{"id":5410,"date":"2005-10-01T09:19:53","date_gmt":"2005-10-01T13:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5410"},"modified":"2005-10-01T09:19:53","modified_gmt":"2005-10-01T13:19:53","slug":"michael-brown-lousy-administrator-and-lousy-liar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/michael-brown-lousy-administrator-and-lousy-liar\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Brown: Lousy administrator and lousy liar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

Reading the reports<\/a> of former Federal Emergency Management Administration director Michael D. Brown’s recent appearance before a House panel made me realize more than ever why the Bush administration had to cut him loose: Not only is Brown an incompetent boob incapable of doing the job, he’s also a crummy liar.<\/p>\n

The one thing you must be able to do, if you are going to serve in this administration or hope to have a post-administration career in the conservative world, is be able to lie your pants off. You must be able to stand before a bank of cameras, or a House committee, or even your own grandmother, and lie, lie, lie. Lie like a rug. Lie till the cows come home. Lie through your teeth.<\/p>\n

Remember that Iraqi information minister who kept insisting<\/a> his country was not being invaded even as U.S. troops were overrunning the place? He would have been a great member of the Bush team.<\/p>\n

Brown started out on script. He blamed everything on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. This is the Rove-honed line that the administration has adopted. So far so good. But Brown quickly went flying off the rails. Under aggressive questioning from a panel that, let’s face it, was meant to be something of a whitewash for the White House’s failures, Brown soon collapsed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brown admitted that FEMA’s ability to move life-sustaining supplies was flawed and “easily overwhelmed” by Katrina’s scale. He said that emergency communications broke down because the country made little “real progress” in learning from the 2001 terrorist attacks, and he warned that if U.S. authorities remain focused on preparing for terrorism instead of natural disasters, “then we’re going to fail.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brown then went on to acknowledge that FEMA’s budget was cut by 14.5 percent and even said he should have resigned in protest.<\/p>\n

Ninety minutes into the hearing, Brown admitted, “FEMA has a logistics problem.” This is like saying the Titanic has a slight leak, but a seasoned Bushie would have known better to even admit that much. <\/p>\n

Remarkably, Brown then went on to say, “One of my frustrations over the past three years has been the emaciation of FEMA.” He added, “[I] predicted privately for several years that we were going to reach this point.”<\/p>\n

No, no, no. That’s no way to get a cushy job with Halliburton! Never admit your budget was cut. Use fancy math terms and obscuration to cover that up. Assert that the money was “placed on a bi-level continuum to unify the budget at the start of the new fiscal year, thus shifting it into another program to avoid unnecessary duplication” — that sort of thing. Did this guy learn nothing during his tenure with Bush?
\n
\nThere is one other possibility: Maybe Brown is on to the fact that the administration plans to make him the fall guy. Maybe he’s waking up to the reality that even if he remains a loyal soldier and falls on his sword there will be no payoff because Rove & Co. are blaming it all on him and hanging him out to dry in a pathetic attempt to try to cover Bush. Do you think?<\/p>\n

What lies ahead for this ass? Brown has gone far enough to burn all of his bridges with the right, yet he’s such a moron and remains enough of a Bush toady that he can’t pull a turncoat and jump over to the left. Hopefully, the left is smart enough not to let him in.<\/p>\n

Maybe that horse group will take him back. Failing that, I hear Burger King is hiring. I don’t think Brown could be trusted around a deep fryer, but the cash registers look more or less foolproof. <\/p>\n

One more thing about Brown: The Post also reported<\/a> that at one point, Rep. William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, had to repeat a question because Brown had been looking at his Blackberry. Why was Brown even allowed to have that thing? When I was in grade school, if I was caught fooling with a toy in class, retribution was swift and serious. The nuns had rulers and knew how to use them. I don’t normally back corporal punishment, but in Brown’s case I’m willing to make an exception. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo Reading the reports of former Federal Emergency Management Administration director Michael D. Brown’s recent appearance before a House panel made me realize more than ever why the Bush administration had to cut him loose: Not only is Brown an incompetent boob incapable of doing the job, he’s also a crummy liar. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}