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Yesterday, Governor Spitzer, Senator Charles Schumer, and Senator Hillary Clinton had a meeting with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael "[I have a] gut feeling...we are entering a period this summer of increased risk" Chertoff but were unable to convince him to raise New York's anti-terror funding. Secretary Chertoff repeated said the he was not there to talk about money, but Spitzer says, "he knew we were going to raise" the issue. Yeah - if you're a federal official walking into a room with the Governor and Senators of a state that has been vocal about how the government has shortchanged it, you can guess what will be discussed.
Though the DHS is giving New York $134 million this year, which is more than last year's $124.5 million, it's still less than the $207 million received in 2005. Schumer said, "The increase we got is basically insulting. ...He made his argument that New York’s doing better than anyone else. We said ‘better than anyone else’ isn’t good enough.”
Last year, there was a big to-do about the reduction in anti-terror funding for NY State and NYC; the DHS implied that the state and city filed their funding request incorrectly. Then Chertoff said that the decision to drastically reduce NY's anti-terror funding was sort of wrong.
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That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up.
Now, I know some of you are going to say, "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a *book.*
Next time, look it up in your *gut.*
I did.
My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.
There's actually been an announcement about increased threat levels ever summer since 9/11. For that matter, there's been a similar announcement every winter holiday season since 9/11, every Fourth of July since 9/11, every election day since 9/11, every Thanksgiving since 9/11 and every 9/11 since 9/11. This is not to say that we're not going to see a huge attack any moment now, but the casual way in which the government - DHS in particular - just rattles these things off with no specifics, no background, no context and no after-the-fact analysis makes these announcements effectively useless. Pair that with the fact that DHS can't even protect our people from, say, floods and comes up on the wrong end of budget issues and fund dispersement every time it comes up in the news cycle and all we have, really, is a propaganda perch masquerading as a security department. The worst thing to me about the Bushies isn't their criminal ineptitude when it comes to policy - it's their misguided belief that the 75% of Americans who feel GWB is doing a bad job are going to believe a statement with the words, "gut feeling" in it. I mean, we were stupid enough to elect this guy twice - but we're not so stupid that we're still gonna take these guys at their word. I mean, when you announce increased threat levels and people feel less concerned about a terrorist attack because they don't believe you, that is as much a security problem as the actual terrorists who are out there.
does bush know that chertoff is gay?
does he approve?
Chertoff
Chertoff is a complete tool. I can't wait for the next President and his/her new administration... any President will do as long as we get these knuckleheads out of office.