Tag: Louisiana

For this Monday, I give you a few articles that I read over the weekend.

First, an excellent Op-Ed call out of the Catholic Church and their rampant hypocrisy:

The Church’s Gay Obsession

Their moralizing is selective, bigoted and very sad. It’s also self-defeating, because it’s souring many American Catholics, a majority of whom approve of same-sex marriage, and because the workers who’ve been exiled were often exemplars of charity, mercy and other virtues as central to Catholicism as any guidelines for sex. But their hearts didn’t matter. It was all about their loins. Will the church ever get away from that?

Jump!

There is a video of Koko the Gorilla mourning when one of her kittens was killed by a lion here:

http://www.godvine.com/Koko-th…

Bobby Jindal is no gorilla.  He is much tougher-minded than some dumb gorilla, like other members of the Stupid Party [Jindal’s own wording]:

Louisiana Cuts Health Care For At-Risk Children & New Mothers, Plans To Just Strangle a Bunch Of Kittens Next If This Doesn’t Close the Budget Gap

Louisiana is set to begin cuts to health care services for at-risk children, new mothers, and a wide range of other highly sympathetic groups on Friday. Gov. Bobby Jindal has yet to confirm whether more groups will be targeted in the future if the measures fail to close the state’s $166 million budget gap, but we recommend making arrangements if you’re a disabled orphan or an adorable,  fluffy kitten.

The health care cuts come just days after Jindal’s announcement that he will pursue a more regressive tax system, which suggests they may be part of some larger plan to turn the entire State of Louisiana into a Charles Dickens novel. Specifically, the state will completely eliminate the following programs:

   Behavioral health services for at-risk children. Because as long as we’re actively refusing to  enact gun control, we might as well cut mental health services, too. There’s no real consensus yet on whether guns kill people or people kill people, so let’s pay attention to neither and see how it goes.

   Case management visits for low-income HIV patients. Do you have any idea how much medical care these people consume? And a lot of them aren’t even working full-time because they’re “sick” or they’re “thowing up 20 times a day from the meds” or they’re “about to die.” Enough excuses, already. McDonald’s is always hiring.

   Nursing visits to teach poor, first-time mothers how to care for their newborns. Figure it out yourself, ladies.

   Dental care for pregnant women on Medicaid. Well now that’s just wasteful spending right there. It’s only a matter of time until they lose their teeth to meth anyway.

   Physical therapy and speech therapy rehabilitation services for nursing home residents. You’ll thank us when Grandma can’t ramble on about  President Roosevelt anymore.

http://www.thedailydolt.com/20…

BTW Linda the Dolt has toned down considerably her wonderful plea to reference Linda when buying from Amazon.  

Every time you make a purchase on Amazon.com through one of these logo-thingies on our website, you help support The Daily Dolt. Go ahead and bookmark one of our links as a reminder to yourself to be awesome

Still awesome but just a shadow of what it once was.  I almost want to buy from Amazon but I doubt they sell rescued kittens from Louisiana.

Best,  Terry

Kindra Arnesen is part of a husband and wife fishing & shrimping team that made their living off the coast of Louisiana until the blowout of the BP Deepwater Horizon well destroyed their livelihood.   They then tried working for BP as part of the cleanup.   What do you do if you see your young child on shore getting so sick from the fumes you have no choice but to try to take her away from this ?  What do you do when you see workers told not to use respirators, and fish dying ?  This is her story.

This was originally posted on

http://GulfEmergencySummit.org

and it may be also seen here:

http://www.sott.net/articles/s…

partial transcipt highlights: (I am having trouble with some of this, due to sound quality, incomplete)

Transportation Without Petroleum or Biofuels

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

At present, oil saturates the Gulf Stream.  An official six-month cessation of permits for new drilling did not actually affect the industry or government decisions.  Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead.  To explain such an authorization and waiver, the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Services Division which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar.  He did not intend to forbid all first cuts in the Earth’s crust.  Absolutely not.  The Federal Government approved wells off the coast of Louisiana in June. Regardless of the day, or realities that are anathema to our citizenry, little has truly changed.  Today, just as in yesteryear, we, the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect Union, polish policies to appear as though our civilization would wish to protect and defend all beings, equally.  

It is by now obvious that even after we stop the gentle trickle of oil that’s currently expressing itself into the Gulf of Mexico (thank you so much, BP) we are not going to be able to get that oil out of the water for some considerable length of time–and if you think it could take years, I wouldn’t bet against you.

While BP is the legally responsible party, out on the water it will be up to the Coast Guard to manage the Federal response, and to determine that BP is running things in a way that gets the work done not only correctly and safely, but, in a world of limited resources, efficiently.

Which brings us to the obvious question: can the Coast Guard manage such a complex undertaking?

While we hope they can, you need to know that the Coast Guard has been trying to manage the replacement of their fleet of ships and aircraft for about a decade now…and the results have been so stunningly bad that you and I are now the proud owners of a small flotilla of ships that can never be used, because if they go to sea, they might literally break into pieces.

It’s an awful story, and before we’re done you’ll understand why Deepwater was already an ugly word around Headquarters, years before that oil rig blew up.  

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a story I originally posted in March of 2007 that seems so important right now I’ve brought it back for your consideration.

Let’s begin today’s discussion with a quick thought experiment.

What is the single most important thing necessary to ensure the survival of the State of Louisiana?

Improved government administration?

More and better levees?

The success of the “Road Home” project?

I submit it is none of these.

The single most important factor determining the future of the State of Louisiana is mud.

That’s right, mud.

So, I receive this from Sen. Leahy today, as follows:

Dear …….

Figuratively speaking, what BP has done to the communities and ecology of the Gulf Coast is downright criminal.

Eleven workers lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Countless more have lost their livelihoods. The environmental devastation to marine life and coastal wetlands is unfathomable.

Yet under current law, if a jury finds BP criminally negligent, the company would not necessarily have to pay any restitution to the victims of the spill — not even to the families of rig-workers who perished or to the fishermen put out of work. Furthermore, criminal penalties are currently too lenient to adequately deter corporate wrongdoers from authorizing risky schemes that damage the environment.

That’s why this week I introduced the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to make restitution for violations of the Clean Water Act mandatory and increase criminal sentences for violators.

Urge your members of Congress to support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to start treating preventable environmental catastrophes as serious criminal acts.

This legislation takes important steps towards deterring criminal conduct that leads to environmental and economic catastrophe.

Too often, big oil companies treat criminal fines and penalties as a mere cost of doing business. But passing ECEA would change all that, sentencing corporate wrongdoers to serious prison time and mandating restitution payments be made to the victims of corporate malfeasance.

So please, take a moment to support this important legislation by clicking here.

I fully support lifting the miniscule $75 million liability cap on corporations responsible for environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill, but I believe we must also go further to treat such acts as serious crimes against our communities, our economy, and our environment.

If you agree, please support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) today.

Thank you for taking action to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable and ensure something like this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Patrick Leahy