To the Freep: A Southern Man Don’t Need You Around Anyhow!
by W. T. Howes
The last resort of the incompetent is sheer prejudice. Last week, the Detroit Free Press resorted to rank bigotry to explain the defeat of the automaker bailout bill in the United States Senate. The guilty columnist relied on one of the greatest non-PC prejudices in the nation: Anti-Southern. The image of the Southern conservative as an ignorant bigot looms large in the liberal psyche. I doubt that Southerner are worried. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd (see You Tube Below), a Southern man don’t need you around anyhow.
I was looking for the some objective indication that the following passage was intended to be satire or some tongue in cheek delivery to lighten the serious mood surrounding the temporary defeat of the automaker bailout, but there was no such objective indication. RON DZWONKOWSKI of the Detroit Free Press wrote the following analysis of the defeat of last week’s cloture vote on the auto bailout bill:
“I mean that a handful of senators from former Confederate states could so summarily sign a death warrant for the Michigan economy. A bunch of self-serving Republicans who will now go around blaming the United Auto Workers for killing the auto industry rescue plan.
Convenient excuse for something they never had any intention of passing. It’s just a coincidence, of course, that they all come from states with non-union auto plants owned by the foreign competitors of GM, Ford and Chrysler.
A former colleague who grew up in the Deep South once told me, “Where I come from, there’s not much difference between union and Union Army.”
Certainly this defeat was payback for the UAW’s traditional support of Democratic candidates. But maybe it ran even deeper, back to 1861 when President Abraham Lincoln exclaimed “Thank God for Michigan!” as 798 men from this state arrived in Washington to defend it against advancing southern troops early in the Civil War.
Thursday’s Senate session gave this southern cabal a chance at long last to say, ‘To hell with Michigan!’”
OK, thanks for setting me straight. Now I understand that defeat of the cloture vote in the Senate was revenge for the War Between the States. It couldn’t be that some Republicans stood by their principles and mustered enough votes to prevent a damaging and ridiculous plan from becoming law. It couldn’t be that several thinking Democrats joined those Republicans in standing for free market-smaller government ideals. No that just couldn’t be. That does not fit the MSM’s template. To the MSM, Republican ideals don’t work. And the MSM wouldn’t want the Republicans to get the idea that Republican ideals will work and they will sell.
So, enter the stereotype. It is a stereotype that is widely accepted in liberal wonderland. This stereotype says that White Christian Southern Men are racists who want to see their wives barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, who want to reinstitute slavery and to oppress the poor. This stereotype says that White Christian Southern Men love their guns and their football to the exclusion of education. This stereotype says that White Southern Christian Men are ignorant and violent. Terms like redneck, hick and cracker are acceptable parlance. A liberal thinks nothing of comparing White Southern Christian Men to KKK bullies.
And this stereotype is accepted as gospel by libs and the MSM.
Funny, though, that the biggest and best supporters of Governor Sarah Palin are from the South. Sarah’s most vocal supporter of late has been Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. Her best results were in the deep South and among men and regular churchgoers. That’s right, the same people who want to see women barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen want to see an Alaskan woman in the White House.
Never mind that the South has established the finest set of state universities in the nation. Top students from the North are flocking to the Universities of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida - if they can get in.
The fact is that someone has to be blamed for this latest liberal failure. There has to be a bogeyman. Pass the crackers, please!
Faithful Citizenship: Assisting the Homebound and the Hospital-Bound to Vote
by W. T. Howes
Under the principles of Faithful Citizenship established by the Conference of Bishops, Catholic churches may be involved in certain forms of non-partisan political activity. MFP is developing an idea for a modest addition to the Faithful Citizenship program undertaken in each parish in the nation. MFP recommends a nationwide effort to assist those Catholics in need of assistance in voting, either by absentee ballot or by transport to the polls.
Each year, untold numbers of American Catholics are sick and hospitalized on election day. Millions of Catholics reside in senior citizen housing or in nursing homes. And an unknown number of Catholics are homebound. Almost all of these good Americans would like to be able to vote, yet many of them are not able to do so. We have the ability to help them.
Across the nation, Catholic parishes have the resources to assist voters in need. Almost every parish has a Respect Life Committee, a Knights of Columbus council and a Legion of Mary. From the ranks of those active Catholic gentleladies and -men, there are many able-bodied and able minded people who can spend some time around each election day assisting voters in need. The basics of the proposal are as follows:
1. Establish a Voter-in-Need Coordinator for each parish. The Coordinator can then identify volunteers to assist.
2. Learn the state laws for absentee ballots and voter assistance. It is imperative that any voter assistance comply with local election law.
3. Identify Voters-in-Need. Determine their residence and voter registration.
4. Contact Voters-in-Need to offer non-partisan assistance in either transporting them to the polling place or obtaining absentee ballots.
5. Get to work.
In this small way, we can help those who need assistance in exercising that most precious of rights, the right to vote AND increase the turnout of Catholic voters nationwide. There may only be a few people in each parish in need of assistance. When multiplied out over a diocese, state and entire region, the result will be significant, both in number of vote cast and in the number of our fellow Catholics served.
President-elect Obama is a new type of intelligence, according to Veep-elect Joe Biden. He is post-racial and post-partisan. He is the chosen one, a transformative figure. It doesn’t take a new type of intelligence to figure out that BHO is a product of the Cook County Democrat Machine, the most corrupt group of pols this side of Jersey City. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been indicted for conspiring to sell BHO’s seat in the U.S. Senate.
Well, this didn’t take long. BHO hasn’t even taken his seat in the Oval Office and he has already soiled the carpets with something that he picked up on the way to the White House.
Obama supporter and soon-to-be-ex-Illinois-governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested on a host of public corruption charges after a three-year investigation by the FBI. Blago’s most recent crime involves the United States Senate seat formerly occupied by BHO. Blago conspired to sell the seat even before BHO had been elected President.
This scandal hits BHO right in the breadbox. The indictment alleges that Blago tried to sell the Senate seat in communications with BHO’s Chief-of-Staff designee Rahm Emanuel. To be clear, Emanuel was not charged and will not be charged, and the charges contained in the indictment are just those - charges. But this is who the Obama administration brings with it. MFP are reviewing the long and detailed indictment, and will follow the Blagojevich case as it develops.
So it is a good week for Republicans with three victories in runoffs of federal races, and a bad week for the nascent Obama Administration.
Congratulations and Thank You to Congressman-Elect Cao
by W. T. Howes
The Republican wave grew a little bigger in Louisiana on Saturday. The Republicans remained undefeated in the Era of Obama, winning their second and third runoffs in federal races in a week. The most stunning win of the year came in the runoff in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District, where no Republican has won since 1888. Anh Cao won a three-point victory over nine-term incumbent William Jefferson.
The big electoral news this week comes from Louisiana’s Second Congressional District, where I once lived.
When I was in college in Louisiana, I attended one of my first election night parties. At the time, I was a Democrat. I was a Democrat for the same reason a lot of young men are Democrats: My girlfriend was a Democrat. She was a Democrat. Her father was a Democrat. Her mother was a Democrat. They were all Democrats (except for her in-laws). The party I attended was for a local Democrat who had run unsuccessfully for a local judgeship. That night, there was a showdown in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District between incumbent Lindy Boggs and Judge Israel Augustine.
They were both Democrats. One was African-American. One was Anglo-American. In one of the last hurrahs of Anglo-American Democrats in Orleans Parish, Lindy Boggs won. Six years later, State Senator William Jefferson won the seat and has held it for nine terms.
On the night in 1984 that Boggs beat Augustine, there was a small but growing new ethnic group in Louisiana. Refugees and immigrants from Viet Nam had settled in southern Louisiana. They escaped the horrors of the Viet Nam War and the fall of Saigon into the hands of Communist dictators. The Vietnamese community had a reputation for being very industrious. Many families worked hard and pooled their resources to purchase homes and fishing boats, and became part of the commercial fishing and shrimping industry in the bayous and in the Gulf of Mexico. Viet-American families reared dedicated students. Indeed, the most common name in the 1984 Tulane University Student Directory was not a cajun name like “Robichaux” or “Thobodeau”. It was the Viet-American version of Smith: Nguyen.
Over the next two decades the Viet-American community flourished in Southern Louisiana. And like the rest of Southern Louisiana, they had to flee from Hurricane Katrina and cope with her aftermath. Apparently, the Viet-American community has returned to Metro New Orleans in far greater numbers than any other ethnic group. As a result, the group’s political clout has grown.
Enter Anh Cao, an articulate, energetic and talented young man, who he fled war-torn Vietnam after the fall of Saigon as an 8-year-old refugee jammed into a helicopter. He succeeded in America. Cao graduated from Baylor University in 1990 and began studying to become a Jesuit priest. He went on several missions before attending law school in New Orleans. After graduating in the late 1990s, he started a law practice and volunteered to help other boat refugees from Vietnam. His home and law firm were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but he rebuilt both, and this summer, he began his quest for public office.
The same toughness that he developed as a child in war-torn Viet Nam and rebuilding after a natural disaster helped him survive an initial defeat at the hands of Bill Jefferson in 2006 and turn it into a victory in 2008. The Republicans have found a new star, whose election may signal a fundamental change in Louisiana politics. Congratulations to the Congressman-elect, and farewell to one of the kleptocracy’s shining stars, Bill Jefferson.
We need to send a strong message that law-abiding citizens have a right to own firearms, for personal protection, for hunting and for any other lawful purpose.
The last resort of the incompetent is sheer prejudice. Last week, the Detroit Free Press resorted to rank bigotry to explain the defeat of the automaker bailout bill in the United States Senate. The guilty columnist relied on one of the greatest non-PC prejudices in the nation: Anti-Southern. The image of the Southern conservative as an ignorant bigot looms large in the liberal psyche. I doubt that Southerner are worried. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd (see You Tube Below), a Southern man don’t need you around anyhow.
Under the principles of Faithful Citizenship established by the Conference of Bishops, Catholic churches may be involved in certain forms of non-partisan political activity. MFP is developing an idea for a modest addition to the Faithful Citizenship program undertaken in each parish in the nation. MFP recommends a nationwide effort to assist those Catholics in need of assistance in voting, either by absentee ballot or by transport to the polls.
President-elect Obama is a new type of intelligence, according to Veep-elect Joe Biden. He is post-racial and post-partisan. He is the chosen one, a transformative figure. It doesn’t take a new type of intelligence to figure out that BHO is a product of the Cook County Democrat Machine, the most corrupt group of pols this side of Jersey City. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been indicted for conspiring to sell BHO’s seat in the U.S. Senate.
The Republican wave grew a little bigger in Louisiana on Saturday. The Republicans remained undefeated in the Era of Obama, winning their second and third runoffs in federal races in a week. The most stunning win of the year came in the runoff in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District, where no Republican has won since 1888. Anh Cao won a three-point victory over nine-term incumbent William Jefferson.
