Bleeding update the third: Never bet against The Phantom.

My instincts have not failed me.  All the casualties at the Empire State Building were shot by the dumb-ass NYPD cops.

NEW YORK -- Authorities are confirming that all nine bystanders caught in the crossfire of a shooting outside the Empire State Building were wounded by two veteran patrolmen who had never fired their weapons on duty.

Officer Craig Matthews fired seven times and Officer Robert Sinishtaj fired nine times at Jeffrey Johnson on bustling midtown block Friday morning after Johnson, who'd shot a former co-worker to death, brazenly pointed his pistol at the officers.

Police had said that nine others were wounded likely by stray or ricocheting police bullets, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly confirmed that Saturday. He says that based on ballistic tests and other evidence, "it appears that all nine of the victims were struck either by fragments or by bullets fired by police.

I love this "brazenly pointed his pistol at the officers" crap, considering the cops then hosed down the whole frigging street. I'm sorry, one guy fires nine rounds into the crowd and the other fires seven? What the hell is that?

Its panic, is what. Its total locked-up tunnel vision by two supposedly "trained" cops.

I guarantee they didn't even -see- the people behind that shooter. All they saw was the big black hole in the end of that Colt .45, and that's what they were shooting at, the gun.  No controlled draw-aim-fire, no sight picture, no check your down-range for collateral damage, no tactical movement to bracket the bad guy, no frig-all. Just "Oh shit!" BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM "I think I got him!"

Why did this happen? Because those two meat heads shoot for qualification once a year, at most. Because NYPD qualification is fifty rounds at a static paper silhouette target, anything inside the 8-ring counts to score, you have to do 75% or better. Timed fire at ranges from five yards to twenty five yards. I've seen kids shoot this course. Its a cake walk.

To retain trained responses, humans have to PRACTICE THEM. You have to practice almost every day to be awesome, you have to practice every week to be good. Twice a month is about the bare minimum to retain learned skills and muscle memory. Once a year? Joke territory. Most cops shoot once a year.

Truly, I don't have a problem with the cops shooting this guy. It was a righteous shoot, and there's no reason they would have done anything else BUT shoot him.

Shooting nine innocent pedestrians in the process? That I've got a problem with.

The Phantom

UH-oh, Barry's gotta prooooooblem.

Well, this doesn't look good for someone. ~:D Emphasis (and pretty colours) mine.

FRIDAY 2 PM: The anti-Obama movie 2016 Obama's America went into wider release around America today and is opening right now in first place at the domestic box office. That's quite a feat since the Rocky Mountain Pictures political documentary is still playing in only 1,090 North American theaters – or about 1/3 as many theaters as actioner The Expendables 2 (3,355 theaters). But these political documentaries like faith-based films are frontloaded. The Stallone pic from Millenium/Lionsgate still will end Friday and the weekend #1. Exhibitors are reporting busloads arriving at theaters around the country in pre-organized trips. It also employed much of the same marketing techniques used to garner attention and support for faith-based films, understandable since the audience is overlapping. Its campaign included advertising nationally over the past two weeks on talk radio and cable news channels including Fox News Channel, A&E, History and MSNBC.

Maybe this explains why Debbie Wasserman-Shultz is so bitchy on CNN these days. She's watching the Hope'nChange Express derail off the side of a cliff in a slow motion train wreck, and that's her meal ticket. D'oh!

Better start polishing that resume Debbie baby. Chick-fil-A: its not a fluke, its a trend!

The Happy Phantom

Bleeding Update two: See?

Well now, here's CNN making my point for me. Additions in parenthesis by me, The Phantom

A disgruntled [WHITE] former employee of a business inside the Empire State Building shot a former [WHITE] coworker in the head in a dispute outside the building, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

As suspect Jeffrey Johnson tried to flee the scene, he pulled a .45 caliber pistol on two approaching [WHITE] police officers, who opened fire on him. Nine [probably WHITE] people were wounded or grazed by gunfire in the crossfire, Kelly said.

"Some may have been accidentally shot by police officers," Kelly said.

We will no doubt discover that most (if not all) of the people shot today, with the exception of the first victim obviously, were shot by the two police officers. I'm familiar with the marksmanship training NYPD officers get, from my observations "spray and pray" pretty much covers it.  NYPD are a bunch of freakin' punks who can't hit a barn from the inside, in my very well researched and not at all humble opinion.  Exceptions to the rule do exist, but they prove the rule.

Please note that if some black guy in Harlem had walked up to some other black guy and popped him in the head, was then shot by the cops and a few bystanders got hit... it wouldn't be a headline on CNN and Drudge, and Bloomberg wouldn't have made a nationally televised speech about it. True? True. Probably wouldn't have even made the papers, except for the local section.

And we wonder why the black population in America riots.

The RAAAAACIST!!! Phantom.

Bleeding update!

I just googled "13 shot" and "19 shot" to make sure I'm not blowing smoke here. Turns out... I'm not blowing smoke. Which is really quite disgusting, you ask me.

Google "13 shot" and on the first page you get the Tribune article from yesterday, and that's it. No more.

But you also get this very interesting thing that happened in Tempe Arizona waaaaay back on March 3rd. 13 people shot at a Nipsey Hustle rap concert. I'm pretty

Nipsey Hussle, who didn't go on stage, used his Twitter account to express his displeasure with the shooting at his show.

"(Arizona) ... y'all gotta be cool man," he wrote.

Guess what race all those people were. Yep.  Did we hear about it? Nope. We heard about Traaaaayvon and his Skittles instead, and the eeeevile White-Hispanic Zimmerman who shot the poor boy.

You know how we paranoid Phantom types sometimes say "there's going to be blood in the streets!" if anything goes wrong with the US Election in November? Going by this non-reportage of mass-casualty black-on-black shootings, I guess it means some WHITE people will START acting like these black people have been acting all along.

I guess noticing this makes me a racist though. Oh well, there goes my Order of Canada.

The RAAAAACIST! Phantom

If it bleeds it don't necessarily lead.

Drudge headline: CHICAGOLAND: 13 shot in 30-minute span...

From the Chicago Tribune article:

Nineteen people were shot in attacks across the South and West sides between about 5:20 p.m. Thursday and 1:30 a.m. Friday - including 13 people during a single 30-minute period - according to the Chicago Police Department.

The shootings peaked between about 9:15 and 9:45 p.m. Thursday when 13 people were shot, including eight in a single incident at 79th Street and Essex Avenue about 9:30 p.m.

That's interesting isn't it? I mean, eight people get shot all at the same time and it ISN'T all over the US national news, and Sarah Brady ISN'T on CNN crying for more gun control, and Barak Obama ISN'T making a speech.

Could there be something about the people who got shot that is less newsworthy than, oh, let's say some random movie watchers in Aurora Colorado, or the building manager of a certain Christian lobbying outfit in Washington DC? 

Like, that they're all Black perhaps? Or that they live in the not-so-nice part of Chicago maybe? Or that they got whacked in what "everybody knows" is an obvious drug gang drive-by hit? Or that Some Important DemocRat is mayor of the city they got shot in, and doesn't want any national press coverage of this penny-ante gang crap?

None of that is in the Tribune, but I'm not sticking my neck out very far when I prophesy that all the victims AND all the shooters are black, they all have criminal records, and most if not all will have gang tattoos all over them. I can make that prophecy because the Mainstream Media -didn't- pick it up.

Open season declared on the South Side of Chi-town and it ain't news. Now get back to work, you've got taxes to pay.

The Phantom

Kewl new thing being done with common cellulose.

Nanocellulose! Who'd a thunk it?

US government ammunition controversy explained: they're burning your money.

Lately there has been a lot of noise about non-police agencies of the US government buying up jacketed hollow point (JHP) pistol ammunition. Many people have said, including myself, that it seems very ominous that these agencies are stocking up on combat pistol ammo right before what could be a very fractious Federal election in November.

Well, Uncle Sam has an explanation.

The agency [SSA] said it has 295 special agents across 66 offices in the country. "These investigators have full law enforcement authority, including executing search warrants and making arrests," the statement said. 

As for concern about the type of bullets -- hollow points, which expand upon impact -- the statement said the type is "standard issue" and is used during "mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions."

The explanation is that contrary to basic economics and common bloody sense, the truth is (or so they claim) that Federal agencies really do give their officers the expensive combat ammo for range practice, instead of the more usual full metal jacket (FMJ) bullets, otherwise known as "hardball". That would be the kind of combat ammo that goes for more than a dollar a round at the store.

50 rounds of Federal HydraShok (JHP) in .40 S&W, 165 grain bullet costs $67.00 at the first store I googled. Same store, 1000 rounds of CCI hardball in .40 S&W, 165 grain bullet, $400.00. Which is $20.00 for 50 rounds. Buying in large quantity, US government agencies will probably be able to get their JHP combat ammo much cheaper, perhaps only DOUBLE what they'd pay for FMJ at -retail-.

Sadly, I believe this explanation. It fits their pattern of "price no object" behavior perfectly. I didn't think they'd be wasteful enough to burn JHP at the range, nobody does that. But it seems I was wrong. D'oh.

Still no word on why Dept.s of Agriculture, Education and Housing need their own SWAT teams though. Same reason probably, mission creep and too big a budget.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Robert J. Hanlon

"... but don't rule out malice." Robert A. Heinlein

The Phantom

Hipster meta-ironic violence.

The Batman shooter showed up armed to the teeth with a plan, gas grenades and body armor. The Sikh temple shooter was a typical "suicide-by-cop" wanker but at least knew to go after old men and women.

But Mr. Floyd Lee Corkins II, loving liberal, LGBT volunteer and all-round DemocRat party useful idiot, what does he do? He walks in with a 9mm Sig and a bag from Chick-fil-A, then launches into a monolog! He stands there and runs his mouth, then after the security guards have gotten right up to him he suddenly realizes they aren't going to run away like little girls. So he starts shooting. I bet his ex-military old man Floyd Lee Corkins I is proud today, eh?

To my (admittedly non-expert) eye, this is not a mentally ill person. This is a person who's been fulminating about this eeeevile FRC for a long while, the major fail of LGBT Chick-fil-A Kiss In Day torqued him off harshly, and he just can't take it anymore. He has to do something to show the Bad People that there's at least one proud gay out there who's going to stop their evil once and for all.

Why would this genius be convinced the FRC is a wretched hive of scum and villainy?

Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign give us a clue. Or you could just go to pretty much any Lefty blog or news aggregator and be stunned by the violent rhetoric getting tossed about. Liberals have finally decided all Conservatives need to die, and now they're nerving themselves up for it.

But.

Floydie wasn't really -serious- about killing these FRC people. He's making a meta-ironic statement with the the bag of chicken, he's making the pop-culture "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" statement with the gun, and he's trying to claim the moral high ground by not actually killing anyone. All at the same time. He even said "its not personal, its policy" when he shot the guard guy. Who then KICKED HIS ASS, which was -awesome- by the way, and of course makes yet another recursively meta statement about gays being the victims of The Man.

In other words, Little Floyd baby is a typical hipster. A college English major, gay-activist pussy for whom symbolism is more important than reality. This shooting was not the act of an insane person, it was a calculated political statement being made by a mainstream fag with daddy issues who's just following the narrative.

Note to other hipster gay activist types: You people suck at this violence stuff. You should probably try to hate Conservatives a little more quietly, or there's a chance you might piss us off.

The Phantom

Meta-updates!

Kathy Shaidle has a superpower, she can read minds!
So can Kate McMillan!
Robins111 in the comments: "... shall be hereafter known as the Tellatubby shooter. " Now -that- is meta. Choke on that, hipsters.

Meta-meta update with ironic pop-culture reference!

Mark Steyn sends a shout-out!!! I'm still geekin' out about it!

Remember liberals, what goes around, comes around.

Sometimes the -right- person gets robbed. Spends twenty years letting scumbags walk, finally she reaps what she has sown.

A D.C. Superior Court judge, who recently presided over a high-profile murder case, was robbed at gunpoint last Friday while walking with two others through an upper Northwest D.C. neighborhood.

Judge Ronna Beck was walking with her law clerk and the clerk's boyfriend when two men with guns approached from behind and announced a robbery.

Judge Beck, who recently presided over the trial of five men convicted in the South Capitol Street drive-by murders, did what the robbers wanted and was not hurt in the holdup.

In fact, all three turned over their valuables, telling police the men jumped into a car and fled east toward 16th Street.

So Ronna baby, how you feel about root causes of crime now, eh? Or ubiquitous surveillance and its power to prevent crime? Yeah, that's a good one.

How about gun control? Staring down the barrel of some punk's heater make you think about that at all? Maybe wish you had a .45 to pull, or more likely did you wish that MAN with you had one? Instead you got the unarmed metrosexual defense-through-abject-supination.

How about when they took your stuff?  Did you feel all grateful that your buddies in the justice system were going to let them off with a slap on the wrist, or at most stick them in a halfway house rehabilitation program?

How about that huh? You frickin' liberal DC Beltway BEEOTCH!!!!

Justice is served!

The Phantom

Something we may be seeing more of in a year or two: gigantic blimps.

Test flight of the latest semi-rigid airship in New Jersey.

A next-generation airborne spy ship as long as a football field made a successful maiden test flight over New Jersey on Tuesday, according to Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command headquarters on Redstone Arsenal.

The Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle is sort of a digital-age dirigible under development by SMDC and prime contractor Northrop Grumman. LEMV is designed to keep a 2,500-pound Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance payload aloft up to three weeks at a time, staring at an area or enemies from 20,000 feet with an "unblinking eye," according to company materials.

Here's some more background on recent heavy lift airships from Defense Industry Daily.

Video from WIRED here.

As usual, the big brains at Northrop Grumman have created the super duper version of a military airship. This thing can haul a total of seven tons, that being 14,000 pounds of fuel, payload and pilots. It can in principle stay in the air for weeks, particularly if they arrange for mid-air refueling. Its full of helium so it will be very difficult to shoot down. Helium doesn't burn. Its also designed so it can fly with no humans on board, land, drop payloads, pick things up, whatever, all under remote control or even under its own local control like a robot vacuum cleaner. World's biggest Roomba.

As airships go this one is very interesting, it has a unique double-hull design that makes it much more aerodynamic and the hull apparently generates lift too when the machine is moving forward. Very, very cool.

Northrop Grumman says they are going to fly it around for a while before sending it on to Afghanistan to get shot at. Probably wise.

Now, this machine is like the ultimate Cadillac Eldorado with the mega tailfins, turbo-nitrous 500 cubic inch engine and the ten thousand watt stereo. Its got everything including a kitchen sink. Its -huge-. But, and this is where the real fun for us "citizens" comes in, compared to a drone or a spyplane, measured by flight hours per dollar, this thing is dirt cheap. I mean super duper give-it-away cheap. Assuming this machine makes itself useful in Ashcanistan, every city in the USA will want at least one for their cops.

There's a reason Goodyear still flies those ancient blimps at the Superbowl.  Its because they offer a rock-steady camera platform and they cost almost nothing compared to a helicopter. Oh, and they can't actually crash either. If you shoot a missile into one the most you can do is make it come down rrrreeeaallllyyy slow, because the gas is held in many small compartments inside the big bag. You can't rip them all at once and the gas itself will put out any fire you can get started. Its helium. If you want you can use your airship to carry and launch smaller drones. Or cruise missiles. Or smart-bombs. Or even put a gun on it and drop artillery shells on things. With deadly accuracy, because it doesn't wiggle as it flies.

Take your crash-proof high tech airship, scale it down. Make it a drone. Stick a FLIR pod on it, maybe some side-looking radar.  Now you've got every official peeping Tom's dream, the eye in the sky that sees in the dark, and they can afford to run it twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Yeah, I think we should get used to seeing something like this floating around big cities real soon. Just remember the Batman movie in Aurora Colorado and the Gurudwara in Oak Creek Wisconsin when they fire up the hype machine to sell this new surveillance toy. Big Brother watching you doesn't make -you- safer. It makes Big Brother safer.

Time to invest in some mylar window blinds and thick drapes. Tinfoil works too, so they tell me.

The Phantom

Kirpan update II: Heart of a lion!

So they can go down fighting!

OAK CREEK, Wis., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The president of the Sikh temple in Wisconsin where six members were killed tried to stop the gunman before he was gunned down, his son says.

Amardeep Kaleka told WTMJ, CNN affiliate in Milwaukee, that his father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, used the ceremonial dagger all Sikhs carry.

"It's an amazing act of heroism, but it's also exactly who he was," Amardeep Kaleka said. "There was no way in God's green Earth that he would allow somebody to come in and do that without trying his best to stop it."

There you go. Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, went after a punk who was half his age and armed with two pistols. Mr. Kaleka had what amounts to a butter knife at a gun fight, and he went anyway. Light a candle for that guy tonight.

Probably some of the other men went after the shooter too. Hell, probably some of the women went after him. Maybe that's why he was -outside- the Gurudwara when the cops showed up instead of inside shooting kids.

HEY OBAMA!!! HEY BLOOMBERG!!! You think maybe Mr. Kaleka could have accomplished more with a Walther .380 than a blunt ceremonial dagger?

Anti-gunners make me sick to the stomach, they really do.

Oh and by the way, for our no-less full of it Canadian politicians, why are Sikhs the only ones who get a knife? Where's MY right to carry MY national blade? Where's my Skean Dhu? Where's my dirk?

The Phantom

Kirpan update: cops knew about the Batman guy too!

Firstly, Kathy Shaidle rocks! Thanks for the linkage Kathy.

On Drudge today we find a report from ABC that the "Joker's" psychiatrist called the cops WEEKS before he finally slipped a gear and shot up the theater in Aurora.

The psychiatrist who treated suspected movie-theater shooter James Holmes made contact with a University of Colorado police officer to express concerns about her patient's behavior several weeks before Holmes' alleged rampage, sources told ABC News.

The sources did not know what the officer approached by Dr. Lynne Fenton did with the information she passed along. They said, however, that the officer was recently interviewed, with an attorney present, by the Aurora Police Department as a part of the ongoing investigation of the shooting.

Fenton would have had to have serious concerns to break confidentiality with her patient to reach out to the police officer or others, the sources said.

Serious concerns, no duh. Concerns like "Hey, this guy is crazier than a bag of weasels, he has a bunch of guns in his house and says he's going to kill a bunch of people!!!"  What do the cops do? Nuttin'. Why? Because they -can't-. Also because they probably can't be bothered to buck the paperwork blizzard just because somebody -might- die.

And really, thank God for that. Because if they had the power they'd be pulling everybody who was even the least bit odd and chucking them in the slammer "just in case". Because you never know, right? We call that kind of thing "North Korea". Speaking as someone who has been considered slightly odd,

Again, Big Brother is not  there to protect you. Big Brother is there to protect Big Brother.

So friends remember that, and remember that a knife is not what you bring to a gun fight. Kirpans are good, but nothing beats five aces like a Colt 1911.

The Phantom

Why do Sikhs carry the kirpan?

Because this kind of thing right here used to happen to them about every week, is why. As it turns out, government was no better at protecting people 500 years ago in India than it is in AMERICA RIGHT NOW. Check this out:

Federal investigators had "looked at" Sikh temple gunman Wade Michael Page more than once because of his associations with right-wing extremists and the possibility that he was providing funding to a domestic terrorist group, but law enforcement officials at the time determined there was not enough evidence of a crime to open an investigation, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said.

Yes friends, the now properly dead Mr. Page was sufficiently an asshole that the FBI actually went looking for a reason to bust him. But of course they came up empty because the guy hadn't actually -done- anything other than mouth off. So total protective power of the FBI, zippo. As expected, right?

But wait there's more! It turns out that more people than just the FBI were COMPLETELY USELESS for stopping this piece of dirt.

Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center had tracked Page for several years. The nonprofit organizations collect publicly available information on hate groups from Web forums, pamphlets and other sources.

There you go, total preventative value of Leftie busybody orgs watching this guy and wringing their hands, zippo. Big Brother watching you doesn't make you safer, kids.

Which is a big DUH no kidding! Because you can't predict when one of these schmucks is going to finally work up the nerve to walk his talk. It is in fact the very definition of UN-predictable, isn't it?

What finally stopped this clown? Getting shot to death by a cop. What could have prevented this massacre? Clownboy getting shot right away before the cops showed up, preferably by the very first person he pointed a gun at.

My suggestion to Sikhs everywhere is keep the kirpan for backup and upgrade to .45ACP for your primary carry. If your local city/state/province morons won't let you, DEFEAT THEM by voting for somebody who will.

The Phantom

Media bias: Its getting so you can set your watch by them.

Weekly Standard notes that the Media Party didn't think record breaking crowds for Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was newsy enough to merit mention.

There's no mention of Chick-fil-A on the front pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the Boston Globe. The front pages of USA Today, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle have small headlines about the restaurant, while Chick-fil-A's hometown paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, fits in a story below the fold under the heading, "Chick-fil-A Controversy." And the front pages of major news websites are quiet in their coverage as well.

Several hundred thousand people all over the USA spontaneously turn up to tell Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama to shove it where the sun don't shine... that's not news.

Utterly predictable. Also predictable, the Kiss-off protest in front of Chick-fil-A today -will- be front page news and all over CNN. You will be seeing pictures of men kissing in your national news tonight. Probably the same two on every channel, because they will be the only two that showed up. If you read tomorrow morning's paper, when you are done you will be less informed than before you started it.

But not if you don't buy it. Or turn on the TV. Which I for one am all over. I don't even get TV or the papers at all. Ever.

Because why the hell would I pay money to be lied to? Especially when I get the truth for free on the web!

The Phantom

Talk about chickens coming home to roost.

Chick-fil-A appreciation day. Lined up around the block, baby. This here is what you call a spontaneous grass roots uprising. Happened in Chicago too.

Every DemocRat apparatchik in the USA is watching this and realizing that nobody is buying their hype. All they have in response is rent-a-mob and bussed in union thugs.

They are done like dinner.

The Phantom