Eric Alterman has a list of relief agencies and philanthropies that are providing assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, here.

There has been an unhealthy desire of many bloggers to use Katrina to justify their political position, whether pro- or anti-Bush. Hurricanes of the size and devastation we've seen this week, although rare, do happen, and will continue to happen, regardless of whether we deal with global warming, maintain the wetlands, or keep a sufficient National Guard presence in the homeland. Of all people, the son of Robert F. Kennedy should be the last person who uses human misfortune as orginating from the temper of a vengeful god. And rightists who are attempting to shift the blame to the state and local government of Louisiana as a way of scoring racist points (not to mention the coverage of "looting", which is suspiciously focused on African-Americans) may try to explain the similar destruction in Republican Mississippi and Alabama.

Anyone would be hard-pressed to point to a single policy that this President pursued that would have alleviated the damage, or stengthened our ability to protect the Gulf Coast from such a disaster, although it's not Bush's (or Congress') fault New Orleans is 20 feet under water; it just happened. Being unprepared for the Worst Case Scenario is an all-too-human fault. That was true last week, before the hurricane, and it will be true next week as well. Partisan blame has nothing to do with the immediate problem, which is saving lives.

But if the Democratic Party doesn't heed the lessons of this tragedy, than it truly is unworthy to be an opposition party. As with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean last year, we, as a species, should be well past the point where thousands of people get killed in a disaster of this magnitude. Tsunami warning systems, reinforcing dikes, retrofitting building to withstand most earthquakes: we can do all of that, right now. We know Bush and the Republican Congress have a misplaced set of priorities, and that money has been drained from FEMA to pursue less important objectives. But what have liberals done to sound the trumpets? What did Clinton do? Why was the possibility that a disaster like this could strike perceived by all sides as less important in the last election than abortion or gay marriage?

As a society, our first priority should be to protect each other from predictable disasters, even before we focus on luxuries like fighting wars and such. This wasn't the first hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans is not the first American city to be nearly destroyed by such a disaster. Even if it is in poor taste to immediately point accusatory fingers at your ideological adversaries right now, it is not inappropriate to ask what we do now to make sure that something like this, or something like the Christmas Day Tsunami, does not have the same impact on humanity in the future.

UPDATE: A challenge to progressive bloggers. Clearly, this project is going to entail more than just donating money and blogging up a storm.