Well we open a new week, but quite a different week then the last. The first thing I want to talk about is something that I saw last week in the news.



I immediately latched on to the fact that the caption for the black person in the water said he was "looting" the groceries, while the caption for the white people was that they "found" the groceries. I was immediately beside myself.

Then I noticed that the captions were from two different news sources, the AP and AFP, so while that told me it wasn't the same caption editor that wrote the captions, it still made me mad that the word choices seemed to be racially motivated. Then I read this explanation on snopes.com

"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."

So I won't call it racism anymore I'll just call it unfortunate.

Next:

FEMA Chief Sent Help Only When Storm Ended

"The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security workers to support rescuers in the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to 'convey a positive image' about the government's response for victims."

YOU ARE FIRED!!!!! SO F*CKING FIRED!!!!! I want your head! It's disgusting! People DIED because you felt all you needed to do was project an "image" that you were being responsive!

"Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as 'this near catastrophic event' but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, 'Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.'

...Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments."

It's broken folks, this is not time for politics, this is time for serious answers, serious work, serious consequences. We can NOT afford to sit back and let our government NOT work for us any longer. It is now costing us OUR lives!

WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!