Only The Idiots

If ever there was a final nail to be pounded into the political coffin of a public official's credibility, this is it:

Raci[st] Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan claimed on Friday that he had a private meeting with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, where Nagin gave him the information that Farrakhan later used to claim New Orleans' levees had been deliberately blown up.

And Charlie Rangel calls George Bush "the new Bull Connor"? Next thing you know we'll find out that there's a Democrat senator who's a former Klansman.

This meeting was corroborated by...oh, hell, read it for yourself:

News of Nagin's meeting with the incendiary black leader first surfaced Monday, September 19, when Nashim Nzinga, chief of staff for the New Black Panther Party, told Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

"Minister Louis Farrakhan charted two planes and put 16 people on them and flew to Dallas, Texas; Houston, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Jackson, Mississippi, on a fact-finding mission. And he met the mayor of New Orleans in Dallas, Texas, and was told these things directly from him."

Apparently the rampant, runaway racist fantasizing in this secret meeting didn't flow in just one direction:

In the same address to the Memphis Millions More rally, Farrakhan said Nagin told him that white racists used attack dogs and machine guns to keep blacks from escaping the Superdome.

"Mayor Nagin told us that those poor brothers and sisters that went to the Superdome, these were the ones who made it out of their houses but didn't have any money or means to get out of the city . . . So when the water began to rise around the Superdome, Mayor Nagin told them to get out and start marching over the bridge, the I-10, and get out of here. So they started marching. And when they got over that bridge into the next parish, which was white, they were met with attack dogs and machine guns."

Farrakhan claimed that Mayor Nagin told him warning shots were fired to keep the black evacuees at bay.

"This is Mayor Nagin talking to us," he told the Memphis gathering. "They fired the machine guns over the heads of the crowd. They accepted any white people that were there, but no black people."

The Extreme Media has, not all that curiously, kept this career-destroyer quiet in favor of pressing its relentless, gutteral attacks on President Bush. And, even less curiously, Mayor Nagin has not brought it up himself.

But now it is surfacing, and whereas "School Bus" and his people weren't at all reticent when it came to belittling the scapegoated former FEMA head Michael Brown's congressional testimony yesterday, Newsmax is reporting that, "Attempts to reach Mayor Nagin were unsuccessful, with calls to his office going unanswered."

Heh.

He was probably too busy selecting political cemetary plots and preparing for his tell-all book-writing sabbatical. I wonder if Calypso Louis will write the forward.

UPDATE: Chairman How, BTW, isn't disavowing Charlie Rangel's "Bush is our Bull Connor" slur:

The Democratic National Committee yesterday refused to distance itself from Representative Charles Rangel's comparison of President Bush to an infamous Southern segregationist, Theophilus "Bull" Connor, remarks the Republican National Committee identified as "hate speech" and urged the DNC to repudiate. ...

The DNC chairman, Howard Dean, appeared yesterday at a campaign stop on the Upper West Side with the Democrats' mayoral nominee, Fernando Ferrer, who has supported Mr. Rangel's remarks.

Asked at the campaign appearance by the New York Sun to respond to Mr. Rangel's statement and the RNC's requests, Dr. Dean said: "I think the chairman of the RNC ought to be embarrassed for what his party has done to America the last five years. ... It ought to be Mehlman that's apologizing to the people of New York City." Dr. Dean made no reference to Mr. Rangel's statements.

Do you want to say, "Daffy Duck," or shall I....?

[HT: CQ]

UPDATE 9/29: The way Newsmax tells it, no elected Democrat wants to go anywhere near the Nagin-Farrakhan secret meeting scandal, even if they are enthusiastically endorsing Charlie Rangel's "Bush is Bull Connor" slander:

Top Democrats who blasted President Bush for bungling the Hurricane Katrina crisis declined to comment on Wednesday on Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan's claim that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gave him key evidence suggesting his city's levees may have been blown up.

NewsMax called the offices of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Senators Hillary Clinton, Mary Landrieu, Barack Obama and Representative Charlie Rangel, as well as ex-President Clinton's Harlem office, and followed up with emails detailing Farrakhan's claims about his Nagin sit-down.

Not a single Democrat was willing to say whether it was appropriate for Nagin to huddle with the racially polarizing black leader, let alone feed him info that stoked Farrakhan's levee conspiracy theory.

Hey, this is the guy Dems are defending when they try to misdirect blame for post-Katina "bungling" onto the President. Remaining silent about not only Nagin's incompetence and buffoonery but his flagrant racism as well won't fray that connection, but will become yet another example of "silence speaking volumes."