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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Regarding the recent flooding in Iowa,

- Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

- Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

- Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?

- When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

- Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

- Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

- When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?

- Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

- Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

- How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

Comments:
While I'm sure this will generate nothing more than a drunken response telling me to fuck off, I'll spell out the difference between the two:

Hurricane Katrina - A city of 500,000 people, mostly urban poor with no financial means to relocate is inundated with flood water overnight. 1300 people die and 700 go missing while the government agency responsible for helping in situations like this sits on their thumbs for 3 days and then is publicly commended by the commander in chief for doing a heck of a job.

Midwest flooding - Gradual flooding of mostly rural areas over the course of a couple weeks resulting in 13 deaths.

The difference - No stadium with 50,000 homeless people being prevented at gunpoint from leaving their city by foot.

Katrina was a clusterfuck and the people who could have prevented much of the suffering should be sacked and never allowed to work again.

Not to trivialize the the tragic recent flooding, but I fail to see the conspiracy you're attempting to allege. Your consistent (and predictable) position of "This administration can do no harm and its critics are buffoons" makes it hard to take anything you post very seriously.
 
I agree with you: (mostly) white people maintaining good order and discipline while riding out a catastrophe is not at all interesting.

Also, with regards to this administration, well, I refer you to my comment of some moments ago.
 
Oh, and while Kathleen Blanco has finally lost her job, the denizens of New Orleans reelected Mayor Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin.
 
Finally, if you're so damn dependent on Government, so completely enervated, that you can't even shift yourself to save your life, well, you probably deserve everything you get, good and hard.
 
Oh, and those 3 days you're all hot about, well, the Imperial Federal Government doesn't get to go charging in everywhere a sparrow falls. There's a process to be followed. You know, declaring a disaster area, asking for Federal help, etc.

I mean, supposing the Feds had charged in on day one, the day Ray Nagin was up to his neck in hookers in Baton Rouge. The screams from, say, the NYT would have been deafening: "Pres to White Woman, Black Man: Out of My Way!"

It took Blanco and Nagin three days to get their heads and asses wired together enough to actually ask the Feds in.

So, there were any number of government types sitting around with their thumbs up their bums and their brains in neutral, starting in New Orleans itself.
 
Oh, and BTW, I've met many a buffoon, and you sir, are much lower than a buffoon.
 
This comment has been removed by the author.
 
Hmm, anon, let me attempt to state in a more direct manner the implications of the blogger's original post. This is a real disaster affecting real people due to the same very real issues with levees. However, the grand standing by various groups on the left is missing because these rural farm folks don't fit the template of oppressed, poor, black people. It's really that simple. The call to their cause just isn't there because there's no impetus in this case for anti-Bush, leftist agitators.

And where the heck does he aggrandize the Bush administration here? He in no way, shape or form on his blog has ever praised Bush or any government agency insofar as Katrina is concerned.

Finally, the people who could have prevented the suffering due to busted levees in New Orleans are the citizens, past and present, of that city and Louisiana. If they are too stupid, corrupt, wasteful and inept too clean up their own back yard then, sadly and rightly, they get to stew in it.
 
I refer to my original opposition to this logic: Katrina = 2000+ dead. Midwest flooding = less than 20 dead. Given the fact that this flood spans at least 6 states, I'd consider that to be pretty damn good. What exactly is there to be outraged about in this current situation? I propose that the human toll is the real difference here as opposed to racial or political motivations.
 
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