Let them eat cake!

This is a joke, right? 'Cause if it's not a joke there ought to be some metaphysical violence happening to a former senior FEMA person and a FEMA 'deputy director of public affairs'.

He needs more time to eat? He can eat sh*t - that won't take long.

If this is true, then he may end up eating lead when he goes back to NOLA for his inevitable book tour.

Three words

Federal Government bureaucrats

What the hell? Has this site been hacked by moonbats? How do you know Brown ignored the "dire message"? And why did you edit the message about the meal, because it sounded to me like Brown just wanted to make sure he had time to eat before a TV interview. Not all the unreasonable I would think. I would also note a 12 year veteran would have been hired in 1993, probably not a Republican and maybe a bit biased. I don't like Brown and agreed with his getting canned, but this site is usually above hatchet jobs.

Interesting reading those e-mails. I sure would like the opportunity to smack that press secretary. But, notice something more important about these e-mails. The continuing meme is that FEMA didn't do anything for days. Here we have proof that a highly experienced DMAT team was on the ground at the SuperDome and 7 trucks of food and water were sent in by FEMA before the storm hit. FEMA was overwhelmed by the incompetence of the local government and was predicting that problem on Sunday.

"Although FEMA does not oversee evacuation and sheltering, we may feel the effects of local decisions pretty soon.... Seven trucks (5 water and 2 MREs) are less than 2 hours away from the Superdome. There were transportation
problems that temporarily stopped the convoy Police escorts now accompany the trucks." - Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 7:16 PM

Do a little research.

Cindy Taylor is probably a GS5 or 6 career bureaucratic go-for, a Democrat, and a Federal Employee's Union Member.

Anyone Taking bets? One of the things you'll never see in this type of reporting is any background on the bureaucrat. The MainSewer Media wants you to belive Bush hired la perra estupupida.

Here are the things I noticed:

1. Michael Brown’s press secretary did send an e-mail that could be interpreted as highly insensitive and out of touch. It however did not come from Mr. Brown personally.
2. Why did Mr. Bahamonte even get copied on this e-mail? It had no bearing on what he was doing from what I can see.
3. The e-mail with the dire warning came 3 days into Mr. Bahamonte’s time in NOLA. What prompted it? Specifically none of his other e-mails appear to have been addressed to Mr. Brown. Was it requested by Brown as a status update, therefore not requiring a response or was it sent because of a disagreement in the lower levels. Need context.
4. On a similar note the vast majority of these e-mails are responses to other e-mails without the original message to provide context. What are they supposed to be showing?
5. Given the questions in 3 and 4, how do we know Brown ignore the e-mail.

OK, Kevin, I give in, this is evidence of FEMA malfeasance. Time to move on...

Thank you Kevin for NOT moving on. The American citizens that are still living in tents or the citizens that still don't know if their businesses can be saved or the citizens that aren't sure that anybody even remembers anymore that a major American city has been devastated thank you. Epador, come down here to southern Louisiana or southern Mississippi and see with your own eyes the conditions people are living in. You would not be saying "move on".

I can't speak for epador, but my thought is that when you have reached the point that you are taking e-mails out of context and editing them to make them appear worse then there is no point in continuing the argument. If Kevin had titled this "Email shows FEMA disorganized" or something similar then I wouldn't really have a problem with the post. Instead we have portions of an e-mail chain and this statement

"Bahamonde, the first agency official to arrive in New Orleans in advance of the Aug. 29 storm, sends a dire message to FEMA Director Michael Brown about deteriorating conditions at the Superdome - a message which Brown ignores. Just a few hours later Brown's press secretary has a critical message of her own that has to be seen to be believed."

To the casual reader this implies that the message was sent on the 29th as one of the first things Bahamonde did. Instead it was sent 3 days into Bahmondes time in NOLA and was an outlier in regards to the previous e-mail chain and subsequent communication. We don't have the context to know why it was sent and given the fragmentary nature of the chain we don't know the actual context or if a reply was sent. Given the time frame my bet is it was a requested update on superdome conditions for a press appearance. That would not require a response.

To sum up I am not trying to excuse FEMAs performance or Brown's tenure there. Both appear to have been horrible (although as details come out FEMAs response was not as pathetic as I originally thought). I am saying lets be fair in judging this stuff. If Brown was completely FUBARed it will come out we don't need to manufacture evidence.

All of this is of course mooted by the fact it is Kevin's site and he can post what he wants.

Sigh...

I'm not sure why an agency has to be so micromanaged by the top guy that if he takes an hour to eat, people die.

There should be a pretty broad set of people with authority to do what a guy on the ground in NO needs to get done.

FAKES !!!

How do I know ... ?

"crapped" would never have gotten thru the e-mail filter at FEMA ...

plus, what is the proof that these are real ... like some message headers that show server info and such ...

No, these are fakes ... (until proven ...)

Well Kevin pulled them from the same place I did an exhibit from the congressional hearings, so if they are fakes then they should have been challenged during the testimony.

If I want to read this kind of presentation of facts and analysis, I can subscribe to the NYT.

You guys are making yourselves superfluous.

The "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach of the Republican sycophants, that just can't accept how terribly bad the maladministration is, is quite hilarious and at the same time extremely pathetic. What does it take to get you folks to sit up and pay attention? A 2X4 alongside the head?

"Denial isn't just a river in Egypt...."

And kudos to Kevin for having the integrity to post these e-mails (which are real, despite any ostrich-like behaviour here).

Cheers,

Over a month ago, I wrote that the Department of Homeland Security's story that they didn't know about the levee breaks until the day after they happened was scarcely believable, and I speculated that instead the DHS simply didn't UNDERSTAND what was going on. Now the stories start to pop out...

On the Levees of New Orleans II, Update 4

Maybe if they would have gone outside to take a cr4p instead of sh!tting right in the hallways the conditions in the superdome wouldn't have been so bad.

Just sayin...

You know what I and many others would like and would get a lot of links?

Could someone take each individual email out of the PDF file, provide text summaries, and link them from a linear timeline graphic? So, we could see each email on the timeline together with a brief summary and a link to the individual graphic on an HTML page.

If someone does something like that, leave a link at my incoming link.