From: The Mighty Favog To: Listserve Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 18:23 Subject: Re: [Listserve] Third Day (Katrina Mix)
>> Here's something I produced today you may be interested in airing to >> support your on-air efforts to stay topical about the aftermath of >> Katrina. It's the new Third Day single, with news and survivor soundbites >> mixed in. Feel free to pass this link onto anyone else you think might be >> interested in airing it.
All,
Being a native Louisianian watching beloved New Orleans destroyed and the Gulf Coast washed away, my emotions are pretty raw this week. Nevertheless, let me try to be delicate about this. I realize that folks are trying to be helpful, trying to be relevant and are doing so with good hearts.
But y'all have to realize that, sometimes, the proper reaction to great tragedy is not to hand out a tract. Sometimes, the proper reaction is merely compassion -- to suffer with, to enter into victims' Passion, their collective submersion into the sorrowful mystery of Christ's agony and death.
If nothing else, those trapped in New Orleans, those staring at empty lots where their oceanfront homes used to be, those whose homes have been crushed by venerable pines and oaks have been doing NOTHING BUT crying out to Jesus. As have both those natives who evacuated with only what could be stuffed into vehicles and those, like me, who moved away years ago.
This thing, this damnable hurricane, has been bad. Cataclysmic. Friday, U.S. Sen. David Vitter said his best guess was that 10,000 may have died IN NEW ORLEANS ALONE. The economic loss, according to preliminary estimates, will reach $100 BILLION.
We -- all Americans -- will see economic and political upheaval that we can barely begin to fathom at this point.
Tracts are insufficient. Only Christ's love, channeled through His people, and elbow grease is sufficient.
And if you really have to play a song, play one that has come to mean much to folks of the area: "Louisiana 1927" by Randy Newman. There have been wonderful covers, as well, by Marcia Ball and Aaron Neville. It's a song that hit many Louisianians where they lived even before this week.
No, I'm not talking about Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, busted by Officer Mancuso in the Minneapolis airport john. The "family values" senator is one sick puppy deep in denial . . . not a hypocrite.
And his wife needs to get tested. Now.
The lousy, rotten, hypocritical Republican poltroons I'm talking about are all those outraged -- outraged! -- by the senator's alleged toilet-trolling ways. They want him to resign tout de suite as a betrayer of "values voters" and an embarrasser of the party.
These folks are lousy, rotten hypocrites and scumbags because -- apparently in their book -- it's one thing for a Republican social conservative to engage in illegal conduct with female prostitutes (complete with an alleged diaper fetish) and lie about it, but entirely another for a Republican social conservative to engage in illegal conduct with another man in a public-bathroom stall and lie about it.
IN SHORT, where are the Republican senators and congressmen calling for the head of "Diaperman," a.k.a., Sen. David Vitter, R.-La.? (Insert sound of crickets.)
After all, last I checked, boinking a high-class whore is no more or less illegal than a tawdry, anonymous assignation between two men in an airport latrine. The only thing saving Vitter there is the statute of limitations.
And last I checked my catechism, homosexual acts are no more or less gravely sinful than screwing around on your wife with a prostitute.
Neither the law nor the Catholic catechism offers any guidance on diaper fetishes.
And Vitter's wife needs to get tested. Now. Still, when the poor old Idaho poofter gets caught by the Twin Cities potty patrol, we are subjected to twaddle such as this from Sen. John McCain, taking a break from his flagging presidential campaign to spew thusly:
“My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn’t serve. That’s not a moral stand. That’s not a holier-than-thou. It’s just a factual situation.”
NO, SENATOR, that's just self-righteous bull. Factual is that you'll never, ever be president, and that's probably a good thing.
“Exit polls show that was the No. 1 factor in depressing Republican enthusiasm. There is an expectation that leaders who espouse family values will live by those values. And while the values voters don’t demand perfection, I do believe they want leaders with integrity.”
Of course, when the malefactor was the promiscuously heterosexual Vitter -- an old buddy from their days in the Louisiana Legislature -- Perkins was singing from a different page of the hymnal:
The statement by my friend and former colleague, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, was very disappointing. He admitted to a “serious sin” in a statement he released to the press on Monday, prior to news reports revealing that his phone number appeared on a long list of client’s numbers of the now infamous DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.
In the release David assumed complete responsibility for what he did and that he “asked for and received forgiveness from God and [his] wife in confession and marriage counseling.” These allegations first surfaced about 4 or 5 years ago when David was considering running for governor of Louisiana. He backed away from the race admitting to marital problems and he and his wife sought counseling. This public revelation coincides with that time frame.
While I commend him on assuming personal responsibility and working to make things whole in his life, I cannot defend David’s behavior. Adultery is a serious matter that affects not only the individuals involved but families and the well being of the entire community. Voters have the right to consider issues like this when they assess the character of an elected official.
Having said that, the American people have shown themselves to be very forgiving toward a public official who admits their failures and takes redemptive steps. And despite what some have said since he released his statement, so does God. Proverbs 24:16 reads “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.” I hope to see David back on his feet again.
SIN IS SIN. Illegal is illegal. Vitter's no better than Larry Craig.
Both should go.
And, come to think of it, so should the dishonorable men who have so little legal or moral vision that they cannot discern the obvious when it kicks them right in their Kinsey Reports.
President Bush appeared today in New Orleans to commemorate the second anniversary of his screwing over the Crescent City in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Here are some excerpts from his remarks this morning at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology in the Lower 9th Ward.:
Madam Principal, thank you for having us. Laura and I are honored to be here.
From: The Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 02:52 Subject: Re: The impact of Katrina: One city
****,
The anarchy in New Orleans isn't the only thing that's starting to scare me here. The wild rumors that are spreading in city after city, and the reaction to all of this make me wonder if it isn't only among a portion of the urban underclass that the veneer of civilization is starting to come completely undone.
You don't remember the South in the '60s. I do. And what I'm hearing from all over is starting to remind me of some VERY bad s*** when Watts, Detroit and Memphis burned at the very same time white folk were being told they had to send their kids to school with "the nigras."
I remember in 1970, when Baton Rouge was about to be subjected to "neighborhood schools" as a mandatory integration plan. At that time, BR schools were being integrated by the grade-at-a-time "freedom of choice" method, starting in '63 (I think) with 12th grade. The scheme clearly was a joke. I was in fourth grade, and I had gone to legally segregated schools all my young life.
Anyway, I remember sitting in Joe Guillot's (Mister Joe to everybody) barber shop as some guy -- horrified that his boy was going to have to go to Istrouma High with the "g**damn niggers" -- vowed that he would make sure Junior was packing heat. Many things I've heard in the last few days are giving me serious flashbacks.
****, with two little ones , don't have a pistol in the house. It's far more likely that they could get a hold of it and shoot themselves than it is ******* would suffer "New Orleanism" and you'd have to fend off the rampaging hordes.
Besides, you probably would be seriously outgunned anyway.
Maybe things are all going to hell in a handbasket. Then again, maybe not. At least not to THAT extent.
What folks need to do is to just stop it. Stop it, settle down, get a grip on their fear/reason disconnect and take a long, deep breath. Because what we might do in reaction to our worst fears could surpass our worst nightmares.
From: The Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 14:56 Subject: Prescient political commentary of the day
Here is the commentary, which is way better than anything by Fox's "All Stars":
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."
-- Favog
From an AP dispatch:
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."
The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said.
People chanted, "Help, help!" as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.
John Murray, 52, said: "It's like they're punishing us."
From: The Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 23:57 Subject: Re: Bush blows it
Dear ***,
Here's the president's political problem:
Louisiana soldiers are dying for George Bush's sins. New Orleans is dying for George Bush's sins (cutting all the flood-protection money to fund tilting at windmills in Iraq). And then the SOB gives a laundry-list speech of all the great stuff the Great God W. is doing for the Gulf Coast, when just a FRACTION of it is plainly evident on the ground, where refugees are plucked off of roofs just to f***ing die of thirst and hunger because no one can seem to get food and water where people actually can eat and drink it.
I freakin' saw one too many people crying into the WWL-TV camera lens, begging for food and water today. Saw too many hard-assed sheriff's captains and parish poobahs with agony written on their faces, almost in tears, begging the state, the feds, ANYONE to send food and water because people are falling out on Interstate ramps and the tops of levees . . . because evacuation shelters are full of refugees and devoid of food and water because no one will resupply them.
The longtime cameraman who shot one such piece said it was the only time he's ever wept while shooting a story. And then he broke down in tears on the air.
I broke down in sobs at my computer.
Next year in Nebraska, we have pro-life Democrats running for 2nd District U.S. House and U.S. Senate (Ben Nelson). They both have my enthusiastic support.
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 13:46 Subject: More apocalypse . . . at least hundreds dead in N'Awlins. Maybe thousands.
Again, from the invaluable WWL-TV.
-- Favog
Updates as they come in on Katrina 01:40 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tom Planchet
1:39 P.M. -- Hoss: Airline Highway is still underwater.
1:28 P.M. -- WWL-TV's Mike Hoss said the I-10/Causeway interchange has turned into a massive first aid station. 50 ambulances are stationed there, and those who need immediate medical attention are being kept there in tents. Black Hawk helicopters and other rescue copters are constantly ferrying evacuees in to the area.
1:20 P.M. -- (AP) Mayor Ray Nagin says at least hundreds of people are dead -- maybe thousands -- in New Orleans. "We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
1:12 P.M. -- WWL-TV's Josh McElveen describes the stench coming from the bathrooms in the Superdome as horrific.
1:03 P.M. -- Mayor Nagin: Medical ship on the way to New Orleans.
12:56 P.M. -- Governor Blanco - Time is not on our side for stopping the levee break. There were two breaches, when we thought there was only one. Communicatiion, or lack of same caused the problem.
12:55 P.M. -- MIAMI (AP) -- Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines says it is considering a federal request that the company use some of its cruise ships as emergency shelters or help in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in some other way.
12:53 P.M. -- Governor Blanco - thousands still need to be rescued.
12:52 P.M. -- Governor Blanco: We will rebuild.
12:51 P.M. -- Governor Blanco: The magnitude of this is overwhelming.
12:15 P.M. -- Army Corps: 1,200 sandbags that are 20,000 pounds each are being brought in to bridge gap...water level is no longer rising.
12:11 P.M. -- Army Corps: Water has become level with the Lake in the city so no more water should flow into the city, except at high tide.
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 11:59 Subject: New Orleans facing the apocalypse
All,
I just saw Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations chief Walter Maestri on TV, via the Internet. He looked and sounded desperate and frustrated. As I understand from the reporters and anchors, this is not a man given to desperation or frustration.
From what I hear, conditions are no better re: food and water on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
God save the people of the Gulf Coast, because the feds and state aren't enough so far. Alas, I can't help but wonder how many Guard and regular Army resources that might be brought to bear are now tilting at windmills in Iraq.
-- Favog
From WWL-TV:
Updates as they come in on Katrina 11:42 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tom Planchet
11:40 -- (AP) Roving bands of looters are breaking into stores in Carrollton area to get food and supplies. They've also stolen guns and armed themselves.
11:33 A.M. -- Director Walter Maestri: We have no food or water for the evacuees. Says emergency workers have seized the food and water and drinks from Sam's Club, Wal-Mart and other groceries for evacuees, but he said that is all gone. Says water supply is gone. More water expected, but its not there right now. Says evacuees are getting upset and harried.
11:32 A.M. -- Director Walter Maestri: FEMA and national agencies not delivering the help nearly as fast as it is needed.
11:30 A.M. -- Emergency Operations Director Walter Maestri: Evacuees from New Orleans and the east bank of Jefferson are flocking to the west bank, overwhelming the facilities.
10:58 A.M. -- (AP) The New Orleans International Airport has reopened to allow humanitarian flights in and out, officials said Wednesday.
From: The Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 01:14 Subject: Mercy Now
All,
This news photo from the WWL-TV website, I think, says it all. (http://www.wwltv.com/)
-- Favog
Mercy Now by Mary Gauthier
My father could use a little mercy now The fruits of his labor Fall and rot slowly on the ground His work is almost over It won't be long and he won't be around I love my father, and he could use some mercy now
My brother could use a little mercy now He's a stranger to freedom He's shackled to his fears and doubts The pain that he lives in is Almost more than living will allow I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now
My church and my country could use a little mercy now As they sink into a poisoned pit That's going to take forever to climb out They carry the weight of the faithful Who follow them down I love my church and country, and they could use some mercy now
Every living thing could use a little mercy now Only the hand of grace can end the race Towards another mushroom cloud People in power, well They'll do anything to keep their crown I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now
Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now I know we don't deserve it But we need it anyhow We hang in the balance Dangle 'tween hell and hallowed ground Every single one of us could use some mercy now Every single one of us could use some mercy now Every single one of us could use some mercy now
From: Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 19:04 Subject: New Orleans is lost.
Go to: www.wwltv.com
From an emergency notice put on the TV station's web site, which mirrors a bulletin they just had on TV (I'm watching online):
****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****>>
As all of us native Louisianians know, the "entire East bank" constitutes all of New Orleans, Metairie, etc.
The question of New Orleans' survival as a city was in some question an hour ago. Now, I think the question may have been answered. New Orleans will not be habitable for a very long time, and then only after the expenditure of unfathomable treasure.
May God have mercy. Lord have mercy. I am out of words for prayer other than that. Lord have mercy.
From: Mighty Favog To:***@***.com Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 22:39 Subject: Lord have mercy
Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
From: Mighty Favog To: "'Listserve'" Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 19:59 Subject: Re: Prayer
Dear ***,
Thank you for that. New Orleans well may cease to exist as a habitable city tomorrow, and many will die. May God have mercy on them all, and on their immortal souls.
I'm from Baton Rouge, and I well remember Hurricane Betsy, which devastated N.O. in 1965 and was no walk in the park 100 miles inland in B.R.
For folks who've never experienced a hurricane, it's hard to grasp the power of even 100 m.p.h. straight-line wind (not counting the imbedded tornadoes). Try picturing a two-inch, heavy-gauge steel pipe used as a birdhouse pole or antenna mast. (Something MUCH sturdier than your average TV-antenna mast.) Picture it turned into a mini-Gateway Arch, bent all the way to the ground.
Now grasp that Hurricane Betsy was a Category 3 and Katrina is a strong Category 5. Now picture that the only things emerging from the waters covering New Orleans quite possibly could be buildings of more than three stories.
And remember that the Mississippi Gulf Coast also will be utterly devastated.
From: Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 19:41 Subject: Re: This really is the Big One.
Dear ***,
Compared with New Orleans, Baton Rouge ought to fare just fine. Channel 4 is saying strong tropical-storm to minimal hurricane-force wind in the BR area.
But, yes, we will watch on television as New Orleans -- quite possibly -- is wiped out tomorrow. Many people will die, bless their souls. And the whole country will pay dearly . . . the price of oil surpassed $70 a barrel today.
BTW, I'm watching Channel 4's streaming video on the Internet. Go to www.wwltv.com.
I've been trying to impress upon Mrs. Favog the utter awesomeness of such a force of nature, but she's having a hard time grasping the magnitude, or how that even could be. I was four at the time, but I vividly remember Hurricane Betsy in 1965 . . . and that was riding it out in BR.
Folks describe that kind of wind as sounding like a jet engine. That is true, but incomplete. The SUSTAINED WIND sounds like a jet engine. The gusts sound like screaming demons from the bowels of Hell.
From: Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 19:24 Subject: Re: This really is the Big One.
Dear ***,
You can't do anything about the drunken fools in the Quarter, but I'm heartbroken over the poor folks who just won't be able to get out of Da City, and for the folks at, say, Channel 4 and Channel 6, who are going to try to broadcast as long as they can stay on the air.
Doing their journalistic duty well could be a death sentence. By the time they *try* to get to higher ground (or to a high-rise), they might not be able to.
From: Mighty Favog To:***@***.com Date: Sunday, August 28, 2005 00:03 Subject: It doesn't get worse than this . . . at least short of Armageddon
Y'all,
Amid the horror of contemplating what may be about to happen here are public-policy considerations that are going to wash across the country like a storm surge: What happens if we lose an entire major American city?
-- How do we maintain refugee camps for what could be hundreds of thousands of people for God knows how long?
-- Where do we put them all?
-- What happens to the rest of the country when we lose as much oil and gasoline production as we're about to lose?
-- When those supplies are cut off indefinitely?
-- When there's no fuel-oil shipments because there's no more Port of New Orleans -- the second biggest in the U.S.?
-- When ag, raw-material and manufactured-goods imports and exports on the Mississippi are disrupted for who knows how long?
-- Is the military prepared (and do we have enough of it left?) to go in and immediately double the size of the Port of Baton Rouge?
-- Will we, in a month, be paying $5 a gallon for gas, and will that tank the whole economy?
-- Is the U.S. government prepared to rebuild New Orleans?
-- What happens to the insurance industry if the worst happens here?
From: Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Date: Saturday, August 27, 2005 11:41 Subject: Re: Uh-oh
Dear ***,
If that thing ends up tracking just a hair -- and I mean just a hair -- westward of the dead-center forecast, and if it comes in as a Category Four, New Orleans will be obliterated. If it comes in dead center of the forecast track, it will be bad enough, but probably not 20-feet-of-water-in-the-city bad.
Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had better get off the pot. They only have two days -- they need to start getting the poor and the elderly out while there's a chance in hell of doing so. Set them up in shelters in Hammond, Baton Rouge and Lafayette -- all the arena-sized places they can get. The National Guard needs to be starting on that today.
If you keep rolling the dice, figuring "Naw, it CAN'T get THAT bad," sooner or later, you'll crap out. Besides -- and this isn't exactly the Scientific Method, but what the hell -- I think this country has reached a level of depravity and extreme materialism where God is going to keep getting more and more drastic in an effort to get our attention.
Like I said yesterday, you saw the headline here first:
Big Easy's last dance: Katrina and the waves
And I was only half joking about sending Jonah to Bourbon Street.
You know, the company you'd have to keep makes it really hard to come out foursquare for enforcing this country's immigration laws, securing the southern border and generally doing what sane countries do when they're serious about being sane, cohesive countries.
OK, I'M FOURSQUARE for enforcing the United States' immigration laws and securing the southern border. I don't want to see this country overrun by illegal immigration from any country. I want America to be serious about being a sane, cohesive country -- and society.
But you're not going to see me at a protest involving some of the nativist-leaning wingnuts that such demonstrations already attract. And when the National Socialist Movement -- that's the Nazi Party, by the way -- gets involved, the only way you're ever going to see me anywhere near such a protest (for example, Sunday Saturday in midtown Omaha) will be behind the wheel of Elwood Blues' second-hand police special.
“We just got one on our front door. It was pretty anti-immigration, not Nazi propaganda but my friend who is from South Omaha got a Nazi flyer,” said Sam Martin.
Sam is one of a number of Omaha residents who were recently inundated with flyers advertising a neo-Nazi anti-immigration rally to take place at the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 1.
Organized by the National Socialist Movement — the disarming moniker of the official Nazi party of the United States — the rally will also include local members of supremacist group White Revolution and is also certain to attract the Minutemen, who held their own anti-immigration rally at the consulate Aug. 17.
“The United States was founded exclusively by whites, and the founding fathers specifically say they were founding this place for the security and happiness of the themselves and their descendants – not that of Mexico,” said Billy Roper, Chairman of the White Revolution, a national organization that has been “leading America to a whiter future since 2002.”
Jeff Scoop, Commander for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), shared a similar sentiment, “When our forefathers came over here from Europe they were not saying, ‘Ok, everyone else has to learn our language.’ They said they had to assimilate. Now there are unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants reaping the benefits of life in the United States and instead of being prosecuted for being here illegally, they are being rewarded. They aren’t coming here to make a better life or become good Americans or assimilate, they want us speaking Spanish.”
“This country was founded by immigrants,” said Cooper Moon, housemate and fellow Midtown leafletee of Sam Martin’s. “This country’s entire existence is based on immigrants. Why should it be any different now? The whole illegal issue? You wanna talk about our forefathers, the colonists? They were storm troopers of death coming over and obliterating the Native Americans, destroying an entire ecosystem. The Mexicans coming over, getting jobs and raising families? Not even in the same ballpark.”
(snip)
The neo-Nazi groups in the last year and a half have organized hundreds of events. In Dayton, Ohio members of National Socialist Movement appeared in Nazi uniforms at a pro-immigration march to protest, in their words, “the illegal wetback scum and Shabbat goy mud lovers.” Most recently, NSM organized a march on the capitol building in Columbia, S.C. where, according to NSM commander Scoop, “dozens and dozens” of supporters turned out.
When they cannot organize in person, the supremacist groups plaster communities around the country with crude anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration fliers like the ones left in South Omaha.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, in Bakersfield, Calif., for example, one community was littered with National Vanguard fliers that read, “Civilization: One Job Mexicans Won’t Do.” Residents of Pasadena, Texas, discovered racist fliers that urged people to burn down the homes of people thought to be illegal immigrants.
“We intend to send a message to the U.S. government that is if they don’t do something about this illegal immigration problem we will replace all of them,” said NSM’s Scoop. “They are political whores to the Israelis, or special interest groups, whoever is paying them enough money to buy off their souls. Even Americans who don’t necessarily believe in our methods are coming to us. People are sick of being lied to. With us there is no lying. We are concerned about white interests and the way America used to be. If the founding fathers were with us today they would be behind us.”
The rhetoric is popular and it’s working. Recruitment numbers are up, money is rolling into the organizations and white power is getting multimedia diversified. It’s not just about rallies and cross burnings; the National Socialist Movement develops and distributes its own video games, podcasts and radio shows. They maintain a Web site, operate a record label and have recently started NewSaxon.com, a white only version of the social networking site, Myspace.
Scoop claims that NSM, the largest pro-white group in the country, has nearly 50 percent or more of their membership placed in the armed forces with others in law enforcement.
The National Socialist Movement can even boast its very own Nazi presidential candidate, John Taylor Bowles, whose first campaign promise is to provide “all White families in the USA, (husband, wife and minor children)” with zero interest mortgage loans “to buy homes fitted with all necessary household gadgets like fridge, TV, computers, etc.”
(snip)
There is no disputing that the immigrant community in Nebraska is growing. According to census date, approximately 41.2 percent of the total population increase between 2000 and 2006 in Nebraska is attributable to immigrants. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) – an organization that is very questionably fair or accurate – estimates the illegal alien population in 2005 at 39,000.
A report issued from the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Office of Latino and Latin American Studies earlier this year indicates that, between 1990 and 2000, Nebraska’s foreign-born population grew faster than that of any other Midwestern state. From 2000 to 2005, Nebraska experienced the eighth-largest proportional increase of foreign-born individuals of all U.S. states, accounting for more than 60 percent of overall population growth.
Many point to Nebraska’s abundance of jobs, a lack of labor force to fill those jobs, and a low level of competition for jobs within labor migrant populations as other major factors contributing to the growing foreign-born population in the state.
(snip)
“Some people may argue that the people organizing and attending this rally are extreme,” said Lee, the Omaha leader of the White Revolution. “But given the projections given by the U.S. Census Bureau, that says non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in this Country by 2050. I think this calls for extreme measures if we are to remain a first world nation and secure the existence of our people and future for white children. I, nor any other average American wishes to see our Nation transformed into an extension of Mexico.
“Already we are a minority race in over 50 of America’s largest cities. By the time our children reach adulthood, we will have more Hispanics in the USA than in Mexico itself. What kind of future will that be for our children and grandchildren?”
“Stupid people make Third World countries,” said White Revolution’s Roper. “Third World countries don’t make stupid people. The more the United States allows these people in, the more we become like a Third World country. That is not something we want to hand down to our children. We don’t want the United States to become a Third World cesspool.”
Some pretty negative sentiments. But the swastika-wearing interviewees insist that their anti-immigrant stance isn’t about hate.
“I myself, nor anyone I know, ‘hate’ anyone,” said Lee. “This isn’t about ‘hate’ for me, it is about love of my country and my people. It is about securing a future for our children and our grandchildren.
“It’s about preserving our heritage, our culture and history. This isn’t immigration, as our grandparents knew it – no, this is an invasion. An invasion like the world has never before seen in all of recorded history.”
“Most Nebraskans and Americans want common sense immigration reform that treats people with dignity and provides a path to citizenship for people who are paying their taxes,” said Darcy Tromanhauser, Program Director for Nebraska Appleseed, an organization that promotes the integration and participation of immigrant communities. “I think there is a small but vocal minority who doesn’t want to see any immigration at all. They drive from views that are racist and what most people don’t believe. I think this rally and its sponsors betray the roots of some of the more vehement anti-immigrant voices. Many of those who first take an interest in these groups out of a concern over immigration quickly leave when they discover the ugly core of the perspective. Most Nebraskans don’t think this way and believe that if someone is working hard and paying taxes, they should have a path to citizenship and full participation in society, no matter the color of their skin.”
“We understand that they are entitled to say whatever they want. As long as they don’t do any damage to the building, that’s fine,” said Jose Cuevas, head of Omaha’s Mexican Consulate. “I believe that they are mistaken as to what we do. But the First Amendment gives them all the right in the world to demonstrate and say whatever they like.”
New Orleans is my hometown. And it's dying. Despite billions of dollars in aid, recovery programs with catchy names and an outpouring of volunteer effort, New Orleans is not recovering from Hurricane Katrina.
Beyond the happy mayhem of the French Quarter, entire neighborhoods are in ruins and the business district sags from the shattered economy. Thousands of people are homeless and squatting in vacant and storm-damaged properties, some just a few blocks from City Hall.
More than 160,000 residents never returned. For those who did dare to come back home, little resembles normalcy.
For the people with the power to save it, New Orleans is a forgotten place.
It's a national disgrace. People should pay attention. The next time, it could be your town.
NO, NO, NO, you don't understand. It's far more sinister than that.
The feds, and the American public, are kind of like Michael Vick. They brutalize the dog because they can, because it's in their culture now, because they think they can get away with it.
New Orleans is the dog. The battered, bloodied, chewed-up dog that's not worth much to anybody anymore. Trouble is, it was pretty much that way before Katrina.
What's happening -- or, rather, not happening -- there is just "Michael Vick" putting you downafter the dogfight's done and the accounts settled.And I'm not talking insults.
Douglas Brinkley, the well-known historian and professor, has an op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post, and he's wondering whether the federal government's relative inaction in rebuilding New Orleans isn't a deliberate policy action in itself.
The stubborn inaction appears to fall under the paternalistic guise of helping the storm victims. Bush's general attitude -- a Catch-22 recipe if ever there was one -- appears to be that only rank fools would return when the first line of hurricane defense are the levees that this administration so far refuses to fix.
New Orleans appears to be largely abandoned by the Department of Homeland Security, except for its safeguarding of the Port Authority (port traffic is at 90 percent of pre-Katrina numbers) and tourist districts above sea level, such as the French Quarter and Uptown. These areas are kept alive largely by the wild success of Harrah's casino and a steady flow of undaunted conventioneers.
The brutal Galveston Hurricane of 1900 may be a historical guide to the administration's thinking. Most survivors of that deadly Texas storm moved to higher land. Administration policies seem to tacitly encourage those who live below sea level in New Orleans to relocate permanently, to leave the dangerous water's edge for more prosperous inland cities such as Shreveport or Baton Rouge.
After the 1900 hurricane, in fact, Galveston, which had been a large, thriving port, was essentially abandoned for Houston, transforming that then-sleepy backwater into the financial center for the entire Gulf South. Galveston devolved into a smallish port-tourist center, one easy to evacuate when hurricanes rear their ugly heads.
To be fair, Bush's apparent post-Katrina inaction policy makes some cold, pragmatic sense. If the U.S. government is not going to rebuild the levees to survive a Category 5 storm -- to be finished at the earliest in 2015 and at an estimated cost of $40 billion, far eclipsing the extravagant bill for the entire Interstate Highway System -- then options are limited.
But what makes the current inaction plan so infuriating is that it's deceptive, offering up this open-armed spin to storm victims: "Come back to New Orleans." Why can't Bush look his fellow citizens in the eye and tell them what seems to be the ugly truth? That as long as he's commander in chief, there won't be an entirely reconstructed levee system.
Shortly after Katrina hit, former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert declared that a lot of New Orleans could be "bulldozed." He was shot down by an outraged public and media, which deemed such remarks insensitive and callous. Two years have shown that Hastert may have articulated what appears to have become the White House's de facto policy. He may have retreated, but the inaction remains.
IT'S NOT THAT NEW ORLEANS is below sea level, for the most part, that's driving the government's proactive policy of inaction as an American city founders two years after it went under water. If New York City went under the choppy Atlantic, if the Big One sent Los Angeles sinking into the Pacific, if Chicago were overwhelmed by an angry Lake Michigan, the ingenuity and treasure and will of the American nation would be marshaled.Fast.
None of those cities would be allowed to fade into the dog-eared pages of long-unopened history texts.
New Orleans is. Dozens of communities in South Louisiana are . . . in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, now two years past. Brinkley again:
Unfortunately, right now New Orleans is having a hard time lobbying on its own behalf. Minnesota's Twin Cities have about 20 Fortune 500 companies to draw in private-sector money to help rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. New Orleans has one, Entergy, which is verging on bankruptcy. So besides U.S. taxpayers and port fees, New Orleans must count on spiked-up tourist dollars to jumpstart the post-Katrina rebuild.
But this is where the bizarre paradox of living in a city of ruins comes into play. Out of one side of its mouth the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce says, "Come on down, folks! We're not underwater!" Yet these same civic boosters -- viscerally aware that the Bush administration is treating the desperate plight of New Orleans in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind fashion -- don't want to bite the hand that feeds them large chunks of reconstruction cash. New Orleans is both bragging about normalcy and poor-mouthing itself, confusing Americans about what the real state of the city is.
Recently Mayor C. Ray Nagin, born with the proverbial foot in his mouth, tried to explain why the homicide rate in New Orleans is so appallingly high. When a TV reporter asked, Nagin merely shrugged: "It's not good for us, but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there." This absurd comment -- and dozens like it -- hurts New Orleans's recovery almost as much as Bush's policy of inaction.
Everywhere I travel in the United States, people ask, "Why did you guys reelect such a doofus?" There is a feeling that any community that reelected a "first responder" who stayed in a Hyatt Regency suite during Hurricane Katrina, never delivered a speech to the homeless at the Superdome or Convention Center in New Orleans, and played the "chocolate city" race card at a historic moment when black-white healing was needed probably deserves to get stiffed by the federal government.
And Nagin isn't the only bad ambassador New Orleans has. It also has City Council member Oliver Thomas, Sen. David Vitter and Rep. William J. Jefferson -- all currently in deep trouble for potentially breaking the law. Dismayed by such political buffoonery, Americans have simply turned a blind eye to New Orleans's reconstruction plight. There is a scolding sentiment around the country that Louisiana needs to get its own house in order before looking for fresh levee handouts.
TRANSLATION: New Orleans and Louisiana are poor, they're basket cases, they're full of buffoons . . . of what use are they to us? In politics today, as in society today, a vulnerable city or region (like an unborn child, the desperately ill or the profoundly disabled) will be allowed to survive only if we decide there's some percentage in it for us.
We believe there's such a thing as Lebensunwertes Leben . . . life unworthy of life. That is the societal and political milieu in which we live today. I don't like it. Neither should you. But it is what it is, at least for the foreseeable future.
And the American political structure -- and apparently the American people -- have given up on New Orleans . . . on Louisiana.
IN THAT LIGHT, I keep coming back to the persistently sad state of my home state, and I am compelled to ask hard questions of the people there.
Here's the question that came to me as I read Doug Brinkley's piece:
Louisiana, how can you expect America not to give up on you when you've given up on yourselves?
You look at the catastrophic mess that was the New Orleans public school system before Katrina, and you know that that city had given up on its children -- at least the ones whose parents couldn't swing a pricey private education for them -- long before America was being begged for help.
You look at the long tradition, both in New Orleans and in Louisiana as a whole, of corrupt and dysfunctional government. And you know that Louisianians had given up on a functioning civic culture generations ago.
You look at the horrible poverty statistics and the worse educational-attainment statistics, and you know that Louisiana never had any realistic hope for the future. That the state's citizenry never put enough stock in the virtue of hope to commit to the kinds ofactions a hopeful people take.
Hopeful people stay in school, seeking to better themselves. Hopeful people help the poor, and they try to find ways to disrupt the self-fulfilling culture of poverty.
It's the bottom of the ninth, and Louisiana is 0-2 with two out and nobody on.
IN ALL MY COMPLICATED and conflicted thoughts on my home state -- my people -- I also can't help but add my heartbreak at what has become of my old high school, Baton Rouge Magnet High. That school did much for me at a time when I needed much to be done. It was a magical place in a beautiful old building that had been spruced up and modernized for its new role -- this, in 1976 -- as a selective-admission, college-preparatory school for academics and the performing arts.
I understand magic still is made there, but it is made in the confines of a rundown dump, with sagging floors, crumbling masonry work and peeling lead paint.
Obviously, maintenance has been horribly neglected. Obviously, the parish (county) school board has been indifferent to some of its best, brightest and most dedicated students -- the children of their constituents, for God's sake -- spending eight-plus hours a day in facilities they wouldn't inflict upon their pets.
And now it's so bad, no one knows what to do. Renovate the school for $37 million? Tear it down and rebuild for $40 million?
Given all that's been outlined above, would you have any confidence that any brand-new school the school board built wouldn't be just as big a dump and safety hazard in 20 years' time? That the board would ensure any new school were built even half as well as the old one -- which has stood for 82 years (and withstood, sort of, the neglect of its stewards)?
IT ALL GOES BACK to the central premise, doesn't it?
We, unfortunately, live in a utilitarian society. Louisiana can't even give its children schools that the rest of us in America would deem fit for our dogs. Of what use is Louisiana to the rest of us?
Why shouldn't we cut our losses, cut off the money and let the whole dysfunctional lot stew in their own juices until they're as cooked as a crawfish? Why?
Louisianians seemingly don't even love themselves or their children enough to pull themselves out of a cesspool largely of their own making. Why should the rest of America love them any more than they love themselves?
Come on, Louisiana, we're post-Christian and steely-eyed. Give us a reason why.
Please?
* * *
POSTSCRIPT: Douglas Brinkley, author of the WaPo op-ed and a tireless advocate for post-Katrina New Orleans was a history professor at Tulane University. Was. In May, he resigned from Tulane to take a post at Rice University.
Really, does any sane person still think America can "win" this thing?
So, why do we keep throwing good money -- and good young lives -- after . . . I don't have the heart (or, rather, lack of heart) to complete the phrase. WHY ARE WE STILL IN IRAQ? Why are we sacrificing our future and our treasure trying to prop up a failed government in a failed state? Why are we futilely trying to build up an Iraqi military riven by religious hatred, questionably loyal to a basket-case country with no real reason to be?
Our "leaders" say we're there to fight terrorism, to "bring the fight" to "those who attacked us on 9/11." That's odd . . . al Qaida had only a minimal presence in Saddam's Iraq. Al Qaida in Mesopotamia is only there now because we, in effect, created it.
Our presence in Iraq is its best recruiting tool.
So why are we still there? Why are our troops dying for nothing? Why are we breaking the Army and emptying the U.S. Treasury to carry out a fool's errand?
Faced with such a gargantuan puzzlement, it is long past time we did what any good reporter does when delving into gargantuan puzzlements. It's time to follow the money.
Follow the money has left the realm of crackpot, hemp-clad, "mass action" conspiracy theorists. Follow the money may lead us to the only sensible explanation for our Babylonian captivity.
Follow the money. Who's getting rich while our soldiers bleed and the Iraqi people's misery remains unabated? Who's getting rich, and who in government are they in cahoots with?
READ THIS STORY from The Associated Press. Read it now; I'll have no further comment, because after you read this, the only proper response is speechlessness.
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.
“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.
Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.
“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.
(snip)
Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company — with which he was briefly associated — bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.
He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.
It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.
But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.
Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.
“It’s a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system,” said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. “I tried to help the government, and the government didn’t seem to care.”
(snip)
Julie McBride testified last year that as a “morale, welfare and recreation coordinator” at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.
She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.
“After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country.”
Halliburton and KBR denied her testimony.
She also has filed a whistleblower suit. The Justice Department has said it would not join the action. But last month, a federal judge refused a motion by KBR to dismiss the lawsuit.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Yet again -- and I'll probably do this every now and again -- we're rerunning this blog's opening post . . . just to make sure a few things that need to be said keep getting said. After all, Revolution 21 IS kind of, well, unique.
Oh, and while we're at it, let me introduce Revolution 21's first sponsor -- a new program debuting on Mid-Life Crisis, the new Boomer channel on XM-Sirius satellite radio. Your Mighty Favog has heard the new punk show, and he likes . . . thus, Mid-Life Crisis is the Big Show's first sponsor.
Check it out. Listen on the player at the top of the page, or listen here.
AND NOW . . . here's that blast from the past about Who We Are:
* * *
Greetings. The Mighty Favog here. Welcome to Revolution 21.
Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's radio podcast. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.
But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.
Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is radio that aims to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness. REVOLUTION 21 REALIZES that Catholics like the Mighty Favog -- your host and the master of dysfunctionality -- live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.
Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.
For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent radio . . . and a stellar podcast.
And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.
So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. And blues in the night.
But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch (probably out of fear of some Matter-Antimatter cataclysm).
Or something like that.
Well, Revolution 21 LIKES IT when things get blowed up good. We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.
I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.
But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?
Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your potentate of New Media!
Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.
I may well be the last New Deal Democrat in existence in these here United States. Never mind that I was born 15-and-a-half years after World War II ended.
I wish there were still a Works Progress Administration. It would be a lot cheaper and do a lot more good than our deeply stupid war in Iraq.
Heck, I believe that all of the displaced poor from the Gulf Coast and New Orleans -- instead of being shipped off to God-knows-where -- should have been placed in communities built on underused or vacant federal tracts closer to home, like former military bases. There, they could have had access to a full-range of social services, counseling, remedial education and job training.
Then, they could have been put to work rebuilding their destroyed communities. They could have been stakeholders in society, not drains upon it.
Not cheap, trying to reclaim those on the margins. But, once again, a hell of a lot cheaper than Iraq, and at least something -- no matter how humble -- would've been accomplished.
I just wanted you to know where I'm coming from because, frankly, when I read this from The Daily Kos, I'm goin' "What the ****???"
Carville is the Tucker Carlson of the Democratic Party by Justina Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 08:53:47 PM PDT
I just received the a fund raising e-mail from James Carville, who is asking for donations to the re-election campaign of Lousiana’s Democratic Senator, Mary Landrieu. It reads in part:
I'm a Louisianian through-and-through. My hometown, Carville, population 1108, was named for my granddaddy. So when I write to you about our senior Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, I'm writing from my heart and soul.
What a surprise, I didn't think James Carville had a soul; I know he doesn't have his heart in Democratic politics.
Carville, who modestly claims on his web site to be "The man who has devised the most dramatic political victories of our generation" holds no official position in the Democratic Party but who is continually put forward by the "main stream" media as "a leading Democratic political analyst", has been one of the most destructive voices in the Democratic Party since his vicious attacks on Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee after their success in the 2006 election.
Carville, a professional campaign consultant who regularly seems to speak for Hillary Clinton, and his firm of political consultants, has been involved in supporting some pretty reactionary anti-democrats in Latin American, including Manuel Rosales, the Bush supported, anti-Chavez candidate in the 2006 Venezuelan presidential campaign.
Fortunately, President Chavez trounced Rosales by an overwhelming 68% majority. One only hopes that both Hillary Clinton and Mary Landrieu will face similar fates in the Louisiana Democratic primary.
If there is a good progressive candidate who is considering taking on Landrieu, please come forward so I can send you a donation. I’ll send a photocopy to Mr. Carville referencing that I have never before contributed to a Louisiana politician, but his fund raising letter for Mary Landrieu inspired me to support any of her progressive Democratic opponent in the primary.
HUGO CHAVEZ'S Bestest Friend Forever went on to excoriate Carville for his choice of spouse, being that Mary Matalin is a "Republican shill."
Frankly, with Justina's fervent support for demagogic dictators like Chavez, I'm a bit surprised why she bothers with the democratic process at all. If she has a beef with the likes of Carville and Landrieu, why doesn't she raise a bien-pensant army of Venezuelans and expatriate American "progressives," come home and clean house? Maybe she can overthrow Bush-Cheney, end the war and establish the New Jerusalem while she's at it.
You know, sometimes you just have to wonder about the Secular Puritan Left. Mainly, I wonder how it is these folks haven't been laughed into oblivion yet. That, or purged themselves into a million perfectly ideologically pure Democratic parties of one.
Or does stupidity make you racist? Chicken, egg . . . who knows?
And why -- when something this glaring comes about, something hard for a blogger to ignore -- is it almost invariably in my home state. Not to mention my hometown.
Two white men were arrested on counts of hate crimes Thursday, accused of firing a shotgun and yelling racial slurs at two black DPW workers, officials said.
The two employees of the city-parish Department of Public Works were cutting grass along Hoo Shoo Too Road in East Baton Rouge Parish Thursday morning when Eric Arnaud, 22, and Christopher Roussell, 17, drove up.
The two swore and yelled racial slurs at the DPW workers, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Fred Raiford says in a statement.
“It was discriminatory,” Raiford said in a phone interview.
The two suspects went to a house at 11212 Amite River Road where they retrieved a 12-gauge shotgun, Raiford said.
They returned to the lawn workers at Hoo Shoo Too and Kendalwood roads, where Arnaud opened fire, Raiford said.
“They were firing directly at them,” Raiford said.
Both lawn workers escaped unscathed, and headed to the Kleinpeter Sheriff’s Substation to report the crime, said Pete Newkirk, director of the Department Public Works.
Deputies arrested Arnaud and Roussell on Thursday, booking Arnaud into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on two counts of attempted second-degree murder and a count of hate crime. Roussell was booked on two counts of principal to attempted second-degree murder and a count of hate crime.
Newkirk said the two workers had been cutting grass around Hoo Shoo Too Road Thursday morning when their tractor got a flat. A supervisor was on the way with a replacement when the shooting started, he said.
Raiford said the suspects had a Confederate flag displayed outside their house on Amite River Road when sheriff’s deputies arrived.
“They can have that (a Confederate flag) in their prison cells for the next 30 years,” Newkirk said.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It was discriminatory.” Uhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . do 'ya THINK???
Apart from the quote thing, my first reaction is "Why am I not surprised?"
Here's why: Broadmoor Junior High. Eighth or ninth grade. Phys ed. Archery unit.
For some unfathomable reason, the physical-education powers that be at Broadmoor Junior thought it would be a good idea to give junior-high-age boys deadly weapons. Deadly weapons most of us had never used before -- unless you count rubber bands stretched across textbooks, handy for launching sharpened pencils across a classroom.
And for some equally unfathomable reason, Coach set up the targets in front of the school, so that our arrows would be flying toward unsuspecting innocents on Goodwood Boulevard. Especially the arrows of some Future Inmates of America members at Broadmoor Junior.
One day, a public-works crew was working on Goodwood.
“They were firing directly at them. . . .”
". . . and yelling racial slurs. . . ."
SADLY, some things never change. Thank God for crappy bows and insufficient upper-body strength back in the day.
Thank God for crappy aim and the long arm of the law today.
All,
