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Independent Candidate for President
Misteradiant:
I believe America should come to the aid of New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf coast communities that were devastated by hurricane Katrina. What is more important, a bunch of angry Islamic fundamentalists killing each other for power or the homes, businesses and schools of those in our own country? Failing to rebuild New Orleans would have consequences far beyond Louisiana:
+ New Orleans' two ports are the nation's biggest by tonnage.
+ The region handles one third of the nation's seafood and more than a quarter of its oil and natural gas.
+ 4,000 oil and natural-gas platforms, linked by 33,000 miles of pipeline, spread out along the Louisiana coast.
+ The four largest refineries in the Western Hemisphere are located here.
+ This information makes New Orleans and Southern Louisiana more important to the nation's energy supply than Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.
The Army Corpse of Engineers are the ones who destroyed New Orleans. They are the federal government's own and they designed and built the levees. The right thing to do is to admit they let the people and the city of New Orleans down and must now do the right thing and repair it.
But no. This is endemic of our culture today. It is perpetuated by this Presidency and by most of your Senators and Representatives. Nobody has taken responsibility for a levee system designed to withstand a Category 3 storm that turned out to be so poorly built it would never have protected against a Category 1 storm. Instead of taking responsibility and working to amend this thousand-grave mistake, there has been finger-pointing. Is it any wonder that nobody has done much to get New Orleans back up on its gambling poet, drunken troubadour, jazz and jambalaya-filled feet?
The cost of the Iraq War:
One year at war in Iraq would rebuild New Orleans and Southern Louisiana, from the broken and mismanaged levee system to mangled sewage and power grid issues.
I would rather do this for America than continue in Iraq, where twisted religious beliefs turn car bombs into an holy act sanctioned by God.
That is not God. That is not the God of my vision of America. It is a god of hate, not love. It is unforgiving and cruel. It is murderous and it is a lie. They cannot be reasoned with. Let us leave Iraq and rebuild New Orleans.
Besides the economic facts I list above that New Orleans and Southern Louisiana offers our nation, there are creative, historical and spiritual facts that must be taken into consideration when thinking of the worth of New Orleans. It is a hotbed of art and music. It is a town where movies are made, books are written and songs are played in praise of it. It is a place of history.
I want to share my wish for a new city, a center for creativity and commerce, of entrepreneurs and energy, by telling the story of my life before and since Katrina took our home. I want to share with everyone my fight to love her and my hope to be back some day:
My Plea for a new New Orleans:
Now, one year later, we live in San Antonio. Nobody writes songs for San Antonio. No movies are filmed here. No novels speak to life and living in San Antonio. What street? Which neighborhood? It is a suburban sprawl of blow-up houses set in planned community conformity. It is a desert plain of conservative blandness. We make more money, our lives are more stable and we have replaced much of what was lost, but we hurt every day that we are no longer living in New Orleans.
We loved local music in old bars and the Steel Pony motorcycle rally. We loved football and basketball. We loved the Quarter and we lived off Magazine. We loved the trolley, the universities, Voodoofest and the history. We loved New Orleans. We know she is scarred but she is gorgeous. She is real. She hurts and is a dichotomy of beauty and decay. She is prophecy and revelation. Fight for her. Her streets are filled with cosmic purpose. Vote this November and again in 2008. Make the Crescent City a place of rebirth, of opportunity, of creativity and innovation. Please do it for those of us who still cannot come back. Please do it for what she means to all of us and to those who live there.
God bless New Orleans. I miss you.
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If you have something to add, please email me at
. Let me know what concerns you.
I promise you will receive a personal response and that your opinion will make my bid for President of the United States a more inclusive candidacy than any out-of-touch multi-millionaire opponent and his corporate conglomerate backers could pay to fabricate. |
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