But the expert Maddow cited didn't say the area around Timpson City "never" gets earthquakes. He said it's an area that "normally" isn't hit by earthquakes. Not an earth-shattering lie on Maddow's part but a chasm you would not build a foundation on. It got better with the next source cited by Maddow --
MADDOW: Then a week later it happened again.
KLTV ANCHOR (May 17) -- For the second time in just a week and just the fourth time since 1981, an earthquake has struck in east Texas.
Where this "never" happens, at least by Maddow's reckoning, except that it does every eight years on average in recent decades. Put another way, if Obama wins re-election, we will have seen as many two-term presidencies since 1981 as earthquakes in east Texas.
Thirty-one years, not incidentally, barely qualifies as the blink of an eye in geologic time.