No, you really, really, REALLY are NOT paranoid enough. Nowhere near.

Got a Twitter account? Planning on traveling to the USA?  Really bad combination.

Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to 'destroy America' and 'dig up Marilyn Monroe'.

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: 'Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?'

Yes, they REALLY FREAKIN' ARE watching you.  Yes, that means you. You know who you are, you baaad ol' puddy tat!

For you Americans, here's something to ponder. How much did it cost to intercept those jokes, identify those two kids, detain them, scare the living shit out of them for 12 straight hours and ultimately send them home without them having spent a cent of their tourist dollars in LA?  I'd hazard a guess you could pay for four armed men and a Humvee for a couple weeks on the southern border with that money. 

And how friggin' BORED must the officials who set all this up have been? A whole world full of actual threats and these geniuses have the leisure to pick on tourist kids with no criminal records coming from America's oldest ally? Could be budget cut time!

Just something to consider in an election year.

The Phantom

George Soros tells us his plans for 2012

Sometimes its useful to read propaganda. This is an article from The Daily Beast, regarding George Soros and his beliefs about what's happening these days.

To Soros, the spectacular debunking of the credo of efficient markets—the notion that markets are rational and can regulate themselves to avert disaster—"is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a political system. The prevailing interpretation has turned out to be very misleading. It assumes perfect knowledge, which is very far removed from reality. We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems." Understanding, he says, is key. "Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret. The tragedy of our current situation is the unintended consequence of imperfect understanding. A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to." Still, Soros believes the West is struggling to cope with the consequences of evil in the financial world just as former Eastern bloc countries struggled with it politically. Is he really saying that the financial whizzes behind our economic meltdown were not just wrong, but evil? "That's correct."

Do I think Georgie believes that? Not a chance in Hell. That's what he wants -us- to believe.
Here's what Georgie believes:

He sympathizes with the Occupy movement, which articulates a widespread disillusionment with capitalism that he shares. People "have reason to be frustrated and angry" at the cost of rescuing the banking system, a cost largely borne by taxpayers rather than shareholders or bondholders.

Occupy Wall Street "is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest," but it will grow. It has "put on the agenda issues that the institutional left has failed to put on the agenda for a quarter of a century." He reaches for analysis, produced by the political blog ThinkProgress.org, that shows how the Occupy movement has pushed issues of unemployment up the agenda of major news organizations, including MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. It reveals that in one week in July of last year the word "debt" was mentioned more than 7,000 times on major U.S. TV news networks. By October, mentions of the word "debt" had dropped to 398 over the course of a week, while "occupy" was mentioned 1,278 times, "Wall Street" 2,378 times, and "jobs" 2,738 times. You can't keep a financier away from his metrics.

As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. "Yes, yes, yes," he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. "It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States."

Overall, that's a pretty bold statement of fact for ol' George. Since Occupy Wall Street is not a grass roots thing but rather a bought-and-paid-for Soros funded thug group, he ought to know what they are going to do. So this year George is planning to have European-style street violence as part of the election campaign. Not for the sake of freedom mind you, but to cause the increase in police state behavior he claims to be all worried about. Because police states make it easier to steal money, if you own the cops. Awesome, eh?

We shall see how that plan plays out when it meets the -real- grass roots movement in America, and Soros's paid political thugs rub up against the Don't Tread On Me crowd. Should turn out real different than the pre-arranged circus we were treated to last fall.

The definition of insanity...

... is modern governance in the post-logic world. Exhibit A: Fox News, Plane leaves the gate with gun on board!!!

A plane left the gate at DFW Airport with a gun on board before transportation officials alerted the pilot about the problem, FOX 4 has learned.

Airport spokesman David Magana said a 65-year-old woman from Little Elm, Texas had a gun in her carry-on bag that got through the security checkpoint .

By the time the woman took her bag and walked away, a TSA agent scanning the D-30 checkpoint noticed the .38-caliber handgun.

Magana said the TSA shut down only the security checkpoint, not the entire terminal, and began searching the D concourse and other terminals for the woman.

At least 90 minutes elapsed before she was in custody, Magana said.

The plane, American Airlines flight 2385 to Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport, returned to the gate before it got on the runway.

 Some goofy old lady forgets she has her rinky dink little Airweight in her purse, the Super Duper TSA airport security circus blood hounds miss it, and its national news. If it wasn't for 40 years of gun-hate in the national press, that would happen five times a day and nobody would give a rip.  Point is though, forgetful geezer foiled TSA ultra awesome security by accident.

Exhibit B: TSA [finally!!!] admits wrongdoing in STRIP SEARCHES of 2 elderly women.

In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.

Federal officials had initially insisted that all "screening procedures were followed" after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.

But in a letter obtained by the Daily News, the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that screeners violated standard practice in their treatment of the ailing octogenarians last November.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Betsy Markey concedes to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) that Sherman was forced to show security agents her colostomy bag — a violation of policy.

"It is not standard operating procedure for colostomy devices to be visually inspected, and [the Transportation Security Administration\] apologizes for this employee's action," Markey wrote.

They abused two old ladies -for no reason whatsoever-, then lied about it as an organization and not just as individuals, now faced with the truth have finally admitted both the abuse and the lies. Total negative repercussions on TSA employees, ZERO.

Exhibit C: NYC investigates moving airport security procedures out onto the public street.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS in New York his department is looking to deploy Terahertz Imaging Detection scanners on the street in the war on "illegal guns."

Kelly said the scanners would be used in "reasonably suspicious circumstances" and intended to cut down on the number of stop-and-frisks on the street. So called stop-and-frisks are considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

"The NYPD and Department of Defense are working together testing Terahertz Imaging Detection, a new way to get concealed illegal weapons off the streets," CBS reports. Terahertz Imaging Detection measures energy radiating from the body up to 16 feet away and can detect anything blocking it.

So the Federal government in cooperation with the City of New York are planning on expanding the security theater employed by TSA in airports which A. does not work and B. has already led to casual and pointless abuse of American people. They plan, at the expense of millions of taxpayer dollars, to use naked body scanner technology on random passersby in NYC in the name of "public safety".

Which is the very definition of insanity.

Just remember this stuff in November friends.

The Phantom

Too much government, agency vs. agency smackdown!

What happens when Federal conservationists meet the FAA? Lawyers make money, is what.

Operation Migration is part of a U.S.-Canadian partnership of government and private organizations trying to re-establish migrating flocks of whooping cranes. The cranes nearly became extinct, dwindling to only 15 birds in 1941.

So far so good, and these guys have been doing this for a decade. Ten years they've been at it. This year however somebody was bored at the FAA.

Ten young whooping cranes and the bird-like plane they think is their mother had flown more than halfway to their winter home in Florida when federal regulators stepped in.

Now the birds and the plane are grounded in Alabama while the Federal Aviation Administration investigates whether the journey violates regulations because the pilot was being paid by a conservation group to lead the cranes on their first migration instead of working for free.

FAA regulations say only pilots with commercial pilot licenses can fly for hire. The pilots of Operation Migration's plane are instead licensed to fly sport aircraft because that's the category of aircraft that the group's small, open plane with its rear propeller and bird-like wings falls under. FAA regulations also prohibit sport aircraft - which are sometimes of exotic design - from being flown to benefit a business or charity.

Yeah. They waited until the guy was halfway there and THEN grounded him. Not because of anything the pilot did, of because of the aircraft, nope. Because of an obscure detail you'd have to be a lawyer to know about.

Obviously there's too many guys at the FAA with time on their hands. Solution? Fire half of them. Put the fear of God in the other half.

Update: Welcome all you Small Dead Animals and flying monkeys! ~:D

"Dear America, your government is too big..."

Lawyers all over America got a nice Christmas present from the US government. Employers got coal.

Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Defense lawyers:

Some corporate counsels are advising clients to adjust the way they approach the hiring process.

"Employers are wise to evaluate whether a high school diploma really is necessary to perform the essential functions of any job for which it is being required," the Employer Law Report advised in a blog post by Lisa Whittaker, a lawyer with the Porter Wright firm, which has represented business clients for more than 150 years.

"Even in those situations where the high school diploma requirement can be justified, employers will still need to consider" whether a "reasonable accommodation" could be provided to allow a disabled person without a diploma to perform a given job.

Translated, that means "DON'T HIRE ANYONE!!!"

The Phantom

Now THAT is offensive!!!

The music business is all a-twitter with outraged talk my friends. Yes, an entertainer has committed the ultimate sin! He spoke approvingly of [gasp!] religion!

Cee Lo Green upset John Lennon fans on Saturday night by performing a soulful version of the songwriter's classic "Imagine" with the lyrics changed from "nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too" to "nothing to kill or die for / and all religion's true."

Yes friends, killing somebody, beating up your woman and being a drug raddled sex addict is completely acceptable for the readers of Rolling Stone. But say there's a God?  You can't DO that!
Next frontier in anti-establishment rebellion is going to be modest clothing and church every Sunday, you just watch.

The Phantom