OK, now I'm about to get enraged. Scratch that, I'm long since already there. Here's what greets me on Google News:
Napolitano Acknowledges Security Failed in Allowing Terror Suspect on Plane FOXNews - 52 minutes ago
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that airline security failed in allowing a Nigerian on a terror watch list and allegedly armed with explosives onto a Detroit-bound flight, a turnaround from her declaration a day day earlier ...
And the cries for her resignation begincontinue...(they started when she pointed out the danger from the Right in this country)
Janet Napolitano is being demonized for a "failure"? Anyone remember this diary?
There's more of my froth and screaming over the fold.
Just in case anyone asks for a link, and the code would not fit into the intro: Here's the wiki on Richard Reid. My diary rant was about how in December of 2001 Richard Reid - shoe bomber and the reason you have had to take yours off at the security screening - was not stopped by anyone in the Bush administration but by (tell me you remember this) passengers on the plane.
Translation: The Bush Administration failed to stop Richard Reid.
All through the years after 9/11 - especially into 2008 whenever I had to listen to some Republican blowhard say "Bush Kept Us Safe ™" I reminded them that in the case of Richard Reid, it was passengers on the plane that saved us, not anything that the Bush administration did. But I remember no apologies from Bush or Cheney or Tom Ridge or Colin Powell or Donald Rumsfield conceding failure.
Because in the Bush years, that was good enough for anyone. In the Bush years we had to keep up this masturbation fantasy that the government never did anything wrong so we could keep believing we were still the Greatest Country In The World ™. Now of course, the rules have changed, and since a Democrat (and did you know he's black?) Barack Obama is president and it's fashionable to blame the US for every failure from the Bank bailouts (which we have already forgotten took place while Bush was still president and McCain voted for) to that ugly infected hangnail you got last Tuesday.
So this Nigerian gets on the plane, and the NSA and all their wiretaps didn't stop him; it wasn't the CIA or FBI who had zeroed in on him and intercepted him before he got on the plane in a foreign country, it wasn't anyone at the Pentagon who captured or blew him up anywhere on the worldwide battlefield that we had declared was the "War on Terror", and none of the "Air Marshalls" or other measures put in place by the TSA didn't stop the man on the plane. The passengers did.
Just like Richard Reid in 2001. And yet in this case the headline is that your government failed; in 2001 and all through January 20, 2009, we heard that your government (under Bush) kept you safe.
(INSERT SOUND OF GAME SHOW BUZZER HERE WITH BIG RED "X" ON SCREEN:)
WRONG
People - listen to me: the only attempted hijacking in the news today is by by people who lie and sell bullshit for a living for purely political motives, and what ought to scare you more than the terrorists is that so many of your friends, your neighbors, your family are buying it. Bush could do no wrong, Obama can do no right.
People - if they really believe what they are writing, then they really should start shooting us or they will be guilty of treason for knowing of it and not stopping it. Clearly they don't even believe their own hyperbole or they'd be surrendering for their own arrest for dereliction of duty, "I saw our country being taken over and surrendered, and I stood by and wrote Op Ed pieces and blog postings." If what they are telling us is true - our country really has been taken over, surrendered, compromised, sold out - and all they do is boost their ratings but ultimately never take any real steps to stop the damage or "save" their country - who's the traitor?
Call me Chicken Little, I'm sure they will, but the one thing that has the potential to destroy this country will be this country. Remember: only a diamond is tough enough to scratch or cut another diamond. Think that through - if we really are the greatest, most powerful country on Earth, the only thing that is ever going to destroy us is going to be...
...well, a part of us.
Isn't that what the Right is claiming? Maybe they're just short on mirrors over there.
All I'm asking for is that we have the courage to admit they may be correct - America is being torn apart and compromised - and the people who are to blame are the ones who think Democracy only works when they win. A democracy only works when people respect the results. What we have right now in this country is a large population of Republican extremists that will accept and swallow any failure committed by a Republican as God's Will, but declare any fault committed by a Democrat to be a call to arms and a necessary cry for overthrow of the government. Come on - the Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln, a man who's most famous speech says that honored dead shall not have died in vain so that the form of government we now have shall not perish from this earth, and 150 years later we had Republicans threatening to secede - not over slavery, but over a bailout their own party was in control of when it happened.
Do you get it yet? Democracy is failing before your very eyes, and the people who are ensuring the failure are the ones who think that they and they alone know what Democracy™ is supposed to look like. Bin Laden is winning. Democracy is been proven to have a critical flaw, and it's being revealed by Republicans. They are the ones who are acting as if democracy only worked when they win the elections and run the government. How can it be that Democracy is the greatest form of government ever conceived in the history of human civilization, and the US of God Bless A is the most perfect embodiment of it when we've got 50 million Right Wing Republican hyperbolists who are constantly claiming the country has been "surrendered" because the president bowed - or unless they're in control of it?
And given how the last eight years went while they were in control over it, if anyone had the right to call for overthrow of a damn thing, it was us. I guess we're too polite, or too timid, or too...something.
Keep in mind my prediction: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzalez or Donald Rumsfield will never travel abroad - ever - for the rest of their lives. They know they'd be arrested for war crimes.
This is great. Democrats don't have the courage to prosecute our own government failures; Republicans are ready to launch a revolution over every sparrow-fart. This is going to turn out just fine.
The only thing I want to hear today is someone point out that this Nigerian creep is not one step removed from Richard Reid and if anyone wants to run around with their hair on fire and claim that Obama or Napolitano "failed", then we need to bring Bush et al and his lackies back on stage for their concession speech so that they may accept their failure award as well.
You know, like the one they got for 9/11 that they never accepted.
snafubar out.
Another hour of therapy has been forsaken in place of this screed, so from the ranks of the uninsured I say: "thank you".