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Archive for March, 2009

Mar 28

3 Comments

Dimtwitted

So I caved in and added my Twitter feed to the right corner of the blog.

Andrea may be right about the inanity of Twittering, but I’ve been trying my hand at it for a few months now… and there are some advantages. We’ll see how it pans out.

In other news:

- The SPARC Commission website (constructed on a WordPress platform) was launched a couple of weeks ago. Check it out.

- Chronos recently wrote me to recommend this awesome financial blog: Baseline Scenario.

- Oyster points out that the New Orleans population is now estimated at 311,000, which, once again, puts a kink in the redistricting schemes offered up by conservative special interest groups and people who call themselves “political science professors” by day and “professional hacks” by night.

- Buy the album Dark Was The Night. It’s a worthy investment. Plus, all proceeds go to a good cause: HIV/AIDS prevention.

- The Kindle is AWESOME. I’ve been reading The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, and it’s easy on the eyes and very convenient.

Mar 22

7 Comments

Back From DC

A few observations (I hadn’t been there in 13 years):

- I know some people weren’t happy about all the new memorials and museums they’ve constructed around the National Mall, but I think they are all appropriate, conforming, and, well, awesome.

- The new Visitors Center at the Capitol is incredible. I only had one free day (the other day was spent in a seminar, on my own time and my own dime, by the way), and I thought we’d have time to hit up both the Capitol and the Smithsonian. But by the time we were finished with the Capitol, it was almost closing time at the other museums. So, next time you’re in DC and you want to see as much as possible in a short period of time, budget your time wisely. Of course, we had no idea we’d spend nearly four hours in the Capitol, but as it turns out, there really is a lot to see in the new Visitors Center.

- I wish we still had jet service to Houston; the turbo-prop we flew on was easily thirty years old. (To be fair, we DO have jet service to Dallas now).

And I know this isn’t related to my DC trip, but:

- Contrary to what was implied about me on another local blog while I was away, I do, in fact, believe that blogs represent a form of citizen journalism. Duh.

- On a related note, today, The New York Times published a memo on their blog “standards,” and I have to say, I agree completely (bold mine):

What should be avoided in all of them is any hint of racist, sexist or religious bias, or any suggestion of nasty, snide, sarcastic, or condescending tone — “snark.” …

Our ethics code promises that in all dealings with readers, “civility applies.” Contractions, colloquialisms and even slang are, generally speaking, more allowable in blogs than in print. But obscenity and vulgarity are not, and of course unverified assertions of fact, blind pejorative quotes, and other lapses in journalistic standards don’t ever belong in blogs.

Writers and editors of blogs must also distinguish between personal tone and voice and unqualified personal opinion. That is properly found in Opinion blogs, but in the news pages online and in print, opinion must be qualified.

- I’ve bowled a better game than Barack Obama. And I’m disabled. Still, anyone who thinks he actually meant to disparage disabled Americans by comparing his bowling game to the Special Olympics is really stretching it.

- Sarah Palin does not speak for disabled Americans. All this patronizing stuff about how SHOCKED she was and how disabled people are the MOST precious people in the entire universe is just pure grandstanding. Especially since she’s planning on rejecting stimulus money to fund programs for people with special needs. Put your money where your mouth is, Governor.

The biggest single chunk of money that Palin is turning down is about $170 million for education, including money that would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students. Anchorage School Superintendent Carol Comeau said she is “shocked and very disappointed” that Palin would reject the schools money. She said it could be used for job preservation, teacher training, and helping kids who need it.

Mar 17

20 Comments

Louisiana Family Forum Hopes to Carve Up Congressional Districts

To most people, the notion of having a single Congressman (or Congresswoman) represent the predominately minority, inner-city neighborhoods of both New Orleans AND Baton Rouge may seem, well, a little insulting. The two biggest population centers in the State being forced to share representation, gerrymandered along racial lines?

Louisiana is required, by law, to have at least one majority-minority district, but the point isn’t to marginalize constituencies; it’s an acknowledgment that we live in a State with the second-highest per-capita number of minorities in the country. Ideally, we should attempt to draw our Congressional districts in a way that most accurately reflects our demographic realities, not in a way that dilutes representation or marginalizes constituencies.

Yet the Louisiana Family Forum, an organization ostensibly serving the best interests of traditional families (whatever that actually means), suggests when Louisiana redraws its Congressional districts, we should ensure the majority-minority district stretches from the predominately minority, inner-city neighborhoods in South New Orleans to the predominately minority, inner-city neighborhoods in South Baton Rouge.

Check it out:

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See, if you just split New Orleans AND Baton Rouge in half (and in the right way), you can ensure that you meet the majority-minority requirements while, at the same time, making the adjacent and mainly suburban districts less competitive and more assuredly Republican. Moreover, this would ensure that the two seats that lean Democratic (one of which is currently held by a Republican) would essentially be collapsed into one district, and that two of the districts that have been recently competitive for Democrats will be more assuredly suburban and rural.

Also, their treatment of District Five is strikingly bizarre: St. Helena Parish would be represented by the same person who represents Monroe and Alexandria. For some reason (gee, I wonder), North Rapides Parish would be given to District Four.

Here’s what the districts currently look like:

distmap-num

Sure, there are some definite problems with the current district boundaries, but at least there’s an acknowledgment that Baton Rouge and New Orleans deserve and require distinct representation, at least within their urban areas.

We know we’re facing redistricting, no matter what. And I’m sure there are Louisiana Democrats who can draw lines to maximize their electoral advantages. But the LA Family Forum’s concept seeks to remake our State to their own advantage by ensuring that, in a State in which the majority of voters are registered Democrats who live in urban areas, their ability to have their votes meaningfully counted would be minimized. We’d become a State even more dominated by rural and suburban interests, which, obviously, would undermine urban representation.

Mar 14

3 Comments

Dude, They Found My Car

Unbelievable.

It was parked in the driveway of an abandoned house on Bayou Drive.

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Not a scratch or a dent.

I don’t understand how they were able to move it. I have both of my keys and my valet key.

Thank you to the APD and to the neighbors on Bayou Drive who knew something was out of place.

Mar 14

Jindal Scrubs Website of Campaign Promises/Platforms

H/t to C.B. Forgotston.

Remember all of those 31-point plans and the policy platforms Governor Jindal had proudly touted during his campaign?

Well, apparently, after having served for a little more than a year, Jindal decided to remove practically all of his campaign promises and policies from his official campaign website.

Hooray for transparency and accountability!

On his official state website, Jindal focuses on only two issues: ethics and workforce development. Important, to be sure, but so are health care, education, and crime, all of which were once specifically addressed by candidate Jindal in thorough and publicly-available plans.

Even if Jindal doesn’t want his campaign website to still be all about the 2007 election, he could have at least archived those plans.

Mar 12

6 Comments

Who Watches The CenlaMen?

In which one mild-mannered girl tries to imagine heroism in her own small town. And briefly thinks about dabbling in comic-drawing, until she remembers she can only render stick figures.

Read more

Mar 12

4 Comments

Town Talk Wingnuttery Pt IV

Running a John Fleming press release as a legitimate and objective news story with no byline and an obviously slanted perspective:

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Stated as expository fact, not as a quote and not referenced:

The No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009 would help ensure our economy flourishes and that the laws that have crippled businesses are scaled back to their original intent.

1. Saves or creates more than 2 million long-term, sustainable and well paying jobs.

2. Dramatically increases GDP that could well exceed $10 trillion over the next 30 years.

3. Reduces the cost of energy to manufacturers, all U.S. businesses and low-income families. On top of helping businesses compete internationally it reduces the cost of a key input so that resources may be used on other purchases or employee hiring.

4. Will have a significant positive impact on low-income families, as this is the equivalent of receiving a stimulus check. As the price of energy decreases a family may direct the extra money towards other needs.

5. Achieves these goals while not incurring huge amounts of debt payable to foreign governments and leveraged against our own children’s future.

6. Has a direct and significant impact on reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

So, what’s the plan?

Opening up ANWR!

I love how the same folks who believe it’s better to discard stem cells than to use them for scientific research also believe that the future of our economy is in drilling for oil.

Mar 12

6 Comments

CenLamar is Three Years Old

Once again, thanks for sticking around and putting up with me. Thanks to Drew, Sharon, and Daniel for all of their contributions as writers and to Ryan, Oyster, Chronos, Edtilla, Mung, Darren, Padre Pato, and many others for their comments and support.

As of today, CenLamar has been read by more than 350,000 unique visitors.

Mar 11

Hotline: TSA Investigating Vitter Incident

Quoting:

The Transportation Security Administration is examining Sen. David Vitter‘s much-reported decision to open the closed gateway door to his plane — even though he was warned against it by an airline worker.

“We will be reviewing the alleged incident,” Lauren Gaches, a TSA spokeswoman, told On Call this evening.

Background:

According to an HOH tipster who witnessed the scene, the Louisiana Republican arrived Thursday evening at his United Airlines gate 20 minutes before the plane was scheduled to depart, only to find the gate had already been closed. Undeterred, Vitter opened the door, setting off a security alarm and prompting an airline worker to warn him that entering the gate was forbidden.

Vitter, our spy said, gave the airline worker an earful, employing the timeworn “do-you-know-who-I-am” tirade that apparently grew quite heated.

That led to some back and forth, and the worker announced to the irritable Vitter that he was going to summon security.

Vitter, according to the witness, remained defiant, yelling that the employee could call the police if he wanted to and their supervisors, who, presumably, might be more impressed with his Senator’s pin.

But after talking a huffy big game, Vitter apparently thought better of pushing the confrontation any further. When the gate attendant left to find a security guard, Vitter turned tail and simply fled the scene.

Vitter’s office claims this is nothing more than a gossip column. Continuing coverage on The Daily Kingfish.

It’ll be interesting to see the way The Town Talk treats this story, because instead of running with the larger national story, earlier today, the paper was leading with a story about Vitter’s denial.

Gannett versus Roll Call.

Mar 11

8 Comments

Dude, Where’s My Car?

I had one of those stranger-than-fiction days today.

This morning, as I walked out of my house, keys in hand, my car was not in its usual spot in the driveway. And it wasn’t in the garage, either.

Apparently, some fly-by-night wrecker must’ve shown up some time in the early morning hours and furtively towed my car away. And no, before anyone asks, it wasn’t repossessed. It was stolen. No signs of forced entry or a break-in. No broken glass. No tire marks.

It was taken, without my knowledge or permission, from my driveway and is now, more than likely, disassembled into a million pieces somewhere in Texas or in some out-of-the-way chop shop here in Louisiana.

My neighborhood is relatively safe, and the police tell me that Alexandria isn’t exactly a hotbed of car-nappers. One or two reports a month, and many of those end up being false reports– people whose cars have been repossessed or people who bartered their vehicle for drugs.

Whoever took my car must run a fairly sophisticated operation. I had a Mercedes SUV, which means they’d probably have to own a flatbed tow truck to move it, and considering this, it seems extremely unlikely this was anyone local. (I can account for both of my keys).

Much of my day was spent trying to figure out an alternate means of transportation. Because of my disability, I have to drive with hand controls (I didn’t realize there was a black market for hand controls), so finding a replacement is not the easiest thing in the world. Thankfully, I have an exceptional insurance agent, and he was able to find a rental for me up in Shreveport, which is covered by my policy.

A few lessons learned:

1. If you own a Mercedes and you think the little SOS feature will protect you against auto theft, make sure you have the system activated. Although GM’s OnStar feature will allow remote activation, apparently the same is not the case for Mercedes (which is really pathetic).  Since I bought my car used, the system had been de-activated by the dealer.

2. Be suspicious of tow-trucks driving around in the middle of the night, especially if they’re towing a perfectly fine-looking vehicle.

3. Make sure your car doors are all locked. I honestly thought my car doors were locked, but apparently, at least one of them was somehow unlocked, which allowed someone to quietly put the car in neutral and back it out of the driveway.

4. If you can, park as far away from the street as possible.

So, anyway, if any of you know shady chop shop people, tell them to be on the look-out for an SUV with hand controls.

Oh and if, like me, you suddenly find yourself in the market for a new vehicle: BUY LOCAL.

Mar 10

Town Talk Wingnuttery Pt III

Make it stop.

The Town Talk printed this today as a legitimate “Guest Commentary” column:

William J. Clinton, Democrat, failed to report when notified by the Draft Board and was the first felon to be elected president (FALSE), was impeached in 1998 for having a liaison with a White House intern, gave “most favored nation trading status” to China and sold them computer technology which aided their intercontinental ballistic missile capability. He drastically reduced U.S. military strength. He and his attorney general Janet Reno killed Americans in Waco, Texas, causing Timothy McVay to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma.

George W. Bush, Republican, prevented more terrorist attacks in our country, supported a comprehensive energy plan involving all types of innovation and exploration, instituted tax cuts, achieved victory for the Iraqi people by overthrowing Saddam Hussein and re-strengthened our military.

Seriously. Our newspaper printed this as a special “guest column.”

1) Bill Clinton is not a convicted felon. That’s a lie. And Gannett printed it as a Most Favored Guest Column.

2) Speaking of a Most Favored status, Bush, Sr. also provided Most Favored Nation status to China. Idiots.

3) Oh and it’s so awesome the paper basically endorsed someone who believes that Janet Reno caused Timothy McVeigh to blow up a federal building.

Boos to the paper for publishing this and then asking us to pay to read it.

It seems like Libuse, Louisiana is a hotbed for wingnuts. Maybe it’s something in the water.

Mar 9

Sharon Tohline: Delightful Surprises

This post will be slightly shorter than I’d planned. I had written out a nice long lovely post for you, and then my computer decided to delete it. So what had been planned as one LONG post may get broken down into a series. And I call this series “Delightful Surprises.” I realized that I haven’t been pointing out for you all of the things that I love about living here in Alex, and there are quite a lot of them. I find that it’s actually a lot easier to criticize things that are important to me, and this city has fallen victim to that tendency. I hated life in Texas, and consequently I never would have taken the time to delve into in-depth criticism. I just didn’t care enough. However, I am invested in my life here. I care a lot. Perhaps I jumped into being critical too quickly. So over the next few days I’d like to point out the things I’ve truly enjoyed about living here. And I will begin with.

#1: Living in the middle of nowhere, but still living in the city:

We live about 3 minutes from Kisatchie Forest. We don’t get cable or DSL. Our neighbors are horses. If I screamed, it is highly unlikely that anyone would hear me. And yet I have the same zip code as my place of work, as well as some of the stores on Jackson St. When our nephews came to visit at Christmas, the youngest one said, “You need to move!” When I asked why, he said, “Because there’s nothing here! You live so far from the store!” In actual fact, I can get to the store in 10 minutes. Ditto for work. This was never possible in any of the other places I’ve lived. Commutes tended to be 30 minutes or more, even in Baton Rouge. Not many places have this in-town/in-the-country feeling, and it’s been wonderful. Driving home is like driving ot a completely new place, a little oasis of relaxation every evening.

#2 Mardi Gras:

A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of being invited by a group of wonderful people to a party alongside the parade route. There was beer and food and wonderful conversation, all the things that make parades the popular events that they are. Granted, the parade here is very different from those in New Orleans or BR. My understanding is that the Sunday parade here is really the only major event, aside from the children’s parade. In most of South Louisiana there are numerous parades on various days throughout the season, and those parades are usually divided by sections of the community. In Baton Rouge, the Spanish Town parade draws a very different crowd than the Southdowns celebration. Here the parade is a community-wide event, and that’s something that I, as a new member of the city, really appreciated. I was able to meet a wide variety of people in a very small space and time, and people-watching provided a fairly decent sampling of the community. My beer-swilling, keg-standing crowd stood right across the street from a group of Pentecostal children – a cross-segmentation of the population that would likely never be in the same place in BR. And this leads me to my appreciation of:

#3 Enforced Variety:
This may be a quality that is more a result of my newness than of the town itself, but I’m going to list it here anyway. When I left Baton Rouge for California in my early 20′s, my main goal was to move to a place where I could find people who were “more like me.” I’m still not sure what I though that meant, but I did learn very quickly that in a large city like L.A. it was incredibly easy to find a small group of people – a clique, of sorts – to hang about with. I could, if I so chose, experience life in the city without ever stepping outside of my comfort zone of people who spoke and thought much like I did. I have been able to do much the same thing in the other large cities I’ve inhabited.

Here in Alex, I have been exposed to a wide variety of people, and although I think I am finally finding a crowd that remind me of my BR and California friends, I have also befriended girls I would never have met had that group been readily available to me. I’m working in a different industry now, and I’ve made some great friends at work – all of them women who have lives that are very different than mine. We do not have a ton in common, but we get along well and have a great time. I’m glad of these new friends, and only a town of this particular size and cultural make-up could have brought them to me so quickly.

And this is just the surface. I have more to come, but right now I must go lie down, since another apparent result of the size of this town is that diseases are easily passed through it. I’m under the effects of a flu that’s sweeping my office, and I need to get in my afternoon sick-person nap.

Mar 8

1 Comment

Town Talk Wingnuttery Pt II

Sunday, March 8, 2009: Tompkins: Liberals Deny What They Declare Absolutely:

Liberals rail against the torture of terrorists, but adamantly argue for the abortion of innocents.

I suppose the inverse of this sentence would be: Conservatives adamantly argue for the torture of terrorists, but rail against the abortion of innocents.

Obviously, both constructions are absurd and offensive, notwithstanding the implication that eliminating torture or decreasing the number of abortions are partisan issues.

With all due respect, I have to wonder whether or not Mr. Tompkins has ever met a “liberal,” because the stereotype he presents seems to have been built on talk radio memes.

A conservative sees the statue of U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima planting the flag on Mount Suribachi and gets goose bumps about their bravery under fire. A liberal sees the same statue and gets shivers that they didn’t plant a Japanese cherry tree instead.

You see, only conservatives can appreciate, viscerally, the bravery represented by a statue. Apparently, liberals have never fought in the service of our country. Only conservatives own patriotism. Only conservatives understand valor. Liberals, on the other hand, wanted Japan to win World War II.

Riiiight.

Liberals accept as gospel the message of global warming from a former vice president or an actor or a singer, but they reject the message that global warming is bunk when it is delivered by a weather expert such as the former director of meteorology at The Weather Channel.

Nevermind the thousands of scientists, climatologists, meteorologists, and geologists who have thoroughly documented the effects of climate change and global warming; the guy at the Weather Channel says global warming is bunk.

Except that is not what he said.

Joseph D’Aleo, the Weather Channel guy now working at the illustrious Lyndon State College, questions the veracity of data on CO2 emissions. But regardless, D’Aleo doesn’t actually deny global warming. Quoting SourceWatch:

D’Aleo’s fundamental premise is that although there is a global warming trend there is not a strong causal relationship between that trend and carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Instead D’Aleo contends that the global warming trend correlates more closely with other phenomena such as solar activity and ocean current oscillations.

Mr. Tompkins may consider finding another expert to support his argument. It may take awhile, but fortunately, big energy companies, like Exxon, spend millions of dollars every year funding organizations who churn out opposition research solid scientific reports on climate change.

Tompkins concludes:

Given the choice between watching a rerun of last year’s U.S. Open golf tournament final or a live telecast of a visit by Jimmy Carter to Cuba, Iran or North Korea, a liberal will choose the Carter visit every time — and yet make a $10 wager with a conservative watching the rerun that Rocco will beat Tiger this time.

With the exception of the snipe about liberals not knowing Tiger beat Rocco last year (I wonder what Tiger Woods, the Buddhist, multi-racial, Stanford graduate, thinks about global warming), the metaphor Mr. Tompkins presents works perfectly in the context of this editorial. The conservative is watching re-runs of a sporting event while the liberal is paying attention to the actual news.

Maybe this explains it:

Bob Tompkins is a sports reporter and columnist for The Town Talk and www.thetowntalk.com.

He’s also a much better sports writer than political commentator.

Mar 7

3 Comments

Town Talk Wingnuttery

picture-24Two independently wealthy 9-year-olds express their frustration with the Bush Administration’s bail-out of the banking industry Obama Administration’s stimulus bill during The Town Talk-endorsed Lafayette Tea Party.  (Photo: The Daily Advertiser).

A sampling of this week’s Our View editorials in The Town Talk:

Wednesday, March 4:

Consider what is promised in “A New Era of Responsibility,” the president’s misguided spending plan for 2010 and a strategy that will mortgage much of what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Uh-huh. And they’d have us believe the entire plan is “misguided” because, well, it calls for new things (I suppose they believe the old way of doing business and running the government was working just fine, thank you).

This “New Era” calls for new programs, a new path, new jobs, a new foundation, new infrastructure, new energy technologies, new training, new reforms, a new generation, new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries (for those of us who have grown tired of making “old” discoveries), new industries, new levels, a new sense of responsibility, a new home, a new car, a new way of doing business, new industry sectors, new entitlement, new credits and new federal commitments.

By the way, how do you “mortgage” what someone has “in mind”? And what, exactly, is it about Obama’s budget that’s antithetical to the founding fathers? That’s a pretty bold claim.

Which brings me to their editorial the following day, March 5th:

Reasonable Americans, transfixed by the crushing debt of the Obama administration’s “New Era of Responsibility,” have not had time to ask what else is new.

The short answer to that question is this: New Columbia.

You’ve not heard of New Columbia unless you a) know the U.S. Constitution and understand why the Founding Fathers did what they did at the beginning, or b) know the U.S. Constitution and are determined to violate it.

New Columbia would be the new name of Washington, D.C., if the District of Columbia were to become a state.

You see, the fabric of our democracy would be completely undermined if we allowed DC to have actual (and not just ceremonial) representation in Congress.

Why?

It really has nothing to do with this lame Constitutional argument. The paper didn’t seem to care much about the Constitution when it came to things like the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, or the expansion of executive powers. And incidentally, they’ve exhibited some cognitive dissonance when it comes to out-of-control government spending; Obama inherited $4 trillion in debt after eight years of a Republican administration, yet the paper piles on him as some sort of stereotypical tax and spend liberal. And that’s what the DC argument is really about– not the Constitution, but about party politics.

This would include the Democrats who today control Congress and who, once again, are trying to grant Washington, D.C., the right to vote in Congress. They have the votes push the agenda and a president who says he will sign the legislation.

They’ve had to retreat for the moment, because of the opposition’s legislative maneuvering, but that is only temporary. They won’t pass up the chance to exploit the reality of the moment, which is this:

Reasonable Americans may be too distracted by the oppressive costs of the “New Era of Responsibility” to notice this renewed threat to their Constitution.

D.C. is majority-Democratic, which means that if they had a vote in Congress, well, it’d be a Democratic vote. And we can’t have that!

The comment section seemed to know what was going on:

It’s another ploy to further cement the Democrats grip on power. If DC gets the equivalence of statehood that would almost assuredly mean one more Democrat in the House and two more Democrats in the Senate. If the Supreme Court upheld the action, how long do you think it would be before Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, or American Samoa would demand equal treatment?

I suppose, by that logic, this person believes that we should rescind statehood for everything but the original thirteen colonies.

In actuality, D.C. isn’t asking for two Senators; they’re asking that the one “Congresswoman” currently representing D.C. have her vote counted. Remember the whole taxation without representation thing?

Either way, it should come as no surprise that today, the paper implores us to participate in a “tea party” in Lafayette. Now as fun as it would be to hang out with a group of white libertarians, out-of-work computer programmers, and Sarah Palin fans, I think I’ll pass. Still, The Town Talk couldn’t pass up an opportunity to plug their favorite political action committees. The headline today, “Our View: Tea Party A Reason to Go to Lafayette.” Quoting:

They’re having a tea party today in Lafayette for everyone who thinks the nation is headed in the wrong economic direction under President Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress. The event from 1 to 3 p.m. should draw a crowd to Veterans Park. Organizers of the Tea Party and Anti-Pork Protest are the fiscally conservative Louisiana Resistance (www.resist.net) and the Louisiana chapter of Team Sarah, fans of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (www.teamsarah.org). The event is affiliated with the New American Tea Party’s national effort to cut spending. For details on today’s party, call (337) 258-8852.

Actually, Clown Talk, it’s Resistnet.com, not to be confused with resist.com, which is the homepage of the White Aryan Resistance. Close enough, I guess.

Also, I love it how Sarah Palin has fans and not supporters. It reminds me of that ad McCain ran against Obama… you know, the one that compares Obama to a celebrity and his supporters to throngs of cheering, star-gazing fans.

Most of the time, the paper and I agree with each other on local issues (something tells me that the national “Our Views” are written by a different writer), but whenever they venture out of the State, they lose their bearings.

This is what those tea parties are like:

And, just in time, here’s what The Town Talk wanted all of us to attend today in Lafayette:

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Notice the incredible diversity: White people wearing sunglasses and white people not wearing sunglasses. (Note: Some of these people CLEARLY do not have their hands on their hearts).

lafayetterally

Also featuring homemade, barely legible signs predicting the total demise and destruction of America.

Red: “Obama is funding sheep and leading Americans to the slaugter!”

White: “Pelosi: The Wicked Witch of the Liberal West. Go Home Pelosi.” (Note: Nancy Pelosi did not attend the Lafayette Tea Party rally).

Mar 6

6 Comments

Is This Smart Growth?

I have my own opinions, but I’m interested in hearing yours.

The basic concept is to link up the Mall/City Park complex with a new Expressway. Apparently, the project is on the Chamber’s wish list.

I created this map as a rudimentary illustration:

centralparkwayconcept

And here’s the affected area, as it now looks from space:

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