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When The Rats Begin to Eat Each Other . . .

isn't it time to jump ship?

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who has blamed an assortment of people for his agency's pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina, including the mayor of New Orleans and governor of Louisiana, is now blaming President Bush.

While I do agree that FEMA should have known it was in trouble when Brown was appointed (credentials: Brown was the college roommate of Albaugh, Brown's predecessor at FEMA, and president of an Arabian horse club), this really isn't helping.

4 comments:

Anne said...

** snicker **

Like there isn't already a ton of that anyway . . . I'm betting the spamment a couple of posts down didn't get any clicks around here simply because he announced there wasn't any free porn.

Anonymous said...

"when Brown was appointed (credentials: former Bush college roommate"

You didn't even get the lie right. The story in the NY Times was that Brown was the college roommate of Albaugh, Brown's predecessor at FEMA. This apparently was based on the fact that they both went to college (at separate universities) in Oklahoma. After all, if they were both in the state of Oklahoma for college, they must have shared a room at some point, right?

Brown and Albaugh didn't even know each other in college (and neither did Brown and Bush). Most of the NY Times columnists that made this error (including Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd) have so far refused to correct it. Will you?

Anne said...

Our Anonymous friend is correct -- I actually picked up that it was Albaugh in yesterday's paper (obviously not from Maureen Dowd's column) and hadn't found the time to fix it yet. : )

I don't care whether he's a Bushie, merely that he has been grossly incompetent and the ability to manage a horse club simply doesn't translate into emergency management.

My prediction is that the response problems lie with the Department of Homeland Security, which was granted tremendously broad powers and influence. Simple communication error -- no one was sure who had the authority to get things rolling, and no one wanted to take responsibility for an error in judgement.

And of course, let's not forget the outstanding leadership of the New Orleans and Louisianna government. ** snort **

It still doesn't change the fact that Brown could have accepted responsibility and admitted he was unprepared rather than point fingers at everyone else.

Anne said...

Oh. Indiana.

No wonder he was splitting hairs over who roommated with whom, yet ignored DeLay's indictment and Frist's Martha Stewart-itis.