Chet Culver: If You're Out Of Power, Visit Our Web Site

From the Des Moines Register:

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver today demanded that Iowans still without power from the weekend ice and snowstorm leave their houses and relocate to one of their area's emergency storm shelters.

An anticipated ice storm, expected to pound Iowa Wednesday and worsen an already dire situation, has so greatly raised concerns about the medical, food and heating needs of residents, that staying in a house without electricity is "unacceptable," Culver said.

State officials said many of the nearly 200,000 residents statewide without electricity, many of them elderly, are trying to brave the storm alone.

"It's not at this point, frankly, a choice," Culver said at a noon press conference at the National Guard Armory in Johnston. "We need you to go to a shelter and we need you to go now."

Culver said residents needing shelter or facing other emergencies should call 911, despite assertions from at one least one local official that the influx of calls was jamming phone lines. Anyone who cannot through that line, state officials said, should call 211 or their city or county's emergency services agency. They said information is also available at www.iowahomelandsecurity.org.

That's funny. Chet Culver wants you to visit that Iowa Homeland Security web site even though you don't have power, your neighbor doesn't have power, your town doesn't have power, and all the cable and telephone lines are down.

Why is staying in a house without electricity "unacceptable" in this day and age? 70 years ago, only about 11% of farmers had electricity, yet they didn't die. If somebody has a fireplace, drinking water, food, and supplies then they can manage just fine in 30-degree weather for the next week or two. Who wants to go to some Armory building and sleep on a cot with hundreds of other cell phone-yapping scumbags who couldn't manage to wipe their butts without the government coming by and doing it for them?

Maybe the Big Lug can get the National Guard to round up all the Old Order Amish and put them in the prison camps for not using electricity.