Star keeps on lying and lying.

If you want to see the most shameless display of brown nosing to a political party ever in Canadian history, just read anything they write about the gun registry.

Today's pack of lies, headlined "Firearms database popular with police" :

New quarterly figures posted on the RCMP's website reveal not just increased police use of the controversial firearms registry, but increased civilian use as well, meaning more guns in the hands of Canadians are being legally registered.

So the Star's message is the cops LOVE the registry, it provides valuable info that they access all the time, and more people are registering their guns because the number registered keeps going up.

Lie one, cops don't love the registry. Cops -ignore- the registry because it contains zero useful information. Unless they are checking to see if a specific person has a license or that a specific gun is registered, the registry tells them nothing they can use.

Lie two, cops are checking the registry more. The registry gets checked with every police database inquiry. If they run your plate for a parking ticket, the registry gets checked. Its automatic.

Lie three, "more guns in the hands of Canadians are being legally registered." Implying people are all happy about it and getting on board. New purchases get registered because they have to, and that is what the number indicates. New purchases. Possibly more people are buying guns? Gee, ya think?

The best part is where they go after the Conservatives.

MP Dave MacKenzie, parliamentary secretary to Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, quietly tabled the 2008 report in the Commons, and left without taking questions from reporters. A largely positive review of the gun-control program, the 2008 report was not released prior to a Commons vote Wednesday that now puts the long-gun registry's future in doubt.

Those cheaters!!!

Van Loan justified withholding the 2008 report until now, saying it contained "no new information," and accused staff of the national database of failing to provide relevant statistics in an attempt "to justify the existence" of the registry.

The minister, who was unavailable after the report's release, claimed that although police use of the registry has increased, "only 2.4 per cent" of police queries to the database were related to long-gun registration or serial numbers.

Cheater, he's lyin' too! Well, but except he's not. They even say so:

Of the more than 10,000 daily queries, the average number directly related to the guns registered – the serial number or registration certificate – was 296 or 2.7 per cent. But that number is not broken down to long guns versus other firearms.

Yeah, 9,700 traffic tickets and 300 actual questions about an actual gun. But you know, its STILL A LIE, because the implication is these are police inquiries about criminal matters. No, they aren't. Most of them are POLICE INVENTORY CHECKS. Also museums, stores buying and selling between themselves and to customers, and etc. The registry is lucky if it gets one inquiry a day about a gun used in an actual crime.

And is anything worthwhile learned? NO! They learn who owned it before it got stolen, not who used it in a crime.

But all that aside. Since when do we arrange public policy to keep the RCMP happy? Is this a police state where the cops call the tune and we all dance?

The Star thinks it should be, and so does the Liberal Party of Canada. Me, I don't think so.

So why are we all lining up for swine flu vaccine?

We are all lining up because there is one (1) manufacturer of the swine flu vaccine, and they are having "production problems".  That's why.  There's a shortage due to incompetence and/or misadventure at the sole provider.

Next question, why is there only one (1) manufacturer?  How stupid is that?  What idiot decided that?  Harper?

Well, no. Not Harper.

Jean Chretien.  In 2002, as it happens.

By a miracle, CTV actually did their freakin' jobs for once and dug that little gem up out of the memory hole.

Way to go, Liberals.

The exact thing that makes Toronto suck.

We have here in this story from the Toronto (Red) Star the exact thing that makes Toronto suck as a place to live and work.

Store owner catches shop lifter dead to rights, WITH VIDEO to boot, tackles the guy, doesn't harm the shoplifter at all,  waits for the cops to finally get there.  What happens?

[David Chen] The 35-year-old shopkeeper and two of his employees were arrested following a May 23 incident in which they allegedly chased down and tied up a shoplifter, detaining him in a delivery truck until police arrived.

[David] Chen, Jie Chen, 21, and Qing Li, 40, were charged with assault, forcible confinement, carrying a concealed weapon and kidnapping.

But in a pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning, Crown prosecutor Colleen Hepburn tossed out the latter two charges for all three men.

This was welcome news for Chen and his lawyer, Peter Lindsay, but outside the courthouse, both expressed dismay with the Crown's decision to proceed to trial on the other two charges.

"I don't believe that Mr. Chen should have ever faced criminal charges," Lindsay told a group of reporters in front of Old City Hall.

"My much-preferred outcome would have been that all four (charges) had been dropped."

On Aug. 17, Anthony Bennett pleaded guilty to stealing 10 plants from Chen's Lucky Moose Food Mart on Dundas St. W., as well as plant thefts at another store on King St. W.

Bennett was sentenced to 30 days in prison.

Bennett will now testify as a Crown witness at Chen's trial, which is scheduled to begin on June 21.

If convicted, Chen and his co-accused face a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

That my friends is what makes Toronto suck.  The Powers That Be are making it suck on purpose.  They think it is much more important that David Chen knows his place than that Anthony Bennett should be prevented from shoplifting.  Mr. Chen's place is tax payer peon, not free man of business.

Mr. Chen's comment is the beautiful round red cherry on top:

"In China, if this happened, a lot of people in the area would help, plus the police would arrive immediately," he said in Mandarin.

"The thief would be on trial, not the store owner."

He ought to know, he's from there.  If he thinks he'd get better police service and be safer from abjectly stupid justice officials in COMMUNIST CHINA, maybe that's something we ought to think about a little bit.  I can tell y'all one thing, if he'd done this in Phoenix Arizona he would have got the Good Citizenship award from Sheriff Joe Arpaio's own hand, with an additional commendation for his restraint in not shooting the shoplifting son of a bitch.

The Phreakin' Irritated Phantom

The Canadian media and why they are going out of business.

The Toronto (Red) Star flatly lies about the long gun registry and an upcoming bill to repeal it.  Business as usual at the Red Star.

First we have the "news" story wherein we see this lovely statement.

"I'm concerned about the vote," Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley said in an interview.

"People shouldn't play politics with public safety. The gun registry saves lives; it protects police officers," Bentley said.

Well we do expect Liberal politicians to lie, so that statement is no real shocker.

But the last sentence in the piece is:

The registry was established as part of an overhaul of gun laws after the 1989 Montreal massacre.

That is simply not true.  The gun registry was created as an election campaign ploy to win votes from the Kim Campbell PCs in 1993.  It was rammed through in 1995 by the detestable Alan Rock despite vociferous and intense disagreement from police services across the country, including the RCMP.  Rocky went with it anyway, because it looked good to Liberal voters in 905/416, and because it gave Liberals a bat to beat up PC voters everywhere.

Everybody knows this.  Its no secret.

Here's the opinion piece, wherein they say:

The gun registry was a reaction to the 1989 "Montreal massacre" – where, it should be noted, the killer used a rifle, not a handgun. But it soon became a political football, with the Reform party, in particular, vilifying it as unwarranted intrusion on the rights of legitimate gun owners. The public has split on the issue largely along the rural/urban divide, exploited by Reform and, latterly, the Conservatives.

The politicization of this issue is unfortunate. As Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair says, the gun registry is really an issue of public safety, and "public safety is everybody's issue." Wavering Liberal and NDP MPs ought to take heed of his words.

Again, the gun registry was a political ploy from the outset, to give Alan Rock a way of looking tough on crime without actually being tough on crime. 

The net result of the gun registry has been two things.  First, it gave the Liberal Party of Canada a way to steal two billion dollars from the taxpayer.  That's $2,000,000,000 for a database you could run on a laptop.  Really.  The whole thing is less than a gigabyte of records.  Even the most appalling stupidity can't explain why something so trivial can cost two billion.  It isn't like they were trying to automate health records or something, right?

Second and much more dangerous, is that the majority of gun owners have defied the law.  It is estimated (by reliable sources, not the Liberals) that there are between five and seven million gun owners in this country, and that they posses anywhere from 16 to 20 million guns between them.  Currently less than three million gun owners are registered.  Three to five million Canadians have decided to risk ten years in jail rather than comply with this asinine law.

When people openly defy the law, that's a bad thing.  When they defy a STUPID law because the have to, that is much, much worse.  Liberals don't care, and the Star doesn't care.

That's why the Star and the other big papers are in so much trouble.  They know the above lies are lies.  They know that we know they are lying.  They continue to lie anyway.  Recipe for disaster, and disaster is what they've got.

Looks good on them.  Liars never prosper.

Welcome to People's Republic of Canuckistan!

Where the sick line up for their medicine... outside.


Here's your H1N1 vaccine clinic in Cayuga Ontario today, Nov. 3 2009, at four o'clock in the afternoon give or take a bit. Temperature a nice windy, rainy 8 degrees C or ~48 Fahrenheit for y'all in America. Wait time, 3 hours. I asked.

Here it is again from another angle.



Take a good look Americans, this is what happens when you let government decide how its going to be in health care. They couldn't even find a heated building big enough for people to wait in. Like the arena. Which is about 30 yards from where this picture was taken.

Or a school. Or the court house. Or a friggin' barn, for crap sakes.

Wow, this is a surprise!

Well, if you're a frickin' LIBERAL its a surprise, the rest of us predicted this.  Really loudly.

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers -- and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows.

More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.

The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City -- meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.

Duh.

Paging John Galt... your ride is here.

The Phantom
 

"Can we have an adult conversation about taxes?"

Not in the Toronto (Red) Star, apparently.

For Canada's political right-wingers, their insistence that we can have massive tax cuts without suffering any decline in public services is worse than childish; it's delusional. Any 4-year-old knows if you go to the store with less money, you're going to come away with less candy. Eliminate government waste, they say, and we can have lower taxes without cuts in services.

Hugh Mackenzie Research Associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Nice straw man, Hugh!  A decline in public services is what's required if we want to avoid becoming some frozen backwater where they dig iron ore out of the ice with shovels.  Less government is what you get with a tax cut of sufficient magnitude, not a reduction in waste.  They still burn the money, they just have less to burn.  That's the idea.  Duh.

Still wondering why the Star is bleeding red ink?

The Phantom

Why modern management is a force for evil.

Wal-Mart fires employee for chasing after thief

Company says Josh Rutner violated policy when he pursued alleged shoplifter

That's why.

What's more important than the environment?

FOOTBALL!!!  No, really.  I couldn't make this up.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he's going to sign an environmental exemption bill that will clear the way for construction of the LA Stadium.

State senators approved the bill, which would nullify a lawsuit over the project's environmental impact report by citizens in neighboring Walnut.

This is in a state that despite being at least half rocky mountains, imports gravel from Canada because local gravel pits can't meet the insane environmental regulations.
Just don't watch it on that big screen TV, fat boy! 

The phootbaw Phantom

physical pressure changes gene expression!

Here we have a BIG discovery in the embryology/cell biology business.

Cell softness is an intrinsic property of embryonic stem cells and dictates how a cell responds to forces in its physical microenvironment. Those responses include how strongly the cell attaches to a surface, how far the cell spreads on a surface, and, most surprisingly, whether specific genes are expressed.

To study cellular sensitivity to force, Wang and his collaborators first attached a magnetic bead, 4 microns in diameter, to the surface of a living embryonic stem cell. Then they applied a tiny oscillating magnetic field, which moved the bead up and down. By precisely measuring the magnetic field and the distance the bead traveled, the effect of the mechanical force and how soft the cells are could be determined.

The cyclic nature of the mechanical force is very important, Wang said, as it simulates natural forces within a living cell, such as the cyclic movement of the motor protein myosin.

The researchers found that mouse embryonic stem cells were softer and much more sensitive to localized cyclic forces than their more advanced, differentiated counterparts.

This is the first demonstration that -proves- physical strain changes the action of cellular machinery, and can even change what genes are expressed in a given cell.  This is big news for people like moi who practice manual therapy and have been screaming for years that this takes place.

So all you myofascial release, active release, shiatsu, cranio-sacral types, SHAZAM!  You are right.  The doubters are wrong.  Proven at the cellular level.  Hot damn!

The "No, I'm not bitter!" Phantom Therapist

Fusion takes a big step forward.

New hydrogen fusion design gets fired up and they generated a "pinch" on their second shot.  SWEET!  Because a pinch is when they get a fusion event.

The baby is born!  After seven years of theoretical work and raising money, five months of design, five months of construction and assembly, and a week of testing, LPP now has a functioning dense plasma focus, Focus-Fusion-1. The first shot, using helium as the fill gas, was achieved at 5:29 PM today, Oct.15, and the first pinch was achieved at 6:04 PM on the second shot. The fact that a pinch was achieved so soon was evidence of the soundness of the design.

Mr. Fusion here we come.

More dope about the company here: http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/169/

Cool animation here: http://focusfusion.org/assets/animation/DPF_Movie.avi

The Phantom

the innelekshual left.

this is a special post just for one special person, balbulican. i'm putting it all in lower case so balby will feel at home. lefties seem to like lower case for some reason.

anyways, over at blazing cat fur balby asks: "[Geert] Wilders says the Koran should be banned. Now, all you brave free speakers who believe that there should be no interference with the publication of things like the Mohammed cartoons (and I agree, by the way): are you supporting Wilders' right to call for a ban on the Koran, or are supporting the idea of a ban?"

ok balby, it should be stunningly obvious by now that i, The Phantom, do not care for speech codes, human rights commissions, government regulation of trade, speech, guns, food or most other things. In fact about the only regulations I do support are the building code and the local health department guys who inspect food processing plants and restaurant kitchens.

therefore your question is deliberately obtuse and does not deserve a polite answer. My impolite answer is that obviously geert wilders can say any fucking thing he likes and obviously his call to ban the koran is abject stupidity.

equally obviously the british government was insane for banning him from visiting parliament on the occasion of his movie being screened there, no matter what he's ever said.

now, given your purposefully obtuse questioning, i will also add that you are a stupid, stupid man. or woman, or surgically mutilated whatsit, whichever applies.

by the way, as to your post about banning the hijab. godwin's law, much? however, to briefly entertain the concept: it is not the government's place to dictate garb. period. ever. because when they do that it is not a free country anymore, and it doesn't work anyway. the only place they have any business doing that is in the public service, where that battle is already lost. driving a car is an outside possibility, given peripheral vision being blocked by the damn things.

otoh, the hijab/veil/burkha/fucking circus tent bullshit these radical islamic types demand their women wear is an insult to me personally, to my religion and to my culture. i should not have to put up with that. therefore in a free country i should be free to make my views known to each and every individual i choose to communicate with, particularly women wearing tents and the men who make them do so.

this is canada balby. we don't wear tents here. people who come here must adjust to us, we do not adjust to them. you want your six wives to wear tents, stay in the desert.

Ok America. Joke's over, you fat bastards.

Get in shape or pay a price.

That's a message more Americans could hear if the health care reform bills passed by the Senate Finance and Health committees become law.

By more than doubling the maximum rewards and penalties that companies can apply to employees who flunk medical evaluations, the bills could put workers under intense financial pressure to lose weight, stop smoking or even lower their cholesterol.

Why? Because you Americans are stupid, greedy, fat and  disgusting creatures who can''t be trusted to come in out of the rain.  You must be controlled.  At gunpoint.  Furthermore, you deserve to suffer for your many and various sins, and suffer you will.
Just so we are all clear, that is not my opinion.  Not me, none of my doing guys.  I'm just the messenger here.  In fact, it isn't even an opinion.

That, my friends, is the official policy of the United States government.

Have fun.

Where we are in the culture war.

Anyone who is not an extra-galactic visitor knows there's a war on in Western civilization.  Here's where we are at right now.

An all-male college in Atlanta, Georgia, has banned the wearing of women's clothes, makeup, high heels and purses as part of a new crackdown on what the institution calls inappropriate attire.

Where we are:
A) The college had to institute an official policy to straighten out five (5) guys who were dressing up like chicks to freak out the other guys at school rather than unofficially telling them to straighten up.  Said policy is called a "crackdown".
B) The other guys at the school were unable (or unwilling) to impress upon the 5 (five) perverts that they were perverts and had better straighten up.  Meaning they are seriously unable to make their personal views know to other students, for whatever reason.
C) This story made it to CNN.
D) CNN wrote it as if there were some kind of moral controversy here.  "Crackdown".
E) The very idea of an all-male school is being treated as somehow edgy or questionable in the story.
F) You don't find out until half way through the story its a BLACK all-male school, with a long and proud history of scholarship and bravery in the face of bigotry.
G) Because its a Black school, this "crackdown" is merely controversial.  Had it been for example MIT or Harvard the reaction would probably be very different.  As in catastrophic, with burning cars, 24/7 coverage and helicopter video.  IMHO, anyway.

The way I read it, the people running the school have reached their limit for politically correct leftist stupidity, and are taking the obvious steps needed to have a functional work environment for scholars.  Furthermore they are declaring that they will do this regardless of the uproar they know is going to happen in the media.

In other words, common sense is starting to make a come back in the academic world.  Awesome.

The Phantom

Greenies de-cloaking off the port bow.

Well, it seems that the Left leaning greenie contingent has decided to stop pretending and do what they really want to do.  They are going to decide for you what kind of a TV you are going to watch.

 

Reporting from Sacramento - The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions.

This is what environmentalism has been about since the late 1970's.  Dictating what people are going to drive, wear, eat and now watch.  Next up is health care reform, where they get to decide who lives and dies.

In other news, Peterson Publishing's Guns 'N Ammo Magazine head office has finally admitted they can't take it anymore and moved from their LA Wilshire Blvd. address to Peoria Illinois.  I can't imagine why they went to Illinois when Arizona is only a couple hours drive from LA, but nevertheless, they've pushed off from the People's Republik of Kalifornistan.  Just like everybody else with a lick of sense.

Will the last sane person to leave California please light the fuse?

The Phantom

Excellent essay to back up what y'all have been thinking.

Read this essay.

"There have been more Hollywood hagiographies of the revolutionary communist Che Guevara in the last five years than there have been studio pictures in the last two decades about the revolutionary anti-communists who dramatically toppled totalitarians from Tallin to Prague..."

It will fill in your yearning for proof to back up what you think, that central planning is utter stupidity and freedom is on the march everywhere except the USA. And maybe Canada.

The Phantom

P.S. Important attribution note, first seen by me at Small Dead Animals!!! Hi Kate!

New angle of attack: "Junk food farms".

Interesting new attack path for greenies from the Toronto (Red) Star.

Follow the flow of food. That's what any farmer will tell you. Because apples don't grow in supermarkets.

So to get to the root of the exploding obesity epidemic, I went in search of a junk food farm.

Such farms are not so easy to spot. No fields of Dorito bags waving in the breeze, no orchards blooming with soda pop, no soil bursting with 99-cent burgers.

What you do see are vast operations growing the raw materials for junk food: soybeans and corn.

The two crops go into the production of many things: pharmaceuticals, industrial products, animal feed – and inexpensive calories.

Tonnes of soybeans and corn are turned into "edible food-like substances," as food system critic Michael Pollan calls them, used in virtually all processed foods, beverages and junk food.

Last year, Ontario farmers planted 2.4 million acres of soybeans and just over 2 million acres of corn. That's nearly half of all cropland in the province, a near-colonization of Ontario farms by the soy and corn industry.

I read the whole thing.  This schmuck attempts to connect obesity, water quality, soil degradation and Big Food into one "crisis" which threatens Canada.  Farmers are the new bad guys.

Cute.

This kind of scare propaganda is what keeps the masses of asses in 905/416 voting Lieberal and NDPee. Fortunately it isn't selling newspapers. The Toronto (Red) Star can't go out of business fast enough to suit me.  Faster please!

Curse of the Mattel 16? Nope.

News from Afghanistan today regarding the M4 jamming in a firefight.  Its like Vietnam all over again.  DemocRat in the White House and US Army rifles jamming.  Damn Republicans buying crappy gear for the troops!!!  Check it:

When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents

 ...

A week ago, eight U.S. troops were killed at a base near Kamdesh, a town near Wanat. There's no immediate evidence of weapons failures at Kamdesh, but the circumstances were eerily similar to the Wanat battle: insurgents stormed an isolated stronghold manned by American forces stretched thin by the demands of war.

Army Col. Wayne Shanks, a military spokesman in Afghanistan, said a review of the battle at Kamdesh is under way. "It is too early to make any assumptions regarding what did or didn't work correctly," he said.

Usual bafflegab from military spokesmen.  So what's the rest of the story?  You go alllll the way to the bottom to find this nugget from the military historian's report.  Emphasis mine.

The platoon-sized unit of U.S. soldiers and about two dozen Afghan troops was shooting back with such intensity the barrels on their weapons turned white hot. The high rate of fire appears to have put a number of weapons out of commission, even though the guns are tested and built to operate in extreme conditions.

This is not a Vietnam era Mattel 16 fouling and stoppage problem.  This is troops using the M4 as if it was a Minigun.  You can't put 12 mags through a rifle in five minutes and not expect problems.  M4, FN-FAL, H&K G3, doesn't matter.  They all over heat, they all cook off rounds, they all jam when shooting too fast.  Because when you take a long skinny piece of metal and turn it white hot, it tends to BEND a bit, you know?  That's how blacksmiths make horse shoes.

Therefore, as much as I continue to think the M4/M16 Stoner black rifle is a poodle gun, I can't say this report lowers it in my opinion.  The surprise isn't that some rifles jammed, the surprise is that most of them didn't.  Way to go Eugene Stoner.

Also, the US Army kicks Taliban ass if they were that outnumbered and only lost nine guys.  I note that the article doesn't say how many guys the Taliban lost.  More than nine, I think.

The Phantom

NFL finally admits the sky is blue.

This is the DUH! story of the day today.  Dare I say it, a no-brainer.

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer's disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league's former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

So yes, the NFL has finally admitted what the rest of the medical universe has known for dead sure since the invention of the MRI scanner: being hit on the head a lot while playing football can give you brain damage.  Otherwise known as diffuse brain injury.  Otherwise known as what happens to boxers most of the time. They even have a name for it in the boxing world, its called being "punch drunk". Its why you don't see very many jocks living to ripe old ages.  Duh.

Also happens when you head the soccer ball for 20 years, so don't be getting too cocky all you soccer geeks.  Oh, and hockey too.  Life is dangerous, and will eventually kill you no matter what.  So get out the cotton batting and wrap yourself up before its too late!

Next up, the medical community will propose a blanket ban on public, high school and university football and some DemocRat will take up the torch.  And somebody will sue the NFL.

In 3, 2, 1...

Now, interestingly rugby players and Ozzy rules football players have markedly lower rates of diffuse brain injury.  Its because they don't wear pads and helmets.  Helmets actually cause this type of injury, believe it or not.  Also major spinal cord injuries to the neck and upper back as well.  Funny, eh?

That's something else that has been known for a loooong time that the NFL won't admit.  Because they are money grubbing weasels who don't care a damn about sport, their players or anything else, is why.  Same as the Olympics really.

Shut off your TV.  That is what will finally fix it. Nothing else will.

The Phantom

Just how partisan is the media, anyway?

Quite.

Remember the frothing outrage over Bush's continuing the ban on press being present as caskets were received?  You're supposed to forget that now.  Democrat in the White House y'know.

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received.

 

"It seems that if the weather is nice, and it's during the day, we get a higher level of media to come down," says Lt. Winter.

Now that a Republican is no longer the president,  nobody except the AP seems willing to shift themselves to cover the honored dead as they come home from the war.  As Byron York says,

With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.

Yea, verily.

The Phantom

Another for the "Why regulation is bad" files.

Today's lesson on why regulations are bad: because innocent grandmas get arrested for buying over the counter cold medicine at the pharmacy, is why. 

The larger question, of course, is what idiot arrests an -obviously- innocent woman for an -obviously- legal business transaction.  Answer, Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the usual kind of civil servant idiot one usually finds behind these stories. 

Here's what Nina baby says about it:

"Just as with any law, the public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, the prosecutor said. "I'm simply enforcing the law as it was written," Alexander said.

AKA, she's just following orders.  And herein lies the problem.  They are all, always, just following orders.  The fact that no human being could possible know all the myriad regulations, laws, codes, guide lines, strictures and etc. we are supposedly subject to is completely irrelevant. Orders are orders.

This is a common theme these days. There is no reasonableness in bureaucracy.  Reasonable men do not become bureaucrats and officials.  Power tripping, by-the-book, "I was just following orders" willfully heedless cretins are who become bureaucrats.  Its the nature of the job.  Reasonable, intelligent human beings quit in disgust.

Therefore regulations have to be designed so that UNreasonable robot-men can't hurt innocent people with them through malice, boredom or simple stupidity.  Which is pretty near impossible.  No matter how foolproof you make something, the universe will keep delivering greater and greater fools until it breaks.

The answer is to de-fund the bureaucracy.  You can't trust them to make reasonable laws, and you can't expect them to enforce laws reasonably.  All you can do is starve them out.

Tax cut now.  No cut is too big.

News Flash!!!

ABC News notices the NEA scandal. Finally.

Those guys are SO on the ball!

America's future?

One in six patients in the Brit National Health service misdiagnosed.

On the bright side, Britain does have a private care option, which oddly does not seem to have many scandals or outrages associated with it of late.  Barry doesn't like the private care option.

The Phantom

NEA propaganda update!

New audio from Big Hollywood on the government funded NEA search for the next Lenni Reifenstahl.

Fits right in next to the newspaper bailout, eh? Gotta have some shiny Obama content to print in your Obama propaganda machine.

Best thing that could happen here? The US government gets out of the art business. And shames the Canadian government into getting out of it as well.

New DemocRat Majority Protection Bill gets The One's approval.

Yes friends, the man who gave you the Bank Bailout, the Car Bailout, the Porkulus Bailout and is trying hard to jam a big ol' Health Care "Bailout" down your resisting throats has said he'd be delighted to see a Newspaper Bailout on his desk.  Yes he would.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview."

Probably because as he said all over the place, nearly wall to wall on Sunday night, the MSM is behaving "rudely".  Despite the two miles of column space the New York Times has given him and the record TV face time he's been getting, there's still all this rude commentary going on.  Darn that Rush Limbaugh anyway.

So, Barry and the Dems (sounds like a band, doesn't it?) would like for the MSM to go "not for profit" (I'm not making that up, they said that) and get a big ol' "cash infusion" from Uncle Sam so they don't have to keep printing mean divisive stuff about The One just to make a buck and keep the presses rolling.

Translation, Barry is getting his ass handed to him by the Internet and would like to have his very own media machine that he calls -all- the shots on to win the next election.  With you paying for it, of course.

This is a bigger deal than healthcare.  Watch this one move along under the radar.

The Phantom

Finally, you can buy Buckeytubes by the square yard.

Press release by Nanocomp Technologies indicates they have succeeded in making carbon nanotube yarn and cloth as strong as kevlar.

In April, Lashmore had a mechanical multicaliber gun shoot bullets at different versions of his sheet, each less than a fifth of an inch thick, at a speed of 1,400 feet per second. Four sheets were breached, but three showed no damage. Lashmore and his 35 employees were ecstatic.

"We didn't expect it to work at all," he admits.

Cruising the web site, they say they have delivered 10,000 meters of yarn to one customer, so it looks like this is finally the real deal.  Commercial quantities of nanotube cloth, on demand.  Expensive sure, but you can get some if you need it. 

The US Air Force want to use it for wiring in their aircraft because its as conductive as copper (or possibly more so) and weighs a fraction of what an insulated copper wire does.  Its also tremendously stronger than copper, making it pretty awesome for damage reduction in combat aircraft.  You can cast it in directly as part of composite sheets too, making it possible to eliminate wiring altogether for some applications.

I've been stoked about this stuff since Buckyballs were discovered 'way back in the late 1980's.  Diamonds by the square yard, how cool is that?!

The Phantom

Overflight report!

Reporting overflight by Westland Lysander. I've got PICTURES baby! Yeah!



Ok, so its a crappy picture. It was far away by the time I scrambled to get the camera.

Here's what it looked like a couple weeks ago at the Warplane Heritage museum.



It looks like a sweet flying machine in the air. I love Cayuga!

The Phantom

The One's Glorious speech.

The One spoke in his patented mellifluous tones this evening to the US lawmakers. He was received thus:

South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" after Obama had talked about illegal immigrants.

Well, Barry did lie, he said that illegal immigrants wouldn't be covered under his health care bill. Which ain't true. They will be.

Joe Wilson is my hero.

Laws are for the Little People

The Obama White House steams onward at full speed into new, uncharted waters in search of more/better/different sources of propaganda. This time its the NEA in a conference call. As the author says, the silence of the mainstream media is deafening.

Another conference call has materialized, revealing a concerted effort by government to use the arts to address political issues.

Lee Rosenbaum, a blogger for Artsjournal.com, posted her experience with a meeting that occurred on August 27th and confessed that she also felt “uneasy” about the government’s arts effort. The meeting invitation (viewable here) went out to all “member local, state, and regional arts agencies, community-based arts organizations, and national partners of Americans for Arts.” Americans for Arts is a non-profit arts organization that has received substantial grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

But there is more fun!

Even more disturbing than learning that the White House and NEA are using the arts to address specific issues, is to learn what was discussed on this new conference call. Rosenbaum mentions that there was much talk of “leveraging federal dollars” to get artists and cultural organizations involved in social-service projects.

Yes friends, you can use your National Endowment for the Arts grant to make propaganda for The One. Which will no doubt ensure that you get another, bigger grant for your next crucifix-in-pee display.

From the comments, the best comment of the day:

"If I put a Hope and Change sticker in a glass of urine - will they pay me?"

I love it when Lefties say what's really on their minds!!!

What's on the Obama administration's mind?  "Republicans are assholes!"  No kidding, the guy said it on video.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/09/02/obamas_green_jobs_czar_van_jones_republicans_are_aholes.html

'Nuff said!

The Phantom

While we are on the subject of unreasonable gubmint power... you got a receipt for that song, boy?

Did you know they can seize any/all laptops, cell phones, ipods, cameras and etc. etc. etc. at the US border and keep them as long as they want?  As in forever?  And they can analyze the contents thereof  to see if you've committed a heinous crime, like downloading songs?  Or skipping out on parking fines!

Yep.  They can.  9th Circus Court of A Peel says so.  Mind the slippery slope there, they just greased it for you.

On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced new guidelines for searching and seizing electronic devices at the border. In a press release, DHS said the guidelines will "enhance and clarify oversight for searches of computers and other electronic media at U.S. ports of entry."

Rhetoric aside, in reality, not much has changed. Laptops and electronic gear can still be seized and held indefinitely; there's no requirement that they be returned to their owners after even six months or a year has passed, though supervisory approval is required if they're held for more than 15 days. The complete contents of a hard drive or memory card can be perused at length for evidence of lawbreaking of any kind, even if it's underpaying your taxes or not paying parking tickets.

This kind of open-ended scanning should worry anyone who travels internationally, not just privacy advocates. When we have laws like the No Electronic Theft Act, which makes sharing a sufficient number of MP3 files a federal crime, how many college students are unindicted felons? File this under the show-me-the-man-and-I'll-show-you-the-crime department.

So friends, if you are crossing the border, EVEN IF YOU ARE AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, may I suggest you make bloody good and sure you do it with a blank hard drive in your computer, blank SD chips in your phone and a blank pen drive.  I mean, can you absolutely prove every single song and ring-tone on your phone/ipod/whatever was legally purchased?   How about that copy of Windows XP, is it bootleg?

You got receipts?  On ya?

Didn't think so.  Uncle Phantom says wipe it or leave it at home, kids.  Mail an ENCRYPTED stick to yourself, just to be on the safe side. They can't open your mail without a warrant. 

Yet.

The Lead Foil Hat Phantom.  (Because tin foil just isn't enough anymore.)

Democrats move on the Internet.

We are soooo not paranoid enough, my friends.

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

This is a bill that grants the President of the USA control over non-government networks in the USA, guys. Meaning your PC and your internet connection, got it?

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

Licensing of network guys, just like doctors. It gets better:

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

Translation: If your company is deemed "critical," a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

Bottom line here, if they pass this Barry Obama can personally shut off the Internet and all communications networks to do with telephones, faxes, cell phones, and so forth, whenever he sees fit and for as long as he likes. Like, during an election. Or if somebody shows up with a stained blue dress(TM), or if he f-ing well feels like it because things aren't going his way on some legislation.

One more thing to call your congressman and raise Hell about. My condolences mi amigo Americanos, it sucks to be you this year.

Update: Welcome to Kate's Flying Monkeys! Tell your friends, ladies and gentlemen.

The Phantom

Speaking of art, the search for the next Leni Riefenstahl begins!

Sharpen up your resumes and portfolios kids, because the NEA is looking for a few good artists! 

Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama's call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were "health care" and "energy and environment." The service was to be attached to the President's United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans. 

It sounded, how should I phrase it…unusual, that the NEA would invite the art community to a meeting to discuss issues currently under vehement national debate. I decided to call in, and what I heard concerned me.

Every day I wonder if I'm paranoid enough about this guy, and every day the answer comes back: nope.

The Phantom

Big Media bailout: planning phase begins?

The FTC begins hearings!

Though some may be uncomfortable with government oversight of any aspect of journalism, the F.T.C. seems to be "attempting to play a facilitating and public educational role in gathering together various disciplines and perspectives to talk about the crisis in mainstream journalism," said Neil Henry, a professor and dean at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. "The government's willingness to raise the profile of this issue, and to help explain why it is important for a national conversation, I think in general is welcome."

In other words, "Hurry the hell up and give us some money Barry!  Who do you think is going to save your bacon in 2010 if not us?"

My response: gee, how surprising.

Just so we're clear...

This here is art...




This here is a hateful racist statement made by a bad person who hates everyone and everything and drowns kittens.



Ok, everybody got that?

"Useless eaters" update.

As a small "c" conservative type, I have some fundamental beliefs about life and society that appear to clash with the prevailing trend in modern governance.  One of my strongest beliefs is that civilized society exists to serve the people in it.  We do not exist to serve society.

One of the places this manifests itself most visibly is when disaster strikes.  If there is a flood for example, the properly brought up young individual will busy him/herself securing the safety of those around him, including the young, the old and the the handicapped.  He will not forsake all others to save his car, his etchings collection and his current girlfriend.  Call me old fashioned, but that's what I expect out of people, men in particular.

Here's what the US government is doing.

Four years after Hurricane Katrina exposed major deficiencies in the capacity of governments to evacuate and care for the disabled during a natural disaster, America's most vulnerable citizens are barely considered in most emergency plans, according to a report being issued Wednesday by the National Council on Disability.

The report says huge gaps exist in those emergency plans despite an executive order issued by President Bush in 2004 urging federal and local governments, as well as private organizations, to consider the unique needs of the disabled when planning rescues and preparing to provide emergency shelter.

They're planning on leaving Grandma to the flood, is what they're doing.  In the parlance of the true socialist, they are planning on saving the productive members of society and leaving the useless eaters behind.

Try as I might, I can't get behind that.  But what do I know, I'm just a racist/bigot/homophobe neocon.

The Phantom

"Renewable strains grid" Another MSM outlet rolls over in its sleep.

This little fact has been out there fore years and years on the web, but you never see it in the main scream media.  Oops, somebody at Bloomberg didn't get the memo.

President Barack Obama's push for wind and solar energy to wean the U.S. from foreign oil carries a hidden cost: overburdening the nation's electrical grid and increasing the threat of blackouts.

The funding Obama devoted to get high-voltage lines ready for handling the additional load of alternative supplies is less than 5 percent of the $130 billion that power users, producers and the U.S. Energy Department say is needed.

Without more investment, cities can't tap much of the renewable energy from remote areas, said Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He serves as the administration's top official on grid issues and recognizes the dilemma it faces.

"As we add more and more wind power, the grid will get more stressed, and there's going to be a point where the grid can't handle any more," Wellinghoff said at an energy conference in Chicago. "The first thing we need is to build out transmission."

Well, duh.  You stick a 4 megawatt windmill out at the end of a rural power line rated for maybe half of that, every time a stiff breeze comes up the line is going to melt.

I notice there's a lot of windmills going up.  I notice no new power lines.  None.

One more thing I notice, the existing grid is so creaky it came down all by itself in 2003 and blacked out the whole north east USA and Canada.

I add those three things together, observe the rhetoric of the DemocRats of the USA and the Liberal/NDPee/Blockhead triumvirate in Canada, and I say Hmmmmmn.

One of two things will happen.  Either there will be a bunch of abandoned windmills sitting still with the paint peeling off ten years from now, or we will be seeing a lot of electrical "service interruptions". 

Diesel generators, get 'em before the big price hike.

The Phantom

US Fat Tax gathers steam.

With the Democrats in power in the USA, there is always a search on for the next source of revenue to pay for government handouts.  Take from the "rich" (or merely scraping by) to buy votes from the "poor", aka those who scrape by on government handouts.  This is the Democrat way.

They already stuck a tap in Big Tobacco and Big Oil, two of the Big Three Autos have been nationalized (and will henceforth be a net cost, not a source of revenue), Big Finance is nationalized and causing a huge meltdown already, Big Healthcare is on the razor's edge of being taken over.  What large industries does that leave?

Big Food.  They're the only really large source of money left un-raped.

So, here's the plan for Big Food.  We have the Coke Tax, and the Big Mac/Whopper Tax.  Both of these proposals assert that there is an "uncontrolled obesity epidemic", that this epidemic costs on the order of $150 billion annually, and that a tax on pop and/or fatty foods will change eating habits and reduce the number of fat people, while creating "new" revenue for healthcare.

So its another crack at Prohibition, basically.  The War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Guns, the War on Smoking and the War on Crime were all SO successful the Dems are going to have a War on Fat.  Awesome.

The end result is a government official telling you what to eat, what to drink, what and where to smoke (but don't quit, how are we going to collect tobacco tax if you quit?), what doctor you're going to see, what your doctor will be allowed to do for you (if anything), what to drive and how much (pay per mile road tax with GPS, baby), and what you're going to make on your investments (if anything). 

Because according to the Democrat Party platform, you're stupid.  You're so stupid you have to be taxed, regulated and poked with a cattle prod into doing what's in your own basic self interest.  Otherwise you'll friggin' die like turkeys, from standing in the rain, looking at the sky with your mouth open.

After they get done taxing food, I don't know where the hell they're going to look next.  Clothing?  Chairman Mao jackets and blue PJ pants for all?  Well, y'all ARE stupid, maybe Big Brother should choose your wardrobe for you as well as your pantry, garage and keep you from running with the scissors.  High heel tax, ladies?

The Over Taxed Turkey Phantom

Bacteria solve NP-Complete problem.

In an interesting cross between genetics, biology and computer science, some clever lads attack The Hamiltonian Path Problem using bacteria.  From the abstract:

We programmed bacteria with a genetic circuit that enables them to evaluate all possible paths in a directed graph in order to find a Hamiltonian path. We encoded a three node directed graph as DNA segments that were autonomously shuffled randomly inside bacteria by a Hin/hixC recombination system we previously adapted from Salmonella typhimurium for use in Escherichia coli.

Kewl!

Really gawd awful Guardian article about it here.  Wiki page about the Hamiltonian Path problem here.

NP-Complete problems are an entire range of important, practical problems in life that normal (read serial) computers suck at.  Things like laminar flow, network optimization, scheduling etc.  This approach is quite novel, so it will be fun to see how they make out.  Imagine, solving the traveling salesman problem in a petri dish.

h/t Slashdot.

The Bacterialy Computational Phantom

The Algore effect strikes!

Wherever Albert Gore (aka Algore, thank you Rush Limbaugh) goes, it either snows or tries to really, really hard.  Including his home town.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Cool weather has broken a previous low temperature for July 21 in Nashville that was set when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.

When the temperature at the National Weather Service station dipped to 58 degrees at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, it wiped out the previous record low for the date of 60 degrees, which was set in 1877.

NWS forecaster Bobby Boyd noted it was the third consecutive morning when Nashville either tied or broke a daily low temperature record.

The Nashville city council better arrange for Algore to leave before a glacier forms over his house.

That must really be something, to be so great an ass that the very weather mocks you.  Wadda maroon!


The Phantom

In case you were wondering why banks are in trouble...

Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself

No, really.  I couldn't make this up.  The author says,

Still trying to comprehend this legal lunacy, I called the Florida Bar, which put me in touch with Florida mortgage foreclosure lawyers. One of them, Tampa attorney Kristofer Fernandez, said he's seen several cases where a large bank has sued itself for foreclosure as the holder of both first and second mortgages.

"Four or five years ago, you would have never seen this," Fernandez said. "Now, it's very common."

My question is, at what point does a judge have the lawyers taken out to the parking lot and flogged?

The Phantom

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.