And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog...

Thanks to everyone who commented on the three part "The Train" story.  It is now posted on the Story and Poetry Page" for your convenience.

Boy, could I really have some fun ranting about some of the stupid things the "Large-Mouthed Left" have said around and about the GOP convention.  You know, like Ellen Barkin retweeting someone who wished the entire convention would be washed away in a storm; Chris Matthews on MSNBC trying desperately to convince Newt Gingrich that Newt was a racist while spewing racist comments himself;  other NBC commentators trying to tell their audience what hate filled speeches were being made while deliberately not covering ongoing speeches by 2 African Americans and a Latino;  oh, and how about the hackers that got on the Wiki page on Mia Love and called her a "dirty whore" and a "house nigger", and the now-unemployed Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News joking about "Romeny partying while poor blacks drown" in NOLA?  Thank you, democrats and assorted other left wingers, you are all such princes.

However, I've actually been glued to watching hurricane coverage live streaming on NOLA station WWL-TV.  I have been praying for those suffering, watching stories of heroism, and have been in awe how much better prepared the officials in Louisiana are than they were seven years ago.  Suffering is not over, as the storm is slow moving, and they are prepping to blow some of the older levies and evacing a LOT of people who thought they would be safe.  Unfortunately, Isaac is probably the most unique storm in ages, and does nothing as expected.  If nothing else is learned, hopefully the National Hurricane Center will learn it's time to scrap the Saffir-Simpson scale for something that takes into account estimated storm surge, pressure, sheer size of the storm, and forward speed instead of just wind speed.  Then, instead of "I can ride out a tropical storm/cat 1", you might instead think, "Hmm, this is more than just a rain storm, perhaps I should leave."

Among the things unusual here- a hurricane will usually have an inner eyewall that contracts to a certain point, and then collapses and an outer eyewall forms.  This thing, as it neared land, had a 50-mile wide eye (which is pretty big)- and started to form a new eyewall INSIDE this, which I understand no body had EVER seen happen before.  As I type, an official from one of the Parishes (we call 'em counties), put it best- "We've been calling it a Cat one, but to those poor people in Braithwaite and Laplace, it's a Cat five!" 

Braithwaite, BTW, is a town in an area protected by a local (i.e., not Federal) levee that got overtopped this morning.  These people found themselves facing a six foot rise in just under two minutes; by this afternoon, houses that people were being rescued from rooftops in the morning were partially submerged- or worse.  This was the east side of the river- and they are evacing the west side in case they need to blow the west levees to drain the area.

Even I am tempted at times to ride out such a storm, just to see what it's like.  But this year we had a storm here in Ft. Wayne.  It had similar winds, a lot less rain, lasted a fraction of the time, and we had no power for three and a half days.  We didn't have severe damage here, though the city did.  We had access to ice, and batteries, they won't.  And we didn't get flooded out.  And it still sucked.  I've struggled to imagine what would have happened if Ft. Wayne wold have had to withstand ten hours of that storm rather than 10 minutes.  And that's when you go back to praying for them.  So, with all due apologies, I have had other things to do than pay a lot of attention to the convention, or to the hate-blinded morons masquerading as "news media" complaining about it.

I have had time to chuckle here and there, though.  Stole this one off of Facebook:

"Ha ha! Check out this dumbass!"

Take that, Laughing Cow!