Froth Slosh B'Gosh

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Trump's Department of Homeland Security disbands domestic terror intel unit.

Security Theatre

And yet another entry into the tome, "Why I No Longer Fly."

 

More Proof That George W. Bush Was The Worst President In History

He could have taken out Bin Laden prior to 9-11 but didn't.

...most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had Bin Laden in its crosshairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing Al Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks.

That fucker through his gross incompetence, is resposible for the deaths of thousands of US citizens that he could have prevented, if he only gave a shit.

 

Seven Words? Try Hundreds!

Seems like George Carlin was a piker compared to the Department of Homeland Security.  Via gyma over at A Spork In The Drawer, we learn that DHS has a list of naughty words like "cloud," "incident," "pork," "smart," "gang," "pirates," "sleet," and "worm" that can flag your blog or other electronic communications for some tender loving government scrutiny.

The problem with lists like these is that they tend to create a lot of background "noise" that intelligence agencies must sift through in order to glean actual, actionable evidence, never mind the creepiness factor of the gubmit monitoring the web.  Perfectly innocent postings along the lines of "My toddler got a hold of the talcum and the next thing we knew, there was white powder all over the living room" can raise a flag due to the mention of "white powder."  Or, say one of your Facebook friends wants to know what the cause of WWI was, and you answer "The assassination of Franz Ferdinand lead to the outbreak of war in Europe."  Both "assassination" and "outbreak" are on the list. 

I am in no way, shape or form plugged into the intelligence community, but from what I've been able to read over the years, I'm pretty confident that the agencies tasked with monitoring the bad guys have a pretty solid idea of who the bad guys are.  Trolling the web for random words and phrases that might, might indicate something (but far more likely is just an innocent posting, such as "The plumber fixed the gas leak") seems to be a colossal waste of time and manpower.

As for me, perhaps I'll try and work a few of the naughty words into each and every post from now on.