The convention center sits right on the river. It is just down the Riverwalk from where the tourists from Wisconsin board the corny ass steamboat.

Yesterday CNN interviewed a lady holding her baby at the convention center. Actually, they interviewed her Tuesday morning. She was a stranded tourist, and on Tuesday morning she was wearing a cute yellow Gappish blouse and holding her baby over her shoulder. I was interested in her because she was white, and it struck me as strange because all I saw on the news were the black people at the convention center chanting "WE WANT HELP!". She looked frazzled but she was clean. She was saying "we just thank god that we made it through the night".

They found her again last night, and she was wearing the same shirt, only damper. She looked oily and fucked up. She was yelling at the camera, "the baby's not responding! The baby's not responding!" CNN showed the two clips side by side.

Anyone who has been a tourist in New Orleans knows that you can basically pull a barge up to the convention center. That barge could be full of food and water, and the Mississippi has been fully passable for days.

Russia and motherfucking Sri Lanka have offered to help among others (read: if Sri Lanka is asking what they can do, so is everyone else), and we have turned them down. Well, we have not "turned them down" according to Condoleeza "awesome new shoes" Rice, we just haven't acted on their offers. Like how Germany and Japan and France offered to help. Those are offers that we have "yet to accept" Can a ton of rad, superhuman babies go without water for five days?

I just saw a mother holding her baby, dead from dehydration, wailing at the sky on channel 42. She was right on the Riverwalk, and aside from the piles of trash around her and her dead-ass baby, it looked like a lovely day on the river, a blue sky and calm ripples on the river. And then it occurred to me that the gaudy sculpture behind her was the information stand where I got the brochure about the corny ass steamboat that I used in my "our trip to New Orleans" collage for my boyfriend.

This is the United States of Fucking America.

I wholly identify with a bit that David Cross does about ridiculous people who co-opt the pain of others via the news. His illustration is a fat co worker who sits crying at her computer about a boy trapped in a well thousands of miles away. In the bit a character says to the woman "but a man was stabbed to death just a block away like a week ago" and she shouts back "BUT THERE IS A BOY IN A WELL!"

As a cynical asshole who mostly Doesn't Care, when the news drives me to tears or makes me want to beat the shit out of something after I've made a paltry donation to Red Cross and am out of anything I can realistically give, I am pretty pissed at the current administration. I don't mean to politicize a tragedy that goes far beyond politics, but how could anyone have let this happen?

I was talking to my mom on the phone and she said "I hope you never see anything like this in America again in your lifetime"

And I said "Is this really the worst thing you've ever seen" and she said

"Yes" without pausing to think.