Gustav The Guilter - How a Hurricane Reminds Republicans They've Failed Americans

There is no way I am about to applaud the media circus that has become Bush, Cheney and Chertoff dancing around in front of cameras, making preparations for hurricane Gustav's land fall, due to slam the northern Gulf Coast in about a day's time. Nor will I subscribe to McCain's iterations that he's making changes in the GOP convention to be sensitive about this possible catastrophe. This all "day late, dollar short" bullshit by politicians as usual. I, for one (out of dorky interest and car crash mentality too, no doubt) regularly read the National Hurricane Center's forecast pages around this time every year and Gustav has been brewing for well over a week now. If you see the map there are more "Convention Spoilers" coming off of Africa right now - how 'bout "#2" there huh! Betcha that'll be something to pay attention to ... when it gets within a hundred miles of a coastline...maybe.... But it is only within the last 24 hours that Republicans and the President's Office have swung into action... er, um, swung in front of the cameras anyways. But not to save Louisiana or its people... to save their political careers. With the third anniversary of hurricane Katrina just passed people are well aware of what they've not done, they see the political damage this cost... and it will cost them the Presidency. As it should.

Recapping then for action to take place now, three years later, it requires the confluence of the humility-inducing hurricane Katrina, a vacationing president (as usual), a horse racing focused idiot FEMA director, formaldehyde filled trailers (which were never supposed to be used), three years of inaction, stupidity, politicking and bickering (Dems too), and THEN a pending Republican Convention (following the brilliance of the Dems frankly) and the arrival of hurricane Gustav - and importantly on the eve of the Republican Convention - to remind Americans that a) they've not done their due diligence to help New Orleans back to its feet, and b) that "small government" Republicanism has NOT been the solution to "getting things done".

No, instead while we funnel billions of dollars overseas - whether in war or in corporate investments, oil and so forth - we let our own folk live in a risk society that is not of their making, in which they are basically imprisoned. And instead preparations for avoiding a second "Katrina" scenario have evolved into photo ops and lots of talk about "acting as Americans not republicans" and being sensitive about the plight of others during the coming onslaught.

So changes are afoot! Action is being taken! Convention schedules altered! Republicans are standing to together as AMERICANS on the eve of this possible disaster! But wait.... Why is there NO mention AT ALL of Gustav on the Republican Convention website pages (this is 3:20PM on Sunday btw). I really, really, really hate bullshit and lies:

All talk and no action? While McCain talks of changes to the Republican convention because of hurricane Gustav, yet the GOP Convention website makes no mention of Gustav... at all.

To be fair the Democrats don't have it on their pages but they're not the ones saying they're changing their convention schedule. So let's face it - this is window dressing on the need to accomplish two separate goals for the Republicans - get the convention in and look good, and show that Bush has done something in the past three years, that Republicans have done something for Americans. If McCain really wanted to he could cancel the convention, delegates could send in ballots by mail, etc. But, no, you can't do that can you? Too much MONEY has been invested. Too many DONORS have contributed etc. Truth is laid bare here I think. And as for Shrub... it's just a pathetic swan song. New Orleans remains a disaster area and he remains the President under whom it happened - and allowed much of it to happen. No amount of sucking up to cameras will change that.

And three years later were still sitting on gas prices increases caused during Katrina. That's not going away. In this political cartoon Keefe notes we need a better energy policy. Yet, three years later where are we? Oh, wait, all of a sudden McCain is all about "windpower"!... Hmmm, maybe it's just "the prunes" talking....

McCain's selection of Sarah Palin: Radical or Unsettling?

"There, there John... don't worry, here's your baby mama!". Ugh. I can't help but wonder whether or not there is something more to this than meets the eye... And not simply a calculated attempt to win over disenchanted Hillary Clinton-ites from the Dems. I remember reading about Sarah Palin a while back, and thinking, yes, she is a maverick, and yes, she does stand up to her other GOP old school cronies. So good for her. And first of all let's get it out there that this is not so shocking - it's been in the works for over a year.

But let's be clear. She's also championed her keeping of her child through pregnancy and not having an abortion after learning it would be born with Down's Syndrome into some kind of cause celebre for Pro Life. I don't think she did it intentionally but I sure as hell don't see her stopping McCain and others in the campaign from using it as such either. That makes her complicit in using her child as a stump speech for Pro Life.

And, once again (Surprise, surprise...) the elite Republicans have missed the point: She was also able to keep this child. While her husband is being painted as "blue collar" (remember position isn't everything - income matters too) I have the sneaky suspicion she and husband had the means, the health coverage, the access to schools and support to make this birth tenable. I am NOT saying it isn't "noble" - It's despicable however when others use it as the case that ALL women should have their babies then, regardless of their ability to provide them meaningful and comfortable lives. But back to the main point...

Karl Rove phoned Lieberman and told him to bug off. I have little reason to believe he wasn't involved in this arrangement either. Why should that matter? Well because Rove is a slimy, lying, prick that belongs in jail (and don't even try to contest that charge) so there is no reason to trust him that he selected Palin to further champion the rights of women in politics. It's a calculated political decision to get Republicans into the White House again - at whatever cost to the moral and political fabric of most of the country. From the NY Times:

The McCain campaign is eagerly citing Governor Palin’s appeal to Christian conservatives, as a Christian and mother of five whose oldest son is in the Army and will leave for Iraq on Sept. 11. “She’s exactly who I need,” said Mr. McCain, a Capitol insider who is trying to make the case that he can shake up Washington as president.

Yes, exactly who McCAIN needs to win the ticket. Not what Americans need. Not what women need. Not what environmentalists need. No, what Republicans need. A "maverick" is someone who breaks the rules all over the place - not just standing up to one or two fellow party members. As NOW (National Organization of Women) notes - while Palin might speak to women who share similar interests and challenges she clearly does NOT speak for women. And as Gail Collins of the NY Times also notes:

"I do feel kind of ticked off at the assumptions that the Republicans seem to be making about female voters. It’s a tad reminiscent of the Dan Quayle selection, when the first George Bush’s advisers decided they could close the gender gap with a cute running mate....The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong.

In the coming days we'll see more on her no doubt as the muck raking machinery gets to work. For my part I will say I'm pleased to see a choice that shakes things up. But I am unsettled by who's still doing the shaking...

This is an edit - add-on from another post - it bears being in two places to make the point:

Jon Stewart shows the two-faces assholes of the Conservative media and the GOP for what they are; picking them one by one he shows clips of when they said one thing that supported their candidate and then turned around and said EXACTLY the opposite thing, under the same subject about the Democrats. Including teen pregancy, playing the gender card and "Sarah Palin's" experience issue. It's a bit of a digression here to cover so much but check the clip - it's all there. One by one Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Dick Morris, and Nancy Pfotenhauer are shown to be truly collosal idiots who will say anything - the will LIE through their teeth - to get elected. For example, Karl Phat Fuck Rove is showsn saying that Sarah Palin is a experienced for being mayor and governor - of a town of 9000 people. Then in a clip just weeks earlier he is shown calling the possible choice of Tim Kaine as V.P. on Obama's ticket would be "an intensely political choice," noting that Richmond, VA, with its population of 190,000 is America's 105th largest city: "It's not a big town" Rove says. Of course Kaine, can hardly hold a candle to Governor Palin's 48th most populated state in the country vs. his 12th most populated state... Being Governor of a state barely larger than the population of Washington D.C. must be excruciatingly difficult. Phew!

Michelle Obama "...needs to be less Jackée and more Jackie O." - Byron Pitts, CBS

More of this! How wonderfully 'Camelot'!

Less of this! Too...Um... 'Black-Alot!'

Yes, it's the opening of the DNC's Denver Mile High Love-In. Let's get all together, bury the hatchet and get on with the election (PLEASE!).

But not CBS...First Katie Couric kept prodding, asking Kathleen Sebelius what she thought Michelle Obama "needed to do" to basically make people love her. How could she appear... pause... less, as she put it, "controversial" and "edgy". Now wait a sec. The only fucking people worried about her being "controversial" and "edgy" in the manner Couric was suggesting are those bozos at Fox "News" (the quotations are on purpose) with their "terrorist bump", and the Pyscho-Right-Wing-O-Nauts (BTW, I made that word up just now, I like it. It's "mine"). But wait...that wasn't enough bullshit...So! On then to the convention floor for more idiotic comments....

Here, Byron Pitts showed, once again, that in this country, race and stupidity march down the same street, hand in hand ... no matter who is opening their mouths, not matter what the color of their skin. In this case it was a "respected" African American newsman. After speaking to a Man of the Cloth, whom he was also interviewing about what Michelle ought to do to suck up to people (read: Men) who can't stand a smart, strong woman in any position of power, he did a "back to you Katie" and said in summary, and I quote, "(Michelle) needs to be less Jackée and more Jackie O." Holy fuck.... He didn't just say that did he??? You've got to be kidding me. He just compared Michelle Obama to a slutty black woman character from an old TV sitcom. Yes, he did just do that. I looked across the room at my partner (who's black by the way). He looked back, and then said -- speaking dead-pan, matter-of-factly, and only as a black man can, one who has seen this kind of bullshit for decades -- "She can't be Black AND the First Lady, you know." Holy crap, he's right I thought. We're so fucked.

So on national television the presumptive First Lady just got compared to a 'Ho - one of the mouthiest and obnoxious female black characters to grace a sitcom in years Sandra Clark, played by Jackée Harry on the black comedy sitcom "227". Some have kindly described her character as "flamboyant" and, to her own credit, she won an Emmy for her role. But others, and those others being African American "others", were less than thrilled with her, and many other network television characters in such "black sitcoms" (Note: There are no "white sitcoms", are there?). And these portrayals have long lasting effects, symbolically and culturally in our society. And so it has consequences when a national newsperson makes even the worst attempt at a joke (which it was not, it was advice) that suggests Michelle Obama is even remotely like Jackée (as she was later known by her one name moniker in her spin-off).

In Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream, Sut Jhally, television and culture critic, notes that many black folk were offended by the main characters found on many of the networks' prime time "black sitcoms" and have been vocal critics. The shows were, and continue to be, offensive, exploiting stereotypes to get the laughs, all at the expense of the audiences they are supposedly empowering. Just take a look at one such recent incarnation (brought to you by those bright and forward thinking folks at FOX, fucking surprise there....) that car-crash of a sitcom starring Flavor Flav "sambo-ing it up" for all to see. Right down to the white gloves and playing the butler sometimes. Jhally notes the critical comments Blacks make about these enslaving performances:

"These are comments from people who are acutely aware of the power of images and for whom stereotyping is not just a minor problem, but one that affects their everyday lives. Moreover, these stereotypical representations were seen not simply as one-dimensional but as negative and demeaning." (Jhally & Stewart, 1992, 118)

And though Sherman Helmsley ultimately topped all as the actor who received the most sustained critique for offensive portrayal of black characters in such sitcoms Jhally points out a dubious honor goes to "Jackie" (Sandra Clark of 227 ) who was ALSO found to be "especially offensive" to Black viewers for her stereotypically-demeaning performances in such sitcoms (Jhally & Stewart, Ibid). Pitts must know this character still resonates - hell it resonates with me - a 45 year old white guy from Canada, you bone head!

Now, looking back at the two pics above I think comparisons to either person - Bouvier or Harry - are wrong. One is racially offensive but the other is also woefully romantic for a bunch of elitist democrats who fucked up JFK's and MLK's dreams. So now they live vicariously through some twisted version of Camelot (in Southside Chicago? Blackalot) but the damsel has to subscribe to white ideals of behavior and carriage if she is to suceed. When Couric says "She is so 'edgey'" - it's basically code for don't be "uppity". So get over it. Now. But, in the mean time, this is the best that Bryon Pitts, himself a previously illiterate, self-made, pushed to college out of the shit-hole that must have been Baltimore for him then (cuz Christ knows the schools aren't any better here now) can come up with to compare Michelle Obama to? And his best advice is "She needs to be less Jackée and more Jackie O." That's just very, very, very sad... So, for my part I hope Michelle Obama takes her edgey self, goes out into the back alley, and then PUTS THE BEAT DOWN on you and Katie Couric for that drivel you call "news commentary". And as for being more like Jackie O.... She'll be there. Pill-box hat and all. Looking over Michelle's shoulder, maybe even getting one in for JFK - Jackie O. was more than fashion, she had more substance, she'd kick your ass too.