Kanye West gets very emotional...

lostexpectation · 03-09-2005 08:01PM

its got to with money and greed and selfishness, i dunno bout kanye west though he makes powerful song about the violance associated with gold and diamnod mining but he still wears big gold chains etc... i hate hip-hops association with showing off that you've got more then anyone else and he just as bad as the rest for it

Sauron · 03-09-2005 08:36PM

Fair play to Kanye.. to me, he seemed somewhat shaken and what he said seemed genuine.. and it took balls to criticise Bush like that on Live TV

hobbes wrote:

Don't care about Black people? I get the impression Bush doesn't care about anyone except those corporations that put him into power.

Truer words were never spoken. he seems to have screwed everyone over, even a lot of his supporters, throughout his presidency, everyone except the extremely wealthy.. almost all his tax cuts have benefited those at the top and taken from those at the bottom of the spectrum..

Hobbes · 03-09-2005 10:07PM

daveyjoe wrote:

I'm not saying that Bush is the best president ever or anything,

I think hes made the record as the worst ever.

I just think that there isn't a whole lot that he could have done about this. Of course they knew the hurricaine was coming, but so did all the people who live in New Orleans, it wasn't classified information or anything, there was time to get out of the city and many of the smarter people did.

From what I have seen. The majority could not leave. They didn't have cars, buses were not running fully. Airlines were cancelled (Also quite a few people died in their cars trying to get out). A lot bought rations and prepared but its a bit hard to eat your food while your under 20 feet of water. If he was a proper president he should of said "Lets Roll" to the national guard the second the hurricane was listed as a cat4. He should of been on the Majors ass making sure everyone was evacuated. He could of listened to numerous reports of this "accident waiting to happen" and ensured they were covered.

Bare in mind some countries were offering aid the second they heard it had been upgraded.

No instead all the money, resources and people are going to Iraq.

The majority of the poor in New Orleans are black. I've been watching it daily, those that were rescued were dumped off at the dome and told buses would come. They came and drove by. It took 5 days before there was any kind of response from Bush and even then it was half assed for the first day (eg. dropping medical supplies from height so they were all destroyed).

How anyone can defend Bush is beyond me. This is what the man did while people were dying

0utshined · 03-09-2005 10:58PM

Damn, he's even fingering that chord wrong!

I'm not going to defend the US goverment's reaction to this disaster. It was woefully inadequate and to refuse assistance from other countries like Canada and Russia seems short sighted at best. They were ill prepared and don't seem to have had any plan as to how to assist the people who were stuck there.

However I don't think that this poor reaction was due to the majority of NOLA residents being black. I'm sure if the majority were White\Asian\Hispanic the response would have been equally poor. Kanye got caught up in the situation and while I don't doubt his heart was in the right place, to try and turn this into a race issue is going to do no-one any good.

mang87 · 03-09-2005 11:09PM

Fair f'ing play to him.

I'd take the first chance I got to denounce George "Dubya" Bush on live television. I woulda said more, tbqfh.

D-Generate · 04-09-2005 12:38AM

I think Kanye West has a few screws loose to begin with.
He has pubicly said that the US government developed and adminstered AIDS to the African populace and that Crack was invented to halt the civil rights movement and to destroy African American communities. To be honest that says that he is pretty much a nutcase to begin with.

He is however correct about the media bias in regards to white people "finding" and black people "looting".
In regards to the allegation that Bush doesn't care about black people is that I don't really know. Perhaps Bush hates them or perhaps he loves them but either way whatever he was doing before the 2004 election made them and all the southern states vote him in. He only lost one country electoral registrar vote in Louisiana in the most recent election. Also as has already been stated, his administration has more African Americans in high office than any previous administration has.

To be honest, I don't like Bush's policies either but what I do dislike is peoples hatred of Bush letting their ability to come to an informed decision be clouded, e.g taking Kanye West's soapbox speech as being Gospel truth.

bush · 04-09-2005 01:18AM

D-Generate wrote:

He has pubicly said that the US government developed and adminstered AIDS to the African populace and that Crack was invented to halt the civil rights movement and to destroy African American communities. To be honest that says that he is pretty much a nutcase to begin with.
QUOTE]

Rappers have been saying that for years though, hes not the first to have said it. I think hes just going with the flow.

evad_lhorg · 04-09-2005 01:39AM

hahahha brilliant!!!

that was hilarious. just when he said "george bush doesnt care about black people" the face on mike myers was brilliant and then just as it cuts to the next guy he is clearly thinkin "oh shít"!

MrJoeSoap · 04-09-2005 01:40AM

Thats a great piece of footage, as mang87 said above, Kanye saw a chance to criticise the most powerful and evil man on this earth and he took it.

The racism aspect doesn't really come into the flood reilef argument though.

As a complete aside, I went to New Orleans last year, and myself and 2 mates went for a ramble around the city hall district late one night, and met a homeless guy who told us that we were walking in a dangerous neighbourhood and walked us somewhere safer. He asked us for some money if we had any spare and I gave him a 20.

He was black, not that it matters at all, but I can't help thinking about the guy and how he got through it. He had nothing to lose, except his life.

*Back on point* - Fair play Kanye West.

EL_Loco · 04-09-2005 02:53AM

I think Kanye could have been a little more accurate if he said "black or poor people" but fair play to him for saying it regardless. I would have loved if the video ran a bit longer to show how chris tucker actually handled it after cutting over to him so abruptly.

here's an email that got sent to me

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore

nesf · 04-09-2005 03:03AM

Micheal Moore, America's answer to Eddie Hobbes. i.e. dumber and louder.

dahamsta · 04-09-2005 04:03AM

daveyjoe wrote:

There is nothing more that George Bush could have done, he gave $10 Billion of relief immediately and there's more to come.

Sorry, but no. Congress authorised relief aid, and even then it wasn't "immediately". GWB != Congress.

nesf, you do realise that the "Michael Moore is loud and dumb" is about as far from an original post you could get, yes?

adam

steviec · 04-09-2005 04:18AM

Have to say fair play to Kanye for saying what he believed, even if it was completely misinformed, he was obviously being sincere and not just trying to get publicity out of the death of innocents like Michael Moore etc. are.

The fact is, it was a natural disaster. Sure the city could have been better prepared, but it's survived for decades with its current defenses. People make out that GW dismantled the levies or something, he didn't, he simply didn't improve them, just like every President before him. Not because he thought 'yea I wanna see all those civilians die', it was because the assumption was a disaster of that magnitude would never happen. Scientists predicted it would, eventually, just like they predict lots of disasters, but we'll never be fully prepared for everything nature throws at us. If protection was beefed up for every single worst case scenario scientists come up with it would be all we ever did.

The big issue was the response. Which was an absolute disgrace. I think its very very naive to suggest that Bush was personally in charge of everything that happened on the ground and the tactical rescue operation. If it went well the police and local authorities would have got all the praise. But it went badly so it's automatically Bush's fault. There's a chain of command, and something somewhere went very wrong and communication was obviously a failure, and it's something they'll have to look at in future.

A city that happened to have a largely black population got hit by a tragic natural disaster, and the aftermath was confusion and chaos and the authorities weren't able to deal with it efficiently. That's basically what happened. No racism involved. If it was primarily white the situation would be exactly the same. To honestly think some decision maker in the rescue operation decided 'their only black people, lets not bother' is delusional.

steviec · 04-09-2005 04:20AM

dahamsta wrote:

Sorry, but no. Congress authorised relief aid, and even then it wasn't "immediately". GWB != Congress.

There's my point. Government does something good - that was congress. Government does something bad - that was Bush.

dahamsta · 04-09-2005 04:23AM

Your point. Not mine.

OfflerCrocGod · 04-09-2005 06:55AM

Lol the face on the other two guys as Mr West makes his statement I'll be laughing for weeks because of them. It was like this --> :eek: :eek: :eek: <-- lol ROFLMAO :eek: :eek:

Hobbes · 04-09-2005 09:41AM

steviec wrote:

There's my point. Government does something good - that was congress. Government does something bad - that was Bush.

Or to put it another way. Government does something good Bush goes on photo ops on how it was all his idea. Fact of the matter is he should of been co-ordinating before the Hurricance struck to ensure that Americans were safe.

Niave to think that the President is safe to do nothing???

http://www.nandotimes.com/nt/images/floyd/floyd40.html

Notice the word "PENDING".

Or...
http://www.jimbovard.com/American%20Spectator%20Nov%201999%20FEMA%20Fiasco%20Hurricane%20Floyd.htm
In an unusual act that may now become standard operating procedure, President
Clinton pre-emptively declared federal emergencies in several states even before
the hurricane touched the continental U.S.--and, according to a FEMA employee,
"before the governors asked for assistance. This isn't permitted by the law, but
when was the last time Clinton obeyed the law?" With FEMA's encouragement,
Southern states issued mandatory evacuation orders to nearly three million
residents of coastal areas.

Now compare Clintons actions to Bush. Which one was acting more like a president to you?

he didn't, he simply didn't improve them, just like every President before him.

Unlike presidents before him he drastically slashed the budget for the levees every year (80% this year) and cut funding to flood control projects (50% cut this year). He also shipped the engineers off to Iraq. One of the congressmen in charge who complained was "let go".

You can't blame people for act of god, but you can blame them for criminal negligence.

Its not a racist issue. However the majority of the poor are black in NO. when the buses came to evacuate people they went by the convention center (where all the poor were) to pick up others for a good 2-3 days before someone took notice.

WellyJ · 04-09-2005 11:49AM

His new album is great by the way

Cianos · 04-09-2005 11:56AM

The way I see it is that if in one sentence he helped stop GWB getting into office next time round, then its a very good thing no matter what way you look at it.

dahamsta · 04-09-2005 11:59AM

Cianos wrote:

The way I see it is that if in one sentence he helped stop GWB getting into office next time round, then its a very good thing no matter what way you look at it.

He can't become president again, he's on his second and final term. If you mean governor/senator/representative, that's just not going to happen. He'll be busy with his memoirs. He certainly won't be able to do the elder statesman thing, since he's never been a statesman.

adam

Cianos · 04-09-2005 12:21PM

:rolleyes:

Wertz · 04-09-2005 12:48PM

A "nail on the head" editorial piece in the NY Times Saturday

September 2, 2005
A Can't-Do Government
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02krugman.html

Just about sums it up for me. I don't think this thing is gonna damage Bush as much as it's gonna damage the whole republican candidacy for the White House in '08. (and probably congress too)
It's also going to really damage class relations in the whole country...race is only a delineator in this situation....in reality it's all about the haves and have-nots, just that in this case the vast majority of the poor happen to be black.

daveyjoe · 04-09-2005 01:15PM

Hobbes wrote:

How anyone can defend Bush is beyond me. This is what the man did while people were dying

I've got to comment on this photo, why do newspapers decide that because GWB decides to play guitar with some guy a couple of days after the hurricaine that he doesn't care about the people dieing in Lousiana. Is that the point your trying to make or is it that he can't play the G chord?

The guy has certain things on his schedule, he's not gonna stay in hiding for a week just because New Orleans got hit by a hurricaine.

I want Bush out of public office as much as everyone else but photo's like this and Kanye West saying "Bush doesn't care about black people" is not the way to do it. They are highly emotive messages and the sad thing is that some people believe it.

Hobbes · 04-09-2005 01:32PM

daveyjoe wrote:

The guy has certain things on his schedule, he's not gonna stay in hiding for a week just because New Orleans got hit by a hurricaine.

So a photo-op is more important then saving Americans lives?

shuushh · 04-09-2005 02:14PM

you know if he had just said poor people instead of black people everyone on this thread would probably be nodding their head in agreement, you know michael moore said pretty much the same thing a few days ago but i suppose it carries more shock value when a "know it all rap artist" who is black says it. and it should be pointed out that hes donating as much money as possible while im sure chris rock will just milk this entire situation in his next standup tour.

people seem awfully sensitive, hes just a musician and this comments influence on current events will amount to oh absolutley nothing really when it all comes down to it. it wasnt just bush more the entire federal government that made a holy mess of the situation

The guy has certain things on his schedule, he's not gonna stay in hiding for a week just because New Orleans got hit by a hurricaine.

this is true but surely you have to agree that the photo-op was a terrible terrible idea i mean it probably wasnt even Bush's idea whoever handles the press probabaly pushed him into it but it reflects badly on him and his government when he lets himself be caught in these situations. would it really have been that hard to get out the cowboy hat and gone all John Wayne with a few "Bush In Helicopter Over NO" photo ops instead ? Its a bit like him reading stories to kids while the twin towers was being attacked it conveys very poor leadership at times of crisis.

D-Generate · 04-09-2005 02:18PM

Hobbes wrote:

So a photo-op is more important then saving Americans lives?

Well Congress had already authorised aid and the deployment of further National Guard and police departments around the country made the decision, which only they can make, to help the victims of the disaster. So unless you specifically wanted him to be driving the trucks I don't see how he could any more help "saving Americans lives". There is a thing called chain of command and Bush can't become directly involved in every process. He takes an hour or two out to do a photo op, presumably orders he had already issued 2 hours ago were being carried out so unless he is doing hands on work there is no real further reason for him to have any more input until the previous actions had been carried out.

dahamsta · 04-09-2005 02:27PM

D-Generate wrote:

I don't see how he could any more help "saving Americans lives"

He should be in his office co-ordinating things. That's a president's job in times of crisis. However New Orleans is probably better off that he isn't.

Hobbes · 04-09-2005 03:46PM

D-Generate wrote:

Well Congress had already authorised aid and the deployment of further National Guard and police departments around the country

Actually they hadn't. If you go check up the Bill H.R.3645 it was only submitted and passed on the 2nd of September. Bush was playing guitar on the 30th of August.

There is a thing called chain of command and Bush can't become directly involved in every process.

Yet Clinton was able to?

He takes an hour or two out to do a photo op

Try more like a whole day.

daveirl · 04-09-2005 05:08PM

This post has been deleted.

Laguna · 04-09-2005 05:17PM

He's completely right in my opinion. George Bush is the definition of redneck.

Kanye West gets very emotional...

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