Useless, Simply Useless

In this picture you see the news media protecting the public interest by interviewing and vetting Barack Obama during the election. This is probably the leg tingle that Chris "MSNBC's Golden Retriever" Matthews was referring to.

Now all of a sudden the media is reporting that unrepentent terrorist Ayers actually was a family friend of Obama and that Obama faithfully attended the church services of Rev. "God Damn America" Wright for twenty years.

So ... Obama throws these two under a bus, and the media resurrects them .... more than a week after the election is over.

What wasn't an issue is now an issue? What's changed? Oh, he's gonna be the President.

H/T to Protein Wisdom and Rotti Emperor Misha

Thank God The American Revolution Was 230 years Ago

In a stunning display of ineptitude, Special Forces of the French Army attacked its own citizens today at a military open house demonstration.

FOUR people including a child were in a critical condition today after live bullets were used instead of blanks during a French special forces open day, army and regional officials said.

Seventeen people were injured in total.

We wonder if by "Special" Forces the French are really indicating "Short Bus" Forces. That would make a lot more sense out of what follows.

Fifteen civilians and two soldiers were injured in the incident, of which the details remained unclear, involving a demonstration by members of a marines parachute regiment of hostage liberation exercises, a regional authority, Bernard Lemaire, said.

Four of the 17 were seriously injured, with two described as critical following "incomprehensible'' scenes at the barracks near Carcassone, in the country's south-west.

Now Jacques, put the pointy bullets back in the box next to the crayons. That's good. Now put the shorter, blunt ones in the, yes, they are very shiny and very pretty, Jacques. Yes, I like them too, Jacques, but we must not ever use the pointy ones except when we are told to.

According to local authorities, five children were among the injured. Five helicopters, 11 firefighters' first-aid vehicles and two ambulances rushed to the scene to help the injured.

What is really scary is that these are allegedly highly trained Special Feces Forces troops; the best of the best so to speak. I wonder if our Revolution would have survived this kind of French military expertise.

One soldier had been detained, although no explanation was immediately forthcoming for why the wrong ammunition was loaded into weapons. "All hypotheses are being considered,'' said a national police spokesman, adding the weapons had been "seized and placed under lock and key''.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The weapons did not do anything they were not intended to do. You should put the soldiers under lock and key.

Hospitals in the southern cities and towns of Toulouse, Narbonne, Montpellier and Perpignan, as well as Carcassone, were treating the wounded. Colonel Benoit Royal, head of the army's information unit, said a number among the injured were from military families.

I can imagine that a disgruntled soldier had a grudge or was looking to cause much embarassment to the French government (but then again you would think that there are safe guards against this sort of thing). But did none of the other soldiers check their weapons? The people attending the demonstration were their own families! No one bothered to take a peek at what they were about to send downrange into their own wives and children? Huh?

This is astounding, simply astounding.

Our Government In Action

In one way or another I have been involved in government bureaucracies for well over three decades. I just read about the latest TSA debacle and I am again underwhelmed with how some bureaucracies handle their responsiblities.

The problem here is how the TSA views the safety and security of their employees.

In a statement released Friday night, the agency said the external -- or portable -- hard drive contained information on employees who worked for the Homeland Security agency from January 2002 until August 2005.

This sounds suspiciously like an exterior USB drive that can store hundreds of gigabytes of data - a rather cavelier means of storing your personnel information.

Who in their right minds would keep this kind of employee information on a storage device that you can unplug and simply walk away with? It makes no difference if the office area was restricted to authorized personnel only. This device is no more than a big thumb drive waiting to be scooped up and put in someone's brief case or purse.

Why wasn't this information stored in a secure environment where access is controlled not only by physical limitations but also through electronic means on a need to know basis?

I use secure systems every day and I am amazed, astounded, dismayed, incredulous that this could happen in an agency allegedly devoted to national security.

Somebody, probably more than one, in the TSA leadership needs to have their head(s) forcibly removed from their ass.

But perhaps the TSA is merely following accepted federal standards for secure data systems.

In 2000 we had the Los Alamos caper with removeable hard drives containing nuclear secrets disappearing from vaults. They were later recovered tucked behind a copy machine. Allegedly this is a common area for hard drives to gather when they are lost and afraid. Ever since then I routinely examine the areas around our office copy machines for the poor little guys.

Here is a partial list of some of the more obvious shortfalls in the way our government handles sensitive information. The first 22 items are from this year alone...