New Orleans citizens locked out of city council meeting

Hmmm, this is not good.

With so much going on in the news recently, I missed this the first go-around. It seems that - on top of all their other woes - New Orleans citizens were locked out from a court-ordered city council meeting called to allegedly discuss the demolition of 4,500 housing units by HUD. Protesting citizens who managed to be present inside the council's chambers were tazered and allegedly clubbed by police.

The upshot of the meeting is that the council voted unanimously to raze the housing; apparently, as far as the city council is concerned, the residents can now return to their tents, if they have them.

In closely related news, federal investigators are looking into possible illegal kick-back activity by HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson and his assistant, Scott Keller, both Republican appointees.


current-events

Am I crazy, or just very, very angry?

The Shrub is going to come on the TV here in just a few and tell me how great it is to be an American. I couldn’t agree more. It’s great to come home from your second part-time job at the Wal-Mart to a house full of ignorant, doped-up kids, only to turn on the news to watch another piece of American infrastructure drop into a river, taking several fellow taxpayers with it.

It’s just swell to learn that the bastards in Congress passed another ratification of the Shrub’s demon vision of Iran as a terrorist state, declaring them “murderers, ” while American Blackwater contractors machine gun Iraqi citizens with impunity and we learn that not only are we supplying guns and ammo to the Sunnis, we’re giving weapons to the Shi’ias , too, thus ensuring that both sides have lots of armament for their upcoming full-out civil war.

Meanwhile here at home, a reporter on assignment for Britain's largest newspaper (the UK Guardian) was deported after spending 26 hours in lockup in an undisclosed location for failing to have a journalist visa, per the US Patriot (sic) Act. If this is how we treat our friends, you can just imagine how we treat people we don’t like.

By the way, New Orleans is still a mess and the Shrub just vetoed the idea of a 5 cent tax on gasoline to pay for repairing America’s bridges, and he still wants another $80 billion to continue fucking up Iraq. In breaking news we learn that the Japanese just fired up their presses and printed a trillion (with a “T”) yen to prop up the failing (and getting worse) American real estate market.

Congress – and the idiots in the White House – could take some pointers from the Chinese, where the guy in charge of inspecting Mattel toys for the American market committed suicide after it was discovered that those toys were covered with poisonous lead paint.

So how’s your day been?

current-events

State of the Nation

Charity begins at home