Only in George Bush's America

Go watch this heart-wrenching account of a survivor, Charmaine Neville, from New Orleans (via Talk Left), then go read this post from the Carpetbagger about what FEMA has our highly-trained firefighters doing while people like Charmaine are starving and being raped.

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for
firefighters — his own are exhausted after working around the clock
for a week — a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle
Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. […]

"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics,
haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here
having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in
Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."

[...]

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered
roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into
pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a
team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for
Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush
as he tours devastated areas.

Another post by the Carpetbagger suggests that the head of FEMA, Michael "Brownie" Brown might be getting close to wanting to "spend more time with his family," but the two folks that are next in line to take his place don't have any disaster management experience either.

Go figure.