Drownie Brownie

* more to my piece yesterday tearing apart that nyt article about martial law, josh has more here and here

* america blog is calling mike brown "Drownie Brownie" - lol

* cnn's kyra phillips, again: "And in all fairness to the Dept of Homeland Security right now, I mean this is a brand new Department that was formed after 9/11. In many ways this is a "learn by our mistakes and figure out what to do better" type of scenario." (link)

* the nyt ed team write a scathing piece on the poltical hacks at the top of fema:
"Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. " (link)
ouch! so much snark!

* "President Bush has issued an executive order that will allow federal contractors to underpay workers helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast region... Democratic Congressman George Miller of California said "The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities." " (link)

* wolcott: "Whatever the final numbers are from Hurricane Katrina, it will be harder for the WOT propagandists to ritualistically invoke the "3000 dead" to the same sonorous effect. Those deaths have reached their expiration date, not for mourning, but for political, cultural, and military exploitation. Here we are coming up to the 4th anniversary of that horrible day, and Ground Zero still lacks a memorial or even a palatable design, Osama Bin Laden is unapprehended, Iraq is a vale of tears, and a dorky "Freedom March" is being staged in Washington."

* " as GovExec.com wrote in "How FEMA Delivered Florida for Bush" on November 3rd, 2004, literally the day after the President won reelection:
Now that President Bush has won Florida in his 2004 re-election bid, he may want to draft a letter of appreciation to Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Seldom has any federal agency had the opportunity to so directly and uniquely alter the course of a presidential election, and seldom has any agency delivered for a president as FEMA did in Florida this fall." (link)

* "The official White House announcement of Brown's nomination to head FEMA in January 2003 lists his previous experience as "the Executive Director of the Independent Electrical Contractors," a trade group based in Alexandria, Va.
But... Brown, in fact, never was the national head of the group but did serve as the executive director of a regional chapter, based in Colorado, where Brown has lived.
And, Brown held the job for less than six weeks before becoming FEMA general counsel in 2001." (link)

* the #2 story on the tv news here in oz is the fact that pat robertsons Operation Blessing was the 2nd linked 'charity' at the fema website for katrina donations. thats kinda odd.