Micro-house = shack, you Lefties.

micro house.

In case you've been wondering why Tiny Houses, Micro-houses, Housing Pods and etc. have been in the news a lot these last five years or so, this is why:

A new idea is taking shape in San Jose to help the down and out get out of tents and doorways and into more sturdy shelters. The idea involves building new neighborhoods for the homeless with shed-sized buildings.
The high-end sheds at The Shed Shop in Fremont were never designed to house the homeless
"The most common use is a home office," said Paul Johnston of The Shed Shop
But with sturdy doors and windows, two-by-four construction, insulation and built-in electrical wiring they could be very livable.
"These are made just like a little house would be made," Johnston said.
And that's the idea behind a new idea at San Jose City Hall to help the homeless.

What a great idea! Find a nice piece of public land, say down by the railroad tracks, build a bunch of economical Housing Pods, deliver the poor homeless gentlemen and families to the location and give them each a new home! How tolerant! How humanitarian! How liberal!

many micro-houses. Note rail-yard.

Homeless advocates said they do have advantages. "When you give somebody a key to their own door, their own house, that they can call their own that's a victory," said Jenny Niklaus of HomeFirst.

Yeah? Ask the Indians how that worked out for them. Its called a shanty town, and its not normally associated with a healthy and long life. Out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes also known as Coventry.

First Nations micro-house in norther Manitoba. Note satellite dish.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Small Dead Animals and other flying monkeys!

You're paying too much for government, America.

Try this on for size, Americans.

After years of rapid growth during the Obama administration, the cost of federal regulations is now bigger than the entire economies of all but nine countries in the world.
That's according to the latest annual report on the regulatory state issued by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, titled "Ten Thousand Commandments."
Compiling reports of compliance costs from various government agencies and outside sources, author Clyde Wayne Crews found that the "regulation tax" imposed on the economy now tops $1.86 trillion.
By comparison, Canada's entire GDP is $1.82 trillion. India's is $1.84 trillion.

Government regulations -alone- cost you more than Canada makes in a year. What does that look like?

This is a picture of a trillion bucks in $100's. We're talking double this.

But wait there's more!

On a per-household basis, federal regulatory costs average $14,974, which is more than the typical household spends on just about anything else.
When regulatory costs are combined with federal spending, Washington's share of the economy rises to an eye-popping 31%.

So you want to know why you're poor? That's why. And they are piling on more every day, and the rate of increase is accelerating.  I figure four or five more years of this and half of America is going to be right where Cliven Bundy is now, with a SWAT team on the front porch because you ran over a desert tortoise.

America: getting what you voted for, good and hard.

The Phantom

46% of New Yorkers "struggling to get by". The plan to fix it? ID cards.

A recent study in New York revealed that almost half of the city is hovering just above the poverty level. Let's just grant that at face value, for the sake of argument.

Here's DeBlasio's plan to fix the issue:

The report outlined the de Blasio administration's agenda for mitigating poverty: municipal identification cards to provide immigrants with access to basic services and other supports, raising the local minimum wage, protecting low-wage workers, giving preferential treatment to city residents in public works jobs, raising wages at companies doing business with or receiving subsidies from the city, and more school services that also allow parents to work.

Yes friends, the DeBlasio plan is to make it more impossible to do business in a city that its already impossible to do business in. Oh, and give away more stuff.

What are the two obvious results that will obviously happen? Businesses will lay off minimum wage staff because otherwise they will go broke, and taxes will go up to pay for the more free stuff.

Other things that will obviously happen: more immigrants will come to get the free stuff, and more people who are making money will be driven away by the taxes.

Sitting here in my comfy command center here at Casa Phantom Norte, I have a question for all you New Yorkers. The question is, why did you vote for this asshole? Are you crazy?

The Phantom

Compliance with orders is no defense!

Guy in Florida does exactly what the cop tells him, gets arrested anyway. Because cellphone.

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The charge against freelance disc jockey Lazaro Estrada is obstruction of justice.  He was arrested on St. Patrick's Day after using his cell phone to record a video of an arrest at a Cutler Bay store where he was spinning records for a promotional gig.
Miami-Dade Ofc. Michael Valdez arrived at the store to arrest owner Andre Trigiano on outstanding misdemeanor traffic charges.
Estrada says he began recording the episode with his iPhone only after the officer removed Trigiano from the store and threw the handcuffed man to the ground.

In a police state, just being there is an arrestable offense.

The Phantom

Hey Doctors, thanks for voting DemocRat all these years.

Here's a nice present for your faithful service to the DemocRat Party.

In addition to the burden of mandated electronic-record entry, doctors also face board recertification in the various medical specialties that has become time-consuming, expensive, imposing and a convenient method for our specialty societies and boards to make money.

Meanwhile, our Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have significantly declined, let alone kept up with inflation. In orthopedic surgery, for example, Medicare reimbursement for a total knee replacement decreased by about 68% between 1992 and 2010, based on the value of 1992 dollars. How can this be? Don't doctors have control over what they charge for their services? For the most part, no. Our medical documentation is pored over and insurers and government then determine the appropriate level of reimbursement.

I don't know about other physicians but I am tired—tired of the mandates, tired of outside interference, tired of anything that unnecessarily interferes with the way I practice medicine. No other profession would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces. The legal profession would not. The labor unions would not. We as physicians continue to plod along and take care of our patients while those on the outside continue to intrude and interfere with the practice of medicine.

The title of this piece is "A Doctor's Declaration of Independence: It's time to defy health-care mandates issued by bureaucrats not in the healing profession." I'm quite sure there were any number of columns like this written in Saskatchewan back 1962. That was when the doctors actually went on strike to defeat Tommy "Not Dead Enough" Douglas's government seizure of the medical profession, usually called "medicare". That strike lasted three weeks.

They LOST. The forces of socialism WON. Big time. Fast forward to the 1967, just five years, socialized medicine goes national in Canada. Thank you Mr. Pearson and Mr. Douglas.

So here we are, 2014. The socialized medicine system in Canada is a shambling, crumbling wreck, kept alive by an IV drip of cubic megadollars and foreign doctors from Saudi Arabia and Russia, because Canadian doctors burned out ten years ago. They go back to their home countries and tell horror stories of Canadian hospitals, where patients are treated in hallways or left to die in ambulances in the parking lot.

You know what? You American doctors, you've been BEGGING for this since the 1970s. You've been overwhelmingly voting DemocRat/socialist, and you've been whining that single payer is the way to go, and you've been putting up with anything and everything the insurance companies throw at you, and you've been working for HMOs where the policy is Don't Treat No Matter What, and you've been first and foremost among the crowds of Leftists screaming that medical care is a Right!

So now you finally get what you voted for.

You get to be a data-entry clerk making less money than a truck driver. Very Soviet Union, da?

My advice: Don't let your strike collapse in three weeks.

The Phantom

Hate speech reporting law. Here it comes.

World Net Daily reports:

If two Democratic lawmakers have their way, Barack Obama's Justice Department will submit a report for action against any Internet sites, broadcast, cable television or radio shows determined to be advocating or encouraging "violent acts." This according to the text of a new bill from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.  The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 "would create an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes," stated a news release from Markey's office.

I wonder if this here blog will make the cut?

The Phantom

Obamacare = electronic medical records.

Here's a troubling story. Obamacare mandates electronic medical records be installed by ALL providers. This means single doctor practices are going out of existence en mass.

In a slow-motion version of the problems that crippled online insurance "exchanges" for months, doctors who see patients under Medicare and Medi-Cal programs have been forced by federal law to install expensive, complex software systems that sharply reduce time for patients. For many doctors, it's the final straw. Surveys suggest that older physicians are retiring in high numbers. Younger ones are closing practices and taking jobs with integrated health systems.

Buuut but but weren't we told that computerized medical records allowed all kinds of knowledge base improvements and data sharing between professionals? Yeah, we were. That isn't what's happening though.

Nearly 70 percent of physicians say digitizing patient records has not been worth the cost, according to a survey by Medical Economics magazine. This negative cost-benefit view comes even after $27 billion in subsidies to health care providers for the systems.

One big problem is the dozens of systems don't talk to each other, because the feds didn't mandate interoperability before the rollout.

So communication gains among hospitals, clinics and doctors offices aren't happening. Adding insult, doctors can be criminally liable if hackers get hold of patient data.

Worse is the hit to productivity.

The problem is the doctor spends half your office visit typing crap into the computer himself, because the visit doesn't generate enough money for him to pay a clerk to do it. So now instead of being a doctor, he's a CLERK.

What's going to happen? Medical records are going to be NATIONALIZED, is what's going to happen. All those records are going to end up on a centralized serve at Health and Human Services in Washington DC. Some software company will make billions, they will build a multi-megabuck bunker in Virginia and fill it with servers, and y'all will officially stop sharing your thoughts and opinions with your doctors if you have any sense at all.

Because your doctors will have become informants for the government.

And that, my friends, is what's going to happen.

The Phantom

And who do we have to thank for that, Lord Williams?

Leftist in a clerical collar speaks, indites himself as a failure and an ass with the same breath.

The man contrives to look rumpled even in Archbishop's robes.

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Lord Rowan Williams said Britain was not a nation of believers and that the era of widespread worship was over.
It comes after Prime Minister David Cameron said people in Britain should be confident of its status as "a Christian country".

Lord Williams cannot allow this faux pas from the odious Tory leader to pass without comment. England is a Christian nation?! The cheek!

Lord Williams, who retired from being the leader of the Church of England in 2012, said: "If I say that this is a post-Christian nation, that doesn't mean necessarily non-Christian.
"It means the cultural memory is still quite strongly Christian."
He added: "But [Britain is] post-Christian in the sense that habitual practice for most of the population is not taken for granted.
"A Christian nation can sound like a nation of committed believers and we are not that. Equally, we are not a nation of dedicated secularists.
"It's a matter of defining terms. A Christian country as a nation of believers? No.

And who's doing is that, Lord Williams? If the flock should stray do you blame the sheep? Or the shepherd?

The Phantom

Bundy ranch... HEY! Where's Neil Young?

It suddenly occurred to me as I was taking a slash just now... Kent State. Nobody is talking about the parallels between the Kent State shootings and the recent farce at the Bundy Ranch. The only differences are Kent State was a state national guard unit instead of the Feds, and at the Bundy Ranch all the "kids" were armed, dangerous and ready to shoot back.

May 4th is right around the corner. See who mentions Bundy Ranch and Kent State in the same sentence. I bet nobody in the MSM does, for sure.

Forty four years, the frickin' hippies never shut up about the "Four Dead in Ohio". Not a peep out of them now. Because now they don't fight The Man, now they ARE The Man.

Fuck Neil Young. Hippy punching is never wrong.

Dead fetuses for fuel: no longer only in Britain!

It appears that the mortal remains of aborted and miscarried babies are in high demand as a fuel source.

VICTORIA, British Columbia, April 23, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British Columbia Health Ministry has admitted that the remains of babies destroyed by abortion in B.C. facilities are ending up in a waste-to-power facility in the United States, providing electricity for residents of Oregon.

The province's Health Ministry said in an email to the B.C. Catholic that "biomedical waste" shipped to the U.S. to be incinerated includes "human tissue, such as surgically removed cancerous tissue, amputated limbs, and fetal tissue."

"The ministry understands that some is transferred to Oregon. There it is incinerated in a waste-to-energy plant," the email stated.

The ministry said that contractors handling the province's "biomedical waste" follow "health and safety protocols, as well as federal, provincial, and local regulations."

It pleases the medical establishment to label fetal remains "medical waste", even though there are few Canadians who would consider them to be so. The reason is political, of course. If they admit that the remains of an aborted fetus are in any way anything other than garbage, of any more consequence than a used surgical sponge, that opens up questions of morality that the ProChoice liberal crowd don't want people asking.

That's not a good enough reason to display such disrespect for human remains as to burn them for fuel. Its despicable, and it is unseemly for our society to tolerate it.

The Phantom

TSA still frisking small children.

Yes, they are.

The video description clearly suggests that the children were given a pat down without first being allowed to pass repeatedly through x-ray scanners to clear the issue, and in fact that there was no issue with the children at all because it was the mother’s name appearing on a watchlist that prompted the pat down. If this is the case, it represents a violation of the TSA’s own policy.

In a more general context, the video serves as yet another reminder of the numerous idiotic policies employed by the TSA which do nothing to target potential terrorists and everything to harass and inconvenience innocent travelers.

The clip will also stoke concerns that the entire concept of children being taught not to allow strangers to touch them is being violated by the actions of the TSA.

Meanwhile, a teenager was able to STOW AWAY on an American flight.

The slight teenager, first seen on a security camera video, would not appear again until late Sunday morning, when airline workers spotted him, 2,350 miles to the west, wandering on another tarmac, this one at Kahului Airport on the island of Maui.

In the interim, authorities say, the boy survived a perilous 5 1/2-hour odyssey— weathering frigid temperatures, oxygen deprivation and a flight compartment unfit for human habitation — as he traveled over the Pacific Ocean in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines jet.

They need to manhandle toddlers as if they were found-ins at a crack house, but their perimeter is so weak a stupid 15 year old can wander in and hide inside an aircraft for no apparent purpose. Gee that seems reasonable, right?

It is not security. It is security theater. They are training the American public  to accept any outrage no matter how personal as just part of traveling.

Consider driving instead. Let a couple more airlines go out of business, then see how they manage.

The Phantom

44 shot, 8 dead (so far) over Chicago Easter.

That's the count so far. Here's what was said about it.

CHICAGO (CBS) – Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said a bloody holiday weekend that saw at least eight people shot and killed and dozens others wounded "doesn't wipe out" reductions in violent crime in the past two years.
Since Friday evening, at least eight people were shot and killed in Chicago, and at least 44 others were wounded, police said
"This doesn't wipe out what has happened over the last two years, and this is a conversation that we've had time and time again," Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Monday morning. "There's no magic formula here. We have a plan, we have a strategy, and it's hard work. That's what it is. … It's a day-by-day, minute-by-minute grind, and we're into busy season. That's what it is."
Although murders in Chicago spiked to 516 in 2012 – only the second time homicides surpassed 500 since 2003 – they dropped to 415 last year, the lowest murder total for Chicago in nearly 50 years.
The superintendent said the vast majority of shootings in Chicago are gang-related, and detectives were working to determine "which of the hot conflicts" were to blame for the most recent spate of violence.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said addressing the violence isn't just about what the police do but what the schools, community groups and parents do to instill values in their children.
"You can't do this just by discussing how many police we have and counting heads. You can't do this by figuring out many kids are in after school. We have to do all of that and more and we all know we have tough budgets," said Emanuel.

New York City used to be in this exact position. Bankrupt and murder capital of the USA. Nobody could do nuttin' under Mayor Dinkins. Half the crime was done by the cops, never mind anything else.

What finally happened? Mayor Rudy Giuliani started busting guys for j-walking, loitering, spitting on the sidewalk and breaking windows. Crime dropped by double digits the first year and every year thereafter. The free-fire zone known as Brownsville became a boring suburb with cupcake shops springing up like mushrooms on a manure pile.

I know that, you know that, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel knows that and so does his trained seal Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. They know it.

Why aren't they doing what they know will work?

Two reasons. First and most important, there is MONEY in doing nothing. There must be a zillion dollars worth of corrupt business flying around Chicago, and its pretty clear the Mayor's office is either controlled by or afraid of those interests.

Second, nobody important cares if a bunch of gutter-rats get killed every weekend. The crime is confined to "de ghetto" and its pretty clear to me that the DemocRats HATE those people with some seriously hatey hate. Any atrocity that goes down Downtown is all good with the mover and shakers of Chitown.

Otherwise they'd just fire all the dirty cops and start arresting ratbag gangbangers like Rudy did.

The Phantom

Your router may have a "secret" back door in it.

This stuff just keeps getting better and better.

"Eloi Vanderbeken from Synacktiv has identified an intentional backdoor in a module by Sercomm used by major router manufacturers (Cisco, Linksys, Netgear, etc.). The backdoor was ostensibly fixed — by obfuscating it and making it harder to access. The original report (PDF). And yeah, there is an exploit available ..."

What the hell does all that mean? It means that all the routers listed here are sitting with a gaping security hole in them. A hole that's there by design, apparently. Because instead of fixing the hole, they just kind of papered over it a bit. Kicked some sand on it to hide it, you might say. But its still there, waiting for just the right packet to come along and let somebody completely p0n3 your router. Yeah, that one you rent from the phone company, that little box that plugs into the wall.

What can happen? From the link,

Once the backdoor is switched back on, it listens for TCP/IP traffic just as the original firmware did, giving “root shell” access—allowing anyone to send commands to the router, including getting a “dump” of its entire configuration. It also allows a remote user to access features of the hardware—such as blinking the router’s lights.

They get to pretty much completely do whatever they want to your network, from add wi-fi users to lock you out of your own network.

Can you fix it? Yes. Get a PROPER router, one that isn't a piece of cable company shit. If you want to be really sure... forget it. If the manufacturers are putting back doors in the firmware, we're f-ed. You'd have to make your own from scratch.

The Phantom

Stop cooking with cheese!

That's all I can think of when faced with an LA Times article like this.

At a time when the still sluggish economy has sent a flood of jobless young adults back home, older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.

For seven years through 2012, the number of Californians aged 50 to 64 who live in their parents' homes swelled 67.6% to about 194,000, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

The jump is almost exclusively the result of financial hardship caused by the recession rather than for other reasons, such as the need to care for aging parents, said Steven P. Wallace, a UCLA professor of public health who crunched the data.

"The numbers are pretty amazing," Wallace said. "It's an age group that you normally think of as pretty financially stable. They're mid-career. They may be thinking ahead toward retirement. They've got a nest egg going. And then all of a sudden you see this huge push back into their parents' homes."

Thanks, DemocRats!

The Phantom

More anti-robot propaganda.

Seriously, what the hell?

Futurologists, commissioned by global job search website xpatjobs.com, say workers will have less job security and will work more unsociable hours.

Those who take these risks and innovate with their own bodies will be the biggest earners in 2040, they claim.

However, the study added that workers may be left with poor eyesight, smaller sexual organs, and constantly-furrowed brows as they struggle to keep up to life in the 21st century.

Experts expect the current 37.4 hour working week to increase by a third to 50.5 hours.

 

Show me a robot that can go down to the corner store and pick up a pack of smokes for me, and I'll show a machine that costs $20,000,000 dollars.

The Phantom

Clinton fingerprints on Media Party monolith

Remember in the 1990's when the Internet was still very young, and this nobody named Matt Drudge had the Monica Lewinsky story to himself for like a whole frickin' week? Ever wonder how that happened? Well, now we finally know.

WASHINGTON – If you want to learn what Hillary Clinton meant by "the vast right-wing conspiracy," part of the extensive collection of dossiers the Clinton White House kept on its media enemies was released Friday by the Clinton Library.  The most important of the documents, "The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," originally some 331 pages, was reduced to only 28 pages in the sanitized and heavily redacted version posted by the presidential library.

Here's what they did:

The operation launched by the Clinton administration in response to this conspiracy theory was designed to prevent so-called "mainstream media" from picking up such stories. That effort came in several parts:

• The original 331-page report was distributed by the White House and the Democratic National Committee to select reporters in an effort to discredit those behind the critical reports on the Clinton White House – namely billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, journalist Joseph Farah, political activist Floyd Brown and the American Spectator.
• Hillary Clinton's public relations effort to vilify what she called "the vast right-wing conspiracy."
• A pattern of politically motivated audits of individuals and organizations by the Internal Revenue Service.

"It's quite an amazing story," said Farah, founder and editor of WND, whose Western Journalism Center was audited after the White House sent the IRS a letter from a constituent calling for an investigation. "It may all have a familiar ring to the tea-party groups of the 21st century. Clinton got away with it, so it was bound to happen again – and it most assuredly has."

Funny how it's exactly what the Obama White House is doing now, as Farah said. Funny how the whole Bundy Ranch thing so closely resembled Waco too. 

I think Clinton dipped his toe in the water with Waco and found it too hot for him, now Obama is having a go. These morons seem to think that control of the New York Times will let them do anything they want. Lucky for us it ain't true. Yet.

The Phantom

How to tell that scholarship is dead.

Exhibit A:

Why There Will Be A Robot Uprising

Anyone who thinks there will be a "robot uprising", ever, is fundamentally ignorant of the nature of modern digital computers.

The Phantom

Numbers to conjure with: 86 million vs. 108 million.

I had to post this one.

Buried deep on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000.

That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week.

But then there are government workers, who work but don't produce any physical value for the economy.

Of the 103,087,000 full-time, year-round workers, 16,606,000 worked for the government. That included 12,597,000 who worked for state and local government and 4,009,000 who worked for the federal government.

And then there are the ones who don't work at all.

Of course, it stands to reason that some people lived in households that received more than one welfare benefit at a time. To account for this, the Census Bureau published a neat composite statistic: There were 108,592,000 people in the fourth quarter of 2011 who lived in a household that included people on "one or more means-tested program."

Note that this is not the total number of people receiving benefits, this is the number of people receiving benefits who we can assume do not work.

Note that 108,592,000 is larger than 86,429,000.

Any bets on how long this situation lasts?

The Phantom

Michael Bloomberg on gun control jihad.

Bloomberg says he's going to spend $50 million bucks to destroy the NRA.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, said gun control advocates need to learn from the N.R.A. and punish those politicians who fail to support their agenda — even Democrats whose positions otherwise align with his own.

“They say, ‘We don’t care. We’re going to go after you,’ ” he said of the N.R.A. “ ‘If you don’t vote with us we’re going to go after your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids. And we’re never going to stop.’ ”

He added: “We’ve got to make them afraid of us.”

Again, just thought you ought to know. Remember, New Yorkers, the best defense is a strong offense.

The Phantom

FBI attention on buying MREs in bulk.

Given the affair at the Bundy Ranch, this missive from InfoWars caught my eye.

FBI counterterrorism agents are visiting gun shops in South Carolina to investigate “suspicious purchases” made by people who talk about “big government,” according to a new report.

Author Brandon Turbeville says he was approached by an individual who works in a Columbia, South Carolina gun shop to relate the story of how an FBI agent entered the store on Monday, showed his credentials, before proceeding to ask a series of stunning questions.

Telling the gun store worker he was tasked with visiting all the firearms outlets in the local area to check on “suspicious purchases” for counterterrorism purposes, the agent then began discussing what in actual fact were “completely normal transactions,” such as, “paying with cash, purchasing long guns, and other similarly innocuous behavior.”

Now, one of the suspicious behaviors on the flyer the FBI is handing out is buying MREs in bulk. So the FBI is clearly on the lookout for "preppers" and views them as a potential problem. People are suspicious if they:

Make bulk purchases of items to include:
 Weatherproofed ammunition or match containers
 Meals Ready to Eat
 Night Vision Devices; night flashlights; gas masks
 High capacity magazines
 Bi-pods or tri-pods for rifles

I freely admit that a guy buying a bunch of bipods might be a trifle suspicious... or NOT, because he might be like some people we know and have half a dozen AR uppers that all needed bipods and waited for them to go on sale.
Just thought y'all ought to know, my friends. Don't buy all your stuff the same day just because its on sale, or you'll end up on a "nut" list.

The Phantom

This is not alarming either. Fingerprinting Medicare -providers-.

US federal government having a real week here. Now HHS is fingerprinting health care providers as part of some kind of Obamacare thing.

Four years after Obamacare became law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is notifying Medicare providers and suppliers of new fingerprint-based background checks.  Eventually, all individuals who hold a five percent or greater stake in a Medicare supplier or provider that is categorized as "high risk" will be subject to the requirement.  The provision is part of the Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP Program Integrity Provisions (Title E) of the Affordable Care Act, and gives the HHS secretary broad discretion in applying the background check requirements depending on the potential for abuse, fraud, and/or waste.

The new requirements are spelled out in a document posted online on the website of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last Friday.  The new rules will apply to both current and future enrollees who are classified as "high risk," the stated purpose being to weed out "bad actors" in the Medicare program and prevent any more from enrolling.

That's what happens when you have to pass something that runs to 10,000 pages so you'll know what's in it. HHS writes the rules, so providers should be grateful they didn't require a blood sample and a skin biopsy too.

The Phantom

License plate readers are watching you.

Apropos of the recent falderall in Nevada, with the "militia" showing up and etc., I thought this little eye opener I found on Drudge was rather appropriate.

As a part of my series on the use of automatic license plate readers in Virginia, I wanted to find out what kind of information local police might have. By law, the only information I’m privileged to is my own.

Last week I filed a public records request with the Alexandria Police Department. I’ve lived in the lovely city of Alexandria for just two years, and my driving record — aside from the occasional parking ticket — is virtually spotless.

What I found, however, left me riveted.

In all, police captured 16 photos of my car — mostly at night — and recorded my license plate eight times on five dates — from October 2013 to as recently as April 1.

Alexandria PD has 13 plate readers systems mounted in cop cars. Every time this lady passed a cop car on the road, or one drove past her house, the plate reader tagged her car's location. She notes particularly the following incidents regarding these readers:

In 2008 and 2009, the Virginia State Police, which now regularly expunges records but still collects them, captured license plate data of people at political rallies for Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.

Now consider the Nevada situation. Potentially, everybody who showed up to the Bundy Ranch in a car had their license plate photographed and tagged multiple times during the event and previously. It takes no effort at all to pull up a full itinerary of locations for a plate, given the database. Now add cellphone data. Everybody who showed up with a cellphone has left a full record of their comings and goings on cell towers. For that matter Apple and Google potentially have a full record of their locations for months in the past, possibly years.

How much use is this data to police? Laying it out for you, two guys were able to commit four or five murders while on parole and wearing GPS ankle bracelets. They were caught after SEVERAL MONTHS because some bright spark matched cell phone data from the victims to GPS tracker data from a database and found these two mooks. So really, its essentially useless for preventing crime and not amazingly useful for keeping track of criminals. These two retards were convicted sex offenders hanging out at the local prostitution circuit, and zero alarm bells were rung even though they were in major violation of parole.

How much use is this data to somebody who wants a list of people to swoop down on and arrest? Mega. They know where your habitual hangouts are, they know your movement patterns, they know where you park, they know where you live, work, eat, shop, party, they know where and when you go for a dump, potentially. So if the BLM decides they want to play rough, within the next six months or so a whole bunch of people could vanish off the streets and no one will hear about it. For a little while anyway.

Something to consider if you want to support things like the Tea Party, make sure somebody friendly knows where you are all the time. It could matter, some day soon.

The Phantom

US Postal service needs ammunition now?

In a genius move worthy of Einstein, the US Postal Service has let it be known that they are seeking to purchase large lots of ammunition.

Add the U.S. Postal Service to the list of federal agencies seeking to purchase what some Second Amendment activists say are alarmingly large quantities of ammunition.

Earlier this year, the USPS posted a notice on its website, under the heading "Assorted Small Arms Ammunition," that says: "The United States Postal Service intends to solicit proposals for assorted small arms ammunition. If your organization wishes to participate, you must pre-register. This message is only a notification of our intent to solicit proposals."

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said: "We're seeing a highly unusual amount of ammunition being bought by the federal agencies over a fairly short period of time. To be honest, I don't understand why the federal government is buying so much at this time."

Presumably this was written a while ago, even though it was posted at Newsmax today, April 15th 2014. Because now we know why. The government of the USA is very, very afraid of the -people- of the USA. The Powers That Be have decided that the policies they wish to pursue will most likely be violently resisted by the general populace, and they are taking steps to see that they can manage that resistance.

Example, obviously, the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. The BLM and the EPA have been squeezing out ranchers all across the South West states these last 20 years without incident, so now all that's left are the serious ones, the stubborn ones, the die hard sons of bitches who just won't quit.

In the pre-Internet age, all these ammunition purchases and ranch closures would have gone unremarked. 200 cops could roll up to the Bundy place, arrest the lot of them and kill all their cattle, the most that would be seen in the media would be the notice of lawsuit published in the local paper when Bundy tried to recover his losses. Or his estate did, more likely.

Now, 200 cops roll up and a thousand armed yahoos spring from the ground, as if Bundy had sown the dragon's teeth. Obviously the next thing that's going to happen is the cops will black-out phone and internet service to locations they are going to raid. We will have to see how that plays out. Not well, I expect.

Here's another blast from the past from Newsmax, just to illustrate what's going on with the whole firearm supply chain in the USA. EPA closes the last lead smelting plant in America.

The closure of the last lead smelter plant in America due to tightened Environmental Protection Agency rules will have an impact on ammunition supplies and costs, according to Gun Owners of America.

And it will leave nearly 220 people who worked directly or indirectly for the plant seeking new jobs.

In an interview with Newsmax, GOA legislative counsel Mike Hammond said the shuttering of Doe Run Company's Herculaneum lead smelter plant "won't shut off the production of bullets in America because [manufacturers] can get recycled lead from a lot of other plants.

"But combined with the government's large purchases of ammunition, it will make it harder and more expensive to purchase ammunition," Hammond said.

Some Second Amendment supporters see sinister motives on the part of the federal government in tightening the smelting regulations.

Former Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, put a statement on his website about the Doe Run plant closure, calling it a "back-door gun control" move on the part of the Obama administration and the EPA to tighten ammunition supplies.

Of interest here is less the effect on lead supplies in the USA than the effect of EPA regulations on an entire industry. EPA has made it impossible to economically derive lead metal from ore in the United States. I point out that lead smelters operate in Canada quite happily, with no massive ecological disasters resulting from their activities. People requiring certain types of lead are now obliged to buy it from Canada or China, or some other country.

EPA is doing the same thing to coal mines and coal fired electric generating stations. EPA is doing the same thing to farmers in California. EPA is about to begin doing the same thing to oil drillers in the Dakotas. Other federal agencies are doing it to other industries all over the USA.

By contrast, the US Border Patrol has effectively ceased patrolling the southern border and thousands of Mexicans, Guatemalans and people from all over South America are pretty much crossing into the USA at will. The Border Patrol seems to prefer the northern border with Canada, where they intimidate and harass Canadians trying to spend money in American border cities like Buffalo.

In other news, guns and ammunition are flying off the shelves all over the USA. New record for sales every other month it seems. Biggest problem retailers have is having to wait for more stock.

Taken all together, this is somewhat troubling.

The Phantom

BLM in trouble in Utah too.

BLM is just popping up all over the place. And not in a good way.

ENTERPRISE, Utah (Reuters) - A Utah county, angry over the destruction of federal rangeland that ranchers use to graze cattle, has started a bid to round up federally protected wild horses it blames for the problem in the latest dustup over land management in the U.S. West.

Close to 2,000 wild horses are roaming southern Utah's Iron County, well over the 300 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has dubbed as appropriate for the rural area's nine designated herd management zones, County Commissioner David Miller said.

County officials complain the burgeoning herd is destroying vegetation crucial to ranchers who pay to graze their cattle on the land, and who have already been asked to reduce their herds to cope with an anticipated drought.

Wild horse preservation groups say any attempt to remove the horses would be a federal crime.

Be it noted, horses are not native to the Southwest USA. They are European imports. They are supposed to be getting managed, as in culled, by the BLM. That's the BLM's job and reason for existence. Theoretically. So why isn't the job getting done in Iron County Utah? This is where it gets funny.

Wild horses have not been culled due to budget constraints, according to Utah BLM officials, who say their herds grow by roughly 20 percent per year.

Yes, budget constraints. No money, so sad. Meanwhile in Nevada the BLM is burning a million bucks a day to collect a few cattle and play army in the bush. I think a million bucks a day is probably a fair estimate of what it takes to pay for 200+ heavily armed and armored cops, cop vehicles, multiple helicopters, plus contractors and their heavy equipment to manage the cattle that were collected. Oh, plus a fortified, fenced "command post" and a bunch of other crap that we probably will never know about.

Here's a thought. If you deliberately let the wild horse population grow too large, and they start eating everything in sight, plus there's a drought, you can shut down ranching on public land completely.

Just sayin'.

The Phantom

Obama TSA riddled with corruption? Mmmmmaybe!

They say fish rot from the head down.

The director of the Federal Air Marshal Service is retiring after being investigated for his role in an alleged operation to acquire guns for officials' personal use, FoxNews.com has learned. 

Director Robert Bray's home was raided in December in connection with the ongoing probe, according to sources and documents. Law enforcement and congressional sources told FoxNews.com that Bray's recently announced retirement, which is effective in June, is directly related to the investigation. 

Transportation Security Administration officials say no such raid ever happened. 

But Bray allegedly is among several officials who were obtaining weapons through this operation. 

Free guns that "fell off a truck", allegedly given away/sold cheap between high ranking TSA officials, as "gimmes". FOX News is going to have this story all to themselves forever.

The Phantom

BLM/FAA no fly zone in Nevada.

According to InfoWars the FAA has decreed a no-fly zone to keep news choppers out of the area surrounding the Bundy Ranch.

The "temporary flight restrictions," revealed by a contributor to the Free Republic, bans all air traffic under an altitude of 3,000 feet in the vicinity of the ranch except for aircraft operating under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management.

Seems the BLM really doesn't want people seeing what they're doing out there. Such as driving herds of cattle with helicopters. That's an ugly business.

There are also conflicting reports about cell phone coverage. Some people are saying the service was cut off to the ranch, others are saying it was not. Currently it appears the cell towers are up and functioning (as of last night anyway) so I guess we shall see.

I speculate that if some people were getting no service but others were, or that people could call in from outside the ranch but those at the ranch could not call out,  those kind of flaky conditions could be caused by BLM if they had the will to do so. Cell service is 100% under the control of the federal government in the USA (and Canada!) so the cell provider could be doing things to interfere with some phones and not others, or some locations and not others. Furthermore there is lots of equipment that will fit inside a suitcase which can hijack, intercept, jam or otherwise frig with cell service over a limited area and you may be sure the BLM cops have access to such things. If not in their own armory, they can borrow from other services like DHS.

And please, this is speculation. I'm sitting in Southern Ontario, I don't know jack about what they're actually doing. But that's what I'd be doing if I were a power tripping moron with an really big budget.

Tinfoil hatters and doomsday hackers take note, and maybe start working on your own digital shortwave solution to this issue. With enough power a determined individual can bounce a readable signal off the moon, if nothing else. I'm not a radio guy, but I suspect "enough power" would be the output of a couple of diesel electric generators and a decent directional antenna.

Court of last resort, there's always the Apollo laser range finding mirrors, you can bounce a signal off them too. That would be pretty difficult. Very tinfoil hat.

The Phantom

Why "cower and hope" is the policy on US miltary bases.

Demonstration of "Shelter in Place" strategy.

Cross posted from this Small Dead Animals post, my commentary on the second Fort Hood shooting and why this will continue.

In case anyone was wondering why the US military is not allowed open or concealed carry on base, please take a look at what's going on in Nevada today with the BLM.

Infowars has this up on Drudge, you can believe or disbelieve as much of it as you want but still get the general idea.

http://www.infowars.com/breaking-sen-harry-reid-behind-blm-land-grab-of-bundy-ranch/

Are American soldiers going to go raid some guy's farm so that Harry Reid D-Nevada can get even richer? Not voluntarily. They might even get cranky about it. Then you've got a base full of highly trained ass kickers who are all cranky at you.

The thing is, if soldiers on base are armed, they can successfully mutiny. If they are not armed, then a comparatively small number of MPs and officers can keep them under control.

So what it really boils down to is the DemocRat party leadership has some things in mind that they want to do, and they think the US military might not let them do it.

And -that- is why nobody but MPs and senior officers gets to carry on base.

Are we learning yet?

CNN finally discovers BLM has snipers.

Wow, somebody at CNN woke up and smelled the coffee this morning. I guess the crashed airplane didn't have good video anymore. Just lots of empty ocean.

A 20-year dispute between a Nevada rancher and federal rangers over illegal cattle grazing erupted into an Old West-style showdown on the open range this week, even prompting self-proclaimed members of militia groups from across the country to join the rancher in fighting what they say is U.S. "tyranny."

What began as a legal fight between longtime rancher Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has escalated as Bundy kept his cattle on the federal land, and the government has responded by beginning roundups of the livestock.

A confrontation teetered on violence Wednesday when Bundy family members and dozens of supporters angrily confronted a group of rangers holding Tasers and barking dogs on leashes near Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

The usual crap, heavy on the pearl-clutching about MILITIAS!!!! and scare quotes around "tyranny". Taking a breaking situation with a lot of different things going on and dry-cleaning so it fits into the right pigeon hole.

You know, being a Leftist retard must make life much easier. No more wondering what to think about things, no more worrying that things may not be as they seem, no more burning up liver cells because you're SO mad people are lying to you all the time. Just lie back in the big mainstream media hammock and sip on your Michelle Obama-approved diet pop.

Oh well, the Big Networks have finally clued in to the fightin' cowboys down in Nevada. Here's hoping some network trucks get burnt by the BLM. That would be sweet.

The Phantom

BLM snipers update.

Well well. It appears that "militia" are involved now. I put that in quotes because to the Main Stream Media, anybody who shows up to object to a US federal government smackdown must be some kind of extra-chromosome right wing militia nutcase.

What this actually means, as far as the available video shows, is that more people are showing up on random roadsides in Nevada and getting tasered, punched out and bit by BLM attack dogs. All over, let us not forget, a tortoise.

Interesting datum number one, according to Bundy there used to be 52 ranches in the immediate area where the Bundys live. Now there's one (1), Mr. Bundy. Used to be wasn't very long ago either, we're talking the 1990's all this went down. They were all bought out by the state or the local county. If true, that's pretty interesting.
Interesting datum number two, the BLM is not enforcing this cattle seizure on federal land. They're not on federal land at all, and Bundy wasn't running his cattle on federal land. Its STATE land and county land.  State and county are not under the control of the BLM, supposedly.

My opinion so far, based on not a hell of a lot to be honest, is that this Cliven Bundy dude is a crank who won't cooperate by selling out like everybody else. So they're forcing him out. With 200 cops, at least one helicopter and I'm going to assume some of those nice MRAP armored vehicles that are so popular with cops these days. (No evidence of that yet, I'm just guessing they'd bring one along because they look all badass.)

Because he just won't do what he's told.

The Phantom

Dutch traditions no longer allowed in... Holland.

Another racism tempest in a teapot, brought to you by the usual useful idiots.

Last year a simmering debate over the appearance and tradition of St Nicholas's helpers, played by white actors in blackface make-up, spilled over into a series of angry demonstrations and exchanges on social media.

Ineke Strouken, of the Dutch Centre for Indigenous Culture and Heritage (VIE), told De Volkskrant that groups on both sides of the argument had been in discussion since October.

They include Quinsy Gario, an Amsterdam-based artist who was arrested two years at the Sinterklaas welcome parade for wearing a T-shirt with the slogan: "Zwarte Piet is Racisme".

My dear Lefties. Please look up the fable of the little boy who cried "Wolf!" Learn from it, and govern yourselves accordingly.

Yep, that's going to hurt. Too bad there's nobody to help you.

There really are wolves in the world, you should go find one before you start yelling.

The Phantom

Kathy Shaidle, burning the Lefties a new one.

I hear this one all the time, and I'm tired of it:

Just imagine if George Bush had done that.

Just imagine if a Republican said that.

Just imagine if a Christian went there.

The Furious One pronounces the Last Word on this tired and busted rhetorical turn.

The “Just Imagine” Game presumes that leftists are logical and principled.
They are not.
They are too often neurotic, brainwashed, conformist mediocrities — who also too often happen to be in positions of significant authority and influence.

Just imagine if George Bush's BLM set the dogs on a guy who was standing on the side of the road doing nothing. Over a tortoise. Just imagine if the George Bush IRS would have targeted Lefty organizations.

Its not like this anymore.

Well, you can't imagine it. Because George Bush didn't let the BLM do that kinda shit when he was President. BLM didn't even -have- attack dogs, snipers and SWAT teams when George Bush was president. If the IRS had done anything like what Obama has had them doing, they'd have gone to jail.  Its not that the Lefties are a different kind of animal than the Republicans.

More like this...

vs. this.

Its more like Skynet vs. a seahorse. A really fucking stupid seahorse that's not even paying attention.

Why drones are stupid.

Because they crash on stuff.

An unmanned Pennsylvania Army National Guard drone crashed near Lickdale Elementary School Thursday afternoon.
The aerial vehicle, controlled by a remote operator, was part of a training exercise at Fort Indiantown Gap, said Maj. Ed Shenk, public affairs officer for the Pennsylvania National Guard.
The craft experienced "a hard landing" and was run over by a civilian vehicle on Fisher Avenue in front of the school and the Comfort Inn, according to the Pennsylvania National Guard. No one was injured. The craft was destroyed.
National Guardsmen picked up pieces of the craft from the embankment and front lawn of the school at 40 Fisher Ave.
The accident happened about 3:15 p.m., he said.
The vehicle, known as the RQ-7 Shadow, weighs 375 pounds, is approximately 11 feet long and has a wing span of 14 feet, Shenk said.

RQ-7 Shadow with random army dude.

That's bigger than a deer, and its not made of meat. So you can imagine the mess its going to make if it bullseyes a car at highway speed. Or if it crashed in front of the school at 3:15pm on a school day. That could have been international news right there.

Or even if it just augered in to your roof some morning. KaBANG, you've got $20,000 worth of repairs, and that assumes the friggin' thing didn't go on fire. Its an -airplane-, it has gasoline on board.

Drones are for war zones, not civilian use. If the cops get these things, quite apart from the privacy and police state issues, you're going to be seeing 'em crashing all over the place every week.

Why? Because cops are unionized public employees and therefore inherently lazy, aircraft maintenance is shockingly expensive, and even assuming a superhuman dedication to duty, pilots are not infallible.

They're doughnut-wranglers sitting in an armchair looking at a TV screen playing Flight Simulator. How's that going to work out?

The Phantom

Wait. BLM has -snipers-?

Drop the camera, prole!

 Well, it appears the US Bureau of Land Management not only has snipers, they are busy using them on some farmer guy. Because they can, not because he's a menace to society.

Federal snipers with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) trained guns on members of a family yesterday after they dared to stop and take video footage of cattle outside the bounds of a designated “First Amendment Area,” before arresting one of the men for non-compliance.

Yeah, "designated “First Amendment Area,” ". That's the thing that caught my eye too. Bureau of Land Management seems to think they are empowered to outline a designated “First Amendment Area,” in the desert with yellow tape, and then you're not allowed to do anything Free Speechy outside the tape. Like take pictures of the empty landscape on the side of the road. And if you do, they get to kick your ass. Over a tortoise.

“He was doing nothing but standing there and filming the landscape,” Bundy said of his brother Dave. “We were on the state highway, not even off of the right-of-way. Even if they want to call [the area that we were filming] federal land; which it’s not; we weren’t even on it. We were on the road.”

None of the family members were armed, but as soon as Dave Bundy began filming the cattle in the distance, 11 BLM vehicles each with two agents arrived and surrounded him.

“They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area,” said Ryan Bundy.

The family were told to leave the area via loudspeaker because they had violated the crudely established “First Amendment Area”.

“They said that we had no first amendment rights except for up by the bridge where they had established an area for that,” Bundy said.

When Dave Bundy didn’t immediately heed the warning and return to his vehicle, a dog was set on him and he was subsequently arrested.

When they set the attack dog on you, that's called an Ass Kicking. Capital A, capital K.

Dog bites. This isn't the ugliest picture I found.

Dave Bundy might be the biggest, mouthiest prick in the world, but if he's standing by the side of a public highway with a camera in his hands and he's surrounded by 22 armed coppers, setting the dog on him is what we call "roughing" in hockey.

Notice please the complete lack of any news coverage on this deal. Armed BLM agents, snipers, taped-off free-speech areas, no-go zones, this shit was MADE for TV right? But its not on TV. Its under the Cone of Silence.

Please note again, this is about... a tortoise.

Please compare to the dog bite picture for full effect.

Plan accordingly.

Those of you dozy bastards reading this and pronouncing me crazy, or paranoid, or just saying "huh, what?", just remember when they finally, finally come for you: we warned you, and you fucking slept through it.

The Phantom

Update: Another story on Drudge. The farmers estimate 200 armed cops surrounding the farm while "contractors" collect their cattle and take them away to impound.

“They’re carrying the same things a soldier would,” he said. “Automatic weapons, sniper rifles, top communication, top surveillance equipment, lots of vehicles. It’s heavy soldier type equipment.”
His wife, Carol Bundy, said that roughly 200 armed agents from the BLM and FBI are stationed around their land, located about 75 miles outside of Las Vegas. Helicopters circle the premises, and the airspace and nearby roads remain blocked.
“We’re surrounded,” Carol Bundy said. “We’re estimating that there are over 200 armed BLM, FBI. We’ve got surveillance cameras at our house, they’re probably listening to me talk to you right now.”

Update II, April 10th 8:26AM: Today's Thursday. Seems David Bundy was released on Monday afternoon, April 7th. He was "arrested", euphemism for "beaten and tossed into a cruiser" on Saturday. No word on injuries, so he may have gotten off without permanent scars. They held him for the maximum 48 hours though, didn't they?

Also, comments from other cattlemen in Utah, the Bundys are not considered Grade A specimens of The Rancher. However even those who don't like the Bundys agree that this SWATing bullshit is the wrong way to go. I think that's political speak for "AAAAAAAGH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!!"

Religion killed by technology, religion spread by technology.

Exhibit A:

New research has shown a correlation between the rise of the Internet and the decline of Americans claiming religious affiliation.

Other factors, such as an increase in higher education, are also implicated, but according to Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, the increase in Internet usage has a significant correlation.
The MIT Technology Review reports that in 1990, eight per cent of Americans had no religious affiliation. In 2010, that figure stands at 18 per cent, or 25 million people.

Exhibit B:

Why is mindfulness so popular?
It appeals to people seeking an antidote to life in work-obsessed, tech-saturated, frantically busy Western culture. There is growing scientific evidence that mindfulness meditation has genuine health benefits — and can even alter the structure of the brain, so the technique is drawing some unlikely devotees. Pentagon leaders are experimenting with mindfulness to make soldiers more resilient, while General Mills has installed a meditation room in every building of its Minneapolis campus. Even tech-obsessed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are using it as a way to unplug from their hyperconnected lives. "Meditation always had bad branding for this culture," says Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. "But to me, it's a way to think more clearly and to not feel so swept up."

Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Phantom