Douchebag of the Week (2/28/10): Louise Slaughter...

(Note: This feature is a bit early this week, as I have much to do on Monday, and blogging will be light-to-nonexistant).

Louise Slaughter (Dingbat, NY) is living proof that no matter what the biological experts have told you, a mule most certainly CAN successfully reproduce...and the end result will be some kind of stubborn, butt-ugly, impenetrably-stupid sort of beast with ungainly features, which emits a loud, ungodly-nasal braying sound that sets the nerves on end so badly that it can cause your scrotum to jump back into your chest cavity.

The Beast can bray all day long, but once you get used to it it's like any other background noise -- after it's initial shard-of-broken-glass-like shock -- and you begin to ignore it, to filter it out. Your subconscious mind decides that if you take this seriously, if you continue to listen to the noise, you will be driven insane and so it blocks it all out, and besides, you've wasted enough time wondering how and why this Beast should sounds like this, and decide that you have better things to do. Before you know it, years have passed, and you've forgotten the painful sights and sounds associated with the Beast.

Years later, when you are reminded of the Beast, you find it has had an awful lot to say in the intervening years. But you haven't been listening for a long time, and so you've barely remembered how monumentally-stupid it was back when you first heard it, and think it couldn't possibly have gotten worse with the passage of time. Now, when you've been forced to take notice again the Godawful Noise comes back and it's spouting things that defy the boundaries of simple words like "stupid", "idiotic", "retarded". A new class of adjectives might be required. And somehow, you realize, this Beast that you once ignored has somehow managed to make a successful career out of useless, painful noise and stupefaction.

Such are the qualities of Representative Louise Slaughter. Yet another Carpetbagger (why is it that this state continually looks outside it's own borders for it's liberal Congressional representation?) she's managed to reverse the old formula of Reconstruction -- a period that she's old enough to remember well -- and move from Kentucky to New York to bring her special brand of bullshit. She's been in the Congress for a very long time, alternately vegetating and gathering dust, and now Alzheimer's might be setting in, because she doesn't sound reasonable or very coherent. She's getting worse in her Old Age (it's said that Louise is so old that when she attended school, there was no such thing as history). The only thing more dangerous than letting an elderly and apparently-confused Louise Slaughter at an open microphone on national television, is to let her at an open microphone so that she can tell the outrageous -- and so-obviously-totally-contrived -- tragedy of a woman who had to use second-hand dentures. Worse, she might regale you with some nonsense about how an insurance company now considers domestic violence to be a pre-existing condition. The resulting footage is hardly very pretty.

After a hard day of listening to President Obama fall in love with the sound of his own voice all over again at the Potemkin-Health Care Summit, and having delivered her Dentures and Dignity diatribe, Louise slipped back into her coffin for a quick afternoon nap, taking the opportunity to have her fangs (no second-hand oral prosthetics here!) sent out to be cleaned and sharpened so that she could sink them into something she really and truly cares about even more than fictional women who swipe their dead sisters' upper plates;

Prosecuting CIA agents who interrogate terrorists.

I wonder, would Louise consider it a gross violation of human rights if terrorists were forced to use second-hand dentures? She probably thinks it evil that we have dedicated professionals doing the things that need to be done in order to defend this country against those who would kill us. No dentures for the indigent is a crime in her mind, but defending the country she wants to cough up the free phony ivories is a no-no. Getting taxpayer-subsidized choppers is a human right, being able to walk down the street without having to dodge airliners and falling office towers is not. Because of the activities of our CIA, FBI and Military interrogators, Louise Slaughter and her cohorts of the Criminally Stupid everywhere are able to live in a world where they have time to devote to this sort of nonsense, where they can earn a really good living being an idiot in public, and still remain safe enough to reorder their personal priorities so that the subject of hand-me-down teeth takes precedence over physical security and liberties.

People who are capable of thinking this way are every bit as dangerous a terrorists. Perhaps we should waterboard them, too? People like this drop IQ points with every bathroom visit.

The law which she tried to introduce by underhanded means -- and which the House dems quickly yanked off the floor when it was discovered -- was stuck into an amendment which was itself stuck into another amendment which authorized the extension of certain aspects of the Patriot Act -- you know, that evil piece of Bushitler legislation that dems all screamed was a violation of basic human and civil rights, but have voted to extend four or five times already?

The super-secret-camouflaged-stealthy amendment would have held our intelligence folks at risk of criminal prosecution if they so much as sneezed in the direction of a terrorist in custody. If they made a terrorist physically or mentally uncomfortable, if they ridiculed him, if they demeaned and degraded or tricked him, if they played upon his fears and cultural taboos in order to get information, the interrogators could be prosecuted and sent to prison. She tried to sneak this amendment in, literally, in the dark of night, and in a way which precluded any debate on it. In fact, had someone not been alert enough to question what the Amendment was -- on the House floor and as it was being added -- it would have passed into law without anyone knowing...except the first people to be prosecuted.

A classically-douchey move all around. Nice going, Louise.

Look up "Douchebag" in the dictionary, and you'll probably find a picture of Louise Slaughter somewhere next to the definition. We salute you, Louise Slaughter. Congratulations on being named as the biggest douchebag in America this week.

The Real Enemy is In Congress, Not Afghanistan...

Dem lawmakers tried to sneak a provision in that would have punished CIA interrogators yesterday. You can read about it here and here.

I'm especially interested in this quote, from Rep. Pete Hoekstra:

"That Democrats would try to bury this provision deep in the bill, late at night, when they thought everyone's attention would be focused on the health care summit is a testament to the shameful nature of what they were attempting."

This is par for the course, Congressman. This is what democrats always do; they sneak things in behind closed doors in the dark of night, because when the public actually knows what they're trying to do, there is usually a thunderous uproar.

Judging from the level of ideological fervor some lefties have for hanging every CIA agent that ever gave a cross look to a terrorist, don't be too sure that Healthcare Summit wasn't the real distraction so that they could try this stunt.

The System Worked, Part V...

Unless, you're called before Congress to explain why it didn't.

You know, I'm so glad we have these idiots in control of the TSA, the FBI and CIA. I'm glad that we have things like the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (that doesn't get used), and crappy software designed by those who bid the lowest but had the best political connections. I'm so happy I could drop a log at the fact that after 9 years we're not only forgetting the lessons of 9/11, but we're ignoring the ones we've learned since, while pouring billions of increasingly-scarce taxpayer dollars into a federal sinkhole that doesn't do what it's designed to do: catch terrorists.

But then again, it's representative of what has been done in much of this so-called War on Terror.

The DHS and it's affiliates don't capture terrorists, and the soldiers we sent overseas don't capture them either. No one is actually fighting a war "over there". If they were, millions of Muslims (may of them potential terrorists) would be dead, and those that survived would be sufficiently cowed so as to never even think of taking up arms against the United States ever again. Instead, we're spending billions to rebuild Iraq (a country we largely destroyed in the first place), and billions more to nudge Afghanistan forward... into the Mud Age, probably so that IBM, Mary Kay and Dodge can sell them laptops, lipstick and overpriced pick-ups when the conflict is over. These are people who don't understand the basic concepts of personal hygiene, yet someone has decided they'll make a wonderful consumer class one day. A few Muslims terrorists get a drone-fired missile up the Nether regions, but many more roam the landscape freely planting IED's which kill and cripple our troops...who aren't allowed to fight back except under increasingly stringent and legalistic rules of engagement.

And when it's all said and done, what do we have to show for it?

Democracy in the Middle East? Don't be stupid. An end to terrorism? It only ends when terrorists and the people who support them are dead, and not enough people are dead yet to make terrorism an unattractive option. Right now, terrorism pays -- just ask Hamas. Myriad opportunities for Congress to engage in graft with taxpayer money in the name of 'defending' the American people?

BINGO!

Because if there wasn't graft or politics involved in the process of both war and airport security, a) the war would have been won, with the Middle Eastern nations bowing before America, falling all over themselves to pay us tribute, and keeping their violent retards under wraps, b) you'd be able to take a flight from Birmingham to Albuquerque without having to spend an extra four hours at the airport getting undressed, x-rayed, interrogated, herded like cattle, drinking your own breast milk, while having to pack even less luggage in see-through bags for your little adventure than Bear Grylls or Les Stroud does.

It wouldn't cost twice as much, be such a headache, and you'd even be able to get a meal and use the toilet on the flight. It might actually even be a reasonably-bearable experience without all the extra-normal bullshit demanded by a security system furnished at the expense in time, money and sanity of the law-abiding, but which gives those with ill intent with a distinct advantage: no one wishes to offend the would-be murderers amongst us. The System is full of built-in loopholes, and administrated by mouth-breathing government types with little-to-no motivation to actually succeed at anything, let alone their primary mission.

We could be dead, but they'll still have their jobs in the aftermath.

This kind of thing ought to scare the fertilizer out of you.

The System Worked, Part IV...

This bunch at Homeland Security couldn't catch a cold, let alone a terrorist. And no wonder; they're looking for for the wrong people.

Now, I understand that Homeland Security is a huge, multi-departmental mega-behemoth, and that administrative errors are abound to occur in great quantities. You just hope that when they do, your personnel are smart enough to be able to improvise adequately. But this takes the cake.

It points out two glaring failures of the government when it comes to security; the first is the (often) lack of good information. This causes people to make guesses, and worse, these are often guesses which bear no relation to the information the government does have. In this case, having no good information on OBL, the government makes a guess at what he might look like. Being lazy and unaccustomed to actual work, the government employee who created those portraits then does what every 10 year old with a book report due does...and gets his picture off the Internet, probably with a Google search. This smells of "make-work" project, and the result shows.

The only thing that makes this half-way funny is that the dude who's picture finally gets lifted happens to be a dyed-in-the-wool communist. I'll bet he's working on the lucrative lawsuit as we speak -- to strike a blow against the bourgeois, fascist Amerikkka, of course, never for his personal enrichment. Thought never crossed his mind...

The second failure is the reliance upon technology. The government is depending upon the power of the Internet and media to alert people that we're looking for a terrorist who may now be disguised as a Spanish Communist. All well-and-fine; that approach often works in many a criminal case. But is there anyone on the ground actually looking for OBL? Naturally, no one will tell us if there is or isn't (for obvious reasons), but I would hazard to guess that there isn't a solitary soul tasked to scouring the Tribal Regions of Pakistan looking for OBL, because that would violate Pakistani sovereignty.

And if we're about anything in this Public-Relations-Campaign-With-Guns-Against-Terror, it's all about the legal niceties.

Nothing beats a standard-issue pair of Mark I Eyeballs, attached to a properly-calibrated M1 Braincase. You can have all the drones, full-body-scanners, and Google in the world, and it still doesn't stop anyone from boarding an aircraft with TNT Boxer shorts. The technology is merely a tool; the solution is people smart enough not to fight terrorists with Google searches and Photoshop, but with their faculties.

But then there's no opportunity for graft; government contracts can't be given out in return for campaign contributions, there's no federal unions to squeeze for money and votes. Congress would have no say and be made irrelevant to the process. No...it's much better to have the current system, which doesn't work and puts lives at risk, but which provides the opportunity for Congress to put it's grubby fingers into many pies and pinch a few plums for itself and it's friends, right?

Somebody had better be walking the unemployment line today if this is the kind of work billions of taxpayer dollars buys. If he were working in the private sector, he would be; because he belongs to a protected class (civil servant) that's umbillically attached to Congress by a thread of easily-stolen and mismanaged taxpayer funds, he's probably due for a promotion instead.

Get the government out of the "security" business and put it in the hands of private contractors who know what the fuck they're doing...

"What Sort of God Rewards a Mass-Murderer?"

So asks Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy over the sordid tale of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who was the Jordanian doctor who blew himself up inside a CIA 'secret base', killing eight CIA employees in Afghanistan. The event was so dramatic and important that Leon Pannetta -- the CIA Director -- couldn't be bothered to cut his vacation short (then again, an airliner almost being blown up in mid-air didn't cause his boss to cut his short, either, so what do you expect?).

LGF, as an agnostic (i.e. recovering Roman Catholic) let me just say this: the actions of that man have nothing to do with God. She would never condone that sort of thing. Maybe I can explain it;

See, he's just yet another lunatic ejected by a sick culture that is unable to come to terms with progress, and incapable of making the great mental leap into the 21st Century. Mostly because his 7th Century mindset better suits his other psychological problems: he's hung up about sex to the point where he fears women enough to wrap them in burlap and keep them in slavery; he believes in the powers of witchcraft; he's a narcissistic little shit convinced of his own superiority despite the complete lack of evidence for such, and despite the fact that he eats and wipes his ass with the same hand; he is possessed of the poorest hygiene and smells awfully of urine and the Nasty Spices-from-the-far-end-of-the-rack that you never use in your kitchen; He's just stupid and desperate enough to believe the words of a dead child molester are a valid basis of a system of morality, government and religion.

He's typically a petty, goat-herding little tyrant, powerless in real life, afraid of everything, elevating paranoia to an art form. He's incapable of telling and accepting the truth, at all, and especially not truths that might cause him to reconsider himself, his culture and his way of life. He's an angry little worm seeking revenge upon the entire world for the severe beatings and non-stop mind-and-ass rape he suffered at madrassah at the hands of his teachers, uncles, cousins and perhaps even his father. He's continually lashing out at a world in which his only pleasures are the guilty ones he surreptitiously enjoys with hump-backed, quadrupedal mammals...and we just don't mean his Momma. Although if he could fuck her, he probably would...but then there's probably a verse in the Koran that says "Thou shalt kill they mother with a heavy stone after she blows thee, but thou must snuff her before thou fillest her with thy man-milk..." or something like that. Besides, fuck a goat, fuck your mother, what difference does it make? Eventually some Ayatollah will make up some new rules out of thin air, to alleviate the guilt and shame, and also advise you on how and under what conditions you may eat your latest sexual conquest.

Naturally, such a demented and thoroughly disgusting person can only find release in the murder of innocents -- because as the Obama Administration's crack terrorist psychological profilers are fond of telling us -- "A murder is simply an extroverted suicide..." which entitles the greasy little bastard to an expensive trial at government expense and eventual parole back to his sandy little shithole of origin. where he will begin the process anew by ass-fucking and beating the next generation of little boys. Thus, the Circle of Life is affirmed...at least for him...And the next generation of would-be underwear bombers is created.

No, LGF, that has nothing to do with God at all. And as for the wife, there's something left unsaid here. When she says:

'I am proud of my husband. My husband accomplished a very big operation in such a war,' she told reporters. 'If he is a martyr, may God accept his martyrdom.'"

She really means:

"I'm awfully glad the filthy little cocksucker is finally gone -- and thankfully before he could behead me. It was only a matter of time before he beheaded me. That's like foreplay to some of these guys. In the meantime, I'm going to bask in the attention, and accrue the bennies, afforded the wife of a "martyr" -- small though they may be, and perhaps I can make enough scratch off this moron's death to eventually get a plane ticket to a civilized place with indoor plumbing. Like Detroit or Toronto. Yeah, Detroit and Toronto are definitely a step up from sand-flea Heaven..."

I hope this answers your question...

The System Worked, Part II...

Okay, so we've gotten a sorta-kinda-half-assed explanation of what happened, vis-a-vis Undibomber, with yet more (according to some, very shocking revelations) to come. The bad publicity caused by a Homeland Security Secretary who is extraordinarily clueless, a State Department who can't revoke the visa of a terrorist they themselves have identified, a TSA that can't stop people from walking backwards through security checkpoints, and a host of unconnected dots, has finally stripped Barack Obama of his stock excuse -- "It's George Bush's Fault" -- and has him admitting, finally, "It's My Responsibility."

It remains to be seen how much of this is simple political theatre, and how much is actually indicative of a genuine change. Is this President, finally, learning? Is he beginning, after Fort Hood and Pantybmber, to realize the nature of the threat? We can only hope so. His "The Buck Stops Here" speech was the first time I can remember this guy at least looking like he got it. Perhaps he's just stung by the criticism that he wouldn't interrupt his vacation to deal with Pantybomber, perhaps he's come to the realization that there have been two high-profile attacks on his watch, or maybe his Keystone Kops lineup, starting with Napolitano, was so incompetent and so publicly humiliating, that the Big Guy decided to grab the reins and save himself some grief?

We'll see.

In the meantime, we hear that the CIA didn't exactly take the Knickerbomber seriously, either, but then again, Leon Pannettta couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation either when seven of his agents were snuffed out in a bombing attack in Afghanistan, so it begins to become clearer almost everyday just where all this lackadaisical attitude comes from. From the top.

Obama treats terrorism as if it were a social issue, instead of an act of war. Eric Holder treats it as a criminal issue, in his mind there being no difference between a terrorist and stick-up man. Hillary Clinton doesn't speak of terrorism at all, unless she can't avoid it, because that re-opens the whole "Bill Clinton didn't get Osama Bin Laden when he had seven chances" box. Leon Pannetta doesn't believe it exists -- even when it strikes close to home and claims the lives of CIA agents in the field. Janet Napolitano, the shockingly-dumbest person I've seen come down the pike since John Edwards, can't wait to get in front of a television camera to paint defeat as victory -- only to have to stumble over a recantation a few hours later that makes even less sense than her previous announcement.

If you want to see how that sort of attitude, and that sort of 'professionalism" brought us a guy with a bomb in his underpants, read this.

Perhaps now, this Administration will keep it's eyes on the ball, and get serious about stopping people like this.

Update: Clueless Janet opens mouth, inserts hoof...again. (with Video!)

No Smoking Gun...

That's what John Brennan, Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of Something Having to do With the CIA and Homeland Security had to say about the inability to identify and stop the Pantybomber.

According to Brennan, speaking on Fox News Sunday, the Homeland Security folks had "snippets"of information about the Briefbomber, but not enough to put together into a coherent picture that would have allowed security employees to prevent him from getting on that flight to Detroit. According to Brennan, "there was no smoking gun..."

Except that, well, that there was a clear picture...for those of us who aren't government employees. And usually, when you have a smoking gun -- it's already too late.

I guess for someone to be considered a danger to the security of an aircraft, he has to walk through the airport with a flashing neon sign stapled to his forehead that says "I'm a TERRORIST!".

Let's give Mr. Brennan the benefit of the doubt for a moment, and let's say that the Security Apparatus did, in fact, have all the information that it's been reported to have had. According to those reports, Abdulmutallab was denied a visa by the British government, information they pass on to the U.S. Government, he was known to have been in Yemen, a hotbed of international jihad ---and information they got from Abdulmuttalab's own father -- who also told the CIA officer at the American Embassy in Lagos, "Hey, I think my kid might a jihadi."

That information was in the system, and someone took enough notice of it to put Abdulmuttalab on some sort of watch list.

Did they not know about this in Nigeria or Amsterdam? Because the kid got on planes despite being on a watch list. He has a Muslim name. He's travelling internationally without a passport or visa. He's buying a one-way ticket...with $3000 in cash. He has no luggage. None of these actions raised any eyebrows in either Amsterdam or Nigeria, and in addition, conventional airport security screenings missed his bomb entirely. What are the problems there, and why are such things still happening nine years after 9/11?

And then, finally, we have an aircraft damaged by fire, several hundred passengers saved by one of their fellows, and Janet Napolitano proclaiming a false victory.

No, no smoking guns here at all.

You begin to see a pattern emerge when it comes to the problem of catching terrorists before they get on aircraft.

These guys all follow the same modus operandi (I'll say it: the same profile), and yet, no one seems able to stop them. They all engage in the same kinds of behavior which are supposed to be red flags, but which get ignored or overlooked. There is a distinct and identifiable procedure that can be observed which often identifies them; shrewd (or merely just conscious) security people will be able to recognize them in a heartbeat, and thus, we hope, stop a would-be Peni-bomber. The same people who brought you 9/11; the high-school dropout, the obsessive cell-phone-user, the compulsive texter, the brain dead, the lazy, the unobservant, are still on the job. If you need proof of this, a man shut down Newark International last night because he went through 'security' ...backwards....and then promptly disappeared.

The next pattern: they happen to be Muslim. They have Muslim names. They often look Middle Eastern (and yes, I know Jose Padilla and Richard Reid don't look Muslim, we'll get to that in a minute). And somehow, less attention is paid to them and more to the grandmother in the wheelchair. Why? Because no one wants to insult Muslims. Fuck 'em; we wouldn't have to go through all this bullshit if it wasn't for them. If they don't want to be hassled and insulted, tell them to turn in their crazy uncles, brothers and fathers before they kill again. They know who these people are. I'm not concerned about inconveniencing Muslims and making them feel bad about themselves. When they stand up against their own for my right not to get blown up in coach, I'll start giving a shit about their self-esteem. The point is to discourage the Would-Be Muslim Bomber from even attempting to get near the airport by letting him know "We're waiting for you..."

As for Reid and Padilla, they probably (I don't say definitely) would have been caught with the application of some common criminal profiling techniques. Trained police officers are often able to spot the criminals and troublemakers before they do anything, because experience has given them a keen eye for certain details, and allows them to interpret subtle behaviors the rest of us would miss. But here's the thing: if we were profiling Arabs and obvious Muslims, we'd discourage them from flying almost entirely --- and we'd have the resources to better catch the Reids and Padillas with good ol' fashioned police work instead of a multi-billion dollar government boondoggle who's response to a bomb is to restrict rest room use..

Okay, so getting back to Mr. Brennan's assertion that there was No Smoking Gun, given what we know now, it seems that:

a) Homeland Security would never have been on the lookout for Pantybomber in the first place. The information on hand did not point to an "imminent" threat -- just a possible one. TSA and Homeland Security don't work int he realm of the possible, only that which is actually happening, and even then, it's bureaucratic process probably prevents any meaningful action from taking place. I guess to Homeland Security a threat of jihad is simply that. Political Correctness prevents this bureaucracy from paying close attention to the people it probably should be paying attention to (i.e. Muslims and criminals), and even when it is on the ball, the 'system;' is inflexible and reactive, rather than dynamic and proactive.

b) The system which is supposed to share and disseminate this security information and intelligence absolutely creaks and is grossly inefficient. The great clue here is that even when the security regime is in full possession of an awful lot of dots, there is no one to connect them. And certainly not on a Holiday weekend. It's apparent that when the security apparatus is in possession of information that could save lives, that information often falls into a bureaucratic black hole which ensures it's rarely acted upon, or even reacted upon smartly, but which always figures large in the inevitable over-reaction in the aftermath of a (near-)tragedy.

c) Airport security is too-obviously focused on finding conventional weapons (knives, guns, and so forth) and not in catching terrorists. That is a focus that needs to be shifted if we're to actually start catching some of these guys before they do harm. We're about to spend billions on full-body scanners in major airports, and I wonder if the money wouldn't be better spent teaching the slugs at TSA how to spot and stop criminals. The focus is put almost entirely upon technology which, unfortunately, tends to take the responsibility away from a human being. Human beings who begin to realize they aren't responsible for anything soon rely too much on the technology, and failures proliferate. Put the human beings back in charge, train 'em up, and then hold them responsible.

It appears from the tale of the Underwear Bomber that, yeah, there was a smoking gun. Many of them. The line goes all the way back to the American Embassy in Lagos, it runs through the State Department, the CIA, Homeland Security and the TSA. None of these mega-agencies seem capable of putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 4, not without bureaucratic lag, and certainly not in a timely fashion which might save someone's life, and certainly not with the would-be killer's father ratting him out.

Mr. Brennan should be ashamed of himself for having the gall to appear on television yesterday to defend the indefensible (see here). Nine years after the World Trade Center became a smoking crater, this country is still unprepared to defend itself against terrorists, and it's because of incompetence at the highest level, political correctness run amok, and a failure to apply common sense.

No Smoking Gun, indeed...

Update: More on your government's stupidity here and here.

And Still More: Terrorism is a Low Priority for Obamabi Administration, says GOP. Also, Brennan should have resisted the urge to open his big, pie hole and not spill the beans.

New and Improved More: Ralph Peters says the Terrorists are outsmarting us.

CIA Outpost Bombed, 7 Killed...

The bomber was apparently not searched...at all. This is in Afghanistan, no less. The CIA let a complete stranger walk into a 'secret base' and blow himself up. As JammieWearingFool points out in his post, though, at least one Administration official finally used the word terrorism. I guess that's some kind of progress.

But where have we heard of this sort of thing before? Starting to see a pattern develop vis-a-vis Muslim bombers and the Government's security mindset? If someone had searched Pantybomber, he would have been caught. If someone had searched this guy, he would have been caught.

Lesson: search Muslims, find bombs. But apparently our government hasn't figured this out yet. It probably needs another 18-month-long-and-horrednously-expensive "study" to confirm this.