You'll Never Hear About This

Just after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi (but especially New Orleans), droves of folks headed north to Arkansas. There's been very little mention of my home state providing diddly squat in the national news. Only today in The Wall Street Journal has any article (that I know of) in a "national" newspaper even commented on what Arkansas is doing for the folks who, quite frankly, don't have homes any longer.

Here's the link to the article, as I can't and won't rehash what has already been written.

Click it. Read it. Come back and continue.

Finally! We're getting some press!

My mom wondered not too long after Katrina reached the shorline why the national news were only mentioning Texas as seemingly the only neighboring state providing anything for the hurricane evacuees. It bugged her and it bugged me that there was no mention of Arkansas' herculean efforts for these people.

It's no secret to readers of DAO that I have a very low opinion of the Republican mindset and an even lesser opinion of conservatives in general. I also, on the whole, have never been a big fan of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Ever since he took office, I bristled at the notion of a former Southern Baptist preacher holding the highest office in the state. Why? Because, as I predicted when he first took office, he was going to use his position to legislate his morality upon the heathen masses of Arkansas (and if there's one major beef I have against conservative Republicans is their modus operandi of forcing their beliefs and more importantly their morals into laws). For all the reasons I have to question Gov. Huckabee's decisions over the better part of the last decade, I'm going to go on record right now by saying he did our state proud. For everything that the Fed's (and that includes Bush the Younger) did horribly, horribly wrong during Hurricane Katrina, Huckabee did everything right and continues to do so.

I've seen it countless times when airplanes filled with evacuees land in Arkansas, Huckabee is right there on the tarmac waiting for them. As they deplane and look around at their new surroundings, there he is shaking all their hands, looking them in the eyes, and saying, "Welcome home." It's almost... no, not almost... it flat out is what Clinton would've done.

Which got me thinking.

Huckabee has been getting more and more ink lately. He's been hither and yon in key delegate states, meeting people and pressing the flesh. It's on several pundits' minds that he's probably going to make a run for the Presidency in '08.

But c'mon. I mean, what are the chances? What are the chances of an "aw, shucks", out-of-nowhere, Governor from a southern state like Arkansas, who has been in office for nearly 10 years, who is from a little town called Hope holding the power of The Leader of the Free World?

Like that will ever happen...

... again.

(ho-boy....)