Afternoon Baseball

The most comprehensive list of places to donate and who's donating to whom that I've found. The Red Cross, of course, is best equipped to handle this.

Obviously, it's important not to forget Mississippi, particularly Gulfport and Biloxi, which suffered incredible devastation and have a rising death toll. However, New Orleans has lost thousands of people, and may lose thousands more simply because there are 50,000 to 60,000 people just sitting in New Orleans -- with little or no food and water, in searing heat, without bathrooms or a quick way out of the city.
It's not easy to get supplies into that sort of situation. What would help would be lots of Guard troops. But there are 8,000 National Guard troops from Louisiana and Mississippi who are in Iraq. They can't help. There aren't expected to be 8,000 Guard troops in the disaster areas for a while. EDIT: Actually, while there were only 2,800 troops there on Thursday night, they say 30,000 will be there in the next couple of days. But is that really quick enough? Asking, not accusing.
This could be the greatest natural disaster in our country in over a century. This is like when some storm or earthquake kills thousands or tens of thousands in a Third World country and the entire incident gets a paragraph on page A18 -- except that it's right in our faces this time. There will likely be no natural disaster greater in your lifetime that affects people you know (not that that should make the decision). So give money, or whatever else you can do. The Red Cross has a lot of info on what people can do to help.


Don't turn off the news. Don't stop watching on the Internet. Don't put down the paper. Don't shy away from this. This is really terrible, and we all need to know and feel that.

It's going to be a disaster that, sadly, will make 9/11 look like a hiccup in terms of cost and possibly deaths. I know, I know, one was terrorists, this is nature. But we haven't conquered nature, and we probably won't.