We'll be heading down to the Tiger game now to snipe some Yankees.

From our friend Jeff Nabors.

Click on the image below for Amazon.com's offering of the Playmobile Security Checkpoint.

Seriously.

We've included a couple of our favorite comments on this product below.

It's well worth your time reading through them at Amazon as a quiet laugh might cause you to forget your hangover.

Had this item 3 or 4 days now, and things were going fine, until some of the "passengers" began complaining of missing items from their luggage. I found the items in a Playmobil Security Manager's Office, which I hadn't realized I ordered. I'm thinking of complaining to the Playmobil Shop Steward but I'm not sure I'll get anywhere 

The playset seemed well build, but none of the other Playmobil action figures I had seemed to enjoy it very much.  In fact most of them complained, and are now being detained in an unknown location....

This toy would be a lot more realistic with about 350 people standing in line for an average of an hour.  It still makes a nice set with the interrogation room.

This is the perfect playset, I can't wait till it comes back in stock. I am also ordering the 4 additional security screeners standing around to make it 100% authentic. Thanks PlayMobil.

Here's the problem that faces not only the government of the United States, but every government everywhere in the world.

So many lies have been exposed and so much bad faith has been revealed that were the President of the United States to come out and announce that the sky is blue, a significant percentage of the population would walk out their front door just to check.

Which individuals of course would depend on whether it were a Democrat or a Republican President.

Here's a way cynical five minute presentation on the government's account of the events of September 11, 2001.

My strongly held opinion is that the report issued by the 9/11 Commission has absolutely nothing to do with what really happened on that terrible morning and that the real perpetrators are far more likely to be Mossad and the Saudis who are much friendlier than they will ever admit to being, along with some serious help from the very top of the international military industrial complex and some of our own intelligence bankers, than it is to have been some rag tag band of Muslim cokeheads.

Once again thanks to our friend Ammericanu.

Speaking of abusive police.

From the Guardian.UK.

As always click on the photo to link up with the entire piece.

The TSA's mission creep is making the US a police state

The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports –  now it's checkpoints and roadblocks

Jennifer Abel guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 April 2012 10.42 EDT

A TSA 'viper' (VIPR) team patrolling mass transit

Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that "If we can't feel your nipples, they must be a bomb", the agency's craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra "If you don't like it, don't fly!"

This callous disregard for travelers' rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old, Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying "people [who] want to travel by some other means" have that right. (In other words: if you don't like it, don't fly.)

But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA's snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations – and even running checkpoints on highways – never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to theinspirational motto displayed at the TSA's air marshal training centersince the agency's inception: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."

Anyone who rode the bus in Houston, Texas during the 2-10pm shift last Friday faced random bag checks and sweeps by both drug-sniffing dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs (the latter being only canines necessary if "preventing terrorism" were the actual intent of these raids), all courtesy of a joint effort between TSA VIPR nests and three different local and county-level police departments. The new Napolitano doctrine, then: "Show us your papers, show us everything you've got, justify yourself or you're not allowed to go about your everyday business."

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee praised these violations of her constituents' rights with an explanation asinine even by congressional standards:

"We're looking to make sure that the lady I saw walking with a cane … knows that Metro cares as much about her as we do about building the light rail."

See, if you don't support the random harassment of ordinary people riding the bus to work, you're a callous bastard who doesn't care about little old ladies.

Evidently there are Al Queda flags flying atop public buildings all over Libya.

This has raised a question in the mind of Congressman Dennis Kucinich worthy of your consideration.

At least we prevented that bloodbath.

Oopsies!

The great conceit amongst the great unwashed (that would be us) is as follows, “If we can just get our guys elected, then everything will be Ok.” 

Among the great things about the Internet is the fact that there is a site out there for everyone regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation or political affiliation.

Being a retired person enables me to spend many of my days skulking the Internet from the way farthest reaches of the left to the way farthest reaches of the right and everything in between, reading the partisan nonsense that passes for thought.

I have come to the unhappy conclusion that the political parties that supposedly represent the interests of both the left and the right are rotten at their very core and neither can be trusted with the people’s business.

Further, there is no party that represents the majority of the American people, those that reside in the middle. 

Liberal/Progressive Democrat types are always whining about a lack of “bipartisanship” within our elected governmental bodies. What bipartisanship of course means to your garden variety liberal/progressive type is that the right needs to agree completely with every thought they might have because they are good people and as good people they only want what is good for other people.  And by extrapolation anyone who disagrees with any tenet that a liberal/progressive person might hold to must be a bad person because all liberal/progressives are good people who only want what is good for other people.

Those people who identify themselves, as Conservative Republican’s really don’t care that much about bipartisanship as they are fully convinced that the left is populated by delusional whack jobs lacking even the tiniest clue about what really works.

Each side has been able to maintain at the very least a modicum of political power and maintain their rancorous debate for the better part of a generation.

The result of course has been a decade or more of gridlock on practically any issue you can think of, with one notable exception.

The National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1540) passed the Republican controlled House of Representatives by a vote of 283 to 136 having passed in the Democrat held Senate by a vote of 86-13 and was subsequently signed into law by Democrat President Barack Obama.

This bill includes a provision that enables the United States Military to arrest and hold without trial for an indefinite period of time any person the government deems to be a terrorist.

Now what you need to appreciate here is that opposition to this provision extends from the furthest reaches of the American left to the furthest reaches of the American right, from the ACLU to the Tea Party Patriots and beyond.

Test this out for yourself.

Ask anyone you know if they think it’s a good idea for the military to be able to arrest and hold indefinitely without trial an American citizen suspected of being a terrorist.

I’ve asked a raft of people, they mostly look at me like I’m an idiot to even suggest such a thing.

Yet Congress which exists to represent the will of the American people passes this bill with way majorities, and the President who ran on a promise of change signed it immediately.

In all my reading and what I find to be most interesting is that I can find no evidence that the American people's interest/concern about terror and terrorists even begins to approach that of our elected representatives.

With the exception of certain elements within the “Christian Right” who are pretty damn sure Islam is out to get 'em and in all fairness do have some evidence to support that notion, most Americans view “Terror” as an issue that pales in comparison to many other issues including jobs, healthcare, entitlements, deficits ..... you name it.

Yet both political parties remain terrorized and continue to sell “Terror” every time they seek to ...

And that is the very question you need to be asking yourself,  "Just what exactly is it, that they are seeking to do?"

As always, Stratfor Global Intelligence blows the doors off of all competition in the News and/or Analysis business.

The first chart will link you up to the full analysis, they do have some free stuff which I mooched for years, you may have to register or fool around some to get this story.

The second chart will link you to a much larger version of the chart that you can actually read.

 The distinction between Core, Franchise and Grassroots attacks is interesting to me.

Basically core is al Qaeda itself, Franchise groups are those that have some loose affiliation and/or allegiance to al Qaeda, and Grassroots are individual people who have been inspired by al Qaeda and have taken matters into their own hands.

Complicated.

From Congressman John J. Duncan, Republican representing Tennessee's Second District.

We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001.

This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.

Now, let me make that clear. 

Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each.

They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency.

In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.

Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.

It gets better.

Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct.

Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.''

As those big salaries continue to attract the very best people!!!!!