$35 million dollars? Less than half of what will be spent on inauguration festivities. Chump change. Bill Gates and Michael Eisner, turn out your pockets.

And while an immense natural disaster continues to unfold in South Asia and Indonesia, the President remains at his ranch on vacation, silent on the subject except to point out how generous the US was in international aid last year. Oh, excuse me. He made the requisite sympathy calls three (3) days after the disaster.

Could it be that these are only third-world natives and not Americans or Europeans? Could it be that this President's puppetmasters have never seen the devastation of cholera and typhus and have never held a child cradled in their arms, dying of a disease that could easily have been cured?

And where are the multinational pharmaceutical companies? Could it be that a lack of profit means a lax response? Will they wait until there is a terrible emergency and then swoop in by helicopter to rescue the natives? Applause, applause.

Suggestion: Read the New York Times editorial. It says it far better than I.