Thanks to beige_alert for pointing this one out:
Come One, Come All, Join the Terror Target List
It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”
[…]
The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.
“We don’t find it embarrassing,” said the department’s deputy press secretary, Jarrod Agen. “The list is a valuable tool.”
But the audit says that lower-level department officials agreed that some older information in the inventory “was of low quality and that they had little faith in it.”
“The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data,” the report says.
In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.”
Obviously, the terrorists know that if they can disrupt the Mule Day parade in Columbia, TN, a wave of fear will culminate in the cancellation of the National Hollerin’ Contest in Spivy’s Corner, NC, and our very way of life will be destroyed. Either that, or the government is trying to very cleverly provide the terrorists with disinformation, drawing them away from the real targets. Which might work, if the terrorists were all complete idiots.
In the words of Lily Tomlin: “I try to be cynical, but it’s so hard to keep up.”
aiela
Soon, not even the Algonac, Michigan Pickeral Tournament will be safe!
(To quote Dave -- “Where do I fill out my brackets for the pickeral tournament?”)
Rob Wynne
(To quote Dave -- “Where do I fill out my brackets for the pickeral tournament?”)
Dave Blazek’s Loose Parts
technoshaman
No way they’ll ever get to Spivy’s Corner. After all that “SOOO-EEEEEEEEE! HERE, PIGPIGPIGPIGPIG!!!!” half of North Carolina will be just crawling with fuzz…
Did I say that out loud? *EG*
hrrunka
I wonder how they came up with the list? Was it at a particularly wacky free-association brainstorming session? Did they give a bunch of interns the job of listing a thousand possible targets each? Was there an element of “Hey, each possible target gets us this many bucks! How many can we think of?”.
filkerdave
Probably more “we have this many dollars, but we need to get more of them to red states than blue”
Cynical? Nahhhh
annonynous
Maybe that explains why Milford, Mass.’s Summer Sunday Concerts on the Common, the first hour of each of which is enlivened by The Great Benefuchi (comedian, acrobat and evangelist), didn’t get any bucks. (:-/
Ann O.
devinsong
Yeah, but you know, if they have all this money… I mean, Massfilc- they could be a terrorism target, right? Or how about NESFA..? If they’re handing out grants, they might as well go somewhere useful.
keristor
From what they were saying it sounds as though each state is responsible for naming its ‘assets’, and some list everything and the kitchen sink whereasd others only list a few things, perhaps fearing that if they have more they’ll be taxed more or something. “Don’t attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence” (unless the malice theory is more fun)…
hrrunka
I suspect “What’s in it for us?” was the primary motive driving the preparation of the lists. Some figured the more targets they listed the more bucks they’d get, while others…
kayshapero
Good old fashioned pork barrel. Sigh…
joecoustic
Yep. It’s a good thing I’m moving out of Indiana as they have more terror targets than any other state!! *rolling my eyes*