“And right over there, in that toilet, is our credibility.”
PunditGuy: Liar, Liar, Resume on Fire! — OK, I was hoping upon hope that the blog could get off this FEMA thing and this showed up in my in-box from Pundit Guy. It’s a link to the Time Magazine article that clearly shows that the head of FEMA is a out-and-out bullshitter. “Oh, stretch the truth a little, Brown. What’s the worse that can happen?” This is croneyism at its worst and the results are obvious. Of course those two radio stooges Hannity and Limbaugh will claim this is all some sort of Liberal plot to besmirch Bush.
The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Under the “honors and awards” section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices%u2014he lists “Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University”. However, Brown “wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here,” says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). “He may have been an adjunct instructor,” says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of “professor.” Under the heading of “Professional Associations and Memberships” on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home, told TIME that Brown is “not a person that anyone here is familiar with.” (Brown said “he’s never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home.” However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown “was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here.”) Brown’s FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown’s work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown’s boss for two-and-a-half years in the early ’80s. “He did mainly transactional work, not litigation,” says Jones. “There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow.” Jones says when his law firm split, Brown was one of two staffers who was let go.
via Bill Nienhuis via Time Magazine
Original Time Magazine article here.
While you are at it, here is one of the mosre interesting TV Editorials on all this
On the lighter side, here is Harry Shearer’s song: Hard Work.
Drudge is reporting Brown has been relieved. Not that it’s a surprise. Somebody is going to take a bullet, it’s not going to be the oval office.
Dvorak get over it. The Louisana homeland security wouldent let red cross in and that is run by the state not federal homeland security. New Orleans has been run by democrats for 60 years and now look at it. There all almost in poverty and living on state and government handouts then when they cant leave cause they are still poor after all these years with out no effort to better themselves they blame the president.
These kind of people always seem to find their way to positions that they are not suited for in any administration. It just goes to show like a PhD I know says “What’s Democracy best suited for? It’s suited for the suits.”
You mean the Ghost of Brown in the picture.
Let this be the required human sacrifice and get on with the objective. There should now be a cooling off of the rhetoric, but I fear too many partisan critics will be encouraged by the smell of blood at the expense of the job at hand.
Excellent News: Bush just punted this guy back to D. C. Only a matter of time before he is replaced.
Of course, those “radio stooges” pull a bigger audience than any liberal these days, elected or otherwise. I’m sure they’ve already out-manouvered the left on this issue, despite the hit they’ll take over Bush having to cover his ass.
Why? No, they’re not that smart: Just organized.
Definitely to be included in the diploma challenge!
đ
Fabrizio
Drudge appears to be correct. Brown is partially out:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168915,00.html
When I hear someone like Ron I’m reminded of a quote by Thomas Paine:
“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave to himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
People on the Right like Ron have made slaves of themselves to their party. No matter how wrong their party is, they are utterly incapable of seeing any other side or point of view.
Ron, Brown didn’t know about the problems at the Dome until Thursday. I’m just some smuck from the Midwest but I knew about them Tuesday. That isn’t a screw up?
Brown claimed that FEMA provided everyone at the dome one or two meals a day. That wasn’t true. Isn’t it wrong to lie?
Brown had the city’s communication lines CUT. Armed sheriffs had to be posted to ensure they were not cut again. Isn’t that a screw up?
As people were suffering from dehydration, Brown refused to let Wal-Mart deliver THREE SEMI TRUCKS full of water. Isn’t that a screw up?
As people were suffering without medical attention, Brown refused to let the Red Cross enter the city to help. Isn’t that a screw up?
And volunteers who wanted to help and look for victims were told they’d be arrested! Once again, if that’s not a screw-up, what is?!
Ron, open your f-ing eyes to the world around you. Did the city screw up? Sure. Did the state screw up? Sure. Does that give the feds a right to screw up? Absolutely not!
Wait. I’m confused. Is this a picture of Bush getting answers on what country New Orleans is in, or is this a picture of him pretending to find Karl Rove so he can fire him for leaking the identity of the CIA agent? Oh wait.. sorry, that was 2 screw ups ago.. we’re on this new one now.
RT, seems the only screw-up was the minority’s inability to get him on it.
Also, the state’s screw-up (nice of you to notice) regarding the hurricane was far greater than FEMA’s failures. In the end, it is the federal goverment moving people out of the disaster zone.
Bush’s screwup was in not standing strong 3 years ago when Democrats were pushing for a Department of Homeland Security, but he took the politically easy way out, then won the 2002 elections when Democrats messed up the bill. If Bush had resisted then, FEMA wouldn’t have been a part of DHS, and there would have been less bureaucracy to deal with. As it is, they moved faster than in previous hurricanes.
Isnât the neocon squirm fun to watch.
Blaming the Mayor and Gov of Louisiana is the new neocon cop out. It has been interesting to observe how the neocon spin machine has been operating.
1) A former Bush econ advisor gets on the BBC today show and say “Pres Bush begged the Gov of Louisiana federalize the Nat Guard on the 28th”. lie – the Gov of Louisiana called out what little Guard she had on the 28th. Also only the president can federalize Guard units.
2) The mayor gets dinged for âNot evacuating the city before the Hurricaneâ. Lie â Municipal busses were used to get those out that wanted to go. They had already made one trip from NO to Baton Rouge and were attempting to load another when the storm hit.
As Ima Fish says â could the state and city done more. Well in hind sight perhaps. They did what they could with what they had.
But if the state and city could have done more with the meager resources cities and states have these days â it has to be asked how much more could the feds have done? Blaming the city and state officials is like blaming a 8 and 9 year old for not getting a 4 year old out of a burning house while letting the parents off the hook because they were out back smoking dope..
If Duh wants to take credit for every good thing that happens on his watch â he can take the blame for shit that happens on his watch. If any neocons in charge had actually served their country they would know that.
It seems to me this and some other stories about this guy are all of a sudden coming out in order to take the focus off GWB and the lousy situation the federal services in the US are in. If they wanted to punish this guy why not fire him? It seems that for screwing up he gets less responsibility and the same pay! So he remains as the target while Bush keeps a low profile. If they’d fired him attention would return to the real problems or GWB. Heck he probably took the job on the understanding that he would do something like this.
Very funny caption under that photo.
Brown definitely was unqualified, but by July 2005 he had presided over FEMA responses to at least 4 hurricanes in Florida, so he probably thought he knew what he was doing.
When are people going to realize that no government, person, group, or institution can ever protect you? I don’t care if St. Bill Clinton was in charge, the response would have been no different. Government, by its nature, is incompetent. Those who rely on anyone but themselves are actively seeking to be disappointed, and, in some cases, dead.
CORRECTION TO MY POST #13
The Gov of Louisiana called out the guard on the 26th NOT the 28th. Bush declared it an emergancy on the 27th, thus the FEDS had overall control of all relief and rescue efforts as of the 27th.
Even worse than I had origionally thought.
The president can only federalize national guard units at the request of the governor, unless he’
s using the provisions of the insurrection act. New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor has been blaming the governor for not makign timely decisions.