The Urban Grind

Anyone who had bothered reading the right wing blogs four years ago would have known that Barack Hussein Obama was, and is nothing but a resentful race pimp with a huge chip on his shoulder (who was very open in his praise of Jeremiah Wright as well)! Despite being buffoons, black “leaders” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton actually paved the way for Barack Obama. Our current White House occupant is nothing more than a slicker version of those two men, as this video shows.

In this clip, you’ll see Obama riling up the audience in an Ebonics accent, by complaining about how New Orleans was still not rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, and thereby implying that white racism was to blame. Never mind that the Governor at the time was Kathleen Blanco, an incompetent Democrat who didn’t want the feds taking control of the evacuation effort. And let’s not forget whining Mayor Ray Nagin who never bothered using the city’s buses to evacuate his people. Instead he demanded Greyhound buses in a profanity laced rant. Yet despite all this incompetence, Obama blamed white racism. Yeah right!

You’ll also notice that Obama brought up the the Stafford Act, and how it was not waived for the people of New Orleans, which is a blatant lie.

I noted yesterday that in his 2007 speech in Hampton, Virginia, Barack Obama falsely claimed that the Stafford Act had not been waived for relief money appropriated to help New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Stafford Act requires that, absent a waiver, localities match a percentage of the money they receive in federal assistance.

Obama’s claim was false. A few weeks before Obama gave his Hampton speech, Congress had waived the Stafford Act in connection with $6.9 billion in federal aid for New Orleans.

But it gets worse for Obama. Neo-neocon points out that Obama was one of 14 Senators who voted against the waiver of the Stafford Act. So not only was Obama’s complaint false, it was one he would have lacked standing to raise, given his vote on the issue.

Now, Obama voted against the Stafford Act waiver because it was part of a bill providing funds for the war effort in Iraq. Apparently, Obama’s desire to make sure the surge failed and we lost to al Qaeda in Iraq trumped his concern for the good people of New Orleans. Or maybe it was all posturing, Obama’s specialty, since he knew the money would go to Iraq and the Stafford Act would be waived regardless of how he voted.

And of course Obama went on about how it was the government’s job to teach the residents of N.O. how to rebuild their city, and that it was their job invest in city businesses. Anyway, here’s the video.

The new Governor of Louisiana is Republican Bobby Jindal, a graduate of Brown University, Oxford, and a Rhodes scholar.

I’m sure he’ll be a big improvement over former Democrat Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who luckily decided not to run for another term. Now if only they could find someone to replace New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

First came the hurricane, then came the “workers,” then came the anchor babies.

?Before the storm, only 2 percent were Hispanic; now about 96 percent are Hispanic,? said Beth Perriloux, the head nurse in the department?s health unit in Metairie.

There are so many pregnant women that the clinics have reached capacity. Dr. Erin Brewer, the department?s medical director, said, ?We?ve gone from having a maternity clinic two to three days a week to five days a week.?

Many immigrant women are forgoing prenatal care and showing up, ready to deliver, in hospital emergency rooms, where they are required to be seen even if they are in the country illegally.

Now if you read this whole article, you’ll see that aside from these women belting out babies on the U.S. taxpayer dime, no mention is ever made of fathers. It’s just a sob story about how poor these women are, having to pay off their coyotes, and renting apartments.

True to form, that’s all Mayor Nagin had to do for Governor Blanco to order the National Guard in to the city, after five “youths” were killed.

It was the first time the National Guard has been used for law enforcement in the United States since the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Nagin had sought the troops after five teenagers in a sport utility vehicle were shot and killed in the city’s deadliest attack in at least 11 years. Police said the attack was apparently motivated by drugs or revenge. Also, a man was stabbed to death Sunday night in an argument over beer.

Now why on earth should the National Guard be used for Mayor Nagin’s screw ups? What about the New Orleans police? Could it be that they are still on their all expense paid vacations to Las Vegas? Or are they still too busy looting to enforce the law?

What a horrible place!

What happens when you have government bureaucracies involved in the hurricane cleanup business?

You get loads of contractors and subcontractors ripping off the taxpayers.

Since this is Lousy-ana, I guess this kind of thing is to be expected.

“If this is ‘normal,’ we have a serious problem in this country,” said Benny Rousselle, president of Plaquemines Parish, a hurricane-ravaged district downriver from New Orleans. “The federal government ought to be embarrassed about what is happening. If local governments tried to run things this way, we’d be run out of town.”

What is it with these people? Could it be something in their drinking water? Run out of town, my foot! Your idiot mayor and governor screwed up royally during the whole hurricane fiasco, and you haven’t run them out of town. Do locals get a free pass?

For example, one company hired as an ice vendor owns no ice-making equipment. Landstar Systems Inc., a $2 billion Florida company placed in charge of the bus evacuation of New Orleans, is a transportation broker that specializes in trucking and has no buses of its own. In 2002, the company was awarded a $100 million contract to provide emergency transportation services for the federal government during major disasters. The contract, which is administered by the Federal Aviation Administration, was expanded in the fall to a maximum $400 million. Landstar declined a request for an interview.

Thousands of New Orleanians had been stranded in the Superdome for more than 48 hours by the time FEMA issued the first order for a bus evacuation early on the morning of Aug. 31. The order was passed to Landstar, which then turned to other companies to locate buses, according to an official chronology prepared by the Department of Transportation. Landstar hired Carey International Inc., of Washington, which then hired the BusBank, of Chicago, and Transportation Management Systems of Columbia, Md. Bus Bank and TMS called private charter-bus companies — some from as far away as California and Washington state — asking them to send buses and drivers to New Orleans.

Why can’t people understand that big business will always do jobs more efficiently and for less money that the government. Doesn’t the sorry state of our public schools show them that?

Porn, booze and tatoos.

Ah, those poor, downtrodden people!

A Republican today filed documents launching a drive to oust Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco.

Right on!

The Mayor of New Orleans is now asking for 17 billion dollars to rebuild the levees to Category 3 capacity.

Louisiana’s senators, Republican David Vitter and Democrat Mary L. Landrieu, are pushing legislation for $250 billion in rebuilding aid.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved $120 million for New Orleans to provide essential services and has sent the first installment of $20 million. Last month, Congress approved $18.5 billion to pay flood insurance claims.

Today, the Federal Housing Administration will announce a one-year program to pay the mortgages of 20,000 hurricane victims in the Gulf states with mortgage insurance.

Many mortgage companies voluntarily granted limited extensions on mortgages and foreclosures.

I wonder if the residents will attack the levee workers like they attacked the FEMA people in the Lower Ninth Ward recently.

In this instance, it’s coming from the people at the New Orleans Times Picayune.

NEW YORK As New Orleans approaches three months since Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, The Times-Picayune on Sunday took its strongest stance to date against the failed reaction of federal officials to the storm?s destruction with a Page One, above-the-fold editorial slamming Congress and urging readers to demand more reaction from Washington.

Among other things, the editorial then took shots at the Army Corp of Engineers for failing to properly protect the city from natural disasters. ??the federal government built levees and convinced us that we were safe. We weren’t. The levees, we were told, could stand up to a Category 3 hurricane. They couldn’t.?

It comes as Time magazine publishes a major story this week, with the heading, “New Orleans Today: It’s Worse Than You Think: Neighborhoods are still dark, garbage piles up on the street, and bodies are still being found. The city’s pain is a nation’s shame.”

So I guess the roughly 60 billion in federal aid approved by Congress is not enough…?

Or what about the tax relief bills passed for the benefit of the Katrina victims?

WASHINGTON — The House and Senate each passed tax cut bills Thursday aimed at helping victims of Hurricane Katrina as government money continues to flow in response to the devastation.

The House and Senate tax plan, among other steps, waives penalties for hurricane victims who tap into their retirement savings accounts, helps the working poor hold onto an earned income tax credit, and provides a tax break to anyone who houses evacuees for two months or more.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley also hoped to pass a bipartisan $5 billion to $7 billion plan to speed health care to those displaced by Katrina by easing rules for the Medicaid federal health care program, though objections from unnamed senators had snagged the bill as off midday.

And the Senate is likely to pass and send to Bush a House-passed bill to temporarily ease rules requiring welfare recipients to work 30 hours a week for their benefits while extending the overall welfare program through the end of the year.

Separately, an amendment adopted Wednesday by the Senate on a voice vote would provide more than 350,000 families left homeless by Katrina with emergency housing vouchers averaging $600 a month for up to six months.

Nope. The eternal malcontents want more goodies.

Frankly, if they want more sympathy for their plight, I think it would behoove them not to loot, or rape and kill their neighbors for starters. And the fact that some of the hospitals are rumored to have euthanized their elderly/sick patients right after the storm doesn’t make me want to open up my wallet for them.

But getting back to the writer’s complaint about the levees, I’d like to know why it’s the federal government’s fault when the levee board misspent all the money they did receive.

If these people spent half even half as much time demanding accountability from their local government, as they do bashing the federal government, they probably wouldn’t be in the situation they’re in.

Thats what Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Lousy-ana is doing.

BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 17 – Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco created an advisory commission Monday to lead the state’s recovery after two devastating hurricanes, responding to critics who said the pace of rebuilding was moving too slowly.

The 23-member advisory board, to be known as the Louisiana Recovery Authority, will be led by Norman C. Francis, the president of Xavier University, who will serve as chairman, and Walter Isaacson, former chief executive of CNN and now president of the Aspen Institute, who will be vice chairman. Xavier, in New Orleans, is the nation’s only historically black Catholic university. Mr. Isaacson is a New Orleans native.

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“The reputation is that there is a lot of corruption,” he said. “We’re going to be squeaky clean, with open bidding and big auditing firms.”

Squeaky clean, my foot! I’ll believe that when I see pigs flying. And apparently, I’m not the only one.

(CNSNews.com) – A former president of the New Orleans City Council and member of the Orleans Levee Board blames corruption “down to the bone” and “unbelievable ineptness” for the loss of life and injuries during and after Hurricane Katrina. The Republican politician also fears the worst for her city if local officials are allowed to manage the federally funded rebuilding efforts.

“The corruption in city hall was horrible, and it was the same thing at the levee board,” Peggy Wilson told Cybercast News Service. “The corruption in Louisiana and in the City of New Orleans goes down to the bone.”

The only way things will be squeaky clean is if Governor Blanco, and Mayor Nagin are recalled, and the entire Levee Board dismantled.