"I really don't have much of an opinion of his coming," said Lashawn Baker, 33, whose family was just starting to clean her flooded home in a southwest Cedar Rapids neighborhood. "It took him a long time to get to New Orleans and he didn't help any of those people, so I don't think he's going to do anything to help Cedar Rapids now that he's here."

I think this is more telling than the spin the White House is trying to put out. Three years after Katrina and New Orleans is still trashed. I don't think Iowa will be like New Orleans, I think there is a cultural difference between Iowa and N'awlens (which is one of the reasons people go south for Mardi Gras, not to Iowa) and they'll simply rebuild because they will. They got displaced down the road, not 300 miles away.

What they won't get is meaningful help from Washington. They'll send emergency money, which will get eaten up by fly-by-night crap companies, and none of it will actually go where it's needed. Bush has made promises for years. They keep turning out to be worth less than the air used to make them.

Bush promises help for flood-weary Iowans