My plan for Louisiana

Parishioners of Antioch Spiritual Church on Flood Street in the Lower Ninth Ward move soggy, moldy pews to a garbage pile in the street.



The doors to the church were opened for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, revealing a soggy muddy mess over four months after floods devastated New Orleans.

Maybe if Preznit Bush wasn't AWOL from New Orleans for so long; maybe if he hadn't just cruised St. Charles Avenue in the presidential motorcade the last time he was in New Orleans; maybe if he actually got some mud on his shoes and clothes from tromping around in the sewage-laced muck like these guys did to clean out their church; maybe if he just weren't so friggin' cocky; maybe then he'd realize that the problems in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast are beyond the pale, beyond comprehension, and involve issues that are impacting the well-being of hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Maybe if he actually spent some time here for more than "goddamn press conferences", well, maybe then he'd finally get it -- that he can't just hang back and expect solutions to fall in his lap. He needs to be pro-active.

After he shot down the Baker bill, for example, which would have compensated owners for at least 60 percent of the value of their homes, well, then isn't the ball in his court? (For the record, I think homeowners deserve more than what Baker was offering). Shouldn't Bush have to offer a legitimate alternative? Instead, he sent his waterboy Donald Powell to say that the feds would help the 20,000 people whose homes flooded in areas that weren't in designated flood zones. Hey fuckers! That still leaves about 300,000 people hanging in the balance! I'm not even counting the 1.5 million people across the entire Gulf Coast who were impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita all the way from Lafayette, Louisiana to Mobile, Alabama.

Aren't that many American citizens more important than Iraq? Elections in the Palestinian territories? Counterfeiting in North Korea? The White House is developing plans to deal with those problems? Why can't President Bush get his fucking ass down here to New Orleans for more than a couple of hours every few months -- not for photos -- but TO HELP!!! Instead he's waiting for a nation with a short pop-culture attention span to forget about the ongoing misery (nine out of ten hits I'm getting lately are from people just looking for chocolate city T-shirts).

Which reminds me of what Hurricane Czar Donald Powell's mission really is -- it appears that President Bush appointed a former FDIC official not to cooperate in creating a bold vision for New Orleans' resurrection, but instead to pinch pennies and to crush the hope of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Hey you fuckers! Let me tell you something. We don't need to beg to you monkeyshit-for-brains chickenhawks to give us a goddamn thing. We already produce at least a quarter of the nation's domestic oil, at least a quarter of the nation's seafood, and almost all of the grain and other merchandise destined for export from the Midwest travels through the Port of New Orleans.

So we don't need a handout. We'll just take the plan you had for financing your blockheaded invasion of Iraq -- remember how you said it would pay for itself with Iraqi oil revenues? We'll pay our own way. Just give us the $5-8 billion in annual off-shore revenues, 100 percent of which, to date, you've been spending in Washington. Then we'll keep all of the federal taxes we pay, we'll tax the Midwest for their exports and imports, and we'll tax the seafood the rest of the nation consumes.

We'll build Category 5 storm protection. We'll restore the coasts. We'll help everyone return and rebuild their homes. And we'll make New Orleans the city of the 21st Century that will be even more the envy of the rest of the country than it was before Hurricane Katrina.

So hey you fucker Bush -- why don't you just go get yourself a blow job so we can impeach your cheap monkey ass! Like your Vice President is prone to say, Go Fuck Yourself!

How's that for a plan asshole!