Intellectual Gymnastics to Avoid Uttering "Islamic Extremism"

The Aspen Institute is a non-profit leadership organization which aspire to foster open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues.  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson's cautious comments about not associating ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) with Islam showed that one can be so open minded that one's brain falls out.

 Of course, Johnson's conceptual contortions about not naming radical Islam is nothing new.  Avoiding utterances that could be construed as blanket condemnations of the so called "Religion of Peace" (even though Islam is better translated is "Submission") dates back to President George W. Bush after the September 11th 2001 terror attacks.  Western "leaders" have seemed congenitally skiddish about associating plethora of attacks with perpetrators shouting "Allahu Akbar" with Islam.

 

 Is this reluctance to utter reality because our elites are indoctrinated in political correctness and employ a "real world" version of the UNH Bias Free Language Guide?  Maybe it is the progressive hubris that by changing the lexicon one can alter inherent attitudes.  Or maybe there is the realization that when implemented Islam is a holistic religious and political system and by associating the violence with the religion it enlists otherwise unenthusiastic adherents.

 But as Sun Tzu wrote in "The Art of War"  in the Sixth Century BC "Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time."    

Jeb Bush on Homeland Security

Properly Prioritizing Homeland Security

Barack Obama on DHS Funding

  

 During the lame duck session of the 112th Congress, House Republicans fully funded FY 2015 budget, with the exception of Department of Homeland Security, in which a short term continuing resolution was applied to allow for a rider which would not Congressionally fund President Obama's Executive Action on illegal immigration.

 In the new 113th Congress, Senate Democrats refused to allow cloture to debate the DHS bill, lest the funding bill pass on majority terms.  The Obama White House and lackeys in the Lamestream Media and Senate Democrats are striving to frame Republicans for being obstructionists for not rubber stamping Mr. Obama's extra-constitutional effective amnesty. 

 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested bifurcating the Executive Amnesty issue from DHS funding.  But this legislative legerdemain was acceptable to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) only if House Speaker John Boehner acceded to Obama's will.  So far, Speaker Boehner holds the attitude that Senate Democrats ought to "get off their asses" and vote on the House bill. 

The GOP opponents seek to claim that Republicans will endanger the nation due to not funding DHS's $38 Billion budget. Alas, 80% of DHS's 240,000 employees are essential workers, who are required to report to work without a guaranteed pay check (even though all workers have routinely been paid after a budget standoff).  So security should not be an issue, even though the Obama Administration has been hyping the Boko Haram and al Shabob threat on the Mall of America and other Jewish owned shopping centers (but this has nothing to do with certain religions). 

So now the Obama Administration's tact has shifted to hardball politics.  During a townhall meeting telecast on MSNBC and Telemundo, President Obama dared the Republicans to pass the House bill, which would merit another Obama veto.   

  

 May the majorities in Congress stick to their principles and not quickly fold to a passive aggressive bully chief executive.  No matter what, the Lamestream Media is ready to repudiate Republicans. But the shutdown is so targeted that the public won't shed tears over the World War II monument being shut down as during the Flying Flip shutdown of October 2013.

h/t: Bruce Plante

Boehner: Senate Democrats Must "Get off Their Asses"

Over the last four years, Republicans have been painted as obstructionists as House bills have been passed and died in the Democrat controlled Senate because Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) as Senate Majority Leader did not want votes which would embarrass the President and force a veto.  In the six years of the Obama Administration, the Senate only passed a budget from regular orders once, the rest being Continuing Resolutions.

 In the 113th Congress, the House passed a budget early in the cycle, but which contained a rider which prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from expending funds from the Obama Administration's extra legal Executive Amnesty program.  Senate Democrats refuse to allow debate on the budget, much less block a final vote, as they hope to pressure the Republican Majority to cave in order to avoid an entire shutdown of DHS at the end of February .  Of course, most of DHS are essential workers so a hypothetical shutdown would just involve 33,000 administrative workers.

 Judging from the tough talk from Speaker Boehner, the House majority won't back down. But the Lamestream Media will still find a way to frame Republicans as being dangerous obstructionists. 

   

Exposing the Naked Truth About Transportation Security Theater

Ex-TSA agent Jason Harrington

The Politico Magazine published a provocative point of view  piece by Jason Edward Harrington titled: “Dear America: I Saw You Naked– And yes we were laughing. Confessions of an ex-TSA agent."  The article drew back the curtain on exposing the naked truth on Transportation Security Theater.  Harrington is an aspiring young writer who joined the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) after graduating college in 2007.   Harrington presumed that it would be a short stint before pursuing a creative writing degree, but he remained with the most public branch of the Homeland Security Administration until 2013.

The former agent’s recollections confirmed many cynics assumptions about the TSA.  Unfortunately, some of the revelations are worse than one would imagine for a professional part of government supposedly committed to ensuring safety in the homeland.



Harrington hated having a job which required him to pat down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants.  The ex-TSA officer chaffed at the absurdity of confiscating jars of homemade apple butter or nail clippers from airline pilots as they might impose risks to a flight.  Morale at the TSA was the lowest among all federal workers.  According to Harrington, the TSA rank and file privately felt that “[T]he agency’s day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds.

The salient question is Why TSA employed such egregious customary operating procedures?  The ex-TSA author did not address the issue but the answer is obvious.  Political pressure from the left which prohibited profiling forced the feds into the farce of groping Swedish grandmothers in wheelchairs and innocent infants.  So the TSA engages in politically correct Transportation Security Theater “reaching out” to all rather than using a risk based approach to airport security.

Despite the public pronouncements against profiling, Harrington reveals that it ain’t necessarily so.  There was a list of a dozen nations which are: “Selectee Passport List”, which automatically trigger enhanced security screenings.  The included nations: Syria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and North Korea.  Those choices seem sensible. Yet, there is one glaring omission–Saudi Arabia.

One wonders why an agency supposedly entrusted with homeland security would not scrutinize a place that spawned 11 of 12 9/11 hijackers and sponsors many Salafists wanting a worldwide caliphate?  Harrington opined that the list was politically driven with diplomacy playing it’s role, as always.   But the Selectee Passport List was effectively limited to middle-eastern travelers.

A striking passage from Harrington’s account was:

Most of us knew the directives were questionable, but orders were orders. And in practice, officers with common sense were able to cut corners on the most absurd rules, provided supervisors or managers weren’t looking.

But after the Underwear Bomber, 23 year old Nigerian  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, sought to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, the TSA started to push full body scanners as a primary scrutiny device.

It is sad to know that TSA employees knew that the  Rapiscan Systems full-body scanners, which cost $150,000 per machine, would not work even before they were installed.  Harrington recounts that, off-the-record,  the Rapiscan Systems trainer said of his product: “It’s shit” as it would not be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket.

While these full body scanners were ineffective in detecting cleverly hidden guns and explosives, they were good at detecting everything else.  It became sport for TSA agents to use the Image Operator (“I.O.”) rooms as break rooms both because it was the one place in the airport where there were no security cameras on them and it was an excellent place to ogle at the full body scans of compliant passengers.

Some of the lingo which is recounted in the Harrington piece reveals the voyeur tendencies operating in Transportation Security Theater, the morose morale issues and the danger of letting putative quasi- Law Enforcement Officers run wild with power.

• Bin Loader: What a TSA employee is for the first month of his or her employment.
• Code Red: Denotes an attractive female passenger wearing red
• Retaliatory Wait Time:  Result when a TSA officer doesn’t like your attitude.
• X-ray X-ray X-ray!: Code for an attractive female passenger, general.
• White Shirt: Labeling  a TSA agent still under the impression that the job is a matter of national security. 

As the jargon indicates, TSA agents could act in a puerile manner with impunity against passengers,  gawk at every body imperfection and hassle anyone for whom they did not care, claiming “random searches” for national security.

Harrington had two jaw dropping quotes related to the I.O. room.  The truth that: "Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display.” This is not unexpected, but the schadenfreude of using these full body images as entertainment in an unofficial break room is galling.  A more salacious passage was more troubling: “Officers who were dating often conspired to get assigned to the I.O. room at the same time, where they analyzed the nude images with one eye apiece, at best.”  So TSA types were getting off at the hoops that commercial airline passengers have to endure in order to get on airplanes.

So the TSA compelled passengers to stand inside radiation-emitting devices which were ineffective, while these full body scans were sport and arousal agents with the TSA.  No wonder the TSA lingo termed “Opt out” as being a smart passenger.

But when a YouTube video posted by Jonathan Corbett in March, 2012 revealed some deficiencies in the  Rapiscan Systems in detecting cleverly concealed weapons.  Afterwards, the TSA started frisking every fifth passenger in a clumsy work around to a $40 million mistake. This was not the first technical goof by TSA.  There was the ShoeScanner which GE developed which were unveiled with great public fanfare at Orlando International Airport in 2007. But the expedited roll-out missed an important element.  So instead of expediting the screening, it still required half of the passengers to take their shoes off because the $200,000 machine did not catch something.  TSA withdrew them from service.  Then there are the EDS’s CT baggage scanners which cost $1 million a piece compared to the older AT scanners costing $150,000 but which former TSA Chief Kip Hawley proved the same level of security.

Aaron Tobey

Another adverse influence of Transportation Security Theater is cultural, which is hard to quantifiably measure but is quite real.  Take the case of Aaron Tobey, a 21 year old passenger who was arrested for disorderly conduct  in Richmond, Virginia as he was strip searched at a TSA checkpoint for having  with the Fourth Amendment written on his body.  Presumably, 4th Amendment underwear and "Don't Touch My Junk" briefs would provoke similar scrutiny.

Others are less daring but influenced by the budding police state.  I know a frequent flyer who is in process of applying for a TSA fast past card and is so anxious that nothing interfere with that process that the person is chary about complaining over bad service in a restaurant lest a systematic hiccup make her an “SSSS” stamp (automatic special screening for national security risk).  But as Nirvana put it in Territorial Pissing “Just because you’re paranoid. Don’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Considering the NSA “meta-data” personal information grabs and the IRS getting all your health information– remain calm, there’s no reason to panic.  Not!

In the wake of 9/11, some might make excuses for TSA overreach.  But to paraphrase  Ben Franklin’s warning: Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.  As Jason Harrington’s expose of Transportation Security Theater shows, we are not getting the security while the TSA is taking liberties with the flying public.

It is worth reading Jason Harrington's TSA confessions if you want to laugh while you cry. Harrington's prospective novel based upon his TSA experience to still elicit a wan smile about a truly sad situation over Transportation Security Theater.

h/t: Jason Harrington
      Ben Garrison
      Marshall Ramsey

The Most Interesting Woe-Man In the World?

It is amazing how Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's official story has changed about the Saudi so called student who was guarded as a person of interest before the Obama Administration dropped all concerns about an individual due to be deported as a terrorist. 

In a fluid investigation of an atrocity like the Boston Marathon Bombing, it is understandable the investigators might have false leads.  But it is curious how Napolitano's story has changed. On April 18th Big Sis sarcastically refused to answer any questions from Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC 3rd) about any person in custody.  Napolitano said on the record: :“I am unaware of anyone being deported for national security reasons at all...again, I don’t think that he was technically a person of interest or a suspect that was a wash”.

Less than a week later, Janet Napolitano testified before the Senate that the Saudi "student:

He was not on a watchlist.  What happened is — this student was, really when you back it out, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He was never a subject.  He was never even really a person of interest.  Because he was being interviewed, he was at that point put on a watchlist, and then when it was quickly determined he had nothing to do with the bombing, the watch listing status was removed..

Obviously, there was double speak from the Secretary in the DHS in that utterance as he was not on a watchlist before he was put on a watch list.   And now the U.S. government officially does not know where this material witness to the Boston Bombing has gone.

Napolitano also relied on the student visa, where he was supposed to be a student at the University of Findley, except this foreign exchange student never showed up for classes in Northeast Ohio, yet managed to be front and center for the Boston Marathon when there was a terror attack.  The government claims that the Saudi student transferred to Boston.  The problem is that the University of Findley has no records of the transfer.

There continues to be a hub of strange activity about the Boston Marathon bombing, but the bizarreness continues to emanate from between the beltways in the District of Calamity. But if America is still has the rule of law  instead of a rule of men, it might be woe for the most interesting Woman still in the Obama Cabinet.

h/t: The Blaze 

DHS Newspeak and National Security--Help Big Sis' Out

Mini-home malquoted doubleplusungood. Dayorder rectify goodthink for prolefeed bellyfull before Two Minute Hate.

There are times that it just seems apropos to use Newspeak from George Orwell’s seminal novel 1984 to cover the security issues in America, particularly regarding the Department of Homeland Security (Mini-home).

In the early days of the Obama Administration, Pentagon officials were warned not to refer to the Long War or the Global War on Terror but instead to bluster bureacratese “Overseas Contingency Operations”. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tried to avoid refering to 9/11 or terrorism but preferred such euphemisms as “Man made disasters.” The Obama Administration considered what Major Nidal Hasan in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, where 13 people were killed and 29 injured was not homegrown terrorism or domestic jihad (despite the shooter screaming “Allahu Akbar”) but was a workplace violence incident.

 Alas, this “nuanced” approach is not limited to Newspeak...

  READ MORE at the DCBarroco website.