When I was a kid, I was a huge baseball fan, practically obsessed with the sport. The 1994 strike drove me away, and when I came back, I didn’t have anywhere near the same passion.

Except when it comes to the Yankees. I’ll root against the damn Yankees anytime, anywhere. (Unless they’re playing the Dodgers, in which case I unplug the TV and don’t open the sports section.)

Watching the Yankees lose is even sweeter when they get close enough to win and pull up short. It’s happened over and over again in the past few years (last year’s collapse against the Red Sox was the stuff that dreams are made of), but it never gets any less sweet.

So, thank you, Angels! Here’s hoping you go all the way.

Update: Oh, and I am really delighted that Gary Sheffield and Bubba Crosby were unhurt in this crash, because I don’t have to feel any guilt over whooping and hollering at the sheer comic opera of this little pas de deux.

And one more thing … if you want to talk about unlikely names, isn’t Bubba Crosby at the very top of the list? Just sayin’.

Today’s Washington Post reports on this weekend’s Freedom Walk in Washington D.C.:

Organizers of the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and “sterile,” said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.

[…]

Barber said that organizers would rather not have such stringent measures on their event but that police had requested them.

Pettiford said officers would patrol to keep interlopers out because the Pentagon restricted the event in its permit application. “That is what their permit called for, so we have those fences to keep the public out.”

[…]

What’s unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest.

This is a freedom march?

As a wise fictional character once said:

“You keep using that word…I do not think it means what you think it means.”

A few days ago, I expressed the opinion that Michael D. Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), should be replaced. In the comments to that post, I wrote:

The director of the agency is spectacularly unqualified. He spent the previous nine years running disciplinary hearings for the International Arabian Horse Association, and he was fired from that job. Curiously, that nine-year portion of his experience isn’t listed on his FEMA bio. It’s almost as if he were embarrassed by that part of his record.

The head of FEMA should have a background as a senior leader in the military or in the global construction industry. The person in that job should know how to coordinate massive projects and how to lead people under pressure. Brown wasn’t qualified for the job, and the two people who are directly beneath him are equally unqualified. Please read their bios and tell me why anyone could expect them to do a competent job in their current positions.

Apparently, the Secretary of Homeland Security has come to exactly the same conclusion after reviewing FEMA’s disastrous recent performance. The Washington Post reports today that a qualified replacement is now in place:

With Michael D. Brown, the embattled public face of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, taking harsh criticism for the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the secretary of homeland security this week assigned a top Coast Guard official to help bail him out.

Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard’s chief of staff, was assigned on Monday to be Brown’s deputy and to take over operational control of the search-and-rescue and recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast. The unprecedented task of coordinating the massive effort was handed off to a leader and expert who was described by colleagues as unflappable, engaging and intensely organized.

Allen is also familiar with the inner workings of the Department of Homeland Security, where the Coast Guard has landed alongside FEMA as one of the designated main protectors of the United States. Allen has been one of the primary shepherds of change at the Coast Guard since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has been praised for his ability to reach out to other agencies to develop “big-picture” approaches to homeland defense.

Retired Adm. James M. Loy, former commandant of the Coast Guard and former deputy secretary of Homeland Security, said yesterday that Allen has the experience to help steer the federal response to the Katrina catastrophe in the right direction after early shortfalls. When Loy was the Coast Guard chief of staff from 1996 to 1998, Allen was his resource director, and Loy said he “always brings a new idea per minute to the table as far as how to grapple with difficult situations.”

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff handpicked Allen to essentially lead the federal recovery efforts in New Orleans. As Brown’s deputy, Allen will work with Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore — head of the military’s Joint Task Force Katrina — to oversee, manage and lead all military and civilian recovery efforts.

They can spin this as giving Brown an assistant, but any reasonable person can see who’s really in charge now – and not a moment too soon. I don’t understand the logic expressed by some people that now is not the time to replace Brown. Why on earth do you leave a person in place who is doing a terrible job and continuing to make bad decisions based on a complete lack of experience? This move suggests that the Director of Homeland Security thinks the operation needs help right now. It would’ve been nice to have Adm. Allen running FEMA for the past two years. Maybe he or someone with an equally impressive resume can take over at FEMA after this crisis is past.

Comments are closed. If you have an opinion, put it on your own blog and leave a trackback.

I just read this editorial from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, reprinted in Editor and Publisher.

It makes me furious. The spectacularly incompetent director of FEMA, Michael Brown, should be fired. So should whoever hired him. And whoever hired whoever hired him. And so on up the line.

Update: I’m reading a lot of comments (one on this site, and on other sites as well) from people who think that the state and local authorities deserve the lion’s share of the blame. Sorry, I don’t buy that at all. The Department of Homeland Security should have owned this crisis from Day 1, and they know it. In fact, they outsourced the management of the crisis to a private firm last year. Here’s the press release:

IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana
June 3, 2004

IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In making the announcement today on behalf of teaming partners Dewberry, URS Corporation and James Lee Witt Associates*, IEM Director of Homeland Security Wayne Thomas explained that the development of a base catastrophic hurricane disaster plan has urgency due to the recent start of the annual hurricane season which runs through November. National weather experts are predicting an above normal Atlantic hurricane season with six to eight hurricanes, of which three could be categorized as major.

The IEM team will complete a functional exercise on a catastrophic hurricane strike in Southeast Louisiana and use results to develop a response and recovery plan. A catastrophic event is one that can overwhelm State, local and private capabilities so quickly that communities could be devastated without Federal assistance and multi-agency planning and preparedness. [Emphasis added]

Thomas said that the greater New Orleans area is one of the nation’s most vulnerable locations for hurricane landfall.

The Governor of Louisiana requested Federal help on Thursday, August 26. The official proclamation of emergency by the state was issued on Friday. The President responded to her request by declaring a state of emergency on Saturday:

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe…

Ordinary citizens in two-wheel drive vehicles were able to get into town to help people. All the major networks had people on the site from Day 1. So why wasn’t FEMA there?

Because the people running the agency are completely unqualified, and the agency has been gutted.

There will be plenty of time to talk about computers later. Right now this country is in a crisis that is getting worse daily. If I worked for a company that were being managed as poorly as the relief effort in New Orleans, I’d quit in disgust. Sadly, we can’t quit, and we can only hope that someone competent appears on the scene. Soon.

Meanwhile, I’m donating the check that Google just sent me to the American Red Cross, along with an amount equal to the check I’ll get in a few weeks for this month’s ad revenue. That’s a total of $350. If you’ve been waiting to make a donation, I hope you’ll give as well.

If you want a reason to give more, I have an offer for the first 30 people who would like one of my books. Make a donation to the Red Cross or any legitimate charity that is working in New Orleans. Give as much as you can afford. Then send me an e-mail (ed-blog AT bott DOT com) with the details, including your address, and I’ll send you one of my books, signed. Tell me which one you want. I’ve got lots of copies of the standard edition of Windows XP Inside Out, Second Edition and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003 and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP and Ed Bott’s Your New PC. I’ll pick up the postage and handling. All you have to do is donate to the relief efforts.

A report from Think Progress points out that infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government’s “no-fly list.”

This can’t be good news.

Edited to fix broken link.

The “high pants award” can now be officially retired.

(Fark, via Lost Remote)