U.S. Embraces 3rd World Status.

Louisiana to change name to Louisianastan and beg dimes from strangers.

This is just so fucking embarrassing.

Mayor: New Orleans will seek aid from other nations
By Michael DeppMon Feb 6, 7:24 PM ET

Shortcomings in aid from the U.S. government are making New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin look to other nations for help in rebuilding his hurricane-damaged city.

Nagin, who has hosted a steady stream of foreign dignitaries since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, says he may seek international assistance because U.S. aid has not been sufficient to get the city back on its feet.

"I know we had a little disappointment earlier with some signals we're getting from Washington but the international community may be able to fill the gap," Nagin said when a delegation of French government and business officials passed through on Friday to explore potential business partnerships.

Jordan's King Abdullah also visited New Orleans on Friday and Nagin said he would encourage foreign interests to help redevelop some of the areas hardest hit by the storm.

"France can take Treme. The king of Jordan can take the Lower Ninth Ward," he said, referring to two of the city's neighborhoods.

Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city and killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The Bush administration has pledged billions of dollars to Katrina victims but five months after the storm, New Orleans remains largely in ruins.

Nagin said his message to President George W. Bush would be that the federal government needs to refocus on the devastated area.

"We need your undivided attention over the next six months," he said. "We need backup. We need for you to make the words that you spoke in Jackson Square a reality."

Nagin was referring to the president's September 15 address to the nation from New Orleans, in which he pledged "we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes" to rebuild.
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The Bush Administration keeps forgetting that Louisiana isn’t Iraq.

They are certainly both bloody and catastrophic failures -- either one of which would have had the Republican Congress on the White House lawn with pitchforks and torches...if it had happened on a Democrat's watch.

And they are each certainly perfect manifestations of what happens when the serial pathologies of DubyaThink intersect: The absolutely epic, crony-based incompetence at every level, yoked to an invincible, Fundamentalist arrogance, girded one side by a giddly sociopathic disregard for the truth, and on the other by the looters and Armani-suited nationjackers.

For five years, Bush has thrown a mumbling stream of empty, semi-literate words at real problems and bet on the ingrained stupidity, greed and A.D.D. of his followers to forget in a day or two that he never, ever actually follows through on anything.

(Anyone hear anything about our Mission to Mars recently? And does anyone wanna bet that the only reason it even made it into the last SOTU was that Dubya had either seen "Red Planet" the night before, or that Condi just loves "Veronica Mars"?)

Because he is just like his followers; talks a lot of shit about what he’s gonna do by and by, but up close he is just a detached, dim creep who has never had to spend "six-months" of "undivided attention" on anything, ever.

Bush is letting NOLA die of neglect because NOLA doesn’t interest him any more.

Because because he doesn’t have to run for anything anymore.

Because NOLA is boring – so 2005 -- and it can’t be fixed with tax cuts and bullshit.

It’s brown and poor and he figures that he knows the racist core of the GOP well enough to know that they’d gladly let a million brown people die before giving up one cent of their tiny tax cuts or one nickel on a gallon of gas.

But Louisiana isn’t 10,000 miles away.

And it isn’t under tight enough military occupation that Administration lies about everything cooking along Just Great can stay tamped down just long enough for new, replacement lies to be flown in daily by Halliburton, like fresh seafood.

The stink is right out on the street, just a couple of days drive away from almost anywhere in the U.S. of A.

And if the Bush droogies hate anything more than taxes, darkies and queers, it's being humiliated by a buncha damned furriners: When the wider world from which the desperately hide intrudes on and short-sheets their sweet, WWF dreams of Badass Omnipotent 'Murrica.

So I wonder how they’re going to feel when President of France presents Ray Nagin a giant, novelty check while standing smack in the middle of Jackson Square -- because Dubya was too busy giving tax cuts to billionaires to actually keep one of his Big Promises for once take proper care of the middle class American inhabitants one of our great American cities.

I can't imagine what they'll say, but I can promise you it won't be "Thank You, Lafayette!"