The murder of Oneal Moore

A Google news alert showed up in my inbox, with a link to this at the Times-Picayune - also being discussed on the Hard Copy board. Excerpt:

The unsolved 1965 killing of a black Washington Parish sheriff's deputy by a group of white assailants is among roughly a dozen unsolved murders from the civil-rights era that the FBI is giving new scrutiny, said Jim Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the bureau's New Orleans office.

The murder of Oneal Moore is one of 10 to 12 unsolved inquiries into suspicious deaths around the country that FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday the agency is re-examining.

Further down in the article [emphasis mine]:

Ironically, Moore and Rogers were hired in part to help quell racial unrest in Washington Parish, which at the time was thought to have more members of the Ku Klux Klan per capita than any county in America.

I believe it. Remember David Duke's run for a seat in the Louisiana legislature?:

Duke actually carried Tangipahoa Parish, a rural county which is one of four in the district, and finished second in another rural county, Washington Parish. Link

And here's an excerpt from a 1965 Time article:

Governor McKeithen offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to a murder conviction, promised to "demonstrate to the world that Louisianans are law-abiding, Godfearing citizens, and that our state is no haven for cowards and murderers."

Sadly, he has been proven wrong. In this case, Louisiana, specifically Bogalusa, was indeed a haven for a murderer and his two accomplices.

Turn them in. This is a terrible blot on the city, and it's way past time for justice.

Cell phone crackdown at BHS

One of the students had their cell phone on, or they were playing with their ringtones, or somethin'. A search was instituted. We were told some phones were seized.

Please, kids, be a bit more considerate of others. The students involved in after-school activities will be greatly inconvenienced if they have to walk around in search of a pay phone to call their parents and get a ride home.

And that's what'll happen if you keep screwing around like this, and cause cell phones to be officially banned at BHS.

DSL internet service

Somebody at the Hard Copy board mentioned that a Bellsouth employee said DSL internet service will be available all over the area by the end of the year.

I went to the Bellsouth site and had an online chat with a customer service rep.

Yes, it's true. BS DSL will be available all over the place by the end of 2007.

Yippee!

Go to your doctor...

... and get a flu shot, if you haven't already.

This year's virus is awful.

Sorry for the hiatus.

We've been down with the flu.

Will be back posting Sunday [tomorrow].

Hope y'all are having a nice weekend, and stay safe through the storms tonight :-).

Penn Masala

I never heard of 'em, until I ran into one of their videos on Break.com. Not surprising. With the thousands or tens of thousands of musicians and groups, who can follow them all?

Penn Masala, the Hindi a cappella group. Wow.

Listen to Aankhon Mein Tu Hai. A little hip-hop, a little bit of ballad, hauntingly beautiful tune and clean lyrics - Hooray! Teenage daughter loved it.

Go to their site and buy their CDs.

Slothful Sunday

I was able to sit down for a while and finish reading Hard Truth by Nevada Barr.

If you like mysteries, it's a good one. Ms. Barr is a ranger for the National Park Service, and she sets her books in one of the parks.

Trial date set for [alleged] dog shooters

Arraignment of Minton and Englande was Tuesday in St. Bernard Parish.

Trial will be May 8, 9 or 10.

Full story on this page.

Special thank you to Pasado's Safe Haven animal rescue org for traveling all the way from Washington state to help and show support in this very important matter.

For those of you who didn't see my previous post on the topic, you can write a note to the judge here.

For y'all who have companion animals, or understand the love people feel for their pets, why not help Pasado by buying a T-shirt? I like "Not Without My Pets" :-).

The traitorous little jihadi had a blog.

Daniel Joseph Maldonado - also known by some Arabic-sounding name... You know, the fool who's a US citizen and took off to Somalia to train as a "holy warrior" and kill people for al Qaeda.

He's now in US custody.

And he was a blogger.

Don't forget to read the comments. Bad language, sexual references, but a lot of 'em are a scream.

St. Bernard dog-killers' arraignment tomorrow

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in St. Bernard Parish, victims of flooding left their dogs at Beauregard Middle School, scrawling heartrending notes on the walls with their names, their pets' names. "Don't shoot my dog," one reads. "Very nice dog in here," says another. They left what food they could, and water.

All in vain.

Their dogs were shot and left to suffer. Shot in the stomach, the legs. Some starved to death. This, after deputies promised the owners that their beloved pets would be cared for.

This, as animal rescuers were beginning to arrive in South Louisiana to save pets' lives.

David Leeson, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, was driving around in St. Bernard Parish shortly after the storm, looking for the small, oil-soaked dog that he'd taken a picture of. Instead, he filmed three deputies, also driving around, shooting dogs. Showing no emotion. Not putting them out of their misery, but leaving them to whimper and cry on the ground until they died of their wounds.

Tomorrow morning, two of the perpetrators - Michael Minton and Clifford Englande - are being arraigned in the St. Bernard Parish Courthouse. They have been charged with aggravated animal cruelty. They have also been sued by the pet owners.

You may write a note to the judge here. It'll be hand delivered by the folks with Pasado Safe Haven.

Read the whole story.

"Fighting Words"

Seen at Blackfive (which y'all should be reading daily), Trace Adkins' song set to pics by Subsunk:



More about these Congressional Medal of Honor recipients:

SFC Paul Ray Smith, US Army. Bio.

CPL Jason L. Dunham

Heh.

Tonight's headline at Drudge [click to enlarge]:

Sex tours - at the zoo.

Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo calls it the "Wild at Heart" tour. At New York's Central Park Zoo, it's "Jungle Love." San Francisco offers "Woo at the Zoo," and in Boise, Idaho, it's possible to enjoy "Wild Love at the Zoo."

When Valentine's Day rolls around, zoos around the U.S. have become an unlikely locale for adult-oriented entertainment with risque tours that couple champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries and candlelight dining with impressive facts about how animals mate.[...]
Credit for the zoo sex tour concept goes to Jane Tollini, a former penguin keeper at the San Francisco Zoo. Tollini conceived the idea two decades ago while watching her penguins' courtship ritual, which culminates in what she describes as "bowling pins making love."

Read it all here.

For those who prefer visuals in the privacy of their own home, tortoise porn at Youtube. Enjoy!

Animals. Attacking.

In the past two-three weeks:

Bull kills farmer in Wisconsin.
Cow kills Ohio farmer.
Cheetahs kill woman at zoo in Belgium. This idiot entered their enclosure, as though they were pets. Sheesh.
Bull sharks sink fishing boat.

I'm sharing my steak with Fluffi tonight, stayin' on her good side ;-).

Weather follies

Hard to figure out to wear when there are such disparate weather reports. Both are screenshots from today, early a.m. Note the temperatures:

Slothful Sunday

Not.

Not a moment's rest all weekend. Even this post is a day late.

Hope you had some leisure time!

Accident

A generous soul snapped some shots of a truck in the ditch on Spring Valley Rd tonight and sent them to us :-).

Cause of accident, and whether there were injuries, unknown.

UPDATE: Click on the pics. They get huge, and y'all can see detail.

Free credit report online

Read all about it at the Federal Trade Commission.

Helps protect against identity theft :-).

Beware of copycat sites; some of 'em are phishing.

"Fraudera Ranch"

You've got to read this post at Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking [excerpt]:

12 Quartz Ln., Ladera Ranch, CA 92694
--05/2004: purchased for $421,500.
--06/2005: purchased for $530,000 by Angelica, associate of "The Family."
--06/2005: Angelica immediately deed the title to Janneth.
--01/2006: sold to Saul the truck driver for $630,000.
--07/2006: NOD filed, Saul just committed a first payment default.
--11/2006: REO
--Total Profit: $100,000 for "The Family."

There's more. Much more. To the tune of a profit for this family of around half a million dollars.

Tons of it at Mortgage Fraud Blog.

Casey Serin blogged his shenanigans.

Check out the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter. Twenty mortgage lenders gone bust in the past couple-three months.

Hang onto your hats. We haven't seen the bottom yet.

UPDATE: I fixed the nonworking link. Sorry 'bout that.

Bank account spam

Seems like a day doesn't go by when I don't get one. "Attention, someone tried to access your account, so come to our fake bank site and give us all your secret information."

The latest one was from soapstone@yahoo.com. Why not send soapstone an email? Heh.

The email told me to login here.

Screenshot from dumbass spammer site:

Afghans for Afghans

I was at Michelle Malkin's site reading this post...

and followed the link to Crochet Guild of America's charity page...

and thence to Afghans for Afghans:

afghans for Afghans is a humanitarian and educational people-to-people project that sends hand-knit and crocheted blankets and sweaters, vests, hats, mittens, and socks to the beleaguered people of Afghanistan.

This grassroots effort is inspired by Red Cross volunteers who made afghans, socks, slippers, and other items for soldiers and refugees during World Wars I and II and other times of crisis and need.

Knit one, purl two for a great cause.

Where y'at? And why?

We're getting visitors from all over.

Are you displaced residents? Folks with family in the area?

Leave a comment and tell us your story :-).

NOTE: Comments don't always work correctly, and there isn't much I can do about that. Just keep tryin'.

Graffiti or something more sinister?

At The Aviation Nation:

The first time flight attendant Charlotte Smith* found the mysterious writing inside the bathroom cabinet of a 757 aircraft while flying for a major airline, she got spooked. It was February 23, 2005. A flight attendant for twelve years, Charlotte was working the coach class cabin of flight 853 traveling from New Jersey to California. Everything was normal, until her discovery.

In the first of a series of interviews, Charlotte explained:

“By a fluke, I opened up a compartment in the mid-galley lav [lavatory] and there it was, on the back of the cabinet behind where you refill the paper towels:

CHENAULT LIVES

ZATU

The three words Charlotte found were handwritten in black marker and in capital letters. Puzzled by the presence of odd handwriting on an area of an airplane that is off limits to passengers, Charlotte began to look further. She then opened up each of the compartments in that lavatory, carefully examining each panel wall. That’s when she discovered another set of words, also written in black marker, but inside a different cabinet.

Read the whole thing.

ADDENDUM: I finally moseyed over to the graffiti page. 64AB... I'm not connected with law enforcement, but the thing that comes to my mind with the letters "AB" is the Aryan Brotherhood.

And as the article points out, "Chenault" could stand for Marcus Chenault, the nutjob who murdered MLK Jr's mother in 1974.

Perhaps this graffiti isn't related to Islamic terrorism, but a more homegrown group of extremists?

Intrepid at Walmart

Listen, darlin'. If you can't see a vehicle smack dab in front of you with a turn signal on, and beginning to turn, you need to get your eyes checked. How'd you get home without running into a parked car?

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell my children that you should always pass up a parking space if it appears that someone else is waiting for it.

You've gotta be a native Washington Parishite. The immigrants aren't that rude.

ROTC news

Bogalusa High's JROTC Armed Drill Team placed third in the recent meet in New Orleans.

Good going :-)!

Dilbert - "The Knack"

Slothful Sunday

My plans are to NOT wash the truck. Heh. That's kinda cheating, as I never wash the truck.

Prolly will do some gardening, but that's a pleasure, not a chore. I need to dig up and move one more blueberry bush, get it out of the path of tractors and such; it's too close to the gate.

What aren't you gonna do today?

The state of Bogalusa schools

There've been a number of articles published recently in The Daily News detailing the trials and tribulations of our supposedly rotten school system. There are discipline problems, attendance problems, and low achievement.

Parents blame the teachers and the school board. Teachers blame the parents.

I've got to side more with the teachers here, folks. I'm old enough to remember the "good ol' days." Thirty years ago, there were not these huge problems in the schools that I went to, which I admit were more upper middle class than the ones in Bogalusa. So that may have skewed things.

One thing that has changed radically in the past few decades is the number of single-parent families. When one person is trying to do too many things, something is gonna suffer. We've seen the news items about how more juvenile thugs come from single-parent homes. We know that intuitively, eh?

Single-parent homes are also more likely to be poorer homes economically. Poor kids don't do as well in school as better-off kids, generally.

A recent article in The Daily News says the school board and city are going to try and place a "resource officer" at Bogalusa Middle - basically, a uniformed cop. Will that help? Does that help? Or does it simply mean quicker arrests?

If there are gangs, as school board member Raymond Mims claims, Know Gangs is one site with info. Gangs or Us is another. And here is a list of links courtesy of Michigan State University.

I suspect what Bogalusa Middle needs - more than a cop stationed at the school - is a couple more full-time counselors and after school programs with room for any child who wishes to participate.

Addendum: From the MSU site, and thanks to the internet archive - Developing a Gang Prevention Program.