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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Extend test 

...it's been a nice last few days over the course of a long week on the road. Just floating blissfully in a dense tryptophan fog with shields constructed of cornbread stuffing deflecting even the most pernicious hate rays of Bushco attempting to burn through that soft, fuzzy, warm feeling. Just the pleasure of being in a relative news blackout surrounded by conservative, devoutly Christian in-laws who hate George W. Bush as much as their strong beliefs will tolerate and a local newspaper that makes our local effort, the Bend Bulletin, look absolutely encyclopedic by contrast. Well, that's not all exactly true; yesterday's trip back home from the central Washington coast to Central Oregon was done through the sort of weather for which indoor hobbies were created: torrential west-side rain that makes a soul want to google "Noah" and "Ark" for a set of plans and some hint of how the hell long a "cubit" actually is, the kind of rain that offers the occasional nasty little freeway low spot surprise that begs for reconsideration of driving anywhere near the lavish 70 mph speed limit that Washington sets on I-5. But even that didn't intrude on the idyllic nature of the week. Some things, however, are so bizarre that their very mention can blow it all away. The news that Michael Brown is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm, is just such a thing...

...it's like one of those old World War II Pearl Harbor attack movies: "This is Not A Drill!" This is the real deal; this is not some joke or a fictional "Where Are They Now" recreation. The virtual face of the rank incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency - not just from Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, but from the continuing but unreported problems that still plague Florida's residents from last year's storms - is going to advise clients how to properly prepare for a disaster.


Seriously.

(more on the backside)

...one can only assume that he has some crackerjack associates and underlings who actually know something about the subject, because his performance during Katrina demonstrated a remarkable lack of curiosity about what was actually happening in New Orleans or any particular sense of awareness regarding the reports that he was actually receiving or how to respond in any case. Brown may have only been a water-carrier for the Bush Monkey's efforts to gut the emergency management aspect of FEMA's name, but the fact remains that - in FEMA's initial failings alone - he was the guy in charge, the one who should have been setting the tempo and actually moving the proper chess pieces, and he displayed a total lack of raw capability. The simple fact exists that close acquaintences of mine who spent several weeks in Louisiana as part of the federal incident response to Katrina would now rather hurl themselves off cliffs than rely on Michael Brown's FEMA to do anything remotely smart or right or proper; it's just not in 'em to make things happen when tangling everything up in big wads of red tape is an available option, and FEMA sank to this sorry state at least in part under Michael Brown's watch...

...it would be a joke if it weren't for the clear and abundant media evidence of Brown's new career move. Who knows, maybe he's learned a thing or two after being run out of town after the Katrina fiasco. It's entirely possible, but - at the same time - I'd sure like to know who some of these clients are, so I can steer a wide berth around them...just in case, you know...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:57 AM 0 comments

The Backside

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