"Flooded" With Hypocrisy

It is absolutely, categorically ridiculous that New Orleans has lost out in the competition to host one of the three presidential candidate debates scheduled for next year (one vice-presidential candidates debate has been scheduled).

As noted by Harry Shearer of HuffPo here (regarding the official explanation that NoLA is “not ready”)…

The city has just hosted two back-to-back major conventions, it will host two major college football games within a week, including the BCS championship and, oh, by the way, apropos of controlled chaos, the city has easily and safely hosted two Mardi Gras events since Katrina. David Stern, president of the NBA, long since knew the importance of supporting the city's recovery, engineering the league's decision to hold next February's NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans. What is it the Presidential Debate Commission, and its associated pols, don't get about expressing solidarity with a city critically wounded by the malfeasance of the federal government? If the Army Corps of Engineers were headed by Bin Laden, would that make New Orleans "ready"?

This Times-Picayune story, though, noted the following…

One of the cities selected, Oxford, Miss., which will host the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, won even though it lacked the hotel rooms required by the debate commission, (Anne) Milling (a New Orleans debate sponsor) said. The University of Mississippi is the host of the Oxford debate.

The T-P story also tells us that the other winners announced Monday were Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., for a presidential debate on Oct. 7 and Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. for the last debate on Oct. 15. The vice presidential debate will be held Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis, which has hosted a presidential debate in three of the past four elections.

The official explanation of NoLA’s exclusion, by the way, was provided by Paul Kirk, co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which he runs with Frank Fahrenkopf (the latter is a big pharma lobbyist, and Kirk, the former, is a gambling lobbyist, as noted here).

Hmmm…a gambling lobbyist, huh? Do you think Kirk nixed NoLA to avoid an appearance of a conflict of interest because of this? Or maybe the CPD got a better deal from Ole Miss somehow, since gambling is springing up there also?

Something about this genuinely stinks, and it’s not the residue of the 17th Street Canal.