How can 59,460 people be so stupid?
How can 59,460 people--many of whom have not been able to return to New Orleans to live--re-elect a mayor whose passivity is directly responsible for their painfully slow crawl home?
How can 59,460 people re-elect a mayor who's taken nearly nine months inking a fairly simple deal to have flooded-out cars removed from our city streets?
How can 59,460 people re-elect a mayor who seems to be directly responsible for a questionable and possibly criminal multi-million dollar contract for inspection of New Orleans' ailing sewage and water system with a firm run by one of his minister friends--a firm that was incorporated three months after it started work removing manhole covers at $90+ per hour?
Most importantly, how can 59,460 people re-elect a mayor who's lost all credibility with the US legislature--the very people he needs on his side to get the federal money he needs for reconstruction--when his articulate, forward-thinking opponent has bejillions of connections in on capitol hill?
Those are all rhetorical questions, by the way. I'm not expecting answers--though if I were, I imagine illiteracy, contamination of the water supply, and a surfeit of heat/humidity would probably rank at the top of the list. There are other answers, too--complicated ones so frustrating that they make normally sane people consider a career in suicide bombing.
Yes, I'm depressed now. But I was just as depressed--if not moreso--after the last presidential election, and I put that behind me, didn't I? And hey, all those dumbasses that voted for GW are getting their comeuppance now, so maybe the dumbasses who voted for Nagin will soon realize the folly of their ways, too. Maybe. (Yeah, and maybe one day GW will learn to pronounce the word "nuclear".)
At the end of the day, I tell myself, if DC can survive the re-election of a crack-smoking coozehound like Marion Barry, I suppose we can deal with a non-crack-smoking, non-coozehound (though cockhound isn't out of the question) for another four years.
