OK... this tops it all, now it's Racial!

[Thrawn]

I blame socialism.

[Siaf__csf]

Hmm interesting how we have no problems with this kind of people down here.

If your theory would be correct most of europe should be nothing but drug sucking unemployed scum waiting for the next dole payment.

Instead we have far less problems with drugs in general. Far less homeless people, up to non-existant in scandinavia. Far smaller class differences and consequently much less trouble in the society. No heated political debates. No riots here. Well, exception makes the rule (UK). No angry black people with raised fists having a parade. No need to arm ourselves to teeth because we don't have to be afraid of those who can't support themselves.

No need to hire security companies or put bars on the windows (well except in Greece with Albanians looting every place).

We pay more taxes, granted. But I think that our lives are much more troublefree in so many ways. I don't have to worry about raising money for my childrens education - school is free all the way to the university. No need to seek a dental plan - it comes for granted. No need to take a medical insurance - that's being covered too. No need to worry about medical insurance premiums or denial for that matter.

No need to worry about ending up to the street in the case of an accident or lose of health. Covered.

No need to pay trips to the schools or pay meals to the children. Covered. School healthcare. Covered.

State pension system. Check. State funded retirement homes with medical personnel 24/7. Check. Public offices corruption free and effective. (Doesn't apply outside scandinavia though.)

Even the poorest of the families can educate their children and give them a chance of a better life.  Can you?

Even though we have strict gun control laws it's still possible to obtain several different weapons for personal use. You just need to have a background check and register. Gun ownership outside of people who hunt is not, however, very popular. Guns are considered vulgar, a bit of a hillbilly thing. Or related to crime - they have a very negative image in any case.

We literally live in two different worlds. In your world there are many risks associated in several things in life. But on the other hand a chance to fulfill the American dream - become filthy rich.

Here your life will be much more average unless you're really ambitious. The truly ambitious ones will eventually move away officially to avoid taxes and earn a fortune while being 'taxed' in Monaco. Many who try but in the end can't make it outside and return with no money and underwear get the treatment of the prodigal son.

[rpm]

Did anyone catch this week's episode of Real Time? Mahr brought up a couple interesting facts. Federal funding to reenforce the levies was cut from the budget for the last several years and called pork. Meanwhile funding for a bridge in Alaska that serves 30 people and that was not pork.

He also showed a couple AP wire photos. The first showed a black woman wading thru the water with a plastic bag of groceries and a 12 pack of Pepsi. The caption read (and I'm paraphrasing) "A woman escapes after looting."

The second showed a man and woman, both white, wading thru the water with 2 bags of groceries and the caption read (again paraphrasing) "A couple struggle to safety after finding food."

I'm very disappointed in the AP.

[Siaf__csf]

Lol rpm was that a snip from saturday night live or real?

[rpm]

Sadly, it was real.

[Hangtime]

Just listened to my staunchly democrat liberal ex-wife lambaste the feds, the state and the local government for the fiasco.

Then she said (unprompted) 'what's wrong with those people.. why are they just standing there.. why don't they just start walking..'.

then I got punched in the arm when i started laughing. i had to explain that i was not laughing at the folks in need.. i was laughing at her order of priorities.

"dear, i'm in agreement with you. the part that's funny is both you and i would have walked out and THEN started howling about 'where's the help?". Those folks are just standing there, waiting for the mountains to come to muhammed.

then I got punched yet again when I pointed out that the welfare programs and education system she helped bring into being is the ultimate root cause for the majority of the human suffering.. those folks find no blame among themselves for their circumstances, take no responsibility for their own well being, and have been educated to believe that the 'government will provide'.

The Nanny State.

Evidence that the government cannot legislate common sense.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by rpm
Did anyone catch this week's episode of Real Time? Mahr brought up a couple interesting facts. Federal funding to reenforce the levies was cut from the budget for the last several years and called pork. Meanwhile funding for a bridge in Alaska that serves 30 people and that was not pork.

He also showed a couple AP wire photos. The first showed a black woman wading thru the water with a plastic bag of groceries and a 12 pack of Pepsi. The caption read (and I'm paraphrasing) "A woman escapes after looting."

The second showed a man and woman, both white, wading thru the water with 2 bags of groceries and the caption read (again paraphrasing) "A couple struggle to safety after finding food."

I'm very disappointed in the AP.

normally I can watch bill mahr and enjoy the show.  Sometimes it takes more than a grain of salt.  last night, I had to shut him off.  That show was so out of check with actual reality it wasn't even funny.  Yes there has been some unintentional racisist stuff in the media but over all I didn't see any captions for white people stealing TVs and shoes.

After that it was all bush's fault and racism and about Iraq

Truth be told now that the federal govt is running the show progress is showing.  The politics I keep hearing from the left on this almost angers me as much as the looters.

[kevykev56]

Originally posted by rpm
He also showed a couple AP wire photos. The first showed a black woman wading thru the water with a plastic bag of groceries and a 12 pack of Pepsi. The caption read (and I'm paraphrasing) "A woman escapes after looting."

The second showed a man and woman, both white, wading thru the water with 2 bags of groceries and the caption read (again paraphrasing) "A couple struggle to safety after finding food."

I'm very disappointed in the AP.

rpm those pictures were taken days apart. The first time I saw the pic of the woman with the bread was the day after the strike. It was before all the panic and looting was being reported. The first I saw the picture of the woman with the pepsi was  well after the looting began and was a common used word by the media.

Not sure its a great excuse but it could explain the different viewpoints. Or maybe its racism. Real deal is tho, taking food in a disaster area to keep your family in good health is no crime, no matter what race.

Now if you lift it from the hands of your neighbor thats a different story.

[rpm]

Don't get me wrong. I don't blame anyone for scavaging food in this situation. I just find it odd that the black woman was "looting" and the white people "just happened to find" food.

While we are on the subject, I just made a donation to the Salvation Army to provide hot food to the refugees and emergency responders. Step up to the plate, boys.

[Krusher]

Originally posted by rpm
Don't get me wrong. I don't blame anyone for scavaging food in this situation. I just find it odd that the black woman was "looting" and the white people "just happened to find" food.

While we are on the subject, I just made a donation to the Salvation Army to provide hot food to the refugees and emergency responders. Step up to the plate, boys.

snopes has some info on this

http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/looters.asp


It's difficult to draw any substantiated conclusions from these photographs' captions. Although they were both carried by many news outlets, they were  taken by two different photographers and came from two different services, Associated Press (AP) and Getty Images via Agence France-Presse (AFP). These
services may have different stylistic standards for how they caption photographs, or the dissimilar wordings may have been due to nothing more  than the preferences of different photographers and editors, or the difference might be the coincidental result of a desire to avoid repetitive
wording (similar photographs from the same news services variously describe the depicted actions s "looting," "raiding," "taking," "finding," and "making off"). The viewer also isn't privy to the contexts in which the photographs were taken - it's possible that in one case the photographer actually saw his subject exiting an unattended grocery store with an armful of goods, while in the other case the photographer came upon his subjects with supplies in hand and could only make assumptions about how they obtained them.

A Salon article on the photographs by Aaron Kinney suggests the captions were a result of a combination of contexual and stylistic differences:Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."

Regarding the AFP/Getty "finding" photo by [photographer Chris] Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, "This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we're being careful with how we credit these photos." Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that
if Graythen didn't witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn't say they were looting.
The photographer who took the Getty/AFP picture, Chris Graythen, also posted the reasons behind his caption:
I wrote the caption about the two people who 'found' the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water - we were
right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have
floated away anyhow.

[mauser]

Now this is just stupid:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168387,00.html

Kanye West Rips Bush at Telethon
Friday, September 02, 2005

NEW YORK — It began, fittingly enough, with jazz from New Orleans natives Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis. But "A Concert for Hurricane Relief," a heartfelt and dignified benefit aired on NBC and other networks Friday night, took an unexpected turn thanks to the outspoken rapper Kanye West (search).

Appearing two-thirds through the program, he claimed "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and said America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

The show, simulcast from New York on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and Pax, was aired live to the East Coast, enabling the Grammy-winning rapper's outburst to go out uncensored.

There was a several-second tape delay, but the person in charge "was instructed to listen for a curse word, and didn't realize (West) had gone off-script," said NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks.

Immediately after the airing was over, Marks said it was undetermined how much, if any, of the tirade would be included in the taped West Coast feed three hours later.

The host was NBC News' Matt Lauer, who invited viewers to contribute to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund (search) by phone or on the Web. Some 18 presenters performed musical numbers or gave information on the tragedy's huge scope.

Louisiana native Tim McGraw (search) teared up as he told Lauer, "I know the citizens that weren't affected by this directly are gonna stand up and do good things for people." He sang two songs, then became the first of the evening's stars to sign a Gibson Les Paul Special guitar to be auditioned online.

Faith Hill (search), a Mississippi native, sang "There Will Come a Time," with the inspiring lyrics, "The darkness will be gone, the weak shall be strong. Hold on to your faith."

New Orleans son Aaron Neville performed Randy Newman's soulful "Louisiana 1927" with the memorable chorus, "they're trying to wash us away, they're trying to wash us away."

New York governor George Pataki presented the Red Cross with a check for $2.5 million and promised, "This great state will do far more."

"In terms of property damage," said actress Hilary Swank, "the estimate is at least $26 billion in insured losses and perhaps twice that in uninsured losses over a 90,000-square-mile area — approximately the size of Kansas."

Other speakers included Lindsay Lohan (search), Eric LaSalle, Glenn Close, Richard Gere, John Goodman and Leonardo DiCaprio (search).

Comedian Mike Myers was paired with West for a 90-second segment that began with Myers speaking of Katrina's devastation. Then, to Myers' evident surprise, West began a rant by saying, "I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

While allowing that "the Red Cross is doing everything they can," West — who delivered an emotional outburst at the American Music Awards after he was snubbed for an award — declared that government authorities are intentionally dragging their feet on aid to the Gulf Coast. Without getting specific, he added, "They've given them permission to go down and shoot us."

After he stated, "George Bush doesn't care about black people. Please call _" the camera cut away to comedian Chris Tucker.

Concluding the hour a few minutes later, Lauer noted that "emotions in this country right now are running very high. Sometimes that emotion is translated into inspiration, sometimes into criticism. We've heard some of that tonight. But it's still part of the American way of life."

Then the entire ensemble performed "When the Saints Go Marching In."

In a statement, NBC said, "Kanye West departed from the scripted comments that were prepared for him, and his opinions in no way represent the views of the networks.

"It would be most unfortunate," the statement continued, "if the efforts of the artists who participated tonight and the generosity of millions of Americans who are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person's opinion."

Friday's program was the first of several TV benefits planned through next weekend.

NBC and the five other major commercial broadcast networks, along with PBS, plan to unite next Friday for a special. The same night, BET will air a benefit. And on Saturday, Sept. 10, the MTV networks will air a special.

The ignorance is just amazing.  But I guess intelligence and wisdom aren't requirements for being rich and famous.

[Gunslinger]

HA HA HA HA HA

The photos were snoped.  I've seen it all!

But don't beleive them.  This whole rescue effort was delayed because the peopel were black.  Everyone down there hates black people...that's common knowledge.  THose pictures you see of white National Guardsmen and other resucers aren't actually helping them.  

President Bush himself was jumping up and down on a beach in africa and it's those ripples that became the hurricane.  

I swear the left is going to pay politically for their insensativity towards this situation.

[schizer]

Originally posted by mauser
Now this is just stupid:



The ignorance is just amazing.  But I guess intelligence and wisdom aren't requirements for being rich and famous.

here is the video

http://www.putfile.com/leech.php?n=videos/24420044548.wmv

[mauser]

Yep, I saw the video clip on CNN.  Mike Myers looked kinda lost for the most part, nodding slightly a couple times in the beginning, and then after the reference to the President, he looked even more blank/lost.  After they cut over to Chris Tucker, he had that "did he just say that?" look on his face.  

[sarcasm]I'm sure the President hates Condi, and Powell for example.  Oh yeah, according to Harry Belafonte those two are just house slaves.  Never mind then.  [/sarcasm]

[Xargos]

It does not matter what the truth is, if Jesse Jackson says we were slow in helping the people in NO because they were mostly black then you know that must be the reason.