2.01.2021

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • Look at that weather forecast I posted on Sunday, January 30, 2011. You know what day that  was? It was the beginning of Super Bowl week at Jerry World. And that forecast by the National Weather Service didn't remotely predict what was about to it hit. 
  • Texas hospitalizations: Plummeting. 

  • Trump found himself without a legal team on Saturday.  Why? He wanted the defense to the Impeachment Articles alleging he caused the insurrection to be election fraud (aka "The Big Lie.")  That's right. He didn't want the defense to be that he didn't cause the attempted overthrow of America, but instead that it was justified.  No wonder they quit en masse. 


  • This Texas Monthly story from last year is great, and there was a tremendous update to it on Friday: She was finally released after a judge's ruling in Austin. So after 18 years incarcerated for a crime she didn't commit, she walked out of jail. But there was a huge kicker: Then ICE showed up, threw her in a van, and headed for the border. 

  • Badly needed.

  • Here's the dust storm on Saturday:

  • I saw this and thought "what a great idea." If you've ever been to a marathon or half-marathon, the organizers are absolute masters of directing thousands of people converging on one spot.

  • I've seen a few reports asking or demanding Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene apologize and acknowledge that the Parkland shooting was real, the Sandy Shooting was real, that 9/11 was not and inside job, and that the  California forest fires were not caused by Jewish Laser Beams.  The heck with that. You don't get to apologize for being bat crap crazy. It's over. You need to be banished to a trash heap of insignificance. 

  • I've slowly began to realize just how many people believe QAnon theories. And they are all around you -- from Walmart to Brookshires to Allsups. I can't explain it, but America has normalized crazy. How did it happen? It's not like we elected someone who agreed to go on a show hosted by someone who had already said time and time again there was a pedophile ring headed by Hillary Clinton holding children in the basement of a pizza restaurant in D.C.  Oh, wait. We did and he did. (You can watch a great Frontline documentary on Alex Jones here.)
    "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” - Trump to Alex Jones

  • There's a lot of weird things that happen on military bases in Texas. 

  • Happy Days (premiered 1974) depicted life 20 years earlier as well so the same could be said for it.  

  • Stay with me here: 
    • September 12,1932: "The [German] Reichstag passed a motion of no confidence against the Franz von Papen cabinet by an overwhelming vote of 513 to 32, though von Papen called the vote illegal because he was entitled to the floor and had already placed the decree on the speaker's desk dissolving parliament."  
    • Ok, that's a really, really obscure fact about German history and Hitler's rise to power, right? I mean, you probably wouldn't even know it had anything to do with Hitler unless I had not told you. Heck, it's so obscure that it wouldn't even be on a Jeopardy final answer.  
    • Well, yesterday morning I read about that event for the first time as I'm nearing the end of a very good book I'm reading on Hitler's rise to power.

    • Well, get this: Yesterday afternoon I walked in my dad's house, and he is watching a PBS documentary which, at that very moment, was discussing that September 12th moment in Germany. It even was even showing a photo of the no-confidence vote in the Reichstag. 

    • I understand coincidences. But that's a very weird coincidence, right? We haven't even so much as mentioned Hitler to each other. Is there a word for very extreme coincidences?
    • (Now I'm thinking about this Seinfeld scene.)
  • I watched the Night Stalker on Netflix. Verdict: That four hours could have been condensed into one hour, and it sure did spend a lot of time glorifying a couple of detectives who weren't that great.  (And I may be one of the very few who thinks about a 1972 TV movie with Darren McGavin whenever they hear "Night Stalker.")