An American Lion

Another terrorist attack, another freak out by the American media establishment:

A 23-year-old Nigerian was charged Saturday with attempting to blow up an airliner, a day after being tackled on board a flight as it was about to land in Detroit.

The man, identified as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is in hospital with burns following the Christmas Day attack.

Abdulmutallab had for at least two years been on a list that includes people with known or suspected contact or ties to terrorists, an official briefed on the attack told The Associated Press Saturday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The list, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and contains about 550,000 names.

People on the list are not necessarily on the no-fly list and that was the case with the suspect, identified as Nigerian , 23, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told MSNBC.

“Why he was not on the no-fly list we have to look into,” said King, who is the ranking Republican member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Dutch anti-terrorism authorities said Abdulmutallab was traveling on a U.S. visa valid through the first half of 2010.

A security official in Amsterdam, where the Christmas Day flight originated, told Newsweek that U.S. security authorities had cleared the flight for departure.

A U.S. counterterrorism official acknowledged that “in many respects, this one (case) is puzzling. There’s still a lot of questions that need answers.”

It’s called incompetence, my friends, and nothing but cheek-slapping, eyelid-twitching incompetence is what allows things like this to happen. The President of the United States and his vast, privacy-invading security apparatus can’t save you. Only you can save you. Only you can get off your dead ass, jump over seats, and stop a son of a bitch like this and prevent yourself from being blown up in the sky. Whoever let this man on the plane needs to be fired, and removed from ever being allowed to do anything more complicated than slapping a slice of baloney between two pieces of bread. Epic, epic fail. Their terrorism list means nothing. If Nelson Mandela and Ted Kennedy can be on it, what the hell good is it?

Anyone who thinks a Republican or a Democrat gives two shits about something like this is fooling themselves. You are on your own, sir. These people live inside of a bubble. No one tells them what they need to know. No one tells them that their own out-of-control spending on a security apparatus that cannot figure out how to process the information that it collects and is useless when it comes to intercepting what one person says to another over a pot of tea is better spent training first responders and making it so ambulances can fly. No one tells the American people that suicide bombers and suicide attackers can pretty much hit wherever they want and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.

Ideology means nothing. Action, intiative, and courage are all you need to battle terrorism. This one act takes the wind out of the sails of the terrorists. All it takes is for people to stop worrying about what their government is supposed to be doing.