Witless in Washington (Part 3,782)

This is almost surreal:

"A top immigration official has apologized after awarding "most original costume" to a Homeland Security Department employee who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency.

Julie Myers, assistant secretary overseeing Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, was part of a three-judge panel that lauded the costume, worn by a white employee, last Wednesday. She also posed for a photo with him."

So a guy shows up at a DHS Hallowe'en party in a racist costume, and not only is he not called out on it and immediately ejected from the party, his boss gives him a prize for "Most Original Costume", no less! And has no fucking clue that there might be something wrong, something just a little... off... with the whole scenario, until someone else at the party complains. Then it's "Oh... whoopsie!" Needless to say, the photo of Julie Meyers posing with the racist jerk in the "prize-winning" costume has gone down the memory hole and it's apologies all around.

Julie Myers, an immigration official (immigration?! official), is related to former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Meyers, and she's also married to someone who used to work for DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. So the upshot of it all is that while the idiot in the costume has been placed on "adminstrative leave", Myers won't be getting any reprimand.

Little things like this are glimpses into the hotbed of incest and insanity that is the current administration, and their complete and utter detachment from reality. And how they only care when they get caught.

(via Think Progress)

Georgie spends like a drunken sailor

How do small-government conservatives square this? According to the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute, Georgie is the biggest spending president since LBJ (who also had a war going on, so that's no excuse). There's no denying it, Georgie's a Spending Fool:

"When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending — or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare — shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush’s first six years, Slivinski calculates.

That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch.

Discretionary spending went up in Bush's first term by 48.5 percent, not adjusted for inflation, more than twice as much as Bill Clinton did (21.6 percent) in two full terms, Slivinski reports." [...]

"Homeland security spending also has soared, to about $31 billion last year, triple the pre-9/11 number."

This is where I get lost. It makes sense that homeland security spending would increase, but what the hell are they spending it on? Hurricane Katrina should have been a shining showcase of FEMA/homeland security capabilities, and that mess speaks for itself. With all the billions spent, that was the best they could do in an emergency? There's obviously a lot of money being made scammed by people who aren't actually doing anything for it. It makes things like FEMA's fake news briefing last week all the more aggravating.

What do you suppose is going on here?

CNN reports that Department of Homeland Security computers were hacked:

"Hackers compromised dozens of Department of Homeland Security computers, moving sensitive information to Chinese-language Web sites, congressional investigators said Monday.

Investigators pointed a finger at a government contractor, saying the firm hired to protect DHS computers tried to hide the incidents from the department.

The FBI is investigating the incidents, a congressional staffer said, and two members of Congress have asked the department's inspector general to also launch an investigation.

"The results of our [committee] investigation suggest that the department is the victim not only of cyber attacks initiated by foreign entities, but of incompetent and possibly illegal activity by the contractor charged with maintaining security on its networks," Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and James Langevin of Rhode Island said in a written statement.

The lawmakers said committee investigators found dozens of DHS computers were compromised and the incidents "were not noticed until months after the initial attacks."

MONTHS?? Well, that should give Whoever a good head start on Whatever it is they plan to do with this information. See, this is what happens when you contract out important jobs to your buddies, instead of keeping them within the auspices of government. Not that government is that much more competent, but at least there's a modicum of oversight. Once things are in the hands of private contractors, anything goes. You'd think they'd know that by now. Oh well, the good news is that Unisys, the company responsible for this monumental fuck-up, will have it on their performance record if they compete for the contract again. HUH??!