The many, many reasons Katrina victims can now feel reassured

Tom Delay as Roberto Benigni

No worries: Tom Delay is now on the scene!... According to this blog entry on the Houston Post website, headlined, "Delay to evacuees: `Is this kind of fun?'", House Majority Leader Tom Delay has descended on Houston to provide solace and comfort for Katrina victims:

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.

While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

And it's not entirely all that bad for the grown-ups either!... according to former First Lady Barbara Bush, who noted that many of the evacuees who she has visited with "were underprivileged anyway."

According to this NYT report:

As President Bush battled criticism over the response to Hurricane Katrina, his mother declared it a success for evacuees who "were underprivileged anyway," saying on Monday that many of the poor people she had seen while touring a Houston relocation site were faring better than before the storm hit.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

Mrs. Bush toured the Astrodome complex with her husband, former President George Bush, as part of an administration campaign throughout the Gulf Coast region to counter criticism of the response to the storm.

And even though he has been ordered out of New Orleans, and back to Washington D.C., embattled FEMA director (at least for the time being) Michael Brown told the A.P.: "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff magarita and a full night's sleep. And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims."

And this particular factoid buried in this NYT story:

President Bush noted... that Afghanistan has offered to send $100,000 to aid victims, and that Kuwait had volunteered to provide $400 million in oil and $100 million in humanitarian aid.