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This MOT is dedicated to the brave men and women of the Secret Service -- who, I hope, have a healthy sense of humor.
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Warning: the following MOT is crawling with Snark. Highly infectious, take your anti-Snarkotics before reading any further!
Who doesn't wake up on a Thursday morning wondering how to reform the Secret Service?
I'll bet the Obama family wonders about that every day. Do the Obama girls greet their parents each morning with a happy declaration, "We're still alive! So are you! Yippeeday!"
Hugs all around. It's a miracle!
Like every problem in America today, the need to reform the Secret Service is all Obama's fault. Suddenly, during the Obama administration, uninvited guests are crashing state dinners at the White House, the place is packed with drunks and armed intruders and Columbian prostitutes all DUI and crashing their cars through barricades onto the White House lawn. This presidency is out of control!
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It's all Obama's fault, which of course is code for yet another freaking Gee WTF Bush SNAFU. We don't mention WTF Bush, or his many SNAFUs. I tried googling for dodgy events involving the Secret Service during the WTF era and (aside from the whole shoe-throwing incident -- who wouldn't throw a shoe at WTF?) I found one article from 2004 about WTF breaking up a fight between his lead Secret Service agent and Chilean security agents... only one article making WTF look like some kind of hero before I got bored scrolling through page after page of off-topic google search hits. I'm not trying to imply there's a media blackout when it comes to finding information about SNAFUs surrounding Gee WTF and the national security initiatives under his reign after 9/11 (except to say that the internet consistently FALLS SHORT when it comes to research and that Google is probably evil). It's all Obama's fault anyway so why bother looking backwards? The buck stops with Barack.
In 2003, while Obama was chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, he masterminded the creation of a many-headed "big gubmint" monstrosity called The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described thusly:
DHS is a world-wide subversive organization dedicated to global domination. It is the most expensive, powerful, and dangerous such organization in history. DHS is almost entirely composed of men, with some notable exceptions, such as former member Lara Brown, the daughter of a Supreme Hydra, and so-called Madame Hydra, who later became known as the Viper. DHS agents wear green costumes with cowls concealing the entire head except for the mouth and chin and carry multi-colored tick-tacks to leave on the ground as secret cues to their members. Orange tick-tacks mean big trouble. The organization takes its name from the many-headed serpent-like monster known for its ability to grow two heads immediately to replace any head that was severed. DHS prides itself on its ability to regroup and rebuild itself, allegedly mightier than before, after any major defeat. Indeed, the organization has now endured more than a decade.
From his secret lair in Illinois, Obama consolidated several organizations into one huge uncontrollable mess, the dreaded DHS. He then put one of his minions, code-name
"Viper's Mate" -- a conservative troll from one of the five most corrupt states in the US -- in charge of this gigantic chimera. This big gubmint goliath includes the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), U.S. Secret Service (USSS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the then-newly created Totally Sleazy As*holes (TSA). All of these, except maybe the Coast Guard, have come under fire during President Obama's administration amidst accusations of incompetence and untoward behavior.
Mr. President -- What were you thinking?
Before Obama ruined everything in 2003, the Secret Service was housed in the Treasury Department, of all places. Okay, maybe that's a little weird. Maybe the Secret Service was already highly questionable for decades after it failed to protect JFK. Maybe back in 2003, Obama already had his strange obsession with separating money from the elected officials who represent it. Why should elected officials and diplomats be protected by the Treasury Department anyway? Good question. But when Obama severed the agency from the Treasury and created the DHS in tandem with his deception over WMDs in Iraq, he began the downward spiral of the Secret Service, once one of the most prestigious professional organizations in the world, into a bureaucratic drinking binge laced with lies and prostitution:
At the Treasury Department, the Secret Service's leadership had autonomy, and its agents were encouraged to consider themselves elite. The Secret Service was not just the leading law-enforcement agency at Treasury, it was at the apex of the entire profession. Only the best cops became agents...
...[But now...] Secret Service personnel, particularly those in uniform, are often paid less today than law-enforcement officials in other agencies. More than the money, the agency's declining reputation in the law-enforcement community—a trend that goes back to 2003—has hurt morale and recruitment...
We should all rue the day that the Illinois Senate made Obama head of its Health and Human Services Committee. Everything has been declining since that fatal decision was made.
The beginnings of the Secret Service are as sketchy as its current state of affairs. Notably, it was Obama's favorite presidential hero, Abraham Lincoln, who was supposed to establish the Secret Service on April 14, 1865, THE DAY HE WAS SHOT BY JOHN WILKES BOOTH. Are you kidding me? The legislation creating the Secret Service was sitting on Lincoln's desk waiting to be signed the day he was shot? Are you freaking kidding me? Does this bode well for the future of an organization that would be charged with protecting the president's life?
Back in 1865, the Secret Service was all about stopping counterfeiters (hence its orignal home in the Treasury). It would not begin providing presidential bodyguards until 1901. During the Civil War, protecting the president was instead the job of the shady Pinkerton National Detective Agency, a private security firm hired to provide bodyguards for Lincoln (pictured here with General John A. McClernand and a scary Napolean-like and steely-eyed Allan Pinkerton).
Brilliant job protecting Lincoln, guys. On the night of his murder, Lincoln was being guarded by policeman and hired Pinkerton bodygaurd John Parker, who had been censured numerous times for "conduct unbecoming of an officer" including being drunk on duty, sleeping on the job, and frequenting brothels on the job -- sound familiar? At the Ford's Theatre, Parker wandered away from the president in order to find a better location for viewing the play. If he had had a government-issued car, he would have driven it over the barricades and through the fence onto the White House lawn.
"Pinkerton's Men" or "Pinks" also protected numerous private business enterprises using heavily-armed paramilitary units (which is apparently why no one of merit was left to guard President Lincoln). By the early 1890s, the Pinkerton Agency had more agents than the US Army had standing members. Congress would attempt to curb the organization's power with the Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893, which forbids the federal government and the DC municipal government from hiring anyone "employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or similar organization."
Surely this old 1893 law can't still hold water the way the 1911 Espionage Act does? Surely we can't prosecute anyone in or formerly of Washington for hiring the-artists-formerly-known-as-Blackwater or any other "similar organization?" Can we? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Obama? Anyone?
Clearly, private security is not the answer. Clearly, today our president is left to clean up yet another WTF mess. The Secret Service needs to be reformed. But how? Return it to the Treasury Department? Leave it to flounder in the monolithic monstrosity of the DHS? Transfer power to the DoJ? Can any big bureaucracy foster this orphan and return it to its rightful, elite status?
Even ex-Bushmen blame big gubmint for the agency's decline. A former member of WTF's detail describes "years of practices under which the agency has hired 'nice people'. . . . We’ve hired people that are afraid to put hands on people, that are greatly constrained by senior management, that have become more concerned about operating within the bureaucracy.”
So, who knows? Maybe the Secret Service should become an independent non-housed covert power all its own. Maybe it should just start hiring mean people. Or, maybe it should go back to hiring scary Pinks. But I doubt that would put an end to the drinking binge...
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Grab your cup and pull up a chair.
If you are a Secret Service agent, take a breathalizer and get to work! If you're not a Secret Service agent, what's your resume like? Need a job?
What else is on your mind?