17% Of Americans Shouldn’t Have Kids

“17% of U.S. voters want their child to grow up to be a politician, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.”

Car salesman, stripper, the guy who cleans dead animals off the road: Any of those would be better than a politician.

It’s not so much the job itself; the idea of public service is noble enough. The problem is what kind of person wants to be a politician, and what kind of person you have to become to be a successful politician. I can’t think of any other career in which the practitioners are so uniformly small minded, self centered, arrogant, pompous and generally full of shit. But that’s what it takes to succeed.

So if one of my kids wanted to be the trash man, that’s fine. I could still enjoy spending time with them. But if they ran for office? My biggest fear would be that I’d lost my kid.

Do Symptoms Include Forgetting How To Spell?

According to KTBS, Centenary is hosting a “Demetia Lecture” on issues related to Alzheimer’s.

Interesting Story About Our Local Park

The park – AC Steere – features Louisiana’s first handicapped accessable playground. That’s the focus of the article. I do have to disagree with this guy, though:

“I think it’s fantastic. You know any kind of kid there is can come out here and use this park. Handicapped kids, little kids, bigger kids, you see everything out here” says James McGuirk who brought his child to play.

Not that I deny it’s a fantastic park. We go there at least three or four times a week. But in all those times I have never seen a handicapped child.

That the playground does not get used for its intended purpose doesn’t make it a failure. The park is fun for any kind of kid. In fact, the wider aisles and smaller angles make it easier for more kids (and their parents) to use the equipment at the same time. The cushioned ground cover is nice, too. So the handicapped accessibility actually makes it better for everyone.

 

 

Good Thing Maine Just Banned Gay Marriage

If not, then surely gay marriage opponent and conservative heroine Carrie Prejean’s newly released sex tape would have been MUCH racier.

Oh well. At least this hypocrite is hot. And has finally contributed something worthwhile to society.

First Wreck At The Thrill Hill Traffic Circle

I like the circle. I wish the city had more circles and stop signs on neighborhood roads. We’ve got a great grid of four lane thoroughfares; there’s no need for cars to travel more than a few blocks, or over 20 mph, in any neighborhood in southeast Shreveport.

Still, the design of this one is not very good: Low, dark, and without many warning signs. I’m not surprised someone hit it. I just hope the response is to make it more visible rather than to eliminate it.

But Will He Get Back In His Time Machine And Return To 1950?

The justice of the peace who refused to perform interracial marriages has finally decided to resign.

Why Does Bobby Jindal Hate America?

He wants to entrust our national security to the French!

Hope You Had A Happy Halloween

I know we did.

 

Is The Spider “Itsy Bitsy?” or “Incy Wincy?”

The debate continues.

The Rains Are Gone, The Floods Are Coming

Here in town, all is well. Outside town, where all the water drains, not so much. In particular, some of us younguns are going to have to rescue my grandmother later today.

According to the National Weather Service, Wallace Lake is supposed to crest at record heights tomorrow evening. My grandmother’s house is in the floodplain of the lake. Right now – at 10:00 AM on Saturday, a day and a half before its supposed to stop rising – the water is less than twenty feet from her house and is high enough over the roads that she can no longer escape.

Now, we’ve know about the possible flooding since yesterday morning. We’ve all been telling her that the water is going to keep rising until Sunday night and will most likely get in the house. She had plenty of time and notice. She has any number of family members in town who would have been glad to let her stay with them. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to leave while the roads were still passable. But all we got was “well, it’s stopped raining, and we’re just praying the water will recede.”

Maybe it will. Most likely, though, we’ll be using my cousin’s ginormous four wheel drive dualie (I’m 6′2″ and almost need a step ladder to get in it) to go pull them out the front door while the water is flowing through the back door.

KSLA has some video of the area near where she lives.

UPDATE

Just returned from a tour of flooded areas. After seeing the house and hearing the new, lower forecast for the crest, I think it will be fine.

Here’s some pics.

In a ditch just up Barron Road from the house.

The back of the house.

The barn. The thing you barely see inside is the top of an s-10 pickup. The owner is currently doing ten years in the state pen, so he won’t miss it too much.

Finally, the cause of the lake and it’s floods: Wallace Lake Dam. If you’ve ever been out there on a normal day, you understand how much water this is; it’s normally ten or fifteen feet below the spillway and only goes through a drain, that is now submerged, in the middle of the dam. So on a normal day, everything you see on the left, save a ten foot wide channel in the middle, is bone dry. Typically, you can climb up the spillway and walk from one end to the other.