re: "Our politicians were on the ball! They learned the lessons of Katerina, bless them!"
Huh??? I'm glad you're safe, but the experience seems to have twisted your thinking. Did 25 feet of water I never heard about submerge your home - but Barry and Janet stopped by to personally pull you out?? If so, please tell us more!
Irene wasn't Katrina, clo. In fact, Katrina shouldn't have been Katrina. (It wasn't ANDREW, fer cryin' out loud.) Katrina was just a category three storm greatly assisted by a below sea-level, abysmally underprepared city.
What our politicians did this year was to make a huge fuss out of a petered-out hurricane. Mind you, that's probably better than the opposite, but the early response DID cost the taxpayers a whole lot of money... unnecessarily, as it turned out.
Let's wait until a cat-4 hits a major city, then see how it goes. I have a hunch all you and your rhetoric-spouding cohorts on FFFT will have to say then about our "on the ball" politicians is that Bush wasn't any better.

Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months