Because you just never know when Tangos will attack… the pumpkin festival?

Pork spending at the Department of Homeland Security

Federal money to buy armored vehicles to protect the annual Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire?   And 13 Sno-Cone machines in Michigan (to generate ice packs, of course)?   $45M worth of  surveillance cameras in Chicagoland?

All in the name of protecting against terrorist attacks?

That’s the Barack Hussein Obama Administration’s Department of Homeland Security in this time of trillion-plus dollar deficit spending each year according to a report in the Washington Examiner.

Fargo, North Dakota got themselves one of these armored vehicles like the one pictured above.  It’s sole mission so far?  To protect the children’s bounce house at the annual Fargo Picnic, a high-threat terrorist dream target in a state that’s a hotbed of Muslim extremist terrorist training facilities.  (Sarcasm off for the sarcastically challenged.)

Tens of billions of DHS grants have been given to local, county and state law enforcement agencies.  It’s “like winning the lottery” to get one of these grants, one local official told the reporter.

Here’s the story:

DHS grants ‘like winning the lottery’ for state, local officials

America is prepared if pumpkin-starved zombies that can only be killed with flavored snowballs invade, thanks to billions of dollars in federal grants to harden the homeland against terror attacks.

What’s not clear is whether the United States is any better protected against more conventional attacks by actual humans using guns, bombs or chemical weapons, according to report on wasteful spending of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) money issued today by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

DHS has spent $35 billion since 2003 on grants to help state and local governments prevent and respond to terrorist attacks. Money flowed through up to 17 different programs with few standards as to what would qualify.

One costly program with particularly ill-defined rules is the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), which has funneled more than $7 billion to state and local agencies with virtually no accountability, according to the report.

Local governments have used UASI money to buy Sno-Cone machines in Michigan, armored vehicles in small towns across the country, and even to pay $1,000-per-person registration fees at a training seminar that featured a session in which 40 actors portraying zombies were gunned down in a parking lot.