Learning it, loving it . . . living it?

The art of sandbagging (when the river's just too much and the levees are just too little) isn't something just any fool can do without a little learnin'. Of course, you'd be surprised at how many try, nevertheless.

This handy video from our neighbors to the southeast should make you an expert in about a quarter of an hour. Though the folks up in North Dakota add an important detail . . . your sandbags should point in the direction of the water's flow.

Remember, this is the age of the do-it-yourselfer. Unfortunately, in this country, this also extends to flood protection. Learn it, love it, live it.


HAT TIP: NET Radio.

When the levee breaks

Heck of a job, Corps of Engineers.

Watch the feds blame this mess near Hamburg, Iowa, on the levee having been compromised by damage from beavers or badgers (or something), then say Iowans should have inspected it better. Then watch me say that if the levee had been armored with concrete, asphalt or rock, the varmints would have had their work cut out for them . . . and the Corps would have nobody to blame but itself.

Eventually.

Just like in New Orleans.


UPDATE: Here, courtesy of the Omaha World-Herald, is the federally constructed pile of mud in the middle of the Missouri River formerly known as a "levee" this morning after the initial breach. Now, according to late reports, the break in the levee south of Hamburg is now at least 300 feet wide.

Going under on the Missouri

Here is the Missouri River at downtown Omaha on Saturday evening (above).

At right, here's the Missouri River at the same spot downtown as it was May 29.

But it's during the coming week, forecasters say, that the real water will start to hit the Omaha area. By the time the Mighty Mo stops rising sometime in the next month or two -- barring any big rains -- we're supposed to have 4 to 6 feet more water than this.

And it's supposed to stay that high all summer.

Can the levees withstand that much water for that long -- and levels above flood stage maybe until winter? No one knows; the Missouri River flood-control system never has had to withstand such a test.

WILL SOME TOWNS around here, particularly on the Iowa shore, go under? It's a distinct possibility.

Are we already having levee problems in spots? Unfortunately, yes we are.

Do I have confidence in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the flood-control system? Not since 2005 . . . I'm originally from Louisiana.

And in these parts, the feeling quickly is becoming widespread.

Do I think Levees.org -- the New Orleans group that's emerged as one of the chief watchdogs over the Corps -- should send somebody up here to take a look and have a listen? I think that would be useful both for us and for it, yes.

DO FOLKS who live on the bottomlands along the entire length of the Missouri need your thoughts, prayers and assistance now and for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely.

When the levee breaks

We're days and days away from the highest water on the Missouri River, and already the levee near Hamburg, Iowa, has given way.

Does this Omaha World-Herald dispatch sound familiar at all, Brownie?

Two levee breaches just south of Hamburg, Iowa, prompted authorities in Fremont County to issue a mandatory evacuation order Sunday for residents in southern Hamburg.

The Fremont County Emergency Management Office said about 240 residents — roughly 20 percent of the town — were ordered out of their homes following the downstream levee breach in Missouri's Atchison County.

Record outflows from upstream reservoirs have swollen the Missouri River this year, adding considerable pressure to a vast system of levees erected along the river's banks.

Early assessments determined the second partial breach near Hamburg and the damaged areas are likely to fully breach as water levels continue to rise.

As a temporary measure to reinforce the levee to delay a full breach, the Iowa National Guard on Sunday was using a Black Hawk helicopter to drop 1,000-pound sandbags onto the affected part of the levee. Authorities had removed heavy equipment and workers from the area because of concerns about the levee's strength.

The situation in southwest Iowa reflects part of authorities' biggest concerns. Although the stream of river water leaking from the levee into nearby fields was minimal Sunday, authorities worry that part of a community's infrastructure could be inundated.

EVENTS OF the past six years may have caused me to become somewhat cynical, but I do believe I have figured out the government's approach to flood control across these United States:

President ___________ came down in a ___________

With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand

The president say, ''Little fat man isn't it a shame

What the river has done to this poor cracker's land."

Heck of a job.

29 feet and rising

How high's the water, Mama?

Twenty-nine feet and rising.

And if the experts are to be believed, the Missouri River at Omaha is going to rise another 5- or 6 feet over the next couple of weeks, washing out crops, homes and parks all across the metropolitan area. Already, the water engulfs a small part of Lewis and Clark Landing downtown (at right).

Today the "Salute to Labor" sculpture, tomorrow on to the floodwall!

Above, we see flooding across an unfinished riverside park in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Below, sandbags on the now-closed floodgates on the Omaha side of the Maniacal Mo.


OF COURSE, that's nothing when you consider what's happening on the north side of Omaha and above.

Below, we take a panoramic view from high above N.P. Dodge Park, all of which is swamped and getting swampier.


NORMALLY, the Missouri River is beyond the tree line. Far in the distance, we see the bluffs on the Iowa side of the waterway.

And north of Dodge Park, a few miles beyond the city limits, there are scenes such as this.


AND SCENES such as this.


AND SCENES such as this.


HOW HIGH'S the water Papa?

Twenty-nine feet and rising.

Or, to further paraphrase Johnny Cash . . .

We can make it to the road in a homemade boat
That's the only thing we got left that'll float
It's already over all the corn and the oats,
Twenty-nine feet high and risin'.

'I make my living off the evening news'

April 9, northwest Iowa. The day 60 percent of
Mapleton, Iowa, disappeared beneath one of these.

You want to know what I hate?

I hate it when storm chasers shoot video of tornadoes -- which they peddle to the evening news, because nothing sells better than video of s*** getting blown to Kingdom Come -- and all you hear on the soundtrack of the tape is these "meteorological professionals" yelling stuff like "Awesome! Look at that! Beautiful . . . we got a beautiful funnel here!"

Listen, I know it's exciting and all, almost getting yourself killed for 30 seconds of video you can sell for big bucks. I get the adrenaline rush.

Still, I think there's a point I need to make here. That being "F*** you!"

SEE, in the middle of that "awesome, beautiful" vortex, s*** is getting blowed up good. Decades of blood, sweat, toil and tears is disappearing in a matter of seconds. Gone with the wind, as it were.

In many cases, underneath those "awesome" storms, people are being hurt. Some killed.

Killed dead. And dead is forever, which goes on a lot longer than the minute and a half any particular annihilation of worlds (and trailer parks) gets on the network news. In the latest tornado outbreak across the South on Thursday and Friday, 17 people are dead so far.

Awesome. Beautiful.

One can only hope a storm chaser got long-range footage of their deaths, so at least these poor souls will not have died in vain . . . right? It's kind of like the thrilling end of Howard Beale in Network, only without the moral complication of paying Maoist guerrillas to deliver the ratings.


HERE'S ANOTHER thing wiped out by the savage winds last week -- history. Physical manifestations of a region's culture. A man's life work. Maybe jobs, too . . . for good.

Never heard of Malaco Records in Jackson, Miss., that chunk of history and culture that bought the farm in the big wind? I'll bet you've heard what came forth from there.

WLBT television in Jackson reports:

A piece of Mississippi history was virtually blown away by Friday's destructive storms. Internationally acclaimed Malaco Records on Northside Drive in Jackson was almost reduced to rubble and now the owners are wondering whether they will rebuild after 44 years.

It was 3 years ago this month that Malaco Records was honored with an official marker recognizing it as a Jackson landmark along the Mississippi Blues Trail. The company was founded in 1962 and located on Northside Drive in 1967.

Now, that marker is almost the only thing left standing. A powerful tornado shredded two of the three buildings in the compound. Wolf Stephenson, one of Malaco's founders, was inside with about 15 employees, winding down for the weekend.

Stephenson said, "We started seeing limbs and debris flying through the air and decided we better take cover."

(snip)

Stephenson says the warehouse can probably be saved. As for the rest of Malaco Records:

"Well, the buildings are old. It's a real tricky question as to whether or not it's worth rebuilding.", said Stephenson.

IT'S just awesome when we get a whole tornado outbreak to make our day, right?

Cue Don Henley. Again.

How Omaha got its groove back

If all you know about the Omaha indie scene is Bright Eyes, Cursive, the Faint or the whole Saddle Creek Records scene . . . well, podna, you're missing out on a lot.

Like Iowa boy Adam Hawkins and It's True -- and a whole bunch of other artists and groups kickin' it truly indie amid one of the country's most vibrant music scenes.

Exhibit A is It's True's latest video, "Nothing at All" from the "Another Afterlife" CD (coming April 1) and shot in one take at an old school gym in Avoca, Iowa Neb.


OH . . . and there's this from their previous self-titled album.


HAT TIP: Hear Nebraska

When similes attack

When someone tells you someone is as batty as a bed bug, you'll now have some small frame of reference.

Is what I'm telling you.

Naturally, the following story from The Associated Press comes from the great, yet strangely odd, state of Iowa:

An Iowa hospital working to stop the spread of a bed bug infestation was forced to limit access to care in its psychiatric unit for three days after the insects were discovered in two patients’ rooms, hospital officials said.

Officials at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines, a public hospital that serves Polk County, said workers discovered bed bugs in a room during a routine cleaning in early February.

The hospital hired Ecolab, a pest control company, to eradicate the room of the tiny parasites that feed on human blood and spray two adjacent rooms as a precaution.

More bed bugs were later discovered in another room, and the hospital decided to shut down that hallway and several rooms for spraying and cleaning to stop the spread, said Vincent Mandracchia, Broadlawns’ chief medical officer.

“Bed bugs noted during treatment,” reads an invoice from Ecolab, one of four the hospital paid between Feb. 8 and Feb. 28 totaling $550 and released to the Associated Press. “All activity that was found was treated and inspected.”

The three-day process meant the hospital’s mental health and psychiatric center, which normally houses 26, was forced to stop admitting patients. On Feb. 21 and Feb. 22, the patient count dropped to a low of 16, rose to 18 on Feb. 23 and then went back up to capacity after all rooms were reopened, Mandracchia said.

REMEMBER, FOLKS, I don't make this stuff up. I just find it, have a good chuckle and pass it along.

Good night, sleep tight and don't . . . well, you know.

If Neanderthals had electricity

I don't know what you do with someone who calls himself DJ Dog Dick.

I'm pretty sure you don't let him play with the YouTubes.

I'm double sure you don't let him team up with someone from "the Iowa City noise scene." I'd bet my life that whatever the melding of "the Iowa City noise scene" and DJ Dog Dick is (Dog Leather? Really?), it's not something people who have mastered fire and the wheel should call a supergroup.

WHEN YOU HAVE weirdness in the hands of someone like Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart (peace be upon their souls), you might have something. When you have weirdness in the massively less talented hands of a former member of "the Iowa City noise scene" and someone who stage names himself after a male dog's junk, you just have one more laughable moment in the anticulture.

I am reminded of beatniks laying around half a century ago smoking dope and listening to Miles Davis, thinking they were the revolution, man. Only this lacks good music . . . and some "really good s***, maaaaaan," to destroy whatever part of the brain this knuckle-dragger crap might get stuck in.

Good God.

Meantime, I'll have an Old Fashioned and some Tony Bennett on the jukebox. Quick.


P.S.: Nice T-shirt on some half-wit in that shot DJ Doggy Style (or whatever) tried to sneak in with a subliminal quick cut. Not.

Perverted morons.

Get a job. Take a bath. Find Jesus. Something.

Borrowing your demagoguery

The trouble with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is that he's just so very unoriginal.

He stole his name from Bobby Brady and The Brady Bunch. He stole his response to President Obama's 2009 congressional address from Mister Rogers.

And now he's stolen the bright idea of demagoguing university sabbaticals from the Iowa Republican Party. He picked up that idea, no doubt, during all the time he's spent in the Hawkeye State -- as opposed to his own.

In November, as reported by The Daily Reveille, this was the Jindal Administration's party line against such "bad values in education" as the state's flagship university, LSU:

State Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater says Gov. Bobby Jindal's office is looking into University faculty workloads to see if students are getting the best return for their tuition.

"It's important to make sure resources are focused on the classroom and the students and taxpayers get the most value from investments," Rainwater said.

Rainwater said instructors in the LSU System are teaching 77 percent more credit hours than tenured professors. Instructors at the Baton Rouge campus teach 133 percent more, he said.

One area where faculty members do less teaching than instructors is in sabbaticals — a leave of absence to focus on research, writing or acquiring new knowledge. Rainwater said tenured faculty earn the right to have a sabbatical but not during a budget crunch.

"At a time when we're facing a very large deficit, I think it's important that we justify what sabbaticals are taken," Rainwater said.

NOT ONLY is Jindal unoriginal, he's milquetoasty. He's an Iowa Republican watered down to the point of BLECCH!

Watered down and nine months late.

In February, the Republicans in the Iowa House sought to eliminate every single sabbatical at its regents universities -- Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa -- for the next year at a savings of . . . $6 million.

The Iowa Board of Regents had considered canceling sabbaticals in December 2009, but ultimately decided such a move would harm recruitment and retention of faculty, as well as create disruptions in research and a logjam of future sabbatical requests. There were 111 requests for sabbaticals across the three universities for the 2010-11 academic year -- down 25 percent from the previous year.

The University of Iowa led the pack with 52 sabbaticals for professors. Iowa State requested 37 and Northern Iowa 18.

A year later, the ascendant Iowa Republicans are at it again. The state's GOP lawmakers propose -- again -- banning all university sabbaticals. And the new House speaker, Kraig Paulsen, is leading the charge against the eggheads, saying taxpayers just can't afford to give profs a paid "year off."

From an Associated Press article Wednesday:

But professors said the savings Republicans are promising won't materialize, and the move would cost universities in grant money and productivity.

Sabbaticals -- a paid semester or year off from teaching to write books, conduct research, create classes and write grant proposals -- are standard practice at major research universities across the nation. But at a time when other employees are facing pay cuts and furloughs, they have become an easy target for critics and an area where universities can cut to show they are making sacrifices, too.

Several schools across the country have already reduced or canceled sabbaticals, according to the American Association of University Professors. The University of Iowa has cut its sabbaticals in half over two years.

John Curtis, director of research and public policy for AAUP, said he was unaware of any case where lawmakers rather than schools themselves have cut sabbaticals, and he doubted that it would become a trend because of the tiny amount of potential savings.

"I'm sure they feel it has great symbolic value," he said. "But the loss, of course, is what the whole purpose of sabbatical is: to allow faculty members to do research, to engage in understanding new developments in their discipline and then to bring all of that back to their teaching."

A potential fight is already brewing in Iowa, where its three public universities have asked the Board of Regents to approve sabbaticals for professors in the budget year that begins July 1. Details are expected to be made public Thursday.

The regents could approve the requests next week, but Paulsen said they should allow for public debate on the plan to cancel them first.

"It seems to be tough budgetary times. Why should the taxpayers of Iowa be paying to basically give these folks a year off from teaching?" asked Paulsen, a Hiawatha Republican who will lead a chamber that flipped to Republican control in November. "It's as simple as that."

Board of Regents President David Miles said through a spokeswoman that he will withhold comment until next week's meeting. Last year, he urged presidents of the three public universities to ensure any sabbaticals "serve to enhance the core missions of the universities."

The University of Iowa has asked the regents to approve 58 sabbaticals for next year, a slight increase after two years of sharp cuts, said Faculty Senate President Edwin Dove, who defended the practice. UI professors wrote 26 books in 2009 while on sabbatical, published 147 research articles, created and updated nearly 100 classes, and submitted 50 grant applications, Dove said.

SO IN IOWA, we have a debate over highly debatable savings in the mid-seven-figure range. But hang on a second:

House Republicans have said their plan would save $6 million and be part of a budget-cutting package introduced next year. But their projected savings apparently includes salaries that professors will earn whether they are on sabbatical or not. The actual savings would be the roughly $250,000 universities spend to hire replacement teachers, university officials said.

THE STATE'S GOP legislative contingent would appear to be disingenuous here, at a minimum. Some might say they're just playing the booboisie for a bunch of suckers, trying to appear as if they're doing something while proposing next to nothing.

At a minimum.

So, back in Louisiana, what to make of Jindal's quixotic demonizing of LSU professors?

Well, let me put it this way: Remember the number of sabbaticals Iowans have been fighting over? Keep that figure -- 111 . . . 50-something of that total at UI -- in mind.

This year, LSU has 19 professors on sabbatical. Nineteen.

One-nine.

One less than 20.

That's what the Jindal Administration has seen fit to harp over whenever someone frets about a worst-case $60-something million cut to Louisiana's flagship university next year. We're probably not even talking about a million bucks in highly debatable savings, here.

One thing, however, has become crystal clear. What Louisiana's absentee governor lacks in the originality or comprehensiveness of his demagoguery, he certainly makes up in audacity.

They're funny that way

Sorry.

Right of the great divide

If you care to look at what kind of political climate we're facing these days, look no further than Rep. Steve King, western Iowa's crazy-uncle congressman.

In 2008, King -- a three-term representative for whom the description "incendiary" may well be an understatement -- won with 60 percent of the vote. Tuesday, he won with 68 percent.

In February, he was being glib about the guy who flew his plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas. Two years before, it was this:


AND THE good people of western Iowa like him just fine, according to today's Omaha World-Herald:

King is a staunch conservative known for eyebrow-raising comments. He expects the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives to lead to his becoming chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. He is the senior Republican on the subcommittee.

He said Tuesday he wants to introduce legislation reducing and eventually ending federal aid to so-called “sanctuary cities” if they did not change their policies.

“We have a number of cities in our country that, essentially, forbid their law enforcement officers from gathering information on illegals,” he said. “We need to put an end to it.”

Cities — including Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco — have adopted ordinances banning city employees and police from asking residents about their immigration status. King described Des Moines as a “de-facto” sanctuary city where the practice is in place without an ordinance.

He also called for ending automatic citizenship for what he called “anchor babies,” children born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Doing that would likely require changing the U.S. Constitution.

WHAT DEMOCRATS have to deal with isn't that King is a nut and attracts like addle-minded zealots. What Democrats have to deal with is that lots of normal people in the country's breadbasket keep electing a bomb-thrower like the congressman from Iowa's 5th Congressional District.

That they regard him as "normal" enough to represent them, and see Democrats as unfit.

What Democrats have to ask themselves is why they are so alienated from normal Midwestern folk -- angry, fearful, marginally knee-jerk and increasingly deluded folk, to be sure, but not particularly lunatic ones. Dismissing folks like Steve King's Iowa voters, deriding them as bigots and nuts, may be satisfying for the Democratic base, but it still amounts to pissing in the wind.

The difficult question that some Democrats need to ask themselves, but won't, isn't "Why is everybody but us so crazy?" The pertinent question, instead, is "Why do people find us significantly more frightening than somebody like Steve King?"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars . . ." etc., and so on.

When a D+ equals an epic fail

Never, ever hire a design firm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to do an important job.

And remember from this Associated Press story, children, that the only possible PR spin for an Iowa-sized screw-up is "Boy! Are we dumb or what? We must have signed off on this before we went into rehab for our meth addiction."

Leaders at the Des Moines school say regardless of how people react, they are reacting and that's what they wanted to accomplish.The Des Moines Register reported Friday that Drake hired [a] Cedar Rapids-based company to help develop the new "Drake Advantage" recruitment campaign. The university recently unveiled it to prospective students through brochures and its website.

Drake spokesman Tom Delahunt says while the "D+" comes across as a grade at first glance, it's meant to represent all the opportunities Drake offers students.

YEAH, that's the ticket. Opportunities. Right.

Walk, don't fly

TRAVEL ADVISORY: After the unfortunate Icarus incident, travelers who plan to venture close to the sun are strongly urged to take the pedestrian bridge. Flying close to the sun is undertaken at your own risk.

Iowa and Nebraska authorities -- due to the continued high water and strong currents on the Missouri River -- will not be plucking your sorry ass out of the drink if you choose to fly and your damned wings melt.

This travel advisory is in effect until further notice. Thank you.

On Iowegians: We pity the fools

The things you learn from joining the Big Ten Conference, as Nebraska has just done.

For example, did you know that the state of Iowa is even lamer than you originally thought? I mean, my God, they think this is funny.

Really? Is this the best you got, Iowa? Is this the best the comedic mind of Des Moines media can manage? Well, no, but he left for a bigger job at an AM daytimer in Pixley, so this is all WHO-TV can muster -- total mindlessness.

LISTEN, you Idiots Out Wandering Around, our governor in Nebraska is Dave Heineman. C'mon, the man is the Pillsbury Doughboy . . . on barbiturates.

And you pass up that comedic gold mine in favor of dressing up a Missouri fan in his Sunday best and painting a Nebraska logo on his best hat?

That's all you effing got?

Too bad. You will have invited an overwhelming retaliatory strike by Omaha World-Herald columnist Mike Kelly -- a pique-fueled bombardment of stats, rankings and civic-minded anecdotes proving how up-to-date everything is in Omaha and greater Nebraska -- and you will have invited it for something as totally piss poor as that WHO-TV video.

Iowegians. They never learn.

LipDubbapalooza

When high schools meet lipdub, it's kind of like giving Junior the keys to the Plymouth. You fear the worst and pray for your car -- and, by the way, Junior -- to come back in one piece.

And with a full tank of gas. (OK, sometimes prayer is a long shot.)

Jaded old fart that you are, you are surprised when the old heap comes back not only in one piece, but topped off and detailed, too. Applying the analogy back to the world of lipdub, that's what Shorewood High School did in Washington state (above).

And you find yourself thinking, fossil that you are, "How did they do that?" Then Junior gives you that "This moron is the BOSS OF ME???" look, and explains the patently obvious to the Old Man.

IT GOES something like this:


AND THEN Junior's slacker friend drops by, and you're thinking, "Holy crap . . . here we go," and you discover, to your amazement, that he's been working hard on a project for a principal who's stationed in Iraq with his National Guard unit . . .


. . . AND THEN, a tribute for another one who's retiring at the end of the year:


DISORIENTED, you struggle to understand when the kids tell you about other youth just like them in Florida.

"What the f. . . ?" you start to ask them, then you remember what your wife told you about cussing in front of Junior, and how you're a bad example, and to knock it the . . . hell . . . off.

Then the kids show you this:


"WELL . . . HECKFIRE," you think. "Maybe I've been all wrong about the next generation. Maybe they're smart enough, they're good enough and -- doggone it -- I should like them."

Then the phone rings.

It's Junior's homeroom teacher.


SUDDENLY, your equilibrium restored, you feel much better. And you yell at Junior about that little scratch you just found on the rear-left quarter panel of the Plymouth.

Damn kids.

I blame gay marriage in Iowa for this

I think I know what killed Sergeant Floyd.

Iowa's King-sized mess

Southwestern Iowa, can we talk?

Surely you've noticed lately that your guy in the U.S. House, Steve King, has been a little out of control . . . even by his own loose standards. Frankly, guys, the rest of the country is starting to think he's a little nuts.

OK, a lot nuts.

He's going around throwing rhetorical bombs. He's acts like he's trying to start something bad, trying to get people all riled up.

Frankly, if the tea partiers actually got their way and got national governance just the way the Founding Fathers served it up . . . your representative might be writing manifestos on toilet paper for his lawyer to smuggle out of jail and hand over to Glenn Beck. The Alien and Sedition Acts, as applied by President John Adams, surely would not have been kind to Steve King.

LET'S TAKE a look at Steve King's latest, greatest hits, shall we? Starting with this story today in the Omaha World-Herald:

Midlands Republicans on Capitol Hill strongly opposed health care legislation, but most showed little interest this week in repealing it now that it is the law of the land.

One man who is ready for a repeal push is Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

“Today the work begins to repeal Obamacare and restore the principles of liberty that made America a great nation,” King said within hours of the bill's passage. “The American people must take their country back by methodically eliminating every vestige of creeping socialism, including socialized medicine.”

Of course, repeal would be a steep climb. Republicans probably would need to capture the White House, a majority in the House and 60 seats in the Senate, where they currently hold 41.

THEN, WE HAVE this from KTIV in Sioux City:


AND THIS, an account of King's Sunday night antics, courtesy of The New York Times:

“Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. “Let’s chase them down! There’s going to be a reckoning.”

OF COURSE, let us not forget this, as recounted by CBS News:

Conservative lawmakers and pundits already have many grievances against the Democratic health care reform plan, but Rep. Steve King of Iowa and Fox News personality Glenn Beck are adding one more to the list -- the vote scheduled for Sunday.

Democrats are scrambling to get the bill to the president before leaving for Easter recess, prompting the House to schedule a vote for the bill this Sunday.

"They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God," King said on Beck's radio program Thursday, the Hill reports.

Beck chimed in, "Here is a group of people that have so perverted our faith and our hope and our charity, that is a -- this is an affront to God."

OR THIS, in The Huffington Post on March 16:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) urged a smaller-than-expected crowd of Tea Party protesters on Tuesday to launch a Velvet Revolution-style uprising against the federal government, saying the parallels are striking between America's current government and Eastern European communist rule.

Speaking to the Huffington Post shortly after his speech, King declared that a peaceful uprising, a la the successful overthrowing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on the streets of Prague in 1989 "would be fine with me."

"Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can't get in, they can't get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people," he said.

"So this is just like Prague under communist rule?" the Huffington Post asked.

"Oh yeah, it is very, very close," King replied. "It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over. So there are a lot of similarities there."

Earlier, King implored the crowd to bring the nation's capital to a sort of paralysis. Warning, erroneously, that the health care bill would fund abortion and fund care for 6.1 million illegal immigrants, he demanded that concerned citizens "continue to rise up."

AND, OF COURSE, we can't overlook this "Osama bin King" moment after Joe Stack flew his plane into Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, last month:


SOUTHWEST IOWA, let me be direct. You have a problem -- you elected a lunatic. Furthermore, considering you elected a lunatic to Congress, he's our problem, too.

And we expect you to fix our problem at your earliest possible convenience.

There's something about Iowa

Make up your own Iowegian toilet joke here:

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

HERE'S The Associated Press' attempt:

Iowa City police have arrested a woman who allegedly attacked her sister with the lid of a toilet tank.

Nitasha Johnson, of Iowa City, was arrested early Sunday. She's charged with domestic abuse assault causing injury and interference with official acts.

OH . . . that video atop this post? Any old excuse for British toilet humour, wot?

Osama bin King, R-Iowa

Remember how mad you were when you saw Palestinians celebrating on 9/11?

Steve King, southwest Iowa's mad-hatter member of Congress, is one of those people. Just so long as the target for the terrorist's flying bomb is the Internal Revenue Service.

ACCORDING to Talking Points Memo, the Iowegian carbuncle on the House's ass told a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist like Tea Party Airlines pilot Joe Stack:

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.

The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office.

HELL, we invaded Iraq on flimsier evidence than that regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed support for al-Qaida. What to make of a sitting congressman who can "empathize" with domestic terrorists who launch suicide attacks against the United States government?

When confronted by Think Progress about his remarks, King said that if we just hadn't built the World Trade Center and Pentagon, those 9/11 suicide jockeys wouldn't have had anywhere to aim those jetliners full of innocent Americans. Or something like that:

I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax.

(snip)

It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

WITH THE political heat now on high, King took the weasel route in an interview published in this morning's Omaha World-Herald:

King said his heart goes out to the victims in Austin and their families.

“These acts of violence have no place in our society to be condoned or supported,” King told The World-Herald. “When someone finds themselves in this position of extreme frustration with the IRS, which I do understand that frustration, they should do what I did, get involved in the process.”

King said his treatment by the IRS contributed to his decision to run for public office.

As for the comments about imploding IRS buildings, King said he was employing levity in discussing his belief that the IRS should be abolished. He said he was referring to imploding the empty buildings left behind.

YEAH, RIGHT.

You know, if only the voters of southwest Iowa hadn't elected such a radical asshat to Congress, we who live across the Missouri River in Nebraska wouldn't point our fingers eastward and laugh so hard.

Maybe we should stop that, though. Terrorist-loving creeps like King -- especially when they get elected to high office -- hardly are a laughing matter.