Dick Cheney Coward Who Knew?

I’m sure all of the chicken-hawks crowing about Marines and their guns are fully behind Dick Cheney finding Canada too dangerous to visit.

Wankers.

It’s Just Hot

There is nothing I can do right now but protect the plants I have in the ground.  This drought is hard.  I can imagine what it must be like in the horror that is east Africa at this point.

I admire PBS for not just focusing on the debt ceiling debate.

One of my old students from Mali stopped by today.  I encouraged her to come back to our program.  I hope she does.

I heard today about people who are willing to go into nuclear disasters like what is happening in Japan.

I think that there are bigger problems in the world than just voting to raise the debt ceiling.

What a nothing burger to get all knotted about.  What a waste of time that the Teabaggers have caused.  They are a loud minority and they don’t even have a clear point, but to destroy this nation simply because there is a half black man in office.

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More Liars

I’ve run into this blogger before, I just can’t remember when.  But trust me, he is just another rumor-monger, and he links to the wingnutty chiropractor, Melissa Clouthier.  And looky here!  Who does she link to?  None other than our friends Kevin Whited and Cory Crow!

The official that they are smearing, El Franco Lee, a longtime trust official, had to set the record straight.  He didn’t yell at anyone.  You big babies.

As far as I can tell, the D.A’s office and other officials are acting on complaints quickly and making sure that everything moves smoothly.  I’m planning on voting early this weekend, but I am sorely tempted to wait until election day just to make sure none of these suburbanites come in and harass the nice people who work my precinct.

This is What People like Michale Berry Do Not Get

Today, Michale Berry spent his time on the radio crying about how President Obama didn’t go speak to the homophobic Boy Scouts organization.  (The fact that Berry supports Perry for gov and Perry “wrote” a book about the Scouts might have something to do with that.)  Of course he got a dig in at Sheila Jackson Lee and Bill White, but most of the time he was mocking black people.  You can get a pretty good idea of how Berry feels about black people from how he tries to mock the way he THINKS they all talk.

(I has  a SAD.  I couldn’t get my audios file up.  Just listen here and see if you don’t get what I’m talking about.)

(Curious how few callers he had) — Michale hopes that his listeners accept his excuse that he had so many things to talk about.  But really, Michale is just filling time.  Nobody really calls anymore.  Not even me.

Let’s put this in perspective.  Today a man who was wrongly convicted of rape TWENTY SEVEN YEARS AGO was not released (on bond?  why is there any bond or anything?) as scheduled.  Why?  He got a little pissed off at being shackled hand and foot, so he spends yet another night in jail for nothing.  This is how black Americans have been treated for years.  You behave — even if all of us were wrong and you were right — you BEHAVE!  It’s disgusting.  I’m pretty sure my choice for the inevitable Republican for District Attorney (Jim Leitner) wouldn’t have made this mistake.

It’s a well known, though little talked about fact that the “law and order” Republicans see the justice system as a way to reduce the number of black Americans able to vote.  Their thinking goes along the lines of hit black Americans with everything available and legislate even more ways to make sure a good percentage of blacks get caught up in the penal system.  If a few whites do too, well they represent a larger group and their punishment can be reduced based on the offense.

Just look at how long it took to black farmers to finally (maybe not, sadly, again) to get a settlement from the USDA.  Show me the white farmers with the same grievances.  Oh yeah, they are all of the wealthy farmers living of of government subsidies and bellyaching about the Bush tax cuts expiring.  Right.

I’ve written about this sort of thing before, but not nearly as much as I should have.

This makes me very angry and very sad at the same time.  Listening to Michale Berry today mock black people — while claiming that he didn’t have enough time to get to all of his supposed topics — just made me mad.

And then I realized something.  Michale Berry doesn’t care about black people singularly or in general.  Michale Berry cares about Michale Berry.  Anything he says will not reflect badly on the Republican party because he’s no longer a real player — except to be a handmaiden to Glenn Beck.  In other words, he’s just a tool.  A means to an end.

And so, I don’t feel so angry or mad because you know what?  I can mock him here on my little blog and he links to it and Kevin Whited links to it and every one of their readers turn out to be lame numskull cowards — or paid lackeys.

Here I am.  I support the Innocence Project.  I support the Southern Poverty Law Center.  I support LULAC and La Raza.  And the NAACP.  And Amnesty International and UNICEF.

I don’t support Texas Direct Auto, Gulf Coast Siding, and now IKEA (learn something new every day), or Houston Siding, nor any of the other people who peddle in the hope of making a buck off of the racist audience of Michale Berry.

Gah (vomit) in listening to him to capture the audio I forgot how he falsely accused a Spanish speaker of focusing on Spanish pronunciation.

Another Haiti Post

I remember what Hurricane Ike was like.  It was scary because you knew it was coming.  It was scary because of the wind.  But everyone knew after hours and hours of wind and rain, it would eventually stop.  It was eerie around here when there was no electricity.  At least I knew that my house was still standing afterwards, in the dark.  For two weeks, I had my house and knew it wouldn’t fall down on me — even if the ceiling was crumbling in a couple of places.  I felt safe in my house.

The people in Haiti have no such security.  Either their houses were destroyed or they were unstable — the houses could fall at any moment.  They are by necessity out in the street.  The city was built to accommodate 50K, but 2 mil were living there.  They don’t have electricity.  They don’t have any way to communicate.

I turned off every media that focused on any violence in Haiti earlier today.  The PBS News Hour disappointed me in trying to push that point.  It’s wrong and sensationalizing.  Something Fox News Channel would do — like they did with the president’s stopping deportations.

My hope is that things will get better over the weekend.  There has to be a way for the U.S. military, the Red Cross and the U.N., despite their losses on the ground, to get their operations up and running.

Now for the shame.  Though no one I try to shame will ever admit it, I’ll do it anyway.

First to Kevin Whited.  Coward. Nothing on the Houston Haitian community or the earthquake.  As if it never happened.  Less than a month into the new city administration, Kevin is grousing.    Who could have predicted?

And then there is Kathleen.  Remember, she’s all for getting blacks (not Hispanics so much) into the Republican party.  Here are her contributions.  On her Houston Chronicle blog, it seems self promotion and the pasty work is more important than what happened in Haiti.  She finally posted something today — a false equivalence — seriously, Danny Glover vs. Pat Robertson?  But she adds this diddy that she claims she can’t get out of her head:

The devil went down to Hait, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind ‘cos he was way behind: he was willin’ to make a deal.
When he came across this young man talkin’ to a frenchi who was all hot.
And the devil jumped upon a palm stump and said: “Boy let me tell you what:
“I bet you didn’t know it, but I own the frenchies too.
“And if you’d care to take a dare, I’ll make a bet with you.
“Now you have pretty good island, boy, but give the devil his due:
“I bet freeing you from the french against your soul, ‘cos I think I can make it better for you.”
The boy said: “My name’s Jean-Bertrand and it might be a sin,
“But I’ll take your bet, your gonna regret, ‘cos we’re the best island that’s ever been.”

Where the hell did she get that from?  I can’t find it anywhere.  Is there some email making the rounds?  Sorry, but that’s the most racist thing I’ve read in a while.

(shakes head)

She finishes with this:

Danny, Pat? I’ve got a newsflash for you guys. Satan didn’t do this and gobal (sic) warming didn’t do this. This is called nature. So get over your stupid theories.

I don’t get it.

It seems fairly straight forward to me.  There is a Haitian community in Greater Houston.  The earthquake is a big deal.  Perhaps these Republicans got burned during Katrina and can’t seem to bring themselves to even look at what happened in Haiti.

It will take a lot of work by people with more expertise than me to get Haiti together and healthy and safe.  Is there so much going on that Kevin and Kathleen can’t even suggest a place to give on their very influential blogs?

Don’t Like It at All

I spent today in my pajamas and terry housecoat — much like most wingnut bloggers do — and I don’t like it at all.

Sure, I played games and noodled around on the internets, but gees it is BORING.  I danced around for a while, swirling my warm terrycloth housecoat about me, and I played peek-a-boo with the pups.  I cleaned the house so far as I was allowed and then UTTER BOREDOM.  Honestly I don’t know how my mom did or people my age now do it everyday.  If I had this much time everyday, I’m pretty sure I would have invented a Star Trek level transporter by now.
This wasn’t a vacation day, but rather a stay at home day because the dentist said, but it made me think, if you don’t have a job and you don’t have to clean your house or take care of your yard, what is left but to noodle around on the internets.  And dear god that is very unsatisfying, given how touchy people are.  I guess it’s different if you are just trolling the nets for people to mock or criticize.  I seem to remember that both Ron Green and M.J. Khan had that complaint about Pam Holm in their debate:  all she and her conservative colleagues can do is criticize.  It took her far, right?  Perhaps Cory and Kevin could take a clue from that last electoral decision.

Or not.  😉