I wonder if Sarah Palin has the same idea

I thought that Philadelphia's Mayor Michael Nutter was going to have a hard time getting reelected because of some of the decisions he's made, such as trying to shut down a bunch of city libraries and closing some city firehouses.

But Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, might be the only elected official with a more uphill climb to his reelection if he makes a decision he's threatened to make regarding the recently passed $789 billion federal stimulus package.

According to WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, Jindal may not take the $4 billion that Louisiana has been alloted through the stimulus package. His reasons: there may be too many strings attached. I wonder if he'll announce his intentions as part of the response he's supposed to give to President Barack Obama's address tp Congress next Tuesday.

(I also wonder if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the current frontrunner for the Republican Party's presidential nomination is saying "Geez, what a dumb ass! I'm taking the money. I at least want to have a shot in 2012.)

Now I'm guessing that Jindal will say he's not playing partisan politics here. I'm guessing he'll say that he's just doing what he thinks is right for his state because he doesn't want to begin a program with the stimulus that might not be sustainable for the state otherwise. I'm guessing that he's not thinking of refusing this money so that he can say that the 50,000 jobs that the White House says will be created in Louisiana thanks to the stimulus don't materialize, thus smoothing his path, ever so slightly, to the presidency in 2012.

But no matter what his reasoning is, Jindal is being totally irresponsible in my humble opinion.

Why? Because he's the governor of Louisiana.

You remember what happened there a few years back don't you? Hurricane Katrina? Lots of rain? Broken levees? New Orleans turned into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Gulf of Mexico? Lots and lots of drowned and starving folks due to a combination of governmental stupidity and plain old indifference? Anderson Cooper of CNN showing us that he's more than just a great mound of hair and bright blue eyes?

Well, even if Jindal doesn't remember Katrina, I'm pretty sure folks in New Orleans do, mostly because in some places, most notably the Lower Ninth Ward, it never completely went away. That's why Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, has already said that any money Jindal refuses, he'll take.

But even if Katrina had never happened, Louisiana doesn't have enough of a margin for error for Jindal to refuse $4 million. It's one of the poorest states in the union and folks are pretty hard up there.

I get politics. Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. Most people get into politics because they want to help out their fellow man and find a way to do more for their community.

If someone can tell me where refusing money for your state because you want to make a blatantly partisan point represents the art of the possible, I'd sure like to know.

Somehow, I see a recall election in this man's future.

Or, at least I should.

Wow! That was fast!

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I knew that Michael Steele was going to catch a little hell from the folks that he now presides over as chair of the Republican National Committee. I even knew that much of that hell would come from within.

I just didn't think that it would take a grand total of two days for the White Supremacist element to rear it's ugly head. And I do mean ugly here. Whomever gave David Duke that plastic surgery should be taken to jail for fraud!

Michael, Michael, Michael

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First of all, I love the Rachel Maddow Show. She's as snarky as Keith Olbermann without also being a blowhard (which, although I'm also an Olbermann fan, he is a blowhard.)

Secondly, check out this video. It talks about the election of Michael Steele, the former Lieutenant Gov. of Maryland, as the new chair of the Republican National Committee.

(I'm guessing that the RNC is a lot like America these days: so fucked up that they figured it wouldn't hurt to let a black guy run it for awhile.)

As part of this video, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a political science professor from Princeton, talks about why Steele got the nod from the GOP. Apparently, this isn't an attempt to bring blacks into the party....it's an attempt to take steal some of President Barack Obama's coalition building activity. She likened it to going to Krypton to get the Kryptonite needed to defeat Superman.

Apparently, according to Harris-Lacewell, the selection of Steele was more about getting the "lily white" tag taken off of the party and giving it a sheen of inclusiveness.

Yeah, okay. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

But I know that Steele is going to have his work cut out for him.....and most of the issues are going to come from those whom he's been chosen to lead.

There are no people of color in the Senate or the House from the Republican Party. The the only people of color this party seems to attract are people who either don't know what they're doing (former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez) or are easily ignorable (former Secy. of State Colin Powell, although I don't see how you ignore a Four Star General).

Steele almost lost the race to a guy who sent the CD "Barack the Magic Negro" to friends as a Christmas present. And, a new survey of Republicans says they would rather have Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their leader.

Can someone say "window dressing"? Sure you can.

Once upon a time, I knew a lady whose job it was to bring more people of color into the Republican Party. This was during the time that Strom Thurmond roamed the earth and Trent Lott said that his segregationist theories were the way the country should have gone.

I asked her if she ever felt like telling the members of her party that did this kind of thing "Will you shut the fuck up!? You're making my job impossible!"

She admitted she did. I predict that Steele will utter that particular sentence at some member of the RNC before his tenure ends.

Now the "N" word race really begins: Who will hear it first? Steele or Obama?

A "Ward" of Contradictions

Have you ever seen a conundrum in person?

If you haven't, please look to the right of my column here and avail yourself of the visage of one Wardell Anthony Connerly.

If you're wondering why I consider Mr. Connerly a conundrum, it's because one minute he can be totally right about something, and on the other hand be totally and completely wrong about something else.

For example, Connerly's group, the American Civil Rights Institute, believes that thinking that discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people is wrong. But the group also believes, as I alluded to on Monday, that the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be repealed because Barack Obama is now the president and because of this, people of color have no more problems utilizing their franchise.

Folks who think that the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s were just the beginning of the struggle for equality for people of color have spent countless hours damn near scratching holes in their heads in an attempt to understand Ward Connerly.

This gentleman has spent most the last 20 years trying his best to pretend that racism and discrimination still doesn't exist in this country. From California's Proposition 200 to Michigan's Proposal 2, this dude's been busy in the name of something else that has made me damn near scratch a hole into my head at times....the notion that white folks have been hurt by people of color asserting themselves into society.

And his next target is the Voting Rights Act. People of color don't need it anymore, you know. One of us is president. (Although in Connerly's world, Obama is only black for the purposes of saying that racism is dead.) There's no more impediment to voting.

That Connerly believes that tells me that he doesn't get out much. Because if he did, he might have seen black students finding a hard way to go when they tried to vote in Florida in 2000. Or he might have seen some of the irregularities that have taken place since when it comes to voting.

You know, if Connerly actually left the Church of the Poisoned Mind that he lives in, he'd probably notice that the folks demanding enforcement of the Voting Rights Act the loudest are white.

Yeah, dude. White. White folks are complaining about being denied the right to vote. Check that out!

There are so many blogs, websites, and other things in cyberspace complaining about the voting system in this country that it's ridiculous. And almost all of them are run by white folks. White folks that saw a guy that they didn't want in the White House go in and stay for 8 years took to the Internets and started logging all of the voting irregularities they saw.

So, Mr. Conundrum, might I suggest before you start assuming that this particular group right needs to go the way of the DoDo, you check out who you'll be tangling with this time around.

Here's an open discussion...

Ward Connerley, a dude that has made it his life's work to forget that racism still exists and that we may need laws to combat it, has decided that his next mission is to get the voting rights act repealed.

Discuss.

Well, at least I don't live in Illinois

I live in Pennsylvania, where we have a governor, Ed Rendell, that I really wish would shut up every once in awhile.

Ed Rendell and a live microphone is almost always a recipe for disaster. He tends to do stuff like equate the public review process for the state's budget with "whining", get on national news programs and compare his party's presidential nominee with Adlai Stephenson (who got his ass kicked in a presidential campaign for being seen as "too brainy") and other things too numerous to mention.

But, I can take some solace in the fact that at least he's not Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. While Ed can say and do some off the wall stuff, at least he's not doing stuff like going on The View and begging for his political life.

In case you've been in a bunker somewhere, here's the whole Blagojevich scene: The United States Attorney's Office in Chicago arrested the governor before Christmas on charges that he tried to sell President Barack Obama's senate seat. Since Obama obviously isn't going to finish his term, the governor has the constitutional right to appoint someone to fill the expired term.

While Chicago is famous for it's political horsetrading, I think that Blagojevich has taken it to a new level. Some of the highlights from the tapes include such things as him calling Obama's senate seat: a fucking valuable thing. You don't just give it away...I've got this thing and it's fucking golden!"

Or, my personal favorite Blagojevich response regarding the Obama folks and the "gratitude" they offered if he appointed someone they liked: "Gratitude! Fuck them!"

(It's the Def Comedy Jam of politics folks!)

Despite being asked not to appoint someone to Obama's seat because the person would be considered tainted automatically, he did appoint someone, Roland Burris, and after much saber rattling on the part of Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, he was seated two weeks ago. Granted, he will probably get his clock cleaned in the next election, but Burris is a senator for now.

Naturally, the Illinois legislature, a group that he's been beefing with for quite some time, has issued articles of impeachment because that's what you do when your governor gets indicted and he refuses to resign. The House has already voted to impeach him. The Senate trial is going on now.

Yet, Blagojevich is making the national rounds trying to get the rest of the United States to stand behind him. Personally, I think that the rest of us don't have a dog in this hunt. Blagojevich needs to take his case to the citizens of Illinois...unless they've already decided that they've had enough.

And my guess is that they have.

But they, like us, are going to have to stick with it for awhile.

A conversation about dissent

This morning, I hopped on Philly.com and read the Daily News like I do everyday. (Yes, I know that it's a betrayal of my status as an ink-stained wretch, but if I'm not in my office first, getting the Daily News just isn't going to happen!)

After seeing that the world hadn't blown up overnight, I read the opinion section of the DN, which is where I'm reminded every day that although Philadelphia has some pretty sophisticated people, it's also got some ignorant assed mothers within its city limits (and within the whole tri-state area) and all of them have computers.

I decided to do something that I never usually do: I read Christine Flowers column this morning.

Now for those of you who don't live in Philly, that name means nothing to you. But for those of us who read the Philadelphia Daily News on the regular, she's one of the DN's conservative voices, and while she's not anywhere near Ann Coulter in terms of making no sense at all (which makes her at least readable at times), she's been known to make me want to ask her "Are you living on the same planet I am?" every once in awhile.

Friday's column was entitled: My Big, Fat, Patriotic Promise and it focused on one of my favorite subjects: dissent. Flowers has promised to use her Constitutionally-protected right to dissent every chance she gets when it comes to President Obama, saying that she won't be bullied into supporting the president when she doesn't agree with him by his supporters.

I agree totally with that. I've already outlined some of the stuff that I don't agree with President Obama on. I'm still pissed off about the FISA vote. I'm wondering why in the heck Hillary Clinton's in his cabinet because if I were him I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her. I'm wondering why he didn't throw up on William Kristol's shoes when he had his dinner with conservative columnists a few weeks back.

I'm glad that I live in a country where I can say stuff like that. To me, the right to criticize our government is one of the most important rights we have in this country. I use it as often as possible.

But what I feel like saying to Ms. Flowers, Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and all the rest of the right wing is that there is a certain level of hypocrisy that I see in this demand for your right to dissent. Or did you sleep through the last eight years?

I seem to recall a certain "my country right or wrong" attitude on the part of the right when it came to President Bush and some of the decisions he made, especially after Sept. 11.

Don't think that the USA PATRIOT act is a good idea because it's filled with things that even Richard Nixon didn't try? Shut Up, your being unpatriotic. You want the terrorists to win.

Don't think that the War In Iraq is the right war to fight because the people who actually pulled off the Sept. 11 attacks were based in Afghanistan and that's where we should keep our focus? You don't support the troops! You're unpatriotic. You hate America. (Wanna know how dumb you sound when you say this to an Army brat? Very.)

You don't dig the fact that the United States is spying on its own citizens illegally in the name of fighting terrorism? Our government has the right to do this. They're trying to keep us safe. Shut up you Commie!

See what I mean?

Dissent is patriotic...but it's gotta go both ways. I'm sorry that it required your losing the reigns of power for you to get that, but it is what it is. Maybe if you spent some time reading the Constitution, you know that document that your boy George and his VP Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney spent eight years wiping their asses with, you would have known that and stopped throwing around the word "unpatriotic" like most folks say "pass the salt."

Flowers also asked that the government not impose its views on her. All that I have to say is that for the last eight years, we had a dude in office that you supported who damn near turned this country into a theocracy.

(Which is another thing I'm not feeling Obama on. Can we lose the whole "faith based" initiative thing especially since all it is is a way for religious groups who want to discriminate against gay people to get federal money to espouse their views? I don't want my tax money to go to folks like the Salvation Army, who reserves the right not to hire people because they're gay or lesbian or the Mormon church, who spearheaded the whole Proposition 8 thing.)

Again, I go back to the whole "read the Constitution" thing. All that might happen is that President Obama turns us back into a secular government, which means that if I go to my local CVS and ask for some birth control, the person ringing me up at the counter can't refuse to sell it to me because she believes that I should only be allowed to get my freak on if there's a wedding band on my finger.

But, Obama supporters, I say this to you: look at how you were treated the last eight years and do the opposite. Let those who wish to dissent have their say. They'll make you mad. They may make you laugh. But let 'em have their say. It's the American way.

The next four years are going to be really interesting.

If you want to read Flowers' column, here is the link.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20090123_Christine_M__Flowers__My_big_fat_patriotic_promise.html?posted=y&viewAll=y#comments