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A little news; Michael Brown replaced... awesome. See what happens when Bush appoints his politic pals rather than people actually trained for the job. Oh wait, you guys are a bunch of fucking right wing hicks so this is like talking to wall.



Brown got a strong endorsement for professionalism at his confirmation from Joe Biden. And WSJ reports that whatever his (lack of) talents in comments to the press, Brown may not be to blame from the policies and budgeting issues at FEMA. They've got some evidence that Brown opposed getting FEMA out of the local planning loop and that the unreadiness may be the result of Chertoff's priority choices. If so it's entirely possible that Brown might have quit now so that people start looking at Chertoff.

You need to be a little more analytical if you want to be persuasive. Pick some action you think Bush have taken, cite the laws allowing that action, state when he should have taken that action, and what evidence he had or should have had at that time to indicate that said action was appropriate.

A good example is "Bush should have seen in National Guard Monday." The problem is that he cannot do so by law without the governor's approval, and that apparently did not come until Thursday, and then only partially? The record isn't clear here. In any case there was no crisis in New Orleans on Monday: the mayor said so on TV. The crisis erupted Tuesday afternoon and evening.

It's also useful to compare & contrast the situation in Mississippi and Louisiana. Mississippi & Alabama got hit hard with an unbelievable storm surge (29 feet???). New Orleans appears to have gotten a fairly average storm with perhaps 10-12 feet of surge. Yet Mississippi appears to be doing well considering what hit them: the problems in planning & execution appear to be largely confined to Louisiana and not to all areas, as one might expect were it some general FEMA problem.
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"If they can't picture me with a knife, forcing them to strip in an alley, I don't want any part of it. It's humiliating." - windsock