But are they spending untold millions to repair their reputation or to save the lives of the citizens of New Orleans? Or both?

My fireman nephew in Tennessee called yesterday to say that FEMA has turned his station into an emergency operations center for the processing of evacuees from Louisiana. They plan to house thousands in the barracks of a nearby National Guard base. You’ve probably seen some TV coverage of other far-ranging operations that FEMA has underway.

It’s not that I think the residents of New Orleans should be left to drown. I just don’t think they should be living in a place that requires such heroic efforts to save them every few years. They might argue that before Katrina it had been decades since the city had suffered any significant storm damage. But I would respond that the millions spent on levees, pumps and other measures probably helped protect them during that period. Storms or no storms taxpayers across the country are paying dearly to try to keep New Orleans safe. And it’s not working very well. For taxpayers there’s nothing easy about the Big Easy.

I read that thousands of the pre-Katrina residents have never returned. They’re the smart ones. We should reward them. Hey there’s an idea! Perhaps we should pay New Orleans residents to leave and never come back. It might cost less than evacuating them every time a hurricane enters the gulf and housing them after each storm that destroys or floods their homes. And make no mistake about it. An evacuation operation will have to be started for every hurricane that can hit New Orleans within four or five days.

If Al Gore is right New Orleans will be permanently underwater within a few years anyway. Regardless of Gore’s climate astuteness it just doesn’t make sense for us to encourage people to live where they can’t afford the risks they are taking.

In her speech at the convention last night, Michelle started out sounding more like a conservative than a liberal. She talked about how both she and Barack, despite humble beginnings, realized the American dream through opportunity and hard work. She talked about how she benefited from two loving and supportive parents, and how Barack, though his parents were divorced, had two grandparents to fall back on. She mentioned that her mother was a stay-at-home mom and that her father continued to work with a debilitating disease. She talked about how much her own family means to her. She even said that she loves America — without any qualifiers.

But right after all that she emphatically declared that Barack was the right person to fix America. Huh? What needs fixing? What’s wrong with a country that allows anyone — even one with a funny name — to succeed if he wants it bad enough? What’s wrong with a country that has given a racial minority citizen at least an even chance of becoming its supreme leader?

She did a good job in delivering the speech but its content was a bit muddled. She needs to get another speech writer. No, on second thought, she should keep the one she has; I don’t want Barack to be elected.

The Republican National Committee sent a certified letter to me asking for an emergency donation to the McCain campaign. The emergency is that they’re nine million dollars short of their August goal. I’m afraid I can’t help them with that.

I’m still trying to figure out why they felt the need to send a certified letter. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t responded to the hundred or so they sent through regular mail. Perhaps it was just supposed to impress me to the point that I would dig deep and fire off an overnight check back to them.

Whatever their intent they ended up hacking me off. I had to drive to the post office to pick up the letter. I thought it was a summons to jury duty. Those are the only certified letters I’ve gotten — until now.

I’ve complained before about the RNC spending all the money I give them trying to get me to give more.

Barack Hussein Obama is not polling well with the over-65 demographic, so he has come up with a plan to try to buy their support. He promises to relieve all seniors earning less than $50,000 from paying income taxes on those earnings. Message to Obama: That promise won’t win my vote.

Notice the qualifying phrase “on those earnings” above. That was necessary because Obama plans to increase taxes on dividends and capital gains which could affect seniors more than any other form of federal tax. He also wants to increase inheritance taxes.

No Barack, we’re old but we’re not stupid. The fact that we’re not stupid is the reason you’re having so much trouble getting our support in the first place. Let’s suppose that you actually do plan to decrease our net taxes. Do you think that would win our votes when we know that you will increase our children’s taxes to compensate for our tax break? No, we’re not selfish either.

Here’s a clue for Obama: The things most seniors find wrong with this country are the things you want more of.

I read that a citizen of China killed an Olympics visitor with a knife. In China citizens aren’t allowed to have guns. So, in a gun-free zone a knife becomes about as deadly as a gun. The Chinese government understands the difference though; they have guns.