Smackdown to a Stupid Seattle Smear of NOLA

From Scout Prime over at First Draft:

This is the kind of story that brings out the stupid and of course it did just that. In his post Oyster calls the matter of a Mr Vandeleun's stupid to the attention of Ashley Morris in hope that Ashley will deliver his "trademark subtlety and finesse" to one Mr. Vanderleun. Ashley in turn delivers and I highly recommend reading all of it but here is a taste.....

He calls New Orleanians “legions of hustlers, grifters, drunks, junkies, pathics and drooling layabouts”. Hmmm…I wonder which of us he’s talking about. People like me, with a PhD and two jobs? Others on my blogroll, with JDs, PhDs, MBAs, MDs, MFAs, and other advanced degrees? Oh, that’s right. He’s one of those who probably couldn’t cut it, and so his ‘conservative’ response is to slam the ‘liberal bent in higher education’ and denigrate our achievements. People in New Orleans are working harder than anyone, jackass, regardless of educational level. If you only have one job (and I don’t know a PhD in this town that only has one job), then you probably spend the rest of your time fixing up your house. Yes, we’re still doing it. Most of the gutting is over, but people are still hanging drywall, painting, hauling off debris, patching roofs and in general rebuilding their homes and lives. There’s also little affordable childcare, so our kids are either helping us with the work, or else we have to postpone the rebuilding time until after the kids are in bed. So, for clarification Mookie, does that make us “pathics” or “drooling layabouts”?

I love how people who have no grasp of mathematics, statistics, or even simple arithmetic still try to use numbers to help support their points. The twit who sued for $3 Quadrillion is what we call an outlier. We don’t consider him when determining weighted averages. He won’t make a big difference when calculating the median. But that doesn’t stop Mookie from using this outlier to cipher an average. As we say about the lottery, it is a tax on those who failed statistics. Mookie must direct deposit his paycheck to the lottery, and picks the same numbers, week after clueless week after clueless week.

Do read the rest

I heard in a news report last weekend that most Americans think that NOLA is still flooded. This is because if/when the media presents a story about the area, they use archive footage from the original flood. Unbelievable. Now that's lazy. I have friends in Mississippi who are still living (four days a week) in tents on their property because of battles with insurance companies and the state government. It ain't all well just because the MS casinos have been able to reopen.

If you care to know what is really happening in the Gulf area and NOLA go HERE.

And so it goes.
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