Is the Director of Homeland Security an “Anus Horribilis”?

Michelle Malkin has been covering the hapless “Ja-No” as she makes the MSM round spouting like a whale:

It has been, in the words of Queen Elizabeth II, an “annus horribilis” for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Beginning with her embrace of the impotent euphemism “man-caused disasters” to the hit job on conservatives and veterans that she was forced to apologize for, to her assertion that crossing the border illegally “isn’t a crime per se”, to her boneheaded claim that 9/11 terrorists came in through the Canadian border, Ja-No has confirmed time and again that she’s not ready for prime time. [see the omitted internal links at Ms. Malkin’s post, here]

Sheesh, the woman is a born flacker. She is the quintessential bureacrat heading one of the most bureaucratic entities that so horribly burden our commonweal. Former President Bush earned much bad karma when he set the wheels in motion for that Kafka castle he named Homeland Security. The place became a refuge for the incompetent so quickly that it was hard to keep up with their pratfalls.

When I am appointed first godhead, this Homeland Security Bureaucratitude is going to be banished to one of the circles in Dante’s Inferno… I just can’t decide yet exactly how far HS ought to be flung into the smoking pit. I have decreed, however, that Ms./Secretary Napolitano will be flying to the nether world with it, strapped into her seat whilst would-be bombers smoke and burn and mutter Allahu akhbar in all the adjoining seats. Some passenger will be there with his cell phone camera; if the pictures come out well he’ll be permitted to return and we’ll give him lots of medals made in Copenhagen as trinkets for his children.

Here is the money quote that led to Another Black Conservative’s photo shopped depiction of her as a clown. Bear in mind that the Director is talking about that failed self-bomb attempt by the Nigerian getting ready to land in Detroit:
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What we are focused on is making sure that the air environment remains safe, that people are confident when they travel. And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. [emphasis added]

That clown picture is going to become iconic, especially when captioned. I’d say “poor Ms. Napolitano” except she keeps on opening her mouth and progressive platitudes keep issuing forth. Like many politicians she truly believes that saying the same thing repeatedly will eventually lead to a different outcome.

Ms. Malkin calls her dramatis personae “playing Big Pollyanna”. For readers not familiar with Pollyanna, she is the Midwestern Victorian orphan sent to live with her tight-laced aunt, a prune who doesn’t like her ward very much. This doesn’t deter Pollyanna, who plays what she calls “the glad game” with you whether you like it or not. The girl is impelled to find some good in any situation. One time she tells her crippled, homeless little friend, Jimmy Bean, that he is so fortunate to have crutches. She reminds him of all the crippled kids who don’t have crutches. Believe it or not, Pollyanna makes it out of childhood and isn’t beaten to death by someone wielding a crutch. I know this because I read the sequel in which Pollyanna is a grown-up married to… Jimmy Bean. If I remember correctly, he is no longer a cute cripple because a kind-hearted doctor operated on him and cured his disability. Pollyanna, on the other hand, isn’t cured at all. Instead, she grows up to be the third director of our Homeland Insecurity and she’s still obsessed with the glad game.

Big Pol’s most infamous utterance was the directive [pdf] in April that purported to know the biggest danger to America’s security: us. You and me and all the members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy who are convinced that President Hamlet is an indecisive, self-referential gasbag. Here’s a clip that blogger Another Black Conservative clawed out of that pdf entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment:

Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election time frame to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to wider audience of potential sympathizers.

Oh. That must be why that part of the electorate which labels itself “conservative” is the fastest growing group at the moment. Big Pol overplayed her hand, probably driving a few otherwise normal American voters into the thickets on the right.

Thus the lame attempt to marginalize conservatives backfired. I’m sure Obama briefly regretted the endeavor before he moved on to other things. However, come election time in 2012, it will get some play in the primaries, perhaps from those on both sides of the aisle who are anxious to distance themselves from paranoid attacks on fellow Americans. We’ll see.

Given that images are more powerful than words, though, look for the Bring-in-the-Clowns photo shop job to have staying power. It signifies so well all that is wrong with the current Homeland Security Director. Let’s face it: anyone who would agree to serve as head of such an ill-conceived bureaucracy as our Homeland Security is already a… what did Ms. Malkin call her? I believe it was an “anus horribilis”? Yep, that be Miz Pollyanna all right.

2009 has been a humdinger for Big Pol. Can’t wait to see what issues forth next year. Fewer and fewer of us can afford bread and circuses, even the government-issued kind. We're going to have to settle for being alternately amused and horrified by the Chicago Gang that Can't Shoot Straight.


One of our donors responded today to my question about whether he was still in the US or had returned home ahead of the current airport mess:

Glad you made it out to the mass.

I’m still in the US - unfortunately, I didn’t leave before the latest attempted terrorist attack, so I’m dreading the flight back tomorrow…I imagine that all of the airports will be more chaotic than usual, and that there will be even more ineffectual rules, and additional screening of people who don’t even remotely match the potential terrorist profile.

(I’ll spare you my ranting on how useless it is for me to have to make sure that my bottle of contact solution is 100 ml or less, while the US government can’t even cancel the visa of someone whose name is on a list of people with suspicious connections and whose FATHER called the local US Embassy to report that he was a terrorist, or at the very least, communicate to the airports that he should be checked very thoroughly before boarding the flight!)

I’ve been feeling kind of hopeless about the future these days, but I think that things have not fallen as far as they could, and that there is still at least some reason to hope…