James McMurtry: Traffic Jam In the past week, I have driven past the immediate aftermaths of two horrible car wrecks. The first was a single car roll over with no apparent survivors. On a dirt road that led off a two lane highway in North Texas, a small crunched up four door sedan was sitting […]
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Jason Isbell is moving mountains. He has managed to get a major venue in Austin, Texas to require patrons to provide proof of vaccination for COVID and the wearing of masks for entry to his performances. I can’t get that from two hundred seat clubs across the Southwest, not yet anyway. I have a feeling […]
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James McMurtry — “Cancelled Culture” When the pandemic became a real thing for most of us, a year and a half or so ago, I worried that if I were an asymptomatic carrier of covid and coughed in a restaurant, I might infect a server who might then go home and infect his or her […]
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James McMurtry – Wasteland Bait & Tackle As I write, there are sixteen ICU beds available in the 11 county Trauma Service Region O(TSA*O) which includes Austin Texas, and provides service to over 2.3 million residents. Again, sixteen beds, two point three million residents. We’re back to square one, if not further back. I’m older […]
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So I’ll write about me. But I might also be writing about you. I cast my first vote on a poster sized paper ballot which I marked with a pencil, provided by the county, and then folded and stuffed into a black wooden box similar to the one LBJ had stolen some thirty six years […]
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At midnight all the agents and the super human crew go out and round up every one that knows more than they do . . . —Bob Dylan, from “Desolation Row” Dr. Fauci has an unenviable position. He knows more than Donald Trump. He knows more than most any of us about infectious disease. And […]
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By James McMurtry Let’s say you’ve got a brand new custom 1911 .45 ACP pistol with all the bells and whistles, except a muzzle brake. You don’t think you need a muzzle brake because you are a real man, you can handle recoil. But you and your new pistol just can’t seem to knock down […]
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Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone trends at the top of google news as if no one saw it coming. Houston is out of ICU beds. ERs are directing ambulance crews elsewhere. Trump’s pardon of Stone dominates the headlines. Who really gives a rat’s ass about Roger Stone? We have real problems that need to be […]
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So now the President wants a “National Heroes Garden” eh? I guess he’s been studying fascist dictators again, has moved on from Mussolini, and discovered Francisco Franco’s “Valle de los Caidos” up the hill from Madrid, The Valley of the Fallen, which Franco billed as a national act of reconciliation after the Spanish Civil War, […]
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By James McMurtry Our President cares an awful lot about statues commemorating officers of the losing side of our civil war, a conflict that occurred before either side of his immigrant family reached our shores. He’s not known for admiring those he calls LOSERS!, and he has no roots in the conflict. My father and […]
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