“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

These were the words GW Bush had yesterday for Mike Brown, his appointed chief of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, widely seen as totally bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Political Wire reports that Brown became head of FEMA with no relevant experience before becoming deputy director in 2001. He had spent 11 years overseeing horse shows for an organization in Colorado---and was fired from that job.