Friday, August 8, 2008
Wow, just wow!
No one craves the spotlight more than Nagin. Why else would he so publicly waffle about whether or not he would even show up to the council meeting? This guy would club baby seals with puppies if he thought it would get him some good camera time. He is apparently a subscriber to the any publicity is good publicity school of thought. Well Clarence, I am here to tell you that just ain't so. Let's say that, in your former life at Cox back before you went bat-shit nuts, the cable converters started blowing up and killing people. Would you be beating the "keeps our brand out there" drum? I think not.
In the same vein, a high murder rate keeping the "New Orleans Brand" out there, not good. A mayor who is descending further and further into madness and pulling us down with him? also not good. You saying that you're "sick and tired" of being scrutinized? Really, really not good. You are a politician at the helm of a city that is accepting billions of dollars in recovery money from tax payers who, if they had their druthers, would put up a wall and turn the whole place into a penal colony ala Escape from New York.
There are people out here that are really sick and really tired. Sick because the stress of rebuilding their lives takes a heavy toll, and tired because we constantly have to explain why we aren't further along collectively with the recovery. All we can do is try to make our little corner of New Orleans right. I'm not saying you have to do it all by yourself, but please delegate the responsibility responsibly.
Your smugness, incompetence and outright lies are not helping us out. This is not the brand we want out there. Throw in the towel, make the decision that is right for the city for the first time in 3 years.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Bend Over
This is not going to tickle people. At least we are getting our money's worth, right? Nagin is clearly competent, not at all smug and with him at the helm of the recovery, we should be back to normal in no time...wait, isn't it back to normal already? I lose track. I'm too busy driving streets that look like Beirut after a mortar attack, and doing soft-shoe dance routines for tourists in the Quarter for extra money to pay my Entergy bill...totally back to normal.
This has to be a plan to run people out. A massive land grab. Is there oil beneath the Lower 9th, Lakeview, Gentilly and the East that we don't know about? We could all be the modern version of the Clampets if we just stay put (That was a Beverly Hillbillies Reference for all of you that didn't waste a large chunk of your youth watching Nick at Nite). I wouldn't recommend going into your back yard and shooting the shit out of the ground hoping to find black gold, or Texas Tea (reference continues). But, if Halliburton comes knocking at your door, I would get a wee bit suspicious. Keep your head on a swivel folks. Residents around the Haynesville shale up near Shreveport are cashing in — something like $30K an acre. We could be in the petro-crosshairs right now and not even know it.
Maybe Dyan French isn't as crazy as she sounds, maybe she was on to something when she said the levees were blown...and isn't it suspicious that Blackwater just happened to arrive in NOLA shortly after the hurricane? And that they have been working for Halliburton in Iraq for years? If this is my last post, you know that I stumbled upon a massive conspiracy here.
What is a better recipe to get people off their property? Mix one part citywide devastation, with equal parts crippling insurance rates, high property tax, high murder rates, and C. Ray Fucking Nagin! That's almost enough to get even the most stalwart New Orleanian pull the eject handle.
But, they underestimated some of us. We'll wait it out. We'll keep our eye on them and stick around. Who knows there may be oil under them thar streets. We could be rich, rich I tell ya!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Shepherd's Spiral Continues
Update: A friend just forwarded me the PDF of the search warrant for Shepherd's car...News flash, he's full of shit!
In a JPSO search warrant obtained on Monday, it is stated that Shepherd is the one who was threatening his ex-girlfriend's mother and sister, not the other way around. He also dropped his car off at a body shop to get a window that was "shot out" fixed.
In further refuting his comments and testimony, Shepherd was in possession of both his own cell phone as well as Thaise Ashford's, which makes their story that they traded phones to settle their "trust issues" about as plausible as Eddie Price's "I just had a few" lie.
In the warrant, it says that Shepherd basically stalked this woman, driving through her neighborhood and making harassing phone calls. It also states that he was arrested for a similar incident in 2000; simple battery and making harassing phone calls.
'Bout Time
It looks as though the Nagin political machine (read: a hamster on a wheel) may finally be breaking down. IT Director Anthony Jones (aka the highest paid college dropout in New Orleans) is finally resigning. Unfortunately, in true Nagin fashion, he will be further rewarded for lying by taking another job in city government.
According to a source in City Hall, the Nagin clique is in full crisis mode and having many closed door meetings. Ostensibly to figure out who gets thrown under which RTA bus, and how to save the HDIC (Head Dipshit In Charge) from impeachment, federal indictment or just the pitchfork-and-torch-wielding mob soon to be advancing down Perdido St. over the NOAH debacle and boondaggle.
But of course it begs the question, is there any way to get this to stick to "Hizhonah"? The HDIC has proven to be as slippery as greased owl snot. I assume this situation will prove no different. He will be back to smugly delegating to under-qualified political carpetbaggers and slowly hammering nail after nail into the city's coffin.
This reminds me of the old adage about how to boil a frog...if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out. However, if you slowly heat up the water, the frog will get used to it and ultimately boil to death without trying to escape. We are the frog in this situation, and Nagin is turning up the heat on the cast-iron pot in which we all sit.
It's time to take our asses off the flame. Get this sack of crap out of office. Be it by recall election or a good ole fashioned riot.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Shepherd's Confusion
Leave lap dancing to the pros
Posted by Letters to the Editor July 28, 2008 5:21PM
Re: "State senator arrested in battery, theft, " Page 1, July 28. I read with dismay the report in Monday's paper of the arrest of a member of the Louisiana Senate, but it was the circumstances of the arrest, as reported by one of the arresting officers, that really caught my eye.
Police said two women were in Sen. Derrick Shepherd's residence, and at the time of the arrest one of them was performing a lap dance for the recumbent incumbent. When I linked that fact with the $100 bill allegedly missing from his ex-girlfriend's pocketbook the story started to come together.
Clearly, the senator doesn't understand that most of the cabarets on Bourbon Street take credit cards. No need to raid someone else's cookie jar for the odd dollar bill to pay for an amateur dance when you can slap down the plastic and high roll to your heart's content.
This lamentable ignorance may be unique to Louisiana, because this past week New Orleans hosted the National Conference of State Legislatures, and I'm pleased to report that our sales numbers indicate that other states' legislators and their staffs are better informed.
Robert Watters
Rick's Cabaret
New Orleans
Diving in...
I would like to start with our venerable mayor. How is this guy still in office. He has clearly lost his mind. After chastising Lee Zurik for doing his job (which happens to be taking his punk ass to task when millions of dollars in recovery money are misappropriated as they appear to have been) he asks how Zurik is aiding the city's recovery. He's aiding the recovery by acting as the fourth estate you tremendous douche bag! The watch dog aspect of the media is one of the only things that makes it worthwhile. I think we should all have the opportunity to punch Nagin in the gut (a la Derrick Shepard on his ex-girlfriend) for continuously dropping the ball in the nearly three years since the storm.
I don't know that he was all that qualified in the first place. How is running a quasi-monopoly all that difficult. Cox cable's pitch back when he was at the helm could have been "you want cable? Then fuck you, we're all you got." I mean truly this guy is a charlatan. All he wants is to act like a drunken idiot in front of Gallier Hall on Fat Tuesday, and spend the rest of the year dodging reporters and screwing the citizens to the wall. Remarkable.
I don't know if someone else could have done a better job, but I know they couldn't have done any worse. The last two years of the Nagin administration may be the longest of my life. I hope the whole NOAH thing cleans out city hall...empty offices will be far better than what's there now.