Coup D'Etat

It was only a matter of time, of course. Anyone could see that Bush would suspend the electoral process when he saw he couldn't win. Now it's happened in New Orleans, as Steve Sabludowsky at BayouBuzz reports:

On Monday, Governor Kathleen Blanco took the extraordinary step and signed an executive order delaying the qualifying period and the February 4 and March 4, 2006 elections in Orleans Parish due to the collapse of the electoral process in New Orleans.

Whoops! That's the Democratic governor, not the President, short-circuiting the democratic process. Nevermind.

It seems likely that the objective was to protect Ray Nagin, the Democratic mayor who has bungled nearly every aspect of the response to Hurricane Katrina. Sabludowsky continues:

I am one of those people who believe that if the Iraqi people could go to the polls under duress of being killed, the citizens of New Orleans could have held an election. Makeshift voting polls could have been installed in buildings and even in tents using the power of generators if necessary in some locations.

If voting machines were not available, hand ballots work quite well in other countries we call “democratic”.

Meanwhile, not unlike the hapless Michael Brown, Gov. Blanco's memos during the crisis indicate considerable concern with wardrobe and appearance. We never thought Brown deserved all the scorn that heaped on him for his memos, and Blanco's are no worse. We can't help noticing, however, that the Brown story got much more play. Not that there's a double standard here or anything.

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