Brown receives new Village Idiot award

Looks like the Americans got themselves a new village idiot. Move over W! Here comes Michael Brown!!!

The former FEMA director is currently under fire from the special congressional panel investigating the US government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Here is a sample of his best answers.

- When accused to not have been experienced enough for the job: "I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it."

- He said he made “specific mistakes” in responding to Hurricane Katrina. Which mistakes would that be, Mike?

- "It is inherently impractical, totally impractical, for the federal government to respond to every disaster of whatever size in every community across the country," Brown said. "It breaks my heart to think about the disasters we respond to as FEMA and to think about the disasters that we also don't respond to," he added. Maybe so, Mike. But that one was a pretty big one, don’t you think? But maybe poor Black people dying because you didn’t lift a fucking finger’s not considered a disaster where you come from…

- "FEMA is a coordinating agency, we are not a law enforcement agency," he said, also suggesting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was criticized because many people incorrectly believe it serves as something of a federal rapid-response force. So now, "Federal" doesn’t mean "federal" and "emergency" is no longer synonym to "rapid response"? Jeez, maybe I should buy that new dictionary you’ve got yourself there, Mike.

The congressional memo goes on even further… It would transpire that:

- Brown admitted he should have called the cavalry (i.e. the Pentagon) sooner and regretted “that he did not start screaming" for the military's involvement. I guess 5 days IS a long time, isn’t it?

- Brown did not take any official notes during conference calls he ran with state and federal authorities and "just assumed that agencies would follow up on taskings resulting from the calls." Well, isn’t that what secretaries are for?

- Brown said a federal takeover of emergency management responsibilities would be a "crutch" for local and state governments and could lead to future lapses in preparedness. Yeah… God forbid FEMA did ANYTHING to help anyone… What are they, God? “Help yourself and the Lord will help you” type of reasoning has never been the panacea of survival, has it?

Now what you have to understand is that this is the guy who now has a two-week "transition period" remaining at FEMA, time during which he will advise the department on "some of his views on his experience with Katrina," Homeland security spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Oh and incidentally… he is receiving full pay.