So Bob Novak snidely suggests in his latest political report. Talking about upcoming US Senate races, Novak has this to say about Louisiana, which he feels is the GOP’s “best pickup opportunity” in 2008:
Republicans were already on the upswing here before Hurricane Katrina, and at the local level, the villains in the story of Katrina were nearly all Democrats. The election of 2007 could be promising for Republicans at the state level.
If Rep. Bobby Jindal (R) wins the race for governor this fall — and indications are that he will — then the governor and one senator will be Republicans. Of course part of the thinking, voiced publicly by no one, is that the state’s black population in New Orleans largely disappeared with Hurricane Katrina, significantly diminishing the base vote for Landrieu.
Gotta love those Acts of God, especially when the Lord smiles on the Grand Old Party and smites the swarthy sons of Canaan. My question is, who would be so cynical, so selfish and indifferent, that they’d consider the still-suffering Big Easy as an opportunity to be exploited politically? Whose shameless “thinking” is this?
Perhaps subtly answering these questions, Novak writes in his very next line, “There is no obvious GOP candidate ready to step forward. White House advisor Karl Rove has been urging…” (snip)
Of course, Karl Rove! The master spinner himself who—unlike his boss in the Oval Office—isn’t afraid to flaunt his detachment from, and glaring insensitivity to, black people. Novak underscores this with a most telling parapraxis in his final sentence on the matter; read into what you will: “No one will be worrying too much about this race until after the governor’s race is over.”
xpost: JAZZ from HELL
Categories: Politics/Law/Government
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
Are blacks really being exploited by the GOP any more than any other party? Obviously any other party would be the democrats.
The words were:
“who would be so cynical, so selfish and indifferent, that they’d consider the still-suffering Big Easy as an opportunity to be exploited politically?”
I am not sure if democrats have been that much less selfish and indifferent over the past umpteen years when it comes to the black vote. I think they are primed and ready for a mass switch to the republican party.
I am certainly not a Republican. My mother and all of her “swarthy” kin have voted Democrat all of their lives. My reasons for believing this change are from simple observation. After some really big changes in the 1960’s, the gap in equality between blacks and whites has stopped decreasing and in many cases has widened. I think Louisiana is a sign of things to come.
Actually, most blacks (aside from the ones you see on the news who are inevitably disheveled, angry, or in some way or fashion connected with some member of the criminal justice system) are very religious and socially conservative. If not for the token handouts and hat nods given by democrats each political cycle, they probably would have bolted before now.
http://www.media2politic.com
I remember after the first week when all of those poor & predominantly black people were being bused to Houston, I was cynically thinking that they would soon redirect the other buses. Otherwise, a new black majority could throw some races to the dems in the Texas legislature.
“Are blacks really being exploited by the GOP any more than any other party?”
I’ll ferret out Libertarian and Prohibitionist prejudices later… this one was a gimme. And I’m not praising Democrats here either. I was a bit loathe to quote Ms. Clinton, but she crystallized things well.
“If not for the token handouts and hat nods given by democrats each political cycle, they probably would have bolted before now.”
Whatever. All I know is that while we keep spending billions on a doomed war halfway around the globe, we’ve let one of our own cities fester and decay to the point that it’s seeking foreign aid. WTF? As Novak reveals here, shit only matters come election time.
The Democrats took Nawlins for granted and many died from their incompetence (remember the flooded, unused school buses?).
There’s nothing wrong with laughing at the consequences stupid people, who vote based on their race, suffer from collisions with messy reality.
Nagin’s City is a basket case, a microcosm of Haiti with an African culture. No work ethic, no sense of shame, responsibility, or delayed gratification.
We told them so, and they didn’t listen.
Since my tax money is paying for their losing the genetic lottery, I have no problem laughing at their primitive tribal emotions.
And some wonder why Ron Paul isn’t taken seriously…
5.: You really, really believe this?
I guess you were never taught you that the weak and strong march forward hand in hand…
…and you certainly know zero about ethnicity.
Shorter Ron Paul 2008:
I’m a Libertarian IT geek who has to work 14 hours a day for my shitty paycheck to keep my mortgage, and my wife refuses to have sex any way but missionary, so Katrina and all those damn coloreds should just get buried under the ocean.
Heh. I meant to say New Orleans, but people want to bury the legacy of Katrina too. 😉
🙂
You know, I would LOVE to know how decisions were made when they were “exporting” Katrina residents to other states, and how the decisions were made – as to whether the choice of the residents mattered, and what criteria was used to send what people where…
Is he being cynical, or just stating the reality. The reality is, when looking at things from a political prospective, that Katrina probably helped the GOP in Louisiana. It is a political observation. As a GOPer myself, it is a fact I recognize, but I am not giddy about it and neither is Novak. I would rather it be a heavily democrat city and state that to have had Katrina occur. But the reality is the reality. http://www.dryflypolitics.com
I am amazed by many of you conspiracy theorists out there. Can’t a sad unfortunate incident be just that. Get over your paranoia.
You’re missing the overall. The destruction of New Orleans and the black diaspora happened under the watch of a Republican administration. Now unless you think Mike Brown did a heckuva job too, the federal response to the disaster was a disaster all by itself. Go ahead and nitpick at the local level like Novak does–Bush failed to take the lead. Compare his late reaction to a domestic disaster to his billions spent in a country that DOESN’T WANT US THERE.
Why, pray tell, is Novak’s “thinking” voiced publicly by no one? Gee, might a couple of people get mad to hear that?
And dismissing the obliteration and abandonment of an American city as a “sad unfortunate incident?” Good grief. So what was 9/11, a construction accident? What was slavery, a temporary inconvenience? What was the Bush administration, a golden era of national unity? Give me a break.
Swint: normally I’d agree with you – I tend to be very leery around truthers. But gods, the more we learn about the machinations of Cheney and Rove the harder it gets to dismiss these kinds of things. Can I imagine Cheney seeing that exodus to Texas and saying hey, wait a second? Yes I can. Can I imagine Rove seeing what happened to LA and thinking, hey, we might be able to win a coupe seats there now? Sure – I mean, WE can see the possibility, right?
Evidence as to what they’re capable of continues to trickle in. And if we’re asking the question “is there anything they won’t do to grab more power?” the answer is maybe, but we haven’t seen the limit so far.
Conspiracy theory? Republicans IMMEDIATELY saw political oppurtunity in the Katrina mess. Even former FEMA head (Bush appointee) Michael Brown said that the Bush admin saw an oppurtunity to blame everything on Blanco and Nagin and hurt Democrats in the state. The levees in New Orleans are under FEDERAL jurisdiction. Neither the City of New Orleans nor the State of Louisiana maintains the levees. They are maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Also, this notion that Bush did not know what was coming is contradicted by the facts. They were warned repeatedly that the levees could not withstand a powerful hurricane. The amount of money needed for the repairs was tiny compared to the devastation caused by not funding the repairs.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-01-video-katrina-warning_x.htm
This is the most evil administration in history. They seek to exploit every American tragedy for their own gain, whether it’s diverting the anger over 9/11 into an invasion and longterm occupation of Iraq, or using the Katrina disaster to help them politically in Louisiana.
Bush/Rove/Cheney are destroying the Republican Party for many years to come. They have a strangle-hold on what used to be a proud party of less government intrusion and smaller government. They used to be the party that upheld the Constitution, but Bush has warped them into a part that supports removing habeus corpus and spying on Americans without even obtaining a warrant.
As far as the previous message about the busses sitting in New Orleans, I see you’ve fallen for a right-wing talking point. Think about it for a second. You can’t force city bus drivers to remain in New Orleans before the disaster struck. You couldn’t just order them to stay and drive the city busses during a hurricane. They are free citizens who can leave if they want.
So it does no good to complain about empty busses when the city had no drivers for them.
The types of people who CAN be forced to stay and help are the National Guard. Unfortunately, most of THEIR equipment was in the deserts of Iraq. Most of them were either deployed to Iraq, or awaiting deployment.
But simple-minded people will be shown a picture of a bunch of busses underwater, and they just buy into the bullshit like a bunch of sheep.
While the Prince of Darkness is showing his real racist true colors, the fact of the matter is the loss of the Governors Mansion to the GOP has little to do with the color of anyone’s skin. It has to do with the weakness of the State Dem Party itself.
I ran in LA for Congress in ‘06 and I’m also a native of Obama/Durbin-land. The State Dem Party in Louisiana is indistinguishable from the National GOP platform and Dem’s vote Republican because who wants to be GOP-lite when you can have the real thing.
Consider Landrieu has a 78% voting record of siding with the GOP. She’s one of the 14 Senators, who vowed to block filibusters of Nazi Supreme Court Justices by Democrats, (and hopes you don’t remember that given recent 5-4 splits.) Mary Landrieu is the quintessential LA Democrat.
The State Dem Party needs to be taken out behind the shed and put out of its misery. Only by tearing down the old can a new progressive structure be built.
Rove sees LA Dems as weak, and he’s absolutely correct. When Dems concentrate on the needs of the people instead of Guns and God, they might start winning elections. However, that won’t happen until LA looses everything it holds dear. And, I am confident the GOP will be more than accommodating.
…quietly, Republicans ARE dancing the veils of the seven nightengales! believe it! Not unlike the infamous quote (from the historically vanquished) Elton Covington IV (1837): “A blood splattered dock yields no bounty – sept untold gulls borne to Nottingham…” – all this against the back drop of the Corian uprising against the Sansibars (perhaps the bloodiest of revolts during the Gorman kingship – but that is still debatable [many still argue that Niles Groff’s seige on Hampsted was perhaps the pinacle of bloodshed {1848]}) – but that is neither here nor there.
But who is the wiser for the demise of said “watery swamp of human excess and poverty-swept tears?” Certainly one may wish for an indifferent god that looks upon sin with the jaundiced eye of one caught up in an immoral universe – ie. blackholes, and the existence of hemmoroids. But one cannot disregard that New Orleans – like Orleans of old, knew its fair share of – as the bard once quipped: “Lanterns of jellybake and eddies of stew, all revealing I haven’t a clue…” that being said, one must ponder the predominance of graveyards throughout “The Easy”. Mightn’t that have been a fair warning to those of us with a smidgen of sense?
All things weighed, Republican’s schaudenfreud is to be expected when one’s president is swirling into said blackhole – which may infact be his own head into his hemmoroidian arse! Jolly well to have begat this mess – not unlike said Katrina!!
Good Riddance,
Sir Norman Shears
Mike Sheehan, your brain is so sexy. Will you marry me?
Sorry, already ruined one woman’s life… er, I mean, taken. 😛
Repugs are in for a big surprise, if they think the people of New Orleans will forget how it was Bush’s fault that the levees failed in the first place, and how Bush failed to follow up, and how he tried to cover his rear by lying & trying to place the blame on Blanco & Nagin. It’s all there in the record, but in sum:
Bush gave a tax cut to his rich friends as soon as he took office, so, to balance the budget, he took away money from the Corps of Engineers that was slated to inspect, repair & restore the levee system. The cuts also stopped work on the repairs of the Lakeside levee system that was already in progress. This was in spite of multiple studies and warnings from all sides.
Bush then repeatedly lied to Blanco & Nagin, as well as the people of the world, abut how he was going to help, and it is recorded how the White House wanted to use the New Orleans flood for political gain.
Any type of discrimination is discouraging. We must condemn this.
This country is just LOST, plain and simple. To all you guys who got a laugh out of what happened to the folks of New Orleans, I must ask you what you plan to do when your mother floats by you, face down? You do know that you have more or less been left behind as well, it will just take time for you to see and experience the reallity of that fact. Time will tell how superior you superior guys really are when it is your turn to suffer. From what you have consistently shown the rest of humanity over the years I really don’t expect much more than loud and childish whining, blaming of others and of course SUFFERING. Lets face the sad truth… all too many americans are JOKES who think that they are the cats meow because they have life a little better than the next person.
This quote is a hoot!
“There’s nothing wrong with laughing at the consequences stupid people, who vote based on their race, suffer from collisions with messy reality.”
Do you really believe that you are any different when it comes to voting along racial lines? Remember this is America. You are an Idiot and a fool with a superiority complex so to expect things to end well for folks like that is an extreme exercise in futility.
The truth is that neither party did anything to prevent this tradgedy, the dems played the blacks, the repubs played the whites and everyone but Bushes cronies got screwed. So I say there is not a dimes worth of difference between either of these two parties. The sooner that we face the fact that this country is just about finished the better we will all be. Also please do not forget that many of the folks in the GULF COAST who are suffering and were abandoned ARE WHITE. It was a shrewd thing to only show the faces of the black folks suffering. That way the bigots can have a field day, no one notices any of the whites who are suffering and everyone can just go back to what they are doing instead of putting blame where it belongs, on our leadership and ultimately on ourselves. After all, that is just how those people are, not like all those superior guys who have made america and much of the world the messed up place it is today.
Truly a sad joke…
re the Black Diaspora from the New Orleans Katrina disaster…
I hate to come right down ‘between both sides on this – between the “librul do-gooder left” and the “bring back plantation slavery!” (or economic servitude) Right-Wing, but there is a grain of truth in the Righty POV here. #1. Bush was guilty of gross cronyism putting Arab horse show organizer Mike Brown in charge of FEMA, the nation’s multi-billion dollar emergency relief agency – WHERE THE HELL were the cowardly Democrats, why didn’t they FILIBUSTER that glaringly crony nomination? #2. Bush and his “heckuva job” FEMA director did WORSE THAN NOTHING to prepare for Katrina, which ‘only’ set the all-time low recorded pressure (hurricane strength) for the Atlantic basin… Wal-Mart had an entire fleet of trucks with cases of water ready to assist the most devastated zone from the hurricane, WHICH FEMA TURNED AWAY from New Orleans. Bush’s neglect & negligence re Katrina/New Orleans was CRIMINAL DERELICTION OF DUTY – WHERE the hell are the cowardly Democrats to state the obvious?
#3. Post Katrina, Bush & Cheney have USED the Katrina disaster as an EXCUSE to – (what else) zap BILLIONS of TAX PAYER DOLLARS to their crony, connected contractors (Halliburton & Blackwater ‘security’ among others) – WHERE THE HELL ARE THE COWARDLY DEMOCRATS to DEMAND some accountability?
#4. now from the Righty POV – “WHERE the hell is the national BLACK community – aren’t there ANY Black millionaires and billionaires to LEAD the legal and infrastructure rebuilding efforts for displaced New Orleans African-Americans? Can anyone IMAGINE the US national Jewish community DOING NOTHING as one of their local communities was wiped out in such a prolonged, corrupt fashion? When the Red River flooded Grand Forks, North Dakota, segregation-state Senator (and then Majority Leader) Trent Lott said “tough cookies” to Grand Forks residents – but an anonymous donor (Ray Kroc’s wife?) kicked in millions of dollars to make up for the loss. Sad to say, America’s African-American community is WAY AWOL re standing up for their poor brothers & sisters of New Orleans.
#5. It’s not just African-Americans nationwide economically and politically ABANDONING their fellow Afro-Americans in New Orleans…..Miami had a recent teacher’s protest, and one of the teachers on strike (presumably with a college degree?) couldn’t even speak proper English to TV reporters. It is one thing for “street kids” to use an ‘ebonics’ street slang.. but shouldn’t teachers earning an annual union salary be able to speak proper English? Granted, Florida has THE WORST record of public education spending per student in the country. And, just as clearly, a HUGE factor of this appalling statistic from a wealthy state, is that entire swaths of minority school districts have little political clout – if, indeed, education IS EVEN A PRIORITY in those communities! (Certainly high-end communities in Florida brag about their local school ratings in real-estate ads.)
There can be no doubt that George W. Bush treats the entire US treasury as his own personal slush fund, and that he gets away with it because of Democratic Party impotence (if not complicity) and media complicity as well. But what of America’s Black Community? Is Jesse Jackson THE BEST spokesman for the African-American community? And why the hell can’t THEY put some FOCUS on their economic brethren of the New Orleans diaspora? If Bush and Brownie and the GOP deserve the majority of blame for the New Orleans nightmare, there is plenty of “extra credit” to go around.
Don’t bother Jesse and Al, they’re going after easy targets like Don Imus. Look, we can spread the blame around to everyone, including the butterfly whose wingflapping set into motion a chain of events that led to Katrina in the first place. But my focus in this piece is the shameless detachment that GOPers have about New Orleans, a place that they were in the best position to intervene, with their control of all three branches of government, a sizeable chunk of the media and a total grip over the military. They fiddled, they fucked around, they did photo ops, they slapped each other on the back. But New Orleans is still a fucking cesspool… but a cesspool with few blacks left, ripe for GOP plucking. The cynicism of that is beyond disturbing, it’s outrageous. This is what the people in power think of the people without power.
Veracity: If Dems start filibustering GOP crony appointments, then the GOP will do the same to them when they get into power.
And we can’t have that.
veracity, you ask a number of good questions. I myself have asked where the so-called black leadership is/was on this issue. From what I saw most of the elected black leaders (read democrats) folded in with their party leadership and did nothing so that it would make toe repubs look bad. That is criminal, truly criminal. In fact one of the few black elected leaders to step up to the plate in and out of congress on this issue was Cynthia McKinney. Oops, but isn’t she crazy or something?! What ever the case she stepped up to the plate and tried to do something while the rest of her party did nothing. In spite of this performance the dems know they can still get black votes because as you all know american politcs is based on patronage. The many so-called black leaders still support the dem party because that is where the gravy train is and they will never bite the hand that feeds them. So you can think of this as a reflection of some of the overall problems in american politics as a whole. Lest we forget, many of the Katrina victims that no one will ever see are white.
As for what Blacks are doing to help the victims, I would say that on the parts of many individuals and even organizations there is actually a great deal going on. Take a look at the congressional hearings that are still going on. As for what jewish people would or would not stand for, that remains to be seen, for them and any other group of people in this country. Please remember that as a group jews are in a much better and powerful position than blacks.
25 is correct, and we all here and elsewhere better face it full-on. We live in an environment in which people abroad in the country are by and large apathetic, ignorant, satisfied with nothing more than to drive to the mall to buy stuff that they TOTALLY do not need. Each and every one of us, from the most lily-white cracker to the darkest refugee from a Caribbean isle, to the power brokers, Those Big Swinging Dicks of Michael Lewis, shares the responsibility for the general malaise we now experience, and the utterly unacceptable situation with regard to the damage due to Gulf hurricanes in 2005. What shall we do? For those of spirit, only one course remains: to participate heavily in LOCAL political issues, to make conditions LOCALLY better, since it is clear at this point that the federal government has become an agency that supports Big Business, Big War, and Big Lies to support the preceding: expect nothing of any help to ordinary people to spring from the loins of the Monster of the Beltway. It’s literally gone out of our hands to alter the direction this juggernaut is taking every one of us, unbidden, toward a world that from my viewpoint is devoid of meaning such as arises from interactions among humans of all cultures, all classes, all religions, the alleged cornerstone principle of our founding documents. Finally, let none of us ever again criticise somebody else for their wrongful (in)action until we can truly say, We have done our part to move matters in more positive directions.
Race cars and race cards, will the South NEVER rise from the pits?
Brian at #18. Thanks, man. It’s amazing that after all this time, that is one of the very few times I’ve heard anyone make that simple and (you would think) obvious point about The Busses. Isn’t it amazing that wasn’t obvious to the supposed genetic lottery winner who spouted off above?