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Dogs but no goats killed in vicious Beaumont attack

A man with a bow and arrow, I suppose, or perhaps a bow and arrows managed to stop a dog attack on a goat herd that lives in a comfy little goat hangout between Phelan and Calder in Beaumont. I say suppose because I am not really sure from this story on the Beaumont Enterprise online edition. Perhaps if I paid the Enterprise king’s ransom to read the whole story I would be more enlightened. I don’t know that for sure, maybe the story is just a wee bit unclear. But that is the enormous crap shoot you take when a newspaper opens what is known as a “pay wall.” Don’t get me started on all that, though.

Goats saved by archer during violent daytime canine attack.

I love this goat herd. I first noticed it about five years ago driving by on Phelan Boulevard, a pretty well-traveled thoroughfare in the middle of western Beaumont. Calder Avenue is on the other side of the goat “farm.” Calder is itself a busy street in more places than others. The part that forms a boundary for the goat-plex isn’t all that busy. However, those two streets combined are, presumably busy enough for a vicious dog or dogs to transit in search of some fresh cabrito.

One or more of the hurricanes we had forced goat owner Sam Parigi to move the herd. An Enterprise story mention a lot of folks began to miss seeing the goats. I know I did.  Nevertheless, the goats returned.

I went by there a month or so ago and took some pictures with my then new camera — now in New Jersey allegedly being repaired from a tumble in my recent trip to Missouri — of the herd. I found that Parigi has built the goats what look like a very comfy stable, or goat-i-minium. But I also noticed the owner, who also is a big real estate person in this town, has a “for sale” sign up on the fabled herd. If Parigi is trying to sell the land, the herd or the land and the herd, I wonder what will become of the goats? Cabrito? Or perhaps the more appropriate term would be “chevon.”

It would be ashamed to see the goat herd hundreds of drivers including myself have come accustomed to glancing at every day while driving by. The almost comical creatures bring, no doubt, a lot of smiles to a lot of people and the goats somehow make it seem all is right with the world just with their presence.

Alas, nothing stays the same but Congress.

Hat tip to the fellow who managed to dispatch the attacking dogs with his trusty bow and arrow. I don’t much like killing dogs but I like less, dogs attacking the Phelan-Calder Goat Herd.

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Capital One billing long charged-off debt

What’s in your wallet?

Nothing. That is after certain former Capital One customers get reamed by the credit card company whose TV commercial Vikings ask just that question.

That is because the company is searching its books for debt and telling some former customers that they still owe for charged off credit card debt, some of which is at least a decade old. Like everyone else seems to do, Cap One is blaming it all on the government. Ah, yes the big boogyman Uncle Sam, what a mean ol’ cus our uncle.

Read here …

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“Hey, wake up! The governor’s finished speaking.

Since I started writing here more than five years ago I have managed to heap quite a bit of scorn and whatever else I had handy for our well-coiffed Texas Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry.

First there was George W. then Perry that have been both a national and a personal pain in the ass for me. The latter is in part because I had to cover both governors as a reporter and neither were particularly inspiring either as subjects of newspaper articles nor as “statesmen.” I think the last time I covered an event with Perry as governor shows about how interesting he was to write about.

I can’t exactly remember where I was but it was somewhere in Central Texas. Some kind of “pollution-abating” dog-and-pony-show was going on and Rick Perry was there as governor to lend a sis-boom-bah to the event. After all the presentations were made and a few words were said by each of the speakers, including the governor, Good Hair himself asked the some half-dozen reporters if they had any questions.

"Win-win. Win-win. Win-win."

“No, not really,” I told  him. None of the other reporters there asked the governor anything as well, following my lead. I would like to think part of the reason is that the other media members were just waiting for me to write something so they could steal it. Nevertheless, that is the first time I think that I ever saw the media fail to ask questions of a governor — not to mention a governor of the state with both the second-largest size and population in the country —  given the opportunity.

Perhaps now that Good Hair is on a bigger stage, seeking the Republican presidential nomination as he seems to be, every opportunity he gives to ask a question is a big deal to the media. That, and the fact that he seems to only do his talking to friendlies such as Fox News these day. I write these words as Perry is pushing a whole lot of red meat subjects for his “conservative base” (God, I hate those words almost as much as I despise the phrase “win-win.”) for the start of the new Texas legislative session. Anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, support for a federal Constitutional amendment for a balanced budget and so forth are all on his plate. All of these Perry considers as “emergencies” for the Lege to consider.

What an inspiring guy that Good Hair is. I wish he would get caught sleeping with an underage, gay horse.

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A “messy” business could be unfolding in the Middle East

As a political freak and a self-professed “world citizen” I find it fascinating to watch the pictures from Egypt streets of thousands of protesters. The mobs, often clashing with police firing tear-gas, want an end to what they see as a repressive regime under President Hosni Mubarak. Egyptians are also feeling the crunch of a sour economy with high unemployment, inflation and young people who are tired of the same old same old which is partly at root of the protests across the Middle East world.

Strangely, the live pictures of crowds clashing with police do not include an overt animosity to Egyptian soldiers who seem to be trying to keep the lid on a boiling cauldron.

Egypt's Mubarak and U.S.'s Barack share a joke at a White House meeting.

At the moment while writing this I am also listening to a press briefing from the White House to see if they have anything but the continuous and rightly cautious words spoken earlier by Secretary of the State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Caution seems to be the watchword for many including some of those in Egyptian’s neighbor and one-time-sometime foe, Israel. Outgoing Obama administration Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is walking the fine line he has had to travel most days and predictably doesn’t stray far from earlier statements made by the Secretary of State. Gibbs has reflected upon the caution the U.S. government is urging for the Egyptian military for restraint while the press secretary sounds in undertones as if it might be possible for a popular overthrow of the Mubarak government. At least that is what I hear, but what do I know?

An editorial from today’s online version of the Jerusalem Post notes that unrest has flared up in the neighborhood with protesters taking to the street in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya all following the so-called “Jasmine Revolution” that continues to unfold in Tunisia. The commentary by the English-language Israeli newspaper not surprisingly, I suppose, takes a point of view which sounds very much like the phrase “why rock the boat?”

“Oil prices are tolerably high, security forces are loyal, foreign aid is available in abundance, elections have been manipulated and Islamists have been repressed,” says the Post editorial. “Nor would it necessarily serve the interests of national and regional stability for these authoritarian regimes, many of them allies of America, to be suddenly deposed.”

Quite truthfully the commentary says that the framework for a Western-style democracy in Egypt or in the other Arab-world countries lack the necessary infrastructure. The newspaper points to power grabs by Hamas and Hizbullah in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, to make its case.

The revolutionary push from power by authoritarian rule has, from the American government standpoint at least, been known to backfire in some nations over the years. The rise of Castro in Cuba and the emergence of a severe theocracy in Iran following uprisings are just a couple of examples. The U.S. also has some tolerable-to-staunch allies in these countries which seem on the precipice of revolution. King Abdullah of Jordan and several members of the Saudi royalty seem at home at Western events or on TV news talk shows broadcast in the United States.

I certainly don’t have any answers to the strife over there, not that Mr. Obama would tap me for an envoy to the Middle East. I have a hard enough time managing my own life.

Also, I could see why Western interests might worry that even democratic reforms could cause problems with their economic designs. After all, at least in the Republican mind, it seems that democracy and a free-market economy walk hand-in-hand. While the multinational corporate world seem to espouse the view that an open market is truly open, competition is not always welcomed fully.

But if these countries in which thousands are marching to rid their tyrannical heads of state appear to be like-minded with the Western world, then why would not those free Western nations fully welcome more countries into the family of democracy?

Perhaps the offices and organization charts are not all ready for those who seek a democratic government but it is doubtful any national government could be built, like Rome, in a day. While I have reached the end of my comments and I am not averse now to using a cliche to end my writing, I think it would be appropriate to suggest that “democracy is a messy business.”

I just hope it doesn’t get too messy.

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Poe does something right — for a change

It is no secret to many who know me that I am no fan of U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. The former Texas criminal district court judge has become a darling of the right wing, showing up on Fox News shows such as that of Sean Hannity’s or just about anywhere he can make his reactionary credentials known. Part of my dislike of the congressman, who represents the Southeast Texas area in which I live along with heavily-Republican-infested northern Houston suburbs, is personal although most of my ire for him is politically based.

But when even those politicians who irritate the living hell out of me do something noteworthy, I hold my nose and type them a congratulatory message. Well, that is just being downright figurative. It would take forever for me to get through typing with one hand while holding my nose with the other and, sorry, but Ted Poe just isn’t worth the hassle. Kudos are due, nevertheless, for Poe and Vermont’s at-large congressman, Democrat, Peter Welch for leading the opposition to a Wal-Mart proposal to place one of their Superstores on the site of a significant Civil War battlefield in Virgina.

Wal-Mart announced today that they would abandon plans to build a Superstore on the site of The Wilderness, where some 29,000 U.S. and Confederate troops died in a bloody stalemate. The Texas Brigade under Gen. James Longstreet suffered some 500 casualties among the 800 troops who fought off Union soldiers in Spotsylvania County, Va.. The First Vermont Brigade lost nearly a third of their more than 2,800 Union soldiers by  the end of the first day of fighting in that battle.

Both Poe and Welch took to the floor of the House in March to voice their opposition to the mega-retailer’s plans.

“The Wilderness Battlefield is a sacred site for Vermonters, Texans and all Americans. The site marks the sacrifice of so many soldiers, whose memory we must cherish,” Welch and Poe said in a joint statement. “We appreciate Wal-Mart’s decision to build elsewhere and we applaud the leadership and advocacy of those who fought to preserve this important national landmark.”

Of course, it didn’t hurt in quelling Wal-Mart’s thirst for another store that a trial was soon to begin in a Virginia court which sought overturning a special use permit the retailer had received. Local citizens groups had fielded the legal challenge and was assisted by a national coalition supporting Civil War battlefield sites in their efforts to stop the giant corporation from building the store.

“We stand ready to work with Walmart to put this controversy behind us and protect the battlefield from further encroachment,”James Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Trust, stated. “We firmly believe that preservation and progress need not be mutually exclusive, and welcome Wal-mart as a thoughtful partner in efforts to protect the Wilderness Battlefield.”

Both congressmen’s efforts cannot be discounted as helpful in getting Wal-Mart to change their minds and it is certainly good to see Poe doing something for Texans, even if it is a battlefield in Virginia. With congressmen and a lawsuit on their plate, no doubt the better part of valor for Wally World is discretion. Or something like that.

As both Union and Confederate troops realized after the bloody battle at The Wilderness, sometimes you just have declare a draw and I guess one might have to say that is what the gigantic retailer did — this time at least.