Report from Louisiana: Hurricane Ida

Posted: August 30, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Hurricane Ida has finally come and now has left Louisiana, but she is travelling through the eastern states leaving storms and plenty of water in her path.

The predictions for this storm were dire in the days leading up to landfall: “worst storm in Louisiana history!” said one, and “bigger than Katrina!” said others. As landfall was predicted on the sixteen-year anniversary of Katrina, comparisons were inevitable.

As the storm approached the coast, the cone consistently shifted to the east just a little more with every new track. This eventually took my beloved Acadiana region out of danger, and Shreveport, up in the NW corner was never really in danger. We spend a lot of time in Arnaudville and the Acadiana region, and we have a lot of friends there, so we watched the progress with a lot of anxiety.

The storm made landfall as a high-end Cat 4 about noon Sunday; it was hard to concentrate on the sermon in church yesterday. Wind gusts in places were as high as 180 mph when the storm hit Port Fourchon; I read where 28 people chose to ride out the hurricane in Grand Isle. This is akin to suicide in my mind. I don’t know how many of them survived. When the storm made landfall it briefly reversed the direction of the Mississippi River.

The only way to get any reliable news or information yesterday was via live streams of local channels. The Weather Channel was a joke. There was Jim Cantore standing in the French Quarter, braced against the wind as if he was about to fly off while two guys walked the sidewalk behind him sipping coffee. In another shot, Cantore is again braced in the street and another guy runs into the back of the camera shot and turns a cartwheel.  The only positive about that coverage to me was the humor factor in listening to the broadcasters mispronounce Louisiana place names. Houma, Louisiana (prounounced HOME ah) became HOOOOM ah for example. The news anchor did everything she could to avoid saying Atchafalaya and Tchoupitoulas.

This morning as damage is assessed, the Cajun Navy is busy making rescues. Levees were overtopped in some places and people have flooded. LaPlace, Louisiana is completely underwater and impassable. An Entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River leaving NOLA without power; this is expected to be a problem for weeks. It also means that 911 is down.

Damage assessment is ongoing. While some areas are obviously flooded, luckily we are not seeing the massive flooding that we did with Katrina. The damage is extensive of course and cleanup will take a long time. Lake Charles, over on the Louisiana/Texas border, still has not recovered from the triple shot of storms they endured in the last twelve months, the biggest being Hurricane Laura.  Nobody expects this to be fixed soon.

In our area we have a lot of evacuees in shelters anxious to return home. Officials are asking everyone to be patient. There are no sanitary services in most places, no water, no power. The death toll will certainly climb; it is early yet.

If you’d like to help, Catholic Charities of Acadiana has an Amazon Wish List and is assisting with disaster relief. The Cajun Navy is also requesting help. Prayers are good, too!

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

More friends gone too soon!

Posted: August 30, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

I never really understood why my father turned first to the obituary page in his later years.

Now I get it.

I have seen many friends die in the past few months, including four remarkable women who played significant roles in my youth. It’s worth noting that none died from COVID-19. Although I don’t have any proof, it’s conceivable that they couldn’t get the proper treatments because so much of the medical community focused on the pandemic and not other illnesses.

Lynn Langway served as my teacher at Northwestern University and helped me get a job at Newsweek. She worked Newsweek for more than a decade, rising to the level of senior editor. Later, she became executive editor of Ladies’ Home Journal. Although we kept in touch over the years, we parted company over the 2016 election. I’m sorry that politics stood between us upon her death. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnlangway/

Ann Bartsch, the wife of the best man at my wedding, was among the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University—an honor I also held from a far less competitive university. Ann attended law school at the University of Chicago, where he met Doug Blomgren, my roommate in Chicago. 

Ann worked mainly with low-income and elderly clients in Oregon, her home and where Doug also practiced law. She served as the chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Legal Services for the Poor. See her obituary here.

I wrote about two others who died recently in my 2011 book, Flyover Country, which chronicled the lives of my high school class, which graduated in 1969 from Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Barbara Sidlo Hughes was my first girlfriend. We dated in our sophomore year, but she tired of my endless weekends on the road with my rock ‘n’ roll band. 

Upon graduation from Drake University, Barbara became a flight attendant for TWA, where she met her husband, Don. Eventually, the couple and their children moved to California, where she cared for her daughter, whose health issues kept her in a wheelchair much of the time. When her daughter was able to attend college, Barbara started teaching elementary school, where she helped students—many the sons and daughters of immigrants–for more than 20 years. See her obituary here.

Mary Hrdy Kaczmarek was my second girlfriend. We dated in our senior year and later at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. We broke up after two years—a parting that angered Mary for many years. Alas, that divide never narrowed, and I blame myself that we never reconciled. 

She met her husband Norman, a physician, in Danville, Pennsylvania, which ironically is about a 30-minute drive from where I now live. 

Mary first worked as a medical social worker, then helped establish and manage her husband’s medical practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico. See her obituary here.

All of these talented women are gone far too soon! 

Assert your freedom with The Handshake Challenge

Posted: August 30, 2021 by datechguy in culture, DaTechGuy's Quick Thoughts
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After a year or two of various challenges that health officials have come out or had celebreties come out to denounce as dangerous and foolish the time has come for the ultimate in challenges that I’m sure that branches of the government will be loudly denouncing and will likely get me kicked off of Youtube.

The HANDSHAKE challenge.

This challenge consists of extending one’s right hand to another person, and taking said right hand (also extended) in your grip and then moving both hands in unison up and down.

For generations this type of greeting was considered the customary greeting of friendship, particularly among men. It was occasionally used as a test of strength and the unwillingness to shake hands as a sign of peace or reconciliation or approval might even be considered inappropriate:

I know that in those ancient days before March of 2020 a handshake was the most common greeting between men, but now in this enlightened new age of COVID such and action it is considered dangerous and extreme.

In fairness even in that prior privative age there were some cases when it was not considered proper to shake hands, If one was sick , was known to have a communicable disease or if one’s hands were dirty or unwashed such shaking of hands was not encouraged. There were cases when it was considered proper to refuse an offered hand in order to avoid the appearance of approval of said person and or his actions.

There were even extreme cases when said person offering a hand was so beyond the pale that it was preferable to risk death rather than accept it.

All of these limitations are matters of propriety and if any of these limitations are present:

  • Dirty Hands
  • Either person sick or carrying a communicable disease
  • Avoiding confirming legitimacy to a person or action beyond the pale

then it is perfectly proper and even recommended to avoid the Handshake challenge.

But absent these conditions I submit and suggest that the handshake challenge is not only proper but an important if not vital step into reasserting and reclaiming normalcy and to reestablish ourselves not just as free Americans, but as free men and women.

Details here

The incomplete list of people to blame for the Biden debacle

Posted: August 29, 2021 by John Ruberry in elections, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Seven months in and it’s already fair to call the Biden presidency a debacle. Our humiliation in Afghanistan tops Biden’s list of failures. Yes, John F. Kennedy botched the Bay of Pigs invasion and helplessly saw the Berlin Wall built during his first seven months in the White House, but to paraphrase what Sen. Lloyd Bensten said of Dan Quayle, Biden is no JFK. And Kennedy, while we’ve learned years later that he was not a healthy man, showed no signs of cognitive decline during his brief presidency. JFK was 46 when he was assassinated. Biden turns 79 later this year.

The old proverb, “Success has many friends but failure is an orphan” is true to the extent that people prefer to sweep failure under the rug. Lee Iacocca, the legendary automotive CEO, remarked in his autobiography that there were plenty of people eager to take credit for the success of the Ford Mustang. But not for the flop of the Edsel car a few years earlier. 

As a civic duty I’m going to point out those deserving people and groups to blame for Biden, our White House Edsel, being elected president. And there are many.

Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor. The White House physician is also Biden’s personal doctor. In late 2019, as he released Biden’s medical records, O’Connor said, “Vice President Biden is a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State, and Commander in Chief.” Wow. Biden wasn’t “vigorous” two years ago. And just how healthy is Biden?

Do you care to update your comments, O’Connor? And please, doctor, don’t hide behind patient confidentiality laws. Biden is responsible for the safety and well-being of 330 million Americans.

Jill Biden. Someonse else nailed Jill’s role in this tragedy on the head last week and I’ll hand things over to her. “Who are the people responsible for putting someone this incompetent and frankly this mentally frail in this position. …I’m sorry, as a political spouse, I can’t help but look at Jill Biden,” Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is married to a former congressman, said last week. “No one knew better his state of mind than Dr. Jill Biden. And if you ask me the most patriotic thing Jill Biden could have done was tell her husband, to love her husband, and not let him run in the mental state that he is in. I think she failed the country as well.”

US Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC). After lackluster performances in the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary it appeared that Joe Biden’s third presidential run would end up like the others, along the lines of a batter being dealt a three pitch strike-out. But to prevent a Bernie Sanders nomination–and a Trump reelecton–Clyburn gave Biden a strong endorsement shortly before the South Carolina primary. Biden won the primary and essentially coasted to the Democratic nomination, while conducting his campaign, to use Sean Hannity’s favorite phrase, from his “basement bunker” in Delaware.

Senior Biden campaign officials. I’m sure they knew all about Sleepy Joe’s mental state.

The media. I excoriated the mainstream media’s role in elevating Biden in a post here last week. I suspect reporters knew–and still know–that Biden is a weak old man. But they chose to keep it to themselves. And because the person they loathe, President Donald J. Trump, absolutely could not be reelected, they had to cover up, or at least obscure, Sleepy Joe’s many weaknesses.

Never Trump Republicans. Perhaps the GOP Trump haters belong at the top of this list. Are you happy now?

Biden voters. On WIND-AM Radio last week, co-host Amy Jacobson observed that many Biden voters approached last fall’s election as if it was a student council race. Trump was that mean bully and rude Tweeter and he just had to go. He just had too, you know! And besides Trump wasn’t “cool.” As Barack Obama famously and correctly said, “Elections have consequences.” In high school if you elect the wrong people to the student council it might mean that films you don’t like are screened on Campus Movie Night. The stakes regarding elections to the most powerful office in the world are immeasurably higher.

Barack Obama. Sometime in 2019 Obama should have convincingly told Biden, “C’mon man, you’re too old and to feeble to be president.” Or maybe Biden was unqualified to be president even before his cognitive decline set in. “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up,” Obama supposedly said about his vice president. 

Joe Biden. Surely in his more lucent moments Biden must realize that whatever mojo he had as a politician, other than name recognition, was gone. And even when he was at the peak of his skills, Biden was simply a mediocrity.

I’m certain I’ve left many worthy people of shame and blame in this list. Feel free to add others who come to mind in the comments section.

Update 8:00pm EDT:

I can’t believe I forgot the 50 former intelligence officials who made the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop discovery appeared to be a disinformation campaign put forth by Russia. These “experts,” swamp rats really, either had no clue if that claim was true or they were lying.

The propagandists that we call the mainstream media utilized this denial as justification for not reporting on the Hunter haptop scandal.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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