I've been waiting for this.
Critics of Brown were quick to call for his head forgetting the convenientfact that the guy didn't "hire himself".
Simply put, the guy - whether qualified or not (hell that doesn't stop bloggers from trying to be journalists), handled disasters for the last two years, and no one was calling for his head. The only reason my conservative friends jumped on this meme is simply what I covered here. Nothing more, nothing less.
Nuff said.
At least Brown had the guts to say what so-called conservatives and even the President wouldn't say, but that which we all know to be absolutely true.
Katrina Screwup = The leadership of Louisiana are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.
"“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional,”
Amen Brother!Then in the laugher of the morning, the 'esteemed' Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. The funny thing is that Democrats were boycotting this hearing, yet this dunce shows up.
“I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you, Mr. Brown, laying the blame for FEMA’s failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans.”
Well Rep. Jefferson, I mean it's not like commandeering National Guard resources needed to rescue people so that you could retrieve "evidence" from your residence!
What a clown.
But aside from the comedy, we finally hit the nail on the head:
Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., cautioned against too narrowly assigning blame.
“At the end of the day, I suspect that we’ll find that government at all levels failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast,” said Davis.
Davis pushed Brown on what he and the agency he led should have done to evacuate New Orleans, restore order in the city and improve communication among law enforcement agencies.
Brown said: “Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn’t evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications.”
And that is exactly right. FEMA doesn't provide those functions! FEMA by it's creation in 1979 specifically works as a liason between local/state governments and the federal government.
Here is the gist though. This is why FEMA gets the whole of the blame:
"Brown in his opening statement said he had made several “specific mistakes” in dealing with the storm, and listed two.
One, he said, was not having more media briefings.
As to the other, he said: “I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences, and work together. I just couldn’t pull that off.”
Both Blanco and Nagin are DemocratsIf Blanco and Nagin were Republicans, could you imagine?
UPDATE: Here's Blanco's lame-ass response: "In Baton Rouge, La., Blanco’s press secretary, Denise Bottcher, ridiculed Brown’s line of attack. “Mike Brown wasn’t engaged then, and he surely isn’t now. He should have been watching CNN instead of the Disney Channel,” Bottcher said."
Yeah, and Blanco should have called out the National Guard too, you Putz!
Check out AJ Strata's post on this as well.
Filed under Katrina Rita disaster relief new orleans emergency response FEMA Hurrican Rita Rita Michael Brown Blanco blood on their hands
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