Satan Says: Mardi Gras Must Continue

This tells that Satan inspires it’s fellows and push them for sin and before that covers the sin with blanket of virtue…

Those people never think that Mardi Gras has any contribution to the calamity New Orleans are suffering…

Mardi Gras is a festival that promotes paganism, sex, crime…it fetches the city a billion bucks and a Katrina….

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/national/nationalspecial/17mardigras.html?hp

September 17, 2005
Vowing to Maintain an Annual Rite After the Storm
By MICHAEL LUO
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 16 - The giant Agamemnon survived. So did the Kevin Costner head from last year's parade. Wolfman just lost a little papier-mâché. But SpongeBob needs some major work.
In a sprawling patchwork of warehouses across the Mississippi River from downtown, a different kind of recovery from Hurricane Katrina is under way. One worker was busy the other day mending the Styrofoam teeth of an oversize alligator, while another repainted a large catfish - all part of a headlong rush to get back on track for the annual rite that is the psychic center of this city and could signal its rebirth next year: Mardi Gras.
"It's certainly some millions of dollars in damage that we have sustained," said Barry Kern, president of Kern Studios, the family-run company that produces most of the elaborate floats for Carnival, the several-weeks-long celebration that culminates in Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 28 next year. "But it's nothing that's going to stop us. We're ready to roll."
Still, it is unclear whether New Orleans will have the money, the crowds or the heart for a full-blown Mardi Gras, especially the parades that are the season's signature. And as the city struggles to regain its footing, that question promises to take center stage.
"Maybe it has to be primitive, but it still has to happen," said Oliver Thomas, president of the City Council. "It would be an international shame if it didn't."
The celebration's contribution to the city's economy has been estimated at more than $1 billion, according to study conducted in 2000 for the Mayor's Mardi Gras Advisory Committee. Mardi Gras is the lifeblood of a cottage industry of bead manufacturers, costume designers and other artisans, as well as hotels, restaurants and taxis that profit from the tourists and residents who jam the streets.
"It's equal in size to three Super Bowls," Mr. Kern said. "If we don't have it, it would be devastating."
In the storm's wake, the importance of Mardi Gras extends well beyond dollars, many people said.
"Psychologically, I think it would be significant for New Orleans to have some kind of Mardi Gras celebration next year, celebrating that it's back," said Sarah Kracke, senior vice president of Greater New Orleans Inc., an economic development group. "All these things would be extremely valuable to the city and our psyche."
Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the first Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, said Arthur Hardy, who publishes an annual guide to the festivities. In all those years, there have been only a handful of times when revelers did not parade through the streets in the days before Ash Wednesday: during the Civil War, a period of local unrest in 1875, World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
"Basically, it's been wars that have stopped Mardi Gras," Mr. Hardy said, "not anything like a little rainstorm."
Much of how Mardi Gras will look next year is dependent on the more than 50 organizations, called krewes, that put on the raucous parades that stretch over 10 days. Some have histories that stretch back decades, and mythological names like Orpheus, Endymion and Bacchus. Rex, one of the oldest krewes, dating from 1872, suffered some of the worst storm damage, as waters flooded its warehouse, across the Mississippi River from Kern Studios.
A major question is whether the smaller krewes will have enough money, and members back in the city, to stage their parades, said Mr. Hardy, who suggested that corporate sponsors might step in to help.
Regardless, Kern Studios is plunging ahead with preparations at its warehouses here in the Algiers neighborhood.
The work begins an entire year before Mardi Gras, said Blaine Kern Sr., who founded the company and is widely known here as Mr. Mardi Gras. As a result, many floats for next year's festivities had already been completed before the storm. "We're set back, of course, but we were ahead of our schedule," Mr. Kern said.
Some doors blew off the Kern warehouses, but damage to the floats and props inside was minimal. Signature floats like Orpheus's Leviathan, a giant dragon that blinks with an elaborate fiber-optic system, and Endymion's 240-foot-long riverboat were unharmed.
The worst damage was the collapsed roofs of two warehouses. But even there, amid the debris, a fragile flamingo on one float remained standing atop spindly legs, ready to go on.