tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post5555444369326970980..comments2024-03-28T05:47:44.752-05:00Comments on RIFLES AT DAWN: Homeland Insecurity: QuestionsTim Morrisseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00457723301178870851noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post-78821895367202244342009-12-29T16:40:09.192-06:002009-12-29T16:40:09.192-06:00You are correct on every count. In 2000, I report...You are correct on every count. In 2000, I reported a story about what happened on a Greyhound bus from Minneapolis to Akron. A drunken bully was in everybody's face. He was drinking, rifling purses, threatening people with a knife and, to top it off, he urinated in the aisle. Several Amish men on the bus grabbed the man, found a roll of packing tape and taped him to a seat so he couldn't move or make a sound. When the bus got to Madison, he was arrested. Maybe we need more Amish on airplanes. Homeland Security is working just the way it was set up. Unresponsive, money-focused, top-heavy, secret (so we don't know when they screw up, which is often) and ineffective when it counts.George H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00510456908334451963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post-44284445826511141312009-12-29T14:32:02.813-06:002009-12-29T14:32:02.813-06:00THere's a seventh query:
Why in Hell is Obama...THere's a seventh query:<br /><br />Why in Hell is Obama saying "alleged" terrorist, and why is the US d of Justice going to prosecute the loser?<br /><br />Screw the attorneys. Rifles at dawn.Dad29https://www.blogger.com/profile/08554276286736923821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post-6670638413821624002009-12-29T08:38:05.871-06:002009-12-29T08:38:05.871-06:00The very concept of a "Homeland Security"...The very concept of a "Homeland Security" superagency is freighted with failure. It is too big, too general, too wasteful, too clumsy and hopelessly larded with careerist bureaucrats and political appointees. It's like NASA on steroids, run amok. It is a contraption that would have given Rube Goldberg the cold sweats.<br /><br />Start with the name, with its uncomfortable reminiscence of the "Committee for State Security" we were all taught to fear by its Russian initials -- KGB. Our version is more Keystone Kops. The name sounds like the agency should be run by some guy wearing a monocle.<br /><br />The name may have been dreamed up by the same crowd who gave us the National Protection and Programs Directorate. It's a Homeland Security agency of course. Why do we have something called a "directorate"?<br /><br />The top job seems to attract incompetents or fools. It's hard to tell them apart. Tom Ridge would have had us duct-tape our windows to keep out nuclear radiation. He gave us the color-coded "threat level" designations that kept stand-up comics supplied for years. (Remember the color sequence with this mnemonic phrase: George Bush You're Our Rambo.) <br /><br />He was nearly followed by Bernard Kerik, Rudy Giuliani's corrupt police commissioner. Kerik quickly imploded and is currently in jail.<br /><br />That brought us the wholly forgettable James M. Loy, who, as "acting secretary of Homeland Security," gave the agency "values-based leadership" and made sure the pencil supply improved (seriously).<br /><br />Close behind was Michal Chertoff, a former federal appeals court judge, who chose to go boning up on security at a seminar in Atlanta while Hurricane Katrina was tearing New Orleans to shreds. He was "Heckuva Job" Brownie's boss. BTW ... Brownie's previous experience was as the head of a country-clubby group of Arabian Horse fanciers.<br /><br />When Chertoff rode off into the sunset he was replaced by Janet Napolitano, the 21st governor of the Red state of Arizona. She has recently discovered that cheerily saying things are hunky-dory does not make them so.<br /><br />The uberagency has a dizzying and disparate array of lesser entities under its unwieldy umbrella: everything from the Secret Service to the Coast Guard to an ill-sited biosafety level 3 animal disease biological lab on a low-lying Island off Long Island's Orient Point that sits directly in the path favored by hurricanes that periodically visit the Northeast. You'd have better luck herding cats than you would getting those utterly different entities to work smoothly together under the Homeland Security bigtop.<br /><br />So, when you think about it, perhaps Ms. Napolitano had it right. The agency is working pretty much as you'd expect it to.hieronymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post-56076762898854400932009-12-29T07:47:04.373-06:002009-12-29T07:47:04.373-06:00The scumbag is alive because he flew Northwest, no...The scumbag is alive because he flew Northwest, not Southwest. Carlos Mencia has a great routine about why Southwest Airlines will never be targeted by terrorists (because of the violent working class people who fly Southwest, basically). He cites an incident that happened before 9/11/01 in which a mentally ill man on a Southwest flight tried to enter the cockpit; his fellow passengers beat him to death.Ordinary Jillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05967266466238236424noreply@blogger.com