Scuzzbucket of the Week

Actually, this scum has been a scuzzbucket for a loooooong time.




David Duke former Ku Klux Klan leader believes that an Obama victory be a "visual aid" for his "cause". His election, he says, would trigger a backlash - whites rising up, a revolution of sorts - that he and his ilk think is long overdue.

Rot in hell, scum.

Courtesy 2 Millionth Weblog

To the French Relay Swim Team

Check out the Recovery

View Larger Map

Street view via google will let you look at different neighborhoods in NOLA to see how the recovery is progressing.

Where I'd rather be

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Shenandoah Mountains in August.

The Worst Month

August, yuck. It's stuffy, it's more than hot, and I would skip it if I could.


Mosquito Coast talks of what August is all about on the Gulf Coast and she nails it!!

Scuzzbucket of the Week

Scuzzbucket of the Week

Miss Stacey Jackson, a money grubbing bitch who probably thinks she's a glamourous house flipper.
At the expense of New Orleans' poor and elderly citizens, Mizz Jackson has been grabbing up property that has been designated as "blighted" under the auspicies of a company she and her sister controlled.

I've been looking thru everything this group of crazy bandits have been doing for the past few years and it's astounding how intertwined everything is.

Here's the whole story from WWL TV.

Refuge Boardwalk Reopens

from the Times Pic, it took almost three years, but here's news of the reopening of a wonderful little known wildlife boardwalk on Hwy 90 in New Orleans East.



The boardwalk at Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge reopened this week, offering promise and a glimpse of what has yet to return after Hurricane Katrina. Three years after deadly winds and saltwater invasion, scores of trees and thousands of migratory birds are missing, along with hundreds of acres of marsh that made up the 23,000-acre site.



Joe Madere, a retired resident of New Orleans East gives us a little history lesson about the beginnings of this beautiful refuge:

On June 29, 1980 I retired from the New Orleans Police Department and went to work for the New Orleans East Corporation who was developing the eastern section of New Orleans. I worked for them for five years. In 1985, they went bankrupt and Merrill Lynch took over 23,457 acres, and asked me to work for them as land manager. While working for Merrill Lynch, I worked on a project to turn 19,0000 acres to the national government as a wildlife refuge. We worked on this for 5 years, and in 1990 the final papers were signed, making the 19,000 acre Bayou Sauvage Wildlife Refuge.

I got to name the refuge, Bayou Sauvage, because of the bayou, which runs right through the middle of it, that at one time was part of the Mississippi river. This bayou was formed about 600 BC and was a tributary of the Mississippi for about 1000 years, but was sealed off as the river moved further south. Today, Bayou Sauvage is a small body of water about 2 miles long, but it is in its natural state.




"I'm happy to be able to invite people back," Fortier said in spite of the stark surroundings. Few large trees remain to shade the trail, a 2/3-mile loop of raised, wooden boards just east of the Maxent Canal. But along the way strollers can catch glimpses of magnificent insects and flowers and cypress stumps poking from a pond that shimmers in the sun, catching the reflection of snowy egrets flying gracefully overhead.

The boardwalk entrance off Chef Menteur Highway is open daily from sunrise to sunset. Parking is available inside the sliding metal gate, along with new restrooms and cold-water fountains and a pavilion that weathered the storm. Fortier said he hopes to gather students there in the fall for environmental education programs, just as before Katrina.

Touted as the largest urban national wildlife refuge in the United States, Bayou Savage is roughly bounded by the Maxent Levee on the west, Lake Pontchartrain on the north, Lake Borgne on the south and Chef Pass and Lake Pontchartrain on the east.

It has taken many months to clean the area around the boardwalk and rebuild it, Fortier said. A contractor is ready to grind dead trees and brush into mulch in preparation of the massive planting of indigenous trees along the walkway come winter, he said.

Plantings will include live and water oaks, cypress, hackberry, green ash and red maple, Fortier said. The removal of invasive Chinese tallow trees will continue.

With reforestation of the refuge's forest area will come the return of neo-tropical migratory song birds and other wildlife, he said. Also anticipated is the purchase of about 1,500 acres that make up a portion of nearby land and marsh called Brazilier Island, Fortier said.

For information about the refuge and boardwalk, call (985) 882-2000.

Of gators and misconceptions

As a child growing up in New England, I always had this image of Louisiana similar to the ones seen in movies: all swamp and alligators everywhere. When I moved down here over 30 years ago, my ill informed image was put to rest. Louisiana, like every other state in the union, has much of the sameness as other states (walmarts, interstates, jails, etc)and it has sooo much that is awesomely unique.

With the help of NOLA columnist Ron Thibodeaux (tib-a-doe) let's explore some of the misconceptions.Here's the link and here's an exerpt:


When you live in a place as gloriously unique as South Louisiana, it's inevitable to come across some glaring misconceptions from outsiders.

We've all heard them, from the nominally misguided to the patently absurd. As we revel in what makes our home unique, it becomes our duty to set the record straight.

No, just dousing a piece of meat or some other dish with pepper doesn't qualify it as Cajun.



Yes, there is more to Mardi Gras than women showing off their, um, attributes to get beads.



And no, we don't have to fend off alligators as we go about our everyday lives down here.



Over the years we have come to embrace the alligator, figuratively at least, as a state mascot of sorts, an indigenous creature possessed of a mystique that leaves visitors agape.

They can appear ferocious, but many who come in contact with them in the wilds of the Louisiana swamps and bayous know that, unlike their more aggressive cousin the crocodile, most alligators tend to be more skittish of us than we are of them.



The bloodthirsty feeding frenzy by the world's press after Katrina helped plant yet more misconceptions about S.E. Louisiana to the world. True to their colors, the press went after the dirty, gory sensational stories because that's the stuff that sells. They ignored the thousands of people who were just trying to survive while Kathleen Blanco bumbled along and Ray Nagin slowly lost his mind (he's STILL got a slow leak up there somewhere......)

But I digresss.

From yet another article in the T.P. following the gator attack in Slidell last week, some stats:
When an alligator turns up in St. Tammany Parish, sheriff's Deputy Howard McCrea, 61, is the man who gets the call.

He's been doing it for years, pulling gators out of waterways all across the parish. But he had never seen anything like Wednesday's attack on Devin Funck

A national study found in 2005 that only two attacks on people had occurred in Louisiana between 1948 and 2004, compared with 334 attacks and 14 fatalities in Florida. The report stated that numbers might be skewed because of poor documentation.

In 2005, a 12-year-old girl in Venice lost several fingers from a gator bite. In 2007 a 30-year-old woman swimming in Lake Charles was bitten on her buttocks, state Wildlife and Fisheries officials said.

After being hunted nearly to extinction, alligators were listed as an endangered species in 1973. Since then, the population has rebounded along the Gulf Coast, coinciding with suburban sprawl that has placed homes closer to alligator habitats.

McCrea said he enjoys the showmanship of his trade. Sporting camouflage fatigues complete with a glow-in-the-dark alligator logo, he visits classrooms and hands out laminated business cards embedded with pieces of alligator scale.



Mr. McCrea lives in my neighborhood in Slidell. Ten years ago he ran a rescue refuge on his property where he took in gators who had been abused by teenagers and rednecks: gators whose eyes had been shot out, on leg cut off, etc. He also
housed other abused wild animals there. On Sundays he would offer tours to the public of his refuge where a well trained racoon would entertain the crowd. It was very touching, actually to see this ex Marine tough guy (who wouldn't let the high school kids who rode on his school bus to talk in transit) taking care of these huge, potentially life threatening creatures with such tender care but with his years of experience and gator knowledge always in the forefront. The refuge has since closed to the public, but I'll never forget how impressed I was with someone who - until then - I thought was just a big old macho ex marine.

Take this if you have to evacuate

a truely beautiful post
from a truely beautiful Maitri with quotes from a BigEZBear

Thanks, Katrina

St. Tammany Parish Deputy Howard McCrea, THE wildlife specialist with the parish, has seen his share of alligators in the past 20+ years. He's spent his entire life tracking and wrangling alligators, said that while he spends most of his time in the Slidell area rounding up the creatures, the incident that occurred this week is the first actual attack.

“The last incident I can recall is a guy getting his finger bitten off when he was feeding a gator,” said McCrea. “These are very territorial animals, and as we move more and more into their territory, the greater the risks of something like this happening.”

McCrea noted that the area’s alligator population has experienced a huge surge in the last three years........since Katrina.

~~~~~~~

The little boy who was attacked by the eleven foot gator, Devin Funck of Slidell, is still in intensive care but has been taken off a ventilator and has been able to speak with with his parents, said Dr. Leron Finger, medical director of Ochsner Flightcare and a pediatric intensivist. Though attempts to reattached Funck's arm were not successful, he is otherwise expected to make a full recovery in the coming months, Finger said.

"Devin and his family's courage during this difficult time has been an inspiration to the entire Ochsner staff," he said.

What should also be noted is the incredible efforts by two St. Tammany Parish Deputies who responded to the attack.

Detectives Ben Godwin and Gordon Summerlin had to be hospitalized for heat exhaustion after the alligator was captured and shot.

As St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Detective Ben Godwin recalls:

“I was in the subdivision doing an extra patrol in the area for drug-related activities when I overheard the dispatcher telling patrol units about a 911 call regarding a kid who got his arm bitten of by an alligator. It was a kid. We had to go,” Godwin said.

Godwin and his partner, Detective Gordon Summerlin, headed toward the pond and were flagged down by a New Orleans Police Department officer who lives in the subdivision. He told them they would have to take the levee to get to the pond.

“But when we got there, we got there blocked by a chain link fence and the kid was about a mile and a half in,” said Godwin. “All we could do was run. I grabbed a towel I had in my unit, and me and Gordon took off running. I made it to the kid first. He was out by the pond where the alligator attacked.

“I pulled him to the top of the levee. He had bad lacerations on his neck, and his arm was just gone. I wrapped him in the towel and ran back with him.”

The child, Devin Funck, was remarkably calm, said Godwin. The detectives worked to keep him that way, and to keep him alive.

“I kept the towel over him,” said Godwin. “I didn’t want him to see his arm. He talked about paint ball. And he said he was thirsty. I told him I had a Mountain Dew back in the unit, but he couldn’t have all of it because I needed some, too.”

Godwin kept running through the heat of the afternoon. Funck started to turn pale.

“I kept him talking,” said Godwin. “If he’s talking he’s breathing. And he was thinking. He was making sense.”

When they were part way back from the pond, some help arrived.

“A civilian on a mule, a four-wheeler, was coming toward us as I was running back,” said Godwin. “He picked us up and drove us the rest of the way to where the fire department and medical personnel were.

“When we made it back, medical personnel took the kid, and the next thing I knew I woke up in the emergency room.”

The detective suffered a heat stroke. His partner ended up in the emergency room as well. Summerlin was dehydrated.

As tragic as this story is, it tells of what 99% of all law enforcement officers face on a daily basis and of their dedication to their duties.

Many thanks to Officers Godwin and Summerlin. Y'all rock.

Keep going, Lee

Nagin is such a son of a bitch.

I hope this is the beginning of the end for him

NOAH inverview with Lee Zurik.