Serious question: Will Trump's people allow Confederate flags at the rally? 
  
• And that announcement came on the same day that an official with the Tulsa PD said this. 
  
• Do we have any Confederate memorials or statues in Wise County?
• Trump is gonna get mad at Fox News again. 

  

  Don't they know that unfavorable polls
  are just "Fake News?"

  
  

  

  "Going Down"

• I don't know what these middle-of-the-night ramblings were about last night. Protesting = taunting? Protesters = ugly anarchists? Promising a federal invasion? Once again, he uses language of division. And the mayor responded.
  
  
  
  
• Slidell's high school basketball team opting out of the UIL's ceremony honoring them as state finalists is interesting. But the UIL really did screw that day up as they shut the whole tournament down with no notice and no communication. 
• VP Mike Pence deleted this, but I'm not sure why.  Clearly social distancing is being violated but they longer care about that -- it's been 44 day since they last held a Task Force briefing. And there is one black guy front and center which could be interpreted as a prop, but they don't care about that either. 
  
• Something going on in Graham?....

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• Coronavirus - Texas. We hit another high yesterday in a hospitalizations. If any number should be the gold standard, it's hospitalizations. Right? Shouldn't we be more concerned? And that's a heck of a sustained trend we've got going.
  
  
  
  
• Wise County: Total 57, Active 6 (+1), Deaths 5.
• It looks like Wise County will have a BLM-like rally around the courthouse on Sunday at 4:00. In looking at some social media pages which I never visit, some people are treating it like the Nazis are coming to town. We aren't that backwoods, are we? 
• The 180s continue.  Why in the heck arrest them in the first place? 
  
• How many times have I written Too Many Police?™ over the years? You know, I should have trademarked and sold that question to those who thought Defund the Police was a good idea. Mine better conveys the message. 
• Very Random Thought: Did I ever tell you I came up with idea of anti-lock brakes on my own in 1975? (I don't know when they were invented, but I had never heard of them when I came up with the idea in my teenage brain.)
• In watching people argue whether there is "systemic racism" with the police, I was reminded of the Tulia scandal in Texas in 1999 which eventually caused every "drug task force" in the state to disband. That included the very wheels off Cross Timbers Task Force which ran around Wise County. 
  
• Hey, look, a white guy! And get a load of this quote from his father who said this about his home schooled kid  “He has grandiose ideas, a lot of them . . . and zero common sense . . . . I’m still proud of him, whether he burned down the police station or not. He didn’t hurt nobody, did he?”
  
• There was a similar George Floyd death by the Williamson County Sheriff's Office last year where the video was just released after the Sheriff fought to keep it from the press. It's been big news in the Austin area, but I don't know if that story has the legs of the Floyd incident. But at least one state rep and one county commissioner wants the Sheriff to resign. The Sheriff called the commissioner a dirty lib (basically). Note: Live PD was riding along for the incident but claims they didn't keep the footage. (Riiigggggt.) A&E has put Live PD on hiatus for unrelated reasons. The body cam video does exist.
• Oh, and Cops has been cancelled. Not the real cops, the show. 
• And the new streaming service HBO Max has shelved Gone With The Wind. I'm not on board with that. It's way too close to book burning. 
  
• Confederate statues are coming down in Tarrant County and even Denton County. That wouldn't have happened two years ago.  But I've never understood why we've honored people who took up arms against the United States. 
  
  
  
  
• Wait. This was allowed?
  
• There was a guy in Bridgeport selling Trump gear at the intersection of 380 and 101 yesterday. He had quite a few customers.
  
   
• This guy in New Jersey who was off to the side "re-enacting" the murder of George Floyd as a protest was passing by probably wants to rethink that bit. Or, who knows, maybe not. People are crazy. (Video of the incident.)
  
  
• This is awful out of Mesquite. And it comes on the heels after a family of six were found dead in a murder-suicide in San Antonio.
  
   
• TxDot's horribly designed interchanged at 287 and 380 in Decatur has always been a disaster. One reason is when vehicles westbound on 380 exit to go northbound on 287. The turn is so sharp that the fence and railing there have been crushed at least a dozen times. I noticed the last time it was knocked over that TxDot basically gave up and left it unrepaired for at least six months. Then about one month ago crews came out and fixed it. Since then, I had seen that it had been destroyed in two different places. And this morning, according to the Update, a truck overturned taking the turn. 
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Holy crap. Trump just did this. If you had "old man bleeding out of his ears had it coming" on your bingo card, you win.  He's a madman. He's a disinformation machine. The comparisons to Hitler losing his mind during the final days aren't that funny anymore. And he's getting his information from OANN!: 
  
  
• There's no limit to the amount of contempt I feel for that man. And if you support him, you own him. All of him. He is your leader. You have no excuses. 
• Now on to what I had written . . . 
• As the Coronavirus now fights to regain headlines over protesting for social justice, this post about the combination of the two made me laugh. He ain't wrong. 
  
• Wise County 'rona numbers: 55 total. 5 active.  But we've had two new deaths hit the books which brings that total up to 5 as well.  
• Texas numbers for Monday was enough to cause the seven day average to trend upwards again. More importantly, we beat the record for the current number of hospitalizations which had been set on May 5th.  So the numbers were enough for us to shut down in April, huh? 
  
• This report got lots of attention yesterday, but the headline also got roundly criticized as misleading. You might want to put it in your "I'm not sure about that" category -- a category which should be bulging at the seems. 
  
• You think the stock market makes any sense? Yesterday the S&P recovered to such a point that it's the same now as it was on December 31, 2019. So it's just like 2020 never happened. 
  
• It won't be a lot of peoples' cup of tea, but this week's episode of  Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about policing in light of the murder of George Floyd is getting a lot of buzz -- especially the way the show ended. It's chilling. (Language warning.) 
  
• We are seeing lots of police departments doing lots of 180s on these arrests.  And, note, they weren't arrested in Fort Worth for "rioting" they were arrested for being on the 7th Street Bridge and being tear gassed by police. One of them was from Bridgeport, but  I never did get a name. (My Faithful Reader Army failed me.)
  
• I might enjoy her more than Sarah Sanders because she's more likely to give us gold. From yesterday:
  
  
• Man, Drudge loves sticking it to Trump.
  
  
• The new Wall (no, not that one that hasn't been built which Mexico isn't paying for) really is ridiculous.
  
  
• AG Bill Barr is probably in trouble this morning. 
  
• UT, which still plans on holding in-person classes this Fall, says students and instructors will wear masks. Assuming that fans are allowed at football games, how will that work out there? 
• A couple of screenshots from over the weekend. 

  

  DPD screwed that one up.

  

  Fox apologized yesterday for this one. 

• The Colonial has the greatest field in its history this week. After experiencing the heat and humidity, most may never come back. 
• With Cary Bohn dropping out of the Decatur's mayoral race, Decatur's next mayor will be a graduate of Bridgeport High School. (The same year as me, by the way). I'm guessing that has never happened before.