On CNN, Jesse Jackson about the response to the flood/hurricane:
“There is a feeling that the last few days without food and water was like being in the hull of a slave ship.”
I’ll start the discussion.
F—K YOU, JESSE.
Also, the dumbest person on the intertrons has some related thoughts that Jeff and Ace tag-team.
*** Update ***
Excuse me. Make that the second dumbest person on the intertrons. Here is the dumbest:
Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”
They lock them in, starve them, let them rot in death and sewage, and then on day six – they destroy them completely.
This is nothing short of ethnic cleansing against starved, tired, half dead black Americans! Is that what we have become now? Send their sons and daughters to fight in Iraq so we can murder their families here?
The managing editor of the Raw Story at HuffPo.
*** Update ***
More here from Patterico.
Jeff G
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been on the hull of a slave ship.
[crickets]
Yeah, that’s what I thought, you race baiting cocksucker.
Adam
He was playing poker when he said it?
Pb
Say what you will about Jesse–the end result is the same.
over it
I second your opening to the discussion.
Pb
Vladi G
Right, because the only we can tell what something must have been like is to actually experience it ourselves. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Jesse Jackson, your comment is pretty stupid, Jeff.
kl
Whereas pretending Jackson isn’t race-baiting is really, really smart.
jg
I don’t disagree with Jackson but what good can come from saying that? Is stating the obvious the kind of leadership the black community needs.
Randolph Fritz
John, do you think there would have been such a poor emergency response if the area hit had been the Hamptons? Racism and class warfare slowed and are are slowing the response in New Orleans. Can you argue otherwise? Given that–hell, why not scream bloody murder about it?
John Cole
Yes, I disagree. I have written at length how the poor are disproportionately less capable of evacuating in these disasters, and of course in a city that is 70% black, most of the poor are going to be black.
But to argue that race ‘slowed down’ the rescue efforts is absurd, obscene, and stupid.
Adam
The Hamptons is not a million-strong urban population center. The racism responsible for this debacle is the racism that dictates that the poorest 20 percent of New Orleaners are black. The same racism that ensures that in any similar tragedy, be it in LA, DC, or NYC, the poorest communities would be left in the dust, and that those communities would most likely be black. It’s about subtle racist economic and social policy going back decades.
Anyone who asserts that the New Orleans refugee catastrophe happened because Bush, FEMA, or whoever, said, “Oh, it’s just black people, fuck ’em” is an idiot.
Mike S
I don’t think it was race or even class. It was simple incompatence.
Adam
Agreed. Who was it that said, “never explain by conspiracy when incompetence will do?”
ppGaz
I’m an old sixties-style Civil Rights marcher. I’m watching the debacle unfold and I can’t find any evidence that any of this giant bungle is race-related or race-driven. Nary a shred.
That said, if I am black and stuck in a pile of trash and abandoned for several days out there in the heat and the sewage, I don’t know how I can help but think that there is something racial about it, when all the hapless people around me are also black.
This country will have grown up when it can handle the fact that a lot of black people are going to feel that there is a racial undertone to this …. even though there probably is not, in reality …. and not get all bent out of shape about it. People who are being fucked over are going to make all manner of loud complaints. So what?
Are we bigger than that? Can we just acknowledge the way they see it, and move on? Or do we have to get in our little pound of snark over it, like a bunch of ASSHOLES?
Thoughts?
docG
It is hard to find a major American city in which African-Americans do not make up a disproportionate share of those living in poverty, regardless of the overall percentage they make up of the total population. Why is being black highly correlated with being poor? I agree with you that poverty is the major evacuation issue in NO, but don’t agree that being black and being poor is coincidental. That said, Jesse Jackson misuses race to promote himself at every opportunity.
ppGaz
So what? On the not-so-grand-scale of things, who cares what he does? Why is his narrow view so important?
TallDave
Ah, religious stupidity:
TallDave
There are lots of blacks that are highly succssful, and not just in the sports or entertainment worlds. The difference between them and those that don’t succeed — of any race — is a matter of character.
The factors for success apply irrespective of race: hard work, placing a high value on education, and integrity. No one who has those qualities of character will fail to earn a decent living in America.
Accountability is a dirty word
Farrakhan of course is as full of crap as Falwell and Robertson were after 9/11. However, Bush’s Iraq policy is on even thinner ice now. The war was sold without sacrifice and it is clear now that the budgetary and resource strains of the war in Iraq have had effects stateside. The war’s popularity is on the wane before this and this just might send it into even greater depths.
The Pentago announced that the troop additions before the 10/15 election in Iraq would be 2,000 instead of 20,000. Coincidence or a reflection of resource constraints and/or political fallout from more national guardsman being sent to Iraq?
Trent
Fuck the Jesse Jackson quote. What the fuck is this about the military going in??? Little Somalia??
Why can Harry Connick Jr walk through the streets of New Orleans, walk into the Convention Center and talk to people, but food, water and transportation can’t? Why???
Republicans only know of one solution to a problem and it’s at the barrel of a gun. They simply cannot see a problem from any other viewpoint than the unruly child that needs to be punished by the overbearing father.
If i’m misinterpretting this quote, i’ll gladly backpedel. Believe me, i don’t want this to be true. But if this turns into a bloodbath or a mass incarceration…
Darrell
I disagree. I think the reason many black people may think like that is because too many of us have been too quiet on the widespread race baiting.. while too many are silent, others openly promote racist conspiracy theories which are not roundly denounced and refuted. it’s poisonous to suggest that we just ‘get over it’
Trent
Just a couple bad apples i guess?
Darrell
Armed gangs are roaming the streets, rescue workers and police are being fired upon, people are getting shot left and right. Are you suggesting that under these circumstances, mass incarceration and/or return gunfire should not be considered? Please elaborate, as I want others to see up close how so many of you leftists really think
ppGaz
“Us?” No offense, Darrell, but do you think you have any street cred outside of the GOP fan club?
So who is “us?”
Why would people who think they have descended into hell listen to you to be told what to think about it?
I’m serious. In fact, why would you presume to tell them what to think about it, at all?
I put you in italics because it’s a general you. Not personal.
ppGaz
John Cole: Maybe the blog would be a kinder, gentler place if we didn’t have to put up with this kind of grinding, dismissive shit from the likes of Darrell and Stormy every damned day?
Why is “Dear Leader” forbidden on the basis of its annoying quality, while never-ending Darrellspeak is okay?
ppGaz
No it isn’t. It’s appropriate to ask you to just grow the hell up.
Darrell
ppgaz, would you think it appropriate to loudly denounce anyone blaiming Katrina’s devastation on “the jews”?
Peter T.
Darrell, could you provide some links to support your ‘people getting shot left and right’ statement? I’ve read that a police officer and a guardsman were shot earlier in the week, but I read in the Washington Post today (sorry, link appears gone) that the guard was not encountering violence as anticipated. I’ve read nothing of firefights or gunshot casualties since the guard arrived in force. In fact, everything I’ve seen suggests that once the aid needed was provided, the evacuation of New Orleans is pretty much occurring as it should.
ppGaz
Eh? You lost me.
Trent
Absolutely. You can’t “ban” one without the other.
I’m so fucking tired of the phrase “leftist.” It’s such a shit comment. Along with calling those on the Left communists, terrorists, unamerican and unpatriotic.
We’re Americans, you jackass. The only unpatriotic, un-American people out there are those attacking their fellow Americans in this way.
It’s time to stop viewing politics as a fucking sport and realize that its true purpose is to serve the people, serve the country and strive to live up to the high ideals that this nation was founded on. “Grinding, dismissive” comments like yours certainly has no place in that.
John, this is why you have people saying Dear Leader. i’m sorry, if you want to speak to one, you need to speak to it all. Not criticizing, just explaining.
tBone
Wow. The brigadier general makes a stunningly stupid comment (he couldn’t think of a better example than “Little Somalia,” for Christ’s sake?), only to be trumped by the unparalleled idiocy of the HuffPo blogger. And just when you thought this thing couldn’t sink any deeper into farce . . .
Darrell
Well I suppose I could dig some up, but have you been living in a news blackout? Armed thugs roaming the streets have been reported by multiple news agencies. So have the fact that rescue workers and police have been shot at. There were also shootings and rapes in the Superdome earlier in the week. Geraldo reported that he saw some guy get shot through the head. There was a shootout in a hospital..
ppGaz
I got news for you, Darrell. Armed thugs are roaming the streets of every major city in America, right now. Thanks to porous laws, mentally ill persons can get weapons and ammunitions almost without challenge. So you have armed crazy people too.
It’s not the end of civilization that these things happen. Not all of the 100,000 people left behind in New Orleans are going to be nice people. So what?
What makes this situation different is (a) a lack of law enforcement on the ground, and (b) a plethora of ENG coverage 24 by 7.
Richard Bottoms
“Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”
It seems that crushing force wasn’t needed. Just food and some busses to get people the hell out of there.
You don’t suppose that the magnitude of the violece and warfare on the streets of New Orleans was… overblown.
Cops get shot every day, which is a bad thing, but hardly make New Orleans into Fallujah. Where race has played a part is in the utter scary nature of black people when they are p.o’d.
Mix that in with a bunch of gang bangers random shooting, screams in the night, and dire reports of rapists on every corner and surprise you have a military commander expecting armageddon.
It was all overblown. Some criminals, none 10 feet tall.
Meanwhile you have a mass of real black people, starving, homeless and dying huddled in two public buildings, waiting for rescue. I have no doubt the military response and rescue mission was delayed because GW feared a Black Hawk Down moment live on CNN.
Trent
Aw, the leftist comment was directed towards me! I didn’t even realize… How cute.
Here’s the problem with your statement: You hear that someone fired on a helicopter and process it as “Helicopters are being fired upon by people.”
You hear that there police have been fired at and think “armed gangs are roaming the street and need to be killed.”
That is just not the case. It’s makes it nice and clean and simple and easy for you to process and paint black and white, but it’s not true. If you need me to cite report after report proving this, I will. But it should be self evident.
There are problems and there is some violence, but nothing calling for a bloodbath or mass incarceration. Nothing that explains why food and water could not safely make its way to the convention center when Harry Connick Jr and Geraldo Rivera could.
They need a police presense, yes. They need troops to secure the streets, yes. But that’s needed in any disaster. The difference here is that New Orleans never received it.
(And before you say it, if a policeman shot dead someone who WAS shooting at a helicopter, i wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But it’s a far stretch to go from that to saying we need a massive military operation show of force to control the streets of New Orleans.)
rayabacus
Peter T,
Here you go. Link to armed combat in NO.
riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2005/09/orleans_parish_.html
Darrell
This, coming from the same ahole who linked to an article on alleged police criminality based on uninvestigated claims from “residents of an impromptu shantytown” with the sarcastic comment “only a few bad apples”
I made no mention of helicopter or helicopters. Hospitals and rescue workers have been fired upon.
Darrell
Snopes debunks the story of the two news photos which allegedly ‘prove’ racial bias, one of a white couple who “found” food, vs. the other of a black boy holding a bag he had “looted”:
Bob
But, of course, the racism comes out. It’s blame the victim through Jesse Jackson.
However, I have, over the years, believed that Jackson was the man put in place by the authorities after MLK was gunned down. The book, ORDERS TO KILL, about the MLK assassination, quotes an order to the shooters not to hit anyone wearing ties. They’re with us, it went. So Jesse bent over, smeared blood on his shirt for effect, and then was proclaimed leader of the civil rights movement by Newsweek.
I think that the powers that be keep Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton around to focus anger against African Americans and deflect discussion from the real issues. Sharpton is funnier, though.
Jim Caputo
Okay, the spin machine is gonna need some plausible explanations for this…
Rapes, killings hit Katrina refugees in New Orleans
Sat Sep 3, 2005 4:23 PM ET
By Mark Egan
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.
Police and National Guard troops on Saturday closed down the two centers — the Superdome arena and the city’s convention center — but them penned them in outside in sweltering heat to keep them from trying to walk out of the city.
Military helicopters and buses staged a massive evacuation to take away thousands of people who waited in orderly lines in stifling heat outside the flooded convention center.
The refugees, who were waiting to be taken to sports stadiums and other huge shelters across Texas and northern Louisiana, described how the convention center and the Superdome became lawless hellholes beset by rape and murder.
Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.
In one, a young man was run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer, in another a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier, witnesses said.
Police here refused to discuss or confirm either incident. National Guard spokesman Lt. Col Pete Schneider said “I have not heard any information of a weapon being discharged.”
“They killed a man here last night,” Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. “A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck’s windshield and they shot him dead.”
Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale of horror.
“Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head,” Batiste said.
The young man’s body lay in the street by the Convention Center’s entrance on Saturday morning, covered in a black blanket, a stream of congealed blood staining the street around him. Nearby his family sat in shock.
A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.
“There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave,” she said through tears.
People here said there were now 22 bodies of adults and children stored inside the building, but troops guarding the building refused to confirm that and threatened to beat reporters seeking access to the makeshift morgue.
People trying to walk out are forced back at gunpoint – something troops said was for their own safety. “It’s sad, but how far do you think they would get,” one soldier said.
“They have us living here like animals,” said Wvonnette Grace-Jordan, here with five children, the youngest only six weeks old. “We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America.”
One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, “They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here.”
The Louisiana National Guard soldier said, “We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq.”
Across town at the Superdome, where as many as 38,000 refugees camped out until Wednesday night when evacuation buses first came, the 4,000 still there were corralled outside, hoping to get on four waiting buses with seats for only 200.
The scene at the sports stadium was one of abject filth. Crammed into a small area after the building was shut to them last night, those remaining sat amid heaps of garbage, piled in places waist high. The stench of human waste pervaded the interior of the now vacant stadium.
One police officer told Reuters there were 100 people in a makeshift morgue at the Superdome, mostly people who died of heat exhaustion, and that six babies had been born there since last Saturday, when people arrived to take shelter.
At the arena, too, there was much talk of bedlam after dark.
“We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom,” one National Guard soldier told Reuters. “Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death.”
Trent
Darrell,
You’re citing a web site whose home page headline is “Michele Malkin Linked To Male Stripper”
And the “ahole” comment is appreciated.
You know, i understand why I’m angry about this entire New Orleans disaster. Why are you angry? Just because reality isn’t matching your worldview? Because people aren’t agreeing with your opinion?
What’s up the name calling?
Richard Bottoms
“Police in West Belfast are investigating an attack on a 15-year-old girl who was raped twice after being confronted by two youths while walking with friends early this morning.
The victim was with three teenage boys on Blacks Road just before 3am this morning when the group was confronted by two youths, armed with an iron bar and a screwdriver.
The girl, who is from England, was in Belfast on holiday. Police say the attacker phoned the victim’s mother in England to tell her what he had done.
rte.ie/news/2005/0806/belfast.html
”
Rape is bad thing and happens everywhere.
Jim Caputo
Why would they give these people a hard time? In this kind of situation, you’d think they’d be glad if some people showed initative, but no. I don’t know if there’s a racial overtone to what’s going on in NOLA, but this kind of story sure makes me wonder.
Darrell
Not me. I linked to snopes.com
Oh I don’t know Trent. Maybe because certain scumbags are race baiting the tragedy of New Orleans.. others like you trying to paralyze law enforcement warning that there “better not be” mass incarcerations, even if there really are lot and lots of criminals roaming the streets who really need to be incarcerated for public safety and rescue operations. And maybe because you accuse me without basis of over-stating the amount of violence in NO, while you yourself overstate the amount of police criminality..only a “few” bad apples and all. Does that clear things up for you?
TallDave
We should ignore race. Race only matters to racists.
Looters are criminals, regardless of the color of their skin. And of course by “looters” I mean the people taking TVs from stores and jewelry from the dead, not the people taking food and water or trying to help others with transportation. If the looters offer armed resistance to interefence in those activities, they should be shot. Shot dead.
Trent
Wicked
Now it’s OUR fault the authorities can’t get their act together? My words have paralyzed law enforcement!
No Darrell, it’s the fact that there are more than the two options mass incarcerations and allowing anarchy to run wild. Sorry if that’s too much nuance for you.
I never overstated the amount of police criminality. I merely linked to an AP article which someone later copied in whole and I made a snarky comment about it. You inferred what my meaning was, and of course, you inferred the most extreme, unflattering possibility. Because that’s what you do. It’s black or white.
Well, it’s not. Not everyone there is being violent. Not even close to a large number. But the ones who ARE shooting guns obviously seem disproportionately large. And not all the cops are abusing their authority. But a few are. And they will make headlines.
It’s not always a case of bad guys vs good guys. Sorry.
It’s a city of Americans trying to survive a disaster. Everyone, including the refugees and the cops and the doctors and the journalists and the volunteers and the Guard. Everyone.
hadenoughofthisyet
Wow. This is over the top…
newschannel6.tv/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=8695
Trent
If ANYONE offers armed resistance to the authorities, they should be shot dead. Just like it happens everywhere else in the country. That’s nothing new.
Shooting unarmed “looters”, however, is really unacceptable.
ppGaz
Very profound. The Nobel Prize in blogstuffing is in your pocket.
Yes, the bling on those corpses is probably worth a fortune. Affluence is the common thread among the people dying in there.
That’s right, those tv sets are a capital crime, for sure.
It makes you feel strong and powerful to post crap like that, doesn’t it Dave?
“Shoot them dead.” If only you could do it yourself, eh?
Trent
Over the top in what way? In the accusation or the fact that Bush would do such a thing.
Darrell
If there really are large numbers of criminals terrorizing the citizens and rescue workers and destroying property, what other more nuanced option is there besides mass incarceration? Please enlighten us.. shades of grey and all
ppGaz
What is the “large number” of criminals, Darrell? Exactly how many does it take to get you barking like Barney Fife?
What’s a “mass incarceration?”
Trent
Large numbers: There’s your nuance. How many do you think it is?
50 would be a large number in this context. 50 trigger happy morons could cause quite a lot of havoc in such a difficult situation. One person shooting at a helicopter shared away the whole lot of them.
But does mean you arrest the thousands at the Convention Center?
No, you arrest the people causing the problem. Does 50 arrests = mass incarceration? No. Would i care about 50 arrests? No.
Plug any number in there and watch how shades of grey works! 100? No problem. 150? Arrest away. 200? Take them out officer.
Unless it’s thousands of people running around with guns (which it isn’t) it’s no mass incarceration. It’s dealing with the criminal element running around. (And i’ve already advocated dealing with the violent element down there in the same way we do in every other city in the country, often by shooting them dead.)
But mass incarceration DOES mean, arrest EVERYONE. Sorry, that’s what it means. And that’s what you’re advocating. Arrest everyone, sort it out later. And that’s absurd.
Darrell
ppgaz, aren’t you the same idiot who posted a couple of days ago that “it’s no one’s damn business” if looters run wild?
Trent
ppgaz, aren’t you the same one that described Darrell as “grinding”?
So accurate. lol
Darrell
Not in any dictionary I’ve seen. It means, well, it means large numbers being incarcerated, not “EVERYONE”. Is English your native language Trent? Or are you just stupid?
And there very well may be large numbers of criminals. Lots of reports of violence and looting of non-food items. Yet irregardless of the number of actual criminals committing crimes (a number which neither you nor I have a good handle on), you warn:
No matter what level of crime or what there number of criminals, there better not be any “mass incarceration”.
the friendly grizzly
I’ll see your f@&k-you and raise you a PSMF.
Peter T.
No Darrell, I haven’t been living in a news blackout. I have heard the same thing you have about marauding bands of killers and rapists, but I have been interpreting that as *rumors*, and will do so until we get some data from credible sources. NO is now full of Nat Guard, and I’m just not reading about violence and arrests. Murderers and rapists leave behind victims; where are they?
You know, if my small, overwhelmingly white, northern town was without police for four days I wonder how much trouble our local yokels could get into, knowing they had a free pass.
Thanks for the link rayabaucus, but I was hoping for a cnn or something like that.
Steve
Hmm. While I’ve never been much of a fan of Jackson, I’m reading what he said and I’m not sure why this illicits the response John gives it.
Jackson is talking about feelings. Because you don’t have the same feeling, doesn’t make him wrong. That you don’t have the same feeling doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a right to say that some do.
I don’t know. Why do you even bother to point it out? Is it because the thought makes you uncomfortable? What? If it was so stupid, why not just ignore it?
kl
Yep, he felt like getting on TV some more.
Same reason you responded, I’d imagine. Desire for self-expression, etc.
ppGaz
ppgaz, aren’t you the same idiot who posted a couple of days ago that “it’s no one’s damn business” if looters run wild?
ppGaz
Nope.
I said it’s none of your business, Darrell. Some crap being taken from a store, in that hellish zone? None of your fucking business, Darrell. Shut your trap about it. It isn’t your stuff, it isn’t your store, it isn’t your business just because you saw it on television.
I’m pretty sure that I never used the phrase “running wild”, Darrell. That sounds like your kind of language.
I was right then, and I am still right.
Andrei
Wow… not just this morning Cole is asking us to play nice in the comments then he lets off with a “fuck you Jesse?”
Unreal. Ok.. ban me, but to ask people to play nice then tell someone who is considered by many to be a public leader and who did cut his teeth in the civil rights movement to fuck off is just begging me to call you an asshat.
FWIW, I believe Jackson is wrong in the way he is approaching this issue. It seems quite obvious that indeed this issue is a rich/poor class issue, which happens to be severly tied to race in this country. And yet too many smarter folks are fine to disregard the race angle without acknowledging that in all honestly, race and class are tied to the hip right now in the United States.
Jackson should be angling form the class card for political purposes, which would be a more effective way to call the GOP to task for their treatment of the middle to lower class in this country. But really… so many of the poor in this country aren’t white hillbillies in the Ozarks.
To not recognize that at this stage of history that race is NOT intimately tied to class — to the point that a sementic discussion about race and class is useless in real people’s lives with regards to tragedies like this– in places like New Orleans or Los Angeles… to the point you’d tell someone like Jesse Jackson to fuck off publicly over how to address the situation might also be obscenely stupid on your part.
IMHO.
ppGaz
Maybe, but Americans have an innate sense of what’s going on most of the time. The thing about Jackson’s ill-advised comments is that they contribute nothing to any solution of the current problem. His remarks don’t save one life, don’t resuce one person from a rooftop, don’t get one person onto a bus or one meal or one bottle of water into one suffering person.
That’s why people are getting on Jackson.
Darrell
culture and class, not race and class. Families of any race who get their kids library cards, push them to study, and take them to church, are more likely to create successful adults then those parents who don’t. Cultures which value education will typically be more successful than cultures which demean academic achievement as trying to “act white”. I read a study years ago which showed that black immigrants from the West Indies (like Colin Powell’s parents) earn on average, more $$ than white Americans. I believe non-white Chinese and Japanese, both of whom value education and hard work, earn more on average than whites too.
There is a very large black middle class and a number of wealthy black Americans. It sounds like Andrei is suggesting that all or most blacks are poor. They’re not. Jesse Jackson is a lowlife race baiter, nothing more
ppGaz
He’s still a better man than you are.
jobiuspublius
I don’t know if you people have actually met a racist, but, I have. They have this instinct, which some find charming, for scapegoating. They are so good at it that they do not have to actually know any black people. They just make shit up. You should try having a history with them. You might grow to be wary too.
So, why did people have to get barracaded in the superdome? It’s not like they could go far?
rkrider
Who gives a fuck what Jesse Jackson says, maybe he’s trying to save lives.
rkrider
Question John Cole:
If you were POTUS would these people have food and water by now?
John Cole
I have no idea.
Darrell
Seems charming, talent for scapegoating.. sounds like Jesse “hymietown” Jackson to me. Lot of ‘charming’ people scapegoating the “jooos” and “whitey” too. Nice touch Jobius, inferring that all racists are white
Bob
It’s all over the place, the racism that’s coming out. When Bush fucks up, does anyone think he’s representative of white people?
People in bad situations do bad things. Living in poverty in a ghetto all your life, reviled by the rest of the country, and then left to die. What’s Bush’s excuse?
demimondian
Wow. Go read this newschannel6.tv/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=8695.
If that’s true, then it’s so par for the course. I guess that Bush’s team get to say “Mission Accomplushed”…again.
ppGaz
That’s nuthin …
Read This!
According to Drum’s site (and I consider him one of the more restrained bloggers on the Internets) …. a good deal of what we saw Friday behind Bush …. was staged for the cameras.
The charm of these spuds just gets better and better.
rkrider
John I think I read on you site before that you were in the military (correct me if i’m wrong). But if you were, you know what our military is capable of. Those people have been on TV FOR DAYS now with no food and water(with reporters standing right there interviewing them), and if you were the CIC of this military, your telling me you don’t know if you would have got food and water to them. What are you crazy, man?
Please tell me what would be a bigger priority to you?
rkrider
And John, make sure you read that link by demimondian at 10:27. Ya, just keep blaming the mayor and governor.
Oh, and by the way Cindy Sheehan is down in LA housing and feeding refugees, I’m sure you’ll want to hurry and post that.
She’s doing it just to make Bush look bad.
demimondian
You aren’t going to like what I have to say, then.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. It does appear that the state has been trying to get help for quite a while, and that the Feds have been ignoring the pleas. On the other hand…the state still should have had some resources — even if New Orleans isn’t hit, the state gets pounded every year.
The two issues are orthogonal: whether Chimpy did a staged event and whether the state should have done more. If the reports of the staged event are true, then that’s just Bush to the hilt…but that’s all I said.
jobiuspublius
You never heard of the Mexican gangs waging genocide against African Americans in Southern California? Sort of puts the irresponsibility of Vincente Fox’s assinine comments in perspective. I’m sure there are more examples of why you’re not ready to play with inferences.
Andrei
I certainly don’t disagree with that. /agreed
Andrei
For the love of God Darrell… I didn’t say any such thing, but if you don’t think the majority of the poor in this country aren’t either black or latino, you are really one stupid motherfucker.
Please see the US Census Report on Poverty
Poverty in 2002 for Blacks was at 24.1%, for Hispanic at 21.8% while non-Hispanic whites was at 8%.
If you honestly don’t think race and class are tied at the hip at this stage in our country’s history, you really need to do us all a favor and not vote in the election because you have your head way too far up your ass.
jobiuspublius
You have to admit, there is a danger of going over-board with the race speech. There is so much money and power at stake in this disaster that one does not need to be a racist to screw people over. Although raising the issue now may stave problems and will certainly inspire people to help. I wonder if 50 cent and friends will use their wealth to rebuild communities.
jobiuspublius
OMFG, I’m watching an MALE black african official talking on TV on a totally unrelated matter. He has a female interpretor and HIS audio is turned OFF. ROFLMAO He has such a sweet “voice”.
goonie bird
Up on his soap box sits JESSIE JACKASSON
NC Man
Jesse is a shakedown artist – Always has been always will be and whites know it – If all these bros will go to college or technical school and get a degree the economy wants they won’t find themselves in such a pickle and fall in line behind Jackson saying its someone else’s fault. W
Successful blacks figured it out – Thats why they are successful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone cannot place all their bets on being the next Rap artist or professional athlete –
Helena Montana
John, sometimes the knee-jerk “conservative” in you just has to lash out, doesn’t it? Jesse Jackson didn’t say anything that wasn’t true in this case. We whites may not want to believe it but he’s absolutely correct. He irritates the living shit out of me frequently with his self-aggrandizement, but that doesn’t mean he’s never right.