Confirmed: President Skips GOP Convention
A black-biracial Senator from Illinois runs for President. He's only the second black U.S. Senator since reconstruction. His absent father was African and mother was white American. He gets the Democratic presidential nomination and beating a white woman who is the nation's former First Lady. He then teams up with a longtime Senator whose first wife and baby daughter died in a brutal car accident before he was sworn in for his first Senate term.
This Democratic team is battling a former Vietnam veteran who was brutally tortured by his captors, and then went on to marry a multi-millionare heiress and become a Senator, not in that order. The Senator from Arizona teams up with the Republican party's first female vice presidential nominee, a former beauty queen and former small-town mayor with five children. She is now the Governor of Alaska; her husband is part Eskimo.
You couldn't make this up.
Neither could you make up the tragic fact that New Orleaneans and other members of Gulf states are once again fleeing in the face of a massive storm.
This time the exit from New Orleans is much more orderly and reflects the needs of people with cars. There are plenty of buses exiting the city at the moment, and even places that people can drop off their pets for transport. Some high tech approaches failed, notably a system that would have electronically "tagged" each person so that they could be located by family members. (I don't think that tagging involved crunching a tag into people's ears a la a wildlife show. At least hope not.)
The hurricane right now is heading in somewhere west of New Orleans, but could still move East.
Many of the delegates from the Gulf States are headed home. President Bush and Vice President Cheney are skipping the conventions. President Bush is headed to Texas.
The RNC is going to have a press conference soon about their plans... they may do volunteerism and phone banks to help the Gulf. Wonder if the Dems will follow suit, in terms of volunteerism.
More details when we know them...
Tags: Hurricane Gustav
12:51 PM ET | 08-31-2008 | permalink
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