I would assume Rush isn't the only person who thinks about Katrina/New Orleans after every natural disaster but still On his radio show Rush Limbaugh attacked Katrina flood victims and praised Iowa flood victims: "I want to know. I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois—I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and Illinois that dwarfs what happened in New Orleans." "I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property…I don’t see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don’t see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street." "I don’t see a bunch of people doing everything they can…whining and moaning —where’s FEMA, where’s BUSH. I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America."
That's funny. Yesterday I was wondering if some idiot was going to say that these flooded areas should be abandoned a la New Orleans.
Maybe not by Rush, but this happened a lot after Rita. It was all over local talk radio and letters to the editor. That somehow Southeast Texans and Southwest Louisianans were better than people from the New Orleans area because more returned and we rebuilt our region faster.
What a load of garbage. The scale of the two can't be compared in either population effected or severity of the flooding (persistence). Rita wiped Cameron Parish off the map, but not many lived there, and federal resources were already crawling across the state when Rita hit... it didn't take 5 days for someone in Washington to flip on CNN and say "hmm what do we do after those wacky hurricanes?"
Since Iowa and Illinois didn't have 150mph sustained winds, their buildings were still standing. Also, these people didn't live below sea level to begin with. The two situations aren't really comparable.
I think it's par for the course that a city with a lot of poor people would loot and pillage after a natural disaster. i wasn't really outraged by the looting after katrina; to be honest it wasn't all that surprising. also, iowa isn't really an urban setting; it's harder to loot and take stuff that doesn't belong to you when you have known all your next door neighbors for years/decades.
I'd be OK with it if they would just tell him to stop being so stupid, but that may be too much to ask.
What are you talking about? 150mph winds did not hit New Orleans. It was not the winds that put a pounding on New Orleans, it was when the levee's broke that caused all the water to flood the lower 9th Ward. The only reason the two are not comparable are what happened after the disaster.
Has Rush even bothered to look at a map? About 10 square blocks of Cedar Rapids was flooded and the flood waters receded in about a day. About 10 square blocks of NOLA wasn't flooded and it took three weeks for the flood waters to recede.
They're not comparable at all interms of scope of damage. Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Iowa City were hit bad but they are much smaller city than NOLA and most the area of those cities remained dry and the floodwaters receded quickly. NOLA and many of its surrounding suburbs was flooded and it tooks weeks to get the water out.
I'm so glad you said that, so I didn't have to...150 mph winds??? Gimme a break. It was a freakin' Category 3 or high end Cat 2 when it made landfall. If the levees hold - NONE of that happens. BTW - I've already received my first email here at work from people unhappy with the Katrina situation (which I guess is everyone actually, heh) - with pictures of the current Midwest flooding and an insinuation that because there aren't more deaths and chaos, it's another example of racism. Never mind the apples and oranges nature of the two situations. Easier to evacuate in the Midwest for one, population not concentrated like in New Orleans or geographically boxed in like New Orleans, and in general I'm assuming not as poor in general making it easier to have the means to leave, etc. Both sides of that whole "this is more racism!!/black people are lazy!!" coin get on my nerves. There's nothing productive about any of it.
The 2 situations are not the same. If you put 20k people in an arena in Iowa City, and pumped in false media reports about people shooting at helicopters (the Coast Guard has denied that this ever happened), and reports that dozens of babies were being raped, and that dozens of bodies were being stored in the freezer...you'd probably have a chaotic situation.
that's what pisses me off about the rush statements, a bunch of that stuff was lies. did crime go up, yeah, the vultures came out, but alot of the reports of rapes and shooting at helicopters were plain false.
I think I posted this at the time of Katrina so make of this what you want. My brother in law works for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and he is routinely called out on hazardous material spills, water contamination accidents, etc. His crew was deployed to New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath to help out. He pulled his crew out and brought them home because they were drawing gunfire. They didn't go back.
