My mechanic wants to shoot Katrina victims

No, I'm not kidding.

The upside to looking kinda like a young Republican is that I can sometimes talk myself out of a speeding ticket. The downside is that bigots I don't even know have an unfortunate tendency to assume that I share their views and will start spouting whatever racist crap has been festering in their brains without any prompting whatsoever. The only thing I can compare it to is accidentally stepping on something dead and watching the maggots pour out.

So anyway, a mechanic from the repair shop we use is driving me downtown to drop me off at work so that they can have the car for the day. We start talking about the Katrina and the looting that's going on.

His position:

• Most of the people who didn't leave the disaster area didn't want to leave and in fact probably stuck around to loot.
• These aren't people like "you and me".
• Taking anything from a store, even food and water when you're starving, is wrong. Everyone should have been fully prepared ahead of time.
• He wishes he could be there as a store owner to shoot people who tried to loot from him.

My position:

• What a dickhead. I kinda felt like clocking him, but he was driving my car downtown in rush hour traffic.