Source: Wall Street Journal

It was a landslide for Mitch Landrieu on Saturday, his third try at becoming mayor. Flanked by his US senator sister and his former mayor dad, he thanked voters for finally giving him the post he has long sought. Landrieu won almost two-thirds of the votes, giving him a solid mandate once he takes office. He had this to say about the significance of him being the first white mayor in New Orleans since his dad stepped down in 1979:

"People that say that race isn't an issue are either blind or deaf. But you can't go around it. You can't go over it. You have to go through it and deal with it."

Source:

From WaPo's Mike Wise: "Brees outgunning Manning was essentially the man beating the machine."....

S.I's Pete King looks at the kick: "Perfect. Ambush. That's the name of the Saints' onside kick, the one that continued the Colts' downfall in Super Bowl 44. The reason it's so perfect is that it's right for Payton, and right for this derring-do team with the cocky defensive coordinator and the only slightly less cocky head coach and players and fans who have yearned for so long to deserve to be cocky." (Did you know punter Thomas Morstead had never attempted an on-side kick in a game in his life? Wow.)

Oh - and the game bypassed the MASH finale for a new viewing record.

NPR notes a "New Beginning" for New Orleans: "Down in New Orleans, it's a holiday of sorts after the Saints' victory in the Super Bowl on Sunday night. New Orleans beat Indianapolis 31-17, setting off a celebration in the streets. Some residents see the win as a sign of the city's rebirth."

At The Nation, columnist Dave Zirn says it straight: "Every last person – from Bush to Brownie - that wrote this city off has to now bend down and kiss the ring."

The NYT notes "the aggressive team won": "The Colts probably felt they were the better team, and having established a 10-0 lead, they might have thought avoiding mistakes was the prudent course. The Saints were set free by the circumstances and by a coach who understood the odds and the importance of initiative..."

At The Sporting News, Brian Cook says Sean Payton played the NFL's version of Moneyball: "But the Slate article is a classic example of a common, flawed thought pattern: Payton is aggressive, not timid, end of story. At no point does the idea that one choice might be better than the other enter the equation. It's a strange idea to be so ubiquitous. Most of the folk complementing Payton are doing so under the assumption that he went all-in without even looking at his cards.

In reality, Payton made two calls that well-established mathematical models says are correct."

Basically, solid math pointed the way to victory. If that's not cool, I don't know what is!

Finally, I think Danica Patrick is an unimpressive driver and now, along with SN's Kathy Sheldon, I agree her ads are lousy also. Please get her off my tv, I beg of you. Please.

[Post pic by Taylor Davidson]

Source: Associated Press

Amid Mardi Gras parades and Super Bowl excitement, New Orleans went to the polls today to elect a new mayor. It almost seems like an afterthought, but the election could bring New Orleans its first white mayor since 1979. Mitch Landrieu is expected to win, but may have to face a March 6 runoff.

Source: CNN

Bob Marshall, a writer for The Times-Picayune newspaper who has covered the Saints since 1972, wrote this week that after New Orleans beat Minnesota on an overtime field goal to advance to the 44th Super Bowl, TV cameras missed something. They only showed crowds filling Bourbon Street. What they should have shown was the thousands of people on the other streets of the city, rushing out to celebrate something that was a lot more than a big sports win.

"This wasn't just a victory lap for the sports fan," he wrote. "It was a cathartic scream, a cheer, a dance, a hug, a high five, chest thump, fist bump, a lay-on-the-lawn-and-kick-my-hands-and-feet-in-the-air-in delirium. It was a community feeling not just of overwhelming joy, but the release of mountains of frustrations, disappointments and sorrows that had nothing to do with football."

Source: MTV News

After singing "We Are the World" to raise money for Haiti, rapper Lil Wayne offered this comment:

"I think it's amazing what's been done for Haiti. But I also think it's amazing what hasn't been done for New Orleans."

Is he right? I'm curious what denizens of New Orleans think.

Source: CBS News

When the Saints were playing their "home" games in San Antonio in 2005, team owner Thomas Benson told the team, "We're not going back," according to this report by CBS Sports. In fact, a couple of players (including beloved Deuce McAllister) took the words to heart and bought houses in San Antonio. That's how close New Orleans came to losing the Saints.

Source: CNN

The education secretary apologized for saying Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that could happen for the city's education system, but several people defended his comments. I don't get it. I know the education system was a mess before Katrina and there are amazing teachers and administrators working to make the system better now. I get that. What I don't get is why people would defend a comment that wreaks of disaster capitalism -- using the disorientation and shock of a natural disaster to bring about massive policy changes (like closing public housing, thus reducing school population, thus reducing the size of the city, all for the sake of a right-wing social experiment.) This is what happened and why New Orleans has mostly charter schools now. The hard work of the people in the system is different from the wholesale change the system itself underwent. Is he cheering for the teachers or for the privatization of education?

Source: National Public Radio

Jason Berry on his city's faith in the Saints:

On the morning of Sunday's big game, an auxiliary bishop at St. Louis Cathedral, in a gentle riff off of St. Paul to the Corinthians, said that as believers are joined to the body of Christ, so, and I quote, "Today, we are also reminded that we are all part of the Who Dat Nation. Let us pray that there is great rejoicing" later today.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

This caught my attention in another piece about Saints mania:

Though long-plagued by a murder rate that has at times clocked a killing a day, the city saw no reports of violence before, during, or after the game.

Source: Daily Call

In yet another sign that the American empire is rotting from the top, the National Football League laid claim to the New Orleans Saints "Who Dat?" chant, a fan favorite. No more comment necessary.

But I found this little bit of history interesting:

Before it became a rallying cry of fans of the New Orleans Saints, Who Dat was used as a cheer by St. Augustine High School. And before that it was perhaps first heard in minstrel shows in the later 1800s.

Source: ABC News

In another example of free-marketeer ideologues putting their vision of pure capitalism ahead of people in pain, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said this: "The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster. And it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that we have to do better."

No Mr. Duncan, wrong. It took Hurricane Katrina (and the broken levees, by the way) to scatter the poorest families across the country so that ideologues could wipe out the public system and replace it with a private "charter" system that wouldn't have helped those dirt-poor folks anyway. Let's at least be honest. The experiment that is the charter school system in New Orleans is the wet dream of free-market fundamentalists -- they're desperate to show that their way works in the face of a series of colossal failures, and so they keep talking up the New Orleans school system. Next up, comments like "Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans' public housing."

Source: New York Times

This is too funny:

A number of schools have canceled classes for Feb. 8, the day after the Super Bowl. A civil trial has been postponed. Mardi Gras parades have been moved. Commander’s Palace, the 130-year-old grand dame of New Orleans restaurants, will close on game night, the first time the restaurant has closed for a one-time event in memory, possibly ever.

Serious people are discussing how much the Super Bowl will affect the turnout in this year’s mayoral election, as the primary takes place on Saturday, Feb. 6, the day before the game.

Source: Voice of America

Josh Neufeld's graphic novel AD: New Orleans after the Deluge is featured in this piece. Neufeld went from blog to self-published magazine to a nearly 200-page book with the publisher of the online magazine Smith.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Four young men posing as telephone repairmen have been arrested for allegedly interfering with the telephones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in downtown New Orleans, including James O'Keefe 3rd, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos have scandalized the ACORN voter registration operation.

Serves him right. He was the stupidest-looking pimp ever.

Source: Washington Post

Did anyone show up to work on time yesterday?

A citywide celebration erupted after the game and lasted into the early hours Monday morning. The streets and sidewalks in and around the French Quarter were jammed with people late Sunday night. Traffic was at a standstill, as motorists honked in jubilation and passengers hung out of car windows. One woman with a drink in hand walked boldly up to a police cruiser stopped in the traffic and yelled to the officers inside: "Can you believe it? We won!"

Source: HuffingtonPost.com

Click through to find a video of Mayor Ray Nagin chatting with reporters about New Orleans and Haiti, and mentioning the similarities between the two. The aftermath of the broken levees looks a lot like the aftermath of the earthquake in Port au Prince, he says.

Source: WPBF.com

One unlucky family (or lucky, I suppose, when you consider that they are all still alive) survived the broken levees in New Orleans and settled in Haiti. Now they're back in Florida and planning to return to New Orleans soon. Phew!

Source: Dallas Morning News

Texas is likely to gain three or four congressional districts once the 2010 census figures are in, experts say. If the state does get that fourth new seat, it will be because of the Katrina diaspora. Almost five years after the storm, the state is still home to 50,000 to 100,000 people who fled Louisiana back in fall 2005.

Source: The Hill

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told reporters Wednesday that she is working with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Murkowski's efforts to block EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the agency's current Clean Air Act powers.

Landrieu said she is not yet ready to announce anything but believes the Clean Air Act is not meant to be applied to carbon dioxide emissions.

Apparently Louisiana does not have one of the coastlines most threatened by climate change....except that is exactly what Senator Landrieu said back in 2005. Did everything change for the better and I just missed it?