Day: September 17, 2014

Wednesdays Wars | Tom Callaghan: Obama stops the bleeding

Published on Sep 11, 2014

In the wake of an assortment of self-inflicted wounds that left many wondering whether he was on top of the ISIS challenge, President Obama needed to communicate some clarity to the country. He did so last night in a 15-minute prime-time address.

It was crisp, concise and compelling. It should leave the average American … someone who is neither gung-ho Obama nor an Obama-basher … with the feeling that they have a President who is on the case and has a plan that makes sense.

Now that he’s caught up to the power curve, he’s got to get ahead of it. If we have intelligence capabilities that allow our people to listen in on Angela Merkel’s private telephone conversations, we should be able to get some good intel on what’s going on with al-Baghdadi, the boss of ISIS, and some of his top people. A successful hit on the top of the ISIS organization would go a long way towards rebuilding the critical mass of support Obama will need for the remainder of his presidency.

Obama can make it tough on those of us who like him. Who can forget the first debate with Romney in the 2012 campaign? If it was a boxing match, they would have stopped it, and someone would have had to carry Obama out. Almost as bad was a listless press briefing Obama gave about two weeks ago in which he admitted that he didn’t have “a strategy” to deal with ISIS. To add to the weirdness of that statement, Obama was wearing a strange tan suit that didn’t seem to fit him. Continue Reading…………

Drunk on power: An Ode to Billy Joe….

Anyone familiar with the Pine Belt, in particular the Free State of Jones understands all Circuit Court roads lead to Judge Billy Joe Landrum as the one man band judicial district in Jones County creates a Judgeship with mucho power inherent to the office. Late last month State Auditor Stacey Pickering issued a $313,726.73 civil demand to Judge Landrum for helping himself to personal fuel, vehicles and salaries paid from the Community Services Program to employees that were not in any way affiliated with it. The Community Services Programs is funded by fines paid by convicts that is supposed to fund a diversion program that offered alternatives to jail. This should all sound familiar to you folks in St Slammany that read Slabbed.

Notably, the civil demand does not include any Billy Walker type discount and we have a family feud undercurrent as Auditor Pickering also hails from the Free State of Jones, something his press release on the Landrum demand overemphasized IMHO.  Given that Judge Landrum amazingly let the local paper take his picture showing off the CSP paid equipment he was charitably storing at his house so the taxpayers would not be burdened it is no surprise that more recently the DA in the Free State of Jones decided he needed to look into the matter.

Of course Judge Landrum’s timing could not be better as two days before the civil demand was released to the public Landrum announced his intent to seek an 8th term on the Circuit Court. More recently the Judge was issuing press releases to the local media declaring that Auditor Pickering was attempting to interfere with the upcoming election writing that, “Pickering has no business making false allegations about me in an attempt to influence a Jones County judicial election.”

Looks to me from down here on the coast that Billy Joe Landrum may have served one term as Circuit Court Judge too many already. Given the length of time it took to bring former Southhaven Mayor turned perpetrator Greg Davis to trial, the saga of Billy Joe Landrum is likely to be with us for a while.

He’s backkkkkkk………………….

Jefferson Parish Housing Authority appointment has history of consulting with authority’s contractors ~ Ben Myers

There is actually much that I could add but I won’t because once you say it all there is no sense rehashing things.

Meantime despite the lack of new content things have been busy:

For my part in the cultural exchange, I learned that good print journalists have the same jaded and cynical streak in Romania as here in the US.

After, I met with a couple of sources familiar with the Jefferson Parish political scene. Continue reading “He’s backkkkkkk………………….”