Carpetblogger

Now that the initial shock, outrage and horror of what happened in New Orleans is being replaced by stinging embarrassment that such a fiasco is happening in the country of my birth, I checked in with my pal who works at Mercy Corps. I wanted to see if it's the kind of organization she, an employee and humanitarian aid expert, would give money to for hurricane relief.

Not only is The Corpse of Mercy, as we fondly refer to it, rated one of the nation's best charities and from Portland, Oregon, they do the right thing. According to Ho-M, they've sent in three of their best people who will be working with local residents to give them the assistance they need to rebuild their communities themselves -- the same approach they took after the Tsunami and other places they work, such as Azerbaijan. If you've got some spare cash, Mercy Corps is a worthy recipient.

Now I lived in Los Angeles during 1994 during the Northridge earthquake, a mile from the epicenter, and I recall that James Lee Witt of FEMA was practically a local hero for the agency's speedy response to a disaster that wasn't generous enough to give four days' advance warning! But Bush has replaced professionals with political birdbrains at the nation's disaster agency and drained its money to fight a bogus war on terrorism that has made us less secure. Oh, and he's dumped billions into an elective war that's enervated our nation's ability to protect itself from and respond to disasters.

There are corpses rotting in the streets of a major US city. The elderly are dying in the streets or drowning in their nursing homes. Ordinary people are losing their minds because they haven't got food or water or medicine or access to toilets. Watching it from such a distance, from the kind of place where such events are absolutely imaginable, disturbs me in a way that is completely different than what I felt watching the Tsunami, or even the awful events of September 11th.

It's like learning something that you always believed to be true is patently false.

I try to shy away from commentary on US politics on this blog because there are plenty of others that do a much better job, but the cup of my outrage at this criminally negligent administration runneth over and I can't hold back. There's a whole coop full of rotting, waterlogged, pissed off chickens that are coming home to roost. I hope they shit all over the President's head.