mardi gras in the village......

Pardon my French: What I'm trying to say, in a pidgin sort of Cajun way, is "Let the bad weather roll!" This is actual Mardi Gras headgear worn by Louisiana National Guard soldiers last February in Baghdad. It now rests atop dunces George W. Bush and Mike Brown as they were pictured in a recent Bush Beat item about their not listening to earlier forecasts of an earlier hurricane

.Morning Report 9/10/05 The Bush Krewe
A heck of an idea: Mardi Gras in New York City

Now that we know for sure that the Bush regime has absolutely no idea what to do about New Orleans — except to profit from those po' folks — it's time to let others do the brainstorming.
Bush Beat reader Aria Smith, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology here in Manhattan who has a personal stake in the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, wrote me this morning with a damned good suggestion:
Hi. I was just thinking. We all know that there's no possible way that New Orleans will have a Mardi Gras next year. I've heard people talking about having Mardi Gras in other places, and I think the perfect place would be in the Village. That way they could raise money for the hurricane victims. True, in February it's freezing up here so maybe they could do it before then. I have family in New Orleans. Some have been found and some have not. But I'm just trying to think of a fun way to raise money and any way to help, since Bush doesn't seem to be doing much. I have no idea who you would talk to to get something like that started. I just thought it would be a good, and fun, idea.
Thanks for writing, Aria. That's a great idea. All we have to do is make sure we don't ask for a parade permit. The last time half a million people gathered on the streets of New York City, it was in protest of the Republican National Convention, and the organizers unfortunately went along with the city, the cops, and the federal government and got co-opted. The protesters were penned in and herded around like so many sheep. In fact, they were initially corraled right around where your school is, at Seventh Avenue and 29th. Maybe we'd have better luck if, as you suggest, we focus on having our party a little bit south of there, in the Village. .................