DeMint, Hypocrisy, and the TSA

I’m sure this is accurate, but linking back to the story would be a good idea.

Are you saying if DeMint let it go through 3 weeks before the security SNAFU and the new TSA head would allow the TSA brainiac workers to unionize, then that would have stopped the underwear bomber?

<

p>Are you seriously trying to make this point. Obama’s appointment would have prevented the event? Want to take odds on that?

Has candidate Brown said his position on this? I’d be curious to know his opinion. I feel confident I know Atty. General Coakley’s opinion on the matter.

block on Obama’s TSA nominee could be his Waterloo.

<

p>Blocking the nominee because of his competence would be appropriate but blocking him becuase of an ideological beef about whether TSA workers can organize is putting politics before national security.  

<

p>Without a department head, there’s no telling what important security initiatives could have been accomplished by now that are not.  

<

p>If Republicans are going to play the national security card and politicize everything in order to get re-elected, then they should expect to wear it around their necks when there’s blow back.  

<

p>Remember when Bush Republicans were crying like whinny titty babies about judicial nominees getting an up or down vote?  How is this so different? Obama’s TSA nominee should get an up or down vote and DeMint should stop making us all less safe because of his petty concern about unionized work forces.  
 

Curious why the mainstream media has not picked this up yet and pointed out the hypocrisy of the GOP simultaneously blaming the administration while feverishly working to make it fail through obstruction and mistruths.

<

p>Actually, several of the major papers have had articles about this.  Going so far as to make the argument in the terms you state would run counter to their “objectivity” credo, but they have definitely pointed it out and made the contradiction evident.

<

p>Here’s a recent LA Times article on DeMint’s blocking of the confirmation:
http://www.latimes.com/busines…

While the politicians carp on about what airline security is, I can’t find one person that believes the Christmas incident was anything but a setup.  The perpetrator was on a watch list, his father snitched on him, witnesses say he was lead through security in the Netherlands (which, I am told, has electronic strip search) by another man.  Witnesses say that while the guy was messing with his 3 ounces of explosive in the plane, another man was filming the event.  Did something go wrong or did everything go right?

<

p>Yemen is now the center of terrorism in the world we are told.  Yada, yada, yada.  Now we can justify the wholesale slaughter of people in Yemen.  

<

p>Today’s news, does scare the bejesus out of me.  A vessel filled with LNG from anywhere on earth presents a formidable threat when it comes to a high population area such as Everett.  No more volatile if it comes from Yemen or any other country, my concern is that its detonation by terrorists, real or imaginary, could cause horrendous casualty.  Would such an event be staged to ensure an invasion of Yemen?  Do we trust our government to tell us the truth and protect its citizens?  What’s the track record?

<

p>“That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.” Thomas Paine

As a reminder the August 6, 2001, GB’s presidential daily briefing was entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US”.

<

p>Full transcript here:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOL…

<

p>I did not state that having a current TSA head would have stopped the underwear bomber. But, it is clear that we need the position filled. Now!

<

p>

Remember Obama said he wouldn’t be “rucshed” into a hasty decision regarding the Afghanistan policy (and people here supported him). Well, maybe Sen DeMint was right in not “rushing” a decision about the TSA…

<

p>UPDATE…

<

p>

The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by The Washington Post show.
…

Southers, a former FBI agent, has described inconsistencies in his accounts to Congress as “inadvertent” and the result of poor memory of an incident that dates back 20 years. He said in a Nov. 20 letter to key senators obtained by The Post that he accepted full responsibility long ago for a “grave error in judgment” in accessing confidential criminal records about his estranged wife’s new boyfriend.

<

p>Hmm… now what? Let me guess the response from BMGers… “It was a long time ago so of course he forgot” “Hey, compared to Geitner’s tax problems, this is small change…”

…should be the same government-wide regardless of what that policy is.  It should not be ad hoc.

Some of the same Republican lawmakers currently criticizing the President for softness on terrorism voted back in July 2007 against legislation that, among other reforms, provided $250 million for airport screening and explosive detection equipment.

The Improving America’s Security Act of 2007 was a relatively non-controversial measure that effectively implemented several un-acted-upon recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Eighty-five Senators voted in favor of the bill’s passage. Seven missed the vote (several of whom were on the campaign trail, including Barack Obama, John McCain and Chris Dodd).

Eight Republican Senators, however, voted against passage, including Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), James Inhofe (R-Okl.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ari.). read more

By Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

   Torture really is a slippery slope.  First it was the ‘ticking timebomb’ where torture was OK.  Now it’s an ordinary ‘panty bomber’.  It’s only a short hop skip and a jump to use torture on US citizens suspected of ‘heinous’ crimes such as multiple murders or child kidnappers. From there what about torturing those who smoke pot to find their suppliers.

   Once we are used to it and accept it it will be used whenever we feel like it.

   One question no one, that I’ve seen, has ever asked those who advocate torture.  What happens if you torture an innocent person by mistake?

Well, we have tortured people by mistake. And what happens when you do is that you are tempted to find a way to hide that mistake. And since you have the power to torture, and torture can coerce evidence of guilt, you simply torture some more to get the right answer, or you torture someone else to get corroborating evidence. This has already happened in America. read more

This essay from 2003 offers a different perspective. It suggests that we need to reconsider how we think about intelligence gathering before we can fix the system we have.  Certainly we can do better.  But it is not as simple as just getting more information.  

If you start on the afternoon of October 6th and work backward, the trail of clues pointing to an attack seems obvious; you’d have to conclude that something was badly wrong with the Israeli intelligence service. On the other hand, if you start several years before the Yom Kippur War and work forward, re-creating what people in Israeli intelligence knew in the same order that they knew it, a very different picture emerges.

http://www.gladwell.com/2003/2…

Witnesses reported this guy was escorted onto the plane by a James Bond type character.  Zero mention of this via mainstream channels yet it is all over the New World Order anti-globalist internet as a deliberate false flag news bandwidth occupying precursor for the war on Yemen.

<

p>Don’t say I didn’t bring it up.