McCain Seemingly Backtracks on No New Taxes

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

Minnesota too, but i was just now referring to the Midwest floods up and down the Mississippi. The fact that I said Midwest and you didn't immediately know what I meant is a pretty good indicator that I'm right. I just heard a report on the radio that the US is asking the UN to intervene and send food to those along the Mississippi. It must be bad, but we're not hearing about it daily, weekly. Maybe monthly at this point.

You specifically mentioned Minnesota earlier -- I was commenting on that

I agree the situation is bad all along the Mississippi River. However, the exigency of removing like 50,000 staving people is not there and W is not saying the heck of a job Brownie comment. I suggest that is why the media is not covering it. Interestingly, a month or so after Katrina, the media front pages died down considerably. It was the investigations and Brown's insanly irresponsible conduct that put it back on the front page for awhile - though there were other stories as well like the corruption of the NOPD for starters. To be fair, several exposes came out later, but I am talking about the front page stuff.

In the end, there is just no front page sensational story there like there was in NOLA for the few weeks after the storm.

On edit - this is just my opinion

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

I wasn't specifically referring to black people. I was referring to people left behind waiting for their welfare checks that were committing crimes. I never defined people by race . . . .

Actually, you are correct that you initially never defined people by race, which I gave you credit for above

Again, I said you implied it. I think my statement is accurate. Here is what you said:

If you study social psychology at all, you will see that welfare programs are basically racist. Affirmative Action is racist. Not against whites, but against the blacks it supposedly helps . . . Then take a look at the human debris left behind after Katrina. People with a survival instinct left. Those without did not, and there was quite a bit of publicity about the fact that a lot of them stayed because they were waiting for welfare checks. These people stayed poor because we made it easy to be poor and encouraged them to stay on welfare because human nature always follows the path of least resistance. If the choice was starvation or improving one's self, they would do it.

This is coming from a guy who was homeless twice and was dirt poor for a long time. I could go on and on about hitchhiking 40 miles to school (which I really had to do) and a bunch of other crap. What it boils down to is that if you really want to succeed in this country, you can. We don't need the government dehumanizing people with racist welfare programs designed to leave people in poverty and dependance. People like to talk about failed policies, how about the war on poverty? We've had 60 years of generation after generation living in squalor on welfare because we are handing a guy a fish every day instead of teaching him how to fish. This is why I support the idea of mandating college as a condition to be on welfare. It's the antidote to the racism of the Democratic party.

http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showth...=36253&page=17

Your statement "These people stayed poor because we made it easy to be poor and encouraged them to stay on welfare because human nature always follows the path of least resistance" in relation to the Affirmative Action statement and the subsequent racism statements clearly implies (if not states) that you were talking about black people as the human debris.

Otherwise, why would you bring up that set of people (the almost exclusively black population left behind in NOLA) in the context of comparing the racist effects of Affirmative Action against black people and how that affected the willingness of "these" people to help themselves in the context of Katrina?