Liberty and Justice for All!

Read this first.

Seems as if more people may have become vigilantes after the storm.

One disturbing part of that page is this section

According to Benjamin, Bourgeois said, “I’m gonna kill that nigger,” and ran, barefoot and shirtless, down the street before turning and jogging out of view.

Benjamin heard another gunshot.

Bourgeois ran back to join the group of gun-equipped men standing in the street, she said. “He came back with a baseball cap that had blood on it. And I knew there was blood on the cap because it ran onto his arm. And he brandished the cap for all of his friends,” Benjamin said. “Everybody cheered. They were happy for him.”

Benjamin, who is ethnically mixed — white, Latino, and African-American — was waiting for an uncle and cousin, both of whom are African-American, to come to her house. She feared that Bourgeois and the other men would attack her relatives.

“I went to him and asked him to spare their lives,” Benjamin remembered. “He said, ‘Darlin’, anything coming up that street darker than a brown paper bag is getting shot.’”

Traumatized, Benjamin moved out of the state after Katrina, but just weeks ago, she made two trips to the neighborhood, accompanied by a federal prosecutor and an FBI agent who asked her to retrace her steps.

Anybody with information about this story (and the story about the other three mentioned on my other blog post) should contact the FBI and help them put every racist vigilante murderer that is still walking the streets.

I will note that Councilman Fielkow was the only elected official who ever responded or tried to get anything accomplished with this previous video. Perhaps with the feds involved, we will get some traction.

Many disturbing stories came out of Hurricane Katrina. One of those is the story of vigilantism in Algiers Point after the storm.

Algiers Point residents Vinnie Pervel, Wayne Janak, and Nathan Roper took it upon themselves to “go hunting”. Self defense is one thing. I have no problem with you defending your life, the lives of others, or even your property from criminals. However, these ignorant racist murderers took it one step further and went out looking for black people to kill in cold blood.

The fact that these people have not been sent up to death row yet is a travesty of justice. I am going to send this letter to many elected officials.

http://blog.nola.com/notesonneworleans/2008/12/white_new_orleanian_brags_abou.html

These people bragged about killing black people in cold blood. You have their names. You have their videotaped confession of their crimes.

How will you use the power given to you by the voters who elected you into office to address this issue?

Hopefully someone will take action.

With Ike heading toward the opening of the Gulf as a very powerful storm, why didn’t we wait to see what it would do before bringing everyone back?

Just sayin…

I didn’t evacuate for Georges. I saw the storm coming due North, right for New Orleans, but figured it would make a turn East. Nash Roberts came on later and said the same thing. Bob Breck called him an old coot. It did turn East. .

When I saw Ivan doing the same thing I told my girlfriend at the time and her mother that since it was coming straight for us (again, due North). I figured it would do the same thing as well. However, they wanted to leave so we left. Ivan also turned East.

Katrina scared me. It was coming at us from the southeast and I knew it could hurt us. As we watched the storm I told everyone “look, it is going to turn East right here” and go towards Mississippi at the last second. It did.

So now we have Gustav coming at us from the Southeast. It is supposed to hit Cocodrie. But with what has happened with every other major storm that has threatened the New Orleans area in the last 5 years, I also expect this storm to make a last second turn East. So instead of Cocodrie it would come right at us. This is why the storm scares me. Because the weather-people never take into consideration that very last  minute the storms all take a turn east and when it does, it will directly hit us.

I hope I am wrong. But I am 3 for 3 so far. So please, if you can leave do so now. And if they call for you to leave, don’t be stubborn and watch out for yourselves. Our most treasured resource down here is the people. We cannot lose anymore because of storms.

Three years ago today I was in my first of 3 places I stayed in when I evacuated for Katrina. After 13 long hours of driving we pulled into the hotel at about this time and turned on the news to see exactly what was going on in New Orleans.

For some reason, the only song that would keep coming into my head was “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin. (The link shows a video with Katrina pictures to the song). It really is a morbid song to have in your head during that time but it was an earwig that I could not get rid of. Besides, maybe if someone looks at that video they will be smart and get out of New Orleans if Gustav continues on the same course.

I’ll say it again. If they make the call… GET OUT!

Now, about giving credit where it is due. I promise that despite my feelings about our Governor that if an emergency happens again and he handles himself well that I will give him all the credit he will be due.

I am just getting a little nauseated about how people have been saying that Jindal is “already” doing such a good job and is so much better than Blanco.

There are two flaws with this.

A) Jindal is operating with hindsight as a tool, something Blanco lacked. The picture that Republicans used against Blanco that had her with a shocked look wasn’t taken until after the storm hit. At this point, if i recall correctly, she was acting calmly and rationally and urging people to do the right thing and get out. Now, had Jindal operated without learning the lessons of Katrina then there would be something really wrong with him. So far he hasn’t and that is good. But…

B) The storm could go anywhere. At the time of this posting there is not even a tropical storm warning for any part of Louisiana.

So while I applaud everybody working together to get everything prepared just in case a storm hits, I think it is a little early to dump lavish praise on our Governor just yet.

Over on jindalisbad.com, I complained about the T-P and their lack of fact checking on Bobby Jindal. I think I know why they failed to check the facts on our Governor-elect.

Apparently, the T-P was so concerned with getting Al Copeland’s divorce records that they could not be bothered to do some investigative reporting on the claims made by the Bobby Jindal campaign for Governor of Louisiana. And who can really blame them? When I think of the important issues that face Louisiana, everyone must agree that none are more important than finding out exactly why Al Copeland got a divorce. Why worry about the problems of sediment when we can read about the problems of Copeland’s divorce settlement? Why worry about coastal instability when we can discuss spousal infidelity? Raising our levees? Forget that! We need to discuss how Al Copeland’s kids will be raised!

This just proves why I refer to our major newspaper as T-P.