WAY BIG WIN IN MISSISSIPPI 9NOV11 & 6 Reasons Mississippians Said No to "Personhood" Amendment 8NOV11

THIS is a huge victory! The hypocrisy of those supporting Amendment 26 in Mississippi are the same gop / tea-bagger right wing extremist who demand cuts in the government's social safety net programs providing for children and families in one of the poorest and least educated states in the nation. Fortunately the people of Mississippi were not fooled by the lies, deception, propaganda and blatant hypocrisy of the pro 26 campaign. This from the ACLU and Burns Strider of HuffPost......

Stand with the ACLU as we look to defeat "personhood" amendments wherever and whenever they surface. Last night, you helped win a huge victory for reproductive freedom in Mississippi. It came down to the wire, but the votes are in — and the voters have rejected Amendment 26, an outrageous effort to alter the Mississippi State Constitution to establish legal "personhood" at the moment of fertilization. As someone who's been on the ground here in Mississippi, I can tell you that we had our work cut out for us. But with your support and the work of countless volunteers, we were able to beat back this egregious ballot initiative. If it had prevailed, the measure would not only have banned abortion in Mississippi, but also put many forms of contraception off-limits. Women facing medically complex pregnancies would have been deprived of life-saving medical treatment. And women who have been raped would have been forced to carry the child of their abuser. Unfortunately, we know this fight is not over. "Personhood" amendments are the focal point in the 2012 strategies of anti-choice extremists. We won in Mississippi this year. Next year, we may have to wage battles in Arkansas, Montana, Florida, Oregon, Nevada and beyond. Affirm that you'll stand with us to defeat personhood amendments in 2012. Our victory in Mississippi has already sent a strong message to extremists who will stop at nothing to outlaw abortion. If we stand together, we can stop the escalating assault on reproductive rights. I hope you'll take a moment to celebrate this victory and stand with us as we look to defeat personhood amendments wherever and whenever they surface. 6 Reasons Mississippians Said No to "Personhood" Amendment http://www.huffingtonpost.com/burns-strider/personhood-amendment-_b_1083079.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=110911&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief Only a few months ago strategists were urging their candidates in Mississippi to stay clear of the "Personhood" initiative they'd be sharing space with on the ballot. More than a few candidates, believing it was the only safe path, chose to take a public position in support of the measure defining human life as existing at the moment of conception (or cloning, or a twinkle in an eye). Disease, rape, incest not counting as exceptions. Nothing would. Felonies for everyone. Mississippi has a massively conservative voting base and heavily entrenched conservative politicians and institutions. Polling showed white and black voters overwhelmingly favored the initiative. In January, I sat in the lobby of a Washington, DC hotel with a group looking for ideas on how to defeat Personhood. My advice, partly, based on my experiences with races in the South, polling data and my personal knowledge as a native Mississippian was to assume its passage, run a singularly grassroots operation and craft a campaign that would look beyond Election Day. Fortunately, I did suggest a flexible campaign with data collection and growth capacity in case the unexpected happened and defeating the measure came into play. The unexpected happened. Mississippians defeated "Personhood" driving a stake in the heart of a movement that was planning on sweeping, state by state, through the nation. Why did they lose in arguably the most conservative state in the Union? Why did the anti-Personhood forces win a majority of the vote in Mississippi? Here are six reasons Personhood failed in Mississippi: 6.) The Personhood Initiative language was poorly crafted and made for bad policy. Doctors, for instance, became concerned about the legality of carrying out their oath to save lives. Medical groups organized. This created a foundation for thoughtful people to begin speaking out. Policy generally doesn't win elections but it does create the intellectual depth political passion and message need to prevail. 5.) Clergy stood up and said no. The Episcopal and Methodist Bishops for Mississippi publicly opposed the measure. The Catholic Bishop would not support it instead offering a critical critique. This empowered other ministers to begin speaking out. By the numbers, nothing trumps Southern Baptists in Mississippi, and their leaders remained lividly in support of Personhood. But, Methodists are the second largest denomination in the state, the Episcopal bishop and his family are legendary profiles in courage for Mississippians and the Catholic bishop's pro-life credentials brought attention to his refusal to support the measure. The clergy who spoke out provided a moral framework for the bad policy argument and an even larger moral foundation for voters. 4.) Haley Barbour, the Guv himself, publicly raised concerns about the implications of the measure; right before saying would vote for it. But, he chose to share his concerns. Why? I have no idea. He's an excellent political strategist. Like President Clinton, he's his best strategist. I find it hard to believe he didn't speak out knowing he would have an impact against the measure. He did. Haley "green lighted" many to do what they wanted to do. Vote no. 3.) The Mississippi NAACP announced their opposition to the measure. Derrick Johnson is the president. He is about as courageous and shrewd as they come. He took a stand. And, you know what? The large percentage of black Mississippians supporting Personhood began to crumble. It was leadership in action. And, it changed the outcome. A voting majority began forming of African Americans, white Democrats and upper middle class, educated white conservatives. 2.) "Mississippians for Healthy Families" organized; then they organized the state around defeating personhood. It was this group that brought together the policy concerns, messaging and grassroots organizing that synergized the opposition. Prior to the existence of "Mississippians for Healthy Families" there were only voices in the wilderness throughout the state in search of a movement. This gave them a movement. They connected these voices and brought depth, know-how and resources. Basically, they turned the opposition into a campaign; a winning campaign. Perhaps, "Mississippians for Healthy Families" has a second legacy in creating the largest and most powerful progressive database and organization in Mississippi. 1.) The forces who brought Personhood before the public insulted the intellectual and cultural sensibilities of thousands of Mississippians. They assumed Mississippi would be a cake walk. They provided grandma's 1970's abortion language that didn't speak to many younger, yet conservative, Mississippians. They were sloppy in their organizing and flippant about their opposition; condescending. Their official Personhood website looks like my child's 4th grade class designed it. I talked to many Mississippians leading up to Election Day; acquaintance after acquaintance, folks I grew up with and know as devout social conservatives. And, to the last one they were voting NO on Personhood. They were turned off by those leading the Personhood campaign. They were insulted by the assumptions of how they thought and that they were supposed to follow the leader without question. They didn't. There's a lesson here about showing up in Mississippi without your game face on. As the Ford Expedition set grows in the 'burbs with their venti bolds in the cup holders so does the sophistication. Don't bet the farm unless you've invested in the crops. Otherwise, you will lose. Ask the people of Personhood.

Bayous Flood As La. Residents Scramble 15MAI11 & Haley Barbour To Flood-Stricken Mississippians: You’re On Your Own 11MAI11

A flood of epic proportions, I hope this is a wake up call to the people of the area and they consider just what would be happening now if it wasn't for the federal government. The repiglicans and tea-baggers would have cut the funding for the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, there wouldn't be the hundreds of people on duty necessary to maintain the flood control system and do their best to manage the river and the aftermath of the flood. Think this is all bunk? Consider the lack of government response in Pakistan during and after the massive Indus River floods of 2010, that is how the repiglicans and tea-baggers would handle the Mississippi River floods of 2011. Need proof, see the words of tea-bagger gop governor haley barbour to the citizens of Mississippi on 11MAI11.

by Greg Allen

Listen to the Story

Weekend Edition Sunday

[4 min 30 sec]

 

Enlarge Patrick Semansky/AP A member of the Louisiana National Guard stands guard as water diverted through the Morganza Spillway begins to fill a pasture in Morganza, La., on Saturday.

Whitewater cascaded through the gate of the Morganza Floodway in Louisiana Sunday, part of an emergency effort to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the rising Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineers opened the first gate in the spillway on Saturday, diverting waters that will flood communities along the bayous that thousands call home.
It's a historic moment; the Morganza Floodway has only been opened once before, in 1973.
Army Corps of Engineers Col. Ed Fleming says it's the first time the Corps has ever operated three floodways at once on the Mississippi. In Missouri, the Corps blew holes in levees earlier this month to open the Birds Point Floodway. That lowered the river and protected Cairo, Ill., from flooding. The Corps has also opened the Bonnet Carre spillway of New Orleans and now the Morganza Floodway. Fleming says the Morganza is being opened to keep stress off the Mississippi levees that protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
"We'll take approximately 10,000 cubic feet per second off the top of the Mississippi River," he says.
That's just a fraction of what the Morganza can handle. Even when the river crests in this area late next week, the Corps expects to open just a quarter of the floodgates. Fleming says the Corps will open the gates slowly — just one or two at a time — for a few reasons. One is to protect the spillway.
"The water will come out of here pretty quickly," he says. "You don't want to scour the backside of this structure. From an environmental perspective, obviously there are lots of bear and other kinds of wildlife. And we want to make sure they have the opportunity to get to higher ground. And last but most importantly, we want to make sure folks have the understanding that water's coming their way and they need to evacuate."
About 60 miles south of the Morganza spillway, the people of Butte La Rose have gotten the message. At the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, Teddy and Michelle Wyatt, along with their friend Clo Comeaux, were stacking pews from the church on a trailer.
"We just volunteered to take everything out, to salvage what we could," they say. "The pews, the altar, the cross, you know, everything that was moveable."
Down by the levee, a group of prisoners from the St. Martin Parish jail are working to fill sandbags to protect private and public buildings. They're being supervised by Clayton Landry, with the sheriff's department. He says it's been a busy week in Butte La Rose.
"People are trying to move out, move their gear out of their homes and camps and save as much as they can," he says. "The sheriff hasn't announced a mandatory evacuation yet, but as soon as the water rises, they will announce it."
That could come in the next few days. The Corps says it will take about three days for water in the floodway to reach the southern end, near Morgan City. Then it will begin to back up throughout the Atchafalaya Basin, backflooding bayou communities that are home to as many as 25,000 people. In these communities, people aren't happy about having to fight the water, but few question the corps' decision to open the floodway.
As for Corps officials, they're cautiously optimistic that with the Morganza, plus all the other levees and floodways in their toolbox, they'll be able to handle the 2011 flood and avert a catastrophe.
But Corps Gen. Michael Walsh says it's important that hundreds of workers with the Corps and other agencies keep patrolling the levees to watch for warning signs. History, he says, shows the price of failure.
"There was an 80-mile width of water covering five states from the '27 flood. So any type of failure or any type of concern from that regard in regards to underseeping and overtopping — we're gonna be on rapidly," he says.
The Corps expects to keep the Morganza Floodway open until the Mississippi crests in Louisiana and falls below a level that's a threat to levees in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Unfortunately for people in the Atchafalaya Basin, that may be another three weeks.

Related NPR Stories

Miss. River Spillway Opens, Towns Await The Flood May 15, 2011

Haley Barbour To Flood-Stricken Mississippians: You’re On Your Own

In the past week, the Mississippi Delta has been hit hard by flooding in the Mississippi River. The rising water wiped out crops, forced families out of their homes, and caused river-front casinos to shut down, costing the government up to $13 million a month. The Associated Press reported that the damage in Memphis was estimated at $320 million, but that “the worst is yet to come, with the crest expected over the next few days.”
Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) –- instead of pledging to do everything possible to help the people of his state deal with the flood -– called for the federal government to declare a flooding disaster, moved his furniture out of his lake house, and told flood-stricken families to rely on their friends to get to higher ground because the state wouldn’t help:

As the water rose, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour moved furniture out of his lake house outside Vicksburg on family land that was inundated during the 1927 flood. A week ago, he urged residents to flee low-lying areas, saying that the state wouldn’t assist the evacuations and that people should help one another secure their property and get out.

With Barbour’s staunch opposition to efforts to reduce climate pollution — which is driving the extreme flooding — it’s probably a good thing for America that he took his hat out of the ring for the presidency late last month.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/haley-barbour-on-your-own/
 

Move Over, Sarah Palin, There's A Bigger Idiot In Town 23JUN10

It is hard to believe there is someone dumber than sarah palin.......but it seems there is, meet haley barbour, governor of Mississippi. We can only thank God he was in Mississippi and  she was in Alaska while they were of breeding age......because think of the offspring they would have produced.....makes my skin crawl!

I never thought I'd write this, but I think we've discovered a new level of stupid below the heretofore impenetrable Sarah Palin floor.
It's not unlike the discovery of a previously unknown species of protohuman deep within a cave somewhere, revealing some new twist in the constantly expanding canon of human evolution. There is, in fact, a Republican of national prominence who makes Sarah Palin seem brighter and less contradictory by comparison. That's not to say Palin has miraculously become smarter or better spoken, it's just that the idiot curve is now redrawn in her favor.
Yes, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi is arguably the new king of all Republican stupids. Palin must now relinquish her Twitter feed, her fork cork and her trident. For Haley Barbour has arrived.
What is it about Republican governors? They're either appearing in interviews with a blood-soaked cletus geeking turkeys in the background, or they're lying about hiking the Appalachian Trail, or they're honoring the Confederate States of America while ignoring slavery, or they're entertaining the treasonous option of state secession, or they're bitching about government stimulus money one minute, then posing with giant stimulus checks the next minute.
And now there's Haley Barbour, who said this week about the $20 billion escrow fund to compensate victims of the oil spill:

"It bothers me to talk about causing an escrow to be made, uh, which will, which makes it less likely that they'll make the income that they need to pay us."

Let's ignore the Palin-ish phrase "causing an escrow fund to be made" and focus on the substance. Paraphrasing Jon Stewart's analysis: Governor Barbour appears to be suggesting here that if BP sets aside $20 billion to be paid to victims of the oil spill, it won't have enough money to... pay out to victims of the oil spill. In other words, Barbour is against compensating victims because he supports compensating victims.
Perhaps next time, Barbour should consult with his smarter sidekicks Roscoe and Enos before speaking about complicated topics like "causing an escrow fund." (Jon Chait gets full credit for the Boss Hogg comparison.)
Of course, this isn't the first and it surely won't be last blast of stupid from Barbour during the ongoing oil spill disaster. He's a study in colloquial southern language and exaggerated accents -- a real life character from an unproduced Coen Brothers movie, and it seems that whenever Barbour opens his mouth for something other than pie, stupid things gush out.
For many weeks, Barbour has been downplaying the toxicity and danger of the oil. Back in mid-May, Barbour said the oil spill will have "minimal impact," rivaling Tony Hayward's infamous remarks about how environmental damage will be "very, very modest."
He's also coined some of the finest "the oil is just like delicious food and therefore harmless" metaphors during the whole disaster.
Who can forget the classic description of the oil as "weathered, emulsified, caramel-colored mousse, like the food mousse." Yum. The food mousse. If you're like me, you can't wait to sample some delightful Gulf seafood that's been marinating in the food mousse.
And the good news is, according to Barbour, "Once it gets to this stage, it's not poisonous." Oh boy!
Seriously, if that's the case, I'd like to see Barbour strap on a pair of inflatable arm floaties and dive into a big old slick of the food mousse and flail around in it for a while. See if he can eat his way out. Maybe the Mississippi tourist bureau could videotape it for their next advertising campaign. You know, because the food mousse is both delicious and not poisonous.
Yet, at the same time, Barbour said, "But if a small animal got coated enough with it, it could smother it. But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn't breathe." This made me wonder if Barbour has had one or two mishaps with a gigantic tube of toothpaste. "Dagnabbit! I've accidentally caused toothpaste to be made all over myself again! Can't... breathe! Glug! Glug!" Aides rush into Barbour's bathroom to find the governor coated from head to toe in toothpaste like a real life version of the Shmoo.
But, as with many Republicans carved from the George W. Bush cloth, the doofish behavior tends to overshadow Barbour's more sinister underbelly.
According to Newsweek, Barbour is quite a fan of the Confederacy and all of its trimmins'.

The Republican governor of Mississippi keeps a large portrait of the University Greys, the Confederate rifle company that suffered 100 percent casualties at Gettysburg, on a wall not far from a Stars and Bars Confederate flag signed by Jefferson Davis.

When Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia fumbled his way through "Confederate History Month," Haley Barbour rushed to his defense, declaring that there was no need to mention slavery in the process. Everyone knows about slavery, Barbour reasoned, so why bother to mention it? Barbour, here, played up the debunked Lost Cause mythology -- deemphasizing slavery as a means of ennobling the South's instigation of the Civil War. Barbour said of the slavery controversy in Virginia, "It's trying to make a big deal out of something doesn't amount to diddly."
Newsweek also reported:

Barbour was embarrassed by an aide's nasty remarks about "coons" at campaign rallies. But in reprimanding the aide, he only made things worse. As The New York Times recounted it, Barbour warned the aide that if he "persisted in racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks."

Right. Everyone knows you don't speak the truth out loud. You keep your racist remarks to yourself. However, Confederate flags signed by Jefferson Davis are fine and dandy. And if you're Haley Barbour, it's also okay to appear at a Blackhawk fundraiser hosted by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a paleoconservative white nationalist organization that, among other things, proudly advances the positions of the old Confederacy.
It gets better. Barbour was also the founder of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a DC lobbying firm with significant connections to the tobacco industry. When Barbour left the company to help run the George W. Bush campaign in 2000, the firm signed a deal with R.J. Reynolds worth more than $17,000 a month. Nothing like being steeped in lobbying and cancer money on top of everything else.
And Haley Barbour is looking like a frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2012. I ask you, though: Who better to represent the Republican Party against the first African American presidential incumbent in the entire history of civilization? Here we have an overweight, southern-fried, tobacco-funded, lobbyist superfan of the Confederacy with a history of racially questionable ideas and connections who can barely string together a comprehensible sentence. What better way to put a face and voice to the increasingly regional, homogenized, sophophobic GOP than to nominate Haley Barbour for president.
Keep going, Republicans. You're doing great!