two quick things. because everybody’s going to have, and likely already has had, something to say about this fiasco.

first there’s the recent revelation that FEMA held a fake news conference on Oct. 23, in which FEMA employees posed as reporters, asking softball questions about the agency’s response to the California fires.

whitehouse spokeschick Dana Perino said on Friday “it is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House.” - neglecting to add “after all, we’ve already been caught paying reporters like Armstrong Williams and giving press credentials to neocon prostitutes like James Guckert. not to mention the Defense Department paying Iraqi papers to plant ‘positive’, American-penned stories about the war.”

but it gets even better. because ‘pat’ philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs (and presumably the orchestrator of the fake news conference) is leaving the agency before mike chertoff has a chance to ‘reprimand’ him.

leaving to embark on a ‘bring your own audience’ speaking tour?

no.
leaving because his current position doesn’t pay well enough for him to be able to afford health insurance for his family?

no.
leaving because HE’S BEEN NAMED THE HEAD OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

bingo.

funny thing about the director of national intelligence. fancy position, grandiose title. originally it was meant to have been ‘national intelligence director’, but with so many federal acronyms pronounced as words, somebody didn’t like the sound of ‘nid’ (rhymes w/ ‘kid’) - so they changed it to ‘dni’ (rhymes w/ ‘deny‘). brilliant.