ebonlock | Just when you didn't think the incompetence could get worse

via Sadly No!:

At any rate, I turned to page 5 and found this lovely story:

Brown pushed from last job: Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign'

By Brett Arends

(I should note that in the print version, the headline simply reads, "FEMA BOSS FIRED FROM LAST JOB.")

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows. And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

"This can't be serious," you say. "Surely, his work overseeing horse shows was a short-term position, right? I mean, maybe he had some kind of relevant experience before then, right?" And you'd hope so. But if you skip to the end of the piece, you'll find a big ol' "Sadly, No!"

Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado. "We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. "This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years," she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

"He was asked to resign," Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.

"You gotta be shitting me," you say, slapping your head. "The guy who's in charge of the federal government's disaster relief program previously ran horse shows for 11 fucking years??? And he got fired from it???!!! How did he even get a job with the government???"

Ah, that's the best part!

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign.

This is today's Republican Party establishment in a nutshell. They hire totally unqualified people to run governnment agencies simply because they used to be partners in beer pong tournaments. I hope, I really hope, that I'd be just as outraged were a future Democratic administration to exhibit such outright nepotism and incompetence. I cannot imagine being a mindless apologist for this kind of stupidity.