New Orleans

Friday Night, outside the Mother-In-Law Lounge, post the 'debate.' People were very attentive, not boisterous. Which, if you know the MIL Lounge, is not the standard for Antoinette Kadoe's place.




General Lee Keeps Watch Over New Orleans (Lee Circle), near the Ogdon Museum, where the party for the "New Orleans and the Gulf - 3 Years After Katrina" issue of the Oxford American Magazine was held. There was another party for the OxAm Mag last night, at Tipitina's.

Indian CEO Bludgeoned To Death By Workers

After he fired them.

Woo.

John Tyler, 10th POTUS, the Nixon of His Day

What a hypocritical, nasty creep, he was (1841-1845).

Tyler was called the 'accidental president' because he came in as William H. Harrison's VP, and Harrison died a month into office. As Harrison's illness (probably pneumonia, which he came down with at his inauguration) hung on for a month, and his death was determined very likely, if not inevitable, Tyler had a goodly span of time to strategize how to take the presidency for himself. Tyler was ANOTHER Virginian ....

At that time no POTUS had died while in office. There were no procedures in place as to what to do. The question had come up among the power players at times: hold another election was favored at least as much as any other procedure. What Tyler did then, became precedent for all other presidents who died while in office. If I were in the Senate or the House right now, I'd be studying what Tyler did very carefully.

Tyler's regime was a disaster, one of the long string of presidential disasters since the 1830's, as slavery became an ever more distasteful and every growing blockade to union and solutions to all sorts of other problems the nation faced.

What, if anything, people remember about Tyler, along with being the first president to take office because the elected president died, is manifest destiny and expansionism, the lead-up to the Mexican American War, which war was conducted under the administration of Tyler's successor, James K. Polk.

Tyler's justification for expanionism went like this: Slavery is a problem, but the problem is that there are so many slaves in our southern states we don't know how to deal with them. If we have more! new! territories into which to expand! slavery! then the population of slaves in the older slaveholding states like Viriginia! will be thinned as the slaves are taken away to open the new territories. This is a good and grand solution to everything.

The farkin' hypocritical, lying, sleazy bastard from Virginia didn't mention that slaveholders like himself made so much income from selling slaves that expansion meant expanding that market for their slavebreeding industry.

He was a vocal early proponent for secession. When he died in 1862 he was a seated member of the confederate congress. So much for his sincerity to preserve the union and end slavery.

Creep.

The recent (2006) John Tyler: The Accidental President, by Edward P. Crapol (University of North Carolina Press) provides a well-written, readable discussion and analysis of his character and presidency.

Melanoma & Narcissist Personality Disorder

This concerns the mcPln duo.

If you felt anxious and fearful before, this round-up of articles and blogs by investigators and people who know at least one of them, will really scare you.

Go here, to the blog, Making Light. One of the two owners of it is also the forum comments moderator to BoingBoing. In most areas the two Making Light owners and their moderators and those that have topic choice power there, are level-headed and rational, and they Fact Check. They all come from different backgrounds too.

Gettysburg Battle Cyclorama Re-Opened

The 1884 377 foot painting in the round has had a 5-year, 14 million dollar restoration.There's a video of the site and a few feet of the panorama on the WaPo.

Following the still constant, never-ending revisionism of the Civil War, the narrator mentions only two men's names from the course of the battle, both Confeds, Pickett and Lee, with the additional information that Lee just about won the war at Gettysburg. Lincoln and the cause of the Civil War, slavery, are not in it.

I just finished Lincoln scholar Phillip Shaw Paludan's The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1994), part of the University of Kansas Press's American Presidency Series. This volume of the series won The Lincoln Prize. It is readable, and concentrates on Lincoln's legal reading of the Constitution and his analysis of slavery in connection with the laws of the land, and his analysis of secession with the constitutional laws of the land.

Again, if anyone still can say the Civil War was not about slavery, and that Lincoln himself was not concerned with slavery, personally or as President, I challenge that person to read this book. In particular, they should concentrate on the chapters titled, "Assembling the Cast," and "Northern Power Emerges."

As well, the book throughout provides a strong description and explanation of the North's growing sense that Abolition was the only answer to the mess the nation was in due to the Southern War of Aggression that her slave owners were waging so aggressively during the Pierce and Buchanan administrations.

How Westbrook Pegler Entered sp's rnc Hate Speech

I was too young to know who Westbrook Pegler was, but older generations around me, even in ND, did. Sometimes they would evoke him. I never understood why, but I got the impression that he was not only 'bad' but worse -- something slimy, because he was crazy. People Back Home in those days whispered about people with mental health problems like they whispered about cancer. Which when I was much older I learned he was -- both slimy and crazy. Not only was he a (Joe) McCarthyite (which I was also too young to understand then, when people invoked his name) but a raving lunatic and anti-semite. Back Home associated him with the unspeakable insanity of the concentration camps and the holocaust -- and even WWII.

I'm so sorry that Back Home -- that small town, rural America invoked by the mcsp campaign -- is no longer is what it used to be, changed by those like rush limbaugh. who have embraced Pegler's hate speech, who have been bombarding Back Home with their ugliness 24/7 since the 70's.*

This man, Westbrook Pegler, was administered the rnc kiss of hate by their speech writer, and brought back to life by sp in her speech. This article describes in step-by-step detail how this ocurred, and all with her full understanding and cooperation. This was code, recognized by those at whom it was aimed, the base of the rnc.

[ Though Westbrook Pegler is today a relatively obscure footnote (Thomas Frank first recognized the "writer" quoted in Palin's speech), five minutes invested on Google would have provided those who thought to include his bromide about small-town morality more than enough information about his actual legacy, and one would expect, discouraged any sane political mind from doing so. After all, Pegler is not remembered for writing this phrase (other than in Buchanan's tome, where it is excerpted to illustrate his ability to embrace a candidate after hurling invective), but rather for being an example of Hearst Corporation's venomous voice.

Knowing how carefully Matthew Scully writes speeches, and given the stakes in introducing Sarah Palin, then mired in Twin Peaks-gauge scandal and innuendo, as a national political figure, it appears unlikely that the Pegler quote was introduced without being vetted by the McCain campaign. Someone would recognize the unsourced quote, and someone would eventually think it odd, distasteful, even, that a vice-presidential candidate compare herself to Harry Truman, who became President after Roosevelt's death mere months after the inauguration. More disturbing is the retro ethos provided by the Pegler/Truman one-two punch in the geopolitical context of this campaign: here is a candidate singularly unschooled in foreign policy whose reference to "decency" harkens back to a time, and a character, whose reflexive hatred for Soviets was enough, a time when NATO was created, a time when Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ]

* By the way, that Burk who threatened the non-support of Palin rally women in Anchorage with broadcast of their names, addresses and phone numbers on HIS radio show was suspended -- for a week, without pay. * By the way, that Burk who threatened the non-support of Palin rally women in Anchorage with broadcast of their names, addresses and phone numbers on HIS radio show (on the local faux neuwz station) was suspended -- for a week, without pay. Burk did broadcast the names and cell phone numbers of the two women who organized that rally, who sued, thus the slap on the wrist.

Disaster Reportage, FEMA Failure, Media Blackout

Reportage from the left is beginning that the regime and FEMA are blacking out access to, reporting and images of the worst areas of devastation -- and FEMA's pathetic, disorganized and inadequate responses.

The first place I saw this was on the LJ "View from A Broad. So I looked up the reports in elsewheres. As well, Liz Henry's blog (her efforts and experience in Texas with the Louisiana evacuees was brilliant and invaluable, as were her constant updates and reports), says the same.

Even scarier Liz reports that what is supposed to be disaster relief is working only as a police dragnet.

In order to flee a hurricane or other disaster you MUST have i.d.

What I take away from it is that the preconditions have now been satisfied for the election to be stolen a third consecutive time. And who's going to stop them? The press? The television? The democrats?

And then everybody will say, well, now we've got to get to work on 2012 . . .

He Isn't Able to Come Home

Due to weather conditions, he would not be able to get his flight out of Bogotá.

I confess to feeling a degree of disturbance here.

Also, we have duo stuff scheduled for tomorrow, late afternoon, early evening. Not gonna happen.

Foo.

This is travel these days.

Anchorage Women Rally in NON-Support

Of the Great White 'laska Gawddess.

There's a video and photos too.

[ Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here. ]

You will learn about the radio host denouncing organizers and giving out their phone numbers; that's pure nazi stuff.

Bogotá With Tractor

Vaquero is having a wonderful time. Being away from our own national media insanity is deeply soothing to the nerves. He's in a luxury hotel and being taken very good care of. If I understand this correctly, tonight he's supposed to perform with what isn't really the Buena Vista Social Club, as so many died, but then, the first Buena Vista Social Club was a fairy tale concoction, and not anything like a cojunto of any form of traditional Cuban music anyway. But the singer with them now is a very long time amigo, so there ya go. It's just so funny, considering.

Bolivia, Venezuela & US

So far the most clear story of what's going on published here in the U.S. seems to be in the Miami Herald. You can read it here.

However, now Honduras has joined in solidarity with Bolivia and Venezuela, and says it will not recognize the new U.S. ambassador.

Brasil has also become involved in some way, since it receives 50% of its petroleum from Bolivia.

Vaquero is in Colombia right now, at a music festival, surrounded by periodistas from all the Latin American countries and the Caribbean too. They have some telling perspectives on all this that we probably shall not see in most of the reporting we'll hear, here.

Gasoline prices will continue to rise.

Here's how Vaquero explains the situation:

[ "the recent, proximate cause i haven't fully researched. but the flashpoint is bolivia. basically the US does not want either evo morales or chávez to be in power, much less the bolivarian alternative for an independent latin america that they are promoting. morales in particular is facing tremendous resistance from the elites of his country who have been trying to secede from bolivia ever since he came in. he just won a referendum, however, that is supposed to settle the matter. what the u.s. has been up to in this i don't exactly know, but they have surely been taking the side of the elites and perhaps offering them various forms of assistance." ]

U.S. Demands Cuba Allow Inspection Team for Ike Damage

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Yesterday, September 9, 2008, at 11:50 A.M., the Department of Stateconveyed to the Interests Section of Cuba in Washington Note Nº 252/18 in which, after expressing its regrets for the additional damage caused to the Cuban people by hurricane Ike, it insists upon a visit to our country of a "humanitarian assessment team” to “inspect the affected areas”.

Today, September 10, at 7:20 P.M. the Interests Section of Cuba in Washington sent to the Department of State Note Nº 046/08, in which itconveys its appreciation for the expressions of regret by the Government of the United States for the damage caused in Cuba by hurricane Ike, andreiterates that Cuba does not require the assistance of a humanitarianassessment team as it has a sufficient number of trained specialists to deal with this task.

The Note emphasizes that if the Government of the United States is really willing to cooperate with the Cuban people it is requested to allow the sale to Cuba of indispensable material, such as materials for roofing, forbuilding repairs and for the re-establishment of electric networks.
Likewise, it reiterates the request that the Government of the United States suspend the restrictions preventing U.S. companies from providing private commercial credits to Cuba for the purchase of foodstuffs in the United States.

The Note also calls the attention of the Department of State that the visit to Cuba of a humanitarian assessment team is not required to allow the sale of the aforementioned materials and to authorize private credits for the purchase of foodstuffs.

Lastly, the Note of the Interests Section of Cuba underscores to th eDepartment of State that its Note Nº 252/18 insists in a request that the Government of Cuba had already replied to in Note Nº 1886 of September 6,2008, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but, and it is highly significant, it does not actually respond to the two concrete requests made by the Government of Cuba to the Government of the United States in order to cope with the damage caused by hurricane Gustav, that it once again reiterates.

On the other hand, during the last few hours, spokespersons of the Government of the United States have attempted to justify the refusal byPresident Bush to allow the sale to Cuba of indispensable materials and toauthorize private commercial credits to purchase foodstuffs in the U.S.

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, affirmed categorically on Sunday,September 7: “I don’t think that (…) the lifting of the embargo would bewise”.

The Spokesman of the Department of State, Sean McCormack, insisted, on Monday, September 8, in a press briefing, on the alleged importance thatCuba accept an assessment team to inspect damage “in situ”. Responding tothe observation of journalists that other countries have provided assistance without demanding a previous inspection of damage in the field, McCormack responded evasively: “”See if the Cuban Government changes its mind about allowing us to help the Cuban people”.

On his part, the Cuban American Carlos Gutiérrez, U.S. Commerce Secretaryand Co-Chairman of the commission in charge of implementing the Bush Planagainst Cuba, expressed hypocritically yesterday: “…we reiterate our offerto allow a USAID team to travel to Cuba to assess the situation”.

This is a cynical attitude of the Government of the United States. It attempts to suggest that it is desperate to cooperate with Cuba, and that we are the ones refusing. It lies shamelessly.
Why does the Government of the United States insist in the pretext of carrying out an inspection “in situ” when the information disseminated regarding the serious effects caused by the hurricanes in Cuba is widespread and obvious?

Why does it use the precondition of sending an inspection team, somethingt hat no one else has done among the scores of countries that are already generously cooperating with Cuba?
Why does the Government of the United States refuse to allow Cuba to purchase materials for building repairs, roofing or components there-establishment of electrical networks in the U.S.?
Why does it forbid U.S. companies and their subsidiaries in all countries, to provide Cuba with private credit for the purchase of foodstuffs, which today are essential to ensure food for the affected population and toreplace reserves in the event of new hurricanes?

These are the questions that the U.S. Government must answer.

These are the questions that the international community, that overwhelmingly supports Cuba in its struggle against the blockade, poses to the Government of the United States.

Cuba has not asked the Government of the United States for any gift whatsoever. Simply to be allowed to purchase.

Anything else is pure rhetoric, pretexts and justifications that no one believes.

Cuba will go forward. No hurricane, blockade or aggression will be able to prevent it.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba Havana,
September 10, 2008

This Day

It is weird here. Not the usual pristine brilliant blue 9/11 sky, but mostly white, at least so far. Not the usual bright, warm, perfect late summer day of low 80's as the temperatures dropped down into the 50's last night, and not expected to warm either -- 70 or so.

Both Obama and the 'cain are here, 'debating' at Columbia, not f2f, but separately. How is that a debate? I assume they are both here because it is 9/11. This almost the 1st time the primary media could hardly be bothered to mention Obama's name. Biden doesn't exist at all, evidently.

However, w/the Great White 'laska Gawdess back home in 'laska for the very 1st time since Her Annunciation, it seems the media will not be able to restrain themselves and the GW'lG is going to be all they want to talk about even on This Anniversary Commeration of the Event That Was the Lying Pretext for the Murder, Maiming and Displacement of Countless Information and Art Objects, Small and Medium Sized Animals, Children, Women and Men.

Unless, of course, the boinking part of the Interior Dept. hypnotizes the media more? However, even the primary media appears to find even the idea of Dept. of the Interior staff and Big Oil administrators boinking too eeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu to contemplate.

The names of the victims at Ground Zero are being read, as they are every year.Supposedly, finally, construction will be getting started this coming year. So this is the last time, supposedly, that the families of the victims will be able to walk there, stand there. Construction will block all access next year.By the time this generation of children are grown, this will be for NYC residents like the Slocum Tragedy of June 15, 1904, in which over 1000 German Lutherans, almost all women and children, burned and / or drowned in the East River. Their boat caught fire on their way to picnic on Long Island. Eternal memory was vowed by all. But the families moved away. The city moved on. Or it may be like Pearl Harbor, as the destruction of the Towers is linked to a very long war, which, if the neoCONS have their way, will still be waged in the following generations.

Our primary concern on the occasion of this commorative year appears to be almost solely with the trauma suffered by Our Young Children who watched the Towers fall on television for month after month. How do we counsel Our Children (nevermind the children of Iraq, who, of course are resilient as children are and not traumatized by bombs, murder, starvation, homelessness and being orphaned). Good heavens! Some children who weren't even born in 2001 are afraid to come to New York City!

RIP.

Tippecanoe -- Who? William H. Harrison

I'm going through all the presidencies since Jefferson with the mission of tracking the POTUS's personal and political views on slavery and annexation of Cuba, and positions on South America, as well as the positions on those issues of the other movers and shakers in their administrations, whether on the Hill, the Court or elsewhere. (For instance, Pierce's Secretary of War was -- Jefferson Davis ....). I'm not doing them order, but so far have managed Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Buchanan and Grant.

There is not a single book about Pres. William H. Harrison in the circulating collection of the NYPL. There seems to be only a single book about him in print, titled Old Tippecanoe. The NYPL doesn't have it. There's a book in reference called: The Life of Major-General William Henry Harrison comprising a brief account of his important civil and military services, and an accurate description of the Council at Vincennes with Tecumseh, as well as the victories of Tippecanoe, Fort Meigs and the Thames, a campaign biography published by Griggs and Elliot of Philadelphia, back in 1840. Another Virginian!

"Harrison was in fact a scion of the Virginia planter aristocracy. He was born at Berkeley in 1773. He studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began the study of medicine in Richmond." Then he went into the military instead. Maybe he found shooting more fun than healing? How will I know unless I can find the information.

I shall see if it is on google books or other full text sites.

Such are the consolations of history in these times as Armageddon slouches toward Bethlehem -- which has already been burned to the ground, figuratively speaking.

National Manifest Destiny and Institutional Slavery -- OR --

The War of Southern Aggression.

Free Soilers, settlers of Kansas and Nebraska, immigrants and others of the North viewed it as "The War of Southern Aggression," as southern slave holders launched armed militia/mob invasions out of MIssouri against the non-slave holding settlers and administrators in the Kansas-Nebraska Territories. This is interesting since the Confeds then appropriated the reaction to their bloody mob & militia violence in that western region (which provoked equally bloody terror on the part of insane people like John Brown) for themselves post the Surrender at Appomatox. The Confederacy labeled the Civil War The War of Northern Aggression, though they were the ones who began the violence, in order to expand slaveholding territory.

This is what occured to me yesterday, as I poke around in that long era of national consciousness from the presidency of Polk through the Civil War. I have no idea how right this is though, because I don't know enough about all these issues yet. It's not as though they were taught at all in one's history courses in college or in grad school. You could specialize in them, as a professor publishing or perishing via your scholarship. But academics tend to look at issues in solitary confinement. The connecting of dots among areas of scholarship are left to the 'independent' scholars.

Manifest Destiny and the drive to market expansionism grew parallel with increasing imigration population throughout that same decades, which increased until around WWI, when it was essentially stopped -- until post the Civil Rights era, which put an end to legal Jim Crowe, and that eternal pool of cheap and expendable labor.Southern slavery made the coming Confederacy's region less hospitable for immigrants, due to slaves filling almost all the jobs. So immigrants also looked west to the new lands opening for settlement.

However, as we see distilled in the long and bloody violence of Kansas-Nebraska, as the rest of the nation also proudly believed that Manifest Destiny was the nation's natural right as well as good for the rest of the world (why, yes! you can find much rhetoric that expounds this -- and again, why we NEED Cuba -- for its own good -- and much of South America, and probably Canada too) -- so did southern slave holders believe it was their manifest destiny and obligation to expand slavery into all those regions as well (and again, why, yes! we not only NEED Cuba, but it will be so much better for Cuban slaves and the world that we control Cuba -- not to mention that we then can ensure no cheap slaves will be dumped on US via the vagaries of Cuban national events). Slaves and the slave trade was the foundation of the regional economy.It was during these decades that slavery in the slave states became ever more draconian, and ever more twisted, and the intra-state slave trade ever more profitable, leading to the state of mind that made the belief in slavery like unto a dogma, if not a religion. In other words, the South's thinking on slavery grew into the same irrationality as fringe religions, which in turn provoked the same irrationality in a fringe of the Abolitionists, like John Brown.

National expansion meant not just railroads and immigration settlement, but Southern determination to push slaveholding into those regions because the more territory that was worked via slave labor the greater the fortunes to be made in the investment in breeding and trading slaves.

As well, expanding the territory for slavery -- despite any previous Compromises (very like any treaty with any (Indian Nation was thrown in the trash as soon as their land was looked at by either settlers, the Feds or mining companies) was essential for the South's continuing political domination of the nation in government and cultural policy -- which circularly meant safe-guarding institutional slavery.In the meantime immigrants already facing racial, cultural and economic hurdles establishing themselves in this nation in the face of slavery were natural allies in the Free Soil movement -- though, not, of course, of Abolition, for former slaves would be willing to work at even lower wages than they were. Former slaves would be competitors for the new lands opening west of the Mississippi.

There were so many movements at the time, so many of them in competition and in mutual hostility with each other: Temperance, Know Nothings, Abolition, Free Soilers. What do you think? I haven't researched this enough yet to know whether I'm just blowing wind here.

Haiti -- Drowned, Bleeding, Starving, Thirsty, Homeless

At least fully one eighth of Haiti's population is now homeless.

The conditions are more than dire, after being beaten by hurricanes four times, one, two, three, FOUR.

[ In Haiti, rescue groups have no access to many interior villages across the southern region and to hard-hit Gonaives, north of the capital, which was cut off when a bridge collapsed. A Red Cross truck trying to reach Les Cayes on the southern coast had to turn back because of impassable roads.

''The flooding is more extensive than people realize, and it's awful how little relief has been able to get into Gonaives and other areas,'' said Dr. Arthur Fournier, a University of Miami physician who co-founded Project Medishare, a charity that transports medical aid to Haiti.

Thousands of Haitians have been living in hospitals as temporary shelters, Fournier said. ''They are going to be stuck there for a long time,'' he said. ``They don't have homes to go back to.''

Local, national and international groups worry that a secondary disaster could arise from water-borne diseases. Fournier's group is trying to send LifeStraws to Haiti -- hand-held devices that purify water. Humanitarian workers said the most crucial supplies they need is water, sanitation items and food. ]

In other news from Cuba, the progress at restoring the power grid and other infrastructural systems in Pinar del Rio has proceeded at a speed and effectiveness that has even surprised the government.

Of course, Ike has been beating up Cuba via rain and wind for the last two days. But apparantly Havana was spared the worst. Camaguey took a good pasting, and Baracoa was devasted. But Havana is at least not getting pounded by a Cat 3.

At this time it looks as though New Orleans shall again be spared, as Ike seems headed for Corpus, Port Arthur region.

Cuba & Gustav

Recall, post the Katrina disasters, Cuba offered substantial medical aid of personnel, who are deeply experienced with both hurricane disasters and performing surgical and medical procedures successfully without electricity. The US regime turned it down.

For the disaster of Gustav this US regime offered the insulting 'aid' of $100, 000 ... to a nation that operates in Euros. Recall the value ratio between the two these days.

The media here is being all up self-righteous and aghast that Cuba isn't broadcasting 24/7 that the regime offered them $100,000 dollars. And, um this part, that the U.S. media IS NOT REPORTING, that the condition was that these magnificent funds be distributed not by the Cuban state or that the state determine where this munificence be spent, but that the money be handed over to a private individual of the regime's own choosing to distribute as the regime determines. Riiiiiiiight.

The Cubans returned that the aid they really need and would appreciate would be the sales of U.S. agricultural products to their nation.

Last Word On This For Awhile

Because it is time to focus on Obama and Biden, who are out there fighting, and fighting smart, and keeping their eyes on all the balls at the same time all the time and they deserve us keeping our eyes on them in support.

Look and listen to Joe Biden in Pennsylvania!

Do not tell me it makes no difference right now who gets to D.C. It matters very much to have Obama and Biden in D.C.,, if only to give us a bit of a slow down and breathing space.

The other 2? They are -- 2 wannabe also rans, running together for the very first time!

He's tried to be POTUS how many often? How often did he crash planes?He wasn't a hero, he was a pow -- not the equivalent at all, because if so, by golly, those guys incarcerated for years of torture and humiliation in Guantánamo are too. She didn't make it as Miss Alaska. She ran to being a gov because she was being recalled as mayor. They both fail upward in the grand reThugzcriminalwelfaremanner.

This is the ticket of the Runners-up, the Wannabes, the Also Rans -- the cowards, the liars, the crybabies.

And now, that off my admirable chest, I'm going to concentrate on the Good Guys, not the runners-up.

I think the outer skirts of Hanna have arrived. It's raining. And blowing. I just came in from outside because of that. I was walking somewhere when it began, so I thought I should go home, as I hadn't taken an umbrella. Nor am I doing laundry per the mayor's advice, even though Vaquero's off to Colombia early next week to play in the Jazz Fest. Argh.

No Press Questions Or Meetings To Be Allowed

With sp, according to the rnc.

Cowards!

Ooooh, big girl with big gun is afraid of the press.

That's red meat for the press, and you know what happens when the press smells blood.

Sp's so convenient with that great big family -- she's a got a family member to appeal to every special interest: special needs child, son AND nephew going to Iraq (they won't be going into combat if their mom and aunt makes it to D.C. though), adolescent daughter who 'got into trouble,' a sister who started a new biz (which evidently sp had a 25% share in and they went bust or something -- maybe it was a different biz, a car wash that wasn't the gas station sp stated?), husband in the erl biz and total sportsman, they all have guns and shoot them. They just don't have anybody that fits into the LBGT slot. Dang. But the young 'uns have time yet ....

Is that a fair remark? Considering how they've put that family front and center as THE REASON SP IS QUALIFIED FOR THE OVAL OFFICE, why yes, it is fair to itemize how appealing they are to the voters.

Will the American voters not understand what it means that a person who is running a VPOTUS, someone a heartbeat from the presidency of this nation, cannot be asked any questions while campaigning to be that person? Will they not understand that not only is this not democracy this isn't even an election? Will they not realize that this is the divine right of kings, and even stalinism and naziism? Will this not turn around and bite the 'cain campaign in the ass?

Will sp not become the most hated person in the nation, making the hatred of Hillary Clinton look small in comparison?

I Am Terrified

They have declared the issues off the table. They have declared they are running on narrative, and their narrative is Sarah Palin and her family.

Thus she and her family cannot and will not be off the table. They have made the decision to put her and her family there, with her full and enthusiastic cooperation.

Her speech was a litany of lies, that the primary media has allowed to lie. They aren't being called on.

So it is the family issues or nothing. Her motherhood allows her to be Mother of Our Nation.

One of the reasons she terrifies me is her out-and-out demagogery. How successful it was, focused to get the crowd's bloodlust up to lynching level. The booing, combined with the howling, is the matrix for group violence.

There was nothing like this at Obama's convention and speeches. People were roused, but they didn't howl and boo, they cheered.

The narrative:

The cain campaign has officially stated that this election is NOT about ISSUES. It's about narrative.

Their narrative is that here are 2 mavericks who are D.C. outsiders coming in to clean up the dem stygian mess of Big Gummit, earmarks and liberal media. They will succeed because it is Gawd's will, and the sign that this is Gawd's Will is because they have the Gawddess of Alaska running, and it is Gawd's Will that the new 'Laska Pipeline Be Built and thus it is also Gawd's Will to drilldrilldrill, especially in the ANWR. And so the Gawdess will Save America by laughing at Climate Change That Isn't Your Fault. Besides since she is a Gawddess she can clean up anything, and if it won't clean she'll shoot it with her great big gun while flashing her (Indiana Delgate Buttons stated this) her Hottest Chick legs. And moreover she's the Madonna with even a surrogate Madonna, her Daughter bearing another child, while she herself is still bearing progeny, and this makes for the happiest families in all the world, which is also, by the way, Gawd's Will, and Gawd has blessed America with His Alaska Gawdess, Who Is Just Like You And Your Family.

They are gleefully spreading the word that dems are scared of sara. Damned betcha. She scares the living daylights out of me. She already makes Thatcher look almost lamb-like, particularly since Thatcher's developed alzheimers.

We're there, in one of those states now that we've read so much about in history and fiction.
The only person out of Her People that doesn't adore SP, is probably Ann Coulter. She's been dethroned and displaced as the sexy water carrier, and by someone who has real power, not loaned power, as part of the ruling establishment, not the court jester. We thought the last 8 years were terrible and frightening and disasterous. They were the Overture to the massive tragedy of Armageddon. They really believe it.

What are we going to do about it? Rational, counter-argument, ticking off one by one the lies and refuting them with facts isn't going to do it. Rational plans to deal with the Issues of which there are so many, and telling them the plans for the economy, the health care crisis, the global environmental catastrophe, the research on the miserable failure of teen marriages, isn't going to do it. What will? How do you deal with the irrational combined drive for power and destruction?

They have aggressively followed a concerted game plan to cut off every avenue of rational thought for individuals and for us a community, as a public commons.

That is where the left has failed since the 70's. We are so offended, so frightened, so baffled by the irrational that we can't even admit or acknowledge to ourselves that this is what we're dealing with.What are we going to do? I wish I had a plan. I don't.

Facts do not play to these people. It isn't about facts or truth or information at all. No matter how often you outline and source your facts, they will still say, "Well, you know my gut tells me there is something not right, something fishy about Obama. I don't think he's really an American." These are the people who want red meat, not information, and sp is giving it to them -- on a barbeque, raw steaming hunks, in their big dark restaurants.

So we're people who live in story all the time. What is our narrative that can override this one of greed, meaness, cruelty, of drill, kill & swill?

Amy Goodman, #1 Leftist Journalist Arrested at reThugCON

[UPDATE] Heard from Ren -- he's fine!

On YouTube, footage. Her producer, Max Salazar was also arrested in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It's scary to watch. They manhandled this aging woman.

There have been large protests today, and a complete corporate media blackout about them -- and the massive arrests being made.

I know people who planned to do this, like Ren. I hope they're OK.

Democracy Now has good coverage. 10,000 out there in the streets today in St. Paul. Along with some real idiots who give conscientious protesters a bad name.

Glenn Greenwald, who is there, says this city is more locked down than New York post 9/11. The police and military presence make it like Baghdad. He's got great coverage at salondotcom.

I can't believe it. Just got off the phone with a journalist friend of ours from the major Miami paper, the Herald -- she'd never heard of Amy Goodman! How can you call yourself a journalist and not know who Amy Goodman is? In the defense of my friend, she does mostly music and cultural things, but nevertheless, as I told her, that's no excuse.

And what did she call me for, since it wasn't about getting music info, which is the reason she usually calls. Not this time. She wanted to know what this Palin and pregnancy and daughter baby and all that stuff is about. "Who the F*ck is this character?" she asked, "and why is she supposed to be VPOTUS? By the way, this from the woman who USED to be a dancer at the Pyramid Club and all her friends were trannies and TVs. Maybe that's the answer. The whole country has become south Florida. I told her that Palin would be right at home among all the characters she's familiar with in Miami.

Whew ... I Think ... I Hope

Whew!

Plenty of damage to go around, nevertheless, I am relieved. Maybe we'll be there the week of the 25th for the classes using the Da Book as scheduled.

Whew! I think ....

Thank you, Jesus.

Some may think that last a sneer, coming from me, but it is expressed in the spirit of those who made the documentary of themselves, Trouble the Water, nearly drowning, when the Industrial Canal failed early on during Katrina, flooded their home's district of the upper 9th. It was in danger of doing so again today.

So, it's September, and school has started. By the middle of August then, requests to be guests at various colleges and universities -- and even one very expensive private -- what? prep school? is that what they're called -- started to arrive. As these are paid gigs, they must be accepted. But still, it's an honor to the work of the books.

Meanwhile, Hanna is still coming on, and three more tropical depressions are forming behind her. We're not out of Hurricane Season yet.

Meanwhile, millions of people are homeless in India from flooding. We should help if we can.