GAO says moving infectious disease lab is risky

Homeland Security Department (DHS) trying its best to become the new FEMA.

Planning is for suckers.

I consider my readers to be of average or superior intelligence, so let's take a look. The government has an island where researchers can experiment with highly contagious animal diseases and someone in DHS thinks its fucking intelligent to move said lab to the continental US?

Does Murphy's Law come to mind?

The Homeland Security Department, which wants to move research on highly contagious animal diseases from an island lab to the mainland, never fully assessed the move's safety, an official of Congress' investigative arm told lawmakers on Thursday.

Note: Headline links to source.

Feeling secure? Well don't #22

Sometimes these come in pairs or even triplets. We'll see.

Headline: Pay No Attention to This Spy Scandal, Move Along

A suspected Hezbollah mole who penetrated the ranks of the FBI and CIA pleaded guilty Tuesday to falsely getting U.S. citizenship and snooping in FBI terrorism files.

Former waitress Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., admitted arranging a sham marriage with an American in Michigan to win U.S. citizenship. She parlayed that into sensitive jobs as an FBI special agent and a CIA operations officer, sources said.

Ya getting the warm fuzzies yet? Yeah, me too.

Via No Quarter.

Feeling secure? Well don't #21

Another one. File under you can't make up this shit.

Headline: Airport screeners missed bomb parts (AP)

Government investigators smuggled liquid explosives and detonators past airport security, exposing a dangerous hole in the nation's ability to keep these forbidden items off of airplanes, according to a report made public Wednesday.

Thank gawd for the idiot-in-chief who is watching our backs.

Via Yahoo! News.

What.The.Fuck?!?!

First off, notice I'm not the only fucking person to use profanity on the internets tubes.

Johnson, who has no homeland security experience, is a professional Bush loyalist. While Johnson may have familiarity with some aspects of DHS’s budget, he appears to have no experience in the many responsibilities of the department, including immigration, air travel security, disaster response, and other aspects of our nation’s homeland defense.

He is one of Bush’s oldest friends, having attended both prep school and college with the President. Johnson served as Bush’s gubernatorial chief of staff in Texas before heading up the Bush-Cheney transition team.

Jesus H Christ with ADDA, how much fucking damage can Bush do? Don't answer that. I really don't want to know.

Cross posted at Brilliant at Breakfast.

Via Dependable Renegade.

Feeling secure? Well don't #17

You really don't want to know this, but...



I don't want to get really preachy on your ass, but do you realize your country is being run by a collection of monkeys? They may appear human, but they're monkeys. They can't protect you, care for you or provide for you any better than the habitants of the monkey cage in your nearest zoo.

Let me expand on that.


The TSA has my name on their "no fly" list. This is in spite of the fact I'm no more a threat to the US than a Malaysian magpie.

(via Jonco)

Feeling secure? Well don't #16

I really don't need to comment.

Legions of ill-trained, low-paid private security guards are protecting tempting terrorist targets across the U.S.

Richard Bergendahl is one of them. He fights the war on terrorism in Los Angeles, protecting a high-rise office building for $19,000 a year. Down the block is an even taller skyscraper, identified by President Bush as a building chosen for a Sept. 11-style airplane attack.

(read more)

How bloggers worked the Boston 'bomb hoax'

Mooninite
Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Are you happy now, Bush? You've created a nation of Nervous Nellies.

The latest bomb scare to upset a major US city wasn't the handiwork of the Al Qaeda terror network. This time, it was the Cartoon Network.

It all began Wednesday morning when a transit worker spotted a wired device on a girder underneath Interstate 93. After police found similar devices across the city, they shut down key roads and subway stations and called in federal officials with Homeland Security.

It took most of the day before a worried public would learn that the suspicious devices were merely electronically lit signs depicting a cartoon character known as a Mooninite – and were part of a "guerrilla marketing" campaign by Turner Broadcasting, gone awry. But even as security officials labored to get to the bottom of the incident, a parallel investigation was under way and open to all – in the blogosphere.

Bloggers claim they were the first to suspect that the "suspicious packages" weren't bombs. In fact, some had been blogging about the Mooninite marketing campaign for weeks, given that similar Mooninite signs had been sighted in other cities over the past couple of weeks.

Online investigators

Boston police haven't said whether the blogs or bloggers played any role in their own investigation, but some security analysts say such online social networks ought to be a prime law-enforcement tool during emergencies – or perceived emergencies.

And there's no justice in Boston if the two guys hired to install the devices are prosecuted.

(read more)