YOU CAN'T CATCH 'EM ALL - How come Amazon can track millions of books, but Obama can't track one loon? Because Amazon doesn't have to track millions of books whizzing around the warehouse at random.

The Odds of a Terrorist Attack: 1-in-16,553,385 Departures. In other words, it ain’t very damn likely.

I recently read a commenter who accused the Obamoids of ineptitude by asking why Amazon can track millions of books while Obama can’t track a batshite crazy Jihadist who got caught in-flammable delicto. Fair enough question, though the book metaphor sucks.

Amazon rocks inventory control because they record all books in, check all books out, and the books aren’t silently running tither and yon around the warehouse while they do it.

Even the best intelligence can’t ferret out every lunatic Larry and when it does, the sheer volume of intelligence puts Amazon’s task at the sub-nanobyte level of complexity. Ultimately, it still takes humans to evaluate intelligence and make decisions on where it goes on the to-do list. We have finite manpower, but limitless information. This information overload is partly why the Patriot Act makes the problem worse, not better. Rather than collecting even more, we should be collecting less and concentrating on the most meaningful tidbits.

Swiss Cheese Terror Defense
That’s not to say the status quo is OK nor that the administration and Congress have done a sterling job. However, there are legitimate reasons why our terror defense is as holey as Swiss cheese, some of which have little to do with politics.

Our War of Error president got his weenie stuck in the roller immediately after 9/11 when he and The Black Widow of State™ got briefings on a Qaeda plot the month before it took place. It would’ve been great had they acted on it, but given that the briefing wasn’t particularly detailed or as important as other events on the agenda, it’s understandable. Just because you’re an oafish goober doesn’t mean your mistakes aren’t explainable.

It would’ve been nice if he’d taken responsibility for it happening on his watch, but accountability never was one of his strong suits. But that whole “bring it on” thing really was monumentally stupid.

To their credit, Obama and Janet Napolitano first admitted to a “systemic breakdown”, but then backtracked to “the system worked“. It’s too early to say if their responses are good or bad in hindsight. But, tying air traffic in knots with contradictory procedural changes doesn’t bode well. Furthermore, explaining afterward that the confusion was all part of the plan looks Bushonian at first blush.

Both administrations were saddled with the monstrous Department of Homeland Insecurity. One of the few Bush decisions I ever agreed with was his initial reluctance to shove half the federal government into a single department while assuming it would work better. Remember, the difficulty of any enterprise is exponential to the number of people involved in it and DHS is the perfect example.

Reacting to a Bozo with his Pants on Fire
Bringing up the rear, as always, is Congress. Joe “Party of One” Lieberman was the brain trust behind the DHS debacle then. Now, his reaction to a bozo with his pants on fire is to attack Yemen! Bush Republicans resisted, and still resist, any attempt to investigate their own party’s possible ineptitudes so they can be corrected while Dems put a gazillion hearings on the agenda and then kowtowed to every ignored subpoena and request for information. Word to the wise, if you aren’t going to use your gavel, don’t cock your elbow

Creating a useful terrorist response doesn’t have a chance in hell, see Republican claims that the latest incident was either caused by unions or because there is no permanent TSA honcho while Jim DeWitless holds up the nomination and responds to Democrats fast tracking it by saying they’re in too much of a rush.

Huh?!

The Dems are no better. It’s not like they stood up to the Chump-in-Chief when he was mucking things up and why are they waiting until now to figure out that 5 months is too long to wait for an essential bureaucrat?

Get on the stick you dicks. And speaking of dicks, The Big Dick™ is still, well, dickish.

To paraphrase the politically astute opossum Pogo, “We have met the terrorists, and they is us.”

Related articles

• A Nation Terrorize by Terroists (omnipotentpoobah.com)
• CNN: CIA Had Report on Farouk AbdulMutallab Before Failed Airplane Bombing (themoderatevoice.com)
• A Guide to the Blame Game Following Failed Terror Attack (blogs.wsj.com)
• What the Near-Tragedy in Detroit Revealed (danielpipes.org)
• Bored now (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Jacob Heilbrunn: Up in the Air: Obama’s Terrorism Failure (huffingtonpost.com)
• DeMint’s Waterloo? (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Richard Grenell: You’re Doing a Heck of a Job, Janet (huffingtonpost.com)
• Andy Borowitz: Homeland Security Considers Making People Fly Naked (huffingtonpost.com)