8.16.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts




It's true.

  • On Friday, we eclipsed the total hospitalizations number of the first surge. The daily increases over the weekend weren't major, but they were still on the rise. This week will be interesting. 

  • Decatur COVID related news. 

  • It almost did turn into Saigon yesterday, but as bad as the optics were -- and they were really bad --  the Americans got out. It's been 20 years of bad decisions, and all are to blame.

    • Those bad decisions: Bush going in initially, Obama doubling down, Trump meeting with and giving credibility to the Taliban, and Biden completely wrong that Afghanistan would fall at all.

    • But let's not revise history: 90% of Americans supported the invasion in 2001.
    • We spent more than $88 billion to train and equip Afghanistan's army. And the only result was that the private sector of the Military Industrial Complex got rich  -- which seems to be the only modern purpose of war. 
    • I didn't understand everyone wanting to hang all of Afghanistan around Biden's neck yesterday. Blaming a guy who was ending a 20 year old nightmare doesn't make sense. Do you know who was President when Saigon happened? LBJ? Nope. Nixon? Nope. It was Gerald Ford. 
    • I bet this is right:

    • On second thought, maybe it is an actual Saigon. This happened after we went to bed.  Video.  

    • This is a wild ass video. And if this video is accurate, at least one person who hung onto the plane fell out of the sky. Oh, my. 

  • Legal nerd stuff. The state of masks in schools is very confusing in Texas. Ultimately, no school will able to legally implements a mask policy, but that's no the case at this moment. Here is an explanation as to what is going on right now:
    • Dallas County:  It's important to note that Dallas County government (think Clay Jenkins and not the ISD) sued the Governor over his no-masks emergency order. Jenkins won at the district court and at the Dallas Court of Appeals, and a TRO was issued against the Governor's order. The Texas Supreme Court overturned those decisions late yesterday but here is the limited ruling: The underlying order enjoining the Governor's order as it applied to Dallas County government was set aside. Dallas County government must comply.
    • Dallas ISD, however, then announced they would continue to implement it's no mask policy. How? There's been no court order to tell them to the contrary. They weren't a party to the Clay Jenkins lawsuit. The Texas Supreme Court ruling applied to Dallas County government and, technically, no one else. 
    • Now would the Texas Supreme Court rule the same as to any case brought by or against Dallas ISD or any other ISD? Sure. But it hasn't happened yet.
    • Compare Fort Worth ISD. There some private individuals sued the school district and won in district court on Friday. The result: Fort Worth ISD was enjoined from enforcing it's put on a mask policy. The school appealed it to the Fort Worth Court of Appeals but that court didn't rule over the weekend. 
  • I've got to make a quick comment about the Fort Worth ISD case because I actually watched the hearing by Zoom on Friday afternoon before Judge John Chupp.  That guy was clueless. He didn't care about the text of the emergency order, he didn't care about statutory construction, and he didn't care that the Plaintiffs had to show irreparable harm if they were forced to wear a mask. Nope. Instead he acted like Judge Judy if Judge Judy was a simpleton. It was amazing. Here's an excerpt:

  • A metaphor for Texas:


  • County Judge J.D. Clark told me that we've got a heck of a find as the courthouse renovation begins to take shape. A metallurgist/restoration expert has found that a vault door in front of the current district judge's office has an oil painting and a gold inlet around the edges. It was, for some unknown reason, painted over decades ago. The guy will restore it like he did in Navarro County which is probably pretty close to what the door will look like:

  • Decatur's own Bryce Elder continues to dominate in Double AA for the Mississippi Braves. He's now 7-1 with a 3.21 ERA. In his last start, he went six innings and gave up no runs, no walks, and struck out nine. 

  • I saw the Internet from Vyve in action at a home in Bridgeport this weekend, and I can't believe what I saw. It's amazing. It uses, surprisingly, Bridgeport's old cable TV lines. An old fashioned coaxial cable goes into the back of the modem/router.  

at