Some days it just doesn’t pay to be Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R). He’s lost authority over the eastern half of the Sooner State. How? The U.S. Supreme Court—hardly a hotbed of bleeding-heart liberals—ruled that historical claims by the Muscogee Creek Nation take precedence over state rule, turning eastern Oklahoma into one giant reservation, including Stitt’s home base of Tulsa. We’re still waiting to see how this shakes out for tribal gaming but it looks like a win-win. Then the Oklahoma Supreme Court voided Stitt’s new gaming compacts, siding with Attorney General Mike Hunter and lawmakers who said that Stitt overstepped his authority by unilaterally authorizing sports betting, among other (expensive) sins. If that weren’t enough to put Stitt in a sickbed he contracted Coronavirus, mainly through his own careless behavior, having made a point of mingling, maskless, in public as much as possible. Oklahoma, in fact, has some of the laxest social-distancing rules in the nation. And it’s paying the price. Stitt might just want to pull the blanket over his head and wait until his term is over.
Even worse than Oklahoma in the spread of Covid-19 is our beloved Nevada, ranked fifth by the Centers for Disease Control in rising death rates. (Alabama is #1, followed by Florida.) Last Wednesday, 1,100 new cases were reported, along with 28 deaths. In the meantime, the Babylon Bee directly skewered Gov. Steve Sisolak‘s hypocrisy about Big Gaming (which holds the purse strings) and Coronavirus. It reported that the (fictive) Calvary Chapel of the Desert had gotten around restrictions on social gathers by installing slot machines. Throw open the doors! “Plus, it’s making up for all the lost tithing over the last few months,” said Pastor Chuck Carver, quoth the Bee (the conservative version of The Onion).
