Louisiana bashing returns

You didn't think it would go away did you? The bashing of people who live and work in Louisiana. It's all the rage, as evidenced by the boneheaded ignorant comments following an article in the Washington Post found here.

Entitled "Six months after the spill, BP's money is changing the gulf as much as its oil", the article tells the story of BP paying "huge" sums of money to Gulf Coast shrimpers and makes it sound as if the shrimpers would rather sit around and collect the money than shrimp. Geesh.

Here's a sampling of the "love" from our fellow "United States" citizens:


Geria wrote:
This is another fraud being perpetrated on the people of the Gulf. The whole purpose of the toxic dispersant was to hide the oil and make the water appear normal. That doesn't make it normal as any scientist will tell you!

jrussell1 wrote:
So Acy Cooper, shrimper and vice president of the state's shrimpers association, seems to have found the luxury of BP welfare. The shrimpers begged to be able to go shrimping in that oily water so they could make a living by selling us contaminated seafood, but now that they're getting a nice fat paycheck from BP they elect to stay home. He is probably a life long conservative and has railed against Federal Welfare all his life. How ironic.

FLvet wrote:
We are a nation of deadbeats looking for a handout.

Don't get me wrong, there ARE commenters who defend the Gulf Coast people. But the ignorance of the others makes me see red.

May they live through a few disasters themselves.

Pics from our vacation

I know....the old "pictures from our vacation" entry. But wait! Mine are different. We went to Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida during the second week in October. I'll be adding photos to this post as I can find time. For now, here's what I have that's ready to go


The typical Disney picture


Mickeys pumpkins


Epcot - Mexican Pavillion

Raglan Road - Pagtrick Kavanagh

We found a fantastic Irish Restaurant/Pub in Downtown Disney this week inspired by this poem (pictures to be added later)

On Raglan Road



On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.

Patrick Kavanagh

Scuzzbucket of the Week

Not only was he a scuzzbucket when he gained national/worldwide attention for threatening to burn the Koran on September 11th, but That S.O.B. preacher is now accepting a new car for agreeing NOT to burn the Koran.

From Yahoo News

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Car dealer Brad Benson made the pitch to Florida pastor Terry Jones in one of his quirky radio ads: If you don't burn a Quran, I'll give you a new car.

He was surprised, though, when a representative for Jones called to collect the 2011 Hyundai Accent, retailing for $14,200.

"They said unless I was doing false advertising, they would like to arrange to pick up the car," Benson recalled. At first he thought it was a hoax, so Benson asked Jones to send in a copy of his driver's license. He did.

Jones, of Gainesville, Fla., told The Associated Press that the free car wasn't the reason he called off the burning — and that he didn't even hear about the offer until a few weeks after Sept. 11, when he had threatened to set the Muslim holy book on fire.

He said he plans to donate the car to an organization that helps abused Muslim women.

The pastor will have to pick up the car at Brad Benson Mitsubishi Hyundai in South Brunswick — known locally for Benson's radio ads focusing more on current events than cars — so he can fill out paperwork. No date has been set for the handover.

Jones had threatened to burn the Quran over plans to build an Islamic center and mosque near where terrorists brought down the World Trade Center nine years ago. Muslims revere the book as the word of God and view its destruction as sacrilege.

His plans drew opposition across the world. President Barack Obama appealed to him on television, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates called him personally. Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, said carrying out the plan would have endangered American troops.

Benson, a former New York Giants offensive lineman, said he originally offered Jones use of a car for a year if he refused to burn a Quran ever.

"I just didn't think that was a good thing for our country right now," Benson said.

He's now giving Jones the car outright because he doesn't want to be connected to whatever the Florida pastor does with it.


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"I don't want to be involved in the politics of that," Benson said.

Before he made his decision, Benson asked listeners to weigh in on whether he should honor his promise.

More than 2,600 people responded by phone and e-mail, and the vast majority, Benson said, urged him to keep his word.

One caller suggested painting sayings from various religious books — the Quran, the Talmud, the King James Bible — on the car.

"What you didn't say was what the car was going to look like when you gave it to him," the caller said.

Another caller told Benson to "be a man" and keep his promise. And some encouraged Benson to pick his own charity to get a car.

In 2003, Benson offered another newsmaker — Saddam Hussein — a new car if he fled Iraq. That commercial wasn't as successful, and Benson pulled the ad after two days, replacing it with one apologizing for any offense that was taken.

The Quran commercial was part of a regular "idiot award" segment Benson has singled out others for, including Lindsey Lohan, Mel Gibson and Roger Clemens.

"We don't have your typical car commercial," Benson said.

But they are memorable — and effective. Three years ago, he was selling 60 cars a month, he said. Today, that number is between 500 and 600 — making him one of the state's most successful dealers.

Rebuilding St. Genevieve

St. Genevieve Church - in the Bayou Liberty section of Slidell is finally going to begin construction.

From Nola dot com:

A fluorescent orange X marks the spot where parishioners from St. Genevieve Catholic Church near Slidell will bring handfuls of dirt from home today to fill the spot where the groundbreaking for a new church will take place.


Archbishop Gregory Aymond will celebrate Mass under the stately oaks on the banks of Bayou Liberty where parishioners gathered five years ago for the first Mass after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the original church, which was built in 1958, though the Chapel of St. Genevieve existed on the site from the 1800s.

After the Mass, parishioners will drop the dirt into the hole where the new church’s altar will stand to symbolize the church becoming their new parish home, said the Rev. J. Roel Lungay, St. Genevieve’s pastor. The groundbreaking and the blessing of the site will follow.

“It means a lot,” Lungay said about what the new church will mean to the parish’s 900 families. “But it makes me think about the people who didn’t live to see the church rebuilt.”


The church will measure nearly 12,000 square feet, with fiber cement siding and a metal roof. It will have space for more than 500 parishioners, a sizable jump from the old church’s 350-person capacity and the 300 or so seats now available for worshippers in the church’s parish hall, where Lungay has been celebrating Mass since the storm.


The church will rise 7 feet off the ground, per the area’s new flood requirements, and an elevator will take those parishioners with special needs to the main floor. Officials at one point had hoped to build the church 11 feet high to be able to use the space underneath, but the cost became prohibitive, said Kathie Lusch, the church’s secretary and a member of the Building and Design Committee that helped to create the plan for the new church.

Mary Silva, a parishioner since 1983 when her family moved to the north shore from New Orleans, said she never felt like a true part of the church until she joined the effort to rebuild it. She said with so many parishioners original to the area, her family felt like it was on the outside looking in.

“This is giving us all a chance,” she said. “This is our church now.”

Lungay is hoping that families that left St. Genevieve after the storm will come back once the new church is built. The church lost about a third of its parishioners after the storm.

In addition, the church has been unable to offer religious education classes in the interim, though it joined with St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in Slidell to provide children with the classes, and no one wants to have a wedding there, with no grand aisle to walk down, he said.

Construction is expected to take 18 months and will begin as soon as the church receives its building permit from St. Tammany Parish. The parish is waiting for the church to submit some paperwork to the parish’s Department of Environmental Services before granting the permit, said Tom Beale, a parish spokesman.

Parishioners will not be able to access the church’s boat launch during the construction period.

Officials salvaged the old church’s stained-glass windows, hand-carved Way of the Cross stations, 150-year-old baptismal font and crucifix, and will incorporate the items into the new church. The congregation also plans to restore the old church’s St. Genevieve statue.

The new church will cost $3 million, plus another $1 million to outfit the church once it’s built, Lusch said. The Archdiocese of New Orleans has set aside about $2 million for the construction, while St. Genevieve is nearing its goal of raising an additional $1.5 million.

A film about BP's affect on Louisiana

Crude Justice from Alliance for Justice on Vimeo.

From Oil to Red Tape, The BP Mess Continues

 

From Oil to Red Tape, The BP Mess Continues Posted: 03 Oct 2010 04:00 PM PDT By Veronica Del Bianco In drastic contrast to the tragic oil rig explosion in the Gulf, the eventual capping of the BP well in September was quiet and unceremonious because it meant little in the way of recovery for many along coastal Louisiana. The oil may have stopped gushing into the Gulf, but it's economic impacts continue to spread. Gary Bauer, owner of Pontchartrain Blue Crab, Slidell, La., is worried about the future. "I really thought there would be this flood of fishermen back to the water but it's been very slow," says Gary Bauer, owner of the dock and processing plant Pontchartrain Blue Crab, Inc. at Slidell, La. "They are hesitant. They are waiting to see what happens." Bauer is a big man whose voice becomes quiet when talking about the future of his business and his community. "I got a wife and kids," he says, his voice beginning to waiver. "It's the way I support my family. If the business collapses – I have right at about 100 employees right now – what happens to them? I buy from over 150 fishermen directly. I'm not going to make or break Louisiana seafood but if I fail … what does that say?" Bauer has run the numbers. Between April 20 and August 31 in 2008 and 2009, he purchased 1.8 million and 1.84 million pounds of seafood, respectively. This year, he has only purchased 800,000 pounds during the same period of time. Workers at Pontchartrain Blue Crab picking lumb crab meat for packing. "We're off a million pounds of seafood for the time since the spill," he sys. "That's how much of a drop we have taken." Since the oil spill, Bauer has lost two major accounts – one because of a shortage of supply, and the second because of the negative brand perception of Gulf seafood. For more than ten months, Bauer had worked on a deal worth $750,000 a year with a restaurant chain throughout the southeast to provide them with cooked crabs. But after the rig exploded and oil closed a majority of the fishing grounds, he couldn't get enough crabs, and the restauranteur pulled the plug on the project. "That would have been a substantial repeating business year after year," says Bauer. "That was probably the most disappointing and devastating effect of the spill. If I had to pinpoint any one thing, that would have been tremendous." The second account he lost not because he couldn't supply the machine picked crab meat promised, but because the buyer, who processes crab cakes, no longer wanted to purchase it. "I lost one customer up north in Baltimore," reports Bauer. "He said 'you can't get another cup? My customer will take your meat in any cup that doesn't say product of Louisiana.'" Bauer does not understand how BP and Feinberg can continue to say there is no problem with the perception of Gulf seafood. Fresh caught, wild blue crab from Lake Pontchartrain. "I am Pontchartrain Blues," says Bauer, "and, Lake Pontchartrain was shut down to commercial fishermen for quite some time. That makes the news. And now my name is associated with the spill. It took me ten years to build that name brand. It took 160 days for them to destroy that image." Since April 20th, Bauer has gotten two compensation checks from BP but nothing since Feinberg took over. "There are businesses similar to mine that closed, and because they closed it's easy to prove their loses," says Bauer. "It's cut and dry and they'll be paid. But because I made the decision to stay in business, it's going to be quite a job to prove my loses to BP and Mr. Feinberg." Bauer worries that he will be penalized for staying open and trying to maintain his production, labor force and customer base. "I give myself – the business – maybe a 50/50 chance of being in business six months from now," sighs Bauer, "and less than that if some kind of financial assistance doesn't come through – soon." For Gary Bauer, his business Pontchartrain Blue Crabs, Inc. and the fishermen who sell their catch to him, the caping of the BP well was not the end of the disaster, only the end of the beginning. Now they find themselves in the middle of a bigger mess – red tape. Photos by Peter Forest.

 

 

No Justice for Nicola Cotton

The mentally ill man who fatally shot New Orleans police officer Nicola Cotton in January 2008 with her own gun after she approached him for questioning cannot stand trial because he is "irrestorably incompetent," a judge has ruled.

Times-Picayune archiveIn January, 2008, Bernel Johnson, 44, is escorted from Orleans Parish lockup after being charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of police officer Nicola Cotton.
Bernel P. Johnson, 47, on Sept. 2 was ordered into the custody of the state Department of Health and Hospitals under a civil commitment and will live at the forensic hospital in Jackson, La., indefinitely, his lawyer said.
"He can't get out," said defense attorney Jeffrey Smith, who was appointed to represent Johnson. "That doesn't mean that in five to six years or 10 years he can't come right back to court. It doesn't preclude him from being tried down the road."
Johnson, who has a history of paranoid schizophrenia and lashing out at relatives, remains charged with the first-degree murder of Cotton, 24, who was shot 15 times with her own service weapon the morning of Jan. 28, 2008, outside a strip of stores in the 2100 block of Earhart Boulevard.
"Nothing can happen in this case until the defendant regains his competency," said District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro. "We are on a hiatus."
Cotton's death drew attention to the city's lack of comprehensive mental health services.

New Orleans police officer Nicola Cotton, 24, was shot 15 times with her own service weapon.
Johnson has spent nearly two years at Jackson, being examined as to whether he can grasp the legal system well enough to participate in the defense of his capital murder case. Doctors found him competent for only about two months during that period.
Judge Julian Parker ruled Johnson cannot be restored to competency, having held a series of hearings to take testimony from psychologists who have examined Johnson.
While he has been described by his family as a promising student and artist who graduated from St. Augustine High School, Johnson was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 19, and has spent most of his life in and out of institutions.
Smith said that his client has excitedly told him about highways that he has taken across the ocean to Saudi Arabia.
Johnson will likely spend the rest of his days in a system that he has known for 26 years, a cycle of jails, mental hospitals, and homelessness. He was discharged from Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville not long before he was booked with a cop's murder, which he won't stand trial for anytime soon.
"I'm disappointed," said Henry Dean, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, who is an NOPD captain. "However, we work for the system and we support the system. The real thing is, no matter what happens today nothing will happen to bring Nicola back."
Dean said Cotton's death became a grisly reminder of a scarcity of mental health services in the city.

Times-Picayune archiveCrime scene technicians with the New Orleans Police Department bag officer Nicole Cotton's gunbelt, its holster empty, in front of the food store at Earhart and Simon Bolivar after she was disarmed and shot to death while confronting a man police described as a transient.
"We still don't have our Charity Hospital back," he said. "The mental facilities aren't there."
Smith agreed, comparing Johnson to another client awaiting trial for the murder of a stranger. Erik Traczyk, 39, a New Jersey man, was ordered to stand trial Jan. 18, having been "restored" to competency since his 2007 arrest in the murder of Nia Robertson, 28, at Pal's Lounge.
A bar filled with people watched Traczyk walk into Pal's, pull a knife and first stab a man before slashing Robertson's throat on his way out of the door. Minutes later, police arrested him carrying a blood-stained knife. Judge Karen Herman has found Traczyk incompetent to stand trial four times since November 2007, according to court minutes, but in October 2009 found him competent.
"If the state had a more progressive mental health system, half of these murders would never occur," Smith said. "We are way behind other states."
Several murder cases pending at the Tulane Avenue courthouse involve defendants diagnosed with mental illness. On Monday, police said that 18-year-old Lee Allen, a schizophrenic man with a history of violence, fatally stabbed his 19-year-old girlfriend Monday when she came to pick up their baby daughter. Since November 2009, Allen has racked up three domestic battery cases, including an incident when he dragged Hall by the hair down a city street.
Cotton, a 6th District officer who was eight weeks pregnant, approached Johnson trying to find out whether he was a rape suspect with a similar name -- Bernell Johnson and also 44 years old -- that police were looking for in that area.
Johnson pounced on her, police have said, and for seven minutes, the pair tussled on the pavement.
Cotton called for backup on her radio at some point during the struggle, but Johnson wrestled away her gun and emptied the .40-caliber Glock into the uniformed officer.
Johnson never got a chance to launch any kind of defense at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. Instead, he has spent the past two years at Jackson, being treated for his illness and taught about how the legal system works -- what happens to defendants who are found incompetent to stand trial.
But Smith said prosecutors never had to turn over a videotape of Cotton's killing, which shows that the fatal clash was an unfortunate series of events.
"I guarantee it shows a police officer provoking a totally innocent man," said Smith, a 20-year veteran of criminal trials. "There was an issue of self-defense. He is sitting around minding his own business when all of a sudden a police officer is putting a gun into his ribs."
In court, Johnson's demeanor had become almost docile during the past 2 1/2 years. Instead of his angry outbursts about the court system, in June he quietly asked his attorney if "a lynch mob" was coming for him.
"He does have a treatable illness; I assume he can get much better than he is now," forensic psychiatrist Dr. Sarah DeLand testified in April 2008.

Camp Salmen Nature Park Opening

Nearly 10 years after St. Tammany Parish negotiated the deal to purchase Camp Salmen to preserve the 106-acre site for public use, the former Boy Scouts bivouac will welcome its first visitors Saturday afternoon at a grand opening celebration.

The event will begin with guided walks on Camp Salmen Nature Park's interpretive trails at 1:30 and 2 p.m., followed by a presentation and flag-raising by Parish President Kevin Davis at 2:30 p.m. The 1944 Big Band will perform from 3 to 5 p.m.

The parish is encouraging visitors to bring ice chests and chairs for picnic-style seating at Camp Salmen, which is located on U.S. 190, less than a mile east of Northshore Boulevard. Temporary signs on U.S. 190 will lead visitors down a new road leading to the park, as the parish had not yet decided Tuesday on a name for the road, said Tom Beale, a parish spokesman.

Originally donated by Fritz Salmen of the Salmen Brick and Lumber Company to the Boy Scouts in 1924, the site served as the primary regional Boy Scouts camp in Southeast Louisiana until 1983, when the organization left St. Tammany Parish for a larger, more rural site in nearby Kiln, Miss. The parish worked with the Trust for Public Land to purchase the property in 2001 and secured federal grants to fully acquire the property in 2004.

The interpretive trails include paths and a raised boardwalk along Bayou Liberty that is expected to measure more than five miles by year's end. In addition, families can gather at the park's 5,000 square-foot, open-air pavilion -- the site of the former Scout dining hall.

The new Order of the Arrow Garden, which contains the nearly 200-year-old Camp Salmen Live Oak and is surrounded by new plantings and brick ruins, pays tribute to the ritual of honoring top Scouts at the end of each summer.

Officials hope in later years to further transform the site, building a welcome center at the park's entrance, an administrative building, additional pavilions and an amphitheater at the bayou's edge with a dock leading to the old Salmen Lodge, which is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

The plan is to convert the lodge, which likely served as the first trading post in the Bayou Liberty region and later as the camp director's residence, into a museum to teach school children about the history of the building and the area, officials have said. Teachers would be able to bring their students to the "outdoor classroom" that the park will provide, while another building would house a museum showcasing Scout culture.

Officials also want to restore the flag pole area and a monument to Fritz Salmen, who with his family donated all 106 acres that comprise the site. The parish purchased an additional 30 acres to build the new road leading into the park from U.S. 190.

Further, the parish plans to build a bike path through the park, with the idea of connecting it to the Tammany Trace in the future. The Trace now stops at Neslo Road, not far from the park.

For more information, call 985.898.5243 or visit Camp Salmen Nature Park's website at www.campsalmennaturepark.org.

 

 

3rd Fishkill in Plaquemines

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser is demanding federal involvement when it comes to testing the waters in the parish hit by heavy oil. … “We’ve never seen so many species floating in so many different areas. I’m begging the E.P.A., or somebody… I’m begging them to do their job, get out there and lets test, and see what the hell is going on in the water“…



P.J. Hahn, the Director the Plaquemines Parish Coastal Zone Management Department says fish kills are normal during this time of the year. What’s not normal is how frequent swaths of dead fish are turning up, in areas once heavily oiled.

“Now millions of dead fish that have turned up in the area, and a variety: catfish, redfish, speckled trout we saw, it’s just a number of varieties of fish,” said Hahn… the parish still questions whether they could be related to the oil spill.

The previous fish kills were reported in Bay Chaland and Bay Joe Wise and were predominantly menhaden, also called pogie.

The Bay Chaland fish kill was discovered on September and the Bay Joe Wise fish kill was discovered by officials Thursday, September 16.


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Hahn said Thursday that the fish (in Bay Joe Wise) covered at least one-fourth of a square mile, with oil visible among them. He said he wanted the area tested because it was affected by oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill, said a report from the Associated Press.

In addition to hundreds of thousands of dead fish floating west of the Mississippi River in Bayou Chaland, several days before, a large starfish kill was found in nearby Barataria Bay, and a dead baby whale was discovered near Venice a few days later.



On September 14th thousands of fish and a dead whale were found dead at the mouth of a shipping channel in Venice. Species include crabs, sting rays, eels, drum, speckled trout and red fish.

Billy Nungesser said there is no testing going on to determine if it’s from the oil spill, although the northern Gulf of Mexico has suffered from a persistent dead zone of low oxygen, blamed on nutrient rich runoff from the Mississippi River.

The picture is NOT so rosy in the Gulf

From the website of the National Resources Defense Council regarding
Reports of oiled shrimp and crabs getting caught in some areas continue to crop up. Last week, New Orleans WALB-TV in Mobile, AL, reported crabs caught in Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish were coated in oil after being brought into the dock for sale. According to WALB-TV, seafood dealer Kevin Heir of B&K Crabbing said they tried to notify state officials about the oiled crabs but no one ever came to test them. When he inquired why later, he was told a state supervisor had quashed it, he told WALB.

"We dumped them in ice water, picked the box up, dumped them on the table, and the smell like to knock us down," Heier said. "[We] emptied the box of crabs and the water that was coming off the crabs on the table was just like a sheen."

New reports and fisherman describe oil continuing to wash into the marshes and the beaches along the coast and bays of southern Louisiana. Last week an oiled baby sperm whale and a dolphin washed into the coast, according to fishermen and cleanup workers who saw them before they were hauled away by state authorities. What caused it? No one seems to have answers.

First we couldn't trust BP, then the EPA, then the Natiional Wildlife Agents, then the White House and now? NOW WE CAN'T EVEN TRUST OUR STATE OFFICIALS.