Hurricane Katrina

That's the Superdome up there. Man, New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast got hit hard and I really do feel sorry for everyone. The people I do feel the worst for are some of the idiots and the asinine comparisons that they've made. Here are some that particularly irk me:

"It's downtown Baghdad," said tourist Denise Bollinger, who snapped pictures of looting in the French Quarter. "It's insane."
[Baghdad is well known for its hurricanes]

From the Boston edition of the Metro: "After touring the destruction by air, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said it looked like Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped." [He was in Japan, I presume]

"This is our tsunami," Biloxi Mayor AJ Holloway told the Biloxi Sun Herald. [Hey dude, 250,000 people died in the tsunami]

"It's like being in a Third World country. We're trying to work without power. Everyone knows we're all in this together. We're just trying to stay alive," Mitch Handrich, a registered nurse manager at Louisiana's biggest public hospital, told the AP. [From my co-worker: "I thought Louisiana was already a third world country."]