Oh Really!!! - What Does Mississippi Have?

New Orleans can't host a debate but Mississippi can!!! What is the real reason for this decision?

New Orleans lost out in the competition to host one of the 2008 presidential debates Monday after the commission that selects the sites decided that the city has not sufficiently recovered from Hurricane Katrina to handle such a major event.

Backers of the New Orleans debate, who had won the support of seven presidential candidates and three of the nation's leading newspapers, reacted with indignation and disputed the debate commission's assertion that New Orleans has not recovered its touch for staging national events.

"Politics trumped the moral decision," said Anne Milling, founder of Women of the Storm, one of the sponsors of the proposed debate.

"They missed an opportunity to help America," said Norman Francis, president of Xavier University, which joined forces with Dillard, Loyola and Tulane to host the debate. In passing on New Orleans' bid, the commission skipped an opportunity to award a debate to a historically black college for the first time.

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, Milling said. The University of Mississippi is the host of the Oxford debate.