Mayor Bill White is either dangerously ignorant or willfully dishonest:

“In Houston, generally, we are not very tolerant of the small minority of people who came here from the New Orleans area who are able-bodied and haven’t found a job yet.”

The Los Angeles Times took a look at that “small minority” earlier this week:

A Gallup Organization survey sponsored by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, due to be released soon, found that 251,000 evacuees still live in the state. Of adults, 59 percent were unemployed, and 54 percent were still receiving housing subsidies.

Pollsters have also analyzed the “small minority”:

Neither the city nor FEMA track unemployed evacuees, but a Zogby poll commissioned by the city in March found that 85 percent of the 606 evacuees surveyed were out of work. Sixty percent said they were looking for jobs.

It’s time for the mayor to admit the severity of the problem. As long as he keeps glossing over the fact that we’ve imported a poor, uneducated, unemployed underclass, things are just going to get worse.

Two of my least favorite things are frivolous lawsuits and an entitlement mentality. Add them together and you get another one of my least favorite things — a lefty activist group with lawyers:

Advocates for hurricane evacuees turned again to the courts Tuesday in an effort to compel federal officials to explain their reasons for denying housing assistance.

We don’t need a lawsuit. I’ll be glad to explain why housing assistance is running out. I’ll even type slowly and clearly:

BECAUSE IT’S BEEN A WHOLE DAMN YEAR.

A woman was carjacked, kidnapped, tossed out of her car and left to die. HPD has a videotape of the suspects. Here’s the description of the suspect, as delivered by the Chron’s Anita Hassan:

A man and a woman are seen using the woman’s credit cards in a surveillance video from a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the 3500 block of Highway 6 around 12:30 a.m. Monday.

The two are are also seen driving a light-colored sedan.

Way to ask the tough questions, Anita.

While Houston’s Leading Information Source is asleep at the wheel, Channel 2 has several frames from that surveillance video. Channel 2’s more complete story is timestamped earlier than the Chron’s half-hearted attempt.

For all of those Americans and Europeans who think President Bush is “the world’s greatest terrorist” or the biggest threat to democracy in the world today, a new UK TV movie is coming out you won’t want to miss.

President Bush ‘assassinated’ in new TV docudrama

This is the dramatic moment when President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel, in a gripping new docudrama soon to be aired on TV.

Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its ‘War on Terror’.

It’s a pointed political examination of what the War on Terror did to the American body politic.

For those who might find the work in poor taste, you just do not understand. It’s art.

“I’m sure that there will be people who will be upset by it but when you watch it you realise what a sophisticated piece of work it is.

“It’s not sensationalist, or simplistic but a very thought-provoking, powerful drama. I hope people will see that the intention behind it is good.”

The film premiers at the Toronto Film Festival in September, so be sure to make your travel reservations now.

Much has been talked about the issue of the plea of Not Guilty by reason of insanity in the discussion of Andrea Yates. I now give you a TRUE case of NGBRI. A Patent Attorney in Conneticut was informed by his wife that their 2 year old daughter had been sexually molested by their neighbor’s adult son who had recently been acting strangely, wandering about his front yard in the nude, drinking to excess, and acting erratically.  The father attacked and killed the neighbor, stabbing him a number of times in the chest.

I vote we give the man a medal instead of a prison sentence.

It’s time for the final round of voting in our “Win Some Bling for Benzion by Naming the New Downtown Park” contest.

I am going to make a bold, if potentially controversial decision–”HCAD Victims Memorial Park” is now out of the running, even though it has been one of the leading choices.

Technically speaking the new park will be a City of Houston entity, not a Harris County one, and therefore could not truly be devoted to all HCAD victims.

Also… and how do I say this… I like the name OK, but just not that much. There, I said it. Imperial fiat. Kinda like how the actual contest is going to work, with the illusion of democracy but the reality of hard-nosed downtown power brokers making the final decision. You might as well get used to it right now.

I promise you this–sometime soon I will speak with County Judge Robert Eckels about getting the former Astrodome renamed “The Tomb of the Unknown Taxpayer.”

For the moment, however, the Bling is the Thing.

So make your final choice:

• New York Penis-Envy Park
• The Lee P. Brown Center for Calmness and Serenity
• Destination Urination

Thank you, and God Bless.

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Mexican tourist trap? Illegal-alien training camp? You decide:

Welcome to one of Mexico’s strangest tourist attractions:

A park where visitors pay $15 to hike across fields and through treacherous ravines, a grueling experience aimed at simulating an illegal journey across the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We want this to be an exercise in awareness,” said Alfonso Martinez, who acts as the chief smuggler at EcoAlberto Park in central Mexico. “It’s in honor of all the people who have gone in search of the American Dream.”

The park, funded in part by the Mexican government, compares crossing the border to an “extreme sport” and tells participants that they, too, can “trick the Migra,” slang for the Border Patrol.

Graduates of the camp often go on to rewarding careers in the two-by-four-nailing, housekeeping and U.S.-taxpayer-resource-draining industries.

[Hat-tip: Rick]

Do you have your scorecards handy for the Congressional District 22 election coming up? With Tom DeLay gone from the ballot, there is now a write-in campaign from Republicans for the heavily-monikered Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.

The problem is that even if Republicans in the district rally around the candidate and attempt to prevent the Democrats from winning the seat by default, they will have to “spin and select” the voting machine controls to spell out Sekula-Gibbs’ significant name. Misspellings are sure to open a window of complaint through which the Democrats have already promised to jump.

Governor Perry has now authorized a very handy bit of assistance in the form of a special election to fill DeLay’s seat for the remainder of the year. How does it help?

Governor Perry has called a special election for November 7th to fill Tom DeLay’s seat from November 7th until the end of the year. Therefore, TX-22 voters will have to vote twice on election day - once in the special election, which will have ALL of the candidates on the ballot and once in the general election, which will not have a Republican on the ballot.

With this special election, the voter will have the name of the Republican candidate right there in front of them. As Democrats had signaled their intention to challenge any misspellings/variations of Republican front-runner Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, the special election is a life saver for the Texas GOP.

 

But you can hear a zipper.

CNN had an open mic potty snafu during President Bush’s speech commemorating the Katrina anniversary. You can “see” the video at HotAir.

Like a gift from The Gods:

Priscilla Slade, the former Texas Southern University president fired for her spending of school money on personal expenses, is teaching accounting courses on campus this semester.

Her return to the classroom comes four weeks after a Harris Country grand jury indicted Slade and three aides for allegedly violating the university’s policies and state laws in paying for household furnishings and landscaping, among other things.

Although the university’s governing board fired Slade in June for her spending as president, she remains a tenured professor in the Jesse H. Jones School of Business, officials said today.

[Courtesy Houston Chronicle; hat-tip blogHouston]

FOX News contributor Anne Linehan suggests Slade might be teaching ethics classes next.

I’m hoping it’s “landscape architecture” or “interior design,” but will concede the point.

 

  

Open.

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On the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, who should come out of the woodwork but former FEMA director and slow eater, Michael Brown. His sour grapes provided perfect fodder for the Drive-By Media.

Ex-FEMA Chief Blames Administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who lost his job because of Hurricane Katrina, said Tuesday his biggest regret a year later is that he wasn’t candid enough about the lack of a coherent federal response plan.

As levees broke down at Katrina’s strike against New Orleans and people were forced from their homes, Brown said he sought futilely to get the 82nd Airborne Division into the city quickly.

Actually, while people were dying in New Orleans, local politicians hid under their desks and Mr. Brown was busy worrying about his dinner schedule, as the infamous FEMA e-mails show. That personal disconnect didn’t stop Brown from placing blame on his former bosses.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, he was asked about positive statements he had made at the time about how Washington would come through for the storm victims, rather than leveling with the country about how bad the situation actually was.

“Those were White House talking points,” Brown replied. “And to this day, I think that was my biggest mistake.”

Brown said he had been made the scapegoat for the government’s slow response “because I’m the low man on the totem pole.” He said he thought that President Bush and Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, should have shared in the blame.

Apparently Brown missed Kanye West’s memo that it was all Bush’s fault. Finally, Brown unintentionally provides a hint as to the origins of his poor performance during the storm.

He denied that he lacked qualifications to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“That’s just baloney. I spent more time in my career in local government and in state government and in emergency management experience,” Brown said.

Perhaps all those years of bureaucratic work do not prepare one for quick action in times of crisis after all.

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