Greg’s promotion of Ogre to Assistant Manager continues to anger the staff of the shop. As mentioned, A. called me yesterday to inquire if I would sign an open letter expressing concern over Ogre’s rehiring and promotion. I thought A. was behind it — no, I found out today that her boyfriend, Steve, also the store manager, brainstormed it. He is apparently quite put out that he had no say over this, despite his position.

He’s also really pissed because of something Ogre told him: “As soon as Best Buy hires me, I’m gone.”

What. An. Asshat.

Knight Ridder Washington Bureau:

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina’s early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government’s blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn’t shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours AFTER Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

Flabergasted?

Shocked?

Astonished?

Wish I could say “yes.”

Hat Tip:Andrew Sullivan

I don’t get why Chad hasn’t been fired from the Ed Norris show, and his latest ranting and screaming and cry-babying this hour is just such a ridiculous contrast to the well spoken former commissioner.

I still miss the old Out to Lunch Guys - Bill & Thrill.

Drink beer at the next Baltimore Blogger Happy Hour and a portion will be contributed to the American Red Cross for Gulf Disaster Relief. Woohoo! Run over to Jennetic for a full run-down of the event, but the broadstrokes are here:

WHERE: Slainte’s in Fells Point, 2nd floor.
WHEN: Thurs. Sept 29th, from 5-9 pm

I need to get me a ride.

Last night, surfing the boob-tube, I came across an advertisement for David Spade’s new show, The Showbiz Show.

David Spade is standing between a dog and a firefighter. The viewer is informed that the firefighter is paid $35,000 per year, while the dog makes $60,000 for work in television, films, and commercials. Spade says something along the lines of, “This is so outrageous! Only in Hollywood.” I suppose the intent is to outrage the viewer with how much money the dog makes as opposed to the firefighter.

Me?

I wonder how much David Spade makes for those stupid “Capital One” commercials. I imagine he makes more for one of those than that firefighter does all year.

… with just slightly incredible timing

Glen Pitre wanted to make a documentary about what might happen to New Orleans should a powerful hurricane strike the city.

Instead, he got the real thing.

Just weeks after shooting what Pitre hoped would be a cautionary tale about the region’s ailing levees and wetlands, which included dramatizations of residents hatcheting their way through roofs of their submerged homes, Katrina blasted the coastal town.

“We wanted the original film to warn people what nature could do to New Orleans,” says Greg MacGillivray, producer and co-director. “Then we watched it happen.”

The tentatively titled Storm on the Bayou marks a rare Hollywood project to come from the devastated area. A half-dozen films and TV shows have been shelved or relocated from New Orleans.

USA Today:

Before the storm arrived, St. Bernard Parish officials had asked the owners of St. Rita’s Nursing Home — Salvadore Mangano Sr., 65, and his wife, Mabel, 62 — whether they wanted to move the residents, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said.

“They did not,” Foti said. “They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients.”

Neighbors described a horrible scene that unfolded on Aug. 29, the day Katrina hit. Floodwaters rose to the roof of the one-story nursing home in St. Bernard, outside New Orleans, trapping elderly and infirm residents inside. Neighbors came in boats and smashed a hole in the roof.

“We tried to get out as many as we could,” said Steve Snyder, 29, an oil rig worker. “All we could go by was the hollering and screaming, ‘Help, help!’ ”

“We got 25 to 27 people out alive,” Snyder said. “And then we didn’t hear any more screaming, any more people calling for help.”

The Manganos surrendered to authorities on Tuesday and were charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide. Each count carries a maximum five years in prison. The two were released on $50,000 bond each.

A lawyer for the Manganos said they were being scapegoated. “They are completely innocent,” lawyer James Cobb said.

Cobb said the Manganos have a “spotless record” caring for the elderly and were presented with “a horrible choice” of risking the lives of patients on feeding tubes by evacuating them 70 miles away or keeping them at the facility. The Manganos contacted all relatives of the residents and told them of their plans to ride out the storm, he said. “To pick on these two people with the colossal failures of the federal, state and local government is out of bounds,” Cobb said.

Look, here’s the thing, I don’t see how these two can get charged for this, and how the local politicians who failed to act appropriately to evacuate such a large number of citizens from New Orleans don’t.

I suppose there are any number of reasons why busses were left to flood, why Amtrak trains were told to leave without carrying evacuees. I’m sure many people would have refused a mandatory evacuation order; that even with all the busses and all of the trains, not everyone would have been able to get out, even if traffic wasn’t jammed all to hell; but the complete dropping of the ball by the local government seems in many ways completely criminal.

I’ve gotten on the case of Michael Brown here often, and by default, our bumbling President. Two days ago was the fourth anniversary of the reason why FEMA is so critical to our national response to disasters, regardless of who caused ‘em: terrorists or Osama Bin Laden. The President who ran his campaign on “I’ll keep ya’ safe”, whose vice presidential candidate said “If you vote for the other guy, you’ll die”, allowed just that to happen by appointing an unqualified boob to the job of head of FEMA, an asshole who should’ve been appointed Ambassador to Lima was instead given a hugely important job and he fucked it up and the Federal response to Katrina has been atrocious, mind-boggling, criminally negligent, and absofuckinglutely inexcuseable.

That doesn’t mean the responsibility for the cluster-fuck that is currently New Orleans resides only on George W. Bush’s shoulder, a considerable amount is also shared by Mayor Naglin and Governor Blanco.

As has already been discussed widely on the blogosphere, once the hurricane hit, it was up to the Feds to get their asses mobilized. Instead, two days after the disaster, the Federal government seemed completely clueless … they should’ve turned on CNN or Fox and seen what was going on, instead it was just fucktardiness as usual. Whatever. This is what happens when you vote for a “frat boy” President because you think he’d be cool to go to a party with and drink beer, and because you think he’d take a 2×4 to Osama — he’s all, “Eh, terrorists bad, Americans great!” then hesitates to fire his bumbling FEMA chief until pressure from the left AND the right becomes too great to ignore (oh, and of course, Brown resigned, because Bush can’t stomach firing anyone).

My anger, however, at the negligent conduct of this Administration is tempered because, of course, with these guys, its hard not to escape the impression that they’re all negligent. In any case, ranting aside, none of the Administration’s incompotence excuses the apparent lack of action of New Orleans authorities into making preparations to evacuate the citizens of N.O. (or, failing the ability to evacuate everyone, to provide a safe, secure environment with food, water and security).

There’s a lot of talk made about the New Orleans’s levees breaking as one of the top three most predicted disasters to strike the U.S. As inexcuseable as it is for FEMA to have made no plans whatsoever for such a contingency, it’s mind-blogging that New Orleans authorities, who presumeably were very very very super aware of the potential disaster, had no better plans in place.

Is there anything you can say besides “What the fuck?” Well, clearly, I wrote a lot. See?

The system failed, on every level possible. I don’t see how there can’t be an independent commission, to determine what went wrong, what went right, and how to try to prevent this clusterfuck from happening again.

Oh, but don’t forget: it’s all the Democrats fault. Partisan hack.

One of the things I like so much about the Giant Food at Hunt Valley is the convenient automated check out lanes.

Before I go on, let me say that the horrible traffic flow of the shopping center and York Road, coupled with the horrible drivers who populate the Baltimore suburbs along York Road, along with the horrible drivers who work in Hunt Valley, make the Giant desireable only to those looking to grocery shop at night, which, usually, is when I go to grocery shop.

Did I mention the Giant also has the local branch of my bank inside? Which is also convenient because I can make ATM deposits at ten of midnight.

So, in any case, I enjoy the automated check out lanes. I was at first aprehensive about them, but they’re very simple to use, and once I actually used one, I was totally hooked.

Sunday night I was at Giant. I was there just before the Ravens game, and apparently everyone and their mother decided to do a grocery run for hot dogs and chips for the game. So there I am scanning in my items, scanning in my bonus card, swiping my credit card …

… and nothing happened.

Some problem with the automated checkout! I hit the “Help Needed” button on the touch-screen and finally, after several minutes during which I turned people away from the lane, “There’s a problem here, come back”, the nice lady working troubleshoot came over and identified the problem.

“You have to select what method you’re paying with.”

See, I’d tapped “credit card” on the touch screen. And I’d swiped my card through the reader. But the reader required me to specify credit or debit, and I hadn’t done that. In all of the hundreds of times I’ve used that frickin’ automated teller machine, my brain totally fried on me Sunday night.

It was slightly embarassing. “Look at me, I have a fried brain!”