Once more Ray Nagin shows why he's not fit to be the Mayor of New Orleans

OK, as a former resident of New Orleans and someone who hopes to move back someday, I confess that I was an early supporter of Ray Nagin when he first ran for Mayor of New Orleans back in May of 2002. As a former vice president of Cox Communications, he appeared to have business sense and the ability to make decisions and transcend the race-card-playing, partisan mudslinging that has been the hallmark of Louisiana politics for as long as anyone can remember. At last, I thought, New Orleans is on it's way back up. I'd hoped the city could finally recover from the mess left by former Mayor Marc Morial and his cronies.

And I thought he was doing pretty well, right up until Hurricane Katrina hit.

First he ignored the danger until it was too late. Everyone knew that a hurricane of that magnitude could and would someday hit the Crescent City and cause exactly the damage that Katrina did. Contingency plans had been drawn up decades ago and revised frequently. The plans were up to date and available but when crunch time came, Nagin didn't implement them. Instead he just contemplated the inside of his own rectum. (That's a polite was of saying he stood around with his head stuck up his ass.)
The floodwaters came and threatened thousands while 500 buses that could have evacuated most of them were left in low-lying lots to be destroyed by the advancing waters. His excuse for that travesty? A public comment about how hard it was to get city workers to come in even on a good day. That's right--he blamed the bus drivers even though records show that his administration never even bothered to try to call them in for this emergency.

Then he criticized the Bush administration for not stepping in fast enough, even though the primary responsibility for New Orleans lay with him and Governor Kathleen Blanco (A Democrat elected solely due to the powerful Democratic machine in New Orleans Parish--the rest of the state voted for her more experienced Republican opponent.)

Next, in the face of universal criticism by the voters of New Orleans, Nagin called on Blanco to postpone the February election because he is up for re-election and he knew that the voters would have held him responsible for his failings and elected anyone other than him. And to her disgrace, Blanco postponed the election until April, giving Nagin more time to try to rehabilitate his image. Nagin couldn't survive the February election that the law calls for but law and proceedure never really matter much to Democrats when one of their own is threatened.

Now Nagin's putting his feet back in his mouth again. In a Martin Luther King Day speech that sounded like it was co-written by Whitney Houston and Marion Barry during a crack-smoking binge, he claims to be a prophet of God. Nagin says that the Hurricane came because "God is mad at America over the Iraq war". He then says that God wants New Orleans to become "a chocolate city" again, meaning that it has to be rebuilt as a majority black city.

The areas hardest hit by the storm were some the poorest, most crime-ridden areas (like the lower 9th Ward) and as a result of the storm, most of the people who have been committing the majority of the crimes while laying around on welfare in the massive public housing projects and low-income rental neighborhoods were relocated all over the country by FEMA and in effect given one-way tickets out of town. This was an inordinate benefit to New Orleans and it created a chance for a smaller, safer, more prosperous city to rise from the ruins--a city of educated working people who would actually contribute to the culture of the city. But the second-handers and poverty pimps have been out in force ever since, screaming that racism caused the flood, racism caused the slow response (Ironicaly the biggest failings were Nagin's and he's black), and now racism is supposedly the reason why the federal government isn't shelling out more money to bring all the poor black people back to New Orleans.

And now Nagin's jumped on that bandwagon big time. As quoted in a CNN article,

"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," Nagin said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

I'd like to ask God about that. My money says God would say that Nagin's a liar and a fool.

But that's not all. Nagin also claims to talk regularly with the ghost of Martin Luther King, Jr. Now I'm not even going to bother with that one because that's just too whack for words. It's right up there with Hillary Clinton's claim that she channels the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.

New Orleans deserves better than Nagin. I'm sorry Ray, but you've lost my support for good. I hope that the voters turn you out in April or whenever it is that the Democrats decide to let them vote again. And I call on New Orleans boosters and residents to resist the demands from the paid hustlers who are exploiting the poor for personal profit. New Orleans doesn't need any public housing rebuilt in flood-prone areas and if some people want to live on the backs of the taxpayers no matter what color or race they are, they can stay in Houston or even Anchorage, Alaska if that's where the government puts them and they can be grateful.

New Orleans will always be a diverse city. Many of the well-to-do in that city are black and asian as well as white. The claims made by Nagin and others that all the blacks are impoverished ward of the state who are entitled to homes in New Orleans but won't be able to live there unless someone else pays for their house and moving expenses is an insult to every hard-working, successful black man and woman who lives there, even the ones who live in that Uptown area that Nagin disparages.