That 12 Babes of Christmas thing

I finally broke down and decided to nominate the woman I personally consider the most babealicious in the world -- my wife, cheshyre.

Only to find that three other people, with excellent taste, had beaten me to the punch. The complete list is here, and I notice quite a few true hawties already on the list. Including, of course, cheshyre.

So, everybody already knows that Michael Brown resigned.

I'm not as thrilled by this as other people seem to be. Sure, Brown was incompetent, in WAY over his head, and totally failed to show anything remotely like leadership or basic situational awareness, but I see him more as a victim than a villain.

Okay, yeah. If you know that you're not up to it, you should probably decline a nomination for a job which will involve life-and-death decisions for thousands of people, and billions of dollars worth of property, which will need to be made with accuracy, acuity, and alacrity. And, yeah, I think that, if you're a moron, you have a responsibility to society to be AWARE that you're a moron, and not take that kind of job.

But Michael Brown, as head of FEMA, was aware that he was massively underfunded and understaffed, and kept trying to get more resources. Chertoff nixed it.

I count Chertoff as far more culpable than Brown. Chertoff was the one who ensured that any of Brown's efforts would end in failure.

Okay, Brown's efforts weren't all that impressive, even given the pitiful resources he had to work with -- but he's not primarily at fault.

And I blame Bush for putting him in that position in the first place, and for failing to release further resources once the fecal matter impacted the turbine, such as military resources -- which, apparently, he didn't release, because he wasn't aware he HAD to give those orders, because all the people around him were too frightened of his temper to even TELL him what the situation was. And I blame Bush for, apparently, being such a fucking ogre that people around him are afraid to tell him bad news. Not a good characteristic in a leader who might be leading in crisis situations.