Breaking Down the New Orleans Email SCANDAL

As we constantly refresh NOLA.com, looking for the stories that will have the most outlandishly racist comments, stories about some sort of email scandal within the city government kept showing up. Email? Haugh? Now, I'm not a member, but does that have something to do with the Whole Food?

Inside jokes aside, at first this looked too boring to read about, but after enough repetition we finally gave in and read enough to understand this tedious scandal. Since you have a life, we will simply give you the gist of it:

1. Stacy Head, known in some circles as a City Council member and in others as the recipient of the 2006 Mitch Landrieu consolation prize, wants to score as many easy political points as possible before losing re-election and running for a statewide office that a majority of white people vote for. So at a city council meeting she accuses Sanitation Director Veronica White of not sharing every address receiving sanitation service, even though she totally asked for it a bunch of times before. In the parlance of The Wire, this is known as "pulling a Carcetti". Veronica White says that she didn't and after having her job threatened without any good comebacks, leaves in a huff.
2. What could possibly get to the bottom of whether Stacy Head had asked for list before or not? Email! Enter Tracie Washington, activist lawyer, rabble-rouser, citizen journalist, provocateur, ironic Bill Jefferson-supporter, who puts in a public record request for emails sent by city council members, but not all of them:

   After all, her request did not apply to the three black members of the New Orleans City Council, only to their four white counterparts. Likewise, she sought the e-mails of the highest-ranking white member of the recovery office, Jeff Thomas, but not his boss, Ed Blakely, who is black.

   Washington declines to directly say why she sought only white council members' e-mails. That's "beside the point, " she said.

3. Veronica White cuts through all the bureaucratic red-tape, and goes above and beyond her duties as Sanitation Director. She personally goes straight to the IT department, gets the requested emails, and sends them to Washington. Logic may indicate that she wouldn't be so quick to fulfill this request unless she thought something incriminating would be in them, or maybe she is just still angry. Washington wants to put them online for the sake of government transparency, and totally has a Xerox machine that can scan to .pdf really fast ready to go. But then then some bureaucrat shows up and tells her she can't release them yet.
4. Nagin who has likely been under federal corruption investigation since Katrina, without nary a Pampy uncovered, isn't corrupt. But nobody likes having their email read by strangers, and seeing the writing on the wall he pre-emptively deletes all of his old email. Everyone has a new reason to hate on him all over again. We're guessing his day-to-day life is depressing like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode lately. Another term as Mayor and he could probably give Joe Lieberman a run for his money in a Droopy Dog contest.
   

Leaked! -- The REAL Bobby Jindal Speech THEY Didn't Want YOU to Hear

Good evening, and happy Mardi Gras. I'm Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana.

Tonight, we've witnessed a great moment in the history of our republic. In the very chamber where Congress once voted to abolish slavery, our first African-American president stepped forward to address the state of our union.

I was also at one time a skinny kid with a funny name, so I grew up and made everyone call me Bobby. Like the tribal armband tattoo I got in the late '90s, it made sense at the time. I would have kept my real name if I had known it would become such a trendy political asset.

Did We All Forget How Much Tom Daschle Sucks?

Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination to various Health-related cabinet posts, and some people seem downright wistful about him:

"It really sets us back a step," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "Because he was such a talent. I mean he understood Congress, serving in the House and Senate; he certainly had the confidence of the president."

"I was a little stunned. I thought he was going to get confirmed," said Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that would have voted on Daschle's nomination. "It's regrettable. He's a very good man."

"Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged," Obama said Tuesday. "He has not excused it, nor do I. But that mistake and this decision cannot diminish the many contributions Tom has made to this country."

We always remembered Daschle as the Senate majority leader that was so afraid of being seen as not sufficiently patriotic or tough on terrorism that he led his party to vote exactly like Republicans. Soon enough, with such spineless submissives like him representing the Democratic crème de la crème, people figured they might as well vote for actual Republicans. They lost the majority, and he lost his seat. Basically, Tom Daschle was Jay Bulworth before his crisis of concience in that inspired, shitty movie from the 90's. He was a bigger tool than Carson Daly and Matt Lauer combined.

And now, like that venereal disease you thought you took care of with an entire tube of Neosporin, he returns years later wearing the most douchey red glasses possible. Listen Tom, you are not Thom Daschle, respectable art curator. You're a scumbag lobbyist for the health care industry who would be one of the last people on Earth to effect real health care reform. You had to drop out of effecting fake-change because, rest assured, more shit than free limo rides would have floated to the surface. Tear down those glasses, get some comped Lasik, and keep popping klonopin every time someone says DeLay. A better takedown than ours was done by Matt Taibbi, an actual political reporter:

When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger.

It's February, and we are already pretty tired of fake change we have no better option than to accept. As Bulworth himself once opined, "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" The obvious first choice for health care reformist, Howard Dean, must have turned down the fake-change czar nomination before it was offered to Daschlebbychleb. Either that, or Daschlebbychleb was owed a favor by Obama in some sort of Wire-ish scheme.

Blagojevich Should Have Gone To Corruption School In Louisiana

Today we have all amusingly chuckled when Illinois Gov. Blagojevich got arrested for auctioning a Senate seat to whomever could muster the cushiest post-Gov position. Of course, the biggest consequence of this is the local pride the arrest stirred within those from the area, which could only be expressed in gleeful status updates and away messages proclaiming "home of the dirtiest politics!" or something to that effect. However, an honest appraisal of the skill of corruption is needed. Blagojegish did the deed himself, on the phone. Any bright-eyed, bushy-tailed grad student with copies of The Wire and The Shield knows that corruption is best administered low-key, in person and through trusted intermediaries.

This is a fair and balanced blog now.

After so many transparently partisan* attacks on the McCain-Palin ticket (He had an affair with a lobbyist and writes shitty op-eds, she is underhanded and has no experience) the NYTimes finally soldiered up the integrity to attempt a similar takedown of Joe Biden. (Barack "Jesus" Obama has never done anything wrong.) Of course, it was a half-hearted attempt of innuendo that was quickly relegated to the Politics section, gracing the front page for nary a day.

Focusing on the favors the credit-loving hack Senator enjoys in his home state, the all-too-common buried lede debunks his main character building experience:

Beyond landscaping costs, one of the Biden campaign’s largest regular expenditures is for Amtrak tickets for the senator and his aides or consultants. Going back to 2001, those expenses typically ranged from $9,000 to $15,000 a year — far exceeding that of his colleagues in Delaware’s Congressional delegation, whose campaigns spent between $500 and $3,000, federal election records show. Like Mr. Biden, Delaware’s other senator, Thomas R. Carper, and Representative Michael N. Castle commute daily to Washington, their offices said.

Biden, of course, typically makes a point in stump speeches of relating to Joe Six-Pack-With-a-Lower-IQ by talking about his daily commute. It started as a way for him to visit his two young sons after his wife and daughter died in a automobile crash. Now it is a way for him to chill at his lakefront mansion. Senator, I served with Calvin's Dad: I knew Calvin's Dad; Calvin's Dad was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Calvin's Dad. You're cool if I plagiarized that, right Joe?

It is at this point that we left-coast elitists need to remind ourselves of the life of an average American in these trying, desperate economic times. The average American lives in a small town where the manufacturing/call center job he/she used to work at was recently outsourced due to NAFTA/globalization. Sure, the average American could get a new, depressing job at the meatpacking plant/maximum security prison, but the pay is less and it is 100 miles away. Gas prices what they are, a commute is out of the question, and he/she can't sell the house and move there ever since the housing bubble popped.

Also, the team lost in the state quarterfinals again this year. Coach should really start playing that Sanderson boy more. A real sparkplug. And what with Nell's son listening to that rap music, we're going to have get Sheriff McKay to keep an eye on him. I know trouble when I see it, I'll tell you what. Sure thing Jimmy, if I ever see him near your darling Sandra you'll be the first to know.

Anyway -- the point is, the Average American doesn't want to hear about how your campaign spends $10K a year shuttling you and your staff up and down the eastern seaboard so you can be kicking it on your badass deck before the fireflies come out. As much that can be said for the Palin VP pick being a cynical stab at chromosomal inclusivity -- the Biden pick is the same kind of rote process that gave us the uninspiring banality of Kerry and Lieberman. Hang around Washington long enough, and it will eventually be your turn. Yeah, even you there playing kickball.

Tonight's debate will be a fascinating matchup between someone who can't talk in complete sentences, and someone who completes way too many. We won't be liveblogging it! Don't stay tuned!

*In an ironical sense. It's not partisan if you are right.

List of Notable Community Organizers and Governors

Sparked by a crack we first saw on Gawker, we'd like to make a short list of notable Community Organizers and Governors.

Community Organizers:

• Jesus
  
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Barack Obama

Governors:

• Pontius Pilate
• George Wallace
  
• Victor Hope
• Sarah Palin
  

Republicans Call For Discontinuation of JFK Eternal Flame

WASHINGTON -- Republicans, putting pressure on the Democrat-led Congress and presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, called for discontinuation of the John F. Kennedy eternal flame in Arlington National Cemetery.

"For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than the price of gasoline," President George Bush said. "There is a place in our country that offers untapped energy resources. A place where oil is so prevalent that fumes constantly emanate from the ground before igniting. We must extinguish those flames and remove drilling bans there to ease the unfair pressures that hurt American citizens every day."

"The earth in this place is salty and flowers placed there disappear in a matter of days. I drink your milkshake", Bush emphasized.

"Over the next five months, House Republicans will fight every single day to hold Democrats accountable for their dismal record on producing more energy in our country," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters. "So many average Americans have been completely devastated every time they fill their gas tank, and this must end."

Democrats however, claim that energy advantages gained from extinguishing the eternal flame will be small, and any effect on gasoline prices will be years away. "It is possible that a current U.S. Senator will have his own eternal flame in the near future", rebutted Hillary Clinton. "We cannot shut off our country's traditional eternal flames simply to gain fleeting political victories that offer no benefits to middle-class Americans, who are hurt so, so dearly every time they go to the pump and are forced at gunpoint to purchase more gasoline."

President Bush then described the National Ronald W. Reagan memorial, which he claimed was a clear alternative to obsolete, flame-based memorials. "The Ronald Reagan memorial offers a breeze of cool air to all Americans walking by, especially those that are being exploited by the price of gasoline." Bush said, "It is symbolic of his message of liberty the world felt while he was President. I question the logic of continuing to honor a man who is represented by the needless burning of fossil fuels."

The Ronald W. Reagan memorial, enacted upon his death in 2004, consists of a 1974 Cadillac Eldorado with the AC blasting and the windows down, and has been idling on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. for its entire existence. In summer months the convertible roof is often rolled down while Sports, by Huey Lewis and the News, is played on the tape deck at a reasonable volume.

Obama, while supporting the eternal flame, offered sympathy to Americans feeling the double-pronged pinch of an economic downturn and rising gas prices, "Too many Americans that I meet every day have been bludgeoned and left for dead by the current administration, their bodies wedged behind a Taco Bell dumpster, because of rising gas prices and the poor state of the economy."

This provoked a harsh reaction from presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain. "I think I speak for all decent, hardworking Americans when I say that I am offended by Barack Obama's statement against easing the suicide-inducing pain we experience every time we hit bingo fuel", he bellowed. "At 4 dollars a gallon, it is like combining the worst things I saw in American History X and making every citizen suffer them."

We've wanted to use this photo for awhile

Besides kinda looking like Ray Romano, Bobby Jindal (R-Gov. LA) just very well might be your next Vice President. But in the complex VP vetting process, in which the VP vetters are vetted by the VP vetter vetters (namely, the press), being batshit-crazy might be a problem. Even if he does very well on the daunting "drink beer and talk" event of McCain's new hit reality show, The Running Mate on ABC.

Lets flash back to the summer of 1991, when punk had broke and Jindal had just graduated with a degree in biology from Brown. He became a Rhodes Scholar and got accepted into Yale Law and Harvard Med. While others were wearing flannel and smoking dope, Jindal was presumably getting straight A's and performing vigilante exorcisms with friends:

It appeared as if we were observing a tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange evil force. But the momentum had shifted and we now sensed that victory was at hand.

While Alice and Louise held Susan, her sister continued holding the Bible to her face. Almost taunting the evil spirit that had almost beaten us minutes before, the students dared Susan to read biblical passages. She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence "Jesus is Lord." Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities. In between her futile attempts, Susan pleaded with us to continue trying and often smiled between the grimaces that accompanied her readings of Scripture. Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed "Jesus is Lord."

With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, "Has something happened?" She did not remember any of the past few hours and was startled to find her friends breaking out in cheers and laughter, overwhelmed by sudden joy and relief.

It seems 360 degree head spins and projectile vomiting are just typical Hollywood exaggerations of REAL exorcisms. Plus, this treatment got rid of her skin cancer! So, the next time you are rejected from Ivy League med/law schools, don't feel too bad. When's the last time you got the devil out of someone?

Blogging till the Breaka Breaka Dawn

As we awoke in a pool of our own heat wave induced sweat at 4AM, we were left to ponder the conclusion of the Democratic nomination 'battle royale'. Then we rose up and punched the wall Raging Bull style in anger that we were not asked to write one of the gazillion Op-Eds on the subject. With bloodied knuckles, we promise to keep it short.

We were pretty neutral on the candidates when they began the race a'yonder. Really, any warm body in a blue Hazmat suit that wanted to clean up this mess would have been fine with us. Hillanevitability aside, Barack Obama was against the war in Iraq before it was cool.(+1) He spent his first night in NYC in an alley we walk by every day, when the neighborhood, it was not so safe. He plays pickup basketball, and comes off as a real human being. For awhile there, he even held out against the lapel pin mafia. So, we were sold.

The more states Hillary lost the worse her behavior became. A couple with a reputation of doing/saying whatever it takes to win, the Clintons started doing/saying whatever it took to win (Maureen Dowd called, and she wants her shtick back --Ed.) By the end of the race, she was touting a tardtastic gas tax abatement and watching the first two seasons of 24 on loop.

Hillary's campaign picked up in a string of Appalachian states. She changed her slogan from the unsuccessful "More experienced than Obama, yet less than McCain" to the focus-group approved "Hey, I'm white!". She did really good in those states, where 20% of white voters routinely claimed race as a factor. She did even better with those voters.

But what about the many voters for whom race was a factor, but would not admit to a pollster/themselves of that fact? Well, we called our grandparents(s) today and brought up the presidential race. Our grandmother(s) likes Hillary and said "Now it's not because he's black, but..." before launching into a David Dukish endgame scenario. Eesh. You have your work cut out for you Barack, güten glück!