Why I think government is dangerously stupid.

When I post things, a common theme is the dangerous stupidity of government and the pureblind, willful, aggressive ignorance of those who support more government as a solution any and all problems.

Here's why, in a nutshell.

About 10 officers attended the Pine Ridge Tobacco smoke shack on the east side of Highway 6, south of Caledonia. Owner Steve "Boots" Powless issued a text alert upon their arrival. Within 15 minutes, the officers were surrounded by nearly 20 of Powless's supporters.

"They decided it was not in the public interest to pursue the matter at this time," Const. Paula Wright of the Haldimand OPP said yesterday. "Anyone found to have been acting unlawfully will be held accountable."

Ok so far? 10 cops detailed off to remove an illegal smoke shack parked illegally on a guy's front lawn got confronted by 20 pukes looking for a fight, and they wussed out, or more likely were ordered to wuss out. Said pukes just happened to be Indians. Just for comparison, any time that Gary McHale guy so much as breaks wind 200 cops show up in riot gear. On we go.

Pine Ridge Tobacco is unique because it is the first to arise on private property on the east side of Highway 6 without the consent of the landowner, retired farmer Ernie Palmer.

About a month ago, Powless told Palmer he was setting up shop.

Yeah, about a month ago Bootsy Powless dropped this half-assed trailer thing at the end of ol' Ernie's driveway. Like, on the front lawn ok?
Here's a picture of it:

Nice, eh?

Ernie told him to move along and Bootsy pretty much said "make me, white man."
Ernie's an old guy, short of shooting friend Bootsy in the ass with a load of rock salt there's not too much he can do, right? He's told Bootsy to piss off, he's called the cops, and that's the extent of what his power is. Which by itself is already friggin' pitiful, but it gets better.

On Friday [July 3rd], Haldimand County's bylaw department served Palmer with a summons to appear in provincial offences court July 31. He has been charged with allowing an illegal commercial business in an agricultural zone.

Isn't that great? ERNIE gets charged. Not Steven "Bootsy Baby" Powless, not the f-ing OPP sergeant or captain or whatever imbecile it was that told his men to back down to a few stupid thugs, not even one of the thugs. Ernie Palmer, the victim here, gets charged. And he will no doubt duly show up at the appointed time and be scolded by whatever crack-smoking moron thought it was a good idea to charge him.

Now that is as perfect an example of stupidity in governance as I have ever seen in all my life. We've got a bunch of thugs taking advantage of damn fool federal laws, being encouraged by bald cowardice from provincial politicians, and finally local county officials taking their temper out on the innocent land owner.

Were it mine to decide, I'd clap the lot of them in jail for abuse of power and/or dereliction of duty and give Ernie some money for his trouble. Maybe the combined salary of all the stupid sonsabitches involved in this farce for however long it takes them to get Bootsy boy off Ernie's front lawn. That'd be fair, eh?

The Phantom

When good technology goes bad: hacking opportunity!!!

Scrap the fuel tax for a by-the-mile road usage tax?  Sounds great, right?  Big road users pay more?  Fair, right?

What once was science fiction is being field-tested by the University of Iowa to iron out the wrinkles should a by-the-mile road tax ever be enacted.

Besides the technological advances making such a tax possible, the idea is getting a hard push from a growing number of transportation experts and officials. That is because the traditional by-the-gallon fuel tax, struggling to keep up with road building and maintenance demands, could fall even farther behind as vehicles' gas mileage rises and more alternative-fuel vehicles come on line. [ed. Can you say unintended greenie consequence?  Sure you can! ]

The idea of shifting to a by-the-mile tax has been discussed for years, but it now appears to be getting more serious attention. A federal commission, after a two-year study, concluded earlier this year that the road tax was the "best path forward" to keep revenues flowing to highway and transportation projects, and could be an important new tool to help manage traffic and relieve congestion.

Yeah.  One wrinkle, to do it they have to know everywhere you went.  Everywhere.  It will be recorded.  All of it.  Every day.
What's that?  You have nothing to hide, you say?  What about that side trip to the donut shop every morning?  Donuts are bad for you' y'know. Big Brother's going to be paying your medical coverage, he's going to ding you for everything you do that's bad.

The answer?  HACK IT!  Obviously!  Probably the thing won't even be in full deployment before the first bulletproof hacks show up on the web.  By the end of the first year there won't be one of these black boxes that doesn't have a hair pin sticking out of it to jimmy the tax man. Your tax dollars being flushed down the dumper of life, my friends.

Welcome to the 21st Century Big Brother!  People can fight back now, you jerk.

The Hacky Phantom

I've got a little list, I've got a little list...

...and they'll none of them be missed, they'll none of them be missed!

Update! Welcome, Blazing Cat Fur readers. Try not to set the Chesterfield on fire, eh?

I got yer global warming right here.

My former stomping grounds in Arizona have had the first June under 100F since 1913.

Understandably, no one is complaining.  ~:D

What does racism look like?

Maybe, just MAYBE mind you, racism looks like this.

A 26-year-old convenience store clerk was shot and killed in broad daylight in Gary, Ind., and police say witnesses stood by and did nothing.

...

Police say there were several customers walking around the store after the crime. But only one called 911 for help.

When asked what he finds most disturbing about the surveillance footage, Titus [the police spokesman dude] said, "The fact that people went in and out of the store and didn't call police. There is a man laying there. Nobody thinks to dial 911 or check to see if he's OK or anything."

Why is this racism?  Well, if I tell you the kid who got killed was one Gurjeet Singh, and the customers (and the killers) were other-than-Sikhs, it would seem to indicate that the customers didn't actually care a damn if a Sikh kid got splattered.  Because if they'd cared, they would have called 911 while running away, or standing around, or shopping.  Or shop-lifting, as a careful viewing of the video may reveal somebody leaving without paying the dead clerk guy.

Please note that I, the Phantom, make no mention of the race of the customers.  Because that would be RACIST.  Y'all will have to watch the video and make your own determinations.  But let's just say if they were all white guys in Alabama it'd be wall to wall on CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS etc. but it isn't.  One day on Drudge Report is all this got.

This is my favorite part right here though.

At a news conference on Wednesday, community organizers demanded Gary police offer a reward for information about the case. They said the people of Gary needed financial incentive to come forward.

Because nobody is going to stick their neck out for free, right? Don't be silly!

Gary Indiana is the part of suburban Chicago down at the very bottom of the lake there, just so you know.  What famous guy who's flying high right now used to be a "community organizer" in Chicago, by the way?  No connection, just an interesting... coincidence.

The Phantom

Insulin shot for those OD-ing on the sweetness of The One.

Evidently there is a limit to the tolerance for balderdash in some of the MSM DemocRat faithful.  In San Francisco no less!

You can't blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology. But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?

Doesn't this all remind you of something?

I thought that the Maxfield Parrish, heroic days of the Kennedy Administration PR, where the press and the president were pretty much all in on the same screenplay and the same jokes, couldn't happen in our modern era, what with paparazzi and tabloids and talk shows, citizen sound-bite scavengers and voracious 24/7 news cycles. But now that the stumbling Bushes and smirking Clintons are out of the White House, time has compressed back on itself like the machine in the Denzel Washington movie, "Deja Vu." It's the early 1960s and Camelot all over again.

Indeed!

The Phantom

Channeling my inner geek.

 From the Hack-a-day blog, a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A acoustic coupler modem, complete with original wooden box.  On the web.  Surfing up Wikipedia.

Here's the movie.

Its not even a digital modem, its strictly analog. For some reason, this is the coolest thing I've seen in ages. Maybe I should get out more, eh?  ~:D

The Phantom

This is so ironic its made of iron.

Not a word of a lie ladies and gentlemen, this is from Pravda today:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

Read the whole thing, its a BEAUTY particularly considering the source. I think the fact that you can read truer criticism of the US government in Pravda than you can in the NY Times (or, let it be said, than any Canadian paper either) is a sure sign the end times are upon us.  Look for a two headed calf in your driveway tomorrow, possibly a nice rain of toads Monday or Tuesday.

The Phantom

What does a tyranny look like from the inside?

It looks like this:

Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Republicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.

The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?

It also looks like this:

SAN DIEGO -- A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold bible studies in their home, 10News reported.
Attorney Dean Broyles of The Western Center For Law & Policy was shocked with what happened to the pastor and his wife.Broyles said, "The county asked, 'Do you have a regular meeting in your home?' She said, 'Yes.' 'Do you say amen?' 'Yes.' 'Do you pray?' 'Yes.' 'Do you say praise the Lord?' 'Yes.'"The county employee notified the couple that the small bible study, with an average of 15 people attending, was in violation of county regulations, according to Broyles.Broyles said a few days later the couple received a written warning that listed "unlawful use of land" and told them to "stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit" -- a process that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Friends of the tyrant get special deals, not-friends get taxed really hard, and active opponents are singled out for extra attention by the little faceless jerks who hide within the bureaucracy. If you want to do well, you loudly support the tyrant and give him gifts.

You also start seeing things like this:  Nancy Pelosi speaking in China said this in answer to a question about the USA's efforts at taming carbon emissions.

"We have so much room for improvement," she said. "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."

Now, a generous reader of that out-of-context remark would naturally assume Speaker Pelosi meant to describe the actions of a conscientious citizen, things such a person would voluntarily do to curb global warming.  But in view of Speaker Pelosi's perfidious lies regarding water boarding briefings at the CIA, Mr. Obama's nomination of a member of La Raza for a seat on the Supreme Court, and recalling the two examples given above, I'm not feeling particularly generous.

I think she's planning an actual inventory of private holdings, for the purpose of taxing them based on some arcane carbon cap-and-trade calculation.  A wealth tax if you will, where the government takes a percentage of everything you've got, instead of "just" a percentage of everything you earn in a year.

Well my friends, it may come to pass that Americans will be fleeing to Canada for the lower taxes and the personal freedom.  That will be irony indeed.


The Phantom

Sometimes I hate being right... but not THIS time! BWAHAHA!!!

I've been saying the whole capital "E"  Environmentalism thing is just as over as gun control in the vast majority of people's minds.    The last election cycle will be the last one ever where global warming and enviro-freakism will be a plus issue.  The Dems are going to cut it loose just like the Brady Campaign after Algore lost, and the Republicans are going to boldly run against it.  It is in fact a dead horse.  Only the moonbats will keep beating it.

Here's your proof:  a US mainstream media TV network is running a show this fall that mocks the greenies.  Yes, they are.  ABC, Wednesday night at 9.

Director Mike Judge's new animated television series "The Goode Family" is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words "What would Al Gore do?" Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet's dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid.

So this means two things.  First, ABC is so desperate for ratings they will brave the wrath of the enviroNazis and the Hollyweird elite just for a chance at a hit show.  Second, they know its SO over for the greens that this thing can't miss.

I love being right.  ~:D

The Invincible Phantom

What was bad is now good. The One has spoken.

Remember all the rage and bile spewed by the Lyin' Left about military tribunals?  Remember how they were racist and bad and wrong and prisoners had no rights and everything?  Y'all remember that?

And do you remember how Conservatives of all stripes said the Lefties were cracked, and tribunals were the accepted US method for prisoners of war, and had been for at least 100 years?

Guess what?

President Obama has been accused of a major policy U-turn after he decided to restore the controversial military commissions set up by George Bush to prosecute terror suspects.

Amnesty International is not amused to find  itself  under the bus.

 "President Obama is reinstating the same deeply-flawed military commissions that in June 2008 he called an 'enormous failure.' In one swift move, Obama both backtracks on a major campaign promise to change the way the United States fights terrorism and undermines the nation's core respect for the rule of law by sacrificing due process for political expediency.

"Whatever revisions the Obama administration has made to the commissions do not change the fact that the commissions do not provide an adequate standard of justice for the detainees nor the victims of terrorism -- they merely mock the U.S. Constitution, international laws and undermine fundamental human rights standards.

"What happened to President Obama's confidence in the U.S. justice system's ability to try detainees? He himself said that 'we need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism.'

"U.S. federal courts are a perfectly sound system to try any and all detainees. They have brought other terror suspects to justice, and there is no reason why these courts cannot continue to do the same."

White House spokesmen say "Is not a U-turn!  He had his fingers crossed!"  You think I'm kidding?

 The White House insisted that Mr Obama had not gone back on his word. Aides maintained the president 'never promised to abolish' military tribunals. He 'has always envisioned a role for commissions, properly constituted,' added an official.

See, Obama can do whatever he wants, because he's The One.  Great, eh?

Nancy Pelosi is doing a good imitation of a patio torch too.

 Burn baby burn!

For the first time, Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. But she insisted, contrary to CIA accounts, that she was not told about waterboarding during a September 2002 briefing by agency officials. Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying, she replied, "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States."

 
And burn!

Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terror and sharply rebutted claims she was complicit in its use.

"To the contrary ... we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used," she told reporters, referring to a formal CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

Pelosi said she subsequently learned that other lawmakers were told several months later by the CIA about the use of waterboarding.

"I wasn't briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it," she said.

annnnd BURN!

The speaker's weekly press conference drew a standing-room-only crowd of reporters tracking the steady drip, drip, drip of revelations that have come out over the past several weeks. Dressed in a key-lime green pantsuit and smiling broadly, Mr. Pelosi charged that the CIA lied to Congress and that House Republicans are using her as "a diversionary tactic" to deflect criticism from Mr. Bush.

Aside from not being briefed on what was in that briefing, she said she was very busy at the time -- "I was fighting the war in Iraq at that point, too, you know" -- and battling a Bush administration that was "misleading the American people about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Where's Barry with his fire extinguisher?  Missing in action!

FOX News' Major Garrett was the first and only reporter to ask Press Secretary Robert Gibbs what the White House's reaction is to Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the C.I.A. lied to her. Gibbs said President Obama is "keeping the American people safe by looking forward." Garrett reminded Gibbs this is a serious matter, leading Gibbs to respond that he will not "R.S.V.P" to get involved.

Times like this, it is good to be a Conservative.  All you have to do is lean back and watch your opponents wing over, crash and burst into flames.  Gonna roast me some marshmallows.

The Science Keeps Settling.

Yes friends, as Algore and David (Superfly) Suzuki keep telling us, the science of global warming is settled.  Its a done deal.  They know everything there is to know, so we all need to shut up and get on with the capping and the trading on CO2 so they can get filthy, stinking rich off it.

Today's latest "settling" of the science creates yet another sink hole in the Great Global Warming Superhighway.  This one's big enough to swallow a Peterbilt.  Seems the Atlantic Conveyor deep ocean current doesn't really "convey" the way all the computer models assume.

"This new path is not constrained by the continental shelf. It's more diffuse," said Bower. "It's a swath in the wide-open, turbulent interior of the North Atlantic and much more difficult to access and study."

And since this cold southward-flowing water is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change, this finding may impact the work of global warming forecasters.

"This finding means it is going to be more difficult to measure climate signals in the deep ocean," Lozier said. "We thought we could just measure them in the Deep Western Boundary Current, but we really can't."

Computer climate models: garbage in, garbage out.

Dang.  I was looking forward to a palm tree on my front lawn.  Guess I'll have to go to Arizona for my palm tree fix.

This is what I've been telling you.

Think of this as the tip of the iceberg.

"Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out."

This is how much they care about "the little guy". Don't forget, kids.

Today's American fascism update..

CNBC gets called on the carpet by GE boss for bashing Obama.

THE top suits and some of the on-air talent at CNBC were recently ordered to a top-secret meeting with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to discuss whether they've turned into the President Obama-bashing network, Page Six has learned.

"It was an intensive, three-hour dinner at 30 Rock which Zucker himself was behind," a source familiar with the powwow told us. "There was a long discussion about whether CNBC has become too conservative and is beating up on Obama too much. There's great concern that CNBC is now the anti-Obama network. The whole meeting was really kind of creepy."

The NSA is breaking the law, reading your email "too much".

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews. Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.

Yeah. They are already allowed to do pretty much whatever they want, so I'd interpret this to mean they collected all the email in the country since January. Send those love notes by snail mail kids. Big Brother still needs a warrant for that.

Republicans finally say WTF?!!! to Janet. Wow, those guys are right on the ball there, eh?

Republicans on Wednesday said a Homeland Security Department intelligence assessment unfairly characterizes military veterans as right-wing extremists.

House Republican leader John Boehner described the report as offensive and called on the agency to apologize to veterans.

I like this part the best:

The commander of the veterans group the American Legion, David Rehbein, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano expressing concern with the assessment, which made its way into the mainstream press after conservative bloggers got wind of the analysis.

"Conservative bloggers" broke this. That'd be "rightwing" extremist bloggers, according to the memo. If Republicans wanted my vote they'd have been the ones who broke this story, not drindling along three days later saying "Hey, me too!" Day late and a dollar short, boys.

And finally this which I include for the headline from the Wall Street Journal, aka "Greed's Paper Of Record".

Fear and Greed Have Sales of Guns and Ammo Shooting Up

Buyers Foresee Anti-Weapon Legislation; Collectors Hope to Get Bang for Their Bucks

When you read the article you discover some people are investing in guns because the prices are going up. Its a no brainer. Prices will be going up at least until November 2012, and that's if they don't pass a gun ban. If they do pass one prices will -rocket- upward, jet propelled by yet another genius move by The One to oppress the dangerous Conservatives.

This concludes today's Phantom Fascist Update.

self-assembling revolution.

You know these Tea Party protests that keep springing up in the USA? Turns out no one particular organization is doing those. They're basically flash crowds.

Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies -- dubbed "tea parties" -- to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org. So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize.

Kind of puts a whole new light on the Homeland Security memo that I posted yesterday, eh? The Obama White House isn't going to take any crap from these tax protesters. They've got the power. They are going to use it to do all the wonderful warm hearted things they've always wanted to do, like nationalize the banks and car companies and God help any right wing whacko extremist who gets in their way.

One problem, there's no there there. This is the marching of a 100 million ants, and some of the ants are planning bigger and better things than just marching about.

Cincinnati organizer Mike Wilson, a novice organizer who drew 5,000 people to a rally on March 15, is now planning to create a political action committee and a permanent political organization to press for lower taxes and reduced spending. Tucson tea party organizer Robert Mayer told me that his organization will focus on city council elections in the fall as its next priority. And there's lots of Internet chatter about ways of taking things further after today's protests.

This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.

People are starting to get it that the Republicans are -not- going to reduce the size of government. George Bush won a lot of victories overseas, but back home he increased the size and scope of the federal government more than any other president before him, including Bill Clinton. They are pissed off about it, to the point where they are willing to shut off the TV and go do something about it. If they start targeting city councils and state legislatures, by 2012 they will have a pretty hefty political machine to run over Bary's ass with. He's going to have tire tracks up one side and down the other, because the policies he's enacting now will have started to really cause damage by 2012.

Naturally this makes the socialist/fascist DemocRats very nervous. To date THEY are the ones who have been doing the flash crowd protest crap. They're the ones organizing the G7 summit protests and the Quebec City riots and the Seattle anti-globalization punch-up. Looking down the business end of that is much less comfy than aiming it themselves.

Mark my words, friends. The One is going to use Homeland Security to try and squash this. He's a fascist, that's what they do. No protest of the great leader's genius can be tolerated.

On the bright side, all that will do is increase the pace this tax revolution moves at. You can't put out a brush fire by pouring gas on it.

The Self Assembling Phantom

Media Update! In an amazing fit of total predictability, mainstream media slags the teaparties.
CNN Anderson Cooper "teabagging". Ew.
CNN Susan Roesgen: "anti-government, anti-CNN"
NBC report, "1 million teabags but no place to dump". Stupid rightwing radicals!

That's about it on the news nets. The White House spokesman whatsisname got some soundbites on Limbaugh today, predictably snarky. These guys are not taking this well.

"...an extraordinary arsenal of weapons"

Here's what that looks like.:





One (1) clapped out Browning light machine gun that these imbeciles are calling an anti-aircraft gun.
One (1) .50 cal machine gun in unknown condition, from what I can see it looks more like a Barrett .50 but I could be wrong.
Five (5) assorted rifles, two of which are obviously bolt action hunting rifles.
One (1) grenade, condition unknown.
Parts of a grenade launcher, which parts we aren't told.
Assorted ammunition, much of which appears to be .22cal, but there's also some .308 and .50cal in there.
About a hundred empty AK47 magazines.

This is what the Daily Mail UK calls a:

"vast weapons cache"

Breitbart went with "arsenal".

Could I make that up? I most certainly could not. I know guys in Phoenix who have a hell of a lot more than that in their basement. Hell, I know guys who take more than that to the range on the weekend.

If that's the super scary well armed Mexican drug cartel bad guys we've been told so much about, the Mexican police are a lot more candy ass than we thought.

The Phantom

Conservatism is the new threat to life as we know it.

It appears that the continuing run on guns and ammunition has not escaped official attention down in the United Snakes. Soon it will be illegal to be a Conservative. No shit.

(Oh, World Net Daily is a nut-blog you say? Agreed. How about this?)

Oh, what the hell, here's the actual paper itself. I like this part here:

Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment
tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential
administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and
citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms
ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns
and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the
present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in
expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential
sympathizers.

There you go. If you want a tax cut, think a functional border fence might be a good thing or just want to go shooting, you're a Rightwing Extremist and the Department of Homeland Security has its eye on you.
Man, its starting to look like a pretty good thing I left the USA and moved home to Canuckistan before the end of Chimpy McBushitler's reign of terror. This new Hope'nChange utopia could get me jail time, I think.

Tell your friends who have kids in university: if you wanna be an anti-establishment radical these days, if you want to stick it to The Man, if you wanna speak truth to power, you have to jettison the Che Guevara T-shirt and get one with Rush Limbaugh on it. Rush with a cigar, preferably.

I always thought that "Homeland Security" sounded kinda Third Reich-ish. Seems I had no idea.

The Dangerous Rightwing Radical Phantom
(Dangerous Rightwing radical dangerous person. Danger, Will Robinson!)

P.S. Now might be a good time to get one of those Vast Right Wing Conspiracy t-shirts or coffee mugs... before they're banned.

Update! Al Reuters: Its TRUE!!! Rightwing radicals are coming for yore Chilllldrun!

Up-Update! Janet speaks!

"We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not — nor will we ever — monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources," Ms. Napolitano said.

Translating that from bafflegab, it means "Hell yes we're watching you, y'bunch of Timmy McVeigh nutcase bastards!!! Better not catch you with a teabag in yer pocket, assholes!"

Another victory for cultural sensitivity, prohibition and central planning!

Yes friends, we have yet another great victory for the liberal triumvirate of centralization, taxation and cultural diversity.

The federal government has ordered a crackdown on licensing of tobacco manufacturers in the wake of reports that permits are going to people from organized crime and the contraband cigarette trade.

Say it ain't so, Joe!  And how big is this issue?

Yesterday, a study produced by one of Quebec's top business schools, HEC Montréal, and PricewaterhouseCoopers and Desjardins for the convenience store association said almost 50 per cent of the cigarettes smoked in Ontario and 40 per cent of those in Quebec today are technically illegal.

Now, the phrase "technically illegal" should be read as "un-taxed".  Because that's the issue here, TAX.  70% of the cost of a pack of legal smokes is TAX my friends, and by God they want that money.  This is a crisis!

But really, who is to blame here for this taxation shortfall?  Parliament?  The civil service?  Police? The feds or the provinces?
Oh no no no my friends, it is not them.

Blackburn, who revealed he had worked in a dépanneur [variety store] in his university years and understands the issues, announced his department is also launching an advertising campaign reminding Canadians that their actions have consequences.

"I want smokers to be fully aware of the domino effect they start when they buy contraband cigarettes," he said. "Smokers need to know they are encouraging organized crime by buying smuggled tobacco."

Yes my friends it is you.  You stupid smoke-addicted, popcorn eating, beer swilling peons are to blame here.  Because you stupidly buy the super cheap illegal carton instead of the $60 legal, tax paid carton, you have delivered us all into the hands of organized crime and smugglers.  (Yeah that's right non-smoker peons.  $60 for a carton of weeds.  Holy crap!)

The refusal by the OPP to shut down illegal Indian smoke shack operations all over the province has nothing to do with it.  Nor does the fact that Mr. Blackburn's licensing department has been issuing licenses to manufacture to known criminals despite probably daily pissed off phone calls from the OPP, SQ and RCMP.  Nor indeed does the aforementioned fact that 70 cents of every dollar spent on smokes is TAX.  Its your fault.  You dumb bastards!

So smarten the hell up out there, eh?  How do you expect this to run smoothly if you won't do what you're told?

The Phantom

See? Toldja toldja tooooooldja!!!!

Bary isn't letting the banks pay back TARP.  Yep. Its true.

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

Can I say he's a fascist yet?  That wouldn't be RACIST of me, would it?

The Phantom

The new official animal of Britain.

Well, according to to this, Britain will have to take the lion off the coat of arms and replace it with a PUSSY.

A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them. The woman screamed: "Please save my kids" from a bedroom window and neighbours tried to help but were beaten back by flames and were told by police not to attempt a rescue.

By the time firefighters got into the house in Doncaster, Michelle Colly, 25, her husband, Mark, 29, and son, Louis, 3, were dead. Their daughter, Sophie, 5, was taken to hospital and believed to be critically ill.

Davey Davis, 38, a friend of the family, said: "It was the most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed. Michelle was at the bedroom window yelling, 'Please save my kids' and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near. We were willing to risk our lives to save those kiddies but the police wouldn't let us.

Kathy Shaidle says this proves Britain is now ruled by Satan. Evil is busy triumphing because good men are doing nothing. I can't disagree.

Mark Steyn reminds Canadians we have nothing to be smug about, given our recent history with this kind of thing. AKA Heavilly armed RCMP officers standing around with their thumbs up their asses as a lunatic cut pieces off an innocent man's corpse and ate them. For four and a half hours. After a whole bus full of people ran away.

Still, this action by British police lifts "beyond the pale" to a whole new level of obscene. Far from attempting a rescue themselves, the police actively and forcibly prevented others from attempting a rescue. As Steyn says here:

the emergency responders who are supposed to save you (or at least make an attempt) instead wind up killing you — because a rote prostration before rule enforcement trumps their basic humanity. In recent years, the British police have evolved from being merely useless (at least when it comes to traditional activities such as solving crime) into what John O'Sullivan calls "the paramilitary wing of The Guardian" — the blundering enforcers of the nanny state.

Speaking strictly for myself, I would cheerfully go to jail for assault rather than stand about waiting for The Authorities to finally show up. It would be easier to take than my conscience torturing me for the rest of my life. I've already made up my mind how its going to be at crunch time. I'm gonna GO, same as I always do, and god help the poor bastard public servant who's in the way. Life is too short to spend it regretting cowardice. Its my life, I'll risk it in whatever cause I see fit, and that's how its going to be.

Your mileage may vary, but if it does I think you've got some soul searching to do.

Flame on, trolls.

Naming contest!

This Obama takeover of GM is comic gold, I have to say. Like, what's going to be the name of the first new car to come out of the new, improved Gubmint Motors?

I've seen "The Obama" at SDA.
How about :

The Unicorn.
The Hope'nChange.
The Barymobile.
Der Volksauto. (Volkswagen is taken, eh?)
The Wudth'fugissat?
The Bailoutmobile.
The Chapaquiddick, in honor of Big Ted (its water tight!)

Its a gold mine! We'll see what Leno makes of this, eh?

Car Nirvana

I'm no economist, but all the machinations lately regarding the Big Three seem pretty odd.

I look at it this way. All the car makers are selling vehicles that cost a year's pre-tax pay. At least. That's been the constant since forever. They design them that way.

Problem, real people can't save up a year's pre-tax pay in the life of a car anymore.

So, nobody can buy a car without credit. Pretty much the entice cost of the car is on credit. You start looking at total cost of ownership, a hefty chunk of your income is tied up in your wheels, leading to another reason for that difficulty with the saving, leading to more reliance on credit.

Now, under cover of the Cult of Safety and the Cult of the Environment, the Big Three managed to choke off all competition in North America. The Japanese manufacturers managed to bull their way in to the North American market because they got big enough back home, and thus they became part of the gang.

This was done in collusion with the US and Canadian governments, who basically wrote regulations nobody but the Big Three could meet. This accelerated in the 1980's to the fever pitch we see today, when cars have to be engineered to nearly aircraft-level tolerances.

Which is how they kept the price point so high. Its artificial.

I built a quite nice little race car for myself. Took me 6 months, learn by doing. Capable machine, hardy, good roll cage, good suspension etc. All off the shelf dune buggy stuff. I currently have about $6,000 in it, give or take a couple hundred bucks. If I went with brand-new everything, I could have still done it for under $20k.

That's one guy buying retail, hand assembled in the garage. A proper facility could crank them out for sale at under $10k all day long.

But nobody can, because of the regulations. Which is kinda fascism. Watery version, but still.

Comes the perfect storm of credit crunch, oil price and having the wrong cars tooled up. BANG, sales fall off a cliff, the Big Three can't crack their nut this year. Bush gives them a loan, to keep the scam intact. But its a big nut.

Now we have Bary, messiah of The West. He wants to run both sides of the scam at once. He wants to make the rules AND the cars, to his specifications, to please his supporters. Full on fascism.

So if I'm right about that, in the next little while we will see Government Motors shifting over to very expensive, very small hybrids and electrics to meet stringent new US EPA regulations and take advantage of brand new gas guzzler taxes. Add scrappage regulations to remove the backlog of used cars in the wrecking yards and dealerships, and you've got car Nirvana.

A government issue Volksmobile that extracts the maximum possible dollars from the populace, makes the big political donors happy, keeps the dinosaurian manufacturers stumbling along a heartbeat ahead of insolvency, and keeps those unions cowed and compliant.

Next up, household appliances and consumer staples.

And to keep it all sliding smoothly, John F'ing Kerry is out there yesterday keeping the assault rifle ban alive. Gotta protect the Mexicans, y'know. Well, the Mexican government anyway. Car plants down there to keep safe.

Whole thing seems kinda crooked to me, know what I mean?

Update! Courtesy of Kate at Small Dead Animals, this missive from The Corner. New regulations were already released, same day The One fired GM's CEO.

Why is the road to Hell paved with good intentions?

My friends, today we ask the question why. Why is it that the nice, cuddly, goody goody Left leaning bleeding hearted lovely granola crunchers of this world, with all their peace-love-dove intentions, inevitably bring with them corruption, theft and murder? Why is that? That this is so I support with the fact that wherever these people gain political power, crime flourishes. One need only look at Toronto to see it, but the world abounds with examples. The USSR, East Germany, China, Korea, Nazi Germany, etc. New York city. Los Angeles. Washington DC.

However, we are not here to bash the Lefties, we are here asking Why it is so. Once upon a time a good friend of mine, a sage in this sorry world of ours, told me the answer to the question "Why?" is always "Because!". In all due respect to this sagacious answer, I feel it does need fleshed out a bit.

Let us take an example from today. Spokane Washington seems to be filled with good intentioned Gaia worshipers. Nice people who love the furry animals, they decided that phosphated dishwasher soap was harmful to the little bunnies and birdies and seals etc, so it was banned from sale in Spokane. So what happened?

The quest for squeaky-clean dishes has turned some law-abiding people in Spokane into dishwater-detergent smugglers. They are bringing Cascade or Electrasol in from out of state because the eco-friendly varieties required under Washington state law don't work as well. Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation's strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states.

Real estate agent Patti Marcotte of Spokane stocks up on detergent at a Costco in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and doesn't care who knows it.

"Yes, I am a smuggler," she said. "I'm taking my chances because dirty dishes I cannot live with."

Patti Marcotte, peaceful, real estate agent and good person (presumably) is going to considerable effort and expense to circumvent this well intentioned Greenie initiative. Do the Greenies care? Hell no!

Supporters of the ban acknowledge it is not very popular.

"I'm not hearing a lot of positive feedback," conceded Shannon Brattebo of the Washington Lake Protection Association, a prime mover of the ban. "I think people are driving to Idaho."

What should people do instead of driving to Idaho?

The Washington Lake Protection Association has launched a campaign to encourage people to give the environmentally friendly brands a fair chance. The group suggests consumers experiment with different brands or install water softeners to help the green detergents work better.

"Clean lakes and clean dishes do not have to be mutually exclusive," said association president-elect Jacob McCann.

Yes friends, you should suck it up and remodel your plumbing to conform with our good idea. Its for the lake, you know. What are you, stupid? We're helping here!

And there you have it. One bunch thinks they know better, and so they make a rule. Other people don't like the rule, besides which they really don't like being pushed around, so they circumvent the rule. If the rules are drawn strictly enough, an opportunity to make money circumventing the rules is born. Smuggling, in other words. If the state of Washington makes it a crime to possess phosphate detergent, there will immediately spring up a black market in it. Money is a powerful thing. The black market will become large and self sustaining, self protecting.

This taken by itself would be no big deal (except to the Greenies). But unfortunately people willing to break rules for a living tend not to be particular about which rules they break. Along with smuggling comes bribery of officials, the corruption of the democratic process to get more bribes, and plain old crime like assault, theft, robbery, and if there's enough money involved, murder. Smugglers can be violent.

That's why.

Somebody agrees with The Phantom.

I'm fond of posting that with manufacturing machinery getting so small and so cheap, big factories are going to mostly disappear and little small ones making custom stuff all connected to the Internet are going to be the wave of the future.  I've said it many many times.

Here's a dude that agrees with me. 

This week's unveiling of the Nano automobile produced in India by the Tata Group is transportation's inflection point. Like Stephen Jobs, Raj Tata and his gigantic conglomerate have come up with a cost-effective game-changer that will flatten all rivals. Like Henry Ford, he has designed a product that the workers on the assembly line can afford to buy, thus creating a perpetual economic growth machine.

Most revolutionary, however, is the Nano business model. These vehicles will be sold from the factory door in local economies, not dealerships. Local manufacturing will reduce costs and enhance buzz, include local partners and help promote successful sales. 

The bottom line is that captive markets run by oligopolies -and cars made by people making $70 an hour -- are no longer sustainable economically.

The business model that will work for carmakers is the Dell Computer model. Vehicles must be sold online, the supply chain must be global and assembly plants used to put together all the components and options from colours to bumpers that buyers have selected digitally and fully paid for.

The auto industry will be customized manufacturing, which will eliminate the waste and expense of second-guessing market appetites, consumer biases or discounting and marketing expenses to move inventories.

There you have it folks. You want a 1969 Camaro with an aluminum engine block, a blower, zoomie pipes and 500 horesepower, send an e-mail.  They take Paypal.

The Phantom

Big Brother goes Infra Red.

Another bold step taken in Britain's long march into peonage.

Our movements are already tracked by CCTV, speed cameras and even spies in dustbins.

Now snooping on the public has reached new heights with local authorities putting spy planes in the air to snoop on homeowners who are wasting too much energy.

Thermal imaging cameras are being used to create colour-coded maps which will enable council officers to identify offenders and pay them a visit to educate them about the harm to the environment and measures they can take.

Yes, a friendly little visit from your helpful local government enviroNazis, to hand out pamphlets on how to save energy with latex caulking around the window frames.  Lovely.  During which the helpful public servants will have their beady little eyes open for any other possible infractions, like unregistered kitchen knives, unsafe storage of tennis rackets and golf clubs, unapproved wallpaper, improper stacking of recycling containers, etc.

I hasten to add, this energy they are "wasting" wasn't given to these "offenders" by the government.  They bought it and paid for it, with after-tax money too.

Something similar was done in Ontario a few years ago by police forces looking to stem the tide of grow-ops in Toronto and vicinity.  They sent up aircraft with thermal imaging to see if they could spot any hot spots.  A grow-op in a standard house will light up like a Christmas tree on thermal at night.

The result?  Inadmissible in court.  Caught red handed with 30 zillion dope plants, and they walk.  Same story in Britain probably, not admissible in court due to excess logic and practicality.

But use the technology to harass law abiding home owners busy minding their own affairs and not bothering anyone?  AWESOME!!!

The Phantom

Fairness Doctrine part one.

Part one is where the DemocRats save their friends:  the Mainstream Media.

With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

"This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat," said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

Remember that name, folks.  Senator Benjamin Cardin.  He's the point guy on the job of saving the Dem friendly propaganda mills.  Keep him in mind for next election.

Fairness Doctrine part two coming up soon, is where the DemocRats silence their enemies.

Buy gold and ammunition.  Come to think of it, never mind the gold.  Buy food.

.50 BMG: Reach out and touch someone...

...Once.   Even when he's bunkered in behind a 1" thick steel road plate.

.50 BMG tungsten frangible.

The Fragmenting High Velocity (FHVL) Round is a lead-free replacement that offers far superior tactical capability over the lead core bullet. The FHVL has the same range and accuracy as a lead bullet of similar weight. Long range, reduced ricochet, controlled penetration, and exceptional accuracy make the FHVL the most technically advanced tactical round available today. The FHVL grants the operator enhanced tactical capability, such as controlled penetration (NO EXIT) and increased ability to eliminate threats instantly, all while eliminating ricochet and over-penetration hazards.

That's some impressive technology.

They have movies!    Don't tell PETA.  They think ballistics gelatin has a soul.

H/T The Firearm Blog

The Phantom Gelatin Blaster.

TV worth watching.

Here's Ezra Levant talking about his new book on BNN's Squeeze Play. Seven minutes of intelligent conversation about your freedom to have intelligent conversations. Good stuff!

H/T FFofF!

Liberal hypocrites.

One of the main things that irritates me about the political Left is their propensity for lying. They don't dare tell anyone what they are really working toward, because no one would vote for them. You have to wait for one of them to screw up before you can tell what they are really about.

Case in point, racism. Everybody knows the Left is anti-racist. That's their big claim to fame, their big deal. They're the ones who keep making us change the language we use to identify people.

Like the mentally challenged. I mean the Special people. Er, the developmentaly retarded? Um, cretins? Morons? That's a partial listing of the verbal gymnastics the PC Left has forced on the medical community for puropses I can only describe as... moronic. But they are deadly serious! Use the wrong phrase in a description or a joke, and the PC Rage Brigade will fall upon you. People lose jobs over stuff like this all the time.

Here in the People's Republic of Kanada we have a whole government commission to take care of these things. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, and its provincial counterparts. They can take your house, and have done, over a few ill considered remarks in print.

Except once in a while one of -their- guys does it. And from the PC Rage Brigade you hear... nothing. Crickets chirping.

Most famously last week we have Barry "The Messiah" Obama making his "special olympics" crack on Jay Leno, to the tune of pretty much zero MSM coverage.

Bill Clinton? Free ride from American feminists on the Monica BJ-gate affair.

Here at home we have a certain cat lover who's overly fond of lawsuits. Big wheel in the Liberal Party of Canada to hear him tell it. Made a joke about the source of the meat in Chinese barbecue. Zero outrage on the Left, zero response from the Liberal Party.


And my final example, this dork who makes jokes about long beards on Orthodox Jews, and who also thinks Israel Apartheid Week is a fine idea.

My problem is not that they say these things. I don't care. I couldn't possibly care less. If Obama makes a retard joke, or some tool of the Liberal Party slimes Chinese food, so what?. Its a free country. They can say whatever idiot thing comes to their tiny incompetent minds. My approval or disapproval is not consequential.

My problem is that had George Bush said that, it would have gone down in history as the most vile thing ever. My problem is that if an obscure Conservative Party functionary made some crack about cat meat in Chinese food, he'd have been forced out of the party the next day on the winds of a shitstorm of recrimination and outrage. No apology would assuage, no punishment would suffice. If I made a joke about Orthodox facial hair on this blog, its entirely possible I could get a knock on the door from the HRC. They don't care about women's rights, cripples, cultural diversity, the environment, equal rights, none of it. Its all bullshit.

They're liars.

That's my problem. I'm forced to worry about what the code words for homosexual are this week, or what the accepted convolution is for congenital brain damaged adult, because of a bunch of racist, Jew hating, fag bashing, misogynist LIARS.


Here endeth the rant.

Update: Welcome Big City Lib readers. If you behave yourselves in the comments I may even leave yours up. If not... [click] -poof!-

Immigration update: Pelosi speaks!

More news about the DemocRats and their love of illegal immigration.  First, Nancy Pelosi is the mouth that roared:

"Who in this country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families?" Pelosi told a mostly Hispanic gathering at St. Anthony's Church in San Francisco.

"It must be stopped....What value system is that? I think it's un-American. I think it's un-American."

...

Referring to work site enforcement actions by ICE agents, Pelosi said, "We have to have a change in policy and practice and again ... I can't say enough, the raids must end. The raids must end.

Ok, so that's pretty clear, yes?  No more arresting illegal immigrants, because its mean.  Got it, thanks Nancy.

On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are standing up behind Joe Arpaio, Sherriff of Maricopa County (Phoenix).

Ten Republican congressmen argue that a civil rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office could have a chilling effect on other state and local police agencies that seek to crack down on illegal immigration.

The congressmen, responding to a Department of Justice probe into allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures by the sheriff's office, asked Attorney General Eric Holder to voice support for vigorous immigration enforcement and assure police agencies that they won't face similar investigations.

"It is important that state and local law enforcement officers and the public are reassured that the investigation is proceeding in a judicious and fair manner, and not for the purpose of politicizing or chilling immigration efforts," the 10 congressmen said in a letter to Holder on Wednesday.

 Well, at least voters are being given a clear choice, eh?

The Phantom

Leftist censorship award of the year goes to...

... Britain's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for their absolute bollocks decision on the trailer for "WANTED".

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled the advert gave the overall impression "that using guns was sexy and glamorous" and breached the code for television.

"We concluded the ad could be seen to condone violence by glorifying or glamorising the use of guns," its adjudication said.

Yes, GUNS are the new porn my friends.  Angelina Jolie's naked and tattooed ass is perfectly fine for TV, its the GUNS that are too eeeeevile for TV.  Here's the absolute clincher, for me anyway:

The ASA received just one complaint about the advert.

One guy complains, ONE person picks up the phone, and that is sufficient to have the ASA of Britain pull a multi-million dollar advertisement?  When every -other- sex & guns movie ever before has had their trailer passed no sweat?  Sure.  I believe that.

I've seen this movie.  I've seen that trailer too, they have it at the link I listed above.  This movie is absolutely no different than every other formula sex 'n violence film that's come out of Hollywood in the last 20 years.  The good guys are bad, the bad guys are bad, there's lots and lots of guns, slow-mo bullets doing things bullets can't actually do, and AJ flashing her wherewithall.  Its a 100% TYPICAL. crap Hollywood flick.

So what, the ASA just now woke up to the fact that Hollywood sells socially corrosive movies featuring pointless violence tarted up with Angelina Jolie's tits?  Or is it more likely the British Left is starting on a full-blown censorship campaign and this is the thin edge of the wedge?  I guess we'll know for sure if guns disappear off the Brit TV completely.  Logical next step in their crusade to destroy the country, after all.  You know, right after the kitchen knife registry and GPS tracking chip campaigns.

Next time a Lefty says to you they believe in free speech and personal expression and all that, laugh.  I'd say something else, but then some nanny would come along and ruin me financially.

The Phantom

Are people stupid or are they not?

Courtesy of Kathy Shaidle,  Five Feet of Fury we have a little book review. The book is William Julius Wilson's "More Than Just Race".

The review itself is interesting, in that it contrasts Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's controversial paper from 1965, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" with this new book.

The so-called "Moynihan Report" brought about a new language for understanding race and poverty: Now-familiar terms like pathology, blame the victim, and culture of poverty entered American thought as people debated whether Moynihan was courageously pointing out the causes of social ills or simply finger-pointing. Moynihan forced a nation to ask, "Is the culture of poor blacks at the core of their problems?"

The answer to this statement of the problem by Moynihan was the multi-trillion dollar War on Poverty, which just like the War on Drugs has been an abject, horrible, expensive failure.

In this way, a deep American schism was born. Liberals believed that black poverty was caused by systemic racism, such as workplace discrimination and residential segregation, and that focusing on the family was a form of "blaming the victim." Conservatives pointed to individual failure to embrace mainstream cultural values like hard work and sobriety, and intact (read: nuclear) families.

I describe this a little more bluntly.  Liberals think people are stupid and must be controlled.  Conservatives think people are merely ignorant and must be educated.

Comes now the insight of the book, which I find rather compelling.

Wilson wants to explain inner-city behavior—such as young black males' disdain for low-wage jobs, their use of violence, and their refusal to take responsibility for children—without pointing simplistically to discrimination or a deficit in values. Instead, he argues that many years of exposure to similar situations can create responses that look as if they express individual will or active preference when they are, in fact, adaptations or resigned responses to racial exclusion.

Consider a young man who works in the drug economy. Doing so doesn't mean he places little if any value on legitimate work. Employment opportunities are limited in the man's racially segregated neighborhood. There are few neighbors and friends who have social connections to employers, and most of the good jobs are far away. To complicate matters, many of his friends and neighbors are probably connected to the drug trade. Survival and peer pressure dictate that the man will seek out the dangerous, illegal jobs that are nearby, even while he may prefer a stable, mainstream job. Delinquent behavior? Certainly, but more than likely a comprehensible response to lack of opportunity.

Delinquent behavior is seen by Wilson as the solution to a PROBLEM, not the result of some kind of inherent stupidity or culture of ignorance.

It kills me that such a statement could be considered controversial, but that's a whinge for a different day.

Allow me to inject a little something from the gun control debate.  My favorite bit of research, Brandon Centerwall's crowding based analysis of murders in US cities.  To wit,
Brandon S. Centerwall, MD, MPH, "Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Domestic Homicide." JAMA 1995; 273: 1755-1758 and
Centerwall, Brandon S. "Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 198O" Am J Epidemiol 1991;134:1245-60.

Centerwall's discovery applicable to the argument here is that murder rates do not vary between blacks and whites once you control for socioeconomic status.  So there is no "black culture of failure", there is no "systemic racism", there is no instrumentality effect from guns or living in cities or any of that.

Human beings are (among other things) problem solving machines.  You present them with a problem and they will come up with a solution.  What there is, obviously, is a set of conditions that some people solve with violence and "degenerate" behavior.  Currently we have problems confined to the urban poor that they tend to solve with single parenthood, welfare dependence, crime, drugs, and etc.

I contend a lot of those problems are created and held in place by government.  You take a look at Indian reservations in norther Canada, the social and physical situation in those places is 100% constructed by government.  Food, fuel, vehicles, money, drugs, guns, ammunition, clothing, housing, EVERYTHING is flown in to a remote location at great expense and pretty much dumped on the people who live there.  In return they produce pretty much nothing other than misery and self destruction.  Maybe some soapstone carvings.

So you can look at that a couple-three different ways.  Well meaning liberals assume the Indians can't be expected to rise above the lowest possible behavioral level without intervention because they're being victimized by systemic racism, so the answer is to give them stuff.  That's got us to where we are now.
Previously, well meaning people assumed that the Indians were merely ignorant, and tried to educate them out of their cultural bondage so they could become productive citizens like everybody else.  That was the systemic racism to which the liberals efforts became the "solution".

Both these views clearly don't encompass the reality, because nothing changed under either regime.  The misery and self destruction continue.

A different way of looking at it, as per Mr. Wilson, is to assume that the "problem behaviors" are not the problem.  They are rational solutions to the problem.  When one considers drug use and indiscriminate sex as solutions to the problem of living in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, where everything is delivered to you for free, they seem pretty rational.

In other words, if you pull your head out of your ass and start looking at people in a fucked-up situation with some respect, maybe you'll see something other than your own pre-judgments.

People are smart.  Crime is the logical response to a set of pressures and opportunities.  You need money, there's no real retribution against you, logically you're going to steal it.  And you're going to keep stealing it until the risk/benefit ratio changes.

"This presidency is going to be an act of retribution."

That's the money quote from this article, "The Obama Rosetta Stone".  Author Daniel Henninger thoughtfully translates the double-talk, bafflegab and disinformation of the new American presidency into terms we can all understand.

Either you know instantly what "Piketty and Saez" means, or you don't. If you do, you spent the past two years working to get Barack Obama into the White House. If you don't, their posse has a six-week head start on you.

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists, are rock stars of the intellectual left. Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."

Messrs. Piketty and Saez have produced the most politically potent squiggle along an axis since Arthur Laffer drew his famous curve on a napkin in the mid-1970s. Laffer's was an economic argument for lowering tax rates for everyone. Piketty-Saez is a moral argument for raising taxes on the rich.

Bottom line, rich people are eeeeevile and will be made poor.  Saving the world one rich person's soul at a time, so to speak.  Seems Obama was listening in all those Rev. Wright sermons eh?

Meanwhile gun sales continue to be brisk, and people are hoarding ammunition.  This may be the time that the Founders of the Republic had in mind when they penned the Second Amendment, when the people fall back to the ammo box to fix the gawd-awful mistake they made at the ballot box.  I sincerely hope not.

I'd suggest to all and sundry that you exhaust all other options first.  Take it from me, writing e-mails and making phone calls is a hell of a lot easier than crawling up the side of a hill in the rain trying to escape the O-brownshirts.

The Phantom

Democrats investigate sheriff... for enforcing the law.

You American types will want to perk right up about this one.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona following requests by congressional Democrats and allegations by liberal activists that the department has violated the civil rights of illegal aliens.

Ok, down to business, "congressional Democrats means these guys:  Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Robert Scott (D-Va.) Liberal activists means  National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN.  This is why ACORN needed all that money they got in the Porkulus Maximus bill, to harass cops for doing their jobs.

Here's what's been done in Maricopa County, which is basically Phoenix area.  Emphasis mine.

Concerning the DOJ's investigation, Arpaio told CNSNews.com:  "I will not back down. What I am doing is upholding the laws of the state of Arizona, and I will not be persuaded to turn my back on my oath of office as sheriff of this county."

In an August 2008 press release, Arpaio's office detailed those results.

"While the Sheriff's illegal immigration and human smuggling operations conducted on the streets and roadways here have netted nearly 2,300 arrests, another very successful effort to locate illegal aliens has been quietly happening inside Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jails," the release said.

It continues: "Despite the growing criticism of the Sheriff's illegal immigration fight by some valley politicians and activists, Sheriff Arpaio says 60 detention officers trained by ICE officials have conducted over 106,000 interviews and investigations of inmates booked into jail since April of 2007.

"In those 18 months, 16,000 inmates were determined to be illegal aliens. Either they have already been deported or will be deported after being tried and/or serving their sentences for crimes committed in the valley. The work being done be Arpaio's detention staff is a likely contributor to the recent reduction in crime in the valley," the press release added.

"That number of 16,000 represents a full one-third (1/3) of all inmates in the United States who have had holds placed on them after being identified by jail or prison officials as illegal aliens."

The press release goes on to say that 20 percent of inmates in the Maricopa County Jail are illegal aliens and that of those, 2,000 illegal aliens - 70 percent - were arrested for felony crimes.

Let me make clear at this time that Sheriff Joe and the boys did not arrest 16,000 illegals off the street.  They found that 16,000 people who were arrested for doing a variety of crimes were also illegal immigrants.  The number of people arrested off the street for being illegally in the USA was 2,300.  That's just in the last year and a half.

My friends, bottom line here is the crime rate for the state of Arizona could be cut by 20% just by closing the border to illegals. Not to mention the costs incurred by cops, courts and social services.  As in, by building a fence and encouraging the Minutemen to sit in their lawn chairs on hilltops, calling in the fence jumpers for free.

The fine men and women of the Democrat Party do not want that.  They want these people to stay in your country, to keep committing crimes and keep  collecting social services paid for by your tax dollars. This is the only conclusion I can come to.

You might want to have a word with your congress critters about this.  Today, I think.

No, you are not paranoid enough.

Well, today we have not one but two shooting rampages to feed the gun control ghouls, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about the logical progression of it: knife control.

No, really. Knife control. I kid you not, the British government has just announced a brand spanking new initiative to "get knives off our streets".

Obviously the way to do that is to tax video games. I couldn't make this up.

...Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is set to announce fresh Government plans this morning [wed] to cut the number of knife crimes.

The Tackling Knives Action Plan is a £2million programme aimed at reducing deaths and serious violence among teenagers due to knives.

Violent games are "too cheap" and taxes on them should be "very high", Mr Taylor told MPs.

He told the Home Affairs Committee: "I have young people who I mentor and I see them go up and buy the games and it saddens me that they are being able to have such a negative impact."

Mr Taylor declined to say how much tax should be levied on the video games however.

Apparently losing a child makes you an expert on reducing violence.

Mr Taylor became Mr Brown's special envoy on youth violence and knife crime last month.

Part of his role is to offer new ideas to the Premier on how to change young people's behaviour.

Britain has already drunk the gun control koolaid, and I use that metaphor advisedly, mindful of the results it had in Jim Jones' personal abattoir there in Guyana. Gordon Brown is following the Jonestown glide path, trotting out Mr. Taylor to tug on the nation's heart strings with his tale of woe so as to get more, better and different restrictions on the populace.

Just to be exquisitely clear here, I say this not to mock Mr. Taylor's loss, nor to mock Mr. Taylor himself. He's being used by unscrupulous assholes in the British Labour Party as a bloody shirt, to be waved above the bastions for the betterment of the Party and its innumerable damn fool policy decisions. Gordon Brown now, him I'm mocking the hell out of.

Gun control in Britain has been a deadly failure. There are more gun crimes now than there were when the law was introduced. Like, a lot more. This new push on knives is taking place to distract the public from the failure of the gun law. The inevitable knife ban will fail as well. This is a no brainer.

Ultimately the glide path moves into banning video games, then censoring all "violence" from the media (violence being defined as anything Labour doesn't like) and finally they will ban the consumption of alcohol. Which will work exactly as well as the gun ban. Which is to say it will be far worse than useless. This assumes they don't skip over all that and go straight to the forced labor camps.

People in Britain will wake up right about the time Labour prohibits the sale of alcohol. Brits seem willing to dodge bullets on the way to the pub, but I very much doubt they'll be willing to forgo drinking. This is my prophecy.

The Phantom

US bishops find a pair.

Predictably, Obama's DemocRats are moving to increase government interference in health care.  Well known asshole and socialist Jerry Nadler is going to table a bill.

FOCA, as the bill is known, would make federal law out of the abortion protections established in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade ruling.

Long story short, hospitals and physicians will be required by law to perform abortions and other reproductive services on demand.

Now, the part where Jerry Nadler and the DemocRats are planning fascist-style religious persecution laws is not new or particularly news worthy.  What's new and newsy is this:

The legislation has some Roman Catholic bishops threatening to shutter the country's 624 Catholic hospitals — including 11 in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — rather than comply.

Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil."

But even within the Catholic community, there is disagreement about the effects FOCA might have on hospitals, with some health care professionals and bishops saying a strategy of ignoring the law, if it passes, would be more effective than closing hospitals.

THIS is the proper and indeed only response appropriate for the likes of Jerald Nadler and Barry Obama. Either shut the hospital or ignore the law.  "We're not doing it.  Piss off."

Honda and Toyota motor companies could learn a thing or two here for use in dealing with California.

The Phantom