A horse is a horse...of course, of course...

Mardi Gras (French for "Fat Tuesday") is the day before Ash Wednesday, and is also called "Shrove Tuesday" or "Pancake Day". It is the final day of Carnival. It is a celebration that is held just before the beginning of the Christian liturgical season of Lent. The feast should not be confused with the Polish Fat Thursday, or even McDonalds' Fat Every day.

They are celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans this week. Yes, I know there are those of you out there who will pull the "Return to a semblance of normalcy" defense, but the sad fact of the matter is New Orleans is so far removed from "normalcy" right now, it's rather offensive to me to see parades going on with drunken people dressing up like their headed to the largest "Rocky Horror Picture Show" convention on record. Even the Mayor, the fine spokesman Ray Nagin was in on the celebration, decked out in military gear and riding a horse through town. I guess that's what you have to do when you're given $2 Billion and you haven't spent very much of it on little conveniences like buildings, public transportation, and reliable electricity. You ride your horse proudly through the French Quarter, careful not to turn your gaze towards any of the devastation that still exists in 4/5ths of your city. But it's the government's fault anyways, right Mr. Mayor? Today you made a statement to the press. In a recorded sound bite to the question, "What would you have done differently?", you said....and I do indeed quote:

"I've been thinking a lot about that lately, and I would have done 2 things differently. First, I would have hopefully received a call from Max Mayfield advising me of the situation, and secondly...well...the yellow buses you all saw in the photos, those belonged to the school board and they were flooded, so the buses I had - we moved to higher ground and then they were flooded." Ahhhhhh...thank you Mr. Mayor for that - uuuhhhhh - whatever it was you just said. Let's take a few minutes and break this one down, shall we?

Firstly, the Mayors answer was by no means an answer, that much is clear. We're going to take it a step at a time, ok? The first thing HE would have done was receive a call from Max Mayfield. I should tell you that Max is the Director of the National Hurricane Center. Apparently Max missed the Mayor's telepathic request for a ring up. In any case, out of the 270 million or so people in this country, 269,999,999 knew a massive hurricane was going to direct hit New Orleans 4 days prior. Apparently the one person out of the loop was Mayor Nagin. Since Max Mayfield failed to call him personally, the mayor can now claim the "Hurricane? What hurricane?" excuse. Alright, so we've established according to the Mayor's comments that the first thing HE would have done differently was for someone else to do something differently. Hmmmm.

Onward we trudge. The hundreds of yellow buses we all saw. First part of that one: "The yellow buses belonged to the school board". Apparently the mayor of a major city has no pull with the school board on the use of their buses, especially in a time of crisis - which we all know was not a time of crisis for this Mayor because Max Mayfield didn't call him and tell him about a hurricane, so he didn't know about it - but either way, even IF the Mayor had known about some sort of hurricane bearing down on his city, those buses belonged to the school board. Everyone knows the school board would never lend their buses out to save lives, especially children. School boards hate children, we all know that.

Second part of that one, and it goes along with the statement about the buses the Mayor "had": "they ended up flooded like the school buses"...see below, please.

Friday, Aug 27th...the Governor of Louisiana declares a State of Emergency. Saturday, Aug 28 the Governor of Mississippi declares a State of Emergency. Apparently while this was going on, the Mayor of New Orleans was oblivious to these developments because Max Mayfield had yet to call him, which of course was the first thing the Mayor would have done, blah boodee boop. Later on Saturday, both Governors asked the President to declare a Federal State of Emergency. The Mayor, sitting idly in his office wondering why every channel on his TV was doing the weather, went call-less. Sunday, Aug 28th, the Mayor (have I mentioned him yet?) found out there was a pretty big hurricane headed his way and issued the first ever evacuation notice for the city of New Orleans. The buses, stationed "just in case" for the past 48 hours, apparently had already flooded...at least according to the Mayor's statement above. The next morning, Katrina hit as a Cat 4 hurricane, and within hours the levee's started to fail one by one, and about 28 hours later, the city was awash.

It was at this time that the well-documented screw-ups by FEMA and other agencies began. We could talk for hours and hours about the federal government's failures, but it's been done and is still happening now. What bothers me is at this point in time, no one in high authority has taken Mayor Nagin to task, and apparently no one will. Evidently he needed someone to tell him what was about to happen weather-wise, and no one on his staff informed him that he had magic buses that could flood before the storm even hit. Of the 72 hours before the catastophe, he spent the first 48 motionless, then issued a useless decree because the majority of his residents didn't have the means to get out in 24 days, let alone 24 hours. They needed his his assistance, and he couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't provide it. However, he's the first of many to point out the failures of others while deflecting as much away from himself as he can, and he's gearing up for another run for the Mayoral office. Why not? Marion Barry kept getting re-elected in D.C., and he was a crack-head. I gotta tell ya though, the guy sure looks good up on that horse in his fatigues with the purple and gold beads.

Party on dude...it's Mardis Gras.

Feel free to opine. I now declare this blog open for the inevitable bloodshed and tears...let the unravelling of the faint-hearted begin!!!!

Speak to me...