What has happened down here is the wind has changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away all right
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The president say, "Little fat man, isn’t it a shame
What the river has done to this poor cracker's land."

(--Randy Newman)

I had hoped the worst was over, but it looks like it goes on and on.  I heard the most extraordinary report from CNN's Jeanne Meserve describing the destruction in East New Orleans, and it's heartbreaking.  Eighty percent of New Orleans is underwater.  The Times-Picayune has evacuated.  The "devastation is overwhelming", and the suffering is horrific.

(And, I see that it takes a domestic catastrophe for President Bush to cut his annual monthlong vacation short.  With poverty on the rise even before the hurricane, I wonder what he'll say to his little fat man.)