How The Invisible Hand Let a Terrorist onto Bourbon Street

GOP blames Dem officials, but no one's pointing fingers at big business

Jan. 3: Invisible Hand unseen in Bourbon Street blame-game … Johnson blames open borders, Democrats, Satan … GOP job one in new Congress: Transgender student athletes … Mask mandates creep back just in time for Trump …

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Lt. Gov. Billy Nongesser (R-LA), seen here in an Oct. 2024 video, blamed New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell for the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street. (Screengrab / KLB video.)

It’s at least asshole-adjacent to Monday-morning quarterback security measures this soon after a terrorist attack. On the other hand, we are called The Fucking News, so let’s have at it, Newsfuckers.

One reason the Texan-American immigrant¹ U.S. Army Muslim businessman/real-estate guy was able to kill 15 people on New Year’s Day on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, LA, is that the street wasn’t blocked off as it usually is by annoying, brutalist rods called bollards. Like so:

The bollards had been removed, so cops blocked off the street with police cars, instead. Neither the bollards nor the police cars blocked an arcane, little-known part of the street technically referred to by professional street-engineers as “the fucking sidewalk.”

So the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, deploying his eyes and his brain, drove around the police car blocking his way, and got onto the street via this so-called “sidewalk.” You can see this complicated maneuver — denoted by the “get around police car” label — in this New York Times schematic:

Now, why weren’t there bollards in place for this surprise, last-minute celebration of, uh, Jan. 1?

Because they were being replaced. Not to add bollards to those newly discovered “sidewalks,” but because the old bollards didn’t work when they got jammed with beads. Which is an occupational hazard for bollards on any street in the country literally only Bourbon Street.

The French Quarter police commander actually said out loud in front of people with cameras that driving on the sidewalk “wasn’t something that we expected to account for.” In his defense, it is against the law to drive on the sidewalk, and how can you expect police to account for people breaking the law?!?

So, who’s responsible? Well, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser (R-LA) offered one pretty strong guess, even though he’s literally named none-guesser. He blamed New Orleans’s Black woman mayor person, LaToya Cantrell, for the missing bollards.

It’s a tad early to affix blame for not affixing bollards, and it’s a bit puerile, too. Depressed, fucked-up dudes with trucks and guns can just pick another unhardened target.

But as we head into blame-affixing season, your TFN wants to flag a few things to keep in mind that you may not see elsewhere.

The security of Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, and even the state, is driven or at least influenced in large measure by unelected businesspeople (not to be confused with elected businesspeople such as the one about to retake office this month).

Let’s review!

The French Quarter isn’t run by elected officials. It’s “managed” by something called the French Quarter Management District (FQMD), led by appointees. Some of those commissioners are appointed by elected officials, but most are appointed by business groups.

In effect, the French Quarter is managed predominantly by appointees of, for instance:

• The Louisiana Restaurant Association

• The Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association, Inc.

• The French Quarter Business Association, and

• The French Quarter Business League, because French Quarter businesses need an association and a league.

In November 2019, another private business, Interfor International, delivered a security assessment for the FQMD. Nine months later, the FQMD released a censored version of the security assessment.

Only one mention of terrorism, despite Bourbon Street’s obvious appeal for both genuine terrorists and sad fucked-up Jabbar-ian fuckups. Gawrsh, I wonder why Bourbon Street businesses might not want people thinking about terrorism on Bourbon Street?

The report’s main focus? Crime. But also rowdiness. Now, who the fuck has a problem with rowdiness on Bourbon Street, the world capital of rowdiness? Oh, right, businesses.

In the censored version, though, the New York Times reports, Interfor recommended doing something about the whole driving-through-people scenario and the shitty bollards.

So, the FQMD got yet another private company, Hard Rock Construction Co., LLC, to replace the bollards. Of course, first they had to raise money by selling bonds, because what else are businesspeople gonna do, tax businesspeople?

Work began on the bollards on Nov. 18, 2024, and was due for completion in “early 2025.”

So the next time you hear some half-brained MAGA business-worshiper snipe about government inefficiency, remember: Nine months to release the report, five years to even start replacing bollards, and whatever early 2025 minus Nov. 18, 2024, is to finish replacing the bollards except on sidewalks because driving on sidewalks is illegal.

But wait, you say, surely there must have been some democratic government involved in all of this? There was, of course, all the way up to Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA).

And who does Landry turn to for security advice? The Shreveport Bossier Advocate reports that it’s “Businessman Shane Guidry, Landry's close confidant who advises the administration on public safety in New Orleans.”

And what are businessman Shane Guidry’s qualifications to advise on public safety? Is he a bollard-replacement guy? Or bollard-removal guy? Or otherwise involved in or adjacent to the bollard-industrial complex?

Guidry has a fleet of boats to provide services to offshore oil wells. So the governor’s taking public-safety advice from the guy who’s basically Big Oil’s Domino’s for the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, it may turn out that all the people, business or human, mentioned herein may be utterly blameless. And we all know New Orleans businesspeople are famously ethical and upstanding. But right now they’re not even in a conversation that’s focused instead on stupid, infuriating shit like the stupid, infuriating shit issuing forth from stupid, infuriating Speaker McFuckface. To wit…

Johnson Blames the Transgenders for Bourbon Street Attack

Instead of blaming the Jesus who removes bollards and lets cars drive on sidewalks, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) yesterday blamed the attack in his home state by a Texan Army veteran on:

• Immigrants,

• The transgenders,

• The FBI,

• Pres. Joe Biden

Let’s follow along with his “logic,” shall we? On Fox yesterday, Johnson said:

“...there is some frustration … that I think is very well placed. You know, for four years now, the Biden administration has taken its eye off the ball. I mean, they did not prioritize, in our view, the right things.

“The FBI was off doing all these various and sundry things, putting their emphasis in their investigations and their eye on, you know, conservative Catholics and concerned parents at school board meetings and all these other things, they tried to convince us that the greatest threat to the homeland was racially motivated extremism.”

So where were the Republican priorities that would have prevented the Bourbon Street attack? Sayeth Johnson: “[W]e all looked at the wide open border and thought logically that that might lead to terrorist attacks in the future.”

(See yesterday’s TFN re: blaming immigrants for attack by U.S. citizen.)

Also, in what episode of any NCIS spinoff was any law enforcement entity supposed to somehow know what Jabbar was planning alone?

Also also, the Pentagon had an effort under way to combat extremism in the ranks. Including, yes, Islamophobes! So who put the kibosh on it? That would be Republicans.

And lest we forget, it’s not Democrats and the Biden administration obsessed with transgender people. They’re just trying to protect transgender people from Republican obsession. To wit…

Meet the Priorities of the New Republican Congress

On the same day shit was blowing up in New Orleans and Las Vegas, House Republicans released a rules package for the new Congress that included measures to facilitate moving quickly on certain high-priority legislation.

As the Erin in the Morning Substack flagged, bill number fucking one persecutes transgender student athletes, requiring the Education Department to recognize “sex … based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

This goes hand-in-cisgendered-hand with another House priority, forcing transgender Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) to use the men’s room and the name Harry McGroom. McBride has said she’ll comply with the rules, but there are several points here.

One, it’s Johnson who’s obsessed with whether people in bathrooms do or don’t have their own johnsons.

Two, by forcing McBride to use the men’s room, Johnson is doing exactly what Republicans claim they oppose: blurring the line, which PS is non-existent because gender is a spectrum yo.

When Congress has a transgender man, will Johnson force him to take his johnson into the women’s room? Will Republicans stand for that, in a bathroom where you can’t stand?

All of this gay panic is premised on alleged fears of sexual violence. But y’know what you do if a transgender person goes into a bathroom and assaults someone? Same thing you do if a cisgender person assaults someone in a bathroom, dressing room, or changing room. You nominate them for president arrest them.

Erin in the Morning credits journalist Mady Castigan for spotting the transgender bill in the new rules, and points out that our corporate media had its own priorities out of whack. Their focus on the new rules package centered almost exclusively on the implications for Johnson, who will or won’t be re-elected as speaker today.

Fine We Can Talk About the Cybertruck Explosion

We’ve been doing our TFN best to ignore this one until we had more information — even though it ate at me that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was doing a Cybertruck victory dance almost immediately after the New Year’s Day explosion, much the way Donald Trump on 9/11 crowed about having the tallest building in New York because the still-burning towers had just fallen².

Musk bragged — wrongly calling it a terrorist attack — that the Cybertruck’s construction contained the blast and/or directed it upwards. And cops agreed.

If you’re anything like me, first of all, thoughts and prayers, but also, it must’ve positively eaten at you to know Musk was taking a self-driving victory lap over a Cybertruck saving lives instead of doing what Teslas are also known for, ending them.

You wanted to deny Musk the glory he claimed. And yet, fucking empiricism! Early indications suggested Musk was right! So what do we do?

Newsfuckers wait. We embrace uncertainty and the limbo of not knowing. We zen it out until we have enough facts.

Okay, enough of that waiting shit. This just in!

It was not, in fact, a Tesla miracle. For one thing, the “explosives” were mostly fireworks. For another, the fucked-up bastard at the wheel was special forces. He knew how to make an actual blowy-uppy thing.

And people who study this kind of thing told the Washington Post the reason the car and the hotel doors weren’t damaged has less to do with the Cybertruck’s construction and more to do with the low level of explosive power. Not that any of this matters, but billionaire-myth-debunking is one of the services provided by TFN. You’re welcome.

Four Quickies

• Just in time for RePresident Donald Trump, face masks are back! But it’s not just Covid anymore. We’re seeing a Christmas surge — thank you, Christian Jesus and pagan Santa! — of Covid, the flu, respiratory syncytial virus³ (RSV), and the norovirus (stomach flu). And that means mask mandates and reminders reportedly are popping up in some municipalities and hospital systems.

• Because you don’t want to hand an incoming president just a spike in transmissible diseases, the Biden administration is weighing whether to hand RePresident Donald Trump a war with Iran. Axios reports that Still-Pres. Joe Biden is reviewing possible options for bombing Iranian nuclear sites if it looks like Iran is making a move to join the nuclear club before the U.S. hands its nuclear arsenal to a man incapable of making money off casinos.

• Biden is also handing Trump another pickle to put on his Big Mac. This morning we learned that Biden will block the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel. Trump also opposes the sale — mostly because he was traumatized in the ‘80s by Japan’s economic rise. But this means Trump will have to either drop Biden’s block on the sale — letting an iconic U.S. company get bought by furriners (as if it matters to U.S. workers which country’s oligarchs exploit them) — or Trump will have to keep fighting the sale, and jeopardize the thousands of Pennsylvania jobs U.S. Steel says will go away without the infusion of Japanese, um, dollars.

• The FBI has released a 2021 video of the unknown person who planted bombs outside Democratic and Republican party offices in 2021. The 2021 video is being released now, which is 2025, in hopes that someone will recognize the 2021 bomber now that they’ve had four years to think about it. Typically in a case of potentially deadly attempted terrorism, officials try not to release too much information too quickly, to ensure that no rash arrests are carried out. Attorney General Merrick Garland is believed to be pressing the FBI to make an arrest in this case no later than February 2478.

TCB

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1. Not actually an immigrant.

2. Yes, a long sentence even for TFN. So you know I’m pissed.

3. Don’t tell the podcast listeners, but I’m just gonna say “RSV” for this part. Shhh!