Disaster du jour

Well it’s happened again. Just when we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves because of the destruction and misery caused by our twin hurricanes in the Gulf (We’re number one! We’re number one!), along comes, first, Hurricane Stan burying all these villages in Guatemala under oceans of mud and then, right on the heels of that, an earthquake in India/Pakistan kills upwards of 20,000 in a matter of minutes.

It’s a fact - nobody does natural disasters quite like the Third World! The tsunami back around Christmastime set the disaster bar pretty high: not only thousands but hundreds of thousands dead! It boggles the mind. So does the question: Who’s gonna pay for all this mess? All the concerts and telethons in the world won't make a dent in the bill these latest disasters are going to generate.

While this column normally eschews all things political, today we’re wondering whether our friend President Bush might be feeling a little put upon. Almost as if (maybe, possibly) somebody (and you know Who we mean) might have it in for him. We're also wondering if being president might be getting a little old.

Being president must have seemed like a hoot-and-a-half back in 2001 before all the unpleasantness started. But the times are a-changing and not for the better. 9/11 was a huge tragedy but damn if it wasn’t exciting as hell. Those were heady times for the President. Everybody liked him – he liked himself. Then the wars, which started out so successfully, bogged down into what they are today. And then the scandals, the indictments and the natural disasters started. (Let’s not forget those four hurricanes in 2004). So we wouldn’t be surprised if the old boy didn’t have one of those little count-down thingies on his desk: “only 1194 more days to being a private citizen”. Gee, that’s a long time. Now, we’re depressed too.