Misplace priorities

If you are not yet convinced that we somehow have gotten our priorities all screwed up, just look at the events of the last 2 weeks or so.

The New York Giants, after a 5-0 start, suffer a tremendous defensive collapse, give up more points than probably any other Giants team in recent memory, finish at 8-8 and miss out on the playoffs.

On Christmas Day, some cretin from another country boards a plane in Amsterdam bound for Detroit with a bunch of explosive stuff sewn into his underwear. As the plane nears Detroit, he somehow manages to light his crotch on fire but, due to divine intervention (it WAS Christmas, after all), the alert response of crew and passengers, and a bad fuse, the idiot is captured, his crotch is put out and the lives of hundreds of passengers are saved.

Because of the epic collapse of a once-sterling defensive unit, the owner of the New York Football Giants is incredibly embarrassed. After he lets the fans know how pissed off he is, he promptly sees to it that the two individuals who are responsible for this tremendous error are fired, and so it is done. The defensive coordinator is dumped on Monday and the defensive line coach is sacked on Tuesday. That's called decisive action.

Because of the epic collapse of what we keep hoping is a strong national security system, the President of the United States is incredibly embarrassed. He admits that, while the intelligence (I use that word loosely) was there, no one bothered to tell anyone else - in other words, his defensive "coordinator" failed in his or her duties. It later comes out that the suspect in question was a known terrorist suspect who was on a series of lists and was under surveillance. Seems to me, though, that he was somehow NOT under surveillance on Christmas Day and, perhaps in spite of all the lists he was on the most important list he somehow WASN'T on was a "no fly" list.

And for this incredible breach of security, a collapse that would have had a lot more devastating effect than losing 8 football games and missing the playoffs, the President of the United States, who clearly outranks even the owner of the New York Giants, decided to fire nobody. Let me repeat - the President of the United States, after admitting an epic failure of the system, fired NOBODY.

Giants miss the playoffs and fire two. National Security misses a terrorist who almost blows up an airplane and all the innocent lives on it and we fire NOBODY.

Talk about screwed up priorities!!