Schnazz

And true leaders take responsability for the people under them. Bush is the president. I would imagine that if he called FEMA and said "Fix this, now!" things would be very different. It doesn't really matter if he has the authority to do something, if he has the influence to make things happen. But he had a guitar to receive, or some such thing.

Roughly 50% of the US gets their news not from CNN or MSNBC, but local stations, specifically the nightly news. (hence my statements about the difference between IN news and MA news) And yes, after Kanye's statements I've seen discussion of race and economic factors.

They reportedly have orders to shoot: "The soldiers, some back from Iraq, have orders to shoot to kill looters and gunmen. There are now 30,000 national guard troops and 3,000 regular soldiers on the US Gulf coast." http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,...1561561,00.html Yea, shoot looters and gunmen, but what makes a looter? Some cat with some soda? (such as that yahoo article) And Kanye didn't say that "Georges Bush doesn't like black people" He said "George Bush doesn't care about black people." according to the original article.

That sounds fun, have a great time!

There's a couple problems with that, which put the entire election in a very shady light. I was using cnn.com's election coverage for my primary source of information on that election, and something interesting happened. The polling data showed very consistantly that Kerry was winning through out the day and evening. Then, I believe it was a little after midnight, the poll values instantly changed dramatically. (as in, shifting from a several point lead for Kerry to a several point lead for Bush) There was a lot of uproar over this and the official explanation that I read was that the poll results where combined with the election results at that point. (I believe they actually termed it 'callibrated') Which begs the question, why where the poll results that they had been recieving all day so out of wack with the election results? Is it true, do they need to be adjusted? Why did the significant adjustments only take place in swing state? Why do so many other elections apparently have accurate poll numbers, but this one apparently didn't for the better part of 16 hours? Another issue is the allocation of voting resources. In poor, black communities people literally waited hours in the rain so that they could vote. It's unknown how many people that just got fed up and left, or had to go to work and left. Incidently, poor black neighborhoods typically vote for Democrats, not Republicans. Then there was a report that, I believe it was Diebold, but the head of a major voting machine company, stated that he was committed to helping Bush win the election. And when you look at election data, the numbers are significantly shifted in a way that areas that used those machines had a much higher vote for Bush then areas that didn't use those machines. Perhaps it's all a big coincidence... perhaps the newer machines where more expensive, so you'd expect the richer areas (which usually means more Republican areas) to be voting more for Bush. But it's a shady coincidence. Then you have the question of the security of the machines themselves. It's been reported that you could modify the result data quite easily. (If you know anything about computers, it was reported that the data was stored in an un-encrypted Access database) Since these voting systems are property of the companies, and the courts have ruled that they can't be examined (for competition issues), no one can really state clearly or not if these are in fact secure. And next you have an issue of who's in charge of the election in various states. In Ohio, a very key state, it was a Repulican, who was also a rather high member of the re-elect Bush campaign. There are reports, though non are confirmed, that he made questionable demands and resource allocation that would help sway the vote result. While this person may have behaving in a non-partison way, it does seem a bit shady. Finally you have the un-substantiated rumors. Such as Bush never acting concerned when early numbers showed he was going to lose. Or the hacker who claimed he had either personally changed, or witnessed a change to the election results. All in all, there is no proof that this election was fake, however there are many, many shady things that happened. The legitimacy of the election, and the poll results, are not nearly cut and dry in favor of Bush.

well we actually didn't choose him. bush used his daddy's connections to win 2 terms. the truth is that in 2000 the republicans literally stopped people from voting beause they would do the following: in USA if you are in jail you can't vote so let's say that there is a guy in jail named Will Smith, now let's say that the Will Smith that we know goes to vote. Even if he is in another state they won't let him vote because he has the same name as a guy in jail. also in 2004 the whole thing was fake, because the exit polls (when the press asks people who they voted for right after they leave the voting booth.) they said that john kerry won in a landslide. ← :word: I would add that in the 2000 elections, the actual vote counting was stopped and then the supreme court (the majority appointed by Republican presidents) handed the presidency to Bush, and then basically said that the decision was a one time decision and shouldn't be used as a basis for any future events.

The news doesn't seem to shy away from that at all. ← They also don't seem to be shying away from the fact that the govenment has failed to provide adequate support for those who are still suffering. They are doing their job; addressing all sides of the issue and asking the questions that need to be asked. The media has in no way given the government a free pass on their slowness in providing aid to those in Louisiana and especially New Orlenes. Perhaps Kanye should follow the media's lead and address all sides of the story as well. ← I suppose that the coverage you get in Mass is very different the coverage I see in Indiana. Which could explain why we're on different sides on this. :) The coverage I see rarely asks any hard questions about why the response time for this group of people seems to be so much worse then the response time for other groups of people.

In regards to some of the people trapped, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure some of them thought "oh well, I'll tough it out." But man, people have an incrediblely diverse set of abilities. If ya have no car, and none of your friends have a car, I've heard that it can be kinda tough to out-run a hurricane. If you're 98 years old, never leave your house anyway, have to have your grocieries delivered, I can see why you may try to survive the storm and hope for the best. If you're just ignorant, maybe you really don't know any better... Let's say you do manage to have a means to get out of the danger area, but if you live in poverty, ya can't really afford a hotel. And if you have no friends or family outside of your area, where are you supposed to go? I doubt all, what is it, 100,000? people trapped actually had no means to escape earlier. But I'm willing to bet that there are some that actually had no choice other then to hope for the best.

The news doesn't seem to shy away from that at all.

My mistake, I wasn't clear with that statement. I was trying to say that what hasn't been significantly talked about is why it is that it just so happens that this disaster relief has been so, apparently, poor and the majority of the people who are in need of help are poor, black, and/or elderly. I'm not trying to blame the hurricane (or the flood) on the government. What I'm blaiming on the government is that relief was so pathetic. People where told to go to shelter points, some of which weren't appropriately stocked with supplies. People who managed to escape made it into other communities who are trying their best to help, but without FEMA support. That's the type of things that I'm blaming the government for.

After everythings back to normal again, I would like to see what information comes out about these "hordes." The media has a funny tendency to call two people a "horde". Perhaps it is really is a massive number of people out killing other people (as apposed to a few people killing people and massive numbers of people trying to find food and water), but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this news hasn't been just a bit exaggerated. Sensationalism sells.

Voted! Voted some more. Voted even more. Then, just for good measure, voted some more again. Anyone have the aol link to vote?

I think it was the right time and place. So many people died in the hurricane, so many people died in the aftermath of the hurricane. The reports that I've heard is that people don't even have food or water! Babies dying! For the longest time I didn't hear anything about help actually getting there, then when I did, it was army folks trained to kill! (under the pretence that the area had turned into a hell hole and peace needed to be kept) They actually mentioned on the news how these soldiers where needed because they where highly trained at killing!!! This isn't the first hurricane to hit the US, but this seems to be the illest prepared for and recovered from though. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I recall in Afganistan, US troops where doing air drops of food to feed people. Why aren't we getting food and water the hurricane survivors? At last count, this was the highest natural disaster fatality count since 1906. Three thousand people so far, and the government was doing NOTHING! Three thousand rich white folks died in New York not too long ago, it didn't take five days for help to arrive, more like 5 minutes. The major media wasn't talking about the fact that so many black folks, poor folks, and old folks were dying. We need to be jumping up and down screaming bloody murder over this! This is a problem that must be fixed. And, unfortunately, the way that the American's think and act is that by next week they'll have forgotten and moved on to something else. There's a reason why people say "Strike while the irons hot." So yes, people need to be screaming about this now.

I was watching the video again last night, but on a better monitor. I think once it's on TV, it'll be even more obvious... But seeing it on a better screen, it doesn't look anything like Jeff and it doesn't look as shadowy either. When I saw it on a bad monitor I was convinced that they where trying to pass him off as jeff, but now I think it's just some random DJ that I was reading too much into.

That's a good point... I listened to a little female rap then, but not much. Wasn't MC Lyte the pioneer getting things started?

I'm pretty sure that it was a single cassette. I got mine not long after it came out, probably a few months, and it was a single cassette. I don't really see how it being longer then other albums at the time being that big of a change to the industry. But I can see what you're saying about increasing accessability. Parents and Nightmare where definately huge in suburbs. I think it could be argued that they made the suburban market for rap, the one that The Chronic later took advantage of. The interesting part of He's The DJ being accessable is that even though it was suburb-friendly rap, it was also a great hip-hop album... Incredible scratches and beats by JJ, battle rhymes and insane flow by FP.

Wow, that's interesting. I thought it was an incredible video.

Wills gear is great in this video. In most other rap videos these days the bling count is insane. Will could be the wealthiest rapper to date and he's sporting t-shirts, jeans, and things like that.

I can't believe Interscope sprung for this video. It had to cost at LEAST 1 mil+. If L&F has only sold 600k copies so far, say they're maken $3 per copy, that's 1.8 mil. This video had to take up most, if not all of the profits. True, this could (and will) propel a lot of future sales and profits on L&F, but still.... seems awefully risky for a major corp.

That doesn't seem like a major change to the industry, am I missing something?

Those are some sick effects. The transition scenes are killer.

How????

At times like this I wish I was a hacker, that video must be on the site somewhere. :mrt2:

D.J. Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince - I'm All That Homebase (1991) :)

Congrats!! I love that disc, that is story telling at it's best! And FP just kills it on Numero Uno.