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Monday, January 16, 2006

Nagin Claims God Is Mad At Us

I'm beginning to feel terribly, terribly sorry for New Orleans. Its plight gets more news time than the rest of the Gulf Coast, but I think that New Orleans is more dysfunctional. According to NOLA.com, Mayor Nagin gave a speech discussing an imaginary conversation with MLK and announced that God is sending hurricanes because he is angry with us:
"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin said as he and other city leaders commemorated Martin Luther King Day. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

(convo with MLK)

"I said, 'What is it going to take for us to move on and live your dream and make it a reality?' He said, 'I don't think that we need to pay attention any more as much about other folks and racists on the other side.' He said, 'The thing we need to focus on as a community — black folks I'm talking about — is ourselves.'"

Nagin told the crowd that he also asked, "Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?"

The reply, he said, was, "We as a people need to fix ourselves first."
I wonder what the lesson of bird flu is? According to the Gaia folks, Mother Nature is planning to cull us. Dingo has often written of his fears of the "religious right", and he has also seems to have a lot of respect for Nagin. I wonder what Dingo would have to say about this?

(Dingo is disgusted with national politics):
Politicians, by nature, respond to their constituency. We have allowed the politicians to create cozy little "safe" districts for themselves where they only have to pander to the fringe to remain in power. The vast middle America has sat down and shut up. We allowed them to become out of touch. We voted them into office after all.
I think the rot set in when we allowed the parties to block third party candidates. The two parties have cooperated in squelching reformist movements within their own parties and in trying to exclude them from the national debate. Ross Perot is what they want to avoid. That 20 percent fills them with terror - and it's amazing how the "bipartisan" initiatives seem to be strongly focused on squelching the ability of the average citizen from starting grass-roots campaign initiatives.


Comments:
Revenge of the Birds !!

mynewsbot.com
 
I wonder who is going to demand Nagin apologize?

You know, like they demanded of Pat Robertson.
 
a) I think saying "God sent the hurricanes" is ridicules regardless of who says it.

b) I do respect Nagin, but in context. And that context is in the quality of politician coming out of Louisiana. As many faults as Nagin has, he is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the politicians coming out of NO. If you think he is bad, compare him to the prior 5 Mayors and you will have a whole new respect for him. Whould I vote for him to be the Mayor of New York? Not on your life. Would I vote for him to be the mayor of New Orleans? Any day (assuming the usual lack lust slate of candidates is running).

c) I do agree with Nagin that the black community needs to start focusing on its own faults. Otherwise, the cycle of poverty and violence will never end. It is time the black community takes a long hard look in the mirror.
 
Pedro, you wrote:
Letting democracy flourish is anathema to so many of today's politicians, because once they're in, they have every incentive to keep themselves there by any means necessary.
That sums it up nicely. They are screwing around on our time and with our dollars.

Dingo, the black community is suffering from the same syndrome as the rest of us - the failure to take politics seriously. So see Pedro.

I think Nagin's statement about the hurricane is ridiculous, but I am inclined to cut him more slack than Robertson. Robertson wasn't standing in the middle of a flooded-out city with weakened levees on every side and a bad hurricane forecast for the next year.
 
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