Laisse le bon temps rouler!

It was that kind of night in the magical land known as Nawlins. It's gonna be that kind of day…and night…and the next day…and on through Mardi Gras.

Not that the good people of Nawlins ever needed a reason, really, to party but it IS Mardi Gras season and, well, I understand the city's beloved professional football team actually won a game last night!

GEAUX SAINTS! WHO DAT!

Perhaps, now, the federal government and the good people of the rest of the US of A will get serious about finally repairing the Lower 9th Ward.

Up the road a piece, in another southern state and an alternate reality, 600 chronically angry malcontents and insipidists gathered at Opryland to dance fiddle jigs and complain about the current state of affairs in our great nation.

The highlight of the Teabaggers' convention in Nashville was a 40-minute speech on Saturday night by Sarah Palin, defeated GOP vice-presidential nominee who quit her job as Alaska governor to pursue more fame and riches on the Faux News Channel talking about a book she didn't write.

Speaking from crib notes on her Palm hand-held device, Palin criticized President Obama for reading speeches from a teleprompter. You betcha.

"America is ready for another revolution," Palin told the crowd of insurgents. "How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for you?"

With this kind of incite and intellect she'll go far.

The only disruption in the weekend came when the ballroom emptied suddenly following an erroneous rumor a blue-light special had just gone off in the same isle as the fried Vienna sausages.

No, just kidding about that last part.

Meanwhile, in the snow– and moribund–bound capital of the nation, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby decided to play Vito Corleone and hold up 70 Obama Administration appointees to federal posts until he gets billions of dollars for his home state in two major defense department projects: a $35 billion tanker project and a new facility at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.

Said Sen. Shelby, "some day you may come to me asking a favor…"

Thank Heaven, the Thomas More Law Center has clarified for us that hate crimes are an affront to the Bible. The center, which specializes in Levitical law, filed a lawsuit claiming the recently–enacted federal hate crimes law, "criminalize(s) the Bible and use(s) the threat of federal prosecutions…to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically–based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin."

Hmmm…heck, I thought the Bible was all about love toward others.

Finally, kudos to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein for taking a pay cut, this in light of Wall Street's generous handouts from us taxpayers.

Blankfein will only take a bonus of $9 million this year and that's nearly half the $17 million bonus paid to J.P. Morgan Chase's CEO, Jaimie Dimon (On the Soles of His Shoes).

Thanks, Lloyd, for setting an example. We know it'll be tough to live on $9 million.

"Who Dat talkin' 'bout makin' us pay? Who Dat? Who Dat?"

Yep, unless you live under a rock at the bottom of the Mariana Trench you know it's time for Super Bowl XLIVPDQRLSDSEXINBVDS.

This means there will be approximately 94 straight hours of airtime on the TeeVee Box (and ad sales) surrounding nearly 4 hours of actual football between the NFC Champs, the Nawlins Who–Dats and the AFC Champs, the Indianapolis Peyton Mannings.

One thing is for sure: no one will ever confuse New Orleans and Indianapolis, even though – technically, – they are in the same country…kinda, sorta.

And to fill those 100 hours of TeeVee Box programming the NFL gave everyone something to talk about by claiming…this is good…you're gonna love it…claiming to "own" the rights to the phrase, "who dat."

You see – all you whitebread–middle–America–sit–on–the–couch–and–eat–pretzels folks – the phrase, "Who Dat," has become synonymous with the Nawlins Saints football team and now that its reached the Super Bowl everybody wants to claim it, own it, say they invented it, claim it as a birth right and want to marry it for its money.

But it just doesn't work that way. Besides, the NFL many years ago claimed rights to the phrase, "yassa massa," and the NFL just can't have it all!

The chant, "who dat talkin' 'bout beatin' the (fill in the blank)? Who dat? Who dat?," has been around for a very long time.

Former Saints running back Dalton Hilliard says his high school in Patterson, Loosiana used the chant in the 1970s. Other attribute it to St. Augustine High School in Nawlins, a historically African–American Catholic boys school (where they actually chanted, "who dat talkin' 'bout original sin? Who dat? Who dat?").

Two brothers in Nawlins, Sal and Steve Monistere, claim they own the phrase. Everyone knows the Alcorn State Braves were chanting, "who dat," in the late 70s and early 80s. "Who dat talkin' 'bout beatin' the Braves? Who dat? Who dat?"

At this point, though, the phrase belongs to Nawlins and can't nobody take it away. In fact, nobody can tell Nawlins nuthin'! After Katrina, after the Saints' rise from the Ain'ts, after everything that city's been through…cain't nobody tell Nawlins nuthin'. They get to do whatever they want! Jazz and et tu fe for ever'body!!

I just hope South Beach survives!

Good thing the Super Bowl isn't bein' played in California where the Rams once played because we would then have to worry that GOP senate candidate Carly Fiorina would accuse the opposition team of being demon sheep, just like she implied of her GOP senate primary opponent, Tom Campbell.

Fiorina, who took a $24 million golden parachute and jumped out of the Hewlett–Packard plane while thousands of HP employees were shoved out the door, might have had the wool pulled over her eyes by her media advisors because she's become the laughing stock of the political barnyard animal world for her nearly 4–minute demon sheep ad on the InnerTubes.

And good luck to the Teabaggers gathering in Nashville this weekend for a big ol' grope fest. It's Super Bowl weekend. No one 'cept the Faux News will be paying attention to you. (And that'll just make 'em madder.)

Former Colorado representative Tom Tancredo kicked off the teabagging with a speech denouncing the "cult of multiculturalism" in the U. S. and, according to The Daily Beast, said the election of Barack Obama to the presidency was the result of not having civics or literacy tests as a requirement for voting.

The Teabaggers are not actually meeting this weekend but, rather, they are meeting some time in the early part of the 20th Century.

The man in the clown suit spun doughnuts in the center of the street, hoped out of his little, brightly painted car and ran to the sidewalk.

“YES,” he declared. “I believe Barack Obama is a socialist. I believe he is not a citizen. I believe he should be impeached and I believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama!”

The clown was not part of a Shriner's parade. Nope, he was just warming up for the Teabaggers' convention this weekend in Nashville.

Unfortunately for this poor clown – and for the country – he finds himself in good company; actually, he finds himself in the majority of over 2,000 people who identified themselves as Republicans in a recent poll published in the Daily Kos and conducted by the independent non–partisan polling firm, Research 2000.

Seriously. Can this be true? Has the Grand Old Party been totally subsumed by hopelessly ignorant, the blatantly prejudicial and the sullen?

You can read the poll results for yourself: www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/2/832988/-The-2010-Comprehensive-Daily-Kos-Research-2000-Poll-of-Self-Identified-Republicans.

According to this poll, the GOP has become the Goofy Obstreperous Posse.

Of those polled, 63 percent of the Republicans said they believe Obama is a socialist.

Over half, 53 percent, said they believe Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be President of the United States. Really…not makin' this up.

Over half, 58 percent, said they believe Obama may have been born outside the U.S.

In the poll, 39 percent of the Republicans believe Obama should be impeached. Another 32 percent said no and 29 percent said they aren't sure. No one was clear about for what Obama should be impeached.

To their credit, 43 percent said they do not believe Obama wants the terrorists to “win.” The other 57 percent said they do believe Obama wants the terrorists to win or they're not sure if he wants the terrorists to win or not. Maybe they'd settle for a tie and rematch?

Add to this silliness, a quote yesterday from the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, explaining how the GOP is going to get more women involved in politics:

“Women sometimes need a little more handholding, or they need their friends to help them make a decision,” said RNC co-chair Jan Larimar, who happens to be a woman herself.

“And by our going in and talking to them and recruiting and educating and training them to either get involved in a campaign or become a candidate, we're giving them the tools so that they can do that on their own.”

That's sweet. She did not but could have included:

“Now, you don't worry your pretty little head with all this campaign stuff. We'll get some men to explain the whole thing to you.”

Is it any wonder only about a quarter of the population, these days, is willing to admit they like the Republican Party?

To paraphrase the great philosopher, Yogi Berra, “If Ev Dirksen was alive today he'd be rolling over in his grave.”

Okay, so this great attempt – one more time - at bi-partisanship in Washington which began Friday will end today.

The President will release today his budget for 2011, a hefty little $3.8 trillion document with a running deficit of $1.3 trillion.

What fun!

After crashing the Congressional GOP retreat on Friday and asking them politely – sorta – to cut it out and try to be reasonable for a change and all the Republicans then mobbing the President to get his autograph – because he's a rock star – look for them today to lash out at the budget proposals as a Bolshevik plot!

“We gotta close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality,” said the President on Friday.

And while the President's budget for 2011 will close the gap a little on the deficit ($1.6 trillion to $1.3 trillion) look for the rhetoric-to-reality gap today to widen to Grand Canyon proportions.

Yea…that's more fun: to demonize the other side so much it'll make it tough to get things done.

That's the kind of government we like!

No matter that most of the $1.6 trillion budget deficit in the current year is left over from the previous 8 years of Bush & Company and the 2011 deficit will be lower than the deficit of the current year, this gives partisans in Washington something really spectacular over which to fight…and do nothing…and bore us all to death!

Meanwhile, flights of the critically sick and injured from Haiti to Florida and other states will resume today after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist balked last week and forced a temporary halt to the emergency flights.

Crist asked the appropriate question in a tragedy of this magnitude: “Hey, who's gonna pay for all this?” And answered for all Floridians, “we ain't.”

Nice. Maybe next time a massive hurricane hits Florida and Floridians are suffering without the basic necessities, someone will ask, “hey, who's gonna pay for all this?”

And speaking of Haiti, a bunch of Baptists from Idaho and Texas were arrested over the weekend as they were transporting a bunch of kids over the border to the Dominican Republic. They said they were trying to get the orphaned kids back to the U.S. and to safety.

The only problem, according to plenty of press reports, is that at least half the kids still have parents in Haiti. Oops. Oh well, the LOOKED like they needed to be baptized.

Finally, can't remember the last time Barbara Walters rushed to interview a newly-elected nekkid senator from Massachusetts. Oh wait, it might have been the last time Massachusetts had a Republican senator!