FEMA Director being sent back to DC - being replaced on the ground.

[mr_gyptian]

Well that letter looks very damn specific and very damning to Administration claims that help was never requested.

Now let's sit back and see how Mr._G attempts to spin this one, it should be interesting to watch.

well I guess this is where I link to the New York Times story detailing the governor's inability to understand how this system works. Or the fact that she can request whatever cavalry she wants, but if she isn't willing to cede control to the feds in writing she and her beloved constituents won't get shit.

is it a waste of time to also state that on August 27, the day before that letter, the ball got rolling on declaring the gulf coast a disaster area to expedite funding when the cat 1 hurricane/trop. storm hit landfall in FL. so basically she wrote a letter to request something that had already been done.

anything else dipshit?

[powder11]

well I guess this is where I link to the New York Times story detailing the governor's inability to understand how this system works. Or the fact that she can request whatever cavalry she wants, but if she isn't willing to cede control to the feds in writing she and her beloved constituents won't get shit.

is it a waste of time to also state that on August 27, the day before that letter, the ball got rolling on declaring the gulf coast a disaster area to expedite funding when the cat 1 hurricane/trop. storm hit landfall in FL. so basically she wrote a letter to request something that had already been done.

anything else dipshit?

people at your work pee in your morning coffee and flip you the bird when you pass by

[iceman]

anything else dipshit?

Hahaha, "dipshit" I may be, but I know enough to know that you don't know jack shit about the process and so it's again with the ad hominem.

You don't need to cede control of the National Guard to ask for and -at least theoretically- receive Federal disaster assisstance. Note that assisstance is finally on the spot and control has still not been ceded as proof of this fact. Go back to Andrew, to Ivan, to the San Fran eathquake and tell me what got federalized.

What this was and continues to be is a monumental fuckup on the part of your poster boys which will, no matter how you spin it, cost them dearly in the elections to come. Which may, in fact, all by itself, doom your little revolution.

So chew on that and tell me how it tastes, pal.

By the way, have you ever met or skied with any of the Summit County crew or any of those who regularly ski there? And if not, is there a reason for that? Perhaps it's too dark and cold under your little bridge to venture out into the world and you prefer the company of your fellow trolls anyway?

P.S. How's that coffee tastin'?

[Grange]

well I guess this is where I link to the New York Times story detailing the governor's inability to understand how this system works. Or the fact that she can request whatever cavalry she wants, but if she isn't willing to cede control to the feds in writing she and her beloved constituents won't get shit.

is it a waste of time to also state that on August 27, the day before that letter, the ball got rolling on declaring the gulf coast a disaster area to expedite funding when the cat 1 hurricane/trop. storm hit landfall in FL. so basically she wrote a letter to request something that had already been done.

anything else dipshit?

The point is that she did request assistance in writing and gave specific areas of request and the Administration's reaction was to ask her to give up her control of the state. They could have sent in FEMA and worked cooperatively like she suggested in her last paragraph instead of asking for complete control. From the letter she wrote I think she had some idea of what was needed.

President and his supporters love to claim he's a man of action. Well when it came time to act he hesitated and blamed it on the state.

[truth]

By the way, have you ever met or skied with any of the Summit County crew or any of those who regularly ski there? And if not, is there a reason for that? Perhaps it's too dark and cold under your little bridge to venture out into the world and you prefer the company of your fellow trolls anyway?

P.S. How's that coffee tastin'?

Yeah, what Ice said you you fucking fuck. When I get off these crutches and learn to use my legs again I'm so gonna kick yer mom in the head.

[natty dread]

What this was and continues to be is a monumental fuckup on the part of your poster boys which will, no matter how you spin it, cost them dearly in the elections to come. Which may, in fact, all by itself, doom your little revolution.

I fear that it may not cost them dearly ice, with right wing apologists/wackos like G re-electing shrub after his first 4 disasterous years and the Rove mudslinging machine still in operation.
But I agree with the rest of your assessment.

[kush1]

well I guess this is where I link to the New York Times story detailing the governor's inability to understand how this system works. Or the fact that she can request whatever cavalry she wants, but if she isn't willing to cede control to the feds in writing she and her beloved constituents won't get shit.

is it a waste of time to also state that on August 27, the day before that letter, the ball got rolling on declaring the gulf coast a disaster area to expedite funding when the cat 1 hurricane/trop. storm hit landfall in FL. so basically she wrote a letter to request something that had already been done.

anything else dipshit?

Dude, seriously are you one of those people who say “im a republican, all demarcates suck”. I am neither and am happy to say that, because instead of following blindly behind one party or the other I like to actually think for myself………..please do the same from now on, I would love to hear you criticize at least one thing Bush has done since he’s been in office……………..even Blurred has………

IT WAS A FUCKING CLUSTER FUCK BY ALL PARTIES JUST FUCKING ADMIT IT, JESUS!

[natty dread]

September 10, 2005

Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush and FEMA Chief
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - 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.

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.

"He's not a screamer," a senior aide said of the president. But Mr. Bush, angry, directed the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to find out what was going on.

"The frustration throughout the week was getting good, reliable information," said the aide, who demanded anonymity so as not to be identified in disclosing inner workings of the White House. "Getting truth on the ground in New Orleans was very difficult."

If Mr. Bush was upset with Mr. Brown at that point, he did not show it. When he traveled to the Gulf Coast the next day, he stood with him and, before the cameras, cheerfully said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

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.

One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.

"If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

At the same time, news reports quickly appeared about Mr. Brown's qualifications for the job: he was a former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and for 30 years a friend of Joe M. Allbaugh, who managed Mr. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and was the administration's first FEMA director. Mr. Brown's credentials came to roost at the White House, where Mr. Bush faced angry accusations that the director's hiring had amounted to nothing more than cronyism.

Members of Congress quickly weighed in. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who was in New Orleans or Baton Rouge for more than a week after the hurricane swept ashore, said of Mr. Brown last Friday that "I have been telling him from the moment he arrived about the urgency of the situation" and "I just have to tell you that he had a difficult time understanding the enormity of the task before us."

Members of Mr. Bush's party also were angry. Last week House Republicans pressed the White House to fire Mr. Brown. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi pulled the president aside for a private meeting on Monday in Poplarville, Miss., to ask him to intervene personally to untangle FEMA red tape. Mr. Lott, exasperated, told Mr. Bush that he needed to press the agency to send the state 46,000 trailers, promised for days as temporary housing for hurricane victims.

For a time, Mr. Lott did not directly criticize Mr. Brown or the federal response in public. "My mama didn't raise no idiot," he joked on Capitol Hill last week. "I ain't going to bite the hand that's trying to save me."

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.

In Baton Rouge, Mr. Brown appeared briefly at Mr. Chertoff's side before heading back to the capital, where, the secretary said, the director was needed for potential disasters.

"We've got tropical storms and hurricanes brewing in the ocean," Mr. Chertoff said.

[bklyn]

The white house needs to be better informed about what the average american is seeing on TV. Wall st traders have tv's going all day with the news on, so should someone at the white house, at times of disaster even more so than normal.

Where the white house fears to go is where they should see opportunity and advantage.

He should have been at the superdome early (riding at the head of a military convoy full of water, MREs, and medical personnel) wearing some waders and a cowboy hat saying we're here to help you - we've got buses coming out here to take you to temporary housing.

He could spin the legal crap about coming into a state before being requested any way he liked because everyone would be calling him a hero. His FEMA director & whomever at homeland security should have been with him also.

[Tippster]

The white house needs to be better informed about what the average american is seeing on TV. Wall st traders have tv's going all day with the news on, so should someone at the white house, at times of disaster even more so than normal.

They DO. It's all bullshit to try to deflrct blame. Several days a week I work at the White House. They have more TV Networks present (and ON) there than at the Capitol.

Where the white house fears to go is where they should see opportunity and advantage.

He should have been at the superdome early (riding at the head of a military convoy full of water, MREs, and medical personnel) wearing some waders and a cowboy hat saying we're here to help you - we've got buses coming out here to take you to temporary housing.

If by "He" you mean Bush, well that would never have happened, merely for security reasons. That IS, however, what Mr. Brown should have done. Bush needed to come back to DC on Monday Morning, gotten briefed, and hit the air from the Oval office by monday Evening when the damage pictures started coming in.

[Monique]

From today's Seattle Times:

Brown's unceremonious recall to Washington yesterday suggested to some that his fatal error might not have been FEMA's inadequate response to the hurricane, but dishonesty.

"The Bush people do not look kindly on someone leading them mildly astray, which is what his résumé did," said David Gergen, who served in the first Bush administration and has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on crisis management.

I laughed out loud at "The Bush people do not look kindly on someone leading them mildly astray." Besides the fall guy issue, the notion that the Bush camp is offended by dishonesty may be the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard. Maybe "mildly" is the key word...if you're gonna lie in this administration, you'd better make it a whopper, Dubya style.

[Mott the Hoople]

The guy's entire resume is one big lie. It should be interesting to see how the administration explains why they put him in the office.

Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005 10:48 a.m. EDT

Dem Senate Confirmed Michael Brown

Democrats who've been complaining about FEMA director Michael Brown still want him fired - saying that Homeland Security czar Michael's Chertoff's decision on Friday to recall him to Washington isn't enough.

"It is not enough to remove Mr. Brown from the disaster scene," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Sens. Dick Durbin, Debbie Stabenow and Charles Schumer complained in a letter to President Bush. "His continued presence in this critical position endangers the success of the ongoing recovery efforts." As noted by National Review Online's Byron York, however, Brown got glowing reviews from some of his new critics, when he was confirmed by the Senate in 2002.

"Not only was Brown confirmed," noted York. "But he was apparently confirmed by a unanimous voice vote -- when the Senate was controlled by Democrats. . . .

"The whole affair, including tributes from Brown's home-state senators, apparently lasted less then an hour, and ended with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman saying, 'Mr. Brown, I thank you very much. I will certainly support your nomination. I will do my best to move it through the committee as soon as possible so we can have you fully and legally at work in your new position.'"

The hearing was for Brown's nomination as FEMA deputy director - but apparently Brown didn't have to be re-confirmed when he became director.

Yup, that's interesting.

[powder11]

Dude, seriously are you one of those people who say “im a republican, all demarcates suck”. I am neither and am happy to say that, because instead of following blindly behind one party or the other I like to actually think for myself………..please do the same from now on, I would love to hear you criticize at least one thing Bush has done since he’s been in office……………..even Blurred has………

IT WAS A FUCKING CLUSTER FUCK BY ALL PARTIES JUST FUCKING ADMIT IT, JESUS!

thats the problem with politics in America. its become so polarized that you have to either be a flaming liberal or redneck republican. Im a moderate and used to lean republican because the liberal agenda scared me more. the past two elections have offered moderates nothing more than choosing the lesser of two evils. next time around it would be nice to see moderate thinking people who give a crap about the people. sheep in wolves clothing like Hillary don't count.

[mr_gyptian]

Ice,

Maybe I need to slow it down for you.

Facts: Blanco refused to allow a federal takeover; She refused to allow FEMA-directed aid into NOLA; And the Bushies, to their credit, tried to get her hand over control—even going so far as to devise a hybrid command structure in the middle of the crisis. She refused that joint control offer, too.

To invoke Posse Comitatus a state or an area of said has to be declared a "war zone". NOLA was manifestly not a war zone on August 29th. By invoking the above the President/Sec Def can send in the 82nd at will to restore order. By not ceding control to the Feds she forced Bush to abide by the constitution and not send in Federal troops. She under the powers granted her could have assembled her states national guard troops any time she wanted. Additionally these national guard troops under the governors orders can restore order with greater leeway than can a unit of the military such as the 82nd Airborne.

Bottom line, you have a governor who does not understand the law or what powers fall under her direct controls, how to request help/prevention/relief, or how to cede power to get the proper help to her constituents.

oh and I've skied with both Summit Cty. mags and Denver ones both.

Truth, on your way to kick my mom in the head. Don't trip over one of those one inch bumps. I hear they can be a doozy.

[splat]

But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

“Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers."

That would be the three guys left answering the phones at the Louisiana National Guard, right?

http://www.bushsamerica.com/index.ph...tional_guard_t