Showing posts with label Houma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Houma. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

It's true! Zombie bug thrives with no food


In the news tonight, researchers across the country frantically attempt to unlock the mystery of why the deadly brain-eating amoeba is thriving in Louisiana despite a seeming lack of feeding grounds.

The latest brain-buster for top scientists is the Naegleria fowerli amoeba's appearance in the Terrebonne Parish water system. Theoretically, they say, this should not be possible with no nutrients for the organism to consume.

The baffled brainiacs cited the following article from the Houma Courier website:

Three residents are expected to address the Terrebonne Parish School Board on Tuesday about a member's racially charged Facebook posts.

Dorothy Murray, the Rev. Vernell Johnson and Ronald Williams are on the agenda to address the Confederate flag and an unspecified board member's Facebook posts.

The School Board is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. in its office, 201 Stadium Drive, Houma.

The action comes after School Board member Vicki Bonvillain's posts about the flag last month sparked concerns from the Terrebonne Parish NAACP.

On July 14, Bonvillain shared a picture on her Facebook page that said if the Confederate flag represents racism in America then so do other symbols, including the NAACP's logo, Black History Month, the Democratic Party, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the United Negro College Fund, Hispanic Heritage celebrations and the Black Panther Party.

"Our 'elected officials' want to accommodate our HISTORY to PLEASE some. WELL shouldn't ALL 'MLK' BLVDs be removed nationwide?" Bonvillain asked in a post July 9.

The posts have since been removed.
IN OTHER NEWS . . . despite making the news -- unfavorably -- for one damn thing after another, the state of Louisiana still wonders whether the rest of America is laughing with it or at it.

Film at 11.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Dumber than . . . poot

I glanced at this site, which led me to this story, which referred me back to this January story, which hit me upside the head with one of my home state's raging core crises . . . and why it's only going to abate oh-so-slowly, if at all.

Really, the original story leading to an "Oh my God" comment on it isn't important now. You probably wouldn't be interested.

Suffice it to say, the article, in the Houma (La.) Courier, was about a Catholic-school senior who got a big-time suspension for starting a Facebook group the principal didn't like. At all. And now she and her mother are making a federal case out of it.

Literally.

BUT, LIKE I SAID, that's not important now. What's important is this comment on the original story, which ran last January:

pootypants1 says...
January 26, 2008 8:36:15 am

Even public school can be rediculuse. I pulled my son out and he is home schooled now. He wasn't allowed to have a jacket cause it had one white stripe down one sleeve(rules say solid colors) Then on top of that he is diabetic and takes 9 to 12 shots a day. If his blood sugar happen to drop to low he couldn't eat his candy in class(even with doctors written oders) he was expected to walk down the hall,down the steps, and to the office where they kept his emergency pack. By the time he would get there he could be in a comma. I have home schooled him for 3 yrs now. Works for Us.
Report this post
HELLO, HOUMA COURIER? I'd like to report a post on one of your news stories.

Yes ma'am, I found that post quite "rediculuse," and if I ever again accidentally read something that leaves me laughing like a hyena at the same time I'm thoroughly mortified, the resulting confusion might send me into a "comma."

If the comment by "pootypants1" -- pootypants1??? -- was a joke, you need to find that out. Because if it wasn't, you sooooooo need to do a monthlong series on homeschooling in Louisiana, why ignoramuses are allowed to do it and how that's helping to keep your state dumber than a sack of . . . poot.

When people that illiterate (or would that be "illiderrut"?) are allowed to homeschool innocent children, it's akin to state-sanctioned child abuse. That's poor kid's future is going to be shot to hell from the get-go, and Louisiana's going to be dealing with that -- one way or another.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Break out the Welch's and the strippers

Oh yi yi, ma pouvre Louisiane! Could it be that your inherent joie de vivre leaves you somehow susceptible to unending mal de gouvernement?

THE NATION first saw this back in the age of newsreels, with the homespun, strutting demagogue Huey Long giving his dirt-poor subjects some of what other Americans had taken for granted for decades, but giving himself a lot more off the top as he plotted to take the White House from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A couple of decades later, a nation returned to watch the televised spectacle of Huey's little brother Earl crowin' all the way to the funny farm . . . yanked from the loving arms of New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr and thrown into a rubber room, paranoid and stained purple from the grape juice he had taken to pouring over his head.

Two decades after that, America tuned back in to marvel at the grafting -- and womanizing -- antics of the Silver Zipper, one Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, whose present address is the federal prison at Oakdale, La.

Three years ago, television -- and Hurricane Katrina -- introduced a national audience to da mayuh uh Noo Orluns, "Crazy" Ray Nagin, who proceeded to cry and cuss on the radio as his city drowned, then presided -- of a fashion -- over the half-hearted rebuilding of a self-proclaimed "Chocolate City" . . . and an exploding murder rate.

Nagin went on to say the murder spree at least kept the city's "brand" out there. This before he, ultimately, ended up proclaiming himself a "vagina-friendly mayor."

KATRINA GAVE US NAGIN, and now Gustav has given us Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet. According to the Houma Courier, things ain't good after the hurricane down on the bayou in Houma.

And you probably would have heard about that already had Terrebonne's very own Boss Hogg managed to be at least half as entertainingly whack as Nagin.

But Claudet has been anything but. The best the man could muster, says the Courier editorial board, was to hand off the reins of post-deluge power to Roscoe P. Coltrane and slink off to mutter about those damn Duke boys:
Terrebonne’s response to Hurricane Gustav has been hampered by poor communication from parish officials, and most of the responsibility rests with Parish President Michel Claudet.

Problems started long before Claudet ceded his leadership of the parish’s hurricane efforts Tuesday to Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois — something no one got around to announcing to residents until a day later. They started before the storm, as Claudet and his emergency-preparedness director, Jerry Richard, refused to answer even the most basic questions from reporters and the public about what the parish was doing to prepare.

One of the greatest examples is an e-mail received by The Courier and various Louisiana TV stations and newspapers Aug. 29, as Gustav strengthened and forecasters projected with increasing certainty that the hurricane would hit here or somewhere dangerously close.

Neither the name associated with the e-mail, nor the subject line, includes anything that would indicate it is an important notification or that it even came from Terrebonne Parish government. The subject line reads, simply, “press release.” Open it, and here is exactly what it says, in its entirety:
PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 29, 2008

6:00 A.M. or 0600 hrs. (8/30/08) the EOC will be fully operational.

Mandatory evacuation 4 pm (1600) Saturday, August 30th by declaration of Parish President Michel Claudet.
That was it?

You would think an announcement of that magnitude would have warranted elaboration from the parish president – not a minion or spokesman but the man charged with the wellbeing of 110,000 residents whose lives and property were threatened by a powerful hurricane. And not just to the media but to the people he represents.


(snip)

Throughout this storm, our questions to Claudet and Richard have mostly been met by vague answers, unreturned phone calls, evasiveness or a parish president and emergency director who say they are too busy to tell the people what they are doing to protect them. Sometimes, they simply hang up.

Claudet told the Parish Council, whose members questioned at a meeting Thursday why they, too, have been left out of the loop, that knocked out cell phones and other technological problems impeded communication during the storm.

Once the phones came back on, he said, “all hell broke loose” as officials worked to respond to myriad callers.

“No one can prepare for something like this,” Claudet told the council. “It’s impossible.”
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S response to Katrina, of course, proves that abject incompetence and a tendency to melt down are not phenomena found only within the borders of the Gret Stet.

But you do start to wonder, though, when two hurricanes in three years produce a pair of unrelated meltdowns in basic governance and crisis management. Especially within the context of a state much better at elevating crooks and cartoon characters to high office than statesmen.

Real people suffer because of this stuff. Real progress is stillborn because of this stuff. Louisiana and the American taxpayer ultimately pay a price because of this stuff.

You won't read about any of it in the national press, just like you won't read about the horrendous damage done by Gustav to the state beyond New Orleans' miraculously unbreached levees.

MAYBE IF CLAUDET -- better sooner than later -- pours some grape juice over his head, boinks a stripper, gets hauled off to the booby hatch and then federal prison somebody in a New York newsroom will notice the sufferings of south Louisiana.