First off I want to give love to the now 3-0 New Orleans Saints, after they handled the Atlanta Falcons 23-3 on Monday Night Football. I wasn't sure how the Saints would look this season with all the off-field commotion and a few question marks on the roster, most notably Drew Brees, acquired via free agency from San Diago (the Ron Burgandy pronounciation, thank you very much) who is coming off shoulder surgery. While I think the significance of the Saints return to the SuperDome has been overblown (if you lost everything in Katrina's wake, maybe even losing loved ones, how much would you care, even as a fan, about football?) I do think it's a great story for this team to be playing as well as they are. I still think the will come back down from their current emotional surge (they started 3-0 in 2002, only to finish the season 9-7 and miss the playoffs.) But it's a feel-good story and I'm all for that.
Speaking of Hurrican Katrina I recently watched the HBO documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem" by Spike Lee. This is something that everyone needs to see. The devastation is unbelievable. Equally unbelievable is the complete ineptitude shown by the Bush administration, FEMA in particular, in handling the crisis. It is a truly moving experience to see what the people of New Orleans went through. And (it needs to be said) the circumstances of Katrina shown in the documentary explicitly showcase the biggest distinction that exists in America, and, contrary to popular belief, it's not black and white. The only class distinction that matters is rich and poor. New Orleans is a poor city and that's why the response was slow (among other reasons.) Poor whites died along with poor blacks. Make no mistake, racism exists. But, as I've stated before, the only color that matters in our society is GREEN. And speaking of green, what if instead of spending $300 billion plus "helping" another country's people, we spend some money on our own country: the people of New Orleans. Or on the millions who can't afford prescription drugs and/or insurance. Or the millions who are destitute and homeless. Or just those who can't quite help themselves. Maybe all those taxpayer dollars from United States citizens should go toward helping United States citizens, not helping every country in which the U.S. is looking to spread its imperialist claws.
Quote of the Week:
"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."-Mark Twain
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