Following a week that has seen the administration boast that “lessons learned,” from the Hurricane Katrina debacle, were being applied to the California fire response, The Federal Emergency Management Agency–FEMA finds its credibility at issue. FEMA is once again on the defensive for staging what turned out to be a phony news conference.
On Tuesday, with just 15 minutes notice, the agency notified Washington reporters about a news conference on the California fire disaster. Reporters unable to make it that quickly were instructed to call a listen-only phone line to hear the session with Deputy Administrator Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson.
Reporters who called the number were unaware that top FEMA staffers played the role of journalists asking Johnson about their own agency’s performance.
Among the “hard-hitting” questions:”Are you happy with FEMA’S response so far?” Showing that he was up to the challenge, Johnson replied, “I’m very happy with FEMA’s response so far.” The “news conference” was carried live on cable news networks. CBS News reported on it.
Heckuva job, Harvey.
Welcome to the utterly manufactured reality, where we provide you with the soothing music and the pile of sand, and you just have to assume a bent over position.
Yeah, sure, like this is the first time this has gone down. An “Error in Judgement” is putting too much ice in your drink. This is is simply Propaganda, pure and simple.
No one would have said a word about it if it hadn’t been discovered. Now it’s given FEMA a perfect fall-guy for any percieved failures in California. If anything went wrong, blame Harvey Johnson after he’s evicted from office.
This administration is becoming brilliant in their ability to hang systemic problems on individuals and cut and run from them
Can our next government be populated by grown ups? Please!
This is astonishing. Haven’t the administrative arms of government any sort of political neutrality, any more? Maybe they can film actors putting out the California fires.
With an approval rating of 30%, I was mildly disturbed that everyone that Bush approached eagerly shook his hand.
We treat our “leaders” like celebrities, then are surprised they become detached from reality?
I’ll bet Bushie Boy listened to that broadcast and will quote from it too!
I wonder if anybody asked him about the comb-over?
banana republic!
pj
This was stupid. 15 minutes notice of a press conference to let the press know what a great job they are doing? There is no reason the press conference couldn’t have been held 90 minutes later. This guy is a retired Vice-Admiral. He, of all people, should know better.
Fake news is a long pattern with this sleazy Bush administration.
Sleazy and EXPENSIVE — they have spent untold MILLIONS of OUR TAX DOLLARS to propagandize us.
http://tinyurl.com/yfaqpj
Goodness, I can’t wait until we send these goofballs back to the bible belt.. Don’t let the doors hit them in their wasteful, bungling, arrogant collective butts.
Chertoff puts on a show.
http://tinyurl.com/3378yj
“I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I’ve seen since I’ve been in government,” Michael Chertoff said.
“I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment,” he added.
Another example of deception from the Bush administration.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is doing the same thing!
http://web.grinnell.edu/sandb/questions.html