Tom Ridge confirms that the sky is blue!!

[blueduck37.livejournal.com]

Tom Ridge, reasonably sane Republican and former head of the Department of Homeland Security has-- what else?-- a new (tell-all?) book coming out, called "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege... and How We Can Be Safe Again". Reports indicate Ridge "wants to shake 'public complacency' over security" (complacency? I still have to go through airport security in my socks and surrender my toothpaste).

They also say Ridge indicates he "was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over." This is a shock to almost no one, except maybe Joe The Plumber and that blond woman from Fox and Friends. Of course, it wasn't just one incident. It was a recurring theme. Keith Olbermann took a break from yelling at stuff a couple of years ago to do a really good report on the many terror-alert 'coincidences' during the Bush years-

"Fox's Pete Hegseth said he hasn't washed hands in 10 years" (Watch on YouTube)

"We'll Meet Again — "Dr. Strangelove"" (Watch on YouTube)

I am posting this because a) history shouldn't so easily forget this aspect of the immediate post-9/11 political environment, and b) it's some good perspective as conservatives (well, the extremes anyway) go nuts insisting that there is no bigger threat to freedom than an affordable public health-insurance alternative.

Comments

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Anyone who didn't see that stupid color scale for exactly what it was is a blind idiot who doesn't have the intellect necessary to work a fucking doorknob. For evidence of what exactly it was for, one should definitely note that it vanished COMPLETELY after Bush's reelection and we never heard even a single peep about it again. Oh gee, wonder why that is.

Could you clear something up?

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

So we should or shouldn't be more wary of people with guns around a President?

Vanished? Current status: yellow/elevated

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/Copy_of_press_release_0046.shtm

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Why don't you ask John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Re: Vanished? Current status: yellow/elevated

[blueduck37.livejournal.com]

I believe he means vanished as in we were weren't hearing about it (endless press conferences, etc) the way did during the first term right up until the election. Before it was as an omnipresent part of American political life... Now? Well you have to google the DHS website to find it.

Re: Could you clear something up?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Why don't you ask Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan about that?

Re: Could you clear something up?

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Gerald Ford. One of his would-be assassins was just released.

[writerspleasure.livejournal.com]

i'm as impressed by this sensational revelation years-after-the-fact as by anita hill: not a whit.