Fat, Dumb and Happy in the Northwest

Since Ron and several of his readers are from the Pacific Northwest, I thought I'd share this happy news with you. Everyone is talking about how the head of FEMA is apparently an unqualified, incompetent bit of dreck from a massive Federal system of cronyism. But we can all take comfort in the fact that the country is broken up into a number of FEMA regions, and each has its own regional FEMA chief to supervise matters on a more local basis. Up there covering the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska, you've got Bush appointee John Pennington.

John Pennington, the official in charge of federal disaster response in the Northwest, was a four-term Republican state representative who ran a mom-and-pop coffee company in Cowlitz County when then-Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn helped him get his federal post.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush appointed Pennington to head the Region 10 office of FEMA, overseeing the government's disaster response in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho. He makes $138,000 a year.

Good work if you can get it. Well, be of good cheer. At least this guy has a college degree. Errr... sort of.

Before he was appointed regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Pennington got a degree from a correspondence school that government investigators later described as a "diploma mill."

So how did this guy wind up getting appointed as your emergency disaster management director?

Pennington said he did not seek the FEMA job, although he says he was interested in it. In 2000, he was the co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Cowlitz County, where Bush lost to Al Gore 49 percent to 46 percent.

So his sum total qualifications are that he was a state representative for the GOP, ran a coffee shop and helped Bush with his campaign. Sounds like a winner to me! So don't worry, you Northwesterners - if another one of the Sisters (Edit: Mountains) suddenly remembers that it's actually a volcano and blows its top, it seems that you've got a crackerjack leader at the helm. Hey, if nothing else he can probably hand out really good quality coffee to any of you who manage to survive.

Hey, Ron? Keep an eye on those mountains. And if you see any smoke.... RUN!