Map of where it's safe to live in the US: [link]

Hilarious stuff.

Bwah! She should have included in the "Mormons" region the fallout from nuclear tests.

A friend of mine's description of his trip from his house outside Jackson to Hattiesburg:

[link]

Surreal.

I love Mythbusters. I wish I laughed and cheered and played that much at work.

dw, my favorite part is the little purple square marked "Mormons".

Kanye West went off-script, said the slow response time was because most of the victims were poor and black, and closed with "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

But was Kanye West the one at the Live 8 concert who promoted a conspiracy theory about AIDS being a deliberate attempt to kill all the black people? I caught a snippet of that and now I can't remember if it was him or not. But if that was West, I don't want him on my side.

I don't know. I think charges of racism actually diminish the fucked-up-ness of what's happened. I'm not convinced that Bush cares about white people more than black people. Because I don't believe he cares about people, period. Hell, I'm not sure he understands that other people exist if he's not looking directly at them. A good game of peekaboo would rock his world.

Huh. [link]

I don't know about the accusations of racism. Some of the people (who are outside of the situation) being quoted in the media certainly seem biased, but I think the pitiful response time is a combination of utter cluelessness and the fact that the trapped people aren't seen as potential campaign donors. Either way my rage is on.

I think there is a racism. I think it's easier for some people to dismiss black people as being lazy and irresponsible -- look at the intial righty reactions of "They should have left. Why didn't they do what they were told?" The characterization of "looting" could easily been called "scavenging" or "desperate measures" if it were in Kennebunkport -- there was the example in Salon of two different people with purloined groceries, the caption under the black person was 'looting'. (true, they were from two different news services)

I think there is a lot of classism too. The assumption that anybody has the forty bucks to spend on a tank of gas, another couple of hundred for a hotel room and food, a car in the first place...

Yes, the racism is out there. Certainly. I just don't know what evidence there is that the evacuation cluster-fuck is a result of that. There may be individual examples of it, but on the larger scale I'm seeing incompetence and an inexcusable lack of communication as the big contributing factors. And some really dumb-ass adherence to bureaucracy.

There may be individual examples of it, but on the larger scale I'm seeing incompetence and an inexcusable lack of communication as the big contributing factors. And some really dumb-ass adherence to bureaucracy.

I think it's really possible, even likely, that if it was tow-headed blue-eyed babies more than a little red tape would have been cut quicker. I think the sense of "those" people as opposed to "our" people encouraged the quagmire.

Because, hey, they're being all irrational and loud and animalistic. But that's how they are.