Mike Brown Must Go

No, Not the owner of the Bengals. Mike Brown, the head of FEMA, should be immediately fired and replaced with someone who understands how to deal with a disaster. If the Bush Administration thinks FEMA's focus should be responding to terrorism, then how do they plan on evacuating a major city after a series of Dirty Nukes are set off? The failure to evacute New Orleans indicates that in real terrorist attack situation the aftermath would be the real killer, not the actual attack. The answer to Mike for this type of situation seems to be to pretend that nothing is going wrong, as illustrated by this CNN report. If nothing else, the man is over concerned with the PR spin of his teams efforts. If you are going to be a good department/agency head, you need to let the White House worry about the spin, and you just do your job, especially for an agency whose sole purpose is to deal with emergencies.

I personally would lay this at the foot of the President, but the more important thing is to fire the incompetent man, not the guy who hired him. I would love to fire Bush, but alas we are stuck with more of his bad choices until 2009. We also are stuck with the bad choice of Mike Brown and his Bengals, and can't change that unless he wants to sell. Let's just hope this year they break the curse and make the playoffs.

SCOTUS Change

With the Death of Rehnquist and this morning's announcement of Roberts for Chief Justice, the Supreme Court will now become a battle ground with heavy change in the balance. It is going to get ugly and get ugly quick.

This was a wise political move for Bush, and reduces the number of battles he has to fight. I don't know if it was a good move for the SCOTUS or not. The role of Chief is not one to directly influence case law, in that respect the Chief has no more power than the other 8 justices. Who gets that position is not that big of a deal. The battle starts again as to whom will replace O'Connor. The gloves will be coming off, and the knuckles are going to get bloody.

If True, Damn!

Kevin Drum is doing his usually wonderful job blogging and reports on Bush's alleged staged Photo-Ops on his visits to the Gulf Coast Area. How can anyone like a man who allows his handlers to create any kind of stage and to create what appears to have been fake food distribution areas just for a photo opportunity. I will admit that even I am not willing to accept these allegations as valid on face value, but the glove fits. Erecting a stage for Bush is not only likely, I would bet on it. The food distribution point, which are the more egregious charge, is what I am more skeptical on. If that is true, then the Man and his handlers are heartless scum. If others can find more information on this, I will update the post, even if you can find credible reports discounting or disproving the allegations.

We Are Asking For Aid From Europe

I am glad we are doing it, but I don't know why the USA need to ask Europe for emergency assistance, including blankets, first aid kits, water trucks and food. Why do we need to go outside the USA for this? I am sure we could use money to buy more of these things, but I don't think we need to ship a bunch of blankets across the Atlantic.

Labor Day Lull

Ok, I really have little that I want to post on or am prepared to post on, so if you are Jonesing for a thread, have at it.

Quick Money Rules

When you need cash, I guess civil justice doesn't matter. It is amazing that this company actually was ready to do settle this fast, but what is more amazing is that they set up shop on city property, making I think some of the victims think the city approved of this or it was something the city was offering. Luken did the right thing kicking them off city property.

Refugee

Nearly every news outlet and politician is using the wordrefugee to describe those who have fled New Orleans. The use of the word is totally valid. There are refugees every day from fires and floods. What hits me like a ton of bricks is that there are hundreds of thousands of refugees out of Southeast Louisiana. That is something like out of WWII or out of a famine in Africa. This is not supposed to be happening here in the land of the free and home of the brave. Why is this happening? Why does it seem like the media is able to get around more than the police or National Guard?