We have a pretty lousy history with Haiti, just as an example of the historical perspective …

An example from the site linked above…

How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for “nature” to finish it off?

Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets – with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)

This all came to light when she had the unfortunate timing of traveling internationally when some idiot tried to drive his car in to the Heathrow airport after setting it on fire.

So my mother, is pulled out of a customs / security line at the PHL international airport, and given two years of hell. (you can read the above blog posts, or search my blog for “deport” to get more of the story…) In the end, she was granted “relief” from deportation, and got to stay … But thats just the background to what I found today.

The Dec 25th attempted bombing of that airliner headed for detroit, by the “underwear” bomber has a lot of people scrathing their heads, and wondering what happened, and how it came to pass.

Me too.

Because I read this today at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31062.html and I wanted to choke some one… anyone….

And agencies did not trigger their own alarms by connecting clues about the suspect with other available data, which might have shown he posed a high risk. “Listmasters didn’t link up some of the data points that were vague but available,” a knowledgeable official said.

A U.S. intelligence official contended that the data points were too elliptical to be useful: “Abdulmutallab’s father didn’t say his son was a terrorist, let alone planning an attack. Not at all. I’m not aware of some magic piece of intelligence that suddenly would have flagged this guy — whose name nobody even had until November — as a killer en route to America, let alone something that anybody withheld.”

Ok, let me get this straight.

40+ years ago, my mom gets caught smoking some pot. Hell, the last 3 Presidents of the USA have admitted to doing as much, if not more. And they try to deport her when she gets off an airplane after being in France for a week or two, 2 years ago.

And this week, some guy, who.
1. Buys a 1 way airplane ticket
2. With Cash
3. Has no checked luggage
4. Is flying from places on the planet that are known to help traffic illegal cargo and persons
5. Has his own father report him to the US Govt warning that he might be a threat.
6. DOESN’T HAVE A PASSPORT
…

Gets on an airplane, and __stuff__ happens.

Really, and the govt is saying “data points were too elliptical”.

And depending on what and where you read, there’s even more bullshit information coming out about how this guy was a known person on what ever lists are being kept by our Intellegence community.

The breakdown is embarassing, disgusting, and clearly indicates how much of a failure the security response since 9/11 has been. Sure, maybe we’ve stopped some things from happening, that we may, or may not ever know about. But when I think about what happened to my mother, and compare it to this story… Like I said, I get angry.

The health insurance industry is a profit making engine. Its built to take your money, and not provide a service.

Watch, learn, act.

Taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TsaHmtgfA

From Suburban Guerrilla

From Daily Kos

Just some numbers… you can do the math.

But the opening paragraph kinda left my head spinning.

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.

– The New York Times Endorses Barack Obama

… Now. As you all probably know, I’m really not a fan of Bush and what he’s done over the past 8 years. He’s a fascist and a war criminal… But, who am I to say that?

The NYTimes though, have through the last 8 years, been a liberal news paper, with decidedly left positions on things, but also a paper that as journalism goes, does a good job of being balanced in its presentation of most things, and have had the credit of offering the objective news, as much as they could. At times I was angry at them for not simply stating the opinion, when all they would do is state the fact. But that is what good journalism is supposed to do. Report the facts, and let us as readers do the judgment.

Its never that cut and dry, never. But at the least, the grey lady was as even handed as it could have been.

To read though, in this Editorial, such a scathing summation of the last 8 years under George W. Bush, has me a bit surprised. The language they chose left no room for forgiveness or acceptance of what might be argued was a difficult time, fraught with challenges… and clearly states that he failed, and made things worse.

Its nothing new to most of my readers that I am not a fan of Bush, as I said. But this is the first time I’ve seen a major news source of our land state so clearly, and succinctly exactly what I’ve thought for all that time as well…