Greetings from Austin, Texas! The site of the Annual Out and Equal Workplace Summit. I’m here to emcee their annual awards dinner gala where they celebrate and honor the work of LGBT activists in the corporate world and the work of corporations that make it possible for LGBT people to be out and creative at work.

We are also in the path of Hurricane Ike. It’s 99 degrees and muggy, so I am not out seeing the sites of Austin. That leaves me in my lovely hotel room with this little laptop and the de rigueur flat panel television. The 24-7 weather coverage is hyperbolic, hysteric and all I want to know is whether I’ll be able to get the hell out of here tomorrow morning. Not a one of the slick, soon to be slickered, drawling weather forecasters has said, “Kate Clinton you will make it back to NYC on Saturday with a one hour delay.”

Her-icane Sarah has not petered out and alone in this hotel room I have her talking with Charles Gibson on, but muted. Her voice could shatter that glass ceiling. I still have that vague nausea.

It’s important in this hurricane season not to conflate the feelings of powerlessness I get fronting the isobars of a hurricane with the powerless feeling I can get watching the “there you go again” Category 10 Republican lying cheating hot air machine. It’s easy to do and that’s just what they want me to do.

Let me be clear. I am a Vagina-American but I could care less about possible president Palin’s insane family, her glasses, her hockey momness or darling husband. Let L’Oreal come out with a new line of pig lipstick. I don’t care.

We’ve established the newfound sexism detectors of the cynical Republicans and their snickered media mouthpieces, their double standards, their lying manipulating ways. The cancerous religious right, rumored to be dead or in remission, was having their version of a three-day waiting period, and with Jesus Palin, they are risen again. They don’t like gay people. They don’t want women to have control over their own bodies. They don’t give a shit about running this country. They care only about winning the election. Then lifting off from Alaska in the rapture.