Fucked New Orleans (Part Whatever of a Neverending Series): Whenever it gets so hot up here in the Northeast that the rats are bursting into flames and the streets smell of dog shit and ball sweat, the Rude Pundit thinks fondly of New Orleans, remembering the many nights spent with dancing bodies glistening with that perspiration sheen, of downing speed (back when we called it "speed") with bottles of Dixie beer in shitty Fat City bars where fights would inevitably break out because no amount of alcohol could make you feel fully human in that inhuman heat. Alas, alas, the pain of such memories, and not just because of busted knuckles and splintered chairs. For New Orleans is fucked, yes, it needs to be repeated endlessly, since the storm that wrecked the city and ripped the happy mask off the Bush administration's face to reveal the horrible, scared visage underneath. The FBI released its stats for violent crime in 2007 and, lo and behold, the national average was down just a bit, 1.4% (in Republican statistical analysis, a "landslide"). Cities and states around the country celebrated their own declines in murders, rapes, and robberies. Down in New Orleans, not so much. In fact, violent crime grew at an alarming rate in 2007 in the city. While the rising murder and rape rates seem to be similar to the growth in population of naive optimists and carpetbagging speculators (and poor people who have nowhere else to go and illegals hired to work construction for shit wages), the armed robbery number is startling: 1,245 in 2006; 1,973 in 2007. This year it's gotten even worse. In the first three months of 2008, rapes are up 57% and armed robbery is up 24%. Meanwhile, with 1 in 25 residents of the Crescent City homeless, the House is getting ready to cut $73 million in housing help for physically and mentally disabled Katrina victims from the Senate bill that funds the Iraq war for $212 billion and pays for help for Iraqi refugees to the tune of $350 million. Because President Bush might veto the bill if it's not "clean," as if any spending associated with this cocksucking war can ever be called "clean." Republicans are being aided in this effort by Blue Dog Democrats, who ought to be beaten into yowling submission like the mange-ridden curs they are. Meanwhile, over in the 'burbs, things aren't exactly going swimmingly. You got someone burning "KKK" into a black familiy's lawn in Metairie. You got a bank robbery in Kenner, where John McCain spoke for some reason that was never really explained to anyone. That's in the last day or so. It's motherfuckin' hot in New Orleans right now, hurricane season. Has been for over a month. It'll stay this way only until November, if they're lucky.