{"id":3003,"date":"2008-08-31T14:44:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-31T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3003"},"modified":"2008-08-31T14:44:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-31T21:44:00","slug":"donkeys-elephants-and-gustav","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3003","title":{"rendered":"Donkeys, Elephants, and Gustav"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next week is the Republican Convention. It is also when Gustav is expected to make landfall near New Orleans<\/a>. Some musings and observations on the same:<\/p>\n

There are pluses and minuses in this for John McCain. On the plus side, he won\u2019t have Bush and Cheney speaking at the convention<\/a>… always a good thing not to have that reminder there. It is also pushing news of that pesky Obama off of the news media. On the minus side, it is going to shorten the convention\u2019s agenda, pomp, and pagentry<\/a>… meaning there won\u2019t be as many speeches praising McCain\/Palin and berating Obama\/Biden.<\/p>\n

So what is Obama doing during all of this? Campaigning, of course. However, he does plan to enlist his support network<\/a> to raise funds and find volunteers for those affected. He has no plans to visit the area, because he doesn\u2019t want to get in the way of aid efforts. McCain is travelling to the area. Obama\u2019s opinion: \u201cI\u2019m assuming that where he went that wasn\u2019t an issue. We\u2019re going to try to stay clear of the area until things have settled down and then we\u2019ll probably try to figure out how we can be as helpful as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, throughout all of this, Sarah Palin is still trying to figure out what a hurricane is. After all, they don\u2019t have them up in Alaska. As for the storm surge, she believes that Bush was right to send the extra troops to Iraq even with the blowing sand.<\/p>\n

Here is my suggestion for the two camps: Have a friendly competition. Encourage their supporters on each side to donate funds, blood, and other requested supplies to the American Red Cross. Have them register which campaign they are supporting. Irrespective of who wins the poll, those in the disaster area will ultimately win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next week is the Republican Convention. It is also when Gustav is expected to make landfall near New Orleans. Some musings and observations on the same: There are pluses and minuses in this for John McCain. On the plus side, he won\u2019t have Bush and Cheney speaking at the convention… always a good thing not Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[147,123],"class_list":["post-3003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-lj-xfer","tag-decision-2008","tag-disasters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}