GOOD JOB BROWNIE—YES HE WAS STILL AROUND

The latest FEMA fiasco has nothing to do with the agency’s embattled former leader Michael Brown. But that didn’t stop Brownie from laying into the Bush Administration, FEMA, and the media in an interview today with Radar.

RADAR.COM: He began by criticizing the way that his former bosses, President Bush and Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff, are trying to spin the California wildfires.”The fires are, to a certain extent, a CNN disaster. When the media is covering a story so intently, as they are the fires, it’s important for politicians to show they’re actively involved,” Brown said. “Which is why you have the president and Chertoff going out there and hugging people.”

So they’re exploiting the disaster to make themselves look good? “It’s precisely that. It’s an easy opportunity to take advantage of. They’re saying, ‘Look, we learned the lesson from Katrina. And we fixed things and we’re paying attention.’”

But any comparison between Katrina and the wildfires is completely absurd, Brown said. “I get a real kick out of the media and FEMA talking about how great Qualcomm Stadium was. We’ve got Hyatt hotels catering food; we’ve got face painting. It’s a real picnic atmosphere. It wasn’t surrounded by 12-feet of toxic floodwaters. It didn’t have the roof ripped off.”

“The fires are bad, but you just can’t make that comparison to Katrina. But of course, that’s what the Administration wants to do,” he said.

Brownie then moved on to FEMA, where he spent just over two years heading up the disaster management agency, and the press conference it staged earlier this week. “It’s outrageous and pathetic,” he said. FEMA officials have laid the blame solely with PR man John Philbin, saying that second-in-command Harvey Johnson, the man leading the presser, “had no knowledge” reporters weren’t present. Brownie’s not buying. “Harvey is pointing to people he knows. It would be like pointing at my best friend and saying, ‘Yes, sir. Next question.’ They knew exactly what they were doing.”

What does he think should happen? “All those involved ought to be terminated. People can say what they want to about me, but when I was asked a question by a reporter I just told it like it was. I never tried to deceive.”

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Marine recruiters busted in exam fraud
Stand-ins took test required of 15 marginal enlistees

By DANE SCHILLER Houston Chronicle

Nine Marine Corps recruiters who worked in the Houston area were punished for using fraudulent stand-ins to take military-entrance exams for prospective recruits who might not otherwise measure up, the military confirmed Wednesday.

Eight of the recruiters were reassigned and given non-judicial punishment, which could include fines and reduction in rank. Another, considered the worst offender, was discharged from the service.

“I don’t know why this happened here. Obviously, we do not tolerate it,” said Capt. John Niemann, a spokesman for the recruiting district that includes Houston. “We learned of it. We investigated it and took
appropriate disciplinary action.”

WHO WILL BE THE LAST AMERICAN SOLDIER TO DIE IN IRAQ?

Bruce Sings about it on his new album while this appeared on the NY Times website:
By Brian Turner

At some point in the future, soldiers will pack up their rucks, equipment will be loaded into huge shipping containers, C-130s will rise wheels-up off the tarmac, and Navy transport ships will cross the high seas to return home once again. At some point — the timing of which I don’t have the slightest guess at — the war in Iraq will end. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately — I’ve been thinking about the last American soldier to die in Iraq.

Tonight, at 3 a.m., a hunter’s moon shines down into the misty ravines of Vermont’s Green Mountains. I’m standing out on the back deck of a friend’s house, listening to the quiet of the woods. At the Fairbank’s Museum in nearby St. Johnsbury, the lights have been turned off for hours and all is dark inside the glass display cases, filled with Civil War memorabilia. The checkerboard of Jefferson Davis. Smoothbore rifles. Canteens. Reading glasses. Letters written home.

Four or five miles outside of town, past a long stretch of water where the moon is crossing over, a blue and white house sits in a small clearing not far from where I stand now. Chimney smoke rises from a fire burned down to embers. A couple spoon each other in sleep, exhausted from lovemaking. One of them is beginning to snore. I want them to wake up and make love again, even if they need the sleep and tomorrow’s workday holds more work than they might imagine.

Who can say where that last soldier is now, at this very moment?…

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE SPEAKS ON OBSCENITY

As promised, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court Thursday to review a lower court’s decision that the FCC failed to justify punishing broadcasters for on-air swearing, saying that, as it stands, broadcasters have a pass to swear at will, and the FCC’s ability to regulate indecency at all is at stake.

http://email.BroadcastingCable.com/cgi-bin2/DM/y/ezy70LIJ2Z0Olt0DPCb0Em

W MERMARK WRITES:

Danny, you fail to quote Chomsky. He did NOT say ‘NO conspiracy,’ however, a reader sure can feel you strongly WISHING Chomsky would say ‘NO’ and you WISHING you could SHOUT THAT IN CAPITAL LETTERS, and thereby settle the matter once and for all, and make all the hubbub talkers disappear, in your mind — with us disappeared YOU DO NOT THINK about 9/11 and YOU DO NOT FEEL GUILTY for turning your eyes away from checking the facts of the matter.
Chomsky said anyone staging a Nine Eleven Op hoax would be insane to think they’d get away with it. I agree — some people ARE insane, and ‘they’ DID NOT get away with it. Chomsky said it would be complicated to stage the hoax and, anyway, there would be high probability some part might miscue — what if a plane missed hitting a Tower, he asked us, and then answered himself, ‘but it didn’t.’ Chomsky said he told world press interviews that the Nine Eleven Op would be exploited by manifest oppressive regimes, and he said he told them this within “a couple hours” after it was over — by which I think he meant around noontime on 9/11, and if that is the time he meant, then he must not consider the THIRD skyscraper mysteriously imploding later that afternoon to be part of events. But, WTC building 7 DID disappear, and Chomsky blithely ignores that.

Finally, Chomsky asked us, “who cares?” to know Nine Eleven Op was a staged hoax — by which I think he meant that knowing it does not change the effects it caused. I agree — imprisoning the criminal does not undo damages the crime caused. Imprisonment could arguably serve as deterrent of others planning such a crime. Undoing Nine Eleven Op effects is a separate concern, and requires Congress REPEAL EVERY ENACTMENT done since 9/11 of, by, or for the manufactured ‘terror’ phony baloney.

However, I do not agree nobody ‘cares’ that Nine Eleven Op is found out by people that it was a hoax. WHO CARES is the mass murderer(s) who intend that people not find out. Since, when people DO FIND OUT, the criminal(s) life is in jeopardy. THAT’s who cares. And Chomsky offers them relief, perhaps unwittingly, from their caring worry of being exposed.

You cannot prove a negative. You CAN DISPROVE a positive, though.

Point taken—it its true that cutesy headlines can be distorting. Got me.

BASEBALL: DODGERS SCOOP UP JOE TORRE.

SUNDAY—MARATHON DAY IN NEW YORK

My marathon on debt continues.

I will be speaking/peaching Sunday at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture on Prospect in Park Slope across from Prospect Park at ll AM. Screening at l of IN DEBT WE TRUST. Be there or be square.

Comments welcome: write Dissector@mediachannel.org