Cedar Rapids Versus New Orleans: A Tale of Two Cities:

A blogger who was a long-time resident of Cedar Rapids IA, which was recently hit hard by flooding, has these observations [h/t: Mangan's Miscellany]

I write because I grew up in Iowa, lived in Cedar Rapids for a while, and cannot help but notice the differences in flood preparation and response between Iowa and New Orleans....and because you might be one of the few people who care about my observations! Anyway, here is what I see in Iowa and what is making the response to the flooding there so efficient, and how it is 180 degrees different than the disaster in NOLA:


Iowa: Cooperative and can do spirit and pride and compassion for the fellow citizen
New Orleans: fighting with and blaming of police and all authorities

Iowa: A sense of humor and optimism
New Orleans: bitching and hostility and insistence that government and the Corps of Engineers are out to get them

Iowa: Trust and willingness to follow orders from police and civil defense authorities -- this includes everything from evacuating homes to cutting back on water use. The authorities' urgings to reduce household water use have been so successful that Cedar Rapids will have more water services available, and sooner, than they had hoped. This trust and willingness has contributed to ZERO FATALITIES from the floods.
New Orleans: stupidity, inaction, lack of preparedness

Iowa: Willingness to work hard for nothing (eg, sandbagging, a job that can be struck from the list of "jobs that Americans won't do")
New Orleans: not much willingness to do much of anything to help except point fingers

Iowa : ZERO looting
New Orleans: looting galore

Iowa: organization, well organized news conferences, people following orders
New Orleans: chaos, finger-pointing, racial tensions, blacks and racist media thugs daring to point their fingers at whites and an "evil" government

Iowa: well run, orderly, well prepared shelters even though they are not really set up to house flood victims
New Orleans: chaos, unprepared shelters, Superdome a living hell for whites (ie, racism), even though New Orleans has a well publicized and well known Gulf hurricane threat every year

I could go on, but the preparedness and capability and cooperation and functionality and success of white Iowa stand in sharp contrast to Mayor Nagin's dysfunctional chocolate city.

Of course, the fact that New Orleans was run for a century by crooked Democrat politicians, who in the 1950s wrested levee and dike construction & monitoring from the hands of the Corps of Engineers, has a bit to do with it. For the last six decades, the crooked Dem politicians have controlled the maintenance & upkeep of the system of levee/dikes with predictable corrupt mismanagement.

And of course, when the dikes broke, the fault was all GWB's.

Only the big lie called the MSM could concoct such a calumnious lie. And get away with it because of a corrupt Dem political machine in DC. Headed by Pelosi & Reid. And soon to be aided and abetted by Barack Hussein Obama, unless the country recognizes the clear and present danger of the RICO career bureaucracy, staffed completely by Dems who never met a payroll & who are infested by crooked lawyers from top to bottom.

The ridiculous human offscourings inhabiting NO resemble Lagos more than an American city. Corruption rules.