Teenagers Get It......Homeland Security? Not So Much

Did you do what I did early Saturday evening this past weekend?  I watched the news unfold about how a young man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutalleb from Nigeria boarded a plan bound for DETROIT, with a ONE WAY ticket, paid for with CASH, with NO LUGGAGE and a seat request right in the acknowledged "DON'T LET TERRORISTS SIT IN THIS SEAT BECAUSE IT CAN BEST BLOW THE SKIN OF THE PLANE OUT AND GET TO THE ENGINES EASIEST" seat?  Oh, and his dad, a prominent Nigerian, had previously told the US embassy in Nigeria that his son had begun to associate with radical muslims and had been going on trips to lovely places like Yemen as of late.  In case you missed it, if you go to your local Al Qua-eda travel office, Yemen is now the destination of choice if you want to learn how to blow yourself and others up.  I think you get to wear one of those neat black hoods too as you learn to swing from monkey-bars and jump and roll over pylons, just like you see in those great Al Qua-eda training videos.  Those monkey bars come in handy when a 500 lb laser guided bomb finds your terrorist ass...or maybe not.

Anyway, I just saw this on my Yahoo;

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitanoconceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two areas of aviation security — how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened — as critics questioned how the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.

A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.

"Our system did not work in this instance," she said on NBC's "Today" show. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."

Do they just find the stupidest f**king person in public life and put them in that Homeland Security post?  I think the second biggest window-licker has a choice between Secretary of Treasury or head of the SEC!

Anyway, what I immediately started thinking about was all our brave men and women in the armed forces that I saw in the airports a couple of weeks ago, many of whom are probably either coming back from or going to Afghanistan to keep us safe from terrorism.  Imagine how they feel when they are fighting in perhaps the true A-hole of the planet to get the terrorists (This is what President Obama tells them they are there for) and then a line of dopes from Lagos to Washington DC let a guy like Abulumu...whatever..."Example A" of a terrorist trying to blow up a plane..get on a freaking plane!

I think the last two or maybe three decades of economic growth and prosperity, fueled mainly on bullsh*t, not only covered up the incompetence and fraud of our financial system, but also masked (only partially of course) what a pack of boobs we have elected to lead us.  Now that they actually have to try to make things work and function, they have no idea how!  Republican? Democrat?  Seems to make no difference.  I don't blame them though, I blame myself.  I was so busy trying to get rich moving pieces of paper around I didn't do my job as a citizen.  I knew most of these folks were greedy, spineless and incompetent, I just didn't care enough to do anything about it.  Not anymore.  We have to make this country better for our kids. 

Speaking of kids, here is a great article I saw in the New York Times this weekend.  Not so good for commercial real estate and high-end retailers but that's just too bad.  This is better.  Recession? Teenagers Get It

Comments

[hidflect]

Why are you going so easy on the DHS? You missed out that they had been warned about this guy specifically (apart from his father) 3 months previously. Not so long so you'd forget and not so soon that you can't prepare for his attempt.

[Strangebrew]

Oh, and that NY Times article about the teens....Nice how the Times delved into the correlation between record high teen unemployment and the continued raising of the minumum wage. Oh wait, they didn't?

[Strangebrew]

Nothing to see here, he's just a criminal, there is no 'war on terror' and as such there are no terrorists. He has his lawyer and will be protected by the ACLU and CAIR. No harsh interrogations. I actually heard on the news that he may get up to 20 years in jail and a fine of $250k. That's nice.