For the last time...

Since people seem to still be playing the blame game in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I feel somewhat obligated to weigh in one more time. But this time, I'm going to keep it short and simple, so even the most moronic, talking-point-parroting, conspiracy theorist can understand. So here's a handy little list of facts regarding Hurricane Katrina:

1. President Bush is not responsible for local evacuations. He has no more power to evacuate New Orleans, Louisiana than he does to evacuate Boise, Idaho.

2. FEMA is not designed for immediate response. They have 2,500 full-time employees for the entire country, with 4,000 standby employees, again, for the entire country. They're designed to coordinate/supplement existing relief efforts. As it turns out, there wasn't one in New Orleans.

3. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did not follow the New Orleans evacuation plan.

4. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco did not adequately deploy the National Guard to keep order after the storm.

5. The fact that some of the Louisiana National Guard was deployed in Iraq had nothing to do with them not being deployed before or after the storm. There are more than 11,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard. Some 3,000 of them are currently in Iraq. That leaves more than 8,000 still available for deployment throughout the state. They weren't.

6. Stealing food in water in an emergency is not looting. Stealing plasma TV's and Nike shoes is.

7. Black people in New Orleans were poor before George W. Bush was ever in office. And odds are, they'll be poor after he leaves office. To say that he doesn't care about them, one would also have to say that Clinton did not care about them, nor did any other President this century.

8. Federal funds earmarked for strengthening the levee system and otherwise preventing exactly what happened in New Orleans were misappropriated and misused by state and local officials.

9. There is no definitive proof that global warming exists. If it exists, there is no definitive proof that it is man-made, or at least man-affected. If it is man-made/affected, there is no definitive proof that it leads to more powerful hurricanes. Conceding for the sake of argument that all of these things are true, to claim that all of these effects could have been reverse in neutralized since January 20th, 2000 (the day that George W. Bush took office) is absolutely asinine.

10. If you want to blame Bush for something, blame him for putting FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security. Adding federal bureaucracy to federal bureaucracy isn't going to make anything more efficient, as is now woefully apparent.

There. So that's how it went down. Can we please shut up about it now and talk about something else?

Oh, by the way, Afghanistan had elections over the weekend, and they went off without a hitch. Just letting you know, since you're not going to hear about it anywhere else.