Author: Alan

This is in The Globe this morning:

The developments in New Orleans came against an increasingly stormy backdrop in Washington, where Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was relieved of his command of the onsite relief efforts amid increasing criticism over the sluggishness of the agency’s response and questions over his background. Asked if he was being made a scapegoat, Mr. Brown told The Associated Press: “By the press, yes. By the president, No.”

I didn’t think he was getting the boot because of the hurricane but his track record:

• The [Boston] Herald reported last week that Brown was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows, and that he was tapped to join FEMA by an old college chum and Bush campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh.
• “His bio, the White House press release, and a number of sources list him as assistant city manager in Edmund, Okla.,” Miranda says. ” When we called the folks in Edmund, they told us that, no, his position in fact had been assistant to the city manager, which is a purely administrative job, a very different job. He was an administrative assistant. It’s sort of an entry-level, intern-type job for somebody who’s interested in learning about government. When he began that job in 1977, he was still a college student. He didn’t graduate with his B.A. until 1978.”
• Time also reported that Brown’s profile on the legal Web site Findlaw.com, which is usually based on information provided by lawyers or their offices, said he was an “outstanding political science professor” at Central State University, now the University of Central Oklahoma. The school took issue with that assertion. “(Brown) wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here,” school spokesman Charles Johnson told Time.

I have saved a .jpg of the bio from the FEMA website of Brown’s bio as Under Secretary which has at least two goofs in it. Are there more? You tell me. Here is the website. See if it changes.

I think he’s just getting the boot for being Mr. Fibber MacFibbfibb.

I think it is good to get all cathartic once in a while, shed baggage and, well, point fingers. Colin Powell (former nicest person in what a made-for-TV-movie will one day call George Dubya, The First Years) has started to stretch his wings:

• The Houston Chronicle says: “Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview to be broadcast today that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was ‘painful’ for him personally and would be a permanent ‘blot’ on his record.”
• WebIndia 123 reports: “Powell told Walters government generally failed to prepare properly for Hurricane Katrina. I think there have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels — local, state and federal, he said. There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done.”

Seeing as there is a reasonably valid connection to the state of affairs post-hurricane and thoughts on Homeland Security preparedness and response capability generally, these are…err…less than supportive statements post-9/11-wise. I wonder, now that GWB is polling in the low 40% range and dropping, whether the teflon is starting to finally wear off, whether actual acts and specific policies will be weighed for their own merit rather according to which side of the line drawn in the playground dirt you stand on as you scream “liar!” What will this quack do when he has to add a third dimension to his reality?

Tangent: bookends for two eras have struck me lately – one, Berlin Wall Fall to 9/11 and, second, 9/11 to Katrina. Essays in by noon please.