agitation and confessional deficit

Tough life. However, I don't think you're completely innocent withe the 20yr olds. Glad you're having fun though!

If you decide to come up and it goes bad, you can always give me a call! I have 20something friends.

Oh. Now there's an idea...

I'll rescue you if it goes bad!

Looking through my single friends #'s now....is 27 too old? 24?

(I know you don't need help with the boys)

There's plenty of blame to go around.  Nancy Pilosi and her group of "below the belters" can't just throw bombs on CNN and get out of this one unscathed.  They did create the beaurocratic mess that is the Dept of Homeland Security.  Any FEMA Director, regardless of how talented or experienced, will be so busy with paperwork and GAO, Congressional, OMB, etc. oversight that he/she won't have time to save anyone from a rooftop.

The real failures occured at a local level, beginning with the Mayor of NO, then the Governor of LA, and then FEMA.  How do you mobilize a beaurocratic Federal behemoth to cover 100,000 square miles of destruction in 3 days?  Its impossible.  NO was a disaster waiting to happen and the local leaders knew it, and were not prepared.  The thugs of NO made matters worse by shooting at those who did try to help.  Again, it was a problem at a local level.  Where were the police?  Why didn't the Governor call in the National Guard sooner?  Why did the Mayor and the Governer continually issue conflicting orders?  Why did the Mayor leave all the city and school buses to sit in a parking lot when the levee's broke?  Like I said, you can't lay this entirely at FEMA's feet.  Nothing in response to this disaster at a city, state, or federal level was handled very well.

What good can come from this?  Hopefully, localities will realize that any Federal response will take a minimum of 3-5 days.  They need to plan accordingly.  Head's up to San Francisco (earthquake), the State of Washington and Hawaii (volcanos), and states bordering the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (floods), you may be next.  Is your city, county, or state prepared?

Karl,

Your points, merited or otherwise, do not negate the fact that the top guy at FEMA is not qualified for the job. Nothing in his background qualified him for the job. He is not competent and this position is too important to fill with someone who is incompetent.

That's my point, plain and simple.

Renee,

You didn't mention that the executive shrubbery thought no one had imagined that the levee might breach.  Apparently, the shrub doesn't subscribe to National Geographic.  Problem start at the top.

TW

So, who is most responsible for a city's levee's?  The city?  The state?  Or the Federal Government? 

Federal government.  Army Corps of Engineers I think.  I will have to track down the articles.  I also recall that provision so reinforce levees have been removed from the Bush budgets as deficit reduction measures but I need to do some research to find the source to know who, what, when and where to piss on.  Either Hastert or the executive shrubbery would get the credit for the budget priorities.

TW

TW

Renee- how's 32 yeasrs old for ya?  You can always come to Augusta  if that sounds appealing   BTW- you can send your 20-something guy friends my way  

All kidding aside, it's not about age; it's about attitude. For something long-term, I'd love to find someone in his 40s or 50s. Still looking.

For giggles, I'm open to anyone mid-20s and older. 60s is probably too old for me. Who doesn't like to giggle, am I right?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_levees_2.html

What I thought was a interesting part of this story was the following:

Until the day before Katrina's arrival, New Orleans's 350 miles (560 kilometers) of levees were undergoing a feasibility study to examine the possibility of upgrading them to withstand a Category Four or Five storm.

Corps officials say the study, which began in 2000, will take several years to complete.

Upgrading the system would take as long as 20 to 25 years, according to Al Naomi, the Corps' senior project manager for the New Orleans District.

Martin McCann, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University in California, warns that long-term planning may not account for changes to the risk equation.

"As further development goes on behind levees, over decades you need to revisit the question and say, Are those levees providing us the protection that we wanted?" he said.

"The answer is probably no, because the exposure is probably greater. The number of people and the [amount of] valuable property [behind the levees] is greater.

But of course, those of you that are blaming GW for this are correct. I mean he definitely should have started working on these levees prior to being elected in 2000.   

Bush's favorite tactic to avoid taking action on environmental issues is to call for more "study".  I wish he had "studied" Iraq a lot longer.

TW 

Excellent question! So glad you asked...

The difference is that Florida was hit with 4 (not 6) hurricanes PRE-ELECTION and New Orleans had the misfortune to be flooded POST-ELECTION. If only they had timed their disastrous flooding better...

Also, I think you're confusing post-hurricane recovery from currently-flooded-disaster recovery.

Side note: FEMA threw $30 million at Miami last year for a hurricane that never hit Miami. Coincidence? I don't think so.

I blame POTUS only for appointing an incompetent hack to such a critically important role. Pre-election all we heard about was the sky falling, terror alerts, none of us are safe. Etcetera etcetera etcetera. So with all this heightened concern for domestic security and disaster preparation, POTUS appoints Mr. Brown who has ZILCH, ZIPPO, NADA, NIENTE experience with disaster/ emergency management. How could this happen? How can our POTUS have so little regard for hiring the best and brightest for this all important role? What were the job requirements: applicants with emergency management expertise need not apply?

Ya know, expecting Mr. Brown to be able to handle this role would be like expecting him to win IM Kona after reading a book on how to tri. Can you blame him for his incompetence? No, not really. He wasn't qualified for the job. How could you expect him to do the job well? Wouldn't be fair or realistic to have that expectation. But I can blame him for accepting the job (supremely UNpatriotic, IMO, to accept a job he knew he knew nothing about, with the lives of millions of people at stake) and I can blame the people who put him in a job for which he was supremely unqualified.

"Appointing Michael Brown to FEMA is a national travesty and disgrace. This critically important job should not be awarded to someone lacking the breadth and depth in emergency management necessary to competently manage disasters. It's not about politics; it's about competence where competence is critically mandatory for this demanding job."

My question is what areas could have been drastically improved on? I don't know if it was "a national travesty and disgrace" or not. Please elaborate on what could have been improved.

Maybe you could explain how someone with no emergency management experience is acceptable? In what universe?

Do you not understand how competence in a job makes one capable of performing the job well? Do you not agree that the stakes are too high to appoint someone with no experience?

If you hired engineers, would you hire a burger flipper to be an engineer? Wouldn't you want to hire the best and brightest engineers available? Or would you canvass your neighbor McDonalds for candidates? Or, perhaps, your local Arabian horse stable?

Well....he was the Commissioner of Judges at the International Arabian Horse Association, bt more importantly, he was the college roommate of Joe Allbaugh, who was the outgoing FEMA director at the time.

Again, my question is where should he have improved his response to this tragedy?   The following link is from FEMA and describes Mr. Browns background.  Its a little better than a " burger flipper" but agreed he doesnt have experience in any emergency as large as this one.  The reason I ask the question is that I keep hearing how he was the problem with this disaster and that his inexperience caused the loss of life. I guess all I am asking for is how those who are making the statement of "national disgrace" would have handled it.

http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/brown.shtm

Actually, he had zero emergency management experience. His alleged emergency management experience in 1978 has been disputed by the very people he claims he worked for; they say he was an administrative assistant and had no emergency management experience or responsibilities. Basically, he was a Monica Lewinsky intern (without the scandalous behavior, as far as we know).

I would have handled it by appointing the most qualified man or woman to the job. He has no business being in that position; there are many people who are actually qualified for the job, who actually have decades of experience in emergency management. Mr. Brown had none.

Do you think was qualified for the job? Would you hire a burger flipper to design suspension bridges?

To be fair to Mr. Brown, I believe no Arabian horses died in this catastrophic and ongoing event.

Edited to add news update: Mr. Brown has resigned. Let's hope they put someone qualified to do the job in the job.

I apologize because after looking at my last few posts, I am not being clear about my question.  I will agree with you that he does not have the experience but I ask "What could he have done to improve the response to the tragedy?"