Did You Know A Hurricane Hit South Louisiana?
I've largely been MIA because I've been dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Delta, which hit Louisiana's coast on Friday night and ravaged a good portion of the state's southwest and south central communities, including mine.
At its peak, Delta was a Category 3 storm. It made landfall as a Category 2. While that may seem like it's not very big compared to the Category 4s and 5s that we've seen in the past, a Category 2 still means 96-110 mph winds. That is enough to do serious damage to an already storm-ravaged coastline.
The storm made landfall about 12 miles to the east of where Hurricane Laura hit. Because of wind shear, there was very little in terms of rain and flooding inland, but a lot of storm surge and flooding along the coast. It was the wind from the storm that did the most damage, destroying homes, rooftops, and power lines. As many as half a million citizens were without power in Louisiana, and some of them still don't have it as of this writing.
As a teacher, I have dozens of students still without Internet access and unable to do work they were already struggling to do because they, like so many other students, are having to adapt to the "new normal," which in districts like mine means a hybrid (read: every other day) schedule. I have been fielding emails for four days from panicked students worried that their grades will suffer (they will not suffer because I refuse to let any more Acts of God - be they plague, pestilence, storm, or riders on pale horses - affect their grades).
As a parent, my wife and I have to go to work while my kids' school is still without power. We had to scramble to make arrangements, and I know many other parents out there are in the same boat.
As a citizen of south Louisiana, I knew the risks when I moved down here. I knew these storms were something that happened, but I also was in high school when Hurricane Katrina hit and New Orleans was destroyed. I remember seeing that footage for weeks. But, Hurricanes Laura and Delta each got coverage for about a day, and most of that was the lead-in to landfall. After it was over, the news coverage went away. The problems in south Louisiana will remain south Louisiana's to pay attention to and deal with.
In this modern era, we are so busy focusing on Washington D.C. to micromanage our lives. Even if your existence is one of open rebellion to the idea of Washington D.C. running your life, your absolute devotion to fighting those battles have let you (and me and others) quietly ignorant of the things happening outside the beltway. I get that Lake Charles, Louisiana, is not as sexy a town as New Orleans is (or, at least, it's not as Sodom and Gomorrah as New Orleans is), but it's still a city that has been devastated by these big storms.
It strikes me as amazing that this part of the state was hit by two big storms in just a six-week span and yet you hear nothing about it outside of our local media. I know I'm biased, living here and all, but it seems like we as Americans have largely forgotten to give a damn about our fellow countrymen outside of those we agree with politically when it comes to who the president is or what a party is doing in Washington D.C. It's frankly shameful that we're not doing more to reach out to our fellow countrymen and offering them anything in support.
But, God forbid the Republicans push through/the Democrats block a new Justice to the Supreme Court.
The Democrats Are Scared of Losing
Right up until Hurricane Delta, I had planned on paying attention to the hearings and covering them along with my colleagues at RedState (who have done an admirable job of covering them). Going into the hearings, I think we all expected a lot of fireworks and craziness to erupt thanks to a Democratic Party that is terrified of the Affordable Care Act getting overturned, as well as a possible end of Roe v. Wade as we know it. Many of those antics were the ones that we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings, and while we haven't been blessed with the same bombshells that were dropped during those hearings, we have gotten to see some of the attacks Democrats are leveling at Barrett.
And, I must say, it's rather... boring, isn't it? These sound a lot like normal, partisan games being played over a Supreme Court nominee. They do not sound like the type of partisan games you'd expect to be played when Obamacare and Roe v. Wade are on the line. Why is that?
Back in 2018, the Democrats led an absolute trainwreck of a circus in the Kavanaugh hearings. As a result of that, in a year when voters handed over control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats, they expanded the Republican Party's majority in the Senate. While I absolutely abhor the idea of "mandates" in modern political elections, it seemed pretty clear that Democrats were being punished for the shenanigans they pulled there.
While it is (probably?) much harder to accuse someone like Barrett of sexually assaulting someone or running a rape train or anything like the accusations thrown at Justice Kavanaugh, you would expect something explosive meant to derail the whole process. But we're not seeing that, and I think that's significant. It could mean two things: 1) The Democrats quietly realized how badly they messed up during the Kavanaugh hearings and 2) the Democrats know their lead in the 2020 elections is not as significant as they would like you to believe.
In particular, polling is in Biden's favor, but not by a large enough margin that Democrats should feel comfortable, and I think that the rather lame levels of attack they're waging against Barrett are a hint that they know they have lost this one, so they want to just stick to talking points (healthcare, abortion, and gun control) and not try to completely destroy the reputation of a judge solely to blow up confirmation hearings.
That is also the reason you have many Democrats (and their best friends in the media) trying to redefine the term "packing the courts" to mean "a bunch of conservative judges getting confirmed to lifetime seats." It is less about winning right now and more about winning in a little less than a month. Lose the current battle (to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) to win the war (the 2020 election).
It is, however, an outright admission that they are still very beatable going into November, and Republicans are picking up on it. You see them pushing back aggressively and going after Democrats in ways they might not have prior to this because they see that Democrats are vulnerable.
That is a good sign for Senate Republicans, who could lose as many as seven seats in November but could - with the right turn of events - maintain their hold on the Senate. It also bodes well for Trump, if he can stay on message and join his party in pushing back against the Democrats with clear, targeted messaging.
In short, the war for the Senate and the White House isn't over yet.
Recipe of the We-… Actually, No. It’s A Rant Instead.
It’s time to admit that journalism is dead.
I say this not because of the hurricane column I wrote above, or anything going on with the political world as a whole, but because of a tweet our of a Houston television station that makes me really just want to fight the state of Texas as a whole.
The tweet, posted by KPRC in Houston, has since been deleted, but I think it was largely due to the comments it was getting.
The above picture is not gumbo. Gumbo, while varying from family to family across Louisiana and in some Cajuns communities outside the state (Houston itself, I am told, has a number of Louisiana natives who have moved there), does not look like this. The sauce is not red, tomatoes (if they are added to a gumbo in the Creole style) are not put in whole like that, and you never have shrimp as the only protein.
If I had to guess, I would say the person in charge of the tweet found a picture they thought looked like gumbo and posted it, but in reality the picture is more like a shrimp creole. It is not a bad dish, but for God’s sake, it’s not gumbo.
I am by no means an expert on gumbo, either. I’ve only made it a handful of times, and I’m more an adopted Cajun than one by birth. But I do know that tradition is important, and damnit some things are sacred. That a journalist thought this was okay without doing the appropriate research is infuriating, and I think that person should be fired as restitution to the state of Louisiana.
Final Thoughts…
Seriously. That is not gumbo.