Gov. Culver of Iowa declared the floods that have so devestated his state as one of those 500-year events, which would put the last one back around the time Christopher Columbus showed up uninvited. We do seem to be having a lot of these once-every-500-year floods a lot lately. How long ago was Grand Forks submerged? And weren't there the same sort of floods along the Mississippi in '93?

Many of those who suffered flood damage have been financially wiped out. Initial estimates say that there has been $1 billion in damages.

That's bad for Iowa.

But the incessant rains over the Midwest are certainly bad news for the rest of us as well. Across much of the grain belt, fields have been flooded out and crop losses will be great.

Before the flood, the corn harvest was already estimated to fall 10% from last year. This, coming on top of soaring food prices worldwide, together with the increased demands for ethanol to be made from corn, only promises more hits to the wallets and purses of average Americans.

Meanwhile, imports of crude oil has plunged ominously at our Gulf ports for the last few months. How long can we live off our inventory, especially of diesel, which is such a huge component of our food production and distribution system?

What will we see come harvest time (which is close to Election Day)? I suspect we won't be in a happy mood

I flew into Indianapolis last week to see family out where my dad was born. Besides the flooding, the fields looked like at best like early spring. My cousins said it was due to the cold, wet spring, and now, with two weeks of floods washing out what's been planted, ruination. When I left, we had to call relatives from near Ohio to Indy to find out how the roads were to make sure I could do the drive without swimming. I-70 was closed down due to floods.

We talk about weather and crops about half the time I'm there, and it's never boring. It's not going to be a good year, except for the buzzards.

and this just may kill off a lot of the smaller or less productive ethanol start-ups.

I do feel for the people along the rivers. The Quad Cities is my family on me Mother's side. None of them farmers anymore, although that's where we came from.

why else would he let them suffer!

he hasn't even sent in the national guard to stop the looting and shooting.

oops - my bad . .. no looting and shooting, apparently, just people filling sandbags and working cooperatively.

i guess there IS a difference between city folk and rural folk, then.

it's all I can do to restrain myself right now, BA. My father's from flooded Indiana, and my mother's from New Orlean's 7th Ward. How many people drowned in Katrina? How long were they underwater? How many homes lost? How many people were already deep in poverty? How many are still homeless three years later?

How fucking dare you sit in judgment unless and until you have been in their shoes. And what have you done to make anyone's life better besides your own?

But I wished you had not restrained yourself so. I found myslef speechless at b-a's comment. She claimed the difference was city folk to rural folk, but I suspect she had a racial smear in there.

your post is a reminder, if any were needed, that something is "fair game" for commentary until it happens to you, at which point it magically becomes off limits.

i'm sorry for your loss, and i'm sorry if you read my post as making fun of the iowans, which it clearly wasnt. it was lauditory for their lack of looting, etc.

it was a satire on those who rush to blame bush and his alleged racism for every natural disaster that befalls someone in america.

i suppose i should await being taken to task for theorizing (in another post) that america's religious right was going to announce that the boyscouts "deserved it" when the tornado hit their campsite, because they weren't sufficiently homophobic.

i'll keep checking to see . . .

you are insightful in your comments; sometimes you are so fucking offensive and retarded that I regret reading anything you have to say. Let's just say that this moment is one of the latter.

sigh . . . at least i can console myself that i'm not so retarded as to rush around posting personal attacks and curses against other posters because i disagree with their satires, eh?

some people have all the fun. personally, i've never found that sort of thing fun though

from me. Just half-baked pseudo-comparisons of grossly dissimilar things, especially when they carry racial undertones and intentionally poke at what is already a still-exposed wound. To paraphrase what I said: sometimes you are an interesting poster, and I enjoy reading you on those occasions. Other times, you are a gratuitous asshole, and I regret the time wasted even in replying.

And they are "sufficiently homophobic". I know, seeing how I was an assistant Scout Master as well as a den mother. My son is an Eagle Scout.

As for your Iowa post, Iso speaks to that quite well; I have nothing to add. Except a question: Is everything just a big joke to you? Because that is how it read.

My post is a reminder that you've got a hateful streak in you a mile wide, and its resulting "humor" only funny to you and people like you. Throwing in that bit about satire is your eternal excuse when your attempts at humor fail. Nobody blames Bush for natural disasters. They DO blame him, and rightly so, for the deliberately political response to Katrina. It's inexcusably immoral that Vitter, Nagin, Bush and Rove used Katrina to punish Democrats and engineer Blanco's downfall.

I suppose it could have crossed some Louisianians' minds that the floods in Iowa are God's judgment on those who are judgmental of New Orleanians, but most religious-minded folks believe that's still to come.

is that she doesn't even get what's wrong with it.

Iso,

I hope your family had crop insurance. Farming is surely a tough life. But more and more of us will have to take it up in some fashion in order to survive.

News like this always felt so remote, but months from now we will all feel it. And, yes, some will profit from misery. Like commodities traders.

The folks there have certainly had more than their share. But those flood waters will lap at our own doorsteps when food/gas prices continue to soar... or shortages crop up.