Joel Johnson over at Gizmodo is calling for President Obama to fire the TSA:

Today, DHS’s Napolitano’s response to the crotchbomber: "We’re looking to make sure that this sort of incident cannot recur." But the TSA’s response to Abdulmutalib’s attempt makes one thing clear: We must stop pretending the TSA is making us safer.

Security expert Bruce Schneier nails the core incompetency: "For years I’ve been saying ‘Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.’"

So what has the TSA done in response to the attempted attack? They’ve told airlines to make passengers stay in their seats during the last hour of flight. They’ve made it verboten for passengers to hold anything in their laps, again only during the last hour of flight. Perhaps most hilariously telling, they’ve forbidden pilots from announcing when a plane is flying over certain cities and landmarks.

There is no other way to interpret it: The TSA is saying clearly that they can’t prevent terrorists from getting explosives on airplanes, but by god, they’ll make sure those planes explode only when the TSA says it’s okay.

As Jim White notes, the chances of a terrorism on a plane are about one in forty million. The chances of being struck by lightning, as Nate Silver points out, are one in five hundred thousand. And, as I noted yesterday, airline terrorism rates haven’t particularly gone down since we started spending billions on airline security.

All this adds up to the fact that the TSA gets almost $8 billion dollars of taxpayer money annually and it does nothing which has made us safer. Over a ten year period, that’s $80 billion. That’s enough money to expand Medicare, say, or perhaps enough that if put into a dedicated fund, it would ally Joe Lieberman’s ridiculous fears that a public option would have to be bailed out.

It’s a lot of waste, a huge chunk of which goes to the makers of "security" devices anyway:

A handful of companies could be big winners under the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, thanks to a proposed spending boost for airport-baggage-screening gear in the Transportation Security Administration.

The Obama administration is seeking a total of $45.8 billion in discretionary spending for DHS, a 6.1% increase over the current year’s budget of $43.2 billion. TSA would get the biggest slice of the boost, seeing its budget rise to $7.79 billion, up from $6.99 billion this year, or about 11%.

Within TSA, most of the additional funds, or about $565.4 million, would be set aside for buying and installing explosive-detection equipment to screen checked baggage at U.S. airports.

Only three companies currently produce gear that qualifies under government standards. They are L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., General Electric Co. and Reveal Imaging Technologies Inc.

DHS said Thursday the money also could be used to purchase alternative technologies, although it’s unclear whether government standards will change to allow more vendors to compete.

The new funding would be in addition to $1 billion for airport screening gear in the stimulus law, including an unspecified amount for the same checked-baggage machines.

As Bruce Schneier noted, which was quoted above but it’s worth repeating:

Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.

The cockpit doors are reinforced. Passengers know what to do. Now, can we spend those billions of dollars elsewhere, instead of giving it to a handful of corporations so they can put on a nice security show for us?