It’s the whole stopped clock once a day deal. Other than that, it’s not much more than another opportunity for Malkin to get her hate on for someone.

Maybe one good thing will come out of this tragedy. Maybe Malkin will realize that Brown was not a fluke appointment by Bush. This whole administration has been about rewarding failure and handing out goodies to rich conservatives. Yes, Brown is culpable, but who appointed him? Who appointed the woefully inadequate Chertoff? I’m looking forward to Malkin’s future columns where she asks:
How is Bolton progressing in reforming the U.N.?
How is Gonzales doing in stopping the use of torture that endangers our own troops when they go in battle?
Could the neocon-approved, fundamentalist-filtered appointments in Iraq have something something to do with the quagmire it has become?
And by the way, how is Rumsfeld, whose resignation Bush refuses to accept, performing in Iraq, where his on-the-cheap invasion has become a long, miserable occupation that is only the prelude to civil war?

but she has slipped in a new improved link to the blame-nawlins-’bout-the-buses story : here

Marie Jon’s article blaming the mayor is on Conservative Voice, which claims 10,000 unique visitors a day, and hence on the Google News front page too : here
— being who she is, she doesn’t actually offer any evidence in this piece, but simply assumes that a few mantras about ‘big government=democrats’ will flip the right reader neurons. She doesn’t even mention the buses (but she wrote this before the bus photos popped up).

Big deal. In the first post Piranha Malkin puts all the blame on Mike Brown. If Bush doesn’t take her advice and fire him (he never fires anyone), do you think she will turn her vitriol on her beloved Preznit? Not bloody likely.

In the second post she’s trying to prove she’s not an entirely inhuman GOP propaganda robot by admitting she likes babies. That took a lot of courage.

Fuck her.

FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s wrath, said Saturday that “the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans.”

Pay attention to Malkin. She’s an opportunist, and not a particularly subtle one at that. If she sniffs a change in the wind, she’ll follow it.

She knew her selection of designer bigotry wouldn’t last forever, so she’s marketing a new fashion for the season…her Fall Line. A little more pr?t-?-porter than she’d like, but…the bills, they must be paid, right?

I’d certainly like to see this as a glimpse of some kind of hitherto-unknown integrity that exists somewhere in Malkin’s soul, but…who are we kidding? She destroyed her credibility long ago.

She’s having a rare moment of sanity, in much the same way some of us have rare moments of madness.

Calling Bush “Malkin’s beloved preznit” is not really accurate. She takes him to task constantly for offering amnesty illegal immigrants, and for not racial profiling enough.

As for her coverage of Katrina, I’d say she’s about 80% unobjectionable, including actually agreeing with Kos’ readership on something.

Oh, and I think Mal de Mer may just have it exactly right. She’s a barometer of the conservative movement, and the glass is falling. (Or is it rising? I can’t remember.)

Rowan,

Marie Jon’ posted that article in comments here two days ago. I’ve posted the response I made to it at the time on my blog.

Why would MJ give S,N! readers a preview? I can’t even begin to understand the twisted relationship she has with this website. And I don’t want to understand.

it’s operation “the buck stops at Michael D. Brown”.

they’ll never in a million years take the blame to the guys who appointed this incompetent buffoon.

Hell, that’s WHY they appoint buffoons.

Realist, the term you’re looking for is “lucid intervals”.

It’s not lucid intervals, it’s not temporary sanity…it’s Michelle Malkin.

What? Are you all ready to rehabilitate her, so soon? For crying out loud, she thinks sending people to concentration camps is a good idea.

You guys had better start drawing up a list of miscreants like Malkin…people who should never be allowed in polite company again, and stop being so willing to forgive such abominably atrocious behaviour.

Ah, what’s the use. You guys love forgiving people. You put convicted felons like Negroponte back into the driver’s seat.

Psh, I’m not rehabilitating her.

shystee … hmm … but the buses … see, Brown is saying that the mayor didn’t have the authority to ORDER a COMPULSORY EVACUATION, which may be true but it’s kinda academic, because let us suppose he had that power, he would have needed not just the entire New Orleans police force but troops too, to physically round up the entire stay-behind population of 300,000 or whatever and take ’em to the buses and put ’em on ’em and bus ’em out at gun-point. Absent all this those buses were useless.

It also kind of ignores the disabled, many of whom cannot actually be jammed into a schoolbus for a multi-hour ride to wherever the hell they were supposed to go.

Yep. D.Sidhe, I have a nasty feeling I am doing Marie Jon’s thinking for her, which is a wicked temptation, caused by being able to see what she is trying to do (i.e. blame everything on the dems) and saying to myself, well, if I wanted to do that, I could sure as hell do it better than her, I would just go [x] [y] [z]. Now if I do that and then Marie Jon’ copies whatever I have suggested on her 10,000 unique visitors per day op-ed spot, I have allowed her and her goddam turtleneck to hoodwink me into undermining the entire class struggle in America. God, whatta thought.

Psh, I’m not rehabilitating her.

I’d do it. I’m a sucker for Asian women.

Of course, I’d have to do something about that voice of hers… Fingernails-on-blackboard irritating.

Oh wait. That’s her politics coming out of her mouth. That can make anything sound horrible.

On second thought, if I do try and rehabilitate her, every single one of you owes me. Big.

Michael Brown has been designated Officially Politically Expendable.

He deserves it, yes. He deserves criminal prosecution. Hell, he deserves to be tied to an anchor and dropped into Lake George.

But what Michelle’s doing is using Brown as a scapegoat to protect Bush. If this is going to be the RW talking point, it means they’re ready to toss Brown over the side in order to protect George Bush from accountability.

They can toss Brown, but the thingie about Bush not authorizing NorCom with their 9 million meals to go in to NO ASAP is not going to go away just because Brown does.

Rowan,

The only government institution capable of handling the complete, forcible evacuation of an urban area is the National Guard.

The National Guard should have stepped in the minute it looked like Katrina was going to hit New Orleans. Or at the very least they should have stepped in immediately after the flooding occurred. There was nothing Ray Nagin could have done at that point, buses or no buses. New Orleans cops and emergency personnel were walking off the job because they were trying to save their families. Some of the ones who stayed have committed suicide.

And by the way, Marie Jon’s article says nothing about the mayor except the title and maybe something in the random collection of quotes used to fill in half of her assigned word count.

Also by the way, fuck MJ and Piranha Malkin. I don’t see why they should be given any credit for occasionally displaying a shred of humanity. They’re not expressing their heartfelt opinions, they’re paid GOP propagandists. It’s a paycheck, it’s their job. Do you think they might come around to our side? It will never happen, unless we can pay them more.

They should never be forgiven for spreading their hate-filled propaganda. On the other hand, the misguided US citizens who soak up that right wing propaganda and vote against their own interests are eminently redeemable. They’re real people.

Shystee, I finally caught up with the fact that Nagin put off deciding on a mandatory evacuation, for virtually the whole weekend, because he was waiting for legal advice on whether the city could be sued for loss of business by the hotels etc. It took me most of yesterday to find this, it was buried in a Times-Picayune article from that Sunday morning. I had been brooding confusedly about the delay, the ethics, and the practicalities of mandatory evacuation, but the reason for the delay says it all.

See? It’s those damned trial lawyers again! Tort reform! Tort reform!

Oh, wait. Those are corporate lawyers, aren’t they. And they’re not covered under any tort reform proposal I’ve seen. Never mind. Carry on.