Some of you might remember that I wrote a post last spring about two nesting sandhill cranes. We were thrilled to have the birds across the pond from our house, and watched their process for minding the egg, sharing shifts, and taking breaks.

We weren’t sure they would return this year because the nest was flooded when the pond water elevated from the rains.

My thought of the morning as I doom scroll centered on how resilient America is and whether the progressive project has succeeded in dooming the American Experiment.

The famed HMS Titanic was billed as unsinkable, and yet it sank. Its design involved sixteen watertight compartments in the hull divided by fifteen transverse bulkheads. As many as four compartments could be breached while the ship could remain afloat. Six compartments were breached, and the ship went down.

In the most recent election cycle, three incumbent black judges in San Antonio lost their primaries, as did the other two first-time black candidates. In this article in the San Antonio Express-News, the following quote appears:

“I think it’s a very bad look for the criminal justice system not to have any African American judges,” said attorney Andrew Birrell, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. “The bench ought to reflect A, the society, and B, the people who come before the court. That’s how you get the fairest result that people are the most accepting of.”

I listened to Tucker’s interview, several days ago, on a podcast–I think it was Megyn Kelly’s podcast.  Along the way, Tucker made one outrageous claim after another.  And yet he also, when it came to Israel, was repeatedly at pains to point out that he–who insists that he isn’t an anti-Semite–“understands” Israel’s position vis-a-vis Iran and the rest of the Middle East, and that he realizes that the Israeli position is merely one of wanting supremacy in relation to its regional neighbors. Something, Tucker repeatedly said, that every nation-state wants. And he repeated, time after time, an assertion that he, “Tucker,” understands Netanyahu’s position, and said that had he (Tucker) been in charge of the messaging, he’d have said exactly the same as has Bibi.

Megyn, as I’ve increasingly come to expect, nodded along.

And I started to wonder:  What is it that Tucker Carlson thinks is Iran’s goal in the Middle East?  And why do I never see him speaking to it?  Why doesn’t he ever seem to state that it’s perfectly understandable and defensible to execute thousands of Iran’s citizens, if they’re standing in the way of the regime’s national and religious objectives, and why isn’t he asserting that he–Tucker–would be doing exactly what the mullahs and the IRGC are doing to promote it, were he in charge of Iranian messaging along the way?

Nazism did not fail because the ideology was proven false by intellectual elites, defeated by a superior logical argument. The argument for Nazism was always about power: racial superiority equals military superiority.  When Germany fell, those who supported the Nazi movement all suffered amnesia. “Not me!” they said. “It was the Nazis!”

Islamic Supremacy, the violent Iran-backed vanguard of the new Caliphate, is on the brink of the very same collapse. Iran was built on the idea that Allah, the All-Powerful, made His Faithful all-powerful as well.

Sadly, Chuck Norris has left this mortal coil (and I bet he didn’t shuffle off).  I anticipate a new wave of Chuck afterlife jokes and memes.

My contributions:

I was visiting my doctor at the local medical center, went to use the bathroom, and was greeted by some words of wisdom mounted just above the toilet:

It was seven years ago today, in the midst of a rather difficult time in my life, that a young ginger-and-white cat strode into it.

I’d seen him, over the past several months, in the cold and in the snow, down in the field.  He and another cat, this one black.  The ginger-and-white would occasionally show up on my brick patio for the food I put out for them.  The black one, not so much, and–try as I might–I was never able to round him up.

But, on March 19, 2019, the ginger and white guy decided he’d found a new home.  And on that morning, I opened the door to go outdoors, and he strode inside as if he owned the place.  I wrote, not quite a year later: