DHS prepares to kick your ass.

Latest from your friends in the US federal government, the Department of Homeland Security has given a half-million dollar no-bid contract for 100 Pepperball "projectors" and 120,000 "projectiles". This is a "less than lethal" anti-personnel  weapon system, composed of a 700 round per minute full-auto launcher and of course the Pepperball, which is basically a .410 shotgun shell with a paintball looking thing that's full of capsicum powder, otherwise known as hot pepper.

This is a link to Youtube video of a "test" of this Pepperball thing. Setting the scene, its a Jackass-style stunt where they basically line some TV dude up against a brick wall and shoot him in the chest with one. He's a big beefy guy. One (1) round puts him right on his knees pretty well immediately.

I'm including the video because it makes the point really well, "less than lethal" is an entirely bullshit concept being used for its propaganda value. A full-auto pepperball machinegun is "less than lethal" in the same way a shot in the head from a billy club is "less than lethal".  It probably won't kill you on the spot. However you may go into a coma and die later, or live on as an invalid/vegetable.

Now imagine they shot you in the side of the head.

Point is, obviously, that the Department of Homeland Security is not buying this kit as a way to handle terrorism, the threat it was ostensibly formed to deal with. Its buying it to handle American citizens who are rioting. In other words, this is the Obama administration getting around the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. They can't order the US military to fight civilians in America, so they make up a brand new "anti-terrorism" force and militarize them instead.

Why would they want to do that? Why have a purely Federal military-style police force? Because half the US population is on Food Stamps, and by the looks of things those Food Stamp credit cards are going to bounce really soon. And by soon I mean maybe tomorrow, November 1st 2013.

Drudge report headline yesterday, the US government took in a record $2.7 TRILLION dollars last year (2012) in taxes, more money than has ever been collected in tax in American history... and they're still over a trillion bucks short of what they spent in 2012. What are they doing about it? Spending more, and also buying anti-riot gear for when the bread and circuses run out and they gotta shoot a million zombies.

Dear DemocRats, this is on you. You asked for it, you got it. Toyota. Don't blame me when the starving zombies come and burn down your house, I've been warning you this shit was coming since 1994. (That's when I started raging on the InterTubes.)

The Phantom

Lot of people can start eating crow, right now.

Over the years a whole lot of people have heard me say that someday pretty soon, the government is going to come for your car, your furniture and your frickin' washing machine. I've taken a lot of flack over that.

Well my friends, today is the day. Today it is announced that the European Union is going to ban the sale of "energy hungry" appliances. Like your ShopVac. All the people who've called me a paranoid Nazi freakshow over the years can start sending in the "you were right, damnit!" emails starting now.

The FAZ writes that not only light bulbs and vacuum cleaners are targeted for higher efficiency, but also an entire range of appliances. This is all in the wake of the European Ecodesign Directive, which will go into effect on November 1st for clothes dryers.

Yep. The EU will not allow the sale of vacuum cleaners rated at more than 1600 watts starting in 2014, and will ban models in excess of 900 watts in 2017. By 2020 your mum may be sweeping the carpet with a corn broom, just like the old days before Mr. Hoover's genius invention. Washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, AC and cooking appliances will all be under the gun in Europe THIS YEAR.

By the way, they came for your car in 1969 and nobody noticed. Then the car companies finally pulled their thumbs out, and for the first time since I was a teenager you can buy a car off the lot with 400 horsepower under the hood that doesn't say "Ferrari" on it. Look for the government to come for your car -again- in the next three years. You will be driving a three cylinder microcar that maxes out at 40mph by 2020. Oh, and you'll be paying by the mile for the privilege. Black-box tracking of every car on the road, that's the plan I'm hearing.

All we Boomer generation types need to do is sit back relax and go with the flow, and we will see the Western world return to the technology of the 1890s before we die. We will probably die of either starvation or exposure, due to the general famine and lack of heating in the winter that will be coming if the Greenies get what they want.

Just thought y'all would be interested.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Small Dead Animals readers! Go Kate!

Update II: LA Times reports on the Black Box that the EPA and the IRS and California and probably Ontario wants to put in your car.

Let's compare, shall we?

Exhibit A: "A Woodbridge woman was arrested after she shot a handgun into the air to scare off a group of boys who were attacking her daughter."

Exhibit B: "Northern California sheriff's deputies have shot and killed a 13-year-old boy after repeatedly telling him to drop what turned out to be a replica assault rifle, sheriff's officials and family members said."

Exhibit C: "A former University of California policeman who stirred public outrage by pepper-spraying peaceful student protesters has been awarded $38,000 in worker's compensation for psychiatric damage he claimed to have suffered from the 2011 incident."

Question to all you hipster dweebs currently infesting my blog: Does the above seem like the kind of thing one would expect to see in the newspapers of a FREE country?

The Phantom

Experimental evidence that Time is an emergent property.

Well, this is certainly more important than Obamacare.

Its not every day that we get experimental evidence of a philosophical argument, but today we do.  Briefly, the mathematics of quantum physics equations predict that the universe is changeless. This is clearly not the case since we observe things changing all the time. Two theorists, Page and Wootters, came up with the idea that the universe might look changeable from the inside, but an observer external to the universe might see no change.  From the article:

Of course, without experimental verification, Page and Wooter's ideas are little more than a philosophical curiosity. And since it is never possible to have an observer outside the universe, there seemed little chance of ever testing the idea.

Until now. Today, Ekaterina Moreva at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) in Turin, Italy, and a few pals have performed the first experimental test of Page\Wooters ideas. And they confirm that time is indeed an emergent phenomenon for 'internal' observers but absent for external ones.

Link to the paper.

Abstract:

In the last years several theoretical papers discussed if time can be an emergent propertiy deriving
from quantum correlations. Here, to provide an insight into how this phenomenon can occur, we
present an experiment that illustrates Page and Wootters' mechanism of \static" time, and Gambini
et al. subsequent renements. A static, entangled state between a clock system and the rest of the
universe is perceived as evolving by internal observers that test the correlations between the two
subsystems. We implement this mechanism using an entangled state of the polarization of two
photons, one of which is used as a clock to gauge the evolution of the second: an \internal" observer
that becomes correlated with the clock photon sees the other system evolve, while an \external"
observer that only observes global properties of the two photons can prove it is static.

Julian Barbour talking about the problem of Time in a Youtube lecture.

So, if time is an emergent property, can you adjust it? What else might be an emergent property? Maybe gravity? Could those things be adjusted? If you make an Alcubierre warp bubble will time run the same inside as outside?

Isn't this fun?! Bwaha!

Actual headline: "Canada Has Death Panels And that’s a good thing."

Every once in a while I idly wonder  if there is any depth to which the DemocRat Party and their various media enablers will not sink. Then along comes an article like this one in Slate,  and I realize no, there isn't. They hit bottom a while ago and have been digging furiously ever since. Slate is employing heavy excavation equipment with this latest effort. To wit:

Yet, the question remains: Who decides? Remember that, outside of Ontario, the resolution of these end-of-life disputes is generally reserved for judges. Ontario has simply replaced them with experts and wise community members. That's a lead other jurisdictions should consider following when families' emotions and doctors' judgments collide. 

Perhaps it is easier for Canadians to trust government-appointed panels, rather than judges, with decisions like these. For reasons that arguably go back to our respective foundings, Canadians tend to have more faith in our government and our bureaucratic processes than Americans do in theirs. Look at gun control: Canada lacks a constitutional guarantee of a right to bear arms in part because we never fought a war of independence that made one seem necessary. Similarly, when conservative politicians in the United States condemn Obamacare as a "government takeover" of health care, a lot of Canadians roll our eyes.

Adam Goldenberg writing in Slate considers a board of political appointees to be superior to doctors, judges AND family members in cases of deciding who gets medical care and who gets to die. Thinks its a great idea. America should do it too. Here's his Twitter feed, picture of him indicates he's every inch the law student/hipster idiot you'd expect given this article.

Adam Goldenburg, hipster idiot and propagandist.

Americans please note, in Ontario if OHIP decides they aren't going to pay for your hospital care, you're hooped. In Ontario the private alternative is a hospital in Buffalo, New York. You literally have to leave the country if you want to pay cash.

Little Adam is arguing that a bureaucracy composed of whoever the regime felt deserved a sinecure should be deciding who gets medical care in Ontario. The Consent and Capacity Board should be making these decisions based on what is convenient for the Consent and Capacity Board and the regime in general. Little Adam thinks that all will be well, because obviously the Great and the Good of the Ontario would never do anything bad, right? They would never deny a person medical care for political reasons, right? They would never provide care to crooked buddies instead of the deserving poor, right? Because that would be CRAZY!

Obamacare looks like one of these stepping on your neck.

Like the Great and the Good of the Ontario Liberal Party would never cancel an electricity generating station contract in Oakville, costing the Ontario taxpayer a billion dollars [that's $1,000,000,000], just to keep five seats in parliament, right? Because that would be CRAZY! 

Oh, wait...

Advice to my American comrades: make friends with some doctors. Friends get put to the front of the really big waiting list in Ontario. Little Adam didn't tell you that part, did he?

The Phantom

Update: Welcome twitter readers from Jeff Jedras and Adam Goldenberg. Comments seem to be from people who are pretty young. Ask your Moms and Dads how its going with the taking care of Grandma and Grandpa thing. Their views may shock you.

Little Brother has surveillance envy.

While Big Brother is tracking your every movement throughout the country using your cell phone, Little Brother is using your phone's wifi MAC address to track your every movement throughout their big box store.
 

Thousands of customer interactions a day are logged and uploaded to the databases of third-party companies that specialize in retail analytics. Estimates vary as to how big this industry is, but according to Polonetsky, nine major players account for the vast majority of tracking activity. Others estimate there could be as many as 40 major and minor firms.

I would wager that pretty much every national/international chain store you go into has this setup. Its just too juicy for them to pass up. Here's something hilarious from the article though:

In general, no personally identifiable information can be gathered this way, says Stillman Bradish, co-founder of The Wireless Registry, a D.C.-based start-up that designs ways for consumers to opt out of the tracking. But, he added, as with any type of metadata, it's easily possible to cross-reference it with other forms of public or commercial information. The resulting data slurry can help firms build detailed profiles of consumers, even if the consumers themselves remain anonymous.

You gave them your credit card AND your store loyalty card, you think they can't match that up with their MACdaddy database? Please.

How to beat this? Leave your phone in the car. In a box, just to be sure. And pay cash. They hate that.

The Phantom

How to tell when police have lost public support.

Police in Florida towns using ShotSpotter to find shootings because people don't report them.

More than 70 cities, including several in South Florida, have purchased technology called ShotSpotter to instantly alert police to the sound of gunfire.

ShotSpotter uses microphones and motion sensors placed on light poles and buildings to pick up on gunshots and other loud sounds and report the exact location to police. The California-based company that markets the service says it is specially engineered to hear gunfire, and won't pick up conversations unless they're at a place where a shooting is in progress.

Police say the technology can be especially valuable in high-crime areas where residents don't call police to report gunfire.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/14/3689427/south-florida-cops-hope-shotspotter.html#storylink=cpy

The Miami Herald article is playing the NSA Big Brother angle on this story, but this quote here is a lot more chilling to me:

[Miami Gardens Deputy Police Chief Paul] Miller said the city's staff has deemed the technology "cost-effective" and he believes it aids the police in finding crime scenes when residents hear the gunshots, but don't call the police.

"When we realized incidents were going unreported because people were apathetic, or had developed malaise, we knew we had to do something to combat that," said Miller.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/14/3689427_p2/south-florida-cops-hope-shotspotter.html#storylink=cpy

Yeah. "Malaise" is what they call it when somebody starts a gunfight right in front of your house, and you figure calling the cops is a bigger problem than the gunfight. Miami Gardens will be spending $400,000 PER YEAR on this system, so must be there's a whole bunch of "malaise" going around.

This is why I vacation in Arizona instead of Florida my friends. Dirtbags don't start gunfights in the street in AZ much. Too dangerous.

The Phantom

If a government shuts down in a forest and no one hears it...

... will a jackboot still step on your neck?

"We is not amused."

Courtesy of Five Feet of Fury, today we have Mark Steyn making the point I was trying to make earlier in the week, better. The bastard!

But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America's alleged "National Park Service," a term of art that covers everything from canyons and glaciers to war memorials and historic taverns. The NPS has spent the last two weeks behaving as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, expending more resources in trying to close down open-air, unfenced areas than it would normally do in keeping them open. It began with the war memorials on the National Mall — that's to say, stone monuments on pieces of grass under blue sky. It's the equivalent of my New Hampshire town government shutting down and deciding therefore to ring the Civil War statue on the village common with yellow police tape and barricades.

 Back on October 2nd I opined the following: "Now, without getting too jazzed up about Their Sacrifice and all that, I'd just like to observe that Barry sent his apparatchiks out to deliberately screw over a bunch of sick old men. For cheap political theater. Not who I want in charge of my healthcare, eh?" 

Kind of flippant, but to the point. Steyn makes the point better:

The government is telling you something profound and important about how it understands the power relationship between them and you.

"Let them eat lead."

Paraphrasing Agent Smith: "Americans are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague, and we... are the cure."

The Phantom

"The Law is an ass."

Judge Allan Davis at work.

How to tell that your legal decision making needs some work: Declaring a man to be still legally dead, even after he walks into your court room and says hi.

In 1994, the court ruled that Miller was legally dead, eight years after he disappeared from his Arcadia rental home.

The same judge, Allan Davis, ruled Monday that Miller is still dead, in the eyes of the law. Miller's request for a reversal came well after the three-year legal limit for changing a death ruling, Davis said.

When mere fact cannot change a legal decision, somebody needs to be f-ing well fired. Possibly several somebodies.

The Phantom

Cops do what they're told.

This is a recurring theme here at the Soapbox. Cops do what they're told.
To be fair, in the absence of specific orders, in North America anyway, cops will use their brain and do the morally correct and righteous thing more often than not. But...

...When they do get specific orders to behave in an unacceptable manner and to do things which are -clearly- illegal, immoral and reprehensible, THEY FOLLOW THEM.

Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.

"We've become a country of fear, guns and control," said Vaillancourt, who grew up in Lawrence. "It was like they brought out the armed forces. Nobody was saying, 'we're sorry,' it was all like — " as she clenched her fist and banged it against her forearm.

Surely that's an exaggeration, isn't it? Well, apparently not.

The bus stopped along a road when a large herd of bison passed nearby, and seniors filed out to take photos. Almost immediately, an armed ranger came by and ordered them to get back in, saying they couldn't "recreate." The tour guide, who had paid a $300 fee the day before to bring the group into the park, argued that the seniors weren't "recreating," just taking photos.

"She responded and said, 'Sir, you are recreating,' and her tone became very aggressive," Vaillancourt said.

The seniors quickly filed back onboard and the bus went to the Old Faithful Inn, the park's premier lodge located adjacent to the park's most famous site, Old Faithful geyser. That was as close as they could get to the famous site — barricades were erected around Old Faithful, and the seniors were locked inside the hotel, where armed rangers stayed at the door.

No "recreating". Translation: "No having fun you miserable peons, my superiors have given me specific instructions to see that you all have as lousy a time here as possible, and I am going to carry out those orders, so that I get a promotion."

Its not a government "shutdown" if the whole Parks Police force is on emergency overtime, is it? Its something else. Something more like a show of force, to scare the stupid public into calling up those damn Republicans so they'll knuckle under to the Dems like they're supposed to and get the government opened back up again. Before something bad might happen.

Now might be an excellent time to remind everyone that the National Parks Police have their own SWAT team. Which I have no doubt some apparatchik somewhere is aching to take out for a drive, despite the web page being shut down today.

Because of the federal government shutdown, all national parks are closed and National Park Service webpages are not operating. For more information, go to www.doi.gov.

 

Last Updated: 10/01/2013

So, where did these orders issue from you ask? Who said to throw the old people out of Yellowstone Park?  Even though its a PRIVATELY OWNED HOTEL they were staying in, not Federal Parks property. Well, who told the DC Parks cops to barricade the WWII Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial but not the WWI Memorial? And who gave permission today for a pro-immigration demonstration on the otherwise closed DC Mall?

The White House. Or so says the Christian Science Monitor, anyway.

Yet to some people, it also seems federal officials are going out of their way to make the shutdown painfully symbolic. Many of the open-air monuments currently barricaded were not closed during earlier shutdowns. Some, including the World War II Memorial, were closed by express orders from the White House, according to the Park Service.

At Gettysburg, park officials barricaded pulloffs on a public road so people couldn't stop and view the monuments from the public right of way. Such pulloff barricades suggest to experts like Mr. Reynolds at the University of Tennessee that the cones are simply there out of spite – an evocation of the power and necessity of the federal government.

At Valley Forge National Historical Park, a man named John Bell entered the monument through what he said was an ungated entrance, but was ticketed by two rangers when he returned to his car. At Maine's Acadia National Park, rangers have also been issuing fines to campers, bikers, and hikers who have jumped the barricades.

Just popping up on Drudge is another example of SuperCop overreach, Grand Canyon PArk in Arizona.

Nearly two dozen people have been issued citations for entering Grand Canyon National Park after a partial government shutdown forced its closure.

Grand Canyon Chief Ranger Bill Wright says some people have been caught at the South Rim, on trails, attempting rim-to-rim hikes or trying to sneak in through dirt roads.

All of the citations will be handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office. Wright says each of the 21 citations issued as of Monday has a mandatory order to appear in federal court.

A state highway that runs through the national park was closed after Grand Canyon officials found tourists removing barricades at overlooks along the road.

Yes friends, US Parks Service closed a state road. Legally, they can't actually do that as far as I know. Its a matter of some concern for Arizona, as nearly every major highway in the state runs through or past some kind of national park or monument. 
 

Y'all might want to contemplate what might happen if The One takes it into his head to close the Interstate Highway System because of the "shutdown". Its federally funded, after all. And the cops really will follow those orders. Count on it.

The Phantom

Wall of silence breaks, US border guards ARE ordered to stand down.

From Breitbart we hear that as I have long suspected/assumed, Border Patrol on the Mexican border has been ordered to do nothing.

Shawn Moran, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, spoke exclusively with Breitbart News and claimed that Border Patrol management has begun the practice of ordering Border Patrol Agents to stand down and cease pursuing drug smugglers, human smugglers and traffickers, and illegal aliens. He also warned it could lead to illegal aliens entering the country from nations associated with terrorism.
"It doesn't matter whether it's drugs, bodies, or how large the group is, our agents are being ordered to stand down by Border Patrol management," said Moran. "I have received reports from our agents in every single sector from San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas that they are receiving these orders."
"They are not being relieved in place, they are simply being told that someone else is being dispatched, but none of us have seen that occur," he explained. "We are simply being ordered to stand down and stop tracking and trying to apprehend the criminals." He discussed the importance of agents being relieved in place when tracking an individual or group.

Thus it is safe to assume that it is the official policy of the United States government that Mexican drug cartel dirtbags are allowed to do whatever the hell they want, while going to great lengths to prevent World War Two vets from visiting a pile of masonry in a Washington DC park.

Remember, its not the slide down the slippery slope that kills you, its the sudden stop at the bottom.

My dear American friends, you people are being taken for a sleigh ride. You might want to consider the destination they have in mind for you.

The Phantom

Obama admin blocking Vets from war memorial.

Here's a comment from somebody who appears to know what the deal is, Mike Flynn:

Having lived in DC for 18 years, I can tell you, the WWII Memorial is simply an architectural structure in an open public space. There is no official "access" to it. There are no guards. It's a building in a park. Yet, the Obama Administration tried to block veterans from viewing the public memorial, even after hearing about the planned visit.

 Yes. The O-bots have -blocked- access to an open bit of park, they have not simply shut the gate on a controlled access site.

Now, without getting too jazzed up about Their Sacrifice and all that, I'd just like to observe that Barry sent his apparatchiks out to deliberately screw over a bunch of sick old men. For cheap political theater.

Not who I want in charge of my healthcare, eh? Just sayin'.

The Phantom