Finally, Sarah Brady says what she thinks!

Here is something I tought I'd never see. A truthfull representation
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050929/lf_afp/afplifestyleflorida_050929191421;_ylt=Asptn9HaPTrxVVZlyAhVo8D1_sEF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl>of
what an anti-gun propaganda outfit (The Brady Center, AKA Handgun
Control Inc.) thinks of gun owners.

> MIAMI (AFP) - Welcome to Florida, but avoid arguments or thanks to a
> new law you run the risk of getting shot, according to an ad campaign
> launched by a gun-control group.
>
> The campaign coincides with a state law that enters into effect
> authorizing gun owners to shoot anyone in a public area who they
> believe threaten their safety.

You have to see the poster
<http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050929/photos_lf_afp/050929145342_o34pwmru_photo0;_ylt=A9G_RyLSXT1DBZgASwb2_sEF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA->
to really get it though, this is classic. They lied about the law sure
enough, but they told the truth about how they see gun owners and
Americans in general.

Nice promotion of the "Shoot First Law" propaganda by all the news too.
The truth of the matter is that law on self defence has been changed.
They removed the requirement of retreat in the face of a dangerous
attack before using deadly force. It means if somebody attacks you, and
you have reason to fear they will kill or maim you because they are
armed or much bigger or whatever, you don't have to run away and have
them chase you first, you can just shoot them.

Previously if they didn't chase after you before you shot them you could
go to jail. At one point Florida law held that even in your home you
had to run outside and could only shoot them if they ran outside after
you. No defense of property allowed.

As anyone familiar with the tactics of self defence knows, running away
from an armed assault is 100% the right thing to do, and unfortunately
100% impossible most of the time. There is no TIME to retreat because
its all over in two to three seconds, you don't have a clear line of
retreat usually, and thinking about the legal niceties in the middle of
an armed assault is not what one wants to be doing. You've got less
than a full second to get that gun out and on target, you better just go
for it. Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six and all that.

The law has been changed to reflect these facts, so that innocent crime
victims who defend themselves or others don't go to jail. And about
friggin' time I might add.

Enter the Brady Campaign with their take: "Please be aware that the
local wildlife is armed and extremely dangerous! If you anger one of
these gun-toting Florida red necks we have around here they can shoot
you, and they absolutely will. Because anybody insane enough to
actually own a gun is looking for an opportunity to use it. Be afraid!
Run away!"

And the truth will set you free! They think normal, regular people are
all ASSHOLES with zero impulse control and the blood thirst of Vlad the
Impaler! People Are Stupid, central tenet of the liberal catechism.
Give 'em a gun and they'll go nuts. And they came right out and said
it. They must be pretty desperate to resort to the truth after all this
time.

The Phantom Red Neck

BC set to sue Big Tobbacco

http://www.canada.com/national/story.html?id=fa0f7310-0fd1-4436-8d30-b4182c81acd3

Well my friends, the Supreme Court has yet again decided that Canadians have no rights.  This time, to enable the BC government to sue Big Tobbacco, they decided:

The legal ground rules set out in the legislation are not as unfair as the tobacco firms claim, wrote Justice John Major on behalf of the court.

"They appear to reflect legitimate policy concerns of the British Columbia legislature regarding the systemic advantages tobacco manufacturers enjoy when claims for tobacco-related harm are litigated through individual common-law tort actions."

Canadians who want to claim personal damages from tobacco firms have long been free to file individual or class-action lawsuits and can still do so.

The new wrinkle in the B.C. law is that it lets the province file a so-called "aggregate action," in which it seeks to recover money to support the health care system as a whole.

That means the government doesn't have to prove specific harm to each individual.

See, if the government doesn't have to prove specific harm, then really there's no defense against a government charge.  They can use any old junk science to demonstrate some kind of "general harm to society" and take your money.  Got an SUV?  Not for long!

The Harmful Phantom

Liberal bias in the newsroom? Say it ain't SO!

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2005/09/29/1240075.html

The Sun has been coming out with some pretty good stuff lately. Here's
a study which confirms what my lyin' eyes have been telling me for years
about the TV news.

> According to a recent study by two Ryerson University journalism
> professors:
>
> * Almost half of all Canadian television news directors, the
> individuals who have the most influence in determining what political
> news is covered on your favourite nightly newscast and how it is
> reported, vote Liberal.
>
> * A TV news director working at the tax-funded CBC is almost three
> times more likely to vote for the NDP in federal elections, compared
> to his or her counterpart in the private sector.
>
> * When this research was compiled in 2002, just over one in 10 (11.4%)
> of all private sector news directors said they would vote for the
> Canadian Alliance. However, not one news director at the CBC described
> himself (or herself) as an Alliance voter.
>
Surprise, the TV news is run by liberals! Wow, didn't see that coming
eh? The guy who decides what ois going to be on the news and how it
will be portrayed is pretty socialist (PC Party), really socialist
(Liberals) or "workers unite and sieze the means of production!"
socilaist (NDP). One in ten is mildly willing to look at something
other than socialism, if that's ok with everybody. That's the Alliance
Party, now known as the Conservative Party of Canada. The CBC appears
to be a branch of Pravda, but hasn't got the word about the Berlin Wall yet.

And we wonder why all there is on the news is pictures of Harper eating
kittens.

The Biased Phantom

American government: not as bad as it could be.

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050928-084414-7121r.htm

This is a discussion of the threat posed by emerging Bird Flu viruses to
the USA, and the lack of effective action by the US government to the
threat.

> The threat of the avian flu virus is real, as Senate Majority Leader
> Bill First explains in this section, and could potentially claim
> millions of American lives. No vaccine for the avian flu exists. The
> country needs biotechs, academia and government to cooperate to create
> the vaccines and other compounds needed to fight it.
> In that regard, the avian flu is just one of many potential
> biological problems -- whether natural or man-made -- that we must
> grapple with. To deal with the avian flu and the others -- anthrax,
> smallpox and radiological threats, to name three -- the United States
> must update the 2004 Bioshield law. That law was a good start, but not
> nearly enough.
> The record on implementing Bioshield was not encouraging. For
> instance, it took three years and eight months after the October 2001
> anthrax attacks before the Department of Health and Human Services
> finally stockpiled the first doses of anthrax vaccine. Beyond the
> obvious no-defenses problem, this was regrettable because it
> disheartened some biotechs and pharmaceutical firms considering
> supplying the government with new drugs to combat new biological threats.

You know, as a Canadian I can only look south in envy at the actions of
the US government. Compared with Canada, Frist's complaints are mere
quibbles. Here in the Frozen North the issue is not being discussed.
People are not only not doing enough, they not only doing nothing, they
don't even know there is something they should be doing something about.

If Bird Flu is half what the hype is, we are in for some very serious
shit here because the government, which 100% controls the health care
system, is not even thinking about this.

The I'm Buying A Gas Mask Phantom

Very interesting analysis of CDN healthcare

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=ee0b4706-7289-4cd8-9f05-eee5ef199631

From the National Poost today, an interesting revelation about
healthcare spending:

> As debate swirls about the role of private medicine in Canada, the
> private sector already covers a bigger chunk of health care costs here
> than in many Western nations -- and its share is growing, a new report
> released yesterday reveals.
>
> About 70% of Canada's $130-billion health tab is covered by
> governments, compared with 83% in Britain, 76% in France and 78% in
> Germany, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information
> (CIHI) review.
>
> But in the European countries, the funding is spread more evenly
> across everything from acute medical service to dental visits and
> prescription drugs. Government spending in Canada is concentrated on
> hospital and doctors' services, the study underlined.
>
Which raises an interesting point. Dental care is 100% private pay,
with private insurance being pretty slim and co-pays large. Yet I don't
see too many people walking around with their teeth rotting out (other
than winos and junkies). How do the poor downtrodden masses manage to
pay the eeeevile capitalist dentists? Hmmm?

The rest of the article is even more interesting. Private care is
pretty much taking over through the back door while the Liberals stand
at the front door screaming TAX THE RICH. Typical Liberal manuever,
they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Meanwhile sick people
wait in ambulances in the parking lot.

The Inquiring Phantom

Here's a shocker: Corruption in Chicomland! Say it ain't so, Chairman Moe!

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/29/MTFH18416_2005-09-29_06-10-14_FLE922191.html

Boy howdy, this is just so unexpected!

BEIJING (Reuters) - An investigation by China's state auditors released on Thursday has found rampant financial irregularities throughout government and said corruption in public administration is widespread.

The report found budget mismanagement in no less than 32 government ministries and departments, and was equally critical of the Finance Ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission, the two main bodies that disseminate cash.

The primary difference between a capitalist company and a communist country, is that the company will eventually go broke if there's widespread corruption.  No matter how big it is, no matter if it has an iron clad monopoly, a private company can't withstand corruption and will go out of existence.  Thereby killing the corruption.

A communist country has corruption as the foundation of its existence, and maintains itself primarily through terror and theft.  Once the people get a smell of the freedom outside their walls, the corrupt government is pretty well done for because it can't react constructively.  All it can do is crank the noose tighter until the friggin' rope breaks.

I look forward to the fall of the house that Mao built with great anticipation.  I'd say I hope it is an object lesson to all the socialists, but if they ignored the Berlin Wall crashing down they can ignore anything.

The COMMUNIST Phantom  ~:D

Hollywood continues to auger into the ground. SPOILER alert, if anyone cares.

Well, it seems the latest Jody Foster film is following the hate America template along with the rest of the totally awesome films we all didn't see this year.  Courtesy Drudge today.  Who's pissed this time is the flight attendants.

Labor unions representing most of the nation's 90,000 flight attendants have urged their members to boycott a new Jodie Foster film that portrays a flight attendant and a U.S. air marshal as terrorists.

They said that casting cabin crew members as villains in the movie "Flightplan" was irresponsible in light of heightened security concerns since the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which suicide hijackers used airliners as guided missiles.

The Walt Disney Co. film, which was the No. 1 release at the North American box office last weekend, stars Foster as an airline passenger who awakens from an in-flight nap to find her young daughter missing. It turns out that one of the flight attendants aboard is involved in a terrorist plot hatched by the plane's air marshal.

Gee, isn't that what you sooo want to see in the post 9/11 world?  Officials of the US government are terrorists!  It will be a wonder if this trash breaks even.  It did $25 mill opening weekend, that doesn't bode well for it once the word gets out.

It remains to be seen whether or not Hollywierd will get a friggin' clue before they go bankrupt.  My money is on bankruptcy, I don't think they are very bright.

The Phantom Film Critic

PC enforcement run amok: Don't look at the babies!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=363576&in_page_id=1799&in_a_source=

Well, today is a big day for moonbats I guess.  Here's a hospital in England that's banned cooing over the newborns.  I'd swear this belongs in The Onion, but apparently not.

Managers at Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax have asked visitors to the maternity wing not to stare into cots or question mothers about their labour.

Staff in one of the wards have put up a display of a doll in a cot with a message saying: "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"

<snippage>

Debbie Lawson, a ward sister at the special care baby unit, said: "We know people have good intentions and most cannot resist cooing over new babies but we need to respect the child.

"Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me."

"We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen.

"Hopefully our message comes across loud and clear. The Government has set a benchmark that every patient has a right to privacy and dignity and we say that includes tiny babies as well.

"I can't imagine why any mother would complain about this. Most would be against strangers poking and prodding and asking questions."

This is what happens when officious little ex-cheerleaders get too much power.  Somebody need to take Debbie Lawson and her management to the wood shed.

The Phantom Moonbat Smacker

Why grow-ops need crushing.

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/theprovince/news/story.html?id=32bab419-9574-4969-ba1a-3037f1a2f618

Let us begin our little excursion into the fun world of dope growers with some confession:  I don't think smoking up is a big deal.  It doesn't appear to be significantly more harmful than tobacco or booze, it never did me any harm as a kid, and I could care less if people grow their own and smoke it at home.  People make wine and beer at home, this is no different.

Smoking and driving is no different than drinking and driving and should be discouraged.  Possibly the present police-state Stasi style efforts are a bit excessive, but I'm open to discussion.

If someone wants to become a total pot head its no different than the alcoholics.  My feeling is actions have consequences, rights come with responsibilities, they screw their lives up that's their problem.  Anyone trying to make it my problem will find they have a bigger problem.  Also, lets not be shy about cutting off their state welfare checks.  Self inflicted wounds do not give someone a right to reach into my pocket.  Suck it up and get over it or live on charity from people who give a shit.  Probably reduce chemical dependencies 90% right there, but if not I don't care.  Call me a hard ass, but personal responsibility is all that stands between us and barbarism.

Ok then, having said all that, the curent business of marijuana growing operations is a BAD THING and needs to be seen to.  Failure to do so will have extremely dire consequences for our society. To wit:

An 86-year-old Vancouver woman had the fright of her life when gunmen shot up her house by mistake.

"Something like that is definitely a trauma for her," said Larry Wales, who was securing the home of his mother, Florence, yesterday.

Seventeen shots were fired at the house in the 2600-block Charles Street. Five rounds tore through the back door and two more came through a window, hitting the kitchen cabinets.

"I was raised in this house basically from Day 1," said Wales. "When you come here and you're looking at bullet holes through the back door and window and into the cabinets and you think about your mother, vulnerable . . ."

The thing to remember about the dope trade is that there is big money in it, and that it is a criminal enterprise.  As in an enterprise carried out by criminals. 

The thing to remember about criminals is that they are not normal people. They are not as smart as your normal kid flipping burgers, their impulse control is poor, their grasp of action-and consequences is non-existent, their morals are convenient to the situation and subject to change.  In short, they are the kind of people who would think it appropriate to shoot up a rival's house, dumb enough to pick the wrong house, and callous enough not to care much if they shoot an 86 year old lady by mistake.  Making people afraid in their homes is probably considered a bonus.

These are not the kind of people you want having access to big money.  Big money gives them the clout to cause damage that reaches much farther than these casual shootings.  They can corrupt the police service, the justice system, the civil service, the Parliament.  They can branch out into other criminal enterprises which damage society in different ways, like prostitution.  Call me a prude, but I don't think the proliferation of cheap whores is going to be good for public health.

There are two ways of combating the grow-op problem.  One way is to legalize marijuana!  This makes it legal for farmers to grow square miles of it out in the open and sell it by the hay wagon full.  Tons and tons and tons of it dropped on the open market will put these grow-op assholes out of business pretty much instantly.  This has problems, one of which is the increased use of dope which I don't see being that big a deal.  The other is smuggling to the USA, which will be a big problem and will screw up trade for a while.  That could be negotiated, but again smuggling is a criminal enterprise and you don't want to give the bastards an inch.

Therefore we turn to the other, less effective method.  Which is of course just enforcing existing law and jailing the grow-op wankers and dope salesmen.  Not ideal, but not bad.  Side benefit, 86 year old ladies don't get their houses shot up.  Plus we don't have cops and officials on the take, and there's no drug money paying for election campaigns.

This can be accomplished, but the Liberals and NDPers refuse to do it.  That leaves us with Harper winning the next election and doing it.  Or we can just get used to gangs shooting up our previously peaceful neighbourhoods.

The Prudish Phantom Hard Ass.

Washington Post over the top this time.

Normally I don't comment on Israel stories.  I figure the Israelis have the right of it and that's good enough for me.  But this one here, this is just too friggin' much for me to pass by unmentioned.

Given the revelations of the past few months that Palestinians have been creating pure fiction for the Western media to print and show on TV, you'd think a paper like the Washington Post would grow a grey cell or two and maybe question their sources a little on some things.  You know, ask around a little, maybe go and look themselves for once.

But no, it seems not:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli aircraft unleashed a barrage of missiles against targets throughout Gaza City early Wednesday, knocking out power and plunging the city into darkness. No injuries were immediately reported.

Missiles landed in at least three locations, including the impoverished Tufah neighborhood and the Bureij refugee camp, just south of the city.

One airstrike hit a two-story building used by the ruling Fatah party in Gaza City. The offices provide tutoring lessons to school children, and cash and food assistance to families in Tufah.

Now, anyone who thinks whatever Liberal hack wrote this crap for the Post actually went and found out that this building really was a child's tutoring center and welfare office is dreaming in technicolour.  This was copied directly from the PLO/Hamas/Islamic Jihad talking points sheet, probably faxed from Gaza direct to the Post offices in Warshingtoon.

No, there's no Leftwing bias in the media!  Heavens, what a sugestion!

The Biased Phantom

Good news, only 10 casualties at Superdome!

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_26.html#082732

If you are a normal person, there's good news about the New Orleans floods:

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.


Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

Now, out of 100,000 plus people, six dying of natural causes in any given week is not horrific, its NORMAL.  Everybody dies sooner or later.  This is not to say that six casualties is cause for celebration, or to imply that things could not have been done better, but it does indicate two things.
A.  It could have been worse, and
B. The media coverage was total, 100% bullshit.

Utter, absolute and complete failure of news gathering and reporting.  People are hearing 200 dead in the Dome, murders, rapes, beatings, and there's NADA.  Jack.  Zippo.  Corrections in the news?  Haven't heard much.

Media bias?  Naw, couldn't be.

The Biased Phantom

Sun Newspapers wake up to smell the coffee

http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=6544

Seems the Toronto Sun has finally awoken to the Liberal Party and their
gun control scam.

> The rash of murders on Toronto streets this summer shows that Ottawa's
> gun registry program does nothing to keep neighbourhoods safe,
> industry experts said yesterday.

Way to go boys, only ten years late. We all knew that back in 1995 when
the thing started. Even Windy Wendy has given up on the thing.

> Wendy Cukier, a professor of justice studies at Ryerson University and
> a member of the Coalition for Gun Control, said the violence on the
> streets has nothing to do with the gun registry.
>
> "There is an erosion between the community and the police. There can
> be 50 witnesses to a killing and no one comes forward," she said.
>
> To end the violence, there needs to be better border control to stop
> guns coming from the U.S., Crown attorneys need to go for mandatory
> sentences for weapons offences and gun dealers shouldn't be allowed to
> sell ammunition to people without a gun license, Cukier said.

Don't you love how they quote this woman without question? Its like
everything she says is divine wisdom direct from God. Increased border
control is impossible, and drug dealers don't buy their ammo at the
friggin' gun store. Mandatory sentences do nothing if they get parole
after six months due to over crowding in the jails, or plea bargained
down, or better yet it they get bail in less than 24 hours no matter how
many outstanding charges they have against them.

Sometimes I feel like I'm beating my head on a wall, I really do.

The Phantom Headache

Another Phantom Prophesy comes true.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Canada/2005/09/25/1234287-sun.html

This one showed up on Captain's Quarters and Proud to Be Canadian and Neal News too.

Critics of the gun registry are eagerly awaiting Auditor General Sheila Fraser's "Canadian Firearms Program" audit which is scheduled to be released in February -- if we're not in the midst of a federal election campaign.

Fraser isn't doing interviews about the audit, which has been underway for months.

The last time her office attempted to look into gun registry spending was 2002 and the results were explosive. In fact, her team was forced to abandon its attempts to follow the spending on the gun registry because of the absence of records.

"The information on cost recovery provided to the government changed as the program developed," Fraser wrote at the time.

Scuttlebutt (Peter McKay actually) has it that Sheila's got a whopper here, may make Adscam look like small change.  Which is what I've been saying for about three years I think.  The ONLY explanation for the exhorbitant cost of this idiot program is graft on a huge scale, and the only reason to have the program at all is to make the graft possible.

Captains Quarters has another idea:

...It also cost much more than the Liberals acknowledged at the initiation of the program; the registry has drained finances from other law-enforcement efforts.

Some Conservatives will say that this was the entire point of the Gun Registry all along. The RCMP, which administers the Gun Registry, has the only law-enforcement portfolio to independently investigate the Canadian executive. In the Canadian political system, the executive comes from Parliament and does not have checks or balances as the American executive does in Congress and the judiciary. The only such check comes in a no-confidence motion, which a majority party can easily squelch, or in the national law-enforcement agency of the RCMP. However, burdened by an underfunded mandate in the Gun Registry and the loss of high-ranking professionals over the last few years, the RCMP no longer has the resources nor the clout to exercise that check on executive power.

What happened as a result? Some would point to Adscam, which put a lot of money into the pockets of Liberal Party backers as well as the Party itself.

Too convoluted I fear.  Robbing money from the RCMP budget hasn't really been a problem, the RCMP has their own graft scandals to deal with.  Besides, the Liberals control the staffing of the RCMP right to the highest levels.  They don't need to de-fund them to get the desired freedom from investigation.

Besides, I don't think they are than smart.  Look at Adscam.  That wasn't brilliant, just the sleazy abuse of power and suitcases full of cash.  Registry-scam, they're friggin' stealin' it by the trunk load.  Bring on the Fraser Report!

The Prophetic Phantom

P.S.  The Sunshine Girl is quite nice too.  ~:D

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5510 Trackback to Captain's Quarters.

Important court order imposed, New Orleans can't confiscate guns.

http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=6541

From the NRA yesterday, this important news:

> Gun rights groups won a temporary restraining order Friday preventing
> police in New Orleans and a nearby parish from confiscating people's
> firearms when seeking to evacuate residents.

That's a major win, kids. I like it!

The Phantom

Liberals committed to more crime!

http://www.lufa.ca/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=5185

Now here is where we see the true nature of the Liberal Party.  I'm convinced these guys are just playing to the propagandised Politically Correct doofuses (doofi?) who seem to infest Toronto.  The kind of people who are just pink enough to think TAX THE RICH! is a good idea and not a bit of political misdirection from people with sinister motives.  The kind of people who think our browner citizens are a bunch of children who need seeing to by Big Brother (and isn't that the most condescending idea you've ever heard!) and if we only spend enough on Midnight Basketball and "Community Centres" and all manner of obscure "social services" to help the poor downtrodden imbeciles who can't quite cope, then everything will be ok.

My evidence:

"During yesterday's closed-door, one-day meeting, Liberal MPs and activists focused on social programs as being the only solution to solving street crime, which I find very short sighted," said [Conservative Justice Critic Vic] Toews.

Eeeew, can't take the word of a Conservative for what happened?  He might be lyin'!  Ok, how about Cotler the man himself?

Canada’s justice minister says the country’s gun laws are among the toughest on the books, and he dismissed calls for new minimum sentences as ‘‘a quick-fix solution’’ to a spate of gunplay in Toronto.

...

‘‘We have a very tough regime already in place. That’s why we have to look to other initiatives that may need to be taken,’’ Cotler said.

Never mind the damn criminals, we need more social programs!

Completely ignoring the astounding success in New York City with Giuliani's broken window policy (bust the grafitti sprayers, noise makers, j-walkers and obvious shit heads, and the serious crime rate plummets by double digits) and all other such efforts, the Liberals have battened onto the agenda that destroyed all the big cities in the American Northeast.  Way to goLiberals!  Find out exactly what isn't working and do that to the exclusion of all else.

It can't be accidental, it must be deliberate.  They need high crime rates to get on with their schemes, whatever those are, so they import criminals and then make sure they have a nice criminal friendly environment to work in.  No guns, no cops, lots of customers flush with unearned wellfare money.  Perfect.

Therefore I can only conclude that the engine of Liberal success is public misery in Canada.  I'd like to be wrong about that, but I can't see the error.

The Phantom

One mean mule.

http://wdwd.blogspot.com/2005/09/mean-mule.html

All you dog-and-horse people will like this one.  Something you don't see every day, a mule stomping a cougar.  Courtesy Small Dead Animals.

The Phantom

And now some more Canadian corruption.

http://angrygwn.mu.nu/

Well, in case anyone was still wondering why the Canadian Forces is driving 1975 Volkwagen Things (the Iltis), 1960's era Hercules transports and on and on and on, here's why.  Courtesy of Angry in the Great White North we have this study by Queens University explaining why they drive, fly and float antique, non-functional scrap instead of buying new stuff.

Government red tape and bureaucracy have become so cumbersome that the military finds it easier to keep patching up junk than to buy new equipment, says a study from Queen's University.

The paper from the Kingston, Ont., university's school of public policy warns that if government regulations and procedures aren't streamlined, the Canadian Forces will just crumble away as ships, planes and vehicles decay into uselessness.

Why?  No really though, what is it that keeps it this way?

Capital spending involves a bureaucratic maze.

"It usually can take up to nine departments to agree on the purchase of a major Crown project, something worth more than $100 million," Bland said.

"Getting nine deputy ministers in the same place at the same time is hard enough but getting everybody to agree - with all the policies, other interests, their own stake in things - is really difficult."

Bland says the problem runs through the army, navy and air force, as key systems age. If nothing is done to streamline the system, the military will begin to lose important capabilities within five years.

They can't buy new stuff because the Liberals have essentially made it impossible through bureacracy.  Surprise.  Because I bet you there's a bunch of good buddies making serious cash by supplying all that antique stuff.

A Liberal then is a guy who will cheerfully send young men off to die in a war in Assghanistan equipped with broken down shit that's twice as old as they are, while he makes huge money selling overpriced parts to the military.  That is who Liberals are.  Pretty much the same as the P.O.S. city worker in New Orleans caught stealing aid material by the truckload, but better at it.

The HANG 'EM! Phantom

Corruption reaching all new depths in New Orleans

Calling city officials in New Orleans a bunch of snakes is an insult to snakedom.  Think rather of the lowest form of crawling vermin, in a wheel rut below the gutter, and digging just as fast as they can.

BATON ROUGE, La. - Police found cases of food, clothing and tools intended for hurricane victims at the home of the chief administrative officer for a New Orleans suburb, authorities said Wednesday.

How much stuff are we talking about here?

Officers searched Cedric Floyd's home because of complaints that city workers were helping themselves to donations for hurricane victims. Floyd, who runs the day-to-day operations in the suburb of Kenner, was in charge of distributing the goods.

The donations filled a large pickup truck four times. "It was an awful lot of stuff," Caraway said.

So do we doubt that maybe the levee might have been substandard?  No, we do not.

The Disgusted Phantom

Levees maybe substandard?

Well now.  It seems the levees broke at less than their claimed design strength.  Possible reasons for that are incorrect engineering/fabrication, unforseen forces in the storm surge higher than the design strength, or CORRUPTION.  As in cheatin' contractors putting inferior materials and/or workmanship on the job.

Given that we are talking about New Orleans, corruption seems the best bet.  There's a contractor somewhere sweating bullets right about now, bet you a dollar.

The Phantom

another blow to global warming idiocy

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.html

Climate change evidence for warming is in.  Mars is getting warmer.

Which means, IF there really is any warming going on here on Earth, the cause is likely related to the change recorded for Mars.  As in, solar activity.  Not my SUV.

The Truck Drivin' Phantom

Canada second highest business taxes in the world

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=7509b4b1-23ff-4a30-a525-d2291c6246ec

Canada's economy as we all know is a branch plant of the USA. There's
not really anything sizeable done here that isn't owned by an American
company. Why? Because we have the second highest business taxes in the
world. Second only to Communist China, as it happens. The Americans
are investing with untaxed foreign money, that's why they own
everything. Hell, that's how I bought my house! Made money in the
States, bough a house in Canada with it. No way I could have saved up
the down payment in Canada. Nuh uh.

What's the Liberal plan to fix our economy?

> In a campaign-style speech yesterday, Paul Martin spoke at length
> about the Liberal government's economic strategy, but there was no
> mention of tax reform.
>
> Instead, the Prime Minister concentrated on the need to boost
> education, and it now appears that education and skills training
> rather than tax cuts will form the core of any productivity push from
> Ralph Goodale, the Finance Minister, ahead of the next election.
>
They want to produce a country of unemployed Ph.D.s, pretty much. Cheap
skilled peons for American business to use and for Ottawa to tax.
Here's the breakdown:

> Canada's marginal effective tax on business capital -- combining such
> things as depreciation deductions together with capital and corporate
> tax rates -- averaged 39% in 2005, the second-highest among 36
> industrial and leading developing countries.
>
> Canada was lower than China at 45.8%, but higher than Brazil at 38.5%,
> the United States at 37.7% and Germany at 36.9%.
>
> Importantly, Canada's marginal effective tax rate (METR) was well
> above burgeoning economic engines like India at 24.3%, Poland at 20.2%
> and Ireland, which has slashed its rate to 13.7% and seen economic
> growth explode.

And the tax on those chronically unemployed yet ever so educated workers?

> Marginal income tax rates -- taxes paid on additional earnings
> received -- like overtime work or bonuses -- discourage extra effort.
> This is especially true for lower-income brackets because benefits and
> credits are clawed back if income rises only a small amount.
>
> C.D. Howe says the average federal-provincial marginal tax rates for
> families with two children is about 60% in the $25,000 to $35,000
> income range. Once $20,000 in income is reached, marginal tax rates
> are never below 40% and tend to be close to 50%.
>
> If a mother with three children enters the work force, earning a
> modest income of about $30,000, she will pay significant income, sales
> and payroll taxes as well as lose child tax benefits and other
> income-test credits.
>
Branch plant economy. Yeah baby. Even the European Worker's Paradise
has lower taxes that Canada. And what do we get for our money? Adscam.

But hey, the Harper Conservatives are EVILE! Bad men, fear the bad men!

The TAX ME Phantom

more about Scotland

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1786945,00.html

Well, more has been revealed about the UN study that ranked Scotland as
the world's most violent developed country.

> The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21
> countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week,
> almost ten times the official police figures.

It was a telephone survey. A multinational one. Which means its most
likely total bollocks. Scientifically speaking, even in the very
unlikely event that they did everything right (this is a UN study
remember) the evidence is of the weakest sort. The Chief of Police
naturally concurs:

> Chief Constable Peter Wilson, president of the Association of Chief
> Police Officers in Scotland, questioned the figures. “It must be near
> impossible to compare assault figures from one country to the next
> based on phone calls,” he said.
>
> “We have been doing extensive research into violent crime in Scotland
> for some years now and this has shown that in the vast majority of
> cases, victims of violent crime are known to each other. We do accept,
> however, that, despite your chances of being a victim of assault being
> low in Scotland, a problem does exist.”
>
Damn straight a problem exists, one that is clouded by deliberately
obfuscated police numbers. However even the spin miesters can't conceal
that the cops are a bunch of inept wankers. They reveal that truth every
time they open their yaps. Here's one genius on what to do:

> Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the Strathclyde
> Police’s violence reduction unit, said the problem was chronic and
> restricting access to drink and limiting the sale of knives would at
> least reduce the problem.

Yep, that guy just proposed prohibition and knife control. Remember
kids, Constable Plod says, "People are stupid! Keep 'em away from booze
and sharp objects and everything will be ok."

Makes you wanna choke the nearest socialist, doesn't it? Where's that
son of a bitch with the Che Guevara t-shirt?

The Phantom

NY Slimes reaps the reward of bias

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001140229

NY Times Inc. cuts another 500 jobs, 45 in their newsroom.

Thus is demonstrated the true advantage of private newspapers over
state-run media like the BBC, PBS and the CBC. Eventually, if they keep
printing lies, distortions and disinformation long enough, and if their
condescension to the public is onerous enough, a private company will be
driven out of business. The Times is showing the pressure from people
like myself and yourselves, dear readers, who all have had quite enough
of their nonsense and don't buy their product anymore.

By contrast the CBC could have zero viewers and still be on the air.
Currently their staff is on strike, and yet they remain on the air,
showing re-runs of documentaries from the 1970's and having the janitor
read the news. Nobody has noticed much difference frankly, because
nobody is watching. They could show a test pattern 24/7 and still be on
the air, because they are spending MY money, not their own,

This is the difference between public and private media.

The Phantom

How to tell a Liberal

How does one tell the difference between a Liberal and a normal person? 

Well boys and girls, if a normal person is caught doing something they know is bad, they will feel ashamed and try to be as small as possible.  The Liberal will go on a speaking tour.

And that's how you tell the difference. 

The educational Phantom

Sartre and Guevara, a matched pair.

I can't resist taking a purely gratuitous shot at the contemptible Frogs here.  Faced with the reality of Che Guevara, serial killer and all-round shit heel, the French icon of the time had this to say.  From the Wikkipedia article:

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called Guevara, "the most complete human being of our age."

And that is what the thought of Sartre is worth.  The most charitable I can be here is that Jean-Paul bought the hype, which makes him merely a credulous doofus.

The Phantom

Death cult of Che: lest we forget

In the National Post today is an indispensable article about Che Guevara, who was found murdered in a Bolivian ditch.  Justice prevails, eventually. 

Seems Uncle Che of T-shirt and coffee mug fame has a few skeletons in his closet, historically speaking.  A couple thousand, possibly.  In English the Leftspeak term "Marxist Revolutionary" means "serial killer."  Che Guevara made Jeffrey Dahmer look good. Certainly he had a far higher body count.

However my favorite quote is this one, regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I remember that time, even as a 5 year old it made an impression on me.  People acted very oddly for no apparent reason.  This is one of the reasons why:

Just after the Cuban missile crisis ended -- with Khrushchev reneging on the promise made to Guevara and negotiating a deal with the United States behind Castro's back -- Guevara told a British communist daily: "If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defence against aggression."

Pretty much lays out the Leftist plan for humanity right there.  Ruin and death on the widest possible scale.

So the next time you see some callow youth wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, remind him/her/it of what Uncle Che had planned for their parents and grandparents, lest they forget.

The Phantom of Remembrance

the Knife Culture rises! eek!

From Lufa, this story in the Daily Telegraph.

THE NUMBER of offenders found guilty of possessing a knife has risen by
50 per cent in just five years, Government figures reveal.

The huge increase comes amid a spate of brutal stabbings that left three
teenagers dead last week alone. The statistics also show the number of
murders involving knives has increased by 32 per cent in just five
years.

The escalating numbers serve as a stark reminder of Britain's growing
knife culture.

"Britian's growing knife culture", forsooth.  Can't be that guns are banned and self defense is essentially verboten!  Hell no, couldn't be that.  Kids should be content to call 911 and die like they are supposed to.

I've said it before, and I'm going to repeat myself here.  This is the propaganda groundwork for a comprehensive knife control effort.  They are going to try to ban and/or register knives.  God knows what the final endpoint of this insane policy will be, but no doubt we are going to find out in England.

The Disgusted Phantom

And the Fix Is In at the sponsorship scandal!

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=f751d115-2855-4f1d-a4e8-9e2d55d88624

Wow, I bet nobody saw this coming!

> The first person charged in the federal sponsorship scandal won't be
> going to prison.
>
> Advertising executive Paul Coffin was sentenced Monday to a
> conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the
> community, for defrauding Canadian taxpayers of $1.5 million. Coffin
> pleaded guilty earlier this year to 15 fraud charges.
>
> Justice Jean-Guy Boilard of Quebec Superior Court said he allowed
> Coffin to avoid jail after considering his clean record, his repayment
> of $1 million to the federal government and his remorse.
>
Yep, I bet Paulie is just dripping with remorse that he got caught
taking that million and a half bucks from his buddies in the Liberal
Party. Here's his punishment for going along with the scam:

> Coffin must obey a curfew of 9 p.m. on weekdays and must also speak
> publicly about his experience.
>
> Boilard said several universities, including McGill and Concordia,
> have already taken Coffin up on his offer.
>
Poor bastard. What a horrid fate. Wonder what his speaking fees are?

And people wonder why I'm cynical about the Canadian Justice system.

The More In Sadness Than Anger Phantom

Burger King ice cream foolishness in Britian

You've no doubt heard about this.  The Burger King ice cream label that looks like the word Allah in Arabic.  Stupid concept, but naturally Burger King management are grabbing the ankles in their best pencil neck fashion.  Craven it it, to be sure.

Wouldn't it be nice if the CEO of Burger King released a statement that said "DON'T BUY THE FUCKING ICE CREAM THEN!"  It is Britain though, they probably have to by law or something.  Can't annoy the mullahs, don't y' know.

I wouldn't mention it (because its just friggin' idiotic liberalism through and through) except there are those who are equating this bit of nonsense with the Flight 93 Memorial (Red) "Crescent of Embrace".

See, the deal is that its ok for fill-in-tiny-minority-group-here agitators to raise all manner of hell over slights that are 100% imagined, but let a Conservative (or any American for that matter) say "Hey, wait a second..." over any deliberate outrage of the Left, and that's Just So Wrong.  Freepers in particular are singled out for ridicule.

Tolerance, good manners and above all fairness are quite thin on the ground among our brothers of the Left it seems.  Shame, that's what it is.

The Phantom.

Scotland the Brave becomes Scotland the dump

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13440940,00.html

Well, as it was prophesied so many years ago (after the gun ban I said the place would go to hell in a handbasket), so it has come to pass.  The UN has declared Scotland the most dangerous country in the developed world.  As usual in such things, England is number two but trying harder.

Scotland has been named the most violent country in the developed world.

A United Nations report claims more than 2,000 Scots are assaulted every week - almost 10 times official police figures.

The study - which does not include figures for murder, muggings or sexual assaults - claims that together, England and Wales are the second most dangerous countries.

Experts say Britain's heavy-drinking habits are to blame.

The UN claims the attacks have been fuelled by a "booze and blades" culture in the west of Scotland with the worst offenders being males aged between 15 and 25.

Violent crime has doubled in the country over the past 20 years to a level comparable with crime-ridden cities like Rio de Janeiro.

Which just goes to show that the Scots can still out-drink and out-fight the English or anybody else, any time.  Some things never change, eh?

One thing that has changed is the government's opinion of self determination and self defence.  In the old days a man's home was his castle.  These days a man's home and everything in it is considered government property on loan, and self defence is forbidden.  Small wonder the kids drink and fight.

Look for a similar degeneration in Canada should the Liberals win another majority.  The groundwork has been laid and the shit pile is all stacked up just waiting to slide right on in there.

The Phantom Scot

further to Flight 93 "memorial", the architect backs off.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05259/572574.stm

Fresh from Michelle Malkin, the architect responsible for the "Crescent of Embrace" entry to the Flight 93 Memorial contest has backed off some more.

Murdoch did not say if the design should change or how. What he did say, though, is that there are three main qualities of that part of the design that must remain: that the tribute is seen as coming from the land -- using the topography of the site; that the flight path cutting through the bowl-shaped piece of land is still represented; and that there is still an embracing gesture of the crash site.

"Those are the qualities the families and I feel are important," Murdoch said. "There's a certain degree of flexibility in how that is achieved."

I'd be quite interested in just how the families wishes were ascertained, and whether or not there was a pretty fancy selling job done on them.  If one of my family had been on that plane I'd assume they went down fighting like the berserk Scotsmen we all are, and I'd expect something to that effect in the memorial.

After all, its not an accident site.  Its the crater left over from Americans resisting killers to prevent an even bigger atrocity.  I frankly don't see where there's any embracing to be done, unless its to hug the stock closer for a better shot at the sons of bitches.  A good cheek weld is essential in a successful long range engagement.

The "But you just don't understand the symbolism!" Phantom

Flight 93 Memorial an insult.

Gentlemen,

In the faint, faint hope that this won't be deleted instantly, I'd like
to comment on your company's design for the Flight 93 Memorial.

Here's what I wrote to the National Park Service:

> To whom it will concern:
>
> I think it may be safe to say that an obvious Islamic crescent pointed
> at Mecca is somewhat inapropriate for this memorial, given who died
> and what they died to prevent. A slab of raw concrete with their
> names scratched in with a stick would be less of an insult to their
> memories.
>
> Try not to be quite so obviously hatefull, won't you?

That's for the bureaucrats who chose your insult over all the other
insults offered.

To you, author of this particular slap in the face to Western
civilization, I'd like to propose my own design which would face toward
Mecca. I think the symbolism will not be lost on you.

Athena astride the crater where the aircraft crashed, standing over the
wreckage, spear in hand, in the act of hurling it westward. Behind her
the 40 passengers and crew of Flight 93, every one with a spear ready
for Athena's hand.

The same statue will also work for Ground Zero, but in New York we make
it big enough to use a real F-15 Eagle as the tip [of the spear].

There's some symbolism for you to think upon.

The Phantom

Flight 93 Memorial: worse than I thought.

http://server5.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=mz93c.jpg  Diagram of the winning design for the Flight 93 Memorial and how it points to Mecca.  No shit, it does.
http://lostprovince.net/flight93/  Animated illustration of the proposed design with Islamic crescent superimposed.
http://zombietime.com/flight_93_memorial_project/  Compendium of links on the subject of the design.
http://politicalities.typepad.com/politicalities/2005/09/it_points_towar.html  More stuff.

paul@paulmurdocharchitects.com  E-mail address of the shit heel responsible for this outrage.
National Park Service, which will make the final decision on the design, at their Flight 93 Web contact form;
or you can call the Superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial at (814) 443-4557, or fax him at (814) 443-2180.

Ok you Americans, get busy.  This is your country's sacred honour we are talking about, get those boots swinging toward the right asses.  Some of them are polishing chairs at the National Park Service, its not an accident this Murdoch prick won the contest.

For myself I'm going to e-mail the ever-so PC Paul Murdoch and tell him about Athena.  Greek chicks throwing F-15s baby, that's what we need.  And Todd Beamer holding a re-load for her.

Goddamn, I'm pissed.

The Pissed Phantom

Re: [phantom_soapbox] So, why were those levees so crappy anyway?

D'oh! Forgot the URL for that story:
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050915-090259-2463r.htm

The Phantom wrote:

>Double the fun here today at the Phantom Soapbox, we get to poke the
>Greenies and we get to slag Algore. Can't go wrong with something like
>that!
>
>

So, why were those levees so crappy anyway?

Double the fun here today at the Phantom Soapbox, we get to poke the Greenies and we get to slag Algore.  Can't go wrong with something like that!

Question: why weren't the levees around New Orleans made bigger and stronger ages ago?  Its in a frickin' hurricane zone and the city is 8 feet below sea level, one would think that math would be easy to do.

Thus spake Algore:

On Sept. 9 he spoke in San Francisco, where he said: "The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences." And he urged that "the leaders of our country be held accountable" for the flooding of New Orleans.

On the face of it, he's not wrong.  Somebody's ass needs kicking here.  Question is, whose?  Of whom did Algore speak?

Answer: Well, its interesting.  Algore's speech was given before the Sierra Club, of SUV hatred fame. 

One of the minor reasons I drive a huge pickup truck is to piss those people off.  I pay for my gas and I smile, knowing that somewhere a Greenie Weenie is pulling his/her/its hair out from frustration.  "A dollar thirty six a quart and still he smiles!  DAMN YOU, PHANTOM!!!!!!!"  Heh heh heh.  ~:)

But I digress.

The very day he [Algore] spoke a congressional task force reported the levees that failed in New Orleans would have been raised higher and strengthened in 1996 by the Army Corps of Engineers were it not for a lawsuit filed by environmentalists, led by who else but the Sierra Club.

Was this the first time the Econazis tied up levees for New Orleans?  Nyet comrads!

According to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, a 1977 lawsuit filed by Save the Wetlands stopped a congressionally funded plan to protect New Orleans with a "massive hurricane barrier." A judge found New Orleans' hurricane barrier would have to wait until the Army Corps of Engineers filed a better environmental-impact statement.

So here's Algore standing in front of the very crowd that did the evil deed, gassing off about global warming and holding people accountable.  As the author says, "How the gods do play upon the poor soul known to us all as Al Gore."  First Android vice-President of the USA.  Watta dork.

Lest we jump too quickly upon the Greenies for the whole offence, it must be said that the governments in question let them tie this thing up in court for 30 years, during which time New Orleans dropped another foot or two from subsidence.  There were places downtown where you could practically stick a trowel in your back garden and hit water, so it wasn't something mysterious or unknown.  The inaction of the government was still inexcuseable.  If some nut group blocks action that will save hundreds of  lives, said nut group must be sorted out with legislation.  If nothing else, judges should sort them out.  Republicans, take heed.

However, this does not absolve the Greenies in any way.  They knew the levee was weak and didn't care.  They put "wetland health" ahead of the 36 dead in that nursing home and all the other casualties of the levee break, ahead of the billions of dollars worth of absolutely uneccessary damage, ruined lives and the rest.  They did it deliberately, knowingly, and consistently every day since they launched that suit back in 1977.  Absent their machinations that levee would have been fixed in the 1980's.

Truly, they sowed the wind all that time.  Verilly, they are now reaping the whirlwind.  And there's Algore the Oblivious, flying a kite right in the eye of the storm while the lightning crashes all around.  Good thing wood is a poor conductor, eh?

The Algore Mocking Phantom

Palestinians fleeing Palestine?! How can this be?

Well, it seems that while the flower of Palestinian manhood was busy burning and looting the just-evacuated Jewish Settlements, their mums and dads and sisters were busy hauling ass over the border to Egypt.  From the Glob and Snail today:

It was as if the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the next day Russian and U.S. soldiers went around asking everyone to return to their own side so that the barrier could be rebuilt and the hated status quo restored.

After tearing down the metal fence that had separated them for 23 years and pouring across freely for a day, residents of the two sides of Rafah -- an impoverished town that straddles the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt -- repeatedly defied efforts yesterday to reseal the border and stop the flow of people.

Tens of thousands of elated Palestinians, many of them reuniting with long-lost relatives on the other side, have made the crossing in the past 48 hours, some wedging themselves through tiny crawl spaces torn in the 10-metre-high metal fence with hand tools.

Proving that although there are some fools smuggling themselves and their weapons into Gaza, anybody with a single functioning gray cell  is headed the other way.

So pretty soon there's going to be a couple thousand armed IslamoFascisti terroristas shrieking for Jewish blood while firing small arms over the top of The Wall, and the rest of Gaza will be a ghost town.  Good planning, if the plan was to concentrate the enemy in a place where they could be conveniently defeated.

The Concentratin' Phantom

Vigilantes on the Canadian border! With GUNS! eek!

The Minute Men have decided to set up shop on the Canadian border out in Washington State.

LUMMI INDIAN RESERVATION, Wash. - Armed civilians described by President George W. Bush as "vigilantes" held their first practice session yesterday for a planned border patrol on the U.S.-Canada boundary near Blaine, Wash.

U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials say they have serious reservations about pistol-packing members of an unregulated ragtag army, comprised mostly of Vietnam veterans, scouting the border for illegal immigrants and terrorists.

Now, as a Canadian my knee jerk response is outrage.  What do they think, there's hordes of Canadian wetbacks invading America, trying to escape the hellish poverty up here?  Bite me!

Having gotten over the moment of beaverly maple leaf pride (look at a Canadian nickle) it occurs to me these guys did good work in Arizona and they wouldn't be going to Washington if they weren't all pissed off about that border too.  Which means that maybe the Great Men in Ottawa haven't got the border nailed down quite as nicely as one might hope.  Given the outrageous doings of the Liberals these last ten years this is certainly possible, and in fact I think probable.  They've screwed the pooch on everything else, why not this too?

So I will view with great interest the doings of the Minute Men these next couple of weeks.  It will be a national scandal if they catch more than one or two pot smugglers, let me tell you.  Or maybe I should say it will be a national scandal if anybody finds out about it.  We have a partisan media too.  You can tell by the disrespect for the Minutemen dripping off this article.

The Phantom Wetback

Palestinians behaving as expected: badly.

Two articles (Article 1, Article 2) from Frontpage Magazine today regarding the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip, and the expected behavior of the Palestinians.  Which is to say, looting and burning.  Pictures are on the front page of the National Post.

When looting and burning are done in New Orleans or Los Angeles it is a "national disgrace", verily "a stain upon America".  But when it happens in Gaza its a frickin' national celebration.  Methinks these are not the actions of a people interested in peace.

The Israelis are probably doing the smartest thing they can right now.  Build a big wall and shoot anybody who comes over it.  Not a perfect solution, but better than the suicide bombings. 

Were it me I'd shut the gate on the bastards and let them eat sand for a couple of years.  See how the increased roughage in their diets improves their behaviour.

The Gated Phantom

True Liberals to the last, Ray Nagin's cops confiscate guns.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200509%5CNAT20050914a.html

I noted a couple days ago that The New Orleans authorities are confiscating firearms, not just from criminals, not just abandoned guns in homes, but also from licensed permit holders who are actively engaged in protecting their property.  Furthermore the city has decided to "evacuate" people from their homes even in areas that were not flooded.  At gunpoint.

This seems to me the perfect expression of Liberal governance.  When the shit really hits the fan they are nowhere to be found, but then they come back later and screw up the recovery operation with their nitpicky regulations, they abridge property rights with abandon, and generally kick people around.

I mean, think of it.  The mayor has decided that people living in areas that are undamaged, who presently have telephone, power and water service restored, who are in their own houses and not bothering anyone, who are prepared and able to defend themselves from the bands of looters still roaming the area, those people must leave because it is inconvenient to provide them with the police services their taxes paid for.  They must leave their property to the mercy of the looters because the cops will not protect it, and they must be disarmed in case they decide maybe they don't want to leave. 

That's not the kind of thing one expects to see happening in a free country, but it is precicely what one expects from a Liberal governmet.  Panic and flight followed by arrogant condesension and abuse.  Oh, and all the while blaming the President for the disaster, let's not forget that part.

Methinks a really big federal lawsuit needs to be dropped on Mayor Ray and the State of Louisiana, and that Mayor Ray and the Governor maybe need some friggin' jail time to smarten them the hell up.  Maybe the NRA will be able to get that done.

The Phantom

Jail is too good for the likes of these.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/13/D8CJLE9G0.html
Here's one of those things that happened during the flood that was both unneccessary and inexcuseable.  These two owned a nursing home and left the old people to die when the water came.

Salvador A. Mangano and his wife, Mable, surrendered and were jailed on 34 counts of negligent homicide.

The owners had an evacuation plan as required under state law and a contract with an ambulance service to evacuate the patients, but they did not call the company, Foti said.

They also turned down an offer from St. Bernard Parish officials who asked if the nursing home wanted help evacuating, he said. The home is about 10 miles southeast of New Orleans in an area of heavy devastation.

So they had a chance to get the government to pay for it even, and passed.  According to the story there were people from the local area helping get the residents out on air matresses during the actual flood.  34 didn't make it.

That's a failure of more than just the two scum who owned the home.  That's a massive failure of the city and county government to evacuate the helpless.  Too many politicians busy looking after their own stuff I guess.

Jail is too good for these people.  Drawing and quartering seems about right.

The Phantom

Democrat talks out of both sides of his face at once.

One can only marvel at the depravity of DemocRats sometimes.  For a wonder, this is an ABC report.

Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, a congressman used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings — even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from rooftops, ABC News has learned. On Sept. 2 — five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast — Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who represents New Orleans and is a senior member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was allowed through the military blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where thousands of evacuees had been taken.

This clown comandeered a truck and six men to drive him around "his district".  In fact they went to his house and parked on the front lawn so he wouldn't have to wade through the water going in.  Of course the truck got stuck (flooded lawn = mud, genius).  He ended up wasting the time of a rescue helicopter and another 5 ton to get the first one unstuck during the peak of the rescue effort.  All that so he could gather up a laptop and a large box of unspecified items.

This same man has been raging away at George Bush for the tardy federal response to the flood.

Kinda makes you wonder how they manage to walk in a straight line, being so crooked like that.

The Phantom

Flight 93 Memorial needs exposure, as in needs to be exposed.

http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=21

Mark Steyn speaks on the cultural atrocity about to be comitted in a field in Pennsylvania, called the Crescent of Embrace.

Four years on, plans for the Flight 93 National Memorial have now been revealed. The winning design, chosen from 1,011 entries, will be built in that pasture in Pennsylvania where those heroes died. The memorial is called “The Crescent of Embrace”.

That sounds like a fabulous winning entry - in a competition to create a note-perfect parody of effete multicultural responses to terrorism. Indeed, if anything, it’s too perfect a parody: the “embrace” is just the usual huggy-weepy reconciliatory boilerplate, but the “crescent” transforms its generic cultural abasement into something truly spectacular. In the design plans, “The Crescent of Embrace” looks more like the embrace of the Crescent – ie, Islam. After all, what better way to demonstrate your willingness to “embrace” your enemies than by erecting a giant Islamic crescent at the site of the day’s most unambiguous episode of American heroism?

Mark goes on to rip the weepy MultiCulti shitheels a new one. 

Most of us are all but resigned to losing New York’s Ground Zero memorial to a pile of non-judgmental if not explicitly anti-American pap: The minute you involve big-city politicians and foundations and funding bodies and “artists” you’re on an express chute to the default mode of the cultural elite. But surely it’s not too much to hope that in Pennsylvania the very precise, specific, individual, human scale of one great act of American heroism need not be buried under another soggy dollop of generic prettified passivity. A culture that goes to such perverse lengths to disdain its heroes cannot survive and doesn’t deserve to.

Rush Limbaugh proposes rebuilding the Twin Towers one foot higher.  At the time I proposed a statue of Athena in the act of hurling a spear aimed right at Mecca, a statue big enough to have a full sized F-15 Eagle for a spear point.  I think a smaller such statue should be erected in the field in Pennsylvania, maybe only 100 feet tall, with the entire passenger list and crew of Flight 93 holding the next spear for her.

That would be much more to the point.

The Phantom Architect

Blog spam

Given the volume of really idiotic spam I'm getting in the comments, I'd like to make it clear that this will not be tolerated. If you're going to spam this blog, be aware that your missive will be removed immediately.

Canadian aid finally makes it to Gulf coast.

http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=1408&sc=1

Well, it looks like I have finally managed to be TOO cynical about the
Canadian government. The Liberals may be a useless bunch of backstabbing
camera whores, but while the Liberals were prancing for the media and
throwing stones in the path of our Canadian Forces, the Navy did an end
run and yesterday managed to get actual aid on the ground in Gulf coast
USA. Way to go boys! Bet it pisses Paul Martin off too.

> Canadian sailors got their first taste of sticky Gulf Coast weather
> yesterday, as they unloaded hundreds of boxes of emergency supplies
> destined for Hurricane Katrina victims.

<snip journalistic nonsense>

> Biloxi is a small city of about 50,000 people that was hit hard by
> Katrina. A dawn-to-dusk curfew is still in effect, but residents
> already have their power back.
>
> The Canadian task group consists of two frigates, a destroyer and a
> coast guard ship. They’ll anchor off the major shrimp and oyster
> fishing centre and send in work parties to help clean up the mess left
> in the hurricane’s wake. Military construction experts and combat
> engineers from the ships will work with the Seabees, the U.S. Navy’s
> crack construction battalion.
>
It was my earlier opinion that this aid would never make it to the
disaster zone, it appears I have finally managed to over-estimate the
corruption and slime content of Ottawa. They are two weeks late, but
better late than never.

The Slightly Chastened Phantom

P.S. Gawd awful article that is too eh? Those two little paragraphs
contain pretty much the whole information content of the piece.

Irritate your Leftist friends and spouses!

This little column will irritate the hell out of all your Leftist friends and relations, and your wife be she Lefty or not.  The proposition is that men and women are <gasp!> different!

One of these differences is that women generally have a more difficult time transcending their emotions than men. There are, of course, millions of individual women -- such as Margaret Thatcher -- who are far more rational than many men; but that only makes these women's achievements all the more admirable. It hardly invalidates the proposition.

Far more common than Margaret Thatcher's rationality was the emotionality of the women jurors in the Menendez brothers' trials. All six women jurors in the Erik Menendez trial voted to acquit him of the murder of his father (all six males voted guilty of murder). A virtually identical breakdown by sex took place in the Lyle Menendez trial for the murder of their mother. The women all had compassion for the brothers despite their confessions to the shotgun murders of their parents.

To say that the human race needs masculine and feminine characteristics is to state the obvious. But each sex comes with prices. Men can too easily lack compassion, reduce sex to animal behavior and become violent. And women's emotionality, when unchecked, can wreak havoc on those closest to these women and on society as a whole -- when emotions and compassion dominate in making public policy.

To this example I will only say that the jurors were from California, and so may not come up to world standards of feminine intelligence.  However the point is well taken, while certain women (such as Mrs. The Phantom) indeed rise above, the majority are an emotionally driven bunch.  I'm convinced that this is why children make it to adulthood, because most men simply don't have the patience for little kids.

Example, walk around with a little baby in a carriage and you'll notice after a while that the only people who even look at the kid are women, mostly women who don't have their own kids.  Nobody else cares.  That's a pretty noticable thing.

Women are different.  Measurably so.  That the Left continues to deny this basic fact is just another example of the semi-religious nature of Leftism.  Its dogma dudes, it doesn't have to make sense.

The Dogmatic Phantom

Sharia Law finally dead in Ontario

Proof, yes indeed, proof Ladies and Gentlemen that even a blind pig finds the odd acorn.

The Ontario government will introduce legislation this fall banning all faith-based arbitration, including Sharia.

Premier Dalton McGuinty and Attorney General Michael Bryant agreed in a meeting this week it was time to resolve the contentious issue.

"I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough," McGuinty said yesterday. "There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians."

Huzzah!  It took Liberal Dallton "Wonder Boy" McGuinty sticking his finger up in the air and feeling the sulpherous blast coming from the public to finally drive a stake through the heart of that NDP proposal.

I note that most of the heat in that blast came from Muslim women's rights groups, who came to Canada to get away from all that Sharia crap.  I can just hear them, "If we'd wanted to put up with that we could have stayed home".

Now, lest anyone think that Dalton is standing on some kind of principle here, let me assure you its not the case.  Liberals are all about the implementation of radical Leftist lunacy, EXCEPT when the raising of the wetted finger tells them the breezes are blowing against them.  The NDP are the true pink-to-the-core Lefties who can be depended upon to ride their ideology down in flames, Bob Rae's band of happy idiots being the primary example.  The Liberals are a little more flexible.  Or put another way, they have the spine of a paramecium.  Rubber all the way, baby.

The Spinefull Phantom

The Phantom jumps to a conclusion!

Here's a fun little article on the question, "why does science journalism suck so badly?"  Here's the author's take:

Why? Because papers think you won't understand the "science bit", all stories involving science must be dumbed down, leaving pieces without enough content to stimulate the only people who are actually going to read them - that is, the people who know a bit about science. Compare this with the book review section, in any newspaper. The more obscure references to Russian novelists and French philosophers you can bang in, the better writer everyone thinks you are. Nobody dumbs down the finance pages. Imagine the fuss if I tried to stick the word "biophoton" on a science page without explaining what it meant. I can tell you, it would never get past the subs or the section editor. But use it on a complementary medicine page, incorrectly, and it sails through.

Here's the conclusion I jumped to instantly.  They dumb it down because they think we're idiots, obviously.  But they think we are idiots because they are Liberals.  The dark core of Liberalism (modern definition of course) is the assumption that people are STUPID.  Need their hands held, y'know.  Can't be expected to figure out the relative risk section in the scientific paper on chocolate consumption, so let's just skip it.

Besides, they think it sells better.  I must be backwards to the rest of humanity then, because I STOPPED buying Scientific American when they made it a clone of Discovery.  Well, and started in pushing the Greenie bandwagon full time.  Quite a loss, it used to be my favorite magazine.

The Scientific Phantom

Steyn on Sept. 11 2005

Courtesy our good friend Mr. Lee, Mark Steyn's column today is about the failure of political America to take 9/11 seriously.

It wasn't a "tragic event" or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an "attack," an "act of war." I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who'd tuned out the same station on the grounds that "I never heard my grampa talk about 'the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.' " But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effort was under way to transform the nature of the event, to soften it into a touchy-feely, huggy-weepy one-off. As I wrote last year: "The president believes there's a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things."

Recent events reveal that political America doesn't take natural disasters seriously either.  Lack of a coherent plan got a bunch of people killed in New Orleans.  I note most particularly the hospital patients and nursing home residents who relied most upon the local government and died as a result of local stupidity.  There was no excuse for their abandonment, and a reconing will come.  That was a failure of both government and society, if anyone cared a damn they'd have got those people evacuated, by stealing buses if nothing else.

There was no excuse for the rampage of criminals in New Orleans either.  Unspeakable acts have been perpetrated.  A caller to the Rush Limbaugh Show said that one of the policemen who comitted suicide after the initial flood did so because he went home after a day of saving stranded people to find his whole family had been killed in a way I will not mention here.  These events and atrocities will come to light.  Again there is no excuse for such men to be free in our society, yet they were.  That is a failure of government and society both.

What government at all levels seems to take quite seriously is power, paperwork and process.  Four ships of the Canadian Armed Forces dispatched to aid coastal hurricane victims have yet to make it to the Gulf, two weeks late, because of lost telephone numbers and lack of political will among two nations.  Airline security doesn't include armed pilots in any Western country.  Levees are allowed to break and flood entire cities rather than be replaced with better designs.  In the midst of looting, rape and murder the City of New Orleans is presently confiscating firearms from NON-criminals and forcibly evicting people from their own property which they are protecting from...the looters.

Et Cetera.  Meanwhile, taxes have never been higher.

The solution to this problem remains elusive.  The majority opinion is that we need less government, however the minority who disagrees is both large and well funded, and furthermore are willing to say or do literally anything to have their way.

I fear the results my friends.  I really do.

The Phantom

more about why Big Government sucks

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2043db0e-6342-4299-b75a-08662567f4f6

This Katrina Clusterfuck just keeps getting better. Get this:

> An apparent breakdown in communications between federal emergency
> officials and the crew of Canadian navy ships en route to help victims
> of Hurricane Katrina left sailors scrambling to buy $1-million in
> relief supplies in Halifax stores rather than dipping into stockpiles
> of emergency gear.
>
> Navy supply officers went on a shopping spree for everything from
> chainsaws to diaper cream in the four days before a Canadian task
> force sailed for the disaster area this week.
>
> Navy personnel told the National Post that repeated calls to Public
> Security and Emergency Preparedness Canada went unanswered over the
> long weekend, meaning government supplies could not be accessed before
> the ship's departure.
>
> When supply officers called emergency officials in Ottawa, the
> officials were not available, said a senior officer who spoke on
> condition of anonymity.
>
> "We were calling them all weekend," the officer said. "All we got was
> voice mail ... [and] they never called back."
>
> Approval from Ottawa was needed before emergency preparedness
> officials in Halifax would relinquish any of their stockpiled
> supplies, another senior officer said.
>
> "They told us they couldn't get the supplies together on the long
> weekend and that they needed approval from Ottawa."
>
That's pretty funny right there. But here's the funniest part:

> Officials in Ottawa, however, said the sailors must simply have been
> calling the wrong number.
>
<snippy>

> The Government of Canada Operations Centre staff includes three
> full-time Department of National Defence officers who were available,
> working and in "constant discussions" with Emergency Preparedness
> officials that weekend, said Major Luc Gaudet, a DND spokesman.

The stuff is in a Halifax warehouse, but they can't get it on the ship
because they don't have the right phone number. So they spend a MILLION
DOLLARS buying stuff at retail prices, and take that instead. They
could have driven to Ottawa and kicked the goddamn Minister of Defence
out of bed for a million bucks, you'd think, and have gotten it done
faster to boot.

And that, in a nutshell, is what makes Big Government incapable of
responding to emergencies. There's always some IMBECILE who won't
release goods and services without the right paperwork, so it sits in a
warehouse while people suffer and die in the disaster zone.

Which is why socialism always fails, and individual freedom always succeeds.

By the way, Katrina landed two weeks ago and the Canadian Relief
Flotilla (four small ships) hasn't got to Florida yet. Also, there's
government trucks full of aid sitting on the Trans Canada Highway
because of a trucker's strike due to fuel prices. Nice, eh?

The Private Enterprize Phantom

oh look, Liberal corruption. shock, surprise.

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.html?id=b77b9137-29a5-48cc-a0ac-50d935d3c494

Well well well, it seems the Number 2 Big Kahuna at the UN after Koffi
Anan(anananan) was a Kanuckistanian name of Louise Frechette. Bet ya
didn't know that, eh?

Seems that Louise is up to her Kanuckistanian neck in the Oil for Fraud
scamola. Be still my heart, can I stand the shock of finding this
corruption in the beautiful and perfect land of Kanuckistan.

Long term readers will recall that Maurice Strong has "influence" shall
we say with the Liberal Party of Canada, and his company Magnacorp has
"interests" with various banks and oil companies up to their necks in
Oil for Fraud. Jean Chretien's son in law is (or was at the time
anyway) a Grande Fromage at Total/Fina/Elf, the Euroconglomerate oil
company famously neck deep in Oil for Fraud.

Could it be that Louise baby was carrying water (or oil) for the
Liberals and Maurice? Only her Swiss banker knows for sure at the moment.

The Oil Burning Phantom

Private charity beats Big Brother every time

Here's an illustration of what Conservatives/Libertarians are talking about when they say Big government can't get stuff done like private citizens.  This is a picture of two Vancouver "search and rescue" guys, most likely firemen, who's group managed to charter a plane and get into the area five days ahead of the US Federal response.

The stricken parish of [St. Bernard] 68,000 people was largely ignored by U.S. authorities who scrambled to get aid to New Orleans, a few miles (km) away. Sen. Walter Boasso said residents of the outlying parishes had to mount their own rescue and relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29.

The U.S. government response to the disaster has been widely criticized. Politicians and editorial writers have called for the resignation of top Bush administration officials.

Boasso said U.S. authorities began airdropping relief supplies to St. Bernard last Wednesday, the same day the Canadian rescue team of about 50 members arrived from Vancouver, nearly 2,200 miles away.

"They chartered a plane and flew down," he said.

Two FEMA officials reached the parish on Sunday and the U.S. Army arrived on Monday, he said.

Note that this group is NOT an official Canadian Government effort, this is some guys who said "WTF?!!!", saddled up and headed out to the disaster site before the weather had completely cleared.  They presumably rented or otherwise "aquired" boats and other wherewithall once they go there.  They went because they gave a shit and they did what they needed to once they got there, never mind the damn paperwork.

Note again that the Official Canadian Government Response is pretty much the whole Canadian Atlantic fleet (a destroyer and three helicopter frigates), presently steaming down the coast and not expected to arrive for another couple of days.  Those guys have their forms filled out in triplicate.

Note yet again that the entire LOCAL government S&R operation was a total cluster fuck, not least of which because all the personel evacuated and didn't come back.  I have no information to this effect, but I'd bet money the St. Bernard Parish fire and rescue equipment was all left to the flood on Tuesday instead of being driven to a safe distance, along with any and all county vehicles, buses, and heavy machinery.  Not enough money in the county budget for the overtime, I bet you.  They filled ou8t the paperwork but now its a bit soggy.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you are on your own when the balloon goes up.

The Phantom Balloonist.

Thoughts on Iraq and New Orleans

There's no link to go with this one, just some cogitation from The Phantom.

Question:  Why did Bush chose to engage the terrorists abroad (Iraq, Assghanistan) rather than pull in the borders and harden security at home?

Answer:  Maybe he knows what kind of mindless a-holes are running the state and local governments and the federal bureaucracy.

I mean, George called a disaster on Sunday before the storm even hit.  He was prepared for and expecting all hell to break loose in Louisiana, and so far he hasn't been disappointed.  He obviously knows a lot of things that aren't public knowledge, maybe one of those things is that the Governor of Louisiana is a dipstick and Mayor Ray Nagin is another?  How many other major pols does he know who aren't up to the job?  Maybe a bunch of 'em, eh?  Maybe even most of them.  There's a sobering thought.

Possibly he was briefed on the condition of the FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF/INS and the rest of the alphabet soup dorks that are supposed to secure the USA, and concluded back on September 12th 2001 that the lot of them couldn't organize a two man rush on a three hole shit house.  But that -maybe- the military had their act marginally together and could actually do something destructive on demand.  Therefore he went with a forward defense rather than fortifying the country.

Given that he's a politician, he knows all these local and state level guys, he's got to.  He dealt with them all the time as a Texas pol and his father surely filled him in on the condition of things in Washington.  So he probably knew that the likes of Ray Nagin couldn't find his ass in the dark with both hands and a flashlight, and that any assault on New Orleans was going to succeed.

Mark Steyn brilliantly stated the problem:  "huge swathes of the political culture in America remain committed to a bargain that stiffs the people at every level, a system of lavish funding of pseudo-action."  If anybody was in a position to know that on 9/11/01, it was Bush.  Faced with a guaranteed failure at home and the potential waste of billions of dollars, he clearly decided the military was his only option and ran with it.

Suck on that, Lefty wankers.

The Oracular Phantom