Drownie, You're Doin' A Heck Of A Job

To peruse the ambivalent droning of reliable propaganda tool Elisabeth Bumiller, one might almost reach the conclusion that she was capable of a thought not being spoon-fed to her for systematic regurgitation at the top of the chimeric "librul media" food chain.

To Democrats, Republicans, local officials and Hurricane Katrina's victims, the question was not why, but what took so long?

Republicans had been pressing the White House for days to fire "Brownie," Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who had stunned many television viewers in admitting that he did not know until 24 hours after the first news reports that there was a swelling crowd of 25,000 people desperate for food and water at the New Orleans convention center.

Mr. Brown, who was removed from his Gulf Coast duties on Friday, though not from his post as FEMA's chief, is the first casualty of the political furor generated by the government's faltering response to the hurricane. With Democrats and Republicans caustically criticizing the performance of his agency, and with the White House under increasing attack for populating FEMA's top ranks with politically connected officials who lack disaster relief experience, Mr. Brown had become a symbol of President Bush's own hesitant response.

Not only is Bumiller's leading premise incorrect, but the subsequent two paragraphs actually demonstrate that fact. The question people are asking is not "what took so long"; the question is, "why is this chump still FEMA director?". Fucking duh, moron.

Exactly in what way is Drownie a "casualty" here? "You get to keep your job and we're going to take this headache off your desk for you." Jeez you guys, go easy on the poor lad. He thought he'd be able to horse-whisper himself out of this jam. It's an honest mistake anyone coulda made.

But because Elisabeth Bumiller is another Judy Miller in training, she ably takes administration spin and valiantly tries to make it sound like it actually has some rhetorical heft. "We know we fucked up, that's why we're moving laterally. But let's pretend that it's forward motion, shall we?" Without complicit journamalistas like Bumiller, they'd have their hands full trying to sell this dog-and-pony show.

The president, long reluctant to fire subordinates, came to a belated recognition that his administration was in trouble for the way it had dealt with the disaster, many of his supporters say. One moment of realization occurred on Thursday of last week when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.

The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all.

....

But the political pressures on Mr. Bush, and the anxiety at the White House, were only growing. Behind the president's public embrace of Mr. Brown was the realization within the administration that the director's ignorance about the evacuees had further inflamed the rage of the storm's poor, black victims and created an impression of a White House that did not care about their lives.

Yeah, where would they get that idea. Just because their "leader" was fucking around in San Diego while they were fighting for their very lives? Just because the crony installed to manage disaster responses had to find out from fucking CNN what was going on? How could anyone possibly be discouraged and demoralized and cynical about such a clear pattern of malign neglect?

But on Friday, with Mr. Brown's tenure in the relief role at an end, the senator issued a statement that made clear his views, and those of many others.

"Something needed to happen," Mr. Lott's statement said. "Michael Brown has been acting like a private instead of a general. When you're in the middle of a disaster, you can't stop to check the legal niceties or to review FEMA regulations before deciding to help Mississippians knocked flat on their backs."

Mr. Bush, characteristically, did not officially dismiss Mr. Brown, instead calling him back to Washington to run FEMA while a crisis-tested Coast Guard commander, Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, was given oversight of the relief effort. The take-charge Admiral Allen, who commanded the Coast Guard's response up and down the Atlantic Seaboard after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, immediately appeared on television as the public face of the administration's response.

It's nice that Vice Adm. Allen is "take-charge". But there is more to this story, much more. For one, some idiots were clamoring for Rudy Giuliani or Colin Powell to oversee the Katrina response and reconstruction, as if replacing one hack with another would make a substantial difference.

What is more telling is how quickly the Bushies squashed that idea, not for reasons of competence, but because they didn't want anyone in the role who could be perceived as more competent as Dear Cheerleader. All it takes is a guy in a three-piece suit who can think and speak extemporaneously to highlight the painfully obvious fact that this guy is strutting around stark naked. We're all just supposed to pretend he's still clothed.

Na ga da, as Bush père once famously babbled. We can all see your doodle, Chief. Looks like you've been swimming in cold water for a while.

And since the liberal media will never address the issue, let's consider for a moment why Drownie had be laterally deployed instead of fired. We all know the answer, but it feels better to say it out loud -- because it mean admitting that they fucked up, which they can never, ever do. They might as well pull the curtain back so you can see who's behind it.

Look for Drownie to get a golden parachute under cover of the next political shitstorm, plus maybe a medal for all his hard work in the service of the American public. That's how the Stalinists in charge of this clusterfuck take care of their problems -- they pretend that shit is really chocolate.

Mmmm, chocolate. Go on, have another bite.

[update, 9:45 PM PDT:] Apparently a private e-mail from Drownie to "family and friends" chronicles the plight he is currently having to withstand [emphasis mine].

"I don't mind the negative press (well, actually, I do, but I try to ignore it) but it is really wearing out the family," Brown wrote. "No wonder people don't go into public service. This country is devouring itself, the 24-hour news cycle is numbing our ability to think for ourselves," the Rocky Mountain News reported Saturday.

Sigh. Look, I'm sure Mike Brown is a perfectly genial fellow. What he needs to come to terms with here, if he truly doesn't realize what's going on, is that he's in way over his head. He was not at all qualified for this job; he got it because the previous Bush lackey warming the seat, who left to grift the government as a security consultant, recommended Brown for the job.

Government bureaucracies, more than any other type of job, embody the Peter Principle -- everybody rises to their own level of incompetence and stays there. It's pretty common to find people unqualified for the position they hold. (Brown's boss could tell him something about that, were he the least bit honest with himself.)

But Brown in his self-pity fails to acknowledge that his ineptitude caused a lot of death and misery. I'm sure he feels bad, and I'm sure his family feels beleaguered. Perhaps now would be a good time to go back to the horsie shows, instead of whining about the mean ol' media. Nobody fuckin' cares, dude; they're gonna be pulling rotten corpses out of Mew Orleans for the next couple months. A sense of perspective may be in order.