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Here is another snippet from The Corner. The Corner isn't happy. I am not happy. I almost posted this as an article, but it isn't really an article, and I don't know whether it is entirely true or not, so I didn't, but it was a close call. But I think Bush has wasted his trump card, probably permanently.

"THE COST OF CRONYISM [Rod Dreher] It would be very wrong, I believe, to let the ignominious Michael Brown be the scapegoat for FEMA's sins. Check out this front-pager from the WaPo. Turns out that a raft of FEMA's top leaders have little or no emergency management experience, but are instead politically well connected to the GOP and the White House. This is a scandal, a real scandal. How is it possible that four years after 9/11, the president treats a federal agency vital to homeland security as a patronage prize? The main reason I've been a Bush supporter all along is I trusted him (note past tense) on national security -- which, in the age of mass terrorism, means homeland security too. Call me naive, but it's a real blow to learn that political hacks have been running FEMA, of all agencies of the federal government! What if al-Qaeda had blown the New Orleans levees? How much worse would the crony-led FEMA's response have been? Would conservatives stand for any of this for one second if a Democrat were president? If this is what Republican government means, God help the poor GOP Congressmen up for re-election in 2006."

Well, you already know my evaluation of this administration's competence, and the Katrina episode has certainly done nothing to alter my previous assessment.. In fact, were it not for that, I wouldn't even be on this forum or concerned with politics much at all, but rather happily under my rock as before 9/11. =)

All this Michael Brown hysteria is contrived garbage. Although he wasn't the head, he was there supervising on 9/11 and all the subsequent hurricanes of the last five years. This is just being used, as usual as a club to destroy Bush. FEMA is by definition a "management" agency that is only supposed to coordinate what state and local agencies need. It is not a "first responder" organization, or a rescue and recovery agency.

The history books are full of average men who were given responsibility and excelled. If the Left wasn't so desperate to win the next election or if he had been a Democrat dealing with a Blue state, he'd go down in history as a hero.