...and dutifully ignored their own increasing worry.

Gee, I wonder why they did that?

A Defense Department review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, has found the doctors overseeing Maj. Nidal Hasan's medical training repeatedly voiced concerns over his strident views on Islam and his inappropriate behavior, yet continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks.

The picture emerging from the review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one of supervisors who failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist, according to information gathered during the internal Pentagon investigation and obtained by The Associated Press. The review has not been publicly released.

...

What remains unclear is why Hasan would be advanced in spite of all the worries over his competence....

Hasan showed no signs of being violent or a threat. But parallels have been drawn between the missed signals in his case and those preceding the thwarted Christmas attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner....

The Defense Department review is not intended to delve into allegations Hasan corresponded by e-mail with Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki before the attack. Those issues are part of a separate criminal investigation by law enforcement officials.

So, note, this review doesn't even take into account those 20 emails to the terrorist murder-priest for purposes of "spiritual counsel" and/or "research." This is just based on what his superiors and fellow officers observed.

In telling episodes from the latter stages of Hasan's lengthy medical education in the Washington, D.C., area, he gave a class presentation questioning whether the U.S.-led war on terror was actually a war on Islam. And fellow students said he suggested that Shariah (shah-REE'-yuh), or Islamic law, trumped the Constitution and he attempted to justify suicide bombings.

Yet no one in Hasan's chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. Had they, Hasan's fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.

Instead, in July 2009, Hasan arrived in central Texas, his secret clearance intact, his reputation as a weak performer well known, and Army authorities believing that posting him at such a large facility would mask his shortcomings.

...

While in medical school at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences from 1997 to 2003, Hasan received a string of below average and failing grades, was put on academic probation and showed little motivation to learn.

He took six years to graduate from the university in Bethesda, Md., instead of the customary four, according to the school. The delays were due in part to the deaths of his father in 1998 and his mother in 2001. Yet the information about his academic probation and bad grades wasn't included in his military personnel file, leaving the impression he was ready for more intense instruction.

In June 2003, Hasan started a four-year psychiatry internship and residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and he was counseled frequently for deficiencies in his performance. Teachers and colleagues described him as a below average student.

...

Still, Hasan's officer evaluation reports were consistently more positive, usually describing his performance as satisfactory and at least twice as outstanding. Known as "OERs," the reports are used to determine promotions and assignments. The Army promoted Hasan to captain in 2003 and to major in 2009.

Read the whole thing; I've excerpted more than I really can. It's all good -- or, rather, all bad.

As is the case with the Panty-Bomber -- if even this guy's behavior isn't enough to get the attention of superiors, whose behavior would be?

No one's, obviously. And that is The System that did, in fact, work precisely as designed, just as Janet Napolitano said. The System exists not to detect and handle security threats; The System exists to studiously ignore such threats while providing a small amount of PR for public consumption, to reassure them The System is protecting them.

But it's not. It's expressly designed not to. If either of these men were planning a new 9/11, and had the capability to do so, we'd be mourning the loss of another 2000+ innocent American dead, because The System is designed to permit just that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Comments (34)
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This is the second time in a week the AP has not only failed to shill for Obama but called out his policies directly.

Please join me in welcoming the newest member of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy...The Associated Press.

Ten months into President Barack Obama's first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn't matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama's argument that more road money would address an "urgent need to accelerate job growth."

..."As a policy tool for creating jobs, this doesn't seem to have much bite," said Emory University economist Thomas Smith, who supported the stimulus and reviewed AP's analysis. "In terms of creating jobs, it doesn't seem like it's created very many. It may well be employing lots of people but those two things are very different."

Yeah, they are very different things.

I used to know a guy who worked for the state DMV. He used to claim that his department 'made money' because they took in more than their budget. Try though I might, I could never quite get him to understand the difference between confiscating wealth and creating it. Now it seems people like him are running the government.

The best part about this analysis is they actually take on Obama's claim that you can't look at just the county where the money is spent because workers can come from all over. The AP looked at 700 counties that received project money and 700 that didn't. Unemployment trends were the same in both samples.

I guess this means the AP is no longer 'a real news organization' according the exacting standards of the Obama administration.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:35 AM | Comments (54)
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I don't know if The Sun got pranked, but if you listen to the audio of the Sex Robot talking, she claims she worked at Cantor Fitzgerald (at the WTC) and that "10,000 tons of molten steel" gets her "hot."

She goes on to say "9/11 was an inside job. I was an Anglo so I did not get the call, but all of the Jews got the call.... Bush knew and so did the Israelis."

The audio is so over-the-top -- she asks if you want to "abrade [her] callouses" and asks to see your "wiener" -- that I really think some pranksters screwed with the audio here. Otherwise, why doesn't The Sun even mention this odd sex-talk?

Thanks to The Finger.

Posted by: Ace at 07:25 AM | Comments (87)
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"I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch." -- I Miss That Guy

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:13 AM | Comments (140)
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Happy Sunday all.

Hobo Hunting Goes Mainstream
Okay this is a report from The Daily Show (I know, I know) about the Elk Mountain Resort which offers the ultimate in luxury and anti-terror training which actually sounds pretty cool. The good part comes at 4:00 when the reporter lets his inner moron come out.

Hobos - the ultimate prey.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:09 PM | Comments (330)
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In last night's ONT I was snarking about airport incident and the over the top anger towards the guy who went under the rope when it seemed that there was much more blame on the TSA's part:

Haisong Jiang, 28, is a Ph.D. student at Rutgers and crossed under the security rope to kiss his girlfriend goodbye. The breach forced the closure of the terminal for 6 hours while passengers were re-scanned and also caused air traffic to back up around the world. Yes Jiang deserves every bit of the $500 fine but let's reflect on everything the TSA did wrong:
- The TSA guard responsible for the exit left his post. Despite the TSA being non-unionized, he is currently being defended by the AFGE union
- There were no one-way exit stiles like nearly every subway system has - just a rope.
- The TSA surveillance cameras at the security checkpoint did not work - they had to use backup Continental cameras.
This is not security - it's security theater.

Well a TSA employee (who is a frequent AoSHQ reader and who wishes to remain anonymous) emailed me to point out some misconceptions on my part. On the guard and unionization of TSA employees:

I won't deny that the employee who walked away from his post is an idiot who deserves to get fired. That's not even a debatable point. However, you made several errors that I feel you should address tonight.

First, while TSA is not unionized, each employee is free to join a union. In fact, with Obama's election in January, reps from the NTEU (National Treasury Employees' Union) started coming to my airport. It should be noted that they're the same union that represents Treasury agents as well as Customs and Border Patrol officers. In other words, they're like the FOP or PBA for federal law enforcement.

And on the security arrangements within the airport:

Second, I think you greatly overestimate the control the TSA has over the airports at which it is stationed. Any construction that is done, or not done in the case of the exit lane at Newark, is the responsibility of the airport, not the TSA. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is to blame for not having any technological solution to prevent people from going upstream in the exit lane.

Posted by: Open Blog at 02:32 PM | Comments (174)
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Never let a crisis go to waste.

Venezuela is suffering an energy crisis. Which gives Hugo another excuse to take a potshot at the shopping malls that just irritate the crap out of him.

Chavez on Friday said his government is determined to keep Guri Dam from falling to a critical level where the turbines start to fail in the next several months. He has also imposed rationing measures that include penalty fees for energy overuse, shorter workdays for many public employees and reduced hours for shopping malls.

Several South American countries are overdependent on hydroelectric energy, including Brazil (I think about 60% of their grid is powered by the system on the Rio Plate). I don't blame them per se, it's cheap. But a sound energy policy does not place too many eggs in one unreliable basket.

Unless of course your sound energy policy is to drive coal companies out of business and say you're replacing it with magical green technology.

In which case I suppose we had better get ready for these kinds of emergency measures here in the United States.

ALSO: How about a little currency devaluation to go along with those blackouts? (tipped by commenter appropriately named "Socialistas")

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 11:21 AM | Comments (99)
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One calamity requires a nearly-immediate statement to reassure the public.

The other one can wait until after golf and pineapple mimosas.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (76)
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Wonderful.

"He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a criminal."

I hope, for Obama's sake, he's really personally committed to this proposition, because it's going to 1) kill several hundred innocent Americans and 2) cost him his presidency.

I hope he really has a high level of personal conviction on this, to assuage himself as a private citizen in 2013.

The American people will not, under any circumstances, stand for this.

Via Consigliere5.

Why didn't you come to me like a f*cking man and tell me terrorists are trying to kill us?

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (66)
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Karl explains the differences in the polls. The Globe poll polled only 83 independents -- not nearly enough for a decent sub-sample. PPP polled 290.

Fred Bauer notes the Globe's independents simply do not conform to other polls' findings about them.

I think a lot of the discrepancy between this poll and other polls boils down to the independents. According to this poll, the Registered Undeclared voters support Coakley over Brown 48-42. This number is wildly out of line with the recent polls released by Rasmussen and PPP, both of which show Brown leading handily with independents, winning at least 60% of their votes (Coakley hangs at between around 20% and 30% of independents). If, using all the other weighting methodologies of the Globe poll, you change the undeclared levels of support to 61% for Brown and 31% for Coakley (her highest number in the most recent polls), you come up with a 47-44 lead for Brown.

Yeah, but Rasmussen is Satan's Pollster.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (22)
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