Tag Archives: janet napolitano

Words Are All We Have

Words. The Obama administration has belatedly come to realize they cannot long continue using words to obfuscate and confuse. The other day someone actually uttered the forbidden word “terrorist”, though of course it was hoped the terrorist would turn out to be a right wing tea party zealot. When it turned out the Times Square bomber was a Pakistani trained by al Qaeda, Janet Napolitano, the head of Homeland Security, told reporters the system worked because the bomb failed to explode. Words like terror and Islam and terrorist are not to be uttered, lest those who are determined to kill us take offense. A few days ago Attorney General Eric Holder, in a congressional hearing, was asked if he thought the terror acts were done by Islamic radicals, and Holder refused to answer, saying that such acts have many reasons for happening. They’re only words, and words are all they have, to take our hearts away. 

 

 

Words have meanings, someone said

Though not so much today

We listen to our betters speak

And don’t know what they say

With many meanings different now

From what they were of yore

One cannot tell if afterwards

Now means what came before

Where once was Mrs or just Miss

We now must call her Ms

We speak in riddles to confuse

Who knows what is is is

Big Sis claims victory when a

Car bomb fails to explode

The President blames it on Them

Who we all know is code

For right wing zealots who drink tea

And wish to do him ill

And sees not folks who work real hard

To kill us and they will

 

 

Homeland Insecurity

A Nigerian Muslim boarded a Northwest jet in Amsterdam with explosives in his underwear, evading the airport screeners, and managed to set the bomb off as the plane approached Detroit. The bomb fizzled, causing only a small fire, and a Dutch passenger jumped on the terrorist and held him till other passengers subdued him. When asked about the incident, Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, smiled and said the system worked. Shortly thereafter it was revealed the FBI and CIA had known about the terrorist for years, his own father had warned the American Embassy in Nigeria about him, and the man was on an airport watch list, along with 500,000 other names. Despite all this comforting security the man was allowed to board an airplane with a bomb strapped to his crotch. To Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security, the fact that the bomb fizzled and the plane and all its passengers were not destroyed is proof that the security system worked.

 

 

Our Janet thinks a fizzled bomb

Is triumph for our side

She treats the thing with calm aplomb

Detractors are decried

Five hundred thousand on the list

And not a one is checked

She says so there’s one we have missed

That surely can’t affect

The way we handle terror threats

We do so with dispatch

We always try to hedge our bets

In looking for a match

If she’s the anti-terror czar

Then you would think she would

At least not let them in the car

That much be understood

She thinks that we are all so dumb

To think men mean us harm

And thinks the magic aura from

The O will be the charm

To turn this world to happy days

By making real amends

That steers them from their terror ways

And make them lasting friends

 

 

It’s All A Cunning Plan

Marc Ambinder, in the Atlantic, has spun a virtuous angle around President Obama’s failure to say anything about the thwarted bomb attack on the Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit the other day. According to Ambinder, it was a very clever plan on the part of the president: by continuing with his vacation in Hawaii he did not dignify the attack by commenting on it, did not give al Qaeda the satisfaction of knowing the Great One had so much as noticed them. Of course these were the same kinds of people who heaped calumny and contempt upon President Bush when he was caught reading to some kindergartners when the Twin Towers were attacked on 11 September 2001. To those of us not bent over in adoration of the Obama the Great, the clever plan takes on a somewhat more sinister aspect. We suspect that the president of the United States, who spent twenty years in the pews of a church that preached hatred of the United States in general and white men in particular might not be wholeheartedly on our side.  

 

 

My name is Ambinder

And if I can find her

I’ll ask the DHS to tell

What happened at Schipol

That almost took wee toll

Of airplane and people as well

There’s nothing to see here

The president will be here

As soon as he’s finished his game

In meantime the gap in

Our intel may happen

But we know that Bush is to blame

The problems we’re fixin’

Go back to Dick Nixon

We’ve no time for terrorist plans

The prez will not notice

No matter they goad us

Because they know just where he stands

He stands square with free men

And knows that to be men

Al Qaeda and Taliban must fight

The wars George Bush gave them

And this prez will save them

By leading them into the light

They would not attack us

Instead they would back us

And join us in health care reform

And praise our decisions

On carbon emissions

And Islam would soon be the norm