New Orleans Saints Back Home After Hurricane Katrina

The last time the New Orleans Superdome was in use was during Hurricane Katrina when thousands of residents took refuge inside its doors for many days. After this sports facility was pretty much destroyed by the hurricane and the people inside, once again it is ready for NFL Football this weekend. A bunch of things have changed in the New Orleans area since the pre Hurricane Katrina days, including the fact that the city of New Orleans is now about half the size, population wise, as it was before the storm. There were those who said that the New Orleans Saints ownership would probably bolt from this area after their football stadium was pretty much destroyed, but they have as of yet not up and left this city for another.

For the most part of last years NFL season and the first part of this one the New Orleans Saints have played football in Shreveport, Louisiana in a college football stadium. More than likely most of their hard core fans have not seen them play in person since Hurricane Katrina and this weekend will be something extra special for fans who really need something positive to cheer about in New Orleans. To me it is a sad state of affairs when a professional football team can get their field back in shape before hundreds of thousands of residents can return home, but this is just the world we live in today and most likely thousands of people who use to call New Orleans home will now decide to call their new city home in future years.

While New Orleans will never be exactly the same as it was before Hurricane Katrina, maybe there is hope that this proud city will somehow become a better place to live and work because of the new construction going on within its city limits signs. Recently, there have been reports of an increasing crime problem in New Orleans and now National Guard Troops will help police for the next few years until the local police force can be rebuilt after many officers just left town when all the problems started during and after Katrina. I certainly hope that New Orleans will do a better job at hiring and training police officers in the future because folks who decide to follow a career of public service should first and foremost be concerned about the people they serve and not their own selfish needs.

Now that New Orleans has their Saints football team back in town and good music and food being served once again in the French Quarter, many of the old sights and sounds are coming back to this old and proud city. However, one can only hope that some of the worst aspects of New Orleans have left that city for good. Problems like corruption within the police department and out of control gang activity in many of this cities neighborhoods will hopefully move on to some other place where authorities are better equipped to deal with this problem I know in Houston, where many people were relocated that crime is on the increase, but from what I have heard the State of Texas and Houston police are gearing up to fight this problem in the near future.

Very few people have taken the time to say thank you to the City of Shreveport Louisiana for taking in the New Orleans Saints football team while the Superdome has been rebuilt, but they should and I will thank them. My wife and I have spent many a weekend night over the years in the cities of Shreveport and Bossier City and we can both attest to the fact that the folks who call these two cities home have big hearts and one of the nicest community personalities we have ever seen.

Related: Katrina Problems Linger, Mardi Gras Crowds, Separating Criminals, Hurricane Katrina

Saints Back Home

Central Texas Campaign Goes Negative - Edwards/Taylor

I was watching some television this afternoon when a negative campaign ad came on television which was paid for by our local US Representative Chet Edwards against his Republican opponent for Congress, Van Taylor. Representative Edwards has been in Congress for a long time serving the people of Central Texas and while I mainly trend Republican in my voting history, I usually vote for Chet Edwards because I believe he is one of the few truly moderate folks left in the Democratic Party. I was a little bit shocked today when I saw this negative campaign commercial from Edwards against Taylor because I just assumed that Congressman Edwards was probably in the drivers seat when it comes to leading in this election race.

The ad I saw talked about Van Taylor owning a bunch of stock in drug companies and the ad said, Van Taylor, was against senior citizens being able to purchase prescriptions from Canada at a lower cost. I have not seen or heard of any recent public opinion polls in this area which indicate which one of these candidates is ahead in this race for Congress, but judging only from the tone of Congressman Edwards advertisement, he must be feeling some heat from his challenger. The two biggest advantages Van Taylor has in this upcoming race are that he is a Gulf War Veteran and a Republican in a district which has been redrawn to favor Republican candidates. Maybe this is the reason that Congressman Edwards has decided to go negative in his TV ads so early in this campaign year.

Personally, I think Chet Edwards will and should be reelected in the fall. I work at night and don’t watch very much prime time television, so I just asked my wife if Van Taylor has been running negative campaign ads on television. She informed me that he had been running a bunch of television advertisement the past week or so and they were very negative against Chet Edwards. With that knowledge it makes sense that Congressman Edwards is just responding to negative ads which are being run against him by Taylor. It is amazing how much a person can miss when it comes to television ads when they work at night and don’t watch prime-time television. If it were not for my interest in the Ryder Cup this afternoon, I might not of seen any of these most recent campaign ads.

Fred Barns was on Fox News a few weeks ago saying that he thought Van Taylor had a good chance of defeating Chet Edwards in this fall’s campaign. My personal opinion is that even in this very Republican redrawn district, this race is Chet Edwards to lose. While I like Chet Edwards, I don’t like negative advertisements on either side when it comes to political races. I do understand that this is apparently the path a candidate must take to win political office, but the whole process of cutting down an opponent, when both men in this race for Congress seem like honorable men, doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

Civil War Continues - War Against Terrorism

Dozen more people were killed in Iraq today as the never-ending blood shed there continues without any reduction in site. Almost every neutral observer of this war has declared for months that the nation of Iraq has been engaged in a civil war, but the Bush administration is refusing to admit the obvious to themselves and the American people. President Bush has done a wonderful job in recent weeks doing what he can to change the subject in Washington from the War in Iraq to the War against Terrorism and his approval numbers have made a move to the upside. However, this War in Iraq has more to do with a good exit strategy than a date when victory will be seen and accomplished.

President Bush’s desire to take down Saddam was some type of personal obsession in my view because he and other members of his administration didn’t have a workable plan of how to manage rebuilding such an important country once it was taken apart by the US military. History has taught leaders who care to research it that people and nations are much easier to tear apart than they are to put back together again and Iraq, after Saddam, is adding to that very important history lesson. I know why hard core Republicans and the Bush administration don’t want to admit there is a civil war happening in Iraq and that reason is if they admit failure at this point in time it will hurt their chances of victory in the November congressional elections.

I believe most Americans know that what is happening in Iraq today is a civil war and they also know that it is impossible for any military, even one as large and strong as the United States should not and can not win a civil war. This is the reason why a large majority of the American people have decided to end their support of the Bush administration’s plan to keep troops involved in the daily fighting in Iraq and why so many people want President Bush to find some way to get our troops out of that war torn country. Compared to most nations, the US is very young and when a nation as young as we are has a military that is second to none in the world, mistakes in military judgment are going to be made and with those mistakes many lives of young men and women will be put in jeopardy.

Now the world is faced with other growing threats, due in part to our military policies in Iraq. Iran and Venezuela mock the US almost on a daily basis because of the mistakes our government has made in Iraq. Last night I saw a news report that said our US soldiers are wearing so thin because of this civil war fighting in Iraq that the Pentagon might have to start calling up reserve troops one against to help support the regular army troops, already there, who are on their third or fourth deployment. While I have voted Republican most of my life, it is so important this November to elected leaders who will offer some type of balance to the debate of what should happen next in Iraq. Unfortunately, my political party has made the decision that the only winning formula is to stay the course and let more US troops die in a dead end civil war in Iraq.

Surely, there are better options available other than to stay the course, or cut and run in Iraq. Everyday I believe more and more that neither of these two options are a winning strategy and I hope for other more bold ideas on this subject to come forward in the upcoming months. In the beginning I supported President Bush in his decision to go to war in Iraq because I trusted what he was telling me about his reasons for committing our troops to this far away land. However, as time has gone by many of his reason have proven to be wrong and rather than admit to his mistakes in judgment, the President has decided to stay the course even when doing so puts our troops in harms way in civil war which was caused by our decision to go to war in Iraq in the first place. How this whole mess will finally play out is anyone’s guess, but at this point in time the two major strategy’s of staying the course or packing up and leaving immediately are both bad and hopefully better ideas will enter this war debate after this November’s elections.

Good Choices Make A Big Difference In Life

Life is always about choices, but most folks never give the choices they make on a daily basis much thought at all. Most people I meet believe that either life has been good to them or bad depending on events which have transpired during their existence on Earth. The truth is that making good choices on a daily basis could change the lives of many people in a more profound way than they might think. The real trick to making good choices work for a person is to first convince them that bad or poor choices have lead to their unhappiness in life. Most folks decide to just blame others when things don’t go right, rather than looking inward at what they might have done differently to bring about a different result.

While most people find it easy to see big mistakes they make, what most folks miss are the little choices they make every single day that add up to either moving them forward with a happy and prosperous life or backward into a downward spiral. I know many people who seem to make the same mistake over and over again and they somehow are brainwashed into thinking that if they just do some type of behavior a little bit different the next time it will somehow work out better for them. I have a good friend who has a hard time living in happiness unless there is some kind of new relationship somewhere down the road.

This thinking has lead him to all kinds of problems with women in the past and as far as I know he still keeps running that same pattern over and over again even though it always leads him to an unhappy place and causes his financial future to be in jeopardy. In another example, I work with a young man who is hell bent on never following any kind of authority either in his personal life or at work. This young man is always in trouble at work and he can’t seem to figure out why no one likes him or is impressed with his above average intellect. The truth is that this young man is very smart when it comes to technology, but he is failing badly when it comes to getting along with others he works with and especially his supervisors.

I have learned that the most simple changes in life can be the most profound and as I have grown older I have learned that it makes much more sense to go with the flow rather that swim upstream all my life. There are things in life worth fight for and the real intelligence starts in knowing the difference between something we should fight for and something we should just go along with. I wonder sometimes when I see single mothers who grow old with no man in their life, what kind of a difference abstinence would have made in their life when they were younger? I wonder, if they had not become pregnant at an early age would their life have been more fulfilling? I don’t know the answer and maybe for some, one bad choice will lead to many more good choices in the future.

I do know this, that people will never find true happiness in life if they don’t start to realize that their small daily choices add up to a life of their own choosing. No one will ever find true happiness if they constantly blame others when their own choices put them square in the mess they are current living in. It is so much easier to blame other for the bad choices we make, rather than taking responsibility for our own actions and doing the hard work necessary to make better choices in the future.

Hillary Clinton Should Lead Her Party Forward

Even in a year when Democrats should dominate the November congressional elections there are big doubts as to how successful their goal of taking over control of the US House of Representatives will be. What is really missing in the Democratic Party is a leader who knows how to win campaigns and keep the issues squarely focused until November. The only Democrat I know of that could manage such a feat is former President Bill Clinton, but unfortunately he has his hands full right now getting billionaires to shed some of their money for folks in need around the globe.

Most of the time I vote Republican, but I do desire some sharing of power in Washington DC because I have had my fill of total GOP domination of all branches of the government. That said, I think the Democrats will blow this golden opportunity to regain power in Washington this November because they have elected as their leader a man who doesn’t even appear mentally stable named Howard Dean. The real leader of the Democratic Party is former President Bill Clinton, but he is not interested in the job of party leader at this time. Without someone who knows how to win tough races in very GOP districts, my guess is that the Democrats will do something stupid at the last minute of this falls campaign and snatch defeat from the arms of victory.

I believe former President Clinton did some immoral things when he was in office, but the American people have forgiven him. There is no doubt that Bill Clinton knows how politics work in the US and he knows how to frame issues in a way that will benefit either himself or others in his party. Both the GOP and Democrats are too loyal to extremist on either side of the political spectrum, but President Clinton has found the right formula to thread that nettle to victory on two different occasions when most folks that I know didn’t think he had a chance. People don’t call him “Slick Willie” for nothing because while far right Republicans hate almost everything he says and does, what they hate the most is his ability to win elections and move the American people to his way of thinking.

I know it won’t happen, but if Democratic leaders wish to see their party win this November, they need to somehow convince former President Clinton to become the leader of the DNC and allow him to spend their money in a way which will lead to victory. I have said before and I will say again that given enough time, Howard Dean, the current DNC chairman will find a way to turn the American away from the Democratic Party between now and election day. While Republicans dislike former President Clinton a great deal, leaders within the GOP know of his ability to win elections and the Democratic Party should see the wisdom of convincing this former President to take on the challenge of becoming their party leader before their current chairman finds a way to say something stupid, once again.