Devastating Cyclone hits Myanmar - death toll hits 22,000...and the First Lady shows the infamous "Bush Wife" sensitivity

The number of missing has climbed to over 40,000:

Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and without clean water or food. The official death toll has increased throughout the day. Burmese state radio reported that 22,464 people had been confirmed dead.

Kyaw Hsan, the information minister, said the regime was "doing its best" to help those afflicted, but that the authorities were finding the relief effort difficult.

"The task is very wide and extensive and the government needs the cooperation of the people and well-wishers from at home and abroad," he said in a news conference in the rubble-strewn former capital, Rangoon, where food and water are running short.

The secretive government is so overwhelmed, it has actually opened its doors to those who have been trying to get in with aid.

In one town alone, Bogalay in the Irrawaddy delta, the foreign minister, Nyan Win, said 10,000 people had died after it was flattened by the storm surge whipped up by 120mph winds.

A spokeswoman for Save the Children said: "It is becoming more and more clear that this is a very serious disaster. Our colleagues out there are comparing it to the level of devastation we saw from the tsunami [in 2004]."

The dramatically escalating toll of dead and missing four days after Cyclone Nagris slammed into the south and centre of the country reflects the degree of devastation and remoteness of the worst-affected areas along the coast.

The military regime in Burma, known for the brutal repression of its people, has said it would accept international help, and teams of specialists are making their way to the affected areas.

(I encourage you to read the entire article. It does remind me of the 2004 tsunami in the scope of the devastation.)

So in all this tragedy, what does the U.S. offer?

Laura Bush uses this offer of help to condemn the Myanmar military leadership - wouldn't that make them less likely to take it, or is that the idea?

Then at the end, the entire focus turned to the preparations for Jenna's wedding.

Per Huffington Post,

While the reporters and the First Lady bantered back and forth about Jenna's wedding details, MSNBC left up their chyron, saying "First Lady Talks About Deadly Cyclone In Myanmar." They also continued to show images of the devastation in Myanmar while Mrs. Bush offered more information about the wedding, including the "Texas limestone altar" built by her husband.

If you go to the HuffPo site, you can watch First Lady Bush and the giddy White House Press Corps get all mushy when they talk about little Jenna's nuptuals.

258 more days of this crap.