For what it's worth...

This was originally posted by Kopper, the fine fellow that runs the Garagepunk.com forum, and is also the host of The Wayback Machine radio show in St. Louis. Like a lot of these online petition/letter sending campaigns I'm not sure what effect it will really have but if it has ANY effect at all than it has served a purpose:

IS IT TIME TO BRING THE NATIONAL GUARD HOME FROM IRAQ? (take action now) After 5 years of laughing off or suppressing sound policy advice, the criminal neglect of our REAL homeland security by the Bush administration has now resulted in the total loss of a major American city. And where is our National Guard and all their equipment that are supposed to be here to protect and save us? They are being ground up in the sand half a planet away for absolutely nothing but the arrogant, uncaring and obstinate pride of our chief executive, who is mentally incapable of admitting or correcting any mistake ever. We must DEMAND that our national guard come home now. http://www.usalone.net/nationalguard.htm The form above will send your personal message to all your members of Congress, and now you can send a letter also to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper at the SAME time, all with one click. Our troops in Iraq need to come home immediately. Not a year from now, not a month from now, NOW now. Is there not a SINGLE politician with the courage to stand up and speak the truth? When enough of US speak up it will happen. We must take PERSONAL responsibility for our government and what it does. Is it the destiny of our country to be utterly destroyed in pursuit of vain foreign conquests, as was Rome so many centuries ago, to where they could no longer protect their own homeland? Is that what is meant by the words "finish the job"? What insanity misled us to this terrible PREVENTABLE tragedy, where pleas for critically needed levee repairs were ignored to finance war profits and tax cuts for this administration's personal cronies. They can't even recruit for the National Guard anymore because it's nothing but a ticket straight to a desert hellhole. Bring the guard home now. We must reach out to our fellow citizens every way we can. Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

And if you don't think you should care about the people of New Orleans out of compassion for your fellow man, then read this (which I also snatched off of a post made by Don Julio Blanco on Garagepunk.com)...

Mop Top Mike mentioned that he has friends in New Orleans. Anybody who's ever enjoyed jazz, R&B, rock and roll, and soul has friends in New Orleans. Anybody who thinks of music beyond symphonies or elevators has friends in New Orleans. That music was created by and for the same people who are now homeless, dazed, hungry, and sick. They shared their homegrown music with the rest of us. For that alone the residents of New Orleans deserve our eternal gratitude. The world is a better place because of New Orleans music and musicians. I can't think of another city anywhere that I could make that statement about. Other cities' music histories can usually be summarized neatly in a book or two, if that. New Orleans music history requires its own bookcase.

People today don't realize that 100 years ago, there was no such thing as an improvised solo in band music. That was a New Orleans concept. A group or orchestra playing from head arrangements instead of written ones was a New Orleans concept. Incredibly important, innovative ideas that we now take for granted were not created at the great centers of western culture by comfortable, trained white musicians but rather the sons of slaves and prostitutes in the back alleys and disreputable dance halls in the same neighborhoods that are now underwater. Millions of words have been written attempting to understand how that happened. Nobody has successfully answered that yet. Classically trained musicians in Chicago called this music jazz as a put-down to discourage people from listening to this horrible new sound when it first came there. New Orleanians got the last laugh. They always did. New Orleans has been fighting for its individuality against the ever increasing onslaught of rigid Anglo-American orthodoxy for 200 years.

In the end it was the water, not conformity, that did them in. They will rebuild. The levees will finally be reinforced, new power lines will go up, shiny prefab houses will replace the 19th Century plantation and shotgun houses out in the West End. Students will file into Layola and Tulane like they once did. But the soul of the city will never be rebuilt. Who in their right mind would want to go drink a 'Hurricane' on Bourbon Street ever again, knowing the horrors and devastation that occured in 2005? The city went from a place of celebration to a place of mourning in 24 hours. This is an irreplacable loss for America.