"President Coolidge say 'Little fat man, isn't it a shame...?' "

Mayor Nagin is looking overseas for help with his disaster area of a major U.S. city, and he may well get it:

French Transport Minister Dominique Perben, leading the French delegation to a city that was founded by France in 1718, said, "This catastrophe has deeply upset the French people and the French government."

France, Perben said through a translator, "wants to be a long-term partner for Louisiana and New Orleans."

What really strikes me about this is that I know Americans who think the problems of New Orleans are...the problems of New Orleans. That is, they shouldn't be visited upon, or become the burden of, the American public at large.

(I'm not sure where they stand on the numerous communities along the Mississippi river which were wiped out by flooding about a decade ago, some of which were relocated lock, stock, and barrel by federal aid to higher ground.)

Ironically, those same people will be just as offended if the French (or the Jordanians) decide that helping New Orleans is a humanitarian effort they are willing to engage in.

At what point do we recognize that our culture values money above all else? At what point do we heed Paul's words that "Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas"?

(as scout prime points out, the need in New Orleans is desperate, and about to get much worse)