Oil Spill Will Cost MS Coast $120 Million This Summer

June 17, 2010 By

Accord­ing to researchers at the Uni­ver­sity of  South­ern Mis­sis­sippi, the Gulf Oil Spill will cost the three coastal coun­ties of Mis­sis­sippi $120 mil­lion this sum­mer sea­son.  This will come in mostly the areas of tourism and ser­vice indus­try revenues.

Here’s a quick syn­op­sis of their fig­ures, just for the sum­mer months (June-August):

  • Busi­ness at non-casino hotels are down 50%.
  • Char­ter boat rev­enue is down 70%.
  • Boat and boat trailer sales are down 65–70%.
  • Seafood restau­rant busi­ness is down 30%, with seafood prices up 30%.

This is based on the rev­enue gen­er­ated the same time last year.  No oil has washed up on Mis­sis­sippi beaches yet (although some tar­balls have washed up on Horn and Petit Bois Islands).  The drop in rev­enue is strictly based on the images seen on national news, and the per­cep­tion that the oil has washed up every­where.  Just imag­ine what these num­bers will be, if and when the oil does wash up on the beaches.

Filed Under: Business/Finance, Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 Tagged With:

Obama’s First Oval Office Speech: We need cap and tax!

June 16, 2010 By

Good morn­ing, folks.   As I lis­tened to Obama’s speech (full text here) last night about the oil spill,  I became more wor­ried than I have ever been before.  Instead of reas­sur­ing the peo­ple of the Gulf Coast, where I call home, that the cap­ping of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon well and clean­ing up the oil spill were top pri­or­ity, Obama decided to push for green energy leg­is­la­tion.  He decided to play pol­i­tics as usual and give a pub­lic relations/political speech instead of a lead­er­ship speech.

As the pres­i­dent started his speech, emo­tion was nowhere to be found.  It started out sound­ing like a professor’s lec­ture — bor­ing and monot­o­nous.  Then, as he started speak­ing about the clean, renew­able energy he wants for this coun­try, he became more ani­mated.  This is what he really wants for the coun­try.  Charles Krautham­mer summed it up per­fectly when he said that Obama is not a “clean-up guy” — he’s a “dreamer”.

This state­ment by Obama will be the defin­ing state­ment of this cri­sis, and his pres­i­dency:   “And sadly, no mat­ter how effec­tive our response is, there will be more oil and more dam­age before this siege is done.”

In his speech, Obama said the fol­low­ing regard­ing green energy: 

For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addic­tion to fos­sil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this chal­lenge requires. Time and again, the path for­ward has been blocked — not only by oil indus­try lob­by­ists, but also by a lack of polit­i­cal courage and candor.

Well, Mr. Pres­i­dent, I have to say that your admin­is­tra­tion just doesn’t get it.  With this cri­sis, you have “failed to act with the sense of urgency that this chal­lenge requires.”  You have lacked “polit­i­cal courage and can­dor” when it comes to this dis­as­ter.  You are sim­ply unable to sep­a­rate the chaff from the wheat.  What hap­pened with the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig was the fault of BP and your admin­is­tra­tion and not the fault of any other oil com­pany.  What you fail to real­ize is that the off­shore oil indus­try is a sta­ple for this region, and the six-month mora­to­rium you have placed on deep­wa­ter drilling will crip­ple not only our local econ­omy, but the national econ­omy as well.

Accord­ing to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, off­shore oil pro­duc­tion from the Gulf rep­re­sents 30% of all U.S. crude pro­duc­tion, and deep­wa­ter drilling rep­re­sents 70% of that.  And, com­pa­nies are being dri­ven to drill deep­wa­ter wells because fed­eral reg­u­la­tions bar any more shallow-water and land drilling.  So this knee-jerk reac­tion to shut down all deep­wa­ter rigs in the Gulf to ensure safety may sound pru­dent on the sur­face, but in fact it will do more long-term eco­nomic harm than this spill itself.

Get with the pro­gram, Mr. Pres­i­dent.  Like I have said before, we don’t need a politi­cian for pres­i­dent — we need a leader.  And you, sir, are not that man.

Filed Under: Gulf Oil Spill of 2010, Politics Tagged With: , , ,

Mississippi Moxie

June 15, 2010 By

Moxie is an older term defined as “the abil­ity to face dif­fi­culty with spirit and courage.”

This is what the peo­ple of the Gulf Coast have in large quan­ti­ties.  Or, to quote one of my favorite movies, they have “spirit and guts”.  Ever since Hur­ri­cane Camille in 1969 (long before I was born), the res­i­dents of this area have known set­backs and destruc­tion.  They have faced it, and over­come it.

Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina in 2005 was even more destruc­tive that Camille was.  Entire com­mu­ni­ties were wiped off the map.  Homes and busi­nesses were lost.  Lives and land­scape were for­ever changed.  But thanks to the over­whelm­ing out­pour­ing of sup­port — both mon­e­tary and phys­i­cal — from all around the coun­try and the world, the Gulf Coast bounced back, stronger than ever.

Then the eco­nomic reces­sion in 2008 occurred.  Prices of homes bot­tomed out.  Oil prices soared to $100 per bar­rel.  The stock mar­ket fell.  But, things were not as bad in Mis­sis­sippi as they were else­where.  The growth expe­ri­enced after Kat­rina due to the rebuild­ing of busi­nesses and com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ued, at least for a while.  We sur­vived yet another poten­tial disaster.

The fish­ing and shrimp­ing sea­son of 2010 was promis­ing to be a ban­ner one for the Gulf Coast.  How­ever, things changed on April 20.  The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon off­shore oil rig exploded, killing 11 work­ers and injur­ing another 17.  Two days later, the rig sunk and oil started gush­ing out of the well.  The oil flow hasn’t stopped since, despite all of the efforts to halt it.

This is a new and dif­fer­ent chal­lenge for the peo­ple of the Gulf Coast.  We have not had to deal with this type of dis­as­ter.  The dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the dis­as­ter response and the bureau­cracy that is the over­sight is putting a damper on progress.  Local gov­ern­ments are used to hav­ing the abil­ity to attack the prob­lem head-on and solve it, with lit­tle or no imped­ance from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.  But in this case, there is so much red tape and con­fu­sion as to who is lead­ing the effort to clean up the oil that it is ham­per­ing oper­a­tions.  Each and every day, the oil moves closer and closer to the beaches.  Poor Louisiana has oil on their shores and in their marshes, and it’s been there quite a while now.

But, as with every dis­as­ter we have faced, the peo­ple of the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast will persevere.

Filed Under: Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 Tagged With: , ,

Read the plan, Mr. President

June 14, 2010 By

In an inter­view with Politico last week, Pres­i­dent Obama said the following:

I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had hap­pened, I had gone up to Con­gress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil com­pa­nies and we need to spend more money on tech­nol­ogy to respond in case of a cat­a­strophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is clas­sic, big-government over­reg­u­la­tion and waste­ful spending.

Not so.  There are already laws on the books that allow for reg­u­la­tion of the oil indus­try and there is already a con­tin­gency plan in place for oil spills.  It would be a good idea if our fear­less leader, who is a Har­vard grad­u­ate after all, reads it.

He also said:

Some of the same folks who have been hol­ler­ing and say­ing ‘do some­thing’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were sug­gest­ing that gov­ern­ment needs to stop doing so much…Some of the same peo­ple who are say­ing the pres­i­dent needs to show lead­er­ship and solve this prob­lem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were say­ing this guy is try­ing to engi­neer a takeover of our soci­ety through the fed­eral gov­ern­ment that is going to restrict our freedoms.

How bla­tantly false and disin­gen­u­ous.  Again, those who are say­ing “Do some­thing” are those who are say­ing, “Imple­ment the plan.”  But instead, Obama is con­tent with allow­ing the pri­vate com­pany who is ulti­mately respon­si­ble for the spill to over­see every facet of it, with lit­tle or no input from the gov­ern­ment.  And don’t for­get:  It was the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion who gave BP a waiver on the envi­ron­men­tal impact study they were sup­posed to draft prior to drilling the exploratory well.  The fed­eral gov­ern­ment also dithered in their response to the spill.  It took the pres­i­dent two full weeks to make his first trip to the area, and he still hasn’t called for the imple­men­ta­tion of the national response plan.  Mean­while, mil­lions and mil­lions of gal­lons of oil are con­tin­u­ing to spill out, destroying the ecosys­tem and econ­omy the entire Gulf Coast relies on.  Every effort that BP has under­taken to halt or slow the flow of oil has failed.

Last night I caught some of the Huck­abee show on Fox News Chan­nel.  He had sev­eral guests on there that have and were devel­op­ing meth­ods to absorb the oil.  Some of them looked extremely viable, and with a com­bi­na­tion of sev­eral meth­ods I’m sure the entre­peneur­ship these indi­vid­u­als are show­ing can put a seri­ous dent in the oil in the Gulf.  I hope the government/EPA/BP review these meth­ods and imple­ment them.

Although oil has not directly impacted Mississippi’s beaches yet, the oil has come ashore on two of our bar­rier islands — Petit Bois and Horn Islands.  The local fish­ing and shrimp­ing indus­try is com­pletely halted.  Tourism and busi­ness is down 50–60%.  Seafood restau­rants are tak­ing a beat­ing in busi­ness.  How­ever, I want to tell every­one that the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast has plenty of golf courses and casi­nos for your enjoy­ment.  I invite all every­one to come down and help sup­port our local econ­omy.  We do need your help.

Filed Under: Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 Tagged With: ,

Faces of Anti-Semitism

June 8, 2010 By

 

Here’s another one:

 

 

There is no difference.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , ,

Kick your own @$$, Obama

June 8, 2010 By

This is my response to this arti­cle and video — go watch it.

Obama said, just in case you missed it or didn’t watch the video:

I don’t sit around just talk­ing to experts because this is a col­lege sem­i­nar, we talk to these folks because they poten­tially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.

Well, if we look at the facts, it is appar­ent he should kick his own and his administration’s, as he put it, “ass”.

In Feb­ru­ary 2009, BP filed a 52-page explo­ration and envi­ron­men­tal action plan for the Macondo well, just 41 miles off the Louisiana coast, with the Mate­ri­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice (an arm of the Depart­ment of the Inte­rior).  The plan stated, “[it is] unlikely that an acci­den­tal sur­face or sub­sur­face oil spill would occur from the pro­posed activ­i­ties”.  They were granted a waiver from a detailed envi­ron­men­tal impact study by the Depart­ment of the Inte­rior.  (For a detailed time­line, go here.)

Then on April 20, 2010, a severe blowout occurred and the rig caught on fire, killing 11 peo­ple and injur­ing 17 oth­ers.  Ever since then there has been a blame game ensu­ing, with fin­gers fly­ing in every direc­tion.  The Obama Adminstration’s response has been, at best, lack­adaisi­cal and lack­ing focus.  Like Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina did with George W. Bush, this dis­as­ter will define Barack H. Obama’s tenure as pres­i­dent, whether he likes it or not.

I am dis­gusted with Obama’s choice to use vul­gar­i­ties in an inter­view set­ting as his way to show emo­tion.  It is class­less, totally beneath the office of the Pres­i­dent, and is insult­ing to the intel­li­gence of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.  We don’t need you to kick ass, Mr. Pres­i­dent, we need you to lead.  That is what you were elected to do.  Bet­ter yet — stay out of the way.  We need peo­ple like Gov­er­nor Bobby Jin­dal and Admi­ral Thad Allen of the United States Coast Guard, who are much bet­ter at being lead­ers, and a heck of a lot more competent.  Admiral Allen helped orches­trate relief efforts for New Orleans and the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast after Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, and he is prov­ing him­self yet again with this crisis.

This is just another clear exam­ple that this Pres­i­dent does not have the experience, capacity, or deco­rum fit­ting that of a United States President.

Filed Under: Disasters Tagged With: , ,

Obama to Skip Out on Memorial Day at Arlington

May 25, 2010 By

Boy, oh boy.  When was the last time a sit­ting pres­i­dent didn’t lay the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Sol­dier?  Accord­ing to the AP, Obama won’t be doing it — Joe Biden will.  Obama and his fam­ily will be going home to Chicago for “vacation”:

The White House says Obama and his fam­ily will travel to their home­town on Thurs­day and stay through the week­end. It will be their first trip back home since a visit for Valentine’s Day week­end in Feb­ru­ary 2009.

He will, however, attend a cer­e­mony at Abra­ham Lin­coln National Ceme­tery in Elwood, Illi­nois.  I know it’s not a require­ment for the Pres­i­dent to do it, but it is a mat­ter of respect and rever­ance for the ser­vice and sac­ri­fices made by our sol­diers.  If it was a one-time deal, I wouldn’t really care.  But this reminds me of the time that, shortly after assum­ing the office, Obama went to Europe and rejected vis­it­ing Nor­mandy to avoid offend­ing the Ger­mans.

I think that, and this is just a guess, Obama is trav­el­ing to Chicago so he can apol­o­gize to Rev­erend Wright for “throw­ing him under the bus”.  I won­der if he will attend Trin­ity United Church of “God Damn America”?

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , ,

The Audacity of Harangue

May 20, 2010 By
La-Raza-758842

That’s exactly what it was yes­ter­day and today with “Pres­i­dent” Obama and “President” Felipe Calderon of Mex­ico, regard­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion and the Ari­zona anti–ille­gal immi­gra­tion law.  (That’s what it is, folks — NOT anti-immigration.)

Obama said this:  “We’re exam­in­ing any impli­ca­tions espe­cially for civil rights because in the United States of Amer­ica, no law abid­ing per­son — be they an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, ille­gal immi­grant, or a vis­i­tor or tourist from Mex­ico — should ever be sub­ject to sus­pi­cion sim­ply because of what they look like.”

And Calderon said this:  “We are and will con­tinue to be respect­ful of the inter­nal poli­cies of the United States and its legit­i­mate right to estab­lish, in accor­dance to its Con­sti­tu­tion, what­ever laws it approves,” he said, “But we will retain our firm rejec­tion to crim­i­nal­ized migra­tion so that peo­ple that work and pro­vide things to this nation would be treated as criminals.”

Crim­i­nal­ized migra­tion?  CRIMINALIZED MIGRATION????  It’s ILLEGAL to come into this coun­try with­out the proper pro­ce­dure and papers.  HEY OBAMA — I have a news flash for you:  A per­son, if they’re com­ing into this coun­try ille­gally, is NOT a law-abiding per­son!!  This law passed by Ari­zona, S.B. 1070, re-affirms what is in our fed­eral law, and does NOT dis­crim­i­nate NOR encour­age racial pro­fil­ing.  It is quite appar­ent that no one that has come out crit­i­ciz­ing this law (i.e. Eric Holder, Janet Napoli­tano, Obama, Calderon, etc.) has actu­ally read said law.  Do your­self a favor before mak­ing an ass out of your­self:  READ THE $@%& LAW!!

I stand by Ari­zona, and from now on I will buy every­thing I can that is made there.  I will sup­port this state whole­heart­edly, and I am hope­ful that my own state and other states will fol­low suit soon.  As per the United States Con­sti­tu­tion, “The Con­gress shall have Power To lay and col­lect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and pro­vide for the com­mon Defence and gen­eral Wel­fare of the United States”.  Also, “The pow­ers not del­e­gated to the United States by the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor pro­hib­ited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respec­tively, or to the peo­ple.”  The right to secure the bor­der of the State is not pro­hib­ited by the Constitution.

Oh, and another thing:  The AUDACITY of our so-called Pres­i­dent, allow­ing noth­ing but a glo­ri­fied drug dealer to address OUR Con­gress, is despicable. S.B. 1070 is noth­ing but a re-statement of the FEDERAL LAW, which Obama and his pre­de­ces­sors have FAILED to uphold, giv­ing the Ari­zona law enforce­ment the abil­ity to ENFORCE the law. I’m so sick and tired of our topsy-turvy gov­ern­ment. Obama’s speech with Calderon yes­ter­day was sedi­tious, and he ought to be thrown out on his..err, ears. It’s high time Obama be impeached for his crimes against the United States.

Some def­i­n­i­tions for you:

Harangue:  a scold­ing or a long or intense ver­bal attack; diatribe.

Ille­gal:  for­bid­den by law or statute.

Impeach­ment:  Impeach­ment, in the U.S. and Great Britain, pro­ceed­ing by a leg­is­la­ture for the removal from office of a pub­lic offi­cial charged with mis­con­duct in office. Impeach­ment com­prises both the act of for­mu­lat­ing the accu­sa­tion and the result­ing trial of the charges; it is fre­quently but erro­neously taken to mean only the removal from office of an accused pub­lic offi­cial. An impeach­ment trial may result in either an acquit­tal or in a ver­dict of guilty. In the lat­ter case the impeached offi­cial is removed from office; if the charges war­rant such action, the offi­cial is also remanded to the proper author­i­ties for trial before a court.

Filed Under: Illegal Immigration, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Rising Stars to Perform at a Local Benefit

March 4, 2010 By

Two of Nashville’s hottest new acts will be home in Lucedale, Mis­sis­sippi, on Fri­day night to per­form a ben­e­fit for a fam­ily deal­ing with bone cancer.

Cold­wa­ter Jane and Bran­don Green, of the duo JB Rocket of “Can You Duet?” fame, will be per­form­ing at the George County Fair­grounds Fri­day night at 7:00 P.M. for Yulanda Coo­ley.  Mrs. Coo­ley was diag­nosed recently with bone can­cer and is receiv­ing care at the MD Ander­son Can­cer Cen­ter in Hous­ton, Texas.

From the Mis­sis­sippi Press:

For sis­ters Bran­don Jane and Leah Crutch­field, who make up Cold­wa­ter Jane, their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­cert is a fam­ily mat­ter. Both grew up in Lucedale and Coo­ley is their aunt.

“She is a won­der­ful, won­der­ful lady,” Jane said dur­ing a phone inter­view on Wednes­day. “She is such a bless­ing to our fam­ily, and she means so much to us.”

Cold­wa­ter Jane has just released their first sin­gle, “Bring on the Love”, which they are pro­mot­ing through their label, Mer­cury Records.  Bran­don Green was awarded a con­tract with Big Machine Records.

So if you want to heard some good coun­try music and help a fam­ily in need, come to Lucedale on Fri­day night.  Tick­ets are only $5.00 at the door and all pro­ceeds will be going to the Coo­ley family’s med­ical expenses.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Local Tagged With: , ,

Joseph Stack Wasn’t a “Tea Bagger”…

February 19, 2010 By

…He was an angry, sui­ci­dal maniac.  Noth­ing more.  And for the record, I do believe what he did an act of domes­tic terrorism.

The fringe left, demon­strated on sites like Daily Kos (read the arti­cle and com­ments!) and the Huff­in­g­ton Post, would have you believe that since Joseph Andrew Stack III — the soft­ware engi­neer from Austin, Texas, who flew his pri­vate plane into an IRS office build­ing yes­ter­day — ranted against the tax code and the gov­ern­ment, he was a “tea bag­ger”.  This is disin­gen­u­ous and libelous.  (Michelle Malkin also has a “nice” list of the “kind” words from our lefty friends.)

First, you must under­stand their ter­mi­nol­ogy.  “Tea Bag­ger” refers to one who espouses the “Tea Party Move­ment”, and is meant to be deroga­tory and con­de­scend­ing.  The term was ascribed to those by none other than David Shus­ter on MSNBC.  It also has a rather hideous sex­ual con­no­ta­tion, which I will not repeat here.  (Go here if you want to read about it.)

The pas­sage they want to point to is from Stack’s sui­cide note that he posted on his website:

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a ter­ri­fy­ing start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ con­tract soft­ware engi­neer… and two years later, thanks to the fine back­room, mid­night effort by the sleazy exec­u­tives of Arthur Ander­sen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calami­ties) and an equally sleazy New York Sen­a­tor (Patrick Moyni­han), we saw the pas­sage of 1986 tax reform act with its sec­tion 1706.

Ear­lier in his let­ter, he admit­ted that he engaged in an exer­cise to prac­tice “what the big boys were doing”:  i.e., cheat­ing on their taxes.  He said in his note, “The intent of this exer­cise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the mon­sters of orga­nized reli­gion to make such a mock­ery of peo­ple who earn an hon­est liv­ing”.  Appar­ently it didn’t work, because in a cou­ple of sen­tences down he says, “That lit­tle les­son in patri­o­tism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retire­ment plans back to 0″.

Stack railed against pretty much every­one in his let­ter, against those he per­ceived were “cheat­ing” him.  The list includes, but not lim­ited to, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, George W. Bush, the Catholic church, and even his wife.  Busi­ness after busi­ness he started, failed, and he kept mov­ing around the coun­try until he set­tled in Austin.

No, Joe Stack wasn’t a mem­ber of the Tea Party move­ment.  He was just an angry, lit­tle old man who failed at try­ing to cheat the sys­tem.  And in that real­iza­tion, he took a cow­ardly way out by try­ing to kill those who he per­ceived wronged him.  No one wronged Joe Stack but himself.

And for those on the Daily Kos and the Huff­in­g­ton Post, take a look in the mir­ror.  Some of the things Stack said in his let­ter are exactly what some of your mem­bers believe.  Be care­ful when you try to pigeon-hole some­one — it may come back to bite you.

(To read Joe Stack’s screed, go here.)

Filed Under: Terrorism Tagged With: , , ,
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