The Midwest Versus the Mideast

Here’s a presidential quiz. You’re the President of the United States. A major river, the Mississippi, has overflowed its banks. The levees couldn’t hold the water and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to release the flood waters, flooding thousands of acres of homes and farmlands, to save the big cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans from even worse damage. Gigantic tornadoes have ripped up the Midwest from Minnesota to Alabama. They may even tear up upstate New York before this night is over. The Federal Emergency Management Association is out of money and hurricane season begins next Wednesday.

But you’re not here in the U.S., overseeing the horrific damage. You’re at the G-8 conference in Normandy, France, shilling for the Arab countries. They want billions of dollars to behave themselves and pretend they love freedom (which they don’t) and democracy (which is against their religion).

What’s more, our national debt, is at $14 trillion and climbing, $4.5 trillion of which we owe to other countries. Our “official” unemployment rate is holding at 9 percent, and experts say the rate is actually much higher but that the media cheerleaders aren’t announcing through their megaphones. You’ve usurped one-sixth of the U.S. economy through your health care plan, and intend to deal with that deficit by raising taxes on consumers who already owe nearly $800 billion on their credit cards and $13 trillion on their mortgages. “For Sale” signs are up all over the country but no one is buying. We have nearly $114 trillion in unfunded liabilities – that’s $1 million every taxpayer would have to cough up to pay the bills just for Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drugs

So where do you want to send the U.S. share of the billions of dollars? Joplin, Mo. (whose county you lost in the 2008 election)? Or to the emerging Arab Spring nations to help develop a system of government they don’t believe in?

If you guessed reallocating the funds to domestic emergency assistance, you were wrong. But you’d probably make a better president than Obama. Remember how the Media criticized Pres. Bush for not immediately flying to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (he sensibly delayed the trip so as not to get in the way of the rescue workers and sensibly held back the money until the damage could be assessed). The thing about a hurricane is you have plenty of warning and plenty of time to get out of the way. You may not have a home when it’s all over, but you presumably have someplace to go until your insurance is settled.

You can’t hide from a tornado. Some towns got a lucky break this year; they had 20 minutes warning. But you still can’t be sure exactly where the finger of God is going to touch down. Even if you do, though, where are you going to go? Emergency experts recommend the basement. Only, you run the risk of having the whole house crash down around your ears. You can try an inner room of your house and hope the walls don’t cave in (which happened during this outbreak and at a high school a few years ago). You can’t really make a run for it because the tornado is faster. Forget about your car. Hiding in overpasses don’t do much good, or gullies; the winds will just suck you up and spit you out. About the only thing that will protect you is a concrete shelter or building (just watch out for the roof.

If I were a Midwest resident, I’d be thinking about building concrete storm cellars right about now. The Middle Eastern countries will not be putting our hard-earned tax dollars to any other use than to overthrow the West. They’ll use our own money against us. Iran’s nuclear capacity is frighteningly threatening.

The tornado shelter you build now will be a solid investment for the future. (Our neighbors to the North build entire malls underground because of the cold weather.) We’re going to have to start depending on ourselves and each other because our own president and government are selling us out.

Let’s just hope we can trade him in in 2012 before those doomsday movies become a reality.