Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Brownie must be doing one heckuva job!

From al-Reuters:
One year after Hurricane Katrina, the United States remains unprepared for a major natural disaster, and the Bush administration has failed to learn the lessons of that catastrophe, former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown said on Tuesday.

Brown led FEMA's response to Katrina when the storm devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after making landfall on August 29. It killed 1,339 people and caused $80 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

But Brown was forced to resign from the Department of Homeland Security agency amid the disastrously slow government response, just days after President George W. Bush's infamous accolade, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

"Rather than address the systemic problems that existed within the Department of Homeland Security, we're now addressing superficial things," Brown told Reuters in a telephone interview from his Boulder, Colorado, office.

"As long as you have those inequities in terms of budget and response and everything else, FEMA will always be the stepchild," said Brown, who is now a private consultant specializing in disaster management.

Last year Brown was ridiculed as a symbol of government incompetence. But his reputation was enhanced by the release in March of videotapes of Katrina-planning meetings that showed him, engaged and informed, warning Bush about the storm.
So there you have it! The MSM and most in the punditry accused Brown of being a bumbling idiot and supremely underqualified to be the top dawg at FEMA. Yet now, because he has come out swinging against the Bush administration, he is magically transformed into a "disaster management consultant" expert?

Considering that "Brownie" has gotten the MSM and the left (pardon the redundancy) on his side and thus transformed himself from incompetent boob to media darling, and considering that he has suckered clients into paying top dollar for his now-famous "disaster management" skills, it is safe to say that "Brownie" is indeed doing a "heckuva job" these days!