How's that foot taste, Ray?

If Ray Nagin, soon-to-be outgoing Mayor of New Orleans (Oh, please God...) had any friends left in the world, they'd have put duct tape over his mouth by now. I mean he just keeps saying dumb stuff and proving to everyone that he's not the man to represent all of the residents and businesses of the Crescent City.

His latest gaffe was minor compared to some of his earlier ones but it still showed us all how he thinks. Addressing a crowd of ex-New Orleans residents in Houston and trying to give them a reason to vote for him. (Someone tell me again why people who aren't living in the city are being allowed to vote?) As he spoke to this crowd, rather than tell them why he's the best man for the job, or lay out his plans to undo the damage caused by his previous screw-ups before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, he tried to scare them into voting for him by pointing out that most of the people now running against him aren't black.
Nagin noted that 23 candidates entered the mayoral fray before the registration deadline last week. "Very few of them look like us," he told the crowd of black ex-residents who had gathered at an NAACP meeting to hear him.

So in Nagin's mind, he obviously thinks that his best chance to get re-elected is to forget about his track-record of ineptitude, including the Superdome, the Convention Center and all of those submerged school buses that could have prevented that horror and just raise the specter of some white guy running the city.

Does Nagin really hate white people that much? Or does he just think that black people are really that stupid that he can scare them into giving him another chance just by making some racist statements? Either way, he's clearly got no business in office. The city needs someone who can be inclusive, not divisice. Someone who will unite the people who are left, not divide them or use the people who aren't even there any more to try to keep the real residents from voting him out of office.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Friday that it wasn't his fault city school buses weren't mobilized to facilitate the Hurricane Katrina evacuation he ordered.

Appearing on NBC's "Dateline," Nagin was asked by host Stone Phillips: "What was mobilized? Were buses ready to take people away?"

"No. None of that," the Big Easy mayor replied.

"Why is that?" an incredulous Phillips asked.

Nagin replied: "I dont know. That is question for somebody else."