Partly coudy with a potential for hostile storms on the personal airline safety front!

Good Tuesday morning and welcome back to another round of thoughts and ideas that typically don’t amount to much more than a hill of beans. It’s January 5, 2010 and I for one am not feeling any safer because of what I have heard our President say and in particular, the strange comments made by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. After the recent colossal failure that saw a loaded jet nearly exploded in midair, we now hear that anyone throwing out questions about how well our security efforts are working are being accused of political grandstanding, while the circling of the wagons around the White House has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Right? Hello? Believe that one and you can sign the petition supporting the Homeland Security Secretary’s outlandish assessment that the system ‘worked’. Any time President Bush went to his ranch in Crawford, Texas the media excoriated him for neglecting the nation’s business. All the stories I read reflects how the mainstream press sympathizes with President Obama because he had to cut short his vacation in Hawaii. They said this President can’t seem to catch a break while before they considered President Bush unworthy of any consideration of any kind. I am not in the least bitter but to not see this at work is like missing the elephant sitting in the room. (No GOP symbol intended.)

I would just as soon see Vice President Cheney stay out of the public debate on these issues. He may make good points or he may be completely off base, however, when he interjects himself into the dialogue he gives much cover to those trying to obscure the facts involved in these recent security breaches. Right, wrong, or indifferent, he is a person that is controversial to the point of distraction. I happen to believe the stakes are too high for any distraction. I don’t know if the dude awaiting confirmation as the head of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the right man or not. It’s not intuitive to me that having him previously on board would have changed what happened. It may have provided another fall guy to choose from but Senator Demint’s objection to his nomination appears to be legitimate. He wants to know if this individual will allow the TSA to become unionized but the nominee will not answer that question. I, for one, would not want to see the people charged with screening to find terrorists being a part of any of the trade unions I know anything about. He should answer and his views should be a subject for analysis and debate.

I read an interview with Secretary Napolitano conducted by Maureen Dowd, opinion writer for the New York Times. The interview was the standard piece of fluff where the secretary was given plenty of opportunity to polish her rhetoric in trying to recover some modicum of respect after her disastrous performance over the past few days. The interview was interesting as an example of our kissy-kissy press, but the hundreds of responses to the article from readers was much more interesting. Believe it or not there are folks who think this lady did a very good job in responding to this attempted attack. Others said she was totally incompetent as proven by her performance. Others blamed the Bush administration. Some thought it was the mean conservatives. Others thought it was racial because of President Obama’s skin color. Me. I think it was a hugely serious failure and without regard to party affiliation or political leanings I am concerned about folks who do not seem to appreciate the seriousness of the threats that are being fomented every minute of the day. Until someone wakes up and smells the coffee, the American people need to be very diligent because according to Secretary Napolitano we are one of the first lines of defense! I suppose that's why we spend the billions, right? Pretty scary, but welcome to a dangerous 2010! May God help us is my prayer. Amen. …..More later.