Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez. Pas.

Diaper fetishes, financial shenanigans, brothels, corrupt senators – courtesy of a commenter at Tbogg comes a fascinating New Orleans political blog, Your Right Hand Thief, which lifts the lid on sexual corruption and hypocrisy in the Katrina-devastated city. It’s damned good reading, once you get the cast of characters sorted out in your head, but it’s not for the easily shocked.

In New Orleans not just the infrastructure’s buggered; the politicians are too. The difference is the politicians enjoy it. Take a particularly vile Louisiana Senator named Vitter, whose sexual predilections allegedly include a taste for wearing dirty diapers. (This seems to be becoming a popular pastime amongst politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, if persistent rumours are true. But I digress.)

Vitter’s just been named on the DC Madam’s list (download from cloggie.org here) and is also said to be a customer of the infamous Canal St Madam too:

Tonight I got confirmation from a solid inside source who has no ideological ax to grind. The source said Vitter was a client at Canal Street, and provided some additional details that shed light on Maier’s comment that there was “more to the business than sex”. [Update: Based on her comments about Vitter not having “unusual predilections”, I would interpret this comment to mean something like companionship and social interaction rather than fetishes… etc.] These details are not for the faint of heart, either.

We’re talking about, among other things, Diaper Fetishism. That’s right folks, according to a trusted inside source, Vitter was well known among other Canal Street Brothel patrons to like diapers as well as other bizarre “fetishes”. I don’t have much more info than that from my source, except that some of the other patrons at the brothel included a well known business-minded New Orleans Republican and a well known Democratic ex-governor. There are many other well known patrons who never held public office, too. You’ve probably heard various names floated about.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love that New Orleans has more than its share of sex fetishists and preeverts who can’t come missionary. This ain’t a vanilla town, kids.

But the thought of Vitter prancing around in a dipey is a bit jarring, especially since I’m changing those nasty things every day. I can’t help picturing the scene and wondering about the details. I assume they were adult sized. But were they cloth or disposable? Did they get dirty? Was there a diaper genie available? What about a tube of Boudreaux’s? Were they customized in Vitter Blue? How old were Vitter’s children when this was going on? Did he change diapers in the morning and then wear them at night?

Enquiring minds would like to know – including mine now. I’m hooked.

But although this is a great blog for lovers of the picaresque and of sex scandals in a steamy southern setting, it’s important to remember it’s not fiction. It’s horribly, disgustingly real: Vitter and his friends’ disgusting political, financial and sexual corruption is worsening the lives of families already devastated by nature and poltical negligence. First they were fucked over by nature, the Corps of Engineers and FEMA: now they’re being fucked over even more by people who care only about the money to be made out of their disaster, not about getting people home.

The hurricane season is coming. The Corps of Engineers’ new maps show New Orleans is still not protected, and its elected representatives are out drinking, catting, coming in their shitty nappies and making lucrative deals while doing so.

Click image to download .pdf

Three weeks late, the Army Corps of Engineers released maps today revealing the West Bank’s severe vulnerability to storm surges, a predicament that hasn’t changed in the two years since Hurricane Katrina, given that the region awaits major improvements to its gaping line of levees and floodwalls.

It’s a source of continued surprise to me that there hasn’t been an armed insurrection in New Orleans – but then I guess that’s why they made sure the refugees couldn’t return to see what the bloated vultures are doing to their city.

Only 21 percent of the 77,000 rental units in the five parishes in the New Orleans metropolitan area are slated to be rebuilt through government grants and tax credits, according to a recent study by PolicyLink, a nonprofit research institute, with a disproportionate number for families on teacher or police officer salaries, rather than much lower-paid home health aides or hotel clerks. Rents on the remaining units have doubled or even tripled.

Despite pitched opposition, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is going forward with plans to demolish and redevelop the city’s four largest housing projects, knocking out 3,000 apartments that were occupied by low-income families before the storm and adding middle-income families to the mix. So far, there is money in place to rebuild only about 1,000 units affordable enough for previous residents.

At the state level, officials have allocated $6.3 billion for the Road Home’s assistance program for homeowners, dwarfing the $869 million allocated to the Small Rental Property Program, which housing advocates say is the most likely to replace affordable units quickly.

Clever- no rental homes, no problem with those pesky Katrina refugees. Plenty of room for carpetbaggers and whores though.

What’s happening to New Orleans and its people is a lesson to all of us who think we are safe from natural disaster. I’ll give NOLAnian blogger Gentilly Girl the last word:

[…]

Without our area America would never have come out of the Great Depression, never could have been the liberator in WW II, and never could have placed Humans on the Moon. This Nation would never have achieved the status it has today without using US. WE ARE the major power for this country, and even today, we are the basis of much of what the U.S. is and can be.

We gave willingly as dutiful citizens, but then there came a storm in August, 2005. Our protections against such storms, promised by the same Nation that was destroying our lands, freakin’ damned FAILED, AND MANY OF US DIED OR BECAME HOMELESS. Our world, our little part of it, almost died. Many voices called for our death, but we would not hear them. We are rebuilding OUR land.

Our place almost died. Can you understand that statement? Look around what you perceive as your community being totally gone. Can you stomach that? That your friends, neighbors, shops and eateries are wiped from the face of the Earth? To know that the faces you have known for years are no longer next door or around the corner? To realize that the children (who you hated because of their pranks and noise), are no longer in the place their parents lived in? That they aren’t there to remind you of the continuity of culture? That you are no longer a part of the Dance of Life?
Can you imagine that in the place where you live?

Can you?

More…

UPDATE:

Commenters as Democratic Undergriound have given the good Senator the sobriquet “Vitter The Shitter”.

Wahahahahahahahaha.