So, it looks like a lot went right for us. Hurricane Rita turned away from Houston, and, despite the flooding, more or less avoided New Orleans. It looks like Lake Charles - where I spent time electioneering last December - took the worst of it, but so far no deaths or even major injuries have been reported due to the storm.

But it's hard not to look at the response to this storm and compare it to the response to Katrina. To this observer, the big difference appears to be that we were very well prepared this time. It looks like the evacuations, and the troop mobilizations, and the overall planning worked. Good for us.

It's easy to chalk this up as "lessons learned" from the Katrina disaster, but this sure doesn't seem like rocket science. I mean, FEMA's full-time job is to prepare for national disasters. Shouldn't someone there have spent a few hours coming up with a comprehensive hurricane reaction plan, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice? And wouldn't that plan include things like evacuations; troop deployments; care for the poor, the sick, and the elderly? I mean, did we really need to swamp a major American city and kill thousands to figure out all that stuff we a good idea?

I'm sure that responders learn how to tweak their plans all the time, but couldn't you develop a basic framework for dealing with disasters before you know precisely how it's going to go down? Isn't that FEMA's JOB!?