Efforts to “plug the damn well” that has shot out biddoodles of oil into the Gulf of Mexico seems to be working for now, according to government and oil industry officials. Let’s just hope the stopped up well doesn’t blow and make everything worse.
Almost Cut My Hair, my a**
Willie cuts his hair. Could’ve said it was getting in his way. Sounds like it. I don’t blame you, bro. You ought to shave your head like me. And be free. And be rhymin’. Like Paul Simon. Okay, I’ve totally embarrassed myself. Sorry David Crosby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6a6oowSAMPizza Pizza: The Beaumont Supe saga continues
Note: Sometimes I revert to my neanderthal ways and must edit reading a bigger text, like a sheet of paper (what’s that), or online where I can see it better. I did some online editing but couldn’t get it very quickly due to a server problem. Hopefully, this will be better. If not, fire me.
It is hard to miss anything big out on the Texas coastal flat-land just east of Beaumont off Interstate 10.
One example is the new 10,000-plus seat multi-use stadium being built — the centerpiece of a multimillion dollar athletic complex that has recently been named for the school’s top administrator. As one gets closer to the tall structures jutting out of the coastal prairie, two red and white banners sit almost one on top of the other are visible, hanging on the press box and battered by the stiff Gulf breeze. They present a strange message to most motorists who are just passing through the last 30 miles or so of Texas before it turns into Louisiana.
The two one-word banners shout out twice what is, in reality, the last name of the school superintendent. “Thomas Thomas,” the banners exclaim, reminiscent of the Little Caesar’s Pizza ad where the little cartoon character shouts: “Pizza Pizza!”
To those who have closely followed the saga of Dr. Carrol Thomas and his detractors over the last few years, the words high above the new stadium should register at least some kind of emotion: Anger. Amusement. Disgust. Sadness. Joy. Perhaps others feel ambivalence.
The story is one of race, power and politics in a minority majority Texas school district. The district is by no means the state’s largest. BISD’s Web site lists its total enrollment at 20,819. However, it boasts the highest paid school administrator in Texas. That would be Dr. Carrol Thomas, the African-American superintendent of the district, whose salary has been reported to be more than $320,000 per year.
What has caused animus over the years are several factors. One, Thomas is black. Most of the school board is black. I have spent about 30 minutes looking for a definitive picture of BISD demographics and cannot find one. But some figures I have seen said that Beaumont’s enrollment is about 60 percent black.
The school district’s performance in the Texas educational report cards have received mixed reviews since Thomas took over in 1996. The last accountability rating for the district was “Recognized,” which words were recently rearranged by alleged vandals on a sign outside BISD headquarters into what school officials believe was an attempt to spell the “N word.” This even though what was ultimately found was “N-I-G-E.” One can draw their own conclusions about that. The Recognized rating is next to the highest rating for schools, “Exemplary.”
Detractors of Thomas also claim they were sold a bill of goods with the $300-plus-million bond issue passed that included the $38 million athletic facility. Irregularities have surfaced with at least one contractor involved in the construction of schools and other facilities. Also, Thomas angered former students of the former mostly white South Park High School when, after a protracted legal fight, he ordered their beloved school torn down over the Easter weekend to make way for a new middle school in what has become a predominately black area. The last straw seemed to be when the board recently voted to name the facility, which includes the multi-use stadium, after Thomas. And the list goes on and on.
The Thomas administration and the school board have certainly appeared heavy-handed with some of their decisions, such as the in-your-face demolition of the South Park school and naming the facility after the superintendent. If the banners were knowingly placed by the aforementioned, it would certainly seem that some gloating was going on.
Personally, I don’t know the reason for the banners. I could ask. I am a resident of the district although I don’t pay property taxes. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an interest in whether the district turns out well-educated students or knuckleheads. But I have too many other matters to take up my time than what would likely be a futile quest to know why these banners were placed where they were placed. I actually see a lot of the squabble to be amusing. Whatever the reasons for the banners being flown, one can imagine that it is just one more instance of the continuing ridiculousness on both sides of the two coins.
So until or if the media feels it is worth their time to ask about the banners, I guess I will just have to chalk it all up to more craziness that makes watching those who run Beaumont ISD and their critics one of the more entertaining local sports.
Looking for a miracle cure in the Gulf
Barack is up to his ankles in oil.
The right-wing critics of the president are doing their best to mire Obama into the oily Gulf of Mexico waters although they know they don’t want to go too far because of their mantra: “Drill baby drill.” The right isn’t right by themselves in the criticism by no means. It is hard not to get frustrated as the oil continues to flow.
But if someone should really get the blame for the bungled response by BP to the cleanup from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster perhaps it should be Exxon Valdez captain Joe Hazelwood, or perhaps George H.W. Bush who signed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 into law.
The law — in response to the catastrophic 1989 Alaska oil spill — restricts federal action in cleanup of such disasters to playing second-fiddle to the company responsible, which in this case of course is, BP. That is like letting the fox fix up the hen house.
For the time being the White House through its point man and Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen, insists BP is doing all that it can. This is despite the fact that too many cooks can spoil the broth and too many federal agency heads can makes matter worse by not singing in the same tune as the White House. However, one could almost bet that in some point in time the Barackistration will seriously intervene unless BP comes up with a miracle cure.
Allen said today that the government was making up its position in response to the cleanup by BP on the fly. And one would think a White House filled with lawyers, including constitutional lawyers, will find a way to get that old Executive Order form out from the president’s desk drawer, dust it off and start using it. First, though, they have to figure out how to stop the damn oil.
If they could just stop the oil, the government, or BP, or the Coast Guard, or some lawyers or some ne’er-do-wells with a substance made from a chaw of Redman, and a coke bottle full of urine, all’s well that could end the oil well. Just shoot me.
Why DO birds suddenly appear? And why are they a hassle?
Life’s a hassle.
I don’t know who said that, first at least. But I am saying it now. From flying to driving to going to the doctor to going to work to renewing your library book. “Enough! Enough!” I say.
But tis fortunate that at least I am not a dog in El Paso.
When one is in a completely different geography, topology, physiography and dingology — study of dingoes perhaps? — for a few days and can sit in the back yard and smell the oleanders, it is then that life begins to look differently even though that is a debatable statement.
Sitting in my friend’s back yard, just able to see the top of the Franklin Mountains over the house in back of the back yard, I was intrigued by what I thought were owls hooting at 6 or 7 in the afternoon. It turned out, said my friend Rene (his work friends call him “Louie” as a nickname for his middle name of Luis), that the avian sounds originated from white-winged doves.
Louie’s neighborhood is full of doves. They are perhaps more overbearing than beautiful and they drive my friend’s dogs absolutely bonkers. The doves actually taunt the dogs. The doves even taunt my friend.
Rene and Martha have five dogs and five cats. The five dogs range in size from beast to little s**t. There are three male dogs in the bunch with a small dog trying to be Alpha although the beast seems best not to jack with when it comes to the first familiar face it sees after a long while. Number Three male is kind of past its prime, but then, aren’t we all just a bit?
Little Alpha dog stares with intensity at the doves when they are anywhere near my friend’s property, or anywhere near Texas it seems. Then the dog barks, loudly and with a sharp, grating sound sort of like a large sledgehammer striking steel. The doves will get close to the dogs, within a few feet as long as the canine hordes are behind a gate. Brave those doves will be while the dogs are fenced in and kept away.
Rene tires of the dog and dove freak show and decides to get rid of the troublemaker. The perpetrator is a dove sitting smugly on the rock wall.
“Ha, ha, you are powerless against my dove wits,” the dove seems to silently say.
“Whap,” goes a faded, green tennis ball Rene throws about a foot too low below the rock fence-perched dove.
“Damn. They’re not even scared of me!” says Louie. (The same guy as in the above sentence)
The lesson to be learned is that even when sitting in a beautiful desert oasis surrounded by the mountains and white oleanders and the pretty doves, life can also be a hassle, especially if you are a dog bullied by the taunting doves.
As for the late Karen Carpenter reference? I haven’t a clue.