Flood!

The rain started just before 3. Stopped around 7. Almost lost my work car. Lot of people a block farther down did lose their cars.

Kayak launched.

Other neighborhoods are a lot worse. My old neighbors say it hasn't been like this since Katrina.

Now it's night time, and the water hasn't gone down an inch.

But I got power, and I'm locked and loaded. Dogs and I are safe.

The New Orleans crowd is growing hostile

Wow, the crying coming out of New Orleans is already reaching the high water mark. Apparently upset because other people are now surviving a flood, but doing it like grown adults and getting by without acting like a bunch of government-dependent babies and criminals, they're trying to tell us all how it wasn't their fault at all--it was the government's. (But just George Bush's, not Ray Nagin's or Kathleen Blanco's...mustn't blame the Democrats even if they did have the primary responsibility for emergency management.)

You see, the government told everyone that the levees were fine, so it's the government's fault that the people of New Orleans didn't take even the most elementary precautions. (News flash: The federal government has regularly disbursed money to Louisiana and New Orleans for decades to maintain the levees but the money always seemed to get diverted by the Democrats that handled it and who were tasked with making those repairs.)

It's George Bush's fault that few bothered to put aside a couple of weeks' worth of canned goods and other staples, and it's the Republicans' fault that these schlubs didn't have a couple of filled five-gallon gas cans set aside to help them get out of town. And these are things that everyone else in the Gulf knows enough to do...but it's FEMA's fault that the people of New Orleans alone by and large did not do any of this stuff.

Oh, and it's the media's fault that the people on New Orleans looked so bad in the aftermath. If the news people hadn't told the rest of the country how New Orleans residents were looting, raping and killing each other, shooting at rescue helicopters, and generally behaving like a bunch of rowdy schoolkids on a playground with the teachers all gone, and if the news people hadn't done all those stories about New Orleans residents committing widespread fraud to get disaster relief funds and launching mini-crime waves in many of the communities that they were relocated to (at our expense), then they wouldn't look so bad today.

Until now, they always excused their behavior by saying "Well there was so much destruction...you can't know what it was like." But now we see other people in Iowa in the same situation, and we can see exactly what it's like when those people actually work around the clock to fill sandbags, help each other evacuate, and generally work through this without acting like a bunch of characters from "Mad Max" oer some other post-apocalyptic movie where there are no rules and chaos is the norm. People in Iowa aren't looting jewelry stores or hauling liquor out of bars. They aren't killing each other. They're under a lot of stress and faced with some serious loss, but they're going on and they're doing what they have to do.

You folks in New Orleans need to stop getting mad at me and others for comparing their behavior to yours and you need to be watching these folks in Iowa and start taking notes, because you could learn a whole lot from them and from your neighbors in Mississippi who didn't act all stupid and spend years running around demanding compensation from the rest of us, like we all owe you for your decision to live below sea level.

And just to head off the next slam, I also lived in New Orleans at one time. I loved it there, but I also knew just like everyone else that it was only a matter of time before the big storm hit and the floodwaters came. I was prepared and so were most of my friends. That you weren't is an indictment of yourselves and your local leaders, not George Bush or anyone else.

The difference between Iowa and New Orleans flood victims

Well Cedar Rapids, Iowa and other areas along the Mississippi River are experiencing a 1-in-500-year flood right now. A great cop and fellow blogger who runs the USA Incognito blog is stuck smack in the middle of it all and I know that she'll appreciate your prayers.

It is a mess there by any measure. Whole towns are underwater, tens of thousands of people are homeless, and Iowa officials are now describing this as the "Iowa Katrina" due to the scope of the devastation.

But one thing separates this catastrophe from the one that we saw in the Gulf, particularly in New Orleans, a few years ago. It's what we're NOT seeing.

--We're not seeing hordes of Iowans sitting on their roofs looking stupid and waiting for someone else to come save them.

--We're not seeing Iowans engaging in massive, wholesale looting and theft of luxury items that they don't even need.

--We're not seeing Iowans shooting at police officers and other rescue personnel.

--We're not seeing Iowans demand new housing for free and and then bitching because it's not good enough.

--We're not seeing Iowans demanding $2,000 debit cards from FEMA and then running off to the casinos or Mexican resorts to spend the dough.

--We're not seeing Iowans demand that the rest of us rebuild their old houses for free.

--We're not seeing Iowans blaming everyone except themselves while they sit around watching everyone else clean up their neighborhoods, and then calling us "racists" when we don't just let them move right in to the most desirable brand-new housing for free.

So while this flooding is a horrible tragedy, it's certainly not a Katrina, if only because Iowans are cut from a different--and better--cloth than all those second-hander socialists and life-long welfare recipients in New Orleans.

Oh yeah...And they don't have any national jokes like Ray Nagin as their elected officials.


Bet we're not seeing much of this in Iowa.





Keep the faith, Iowa. you'll pull through this in fine, American form.