The End-Of-Summer Hurricane Hump Day Surreal Blowout*

My, my, my….how surreal has this week been.

First, you have Cruella da Harris (aka Katherine Harris, the Big Fixer of Campaign 2000) scoring a win in the Florida US Senatorial primary, despite being roundly avoided like the plague by the GOP bigwigs (including Dubya), as well as enduring countless defections and faux-pas (including the “church and state seperation is a lie” smack she pulled out her 34 C bra last week)….all for the right to get her ass dusted by incumbent conservative Democrat Bill Nelson in the general election. Keith Olbermann did a pretty funny sendoff on Harris and her victory last week on MSNBC’s Countdown; the clip can be located here (t/h to Crooks and Liars).

Then….we have the ongoing 2006 Upper Level Low Season (used to be called the 2006 Hurricane Season but due to a developing El Nino pattern and wind shears due to the presence of upper level lows and troughs (meterological terms, don’t ask), the storm total has been knocked considerably down from normal; quite a switch from the Season From Hell last year.  (Although, Hurricane Florence seems to be getting her act together as she barrels toward Bermuda; at last report she was approaching Category 2 strength at 100 mph and still strengthing; otherwise, she looks to become basically a gale storm in the Atlantic.  Looks good for the Gulf of Mexico so far, though we still have about a month and a half to go.

But that’s OK…because the Gulf now has a new worry to fear…..earthquakes.

Yup, that’s not a typo……this morning, the east-central Gulf of Mexico was the epicenter of a strong 6.0 temblor which was felt as far north as Tennessee and Georgia and as far west as Louisiana and Arkansas.  So far, no reports of damage and no aftereffects..but still pretty doggone scary; considering the location.

So….you will please pardon me if I feel a bit more than the usual paranoid today.

Yeeesh.

*”Hurricane Hump Day” refers to today, September 10, as the annual peak day of the hurricane season; from this day on the number of storms in the Atlantic/Carribean/Gulf of Mexico basin should decrease in numbers until the end of the season in November.  Although…we can still get some significant majors and even a few super-canes cranked up (Mitch in 1998, Wilma last year); so you never know.

 

St. Tammany Sheriff to NOLA Black”Trash”: Not In My Parish!! (or, Why David Duke Really Won)

Oh, but y’all are going to love this….this fool happens to be the Sheriff of St. Tammany Parish just east of New Orleans, which suffered a lot of the brunt of Hurricane Katrina last year. You would think that he would have too much on his mind for tending to his own needs to worry about the suffering in New Orleans proper…but noooooooooooo; he has to riff to the New Orleans media (in this case, TV station WDSU) on the threat of “trash” and “thugs” invading his fair parish.

Just listen to this clip, and tell me that David Duke still doesn’t have any pull here in Louisiana.

(From WDSU-TV via Crooks and Liars, also check out Pam Spaulding’s blog.)

I especially liked the “Chee Wees” and “dreadlocks” smack, along with the threat of “a visit from one of my deputies”…,funny, don’t most NO gangstas wear do rags these days???

I guess that Sheriff Strain would much prefer all the “trash” to be left in NOLA to be washed away clean by the next storm, ehhh??

He better have more than a few Black deputies, because if he doesn’t, I will make my journeys down I-10 or I-12 eastbound as brief as possible. Such bigotry already killed Black folk before (see the Gretna/Jefferson Parish police blocking the Crescent City Connection from Black evacuees attempting to escape Camp Abu Gumbo (aka the Superdome) during the height of Katrina); I’d rather not be a casualty now.

It doesn’t ever stop, does it???

When A Right-Wing Democrat Is Just A Plain Old Right-Wing Democrat (With Update)

It was people like her who made me an Left Independent to begin with:

Blanco signs abortion ban into law6/18/2006, 4:30 p.m. CT
The Associated PressBATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed a strict anti-abortion ban into law and a group supporting abortion rights condemned the move as an example of “misplaced priorities of politicians in Louisiana.”The ban has no immediate effect — it will only take effect if the U.S. Constitution is amended to allow states to ban abortion or if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down its own 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that provides for a right to abortion.

Blanco signed the measure on Saturday. Planned Parenthood of Louisiana issued a statement saying the new law “endangers women’s health by criminalizing abortion at a time when the state is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and scrambling to prepare for the start of the new hurricane season.”

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, includes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It would allow abortion only to save the life or the health of the mother.

Doctors found guilty of performing abortions under other circumstances would face up to 10 years in prison and fines of $100,000.

The law is similar to one passed in South Dakota earlier this year that is expected to land before the Supreme Court. A majority of the high court’s nine justices has voted to uphold Roe v. Wade in the past.

Let’s recap this, Clones:

The act was sponsored by a Democrat, passed in a majority Democratic legislature, and signed into law by a Democrat. It is just as strong as the bill signed in South Dakota which is designed as a trigger to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

So…will we be seeing mass protests from the usual women’s groups on this law, and the restriction of women’s basic reproductive choices??

Oh, but I forgot…Kathleen Blanco is a DEMOCRAT..and a woman to boot!!! We can’t put basic principles above the need to keep women in power…and besides, the Republicans are so much worse!!!

Hey, Kos and the DLC: Is this the kind of “swing voter” Democrat that you want us to “compromise” with???

And they STILL can’t make up their damn minds on rebuilding MardiGrasLand…..errrr, New Orleans, or adequately fund our crumbling infrastructure; or provide decent pay raises for teachers and their support staff.

Tell me again about how we have to stay in the party and win these people over, Dr. Dean…..please???

No thank you….I’d rather vote Green and Left than stay in a party that allows this shit.

————————————————–

Update: R. Francis R. (an Alexandria native) does the best job yet of analysis on the political background behind KittyBlank’s (my new gloss for our current neo-Repub governor) betrayal of “progressive? values:

[….] None the less, it is a disturbing move. It reflects a rightward trend for a state that is already so far right that Democrats here would be a Republican in any other state. But Democrats in the state have been a buffer to the more extreme David Duke Lite Louisiana Republican Party. Our Republican US Senator once won the endorsement of David Duke, and our Democratic Senator brags about voting with George Bush the vast majority of the time. But the one thing that kept Louisiana Democrats from morphing from kissing-cousins of Louisiana Republicans into their monozygotic twin siblings, was the overwhelming Democratic constituency in New Orleans. Mary Landrieu, in 1996, won her Senate seat in Louisiana by a mere 10,000 votes, but won New Orleans with 87 percent of the vote. Without New Orleans, Mary Landrieu would never have been elected Senator. In these post-Katrina days, the Louisiana Democratic Party is suddenly recognizing that fact. They acted as if they didn’t know that before with their complete neglect of New Orleans.But now that New Orleans has lost nearly 300,000 of its citizens to the post-Katrina diaspora, the likes of Blanco have realized that without New Orleans there is little chance of being re-elected. So, now she moves rightward (it is hard to believe that someone so conservative needed to move rightward, but such is the case in increasingly white constituency of Louisiana). To be fair, Blanco never said she was pro-choice. But she was more than willing to allow Louisiana progressives to believe she would never sign a sweeping abortion ban into law. She never pretended to be liberal or particularly sympathetic with progressive causes— she simply allowed us to believe she wouldn’t offend us as terribly as right winger Bobby Jindal. But, now she has. And it doesn’t matter to her. Blanco never presented herself as anyone with any clear convictions on anything; she just wanted to live in the governor’s mansion. She clearly wants to live there another four years.[…]The New Louisiana Political Calculus is this— with fewer African-Americans in the state, Louisianian Democrats can rid themselves of the stigma of being the “black party” or the “New Orleans party”. They can now be the white-lite party. Blanco sees this and will now free the Louisiana Democratic Party of any semblance of owing anything to those scalawags [sic] progressives.

(Excerpts from Truth, Justice, and the Progressive Way: Blanco Understands New Louisiana Political Calculus; click on link for full article)

(Excerpts from ; click on link for full article)

(Excerpts from ; click on link for full article)

Simply another case of how “lesser evil” candidates merely lead to greater evil than ever….and yet another signal that the post-Clinton (White) Democratic Party of the South will be far closer to David Duke and Jim Rarick (former John Birchite who was a pro-segregationist Congressman during the 60’s) than to the delusions of the Daily Kos/Jim Hightower liberal populist crowd.

Makes me glad that I dumped this party 20 years ago.

Well…Here I Am!!! :-)

Considering that this is not that new a venture for me, it has been a while since I decided to create a blog to post my more intimate thoughts on issues..but hopefully I will manage an update or two a week, at least.

This blog will mostly be my rants and raves on two particular topics that are gripping my brain:

1)
The total lack of respect for and misconceptions given to Leftists and feminists who support a more tolerant and open attitude about sexuality and sexual expression. You would think that the idea that adults should have the freedom to determine their own sexuality would be universal along the Left diaspora…but you’d be quite wrong. There has been a history of implicit or even explicit Puritanism among progressives that has perverted and divided progressives from time immortal; and thanks to the most recent sex panics brought forth by the Religious Right commisars who have gained power under the thumb of King George the XLIII…..errrrrrrr, I mean, President-Select George W. Bush; a new round of Left erotophobia and repression has been brewing. This blog is meant to serve as an alternative voice for those of us who call ourselves "sex-positive", and for Leftist sex radicals who believe that a more progressive and open-minded view about sexuality is essential to the revival of the Left politically and socially. (More on this in a later post.)

2)
Why the Democratic Party really, really, REALLY SUCKS as a genuine progressive counter to the Right, and how to build an effective alternative movement from the ground up. Being raised in the Red Boot state of Louisiana (and BTW…a nice SmackDog boot to the ass goes to the fool who switched the color scheme and dictated that red be a right-wing color rather than the traditional color of revolt and revolution), and having been witness to the smarmy behavior of conservative Democrats in power (from "populist" Edwin Edwards to our present guv Kathleen Blanco) and the repeated spinelessness of too many liberal Democrats (with some exceptions, of course), I have come to the conclusion that the Party of the Donkey has lived past its due date as an opposition party. After all, the best they could do to battle a President at the bottom of the ratings in 2004 was to nominate a candidate (namely, John Forbes Kerry) who basically adapted most of the "War on Terra" agenda (albeit with more of a smiling face and a bit more rainbowish patina); then just sit back and watch the noise machine of the Right shred him apart with Swift Boat vets and Ann Coulter/Bill O’Reilly missives.

And even that’s nothing compared to what’s in store if, as expected, Hillary Clinton gets the nomination in 2008, if her initial attempts to triangulate herself into a compassionate Republican in Democratic drag are to be believed. If a loyal Yellow dog Democrat like Molly Ivins is opposing your candidacy, then that says much. (More on this later, too.)

Now, these are only the present issues: I will do my best for variety sakes to mix in some not so serious issues, too. BTW..although some adult topics will be expressed here, don’t come here thinking that this is a porn blog and you can post sex spam or irrelevant links; there are other sites for that. I’m always looking for feedback and comments from anyone who views this blog; especially from any sex-rads, sex-pozzies, and progressives who would like to engage me in principled and mature discussion. It’s the trolls who want to poison the well with drive-by smackdowns whom I want to avoid…though if you really, really piss me off, I may use these pages to respond in kind. (But just in case, and for your protection, I will moderate the Comments section for pre-approval.)

To paraphrase George C. Scott channeling old General "Blood and Guts" in that classic monologue in
Patton::

All right, you sons-of-bitches (and
bitches, and
porn sluts, and other assorted radical riffraff)….you know where I stand. It is my extreme privilege to fight alongside you men and women anytime, anywhere.

 

And hopefully, you will come along for the ride, too. (I don’t mean that literally….at least not here.)

 

 

 

🙂