MSNBC's top programs provide more than 18 times as much coverage of Haiti earthquake as Fox News' to

They have collected 50,000 bodies and expect between 100,000 and 200,000 total dead. That is like an above average (in population) American city being wiped off the map and it's newsworthy if you can empathize with people who happen to live in a different country (because none of you would call this a non-event if it were American dead).

The same is true in Indonesia. It is even possible to read assessments of the worst-hit places, such as the island of Aceh"from the World Bank, for example"that describe life there as better than ever before. I am certain that many disagree. However, there are no scenes there of what everyone always calls "biblical" tragedy. Indonesia is not a society of utopian perfection, and neither is the United States. But both have enough social cohesion to support indigenous charities, both have enough educated people to plan reconstruction, both are capable of absorbing lessons learned, of rebuilding villages and cities with an eye to future floods, of helping their own refugees resettle.

Haiti does not have these kinds of internal resources, which means that all the reconstruction expertise will have to come from outside. Most of it will come from the United States. Yet for all the obvious historical reasons, this outside expertise will be unacceptable to many Haitians, who will see it as a colonial imposition, unwarranted interference in local affairs, cultural imperialism. Armed U.S. Marines may wind up in fire fights with those violent gangs. Local elites"those who remain"may plot to swindle the aid missions out of their food and money.

Two of them. Pat must be intending to open some branch offices.