Brown kills blacks

The truth is coming out about Michael Brown, FEMA head -- the man who seems to have had no qualifications for the job other than the fact that he was the former college roommate of Joseph Albaugh, Bush's longtime political fixer.

This same Albaugh referred to all federal disaster assistance as an "oversized entitlement program" during testimony before Congress in 2001. (For more on Albaugh and his various schemes, see Joshua Marshall's post here.)

Brown used to work for the Arabian horse association until he was, in essence, fired. Why? The only answer I've heard so far involves vague references to lawsuits.

LBJ used to say that he didn't trust a man "unless I have his pecker in my pocket." (Always, always the hawks deal in homoerotic imagery...!) Perhaps that axiom applies to Brown. Perhaps something in his shadowy background made him pliable. A man in legal trouble must cowtow to the authority.

All of which may explain why Brown's actions remind so many of willful, rather than negligent homicide.

On August 29, the FEMA website published the following:

Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), today urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

Cute, isn't it? The Bushites never cared about legal niceness before. By the 29th, of course, Blanco had already requested that the problem be federalized and Bush had signed the order making it so.

Which brings us to this:

OK, let's get this straight: Michael Brown is most likely an incompetent stooge but the fact of the matter is that when he refused to release supplies, National Guard troops, and construction equipment, and then ordered the Superdome locked and checkpoints set up along the roads leading out of New Orleans to turn back anyone trying to escape the destruction, he was following orders. None of it was accidental, none of it was a matter of poor decision-making or the wrong priorities. It was a deliberate attempt by the Bush Administration to blackmail the state of Louisiana into handing the city over to the Federal government.

On Friday, four days after Katrina hit, National Guard troops finally arrived, supposedly bringing food and water to those trapped in the Superdome. It's true that there was an initial delivery of emergency supplies, but it was hardly adequate. Everyone assumed more would be coming. But the NG came armed, supposedly to defend itself against bands of looters with handguns and rifles. Soon after, it became clear that the NG's real orders were to lock down the Superdome and prevent anyone from leaving.

Between Wednesday morning and Friday night, ships loaded with food, water, and medical supplies arrived. FEMA refused to allow them to be off-loaded. Michael Brown then ordered the communications lines cut that tied emergency workers together.

Shortly before midnight, the Bush Administration essentially delivered an ultimatum to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco: before they released the emergency supplies, they wanted her to sign the city of New Orleans over to the Federal government.

On another front, we have this:

Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars -- including a Swedish water purification system, a German cellular telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships -- have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department.

Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Of course, the State Department might have been on its game if Condi hadn't spent so much time hobnobbing with the Knights Who Say Ni.

But it looks as though the Rovians won't be able to spin their way out of this one:

Washington - "For God's sake, are you blind?," a woman shouts at the head of the federal emergency management agency (FEMA), Michael Brown.

"You're patting each other on the back, while people here are dying."

The woman is not a victim of Hurricane Katrina. She is a reporter with US television network MSNBC who is so affected by the misery she has witnessed she can hold back no longer.

"Katrinagate" is the term being used by the media to describe the biggest challenge facing the political establishment in the US since the Watergate affair in the 1970s toppled Richard Nixon.

Not for decades has there been such merciless questioning of the president and his administration by the US media.

Side note: Looks like the rednecks of Mississippi will get the aid money you thought would go to the blacks of New Orleans.