That headline's a little less blunt than the one I originally typed...

Touring hurricane relief centers in Houston today, viewing the evacuees as though they were on display in a zoo, former first lady Barbara Bush had this to say:

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

You know, Barbara Bush used to be the only member of her family that I had a shred of respect for. She publicly differed with her husband while he was still president by voicing her support for reproductive choice and she's always been an aggressive defender of her family. Whether they deserved her defense or not, I can respect a mother protecting her cubs.

But her remarks today go far over the line. Beyond her innapropriate chuckling in the face of overwhelming human suffering, which I grant could be a normal trauma response to what she was bearing witness to, her comments were just absolutely wrong.

The poor people were poor anyway, so the squalid living conditions are just fine for them. Now we know why her son has demonstrated such indifference toward these human beings who had so much less access to opportunity than the Bush family has.

We always knew the son took after the father. Now we know he follows just as much in the mother's footsteps.

Just disgusting.