Who is Michael Brown?




Time Magazine, The New Republic, and others are looking into the unspectacular legal career of Michael Brown, the man the George Bush named to head FEMA. Major findings include:

- Brown earned his law degree from an unaccredited Oklahoma City Law school.
- He hasn't seriously practiced law in 15 years.
- He resigned from his last job, judging horseshows, after he was caught soliciting $50,000 from a man whose conduct he was supposed to regulate.
- His only experience in emergency management prior to FEMA was as an undergraduate intern in Edmond, Oklahoma, population 40,000.

Brown was confirmed by the US Senate in 2002 after a grueling 42-minute interview. Republican Senator Ben Campbell from Colorado vouched for his fellow Coloradan this way:
"I cannot state firmly enough that I believe Michael Brown to be more than qualified to serve FEMA and the people of this country as part of the administration. He is dedicated, tenacious, and he is exactly the type of individual who has given up probably a better lifestyle to be in public service and we certainly appreciate all of that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman."
I've known guys like Michael Brown. They spend their lives getting by on family connections and charm. While most of us derive satisfaction from the work we do, guys like Brown measure their lives by the work they've avoided. On this point, Brown has succeeded spectacularly, rising from a third-rate law school to sit-downs with the President of the United States, without having to actually, you know, practice law or do anything really hard.

This guy is the true face of the Republican Party. Smug, entitled, connected. And might I add, safe. Bush will never fire this guy.


Update

Brown is out. Not fired, just out of Louisiana. This is a good time for President Bush to seize the initiative and clean out the stables. Fire Brown, and then fire Chertoff, Rumsfeld, Rove, Card, the whole lot of them. Bush is obviously living in a bubble, brought on in large part by his keepers. Redefine yourself, Mr. President. You can do it.
9.9.05 17:05


Deadline pressures


The Washington Post has responded to criticism that it allowed the Bush administration to peddle a damnable lie in a news story. On Sept. 4, the paper quoted an anonymous White House official who said Louisiana Governor Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency. In fact, she declared the state of emergency on Aug. 26, three days before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana.

In its defense, Wapo says the anonymous source passed on his bogus information "right on deadline." Supposedly, the editors didn't have time to do a Google news search, which would have revealed that the White House source was lying.

What a coincidence, huh? An anonymous White House staffer peddling false leads right on deadline? Rove and company have been playing the media like a cheap fiddle for the past five years. Seems like a venerable institution like Wapo would have caught on by now.

h/t Josh


President Fixit

From today's Newsweek:
The denial and the frustration finally collided aboard Air Force One on Friday. As the president's plane sat on the tarmac at New Orleans airport, a confrontation occurred that was described by one participant as "as blunt as you can get without the Secret Service getting involved." Governor Blanco was there, along with various congressmen and senators and Mayor Nagin (who took advantage of the opportunity to take a shower aboard the plane). One by one, the lawmakers listed their grievances as Bush listened. Rep. Bobby Jindal, whose district encompasses New Orleans, told of a sheriff who had called FEMA for assistance. According to Jindal, the sheriff was told to e-mail his request, "and the guy was sitting in a district underwater and with no electricity," Jindal said, incredulously. "How does that make any sense?" Jindal later told NEWSWEEK that "almost everybody" around the conference table had a similar story about how the federal response "just wasn't working." With each tale, "the president just shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing," says Jindal, a conservative Republican and Bush appointee who lost a close race to Blanco. Repeatedly, the president turned to his aides and said, "Fix it."
Bold leadership.
12.9.05 17:19


Did he really say that?


From today's press conference:
QUESTION: Mr. President, where were you when you realized the severity of the storm?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I was -- I knew that a big storm was coming on Monday, so I spoke to the country on Monday* morning about it. I said, there's a big storm coming. I had pre-signed emergency declarations in anticipation of a big storm coming.

QUESTION: Mr. President ...

PRESIDENT BUSH: -- which is, by the way, extraordinary. Most emergencies the President signs after the storm has hit. It's a rare occasion for the President to anticipate the severity of a storm and sign the documentation prior to the storm hitting.
Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast about 6 am Monday, Aug. 29. Was Bush talking about Monday, Aug. 22? Who's advising this guy, Miss Cleo?
12.9.05 22:17


Bet she didn't see this coming


The Florida State Attorney General, Charlie Crist, has a well deserved reputation as a fraud buster. Not only is he prosecuting a man for cashing in on phony Katrina relief sites, but now he's going after the company that employed TV soothsayer Miss Cleo.

Miss Cleo claims to come from a long line of Jamaican seers, but it turns out the 43-year-old fraud, born Youree Dell Harris, is from California. Her sham psychic hotline company employer, Ft. Lauderdale-based Access Resource Services, reportedly rakes in $400 million annually selling "psychic" telephone readings for $5 a minute. Eight states are currently suing the company for consumer fraud and using overly aggressive collection techniques.
13.9.05 01:40


Rep. Scott Garrett
is a heartless son of a gun




When Erik Anderson read that his congressman, U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., was one of only 11 members of Congress to vote against the Katrina relief bill (H.R. 3673), Anderson wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper:
The Right Honorable Representative Garrett, the Earl of Sussex, will vote against anything if it slows down Grover Norquist's plan to get (our government) down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtu.? But I guess Garrett didn't get the memo. Norquist's plan just succeeded.

Garrett should try being more compassionate with his conservatism, and less conservative with his compassion. Some people depend on it.
Apparently, Anderson's letter didn't settle well with Rep. Garrett, who called his wayward constituent on the phone:
He asked me to write another letter saying that I now understand why he voted the way he did. He said he doesn't want his family going around thinking he's a heartless son of a gun? But the tone of his phone call (pissed), and the fact that he called me at my home, doesn't lead me altogether away from that conclusion.
My goodness, no. We can't let people think Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, is a heartless son of a gun.

So spread the word. As Oliver says, "This man, and ten others, voted against your fellow citizens because obeying the beck and call of the radical right's leadership is more important to them than common decency. And they should be scorned."

Remember: Heartless son of a gun.
13.9.05 15:22


It's his game, after all



13.9.05 21:35


Fighting protractors to the rescue


Patriotic Americans are outraged, outraged I tell you, that the leading proposal for a Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania will incorporate a crescent into its design.

The fighting keyboarders are up in arms! Don't those elitist landscape architects know that the crescent is the symbol of Islam? Brave Little Michelle Malkin says war memorials should memorialize war, and "If you want peace and understanding and healing and good will toward all, go build Kabbalah centers." The New York Sun tells us
The revolt on Flight 93 is going to go down in American history as one of the great moments, and "Let's roll" is going to rank with the retort that General McAuliffe, surrounded by the enemy en route to Bastogne, delivered to the Nazi demand for surrender, "Nuts."

There is, incidentally, a museum in Bastogne known as the "Nuts Museum," a modest place commemorating the spirit of General McAuliffe's soldiers. Imagine if it had been built in, say, the shape of the German eagle...
This is all very amusing to anyone with even a passing interest in symbolism, history, art or thinking with your head outside of your sigmoid colon. The fact is, the crescent has no special religious significance in Islam. Supposedly, one could sell crescent-shaped snot rags in Mecca without fear of amputation.

The crescent and star symbol predates Islam by thousands of years. It was adopted as the symbol of Constantinople long ago, and became associated with Islam when the Ottomans conquered that city in 1453. These days, millions of Muslims reject the crescent and star as a pagan symbol, irrelevant to their faith.

But just when I though the debate couldn't get any more bizarre, the Fighting Protractors at The Belmont Club report that the crescent POINTS TOWARD MECCA!
Drawing a line connecting the tips of the crescent and drawing a perpendicular, you can see which which way it "opens". Using a protractor, I found the crescent opens between 230 and 240 (southwest) degrees, or taking the reciprocal, between 50 and 60 (northeast). You are invited to do this yourselves and verify the result.
And so on. This reminds me of those people who find an eery similarity between Kennedy and Lincoln, or find astounding predictions in the words of Nostradamus. Why does the Belmont Club guy start his investigation by drawing a line connecting the tips of the crescent? Because that way he can get the crescent to line up with Mecca! He could just as easily have found the center points of the two circles that define a crescent, connected them with a line, found the center point, and connected it to where star should be, and plotted a line to Barbra Streisand's beach house in the Hamptons.
14.9.05 19:37


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