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What it was, was those darn Rooskies

 Sven didn’t know what it was. Ole didn’t know what it was. Even Lena didn’t know what it was. But what it was was blue and big and very prominent over Norwegian skies. Oh, and it wasn’t Air Force One flying to Oslo so the President could accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

 Norwegian space officials were inundated with calls about a strange blue light  that turned out to be from a Russian missile test. That’s last part’s kind of spooky in itself.

 But I suppose it is better knowing than not knowing. And it is better knowing it was from a Russian missile than from a giant extraterrestrial Blue Light Special from Planet K-Mart.

 Attention K-Mart shoppers: Da!

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Congressional panels: Improving government or political grandstanding?

 It is difficult for me to recall but I am almost certain that I did not go to the bathroom during my only visit to the U.S. Capitol some five or six years ago. I feel pretty sure about that fact because I have not yet been investigated by a congressional committee.

 I did have something I wrote in a newspaper column once read into the Congressional Record. That was nice. But, no, I have never been grilled by Congress for using the bathroom at the Capitol or anywhere else for that matter.

 The reason I bring the matter up is because Congress seems primed for an publicized inquiry anytime they catch someone using the Capitol water closets. Now that is pure hyperbole but I use the statement because large-scale congressional investigations sometimes seem as if they are more often than not disproportionate to the importance of the subject under scrutiny.

 Now I certainly believe that an inquiry might be warranted into how the glam couple and perhaps future reality TV stars, the Salahis, allegedly crashed the White House state dinner for the Indian prime minister. However, the fact that the show in Congress seems to be amplified by Republican Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking opposition member of the Homeland Security Committee, makes it obvious that King might just be more interested in hurting Obama and  his staff members than worrying about the safety of the President himself. King now has beat that dead horse to the point that he is willing to hear from the White House social director while she is not under oath or before cameras.  It looks as if that reprobate King might have just drilled himself a dry hole. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not a big fan of Peter King. I think the best description of him remains that from Slate media critic Jack Shafer who called King “an explod­ing car­bun­cle mas­querad­ing as a mem­ber of Con­gress.”

 Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee is busying themselves trying to exploit examine the leak of a sensitive Transportation Security Administration document. The 90-some-odd-page manual on how to screen airline passengers was posted, for awhile, on the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said “action” has been taken against those responsible. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Perhaps they were made to stand in line at a TSA screening station for 24 hours. Or maybe they were subjected to continual body cavity searches.

 A lot of good can come from these congressional inquiries. For instance, learning about chinks (and no, I am not making a racial slur against Chinese people!) in the armor of White House security can help make the Prez’s place more secure. And surely the TSA screening process has room for improvement. They can take me off their “watch list” or whatever it was that caused me to be denied an online boarding pass during my departure from Houston to Memphis in October. This afternoon I have filled out a form to send their redress program so maybe I won’t find myself in a dark little room being manhandled in the nude by two former Russian women wrestlers who now are TSA security people. Or I might just make things worse for myself. One never knows.

 Nonetheless, if I was in charge congressional inquiries would help improve matters rather than used as a platform to bludgeon political foes. Or else, if I was in change, I might be out on a big yatch somewhere fishing. I can’t say. I’m not in charge and likely I will never rise to such a high station.

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No 'Parent of the Year' award for suspects sought by police

Among the criminal of our species there are “bottom feeders” and then there is a whole class for below that division.

Right here in “River City” — to borrow from “The Music Man” — otherwise known as Beaumont, Texas, police are seeking a couple who fall somewhere in that class below the lowest.

Theft_Suspects The suspects are the couple in the picture. They look like Joe Bob and Tanya Jean Blow what with Joe Bob in the orange shirt pushing the baby while sweet little Tanya Jean in the black shirt pulls up her hair into a ponytail.

But police say the pair are actually a couple of thieves who use their baby as a distraction.

A Beaumont police press release said the man — who has a mustache and goatee — allegedly snatches and grabs the merchandise while the woman serves as a lookout. Here the alleged sticky-fingered duo at 4:56 p.m. on Nov. 23 search for a real steal at Radio Shack in the Parkdale Mall. They are also suspected of thefts at the Sunglasses Hut in the mall and at the H-E-B Plus on Dowlen Road.

Lowlife is a word that comes to mind when a couple uses a baby to steal or commit other crimes. I once had neighbors who used their kids as a shield for selling crack. The police would make a pass and Mrs. Not June Cleaver would grab up her older Roly Poly or the baby and rock-a-bye until the cops went bye-bye.

So-called adults putting truly innocent children — like a baby — into such a situation is bad enough. But such is the nature of this couple’s alleged crime that the baby himself or herself is a cause of concern for the police. Beaumont police told local media that they want to both collar the couple and check on the welfare of the child.

If you see this couple or know people like them, slap them silly call your local police or Crime Stoppers. In my nekkid of the woods, to lighten this piece just a bit and give someone a chance to say you misspelled “neck,” the phone number is (409)833-TIPS.

Seriously, people who do stuff like use their kids to steal really ticks me off. Of course, lots of things tick me off. But I don’t have time to get into all that, so I will just say “au jus,” dear friends.

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My teams sink into the mud yet the World continues to turn

 A  fast-moving snow came through our normally snow-deprived area Friday and left about a 1/4 inch. Unfortunately, there was little left for a photograph as what was left on the ground was in the dark and by the time I got out of bed the next day the snow was long gone. Such are Gulf Coast snows. At least we got to share our snow with my friends up in the Northeast. My friend Sally, in Western Massachusetts told me she enjoyed the first snow of the year which was thanks to the same potent weather system.

 Otherwise the weekend was one of mostly watching all my football teams go down in flames save one. The Longhorns squeaked by Nebraska and thus will play in the National Championship against the Crimson Tide. I have to be almost apologetic in saying that I root for Texas because, as most of my friends are Republicans while I am a proud Democrat, most of my friends and relatives are also Aggies. Many are such Texas A & M fans that they will root for any team but “TU” or what they call The University of Texas (at Austin). That I don’t understand. It seems like we are all Texans and we would support a fellow Texas team fighting for the national title. But not so many Aggies.

 My high school fell in quarterfinals. I wasn’t surprised because Newton played No. 1 Daingerfield. My college alma mater, Stephen F. Austin was destroyed in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs — formerly NCAA Div. I-A — by No. 1 Montana. University of Houston was beaten by Eastern Carolina for the Conference USA championships. Last but certainly least in the NFL, my Texans got whipped by Jacksonville and slipped to 5-7.

 So yes that one-second nail-biter between the Cornhuskers and the Longhorns was my little bright light. Well, the Saints won in overtime but I didn’t get to see that because Fox cut completely the Saints’ exciting OT finish off for the Cowboys miserable loss to the Giants. I mean, I like Wade Phillips and all but give me a break.

 Needless to say it was a disappointing weekend. Not much snow. My favorite teams were mostly left trampled in the mud. My feet continue to hurt including my non-broken toe that feels now like a broken foot. Yet, the world continues to turn. One cannot watch cable TV news without everything being laid down in the context of politics. With every breath that Obama takes a new poll is released. Will his exhales excite the independent white Christian women or will his inhaling raise his numbers with the black male Muslim upper class cross dressers? Stay tuned. I’m sure we will find out eventually.

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It's snowing but the weather outside's not frightening

 Just a moment ago I stepped outside and noticed that some sort of frozen precipitation is falling along with the rain. It looks like our first winter storm of the season is starting to take shape.

 The agency I work part-time for put their employees in this region on administrative leave beginning at noon because of the winter storm. That just means we get to go home early. It’s no big deal for me since I was only supposed to work until 1:30 p.m. I came home after lunch and took a nap, waking at 1:30 p.m. I know. Life is hard.

 This is the  first time I can remember the National Weather Service — our station is out of Lake Charles, La., — actually predicting snow since I have been living back in the Beaumont area for the last four years. Perhaps they did last year when it snowed on Dec. 11 and I just don’t remember it. But here is how Lake Charles forecaster Sam Shamburger prognosticates the snow fall in an updated version of the latest weather forecast discussion:

   ” AT THIS TIME…OUR CURRENT FORECAST SNOW TOTALS OF 1 TO
    3 INCHES IN NORTHERN ZONES AND UP TO 2 INCHES IN SOUTHERN ZONES
    STILL APPEARS REASONABLE.”

 Sorry, the CAPS are the weather service’s not mine.

 Now if you live in Minnesota or New Hampshire or Siberia or any other place snowfall is a common occurrence, you might wonder what the fuss is about. The answer is that it doesn’t snow — at least in measurable amounts — very often in Beaumont, Texas. The fact that it did last year and a measurable snowfall is expected this evening is kind of like seeing a group of Republicans sporting “Raise My Taxes. Please! T-shirts.

 Just how rare are measurable snowfalls on the upper Texas-Western Louisiana coast? Well, Beaumont has had 17 measurable snowfalls since 1895, according to NWS records. A measurable snowfall occurs on average once every 7 years here with January being  the average month for such an event. I don’t know if this is some kind of recording error or not, but these records indicate the largest snowfall on record  being 30 inches on Feb. 14, 1895. People back then must’ve thought the world was ending. The second greatest snowfall was 4.4 inches in 1960, followed by 3 inches in January 1973. The latter snow I remember as I lived about 60 miles northeast of where I now live.

 The 1973 snowfall was fun. I was a junior in high school and this was also the first snowfall in which I drove. It was quite enjoyable because I lived in a small town and no one, it seems, ventured out on the roads except for fools such as me.

 Last year’s snowfall, which was the earliest on record and will be beaten out of that title if this storm pans out, was the eighth greatest amount of measurable snow on record at 1.8 inches.

 I made some kind of remark on Facebook last night concerning the impending snow storm trying to be funny. An old friend from high school scolded me with an emoticon because she didn’t get the reference I made and she was excited about the prospect of snow. I later wrote that I was as well.

 For all the problems snow can bring to probably most or a sizeable amount of Americans who experience it regularly before, during and after Winter, I feel the rare snow in areas of Texas where I have spent most of my life as a rather cleansing event. I don’t mean cleansing in a physical sense but more in terms of the human psyche.

 In places where snow doesn’t often fall there are kids who get to revel in its charms while older folks get to think of snows past when they were younger and played in it making snowmen or were engaged in snowball fights. Of course, some older folks probably had to walk 20 miles in the snow to school and they scowl at just the thought of it. Others think of snow in terms of magic. And some also remember that they wished some sort of magic was available during snows  in which they were stuck in it or caught out in it on the shoulder of some lonesome interstate.

 But snow is what it is and looking outside I see that some of it is now beginning to fall, along with the rain and the temperature. Like the song says, “Let it snow … ” I’m off work, inside where it’s warm so, if there is magic to behold then let it commence. If it sticks I will post some pics.