NonCompus

I would be disgusted with this government if we had one.
We really don't. We have a bunch of wealthy people who were so pissed over Bill Clintons win over Bush Sr. that they spent 8 years gearing up to do whatever it took to win back "their territory".
Sadly, they have the morals of snakes and people died.
Thousands.
Baby Bush has not, 5 years later, run out of "other options" and gone with the mea culpa approach of pretending to care.
Jimmy Carter he is not.
Idi Amin maybe, but no Carter. He is in all likelyhood just incompetent at everything he has ever done.

The deaths and destruction of Hurrican Katrina were well known. They just did not care enough to tell their cronies "no job for you" and buckle down to preparing. Bush, Rove, Cheney, and the senators that supported them all approved of appointments based on cronyisim. Political payback.

Everyone on the planet knew that a hurricane hitting New Orleans was going to blow the levees. Kids in school have studied it. National Geographic did an issue about it. Smithsonian as well. The advisors to the White House for 4 administrations have warned of it. But this bunch doesn't listen. Not to the press, not to Democrats, not to scientists.
I often wonder if Bush and company have some mental problem that creates the mistaken belief system that what they don't like won't happen. Fantastical thinking it is called in mental health circles.

Yesterday it was announced that Bush has (yet again...yawn) been lying about knowing Katrina in advance. Aside from all the reports and signs, it turns out that there were a LOT of briefings about this disaster coming. But Bush was confidant that "Brownie" could handle it. He handled the Arabian Horse association, didn't he? And that's good enough on a resume to get you the head FEMA spot. Thank God Bush's daughters aren't old enough for jobs. Cronyisim will kill us all.

Brownie went to hearings. Since there were no questions about horse shows and escorting rich women to parties, he did what loyal Republicans have been doing this entire administration. He blamed someone else. Lying on a resume- about the ONLY experience for the job he MIGHT have had was, to Brownie, not the biggest fault. Taking a job he was patently unqualified for- with people's lives in his hands- was not his fault. He blatantly disregarded the safety of Americans, but it is not his fault. His Republican handlers should have known better.
While it appears that the Republicans are making him a scapegoat, I guarantee that he was already promised an even nicer job- with less responsiblity- someplace else when this is all over. In the meantime, before you vote for these pampered boys from the rich end of Martha's vineyard, read what AP had to say about the hearings:
(AP) Former federal disaster chief Michael Brown, the face of the government's listless response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday he told top Bush officials the day the storm howled ashore of massive flooding in New Orleans and warned "we were realizing our worst nightmare."More defiant than defensive, Brown told senators he dealt directly with White House officials the day of the Aug. 29 storm, including chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.He also said officials from the Department of Homeland Security were getting regular briefings that day. Administration officials have said they did not realize the severe damage Katrina had caused until after the storm had passed.Under oath, Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he could not explain why his appeals failed to produce a faster response."I expected them to cut every piece of red tape, do everything they could ... that I didn't want to hear anybody say that we couldn't do everything they humanly could to respond to this," Brown said about a video conference with administration officials _ in which President Bush briefly participated _ the day before Katrina hit. "Because I knew in my gut this was the bad one."In the end, the storm claimed more than 1,300 lives, uprooted hundreds of thousands more and caused tens of billions in damage. The devastation in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities left Americans with enduring images of their countrymen dying in flooded nursing homes and pleading for rescue from rooftops.Brown, in his second Capitol Hill appearance since Katrina, told his side to the senators five months after he quit under fire as chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.He agreed with some senators who characterized him as a scapegoat for government failures."I feel somewhat abandoned," said Brown,Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said he did not know that New Orleans' levees were breached until Aug. 30. Bush at the time said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."At an occasionally contentious White House briefing Friday, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said there were conflicting reports about the levees in the immediate aftermath of the storm."We knew of the flooding that was going on," McClellan said. "That's why our top priority was focused on saving lives. ... The cause of the flooding was secondary to that top priority and that's the way it should be."After three hours of testimony, Brown was handed a subpoena ordering him to reappear in front of a House panel investigating the storm response. Brown is expected to be questioned by House investigators this weekend _ days before the panel is expected to release its findings on the storm.Recounting conference calls that described initial damage reports the day Katrina hit, Brown scoffed at claims that Homeland Security didn't know about the devastation's scope until the next day. He called those claims "just baloney."Some senators suggested Brown look inward before pointing the finger elsewhere."You're not prepared to put a mirror in front of your face and recognize your own inadequacies," said Norm Coleman, R-Minn. "Perhaps you may get a more sympathetic hearing if you had a willingness to confess your own sins in this."Brown responded: "That's very easy for you to say sitting behind that dais and not being there in the middle of that disaster watching that human suffering and watching those people dying and trying to deal with those structural dysfunctionalities, even within the federal government."The disjointed federal response, Brown said, was in part the result of FEMA being swallowed in 2003 by the newly created Homeland Security Department, which he said was focused on fighting terrorism.Natural disasters "had become the stepchild of the Department of Homeland Security," he said. Had there been a report that "a terrorist had blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that," he added.Some senators attempted to trace the failures back to the White House."You quite appropriately and admirably wanted to get the word to the president as quickly as you could," said Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., asking about Brown's conversation with Hagin on the evening of Aug. 29. "Did you tell Mr. Hagin in that phone call that New Orleans was flooding?"Brown answered: "I think I told him that we were realizing our worst nightmare, that everything we had planned about, worried about, that FEMA, frankly, had worried about for 10 years was coming true."Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, suggested Brown may have delayed the federal response by cutting Homeland Security out of the loop about the levee failures and going straight to the White House."I think I now understand why Secretary Chertoff says he didn't know," Bennett said. "The reason he didn't know is because you didn't think it important to tell him."Brown said he communicated directly with the White House instead of Homeland Security because FEMA's parent agency "just bogged things down."

As long as we the people want to cut the taxes of those who need it least, thus cutting spending on things that affect those who need it most, this is our future. Sharing the blame and making public scapegoats that retire to lush private careers after they are done is now so comonplace we all can predict it coming. Even Brownie.