Water to the fish.

American liberals just can't seem to grasp that Reality(TM) is not always well captured by their world view. Their liberal, anti-capitalist philosphy makes them blind and deaf. Case in point today, Neil Stephenson trying to be clever about rockets.

He postulates that the development of space-launch rockets was amazingly unlikely, and gives this as evidence:

There is no way, of course, to guess how rockets might have developed, or failed to, were it not for the fact that, during the 1940s, the world's most technically sophisticated nation was under the absolute control of a crazy dictator who decreed that vast physical and intellectual resources should be hurled into the project of creating rockets of hitherto unimagined size.

These rockets, which were known as V-2s, were worse than useless from a military standpoint, in the sense that the same resources would have produced a much greater effect had they been devoted instead to the production of U-boats or Messerschmitts. Accordingly, the victorious nations showed only modest interest in their development immediately following the war. It is reasonable to suppose that little more would have been done with them, had it not been for another event, happening at the same time, even more bizarre and incredible than the seizure of absolute control over a modern nation-state by a genocidal madman. I refer, of course, to the sudden and completely unexpected development of nuclear weapons, undertaken over the course of a very few years by a top-secret crash program atop a mesa in New Mexico.

Stephenson thinks Hitler was a "bizarre and incredible" aberration, something far outside the norm. Sadly, most nation-states historically have been under the absolute control of crazy monarchs, dictators, or priest/kings with war on their minds. The United States of America is in fact the first one I can think of where that wasn't the case. Even today a majority of nations outside Europe have dictators running them. Military action has been driving technology since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Stephenson carries on in like vein for three pages, bemoaning the present situation in which unspecified new space launch tech can't get a leg-up because the darn capitalists won't insure it. If only vast sums of money were available to pursue other launch ideas, maybe stupid rockets would become yesterday's news.

He's probably thinking about space elevators or Verne guns. Space elevators will remain science fiction until somebody figures a way to make either carbon nanotubes or iron whisker crystals that are measured in feet instead of the current millimeters. Another crazy dictator, Saddam Hussein, very nearly built a Verne gun in Iraq. He was going to use it to shell Tel Aviv, but presumably it or its big brother could have been used to chuck small payloads into orbit. Really tough small payloads. It still could, if anybody could figure out a way to make money out of pop-can sized machines in low orbit. Going to be pretty hard to launch the Hubble Telescope out of a Verne gun.

Orion is of course a non-starter until it becomes acceptable to set off atomic bombs in the atmosphere again. Orion is a gigantic metal plate launched by setting off a nuke under it. The payload is protected by shock absorbers. For acceleration you just keep setting off nukes under the plate. Good way to get a really BIG load into orbit, like an aircraft carrier, a little tough on the environment. Always a favorite in SF, because what's not to like about a spacecraft as big as an aircraft carrier that runs by atomic bombs?

Laser launch systems, again a non-starter because its really frickin' hard to build a laser that can provide as much thrust energy as a plain-vanilla rocket. Its not efficient in atmosphere, and outside the atmosphere you still have to provide propellant, which equals weight, which is the one thing a laser launch system is supposed to eliminate. And if the laser wiggles just a wee little bit, ZAP!!! your spacecraft just got a big hole burnt in its butt.

He also ignores Rutan and Branson's space tourist bid, Virgin Galactic. If they make any money at all, those guys will be upgrading their launch machinery to low-orbit status before the end of this decade. Private launch facilities using recoverable space craft are where its going to pop, you ask me. Pretty soon NASA and the Euro space guys are going to be begging rides on Rutan's spacecraft.

Lock-in it seems is in the eye of the beholder.

Does Tony Clement not have a phone or what?

Oh look, the Conservative Party just woke up and fired a gray cell.  Amazing, they finally noticed they'd been shot in the ass by the CRTC.

The Harper government is stepping into a contentious debate over just how much Canadians should pay for Internet service, as Industry Minister Tony Clement says he will review a federal regulator's decision that will raise prices [MASSIVELY] for consumers and businesses.

For the Liberal Party, regulating the Internet downward this way is advantageous, because they 100% own the mainstream media in this country.  There is not a Canadian newspaper, radio or TV station in existence that doesn't carry water for the Liberals.
The Conservatives get their word out 100% by INTERNET.  They live or die by blogs, YouTube, social network.  For them the CRTC decision is a two-by-four to the head.  Where the hell was Tony Clement last week before the decision was given?  He couldn't call up the CRTC and have a quiet word?  Even the frickin' Liberal guy is saying its a bad idea!

Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau, who said he will pressure Mr. Clement to throw the decision back to the regulator, said he doesn't buy the large providers' arguments about Internet network traffic and congestion.

"There's more and more use," Mr. Garneau said. "But to some extent, it's also self-serving as well. And in this case, the ruling of the CRTC has gone too much in favour of the arguments presented by the big players."

Yeah, no duh!

This country just kills me sometimes, I swear.  WTF are these people doing every day?

The Phantom

From our bulging, tearing open "California is F-ed" file...

You can't make stuff like this up.

Citing the pro-democracy unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, Gov. Jerry Brown called it "unconscionable" that GOP legislators are vowing to block his attempt to ask voters to extend tax hikes to balance the budget.  

"When democratic ideals and calls for the right to vote are stirring the imagination of young people in Egypt and Tunisia and other parts of the world, we in California can't say now is the time to block a vote of the people," Brown said in his first State of the State address in nearly 30 years.

He said the budget has tough choices but that the people "have a right to vote" on the package.

Actually what he's asking for are tax hikes to pay for California state employee retirement benefits.  They are the single largest cost that is un-balancing his budget.

And they thought Schwarzenegger was bad. Bwaha!

The Phantom

Mayor Bloomberg, no lie too heinous to tell.

Yes friends, in the world of New York City politics there is no rock too scummy to turn over, no shite-pile too rank to dig into for a cheap stunt, no lie so heinous it shouldn't be told, no wounded woman you can't step on to get a leg up..

Weeks after the shooting in Tucson, sellers at an Arizona gun show allowed undercover investigators hired by New York City to buy semiautomatic pistols even after they said they probably couldn't pass a background check, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

"After Tucson, you would think that people, particularly at a gun show in Arizona, would have been much more careful in enforcing the law," he said. "That unfortunately in some cases wasn't the case."

Bloomberg has authorized similar sting operations around the country as part of a push for tougher federal laws to help keep guns off the streets of New York.

 The lie here is that you can buy a gun at a gun show in Arizona without going through the background check.  Nuh uh.  Not happening.  Those "investigators" got checked, they filled out the paperwork, the works.

Just thought you should know.

The Phantom

Canada: land of the un-free, home of the Special Deal!

Well my friends, its time once again to discover why Canada sucks.  Why nobody here seems to be able to get ahead no matter how they twist and turn.  I give you, the brand new CRTC regulations for Internet billing.

Metered Internet usage (also called "Usage-Based Billing") is coming to Canada, and it's going to cost Internet users. While an advance guard of Canadians are expressing creative outrage at the prospect of having to pay inflated prices for Internet use charged by the gigabyte, the consequences probably haven't set in for most consumers. Now, however, independent Canadian ISPs are publishing their revised data plans, and they aren't pretty.

...

Starting on March 1, Ontario TekSavvy members who subscribed to the 5Mbps plan have a new usage cap of 25GB, "substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC's decision to impose usage based billing," the message added.

I have yet to get a note from Bell Canada regarding my Internet plan, but I have no doubt there's one being drafted right now.  Basically if you do any music downloading, Netflix, Apple Store shopping, YouTube, Skype, pretty much anything other than plain vanilla surfing and email, y'all are about to get CRUSHED.  Obliterated.  Stomped on.

The big question now is how these kind of billing changes will impact 'Net consumption patterns. Many subscribers use minimal data, but that's changing as Internet video becomes the norm. If these new plans simply discourage data hogs from backing up their 120GB pirated movie collection over the 'Net every night, there's no sleep to be lost. But if they scare consumers away from legitimate non-ISP affiliated movie and content sharing sites, that should be a firebell concern to consumers, entrepreneurs, and regulators.

Well, calling it a "question" is being overly generous.  These regulations are obviously designed to protect entrenched interests, namely television networks, music labels, long distance carriers and the very lucrative video rental industry.  That is their entire purpose, and the only reason for them to be implemented. 
The peasants (that's us) have been getting fractious with this new interweb thing, finding ways to get around paying astronomical sums for things like music, movies and long distance telephone service, so government will just have to step in and protect the profits of their good friends at Bell Telephone Company.
And that my friends, in a nutshell, is what makes Canada SUCK.  Bell Canada getting hurt by new technology, new consumer patterns?  No problem, we'll just change the rules to frack over the business models of these upstarts, and then things will go back to the way they should be.  Get those peasants back in line, by God.
If you look into -any- field of endeavor in this country, from mining to manufacturing to education to publishing, you will find exactly this pattern of behavior.  Ever wonder why there's no Canadian car companies to rival the Big Three?  Because once upon a time the Big Three got a Special Deal, that's why.  Why's there no private universities?  Special Deal.  Why our movies and music and radio and TV and books are all such gawdawful liberal crap? Special Deal. Why we pay FOUR TIMES AS MUCH for cell phones here as they do in the States?  Special. Freaking. Deal.


Time to call our MPs again and make another USELESS protest against the inevitable, I suppose.  This is one example of action by the Conservative government that would have been no worse and really no different under the Liberals or even the NDP.  The Ottawa Mandarinate have spoken, and all shall bow or take a kick in the head.  Fascism, pure and simple, in your face.  Pay up suckers.

The Phantom

Getting around censorship

This brilliant tidbit of tech was suggested by an anonymous comment on the Egypt goes dark thread.

PirateBox is a self-contained mobile collaboration and file sharing device. Inspired by pirate radio and the free culture movment, PirateBox utilizes Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) to create mobile wireless file sharing networks where users can anonymously share images, video, audio, documents, and other digital content.

Here's Cringely  on getting around the no-web issue.  The solutions he mentions are mostly ham radio and dial-up. 

PC World's take.

I'm thinking a fellow could set up a 4G/WiMax mesh pretty quick to get high bandwidth video out of an area where the phones and internet are cut off.  If a Pringles can on a stick will get you WiFi (802.11) reception over a couple miles, I don't doubt a properly constructed WiMax antenna could reach 20 miles or more.  It would be cake to set up temporary coverage of a city or rural area using Twitter or Facebook to arrange things, assuming one made the arrangements before the government shut down communications.  Such coverage could be small enough to fit in a compact car trunk, and maybe even drive around while working.  You could have unattended repeaters stuck on telephone poles, bounce things from one server to another to get around damaged or captured links...

Guerrilla WiMax.  That could be a giggle.  Floor is open for suggestions.

Egypt goes dark!

Here's what a "Presidential Internet Switch" looks like in the wild, my friends.

22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

H/T to Mr. Marco for the heads up this morning.

CNN had this to say on the subject:

Hours ahead of what are expected to be massive displays of anti-government ferment across the world's most populous Arab nation, the internet went dark in parts of Egypt early Friday, and text messaging appeared to be blocked.

Noting that "parts of Egypt" is considerably different than " Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses" and moving on...

By the way, did you know that OnStar can turn your OnStar-equipped GM car on remotely?  It can also turn it -off- remotely. Did you know that California (and through them, all the USA) is trying to get remote-disable as a feature on the next generation of "pollution controls" for vehicles?  Uh huh, they are. This would give them the ability to turn off every properly equipped car in a neighborhood, or on a certain highway, or in a whole city, a whole state, or even the whole damn country and internationally as well. 

Not science fiction, nonono, it has already happened my friends.

That's one of the reasons why I have a 1964 car with a carburetor and points ignition as part of the Phantom vehicle fleet. Still need to get groceries during a "national emergency" y'know.  I recommend y'all look into it, or at least find out which wire to cut on your new vehicle.  Might save your bacon some day.

In the mean time, you might want to phone up your US Senator, as well as Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) and Susan Collins (Rino-Maine), and KICK THEIR ASSES for trying to turn the free nation of America into a third world tyranny like Egypt.

The Phantom

"...pour encourager les autres."

Voltair said it about admirals, but it can apply to peasants too. 

Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district. ... She was sentenced last week to 10 days in county jail and put on three years of probation.

Jail time for trying to skate around a school district?  Seriously?  They hired a private eye and everything to catch this woman.  Why bother?

"I don't think they wanted money," Williams-Bolar said. "They wanted me to be an example."
Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove acknowledged as much.  "I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts," Cosgrove said.

Because apparatchiks don't like being ignored, is why.
Behold the true face of socialism, my friends.  Better to see it now than wait until the bread lines start.

The Phantom

Today's media is a death cult.

You can't go to the movies, you can't watch TV, you can't listen to the radio, you can't read the paper, you can't even buy a frackin' comic book.
When I was a young man, I used to collect comic books.  Then one day, I just... stopped.  It wasn't fun anymore.  Right around the time DC comics killed off Superman the first time, be about 1993.
Every once in a loooong while I buy a Spiderman, Superman, Fantastic Four, X Men or whatever to see if its fun again.

Marvel Comics has snuffed out the Fantastic Four's Human Torch.

In the most shocking death to hit the comic book industry since - well, the publisher knocked off Captain America four years ago - the fiery Johnny Storm goes out in a blaze of glory saving his young niece and nephew from an army of insect creatures in Fantastic Four #587, in stores Wednesday.

Nope.

What the hell is the problem with this company, can't they see their sales going in the toilet every year?

Jonathan Hickman, the current writer of the series, says it wasn't easy to extinguish a comic book legend.

"Johnny kind of represents a childlike idealism within the group," Hickman told the News. "And the story that we wanted to tell going forward from my first issue on the book and where I would like to end up, there came a point in the story where it served us to eliminate what was an eternal source of optimism in the world."

Oh, I see.  Marvel has been taken over by nihilistic post-modern assholes. Well, that saved me four bucks I guess, eh?

The Phantom

Report from the RetardOsphere.

Just some things on Drudge that burned my thrusters today.

108-3 girls basketball rout raises questions

It's been called unsportsmanlike. It's been called ugly. The question now is whether Christian Heritage (Utah) High, which routed West Ridge (Utah) Academy, 108-3, in a girls basketball game last week, actually did anything wrong by blowing out an overwhelmed opponent.

There's almost 2000 comments on there right now, a few of which read like this one from RickP, 19 yr old from New Joisey "should never happen in any sport at any level.the coach should be terminated and barred from any and all youth sports "

The question that comes to my mind is,  "Are you kidding me?" One team is such rubbish that the other team can score two times a minute for four quarters, and the GOOD TEAM comes in for abuse?  That's freakin' retarded!

Somebody didn't get their kickback!

In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel said Emanuel does not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Chicago for a year prior to the election. The judges reversed a decision by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which had unanimously agreed that Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor.

I'd just like to say "Yay!"

General Bullmoose sells more cars in China than the USA!

General Motors Co. sold more cars and trucks in China last year than it did in the U.S., for the first time in the company's 102-year history.

Unlike Yanks, the Chinese don't have a problem buying cars from a corrupt government owned institution.

Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch"

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Susan Collins should be kicked out of the Republican party for this one.  This thing is a disgrace!

Shut off your TV!

Last week, my colleague Brian Stelter reported that on Tuesday, the day after the pilot episode of "Skins" was shown on MTV, executives at the cable channel were frantically meeting to discuss whether the salacious teenage drama starring actors as young as 15 might violate federal child pornography statutes.

Senior executives are now considering additional editing for coming episodes, but that's a little like trying to lock the door after a naked 17-year-old has already busted out and gone running down the street, which is precisely what one of the characters does in Episode 3 — with a pill-enhanced erection, no less.

No really, shut it off.  Its worse than there's nothing on.  There is something on, and it could hurt you.  Hopefully this kiddie porno flick will hurt some poobahs at Viacom and MTV, who seem to really need a visit to banckruptcy court and/or jail to slap some respect into them.  If they can't do the right thing, at least we can make them deeply afraid to keep doing the wrong thing.

That's our trip to the RetardOsphere for today.  Now returning you to reality.

The Phantom

Gee, what could have caused this?

I see on Drudge Report that a "suicide bomber" has blown up 31 people at Moscow airport this morning.


Damn Sarah Palin and her damn crosshairs!!! Obviously we need more gun control!

But seriously, I haven't read the story yet, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the bomber was some kind of Islamist, probably with Mohamed somewhere in his name.

Given the casualties, I'm also going to take a wild guess and predict he blew up in the airport security line, where everybody is packed in like sardines in a nice narrow area with concrete walls and ceiling. Reflects the shock waves, y'know.

That probably makes me a RACIST!!! I mean, it could have been an 82 year old ex-school teacher lady from Barrie Ontario who packed her wooden leg with C4. That's just as likely, right? I mean, it could happen...

Update: Well, I was wrong about the location, it blew up in baggage claim. However BBC and Reuters reports were both completely empty of any other information! They don't actually know that it was a suicide bomber, they made that part up. Islamic militants are "suspected".

Transparent steel!

Never let it be said that the Phantom Soapbox just points and laughs at the leftards.  You've heard of Transparent Aluminum from Star Trek, and you've heard some guy actually did it for real because they are testing it for bulletproof windows.

Well, here is transparent steel.

Glass stronger and tougher than steel? A new type of damage-tolerant metallic glass, demonstrating a strength and toughness beyond that of any known material, has been developed and tested by a collaboration of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)and the California Institute of Technology. What's more, even better versions of this new glass may be on the way.

"These results mark the first use of a new strategy for metallic glass fabrication and we believe we can use it to make glass that will be even stronger and more tough," says Robert Ritchie, a materials scientist who led the Berkeley contribution to the research.

The new metallic glass is a microalloy featuring palladium, a metal with a high "bulk-to-shear" stiffness ratio that counteracts the intrinsic brittleness of glassy materials.

"Because of the high bulk-to-shear modulus ratio of palladium-containing material, the energy needed to form shear bands is much lower than the energy required to turn these shear bands into cracks," Ritchie says. "The result is that glass undergoes extensive plasticity in response to stress, allowing it to bend rather than crack."

 Imagine fiberglass made out of that, my friends.  Or how about metallic glass cables holding up a transparent bridge?  Or maybe just really thin windows.

An exciting time to be alive, to be sure. 

The Phantom

Shut-update: Free speech can't exist unchained. US politics needs the tonic of order.

The Guardian says the Tea Party needs to shut the hell up!

Today's culprit is freedom of speech, or at least the speech of the American right and its broadcast cheerleaders. Shock-jock radio presenters feed on biased television news to present a view of the world divided between goodies and baddies. The baddies are always on the brink of victory and must be confronted with virile aggression. Language that might not disturb a balanced mind can clearly stimulate and legitimise an unbalanced one.

Say again?

The vitriol and inaccuracy of the campaign against Obama's public health reforms last year were like those against abortion and homosexuality. To many Europeans, the echo across the Atlantic came from a people isolated from the outside world and unable to handle today's social and scientific progress. The debate was infused with nastiness and xenophobia, as if the US was a land composed of tribes bred only to hate the outside world, and often themselves.

Damn Americans  are too stupid to be trusted with freedom! There oughta be a law!
Maybe the Guardian will change their tune when they all have to get a license to practice journalism.  Or not, possibly that's their aim.
Anyway, my new response when a guy like this tells me to shut up is "Make me, pencil neck."

re: your article, "Sarah Palin’s hurt feelings aren’t the injury I’m worried about."

You were doing all right until you got to this part:

"Well, time may tell. Mental illness can certainly isolate a family, but I'd barricade a bit too if I lived in Arizona. They're heavily armed, and their response to this incident has been to become way more heavily armed. (Sales of Glock handguns, the very weapon Mr. Loughner used, jumped 60 per cent after the shooting.)I sympathize with their sadness, certainly. But I think if I lived in Arizona, my patio would be underground."

In Arizona, several unarmed bystanders attacked Loughner bare handed, while he was still shooting, and managed to subdue him. In Arizona, several people with guns on their belts, private citizens all, ran -toward- the sound of gunfire and arrived in time to help subdue Loughner.

In Canada, an entire bus full of people ran away from one man with a knife. Just a knife mind you. They let him stab Tim McLean to death. Many, many stab wounds reportedly. They let him cut off McLean's head. And eat it. For hours.

So you might want to ask some Arizonans if they're willing to lower their standards and put up with you for a neighbor before buying a winter place.

The Phantom

Mammoth in 4 years? Woo!

Taking a break from the outrage parade, we have a fun story about cloning the woolly mammoth.

Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.

But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.

Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.

"Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Woolly mammoths, back from the dead.  Dang!  That's freakin' cool, you've got to admit.

I'm changing this place into a mammoth farm, we've got enough snow here.

The Mammoth Phantom

Toning down the rhetoric, San Francisco style.

I have long noted that words seem to mean different things to different people. The largest such difference is between conservative and liberals.
To a conservative, "tone down the rhetoric" in politics would mean that one should restrict oneself to the actual facts, one should keep exchanges between candidates in public reasonably cordial or at least professional, and no swearing. Accusing your opponents of murder and terrorism, that would not be "toned down". That would be "freaking out", and very likely libelous.

This is what "toned down" means in San Francisco:

We feel for Sarah Palin. We do. The Arizona shooting rampage was neither her fault nor the fault of Tea Party members. It just wasn't. (Championing a party that, at its core, centers around a collective dislike of President's Barack Obama's melanin levels? Sure, that's her fault. But certainly not what happened to Rep. Gabrielle Gifford, Gabriel Zimmerman and several others last week.) To attack Palin here is unfair. That would be like unjustly blaming Muslims for the actions of a few extremists, a thick slice of irony lost on the former GOP vice presidential candidate and her self-centered tirade against irresponsible journalists.

However, that didn't stop these posters from appearing in San Francisco overnight. This one here, found in Hayes Valley on Grove between Laguna and Octavia, says: "Enrage them with fear until they feel justified in their violence."

Regarding the poster from the NBC affiliate in SF:

Despite President Obama's speech about healing, shared responsibility and shared pain, conservative pundit Sarah Palin is plastered, unflatteringly, along one San Francisco street (so far).

The posters -- found and publisehd by SFist.com -- espouse "Enrage them with fear until they feel justified in their violence."

Granted, Palin has brought even more spotlight on herself with a recent diatribe against "irresponsible journalists."

Maybe the president's message stressing the strength of our words and how we use them will stick ... like a poster to a wall.

When MSM Democrats use the phrase "tone down the rhetoric" what they actually mean is "SHUT THE **** UP YOU ******* ******* ****** CONSERVATIVE **** ***** **** **** (****)!!!!!!!"

I hope that clears things up.

The Phantom

The true liberal mind revealed.

Every once in a loooong while, one of these MSM big names screws up and speaks the truth that is in their heart.  Tom Brokaw says a mouthful:

"Gun control is too simple a phrase to define all the complications and nuances of it, frankly. In Arizona they have a wide open system. I would be nervous about going into a bar or restaurant in Arizona on a Saturday night where people can carry concealed without permits," Tom Brokaw said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." (via Noel at Newsbusters)

See, according to the Great Myth, it is gun owners who are supposed to be the fearful ones. But the truth is that liberals like Tom Brokaw are so filled with fear and loathing of their fellows that they are quite comfortable using the power of government to disarm and oppress the entire population. 
If I may translate for Mr. Brokaw, "The world is filled with stupid people, and stupid people must be CONTROLLED damnit. If we have to ban every gun and confiscate every bullet in the entire goddamn country, its a small price to pay for me to be able to have a drink on Saturday night in comfort."
Thanks Tom.  Nice to know the truth about it for once.

The Phantom

Sarah Palin returns media fire!

Direct hit in video statement this morning by Sarah Palin!

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don't like a person's vision for the country, you're free to debate that vision. If you don't like their ideas, you're free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those "calm days" when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren't designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government. Our Founders' genius was to design a system that helped settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So, we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure.

OH! BLOOD LIBEL! Dems bring a gun, Palin brings a tank! BOOM, baby!

I love Sarah Palin, she's frickin' fierce!

Go Tea Party!

Shut-update! ABC News further beclowns itself: "Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story. And she may well face further criticism for the timing and scope of her remarks." Found a way to become part of the story, are you fucking kidding me?

More inevitability...

This is a great one!

In response to Saturday's shooting spree in Tucscon, Rep. Peter King (R, N.Y.) has announced that he's planning on introducing legislation to make it illegal for American citizens to knowingly carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress.

Genius!
Remember that name my friends, Peter King, R-N.Y.  Unless that's a typo, y'all should get on the blower to Petey's office and the RNC and fill their ears with fire.

The Phantom

Every time you think they've finally hit the bottom...

... you see the sonsabitches break through to a brand new low.  Vermont senator and EPIC scumbag Bernie Sanders is fund raising off the Arizona shooting.

This afternoon Sanders sent out a fundraising appeal, seeking to raise money to fight Republicans and other "right-wing reactionaries" responsible for the climate that led to the shooting.

He writes:

Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country.  I also want to thank the very many supporters who have begun contributing online to my 2012 reelection campaign at www.bernie.org.  There is no question but that the Republican Party, big money corporate interests and right-wing organizations will vigorously oppose me.  Your financial support now and in the future is much appreciated.

Remember that name my friends, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.  Someday maybe one of us will be in a position to serve up a big ol' can of "You're FIRED!" on this P.O.S.  Some things just should not be allowed to pass.

The Phantom

Sheer, freakin' brilliance.

Kathy Shaidle has smart friends.

http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2011/01/the-left-is-putting-down-a-slave-rebellion-by-shaming-the-slaves/

Greg Swann wrote to thank me for linking to him, and added his thoughts about the Giffords shooting, via email:

Regarding Tucson, responding to the left about vitriolic rhetoric or gun rights is beside the point. "Neener, neener, neener!" is just tu quoque in its original childish garb.

The left is putting down a slave rebellion by shaming the slaves.

If the Tea Party folks are not willing to fight the real war, they are doomed to lose it.

A perfect, shining encapsulation.  Awesome.  Thanks Kathy!

The Phantom

Shut-Update, Dems double down!

Ok, today we are hearing lots more shut-uppery from the Dems, such as this bit here:

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in Congress, said Sunday the deadly shooting in Arizona should get the country thinking about what's acceptable to say publicly and when people should keep their mouths shut.

[snippage]

'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.'

Clyburn used as an example a comment made by Sharron Angle, an unsuccessful U.S. senatorial candidate in Nevada, who said the frustrated public may consider turning to 'Second Amendment remedies' for political disputes unless Congress changed course.

Clyburn said the man accused of shooting Giffords did just that.

'He saw a Second Amendment remedy and that's what occurred here and there is no way not to make that connection,' Clyburn said."

Because you see, Jim Clyburn reads minds, and he just knows what the shooter was thinking!

Inevitably...

New York DemocRat uses the death of innocents to advance her disgusting, insane agenda.

One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday.
...

"My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow," McCarthy told POLITICO in a Sunday afternoon phone interview.

Gun control activists cried it was time to reform weapons laws in the United States, almost immediately after a gunman killed six and injured 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Arizona on Saturday.

New twist, they are going to add some good, solid socialist shutuppery to the menu.

Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.

"Language or symbols that could be seen as threatening" according to a federal bureaucrat could get Mother Teresa chucked in jail.

So the plan is, you won't be able to shoot back and you won't be able to complain about it.  Just thought y'all would like some names.

The Phantom

Ever wonder what the world felt like in 1935?

It felt like this.

Hungary is introducing on Saturday a controversial media law that critics say will turn the clock back and re-introduce totalitarian rule in the former Communist nation. Under the legislation, journalists can face huge fines if their coverage is deemed unbalanced. The controversy comes as Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on Saturday.

"unbalanced", forsooth.  Sound familiar? Tea Party, start your engines.

The Phantom

Gas prices: Where's the outrage?

Larry Elder asks where the media is with their pitchforks this month:

Five dollars per gallon of gas by 2012! A former president of Shell Oil considers this likely. The average price on Christmas Day for a gallon of regular gas reached $3.28 in Los Angeles County, the highest price since October 2008. In one month, the price rose 13 cents, up 35 cents year to year.

Where are the calls to sic Obama's Justice Department on Big Oil to hold the oil companies accountable for "market manipulation"? Why aren't we hunting down the amoral "oil speculators" responsible for repealing the law of supply-and-demand in order to line their pockets?

Silly question, we know where they are.  They are hiding under their desks and hoping nobody remembers what they said two years ago.  Also hoping nobody publicly connects the dots from the gas pump price to Barry's ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  Or inflation.  Or the Treasury printing a trillion bucks this year.  That's not even hyperbole, they really printed a trillion with a "T".  MSM, hiding.

Well, how about Canuckistan?

Here in Canada, we are praying for three bucks a gallon.  Praying, I tell you.  Why?  Because the price right now in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, is $1.14 a liter.  1 liter = 0.264 172 052 36  US gallons, thanks to the undead genius of Pierre Trudeau, we pay by the quart.  Canadian dollar is within 6 decimal points of perfect parity with the US dollar today, so apples to apples,  we pay $4.31 a US gallon for gas.  I paid $1.08/quart for diesel yesterday, that was $4.05 a gallon.  Wowzer, such a deal!
Canada is an oil -exporting- country.  We sell the stuff to you guys in the States.  Why does ours cost more than yours by by such a wide margin?  TAXES.  Plain and simple.  Some will quibble that formulations are different, that Canadian provinces add things that are not required in the US, and blah blah blah, but I have it on good authority that the blend they sell in Michigan and California is as expensive as Ontario's, due to ethanol and oxidizers and whatnot.  California may be more expensive.

Where's the outrage in Canada?  Where are the investigations into Big Oil and all that?  Same deal, the sonsabitches are hiding, praying nobody says anything.  Because if anyone -does- say anything, the finger will point to the Liberal Party of Canada, and the Liberal Party of Ontario.  They are the ones who did this.  And because they are the ones, all you hear from the media here in the Demented Dominion is the faint chirping of crickets.

May they all die of toe fungus.

Who's to blame here, really though?

Of late there has been some news about the Mohawk Warrior Smuggling Society. The smugglers are supposed to be getting an apology from the Canadian Forces.

The Canadian Forces is preparing an official apology for listing the Mohawk Warrior Society as a potentially violent insurgent group in a draft [of a counter insurgency] manual in 2006.

Given the observed facts about the Smuggling Society and their antics in Caledonia since they invaded the Douglas Creek Estates land, plus what's going down in Cornwall area, this seems insane. They -are- a violent insurgent group, there's no "potentially" about it.

I have an explanation of the insanity here. Recently the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy. was given permission to hunt deer in the Dundas Conservation Area and a couple more conservation areas near Hamilton, after being caught and unceremoniously booted off last year for "exercising their treaty rights". One guy made the call.

Hamilton Conservation Authority boss Steve Miazga says he believes Six Nations natives have a right to hunt deer on conservation lands, and that he alone made the decision to close public trails in the interest of public safety while native hunters "cull" deer until Dec. 31.

"My conclusion is that they have these treaty rights," Miazga, the conservation authority's chief administrative officer, said Monday.

As of a couple days ago Mr. Steve Miazga is in some serious hot water over this, since people discovered armed men hunting deer in the PARK. Its a park, y'know. Hikers, joggers, kids on toboggans, the usual park kinda stuff going on. One bureaucrat sticks his neck out? For an illegal deer hunt? Again, this seems insane.

The explanation is, Miazga grasped at the only straw available to him to fix a problem that threatens all the Conservation Authority lands in the Hamilton area: deer.
The fur covered piranha have eaten every green stick in the Conservation Area less than 6 feet off the ground. In the suburbs of Ancaster, deer have gone from the occasional charming midnight visitor to an invading horde of landscaping destroyers. I lived there, the overpopulation is obvious and extreme.
Why? Hunting regulations, obviously. You kill one, you go to jail.
What can the conservation authority's chief administrative officer do about it? NOTHING!!! Regulations. Catch 22.
Meanwhile deer are eating the place. His blather about "poachers" is hilarious. He should be so lucky to have poachers, he needs to cull 100+ animals before spring.
A bunch of race-shakedown artists, members of which have been charged with extortion, make him an offer he can't refuse. "Six Nations Indians" with "treaty rights", this he can sell. He takes the deal! Hence the appearance of insanity.

Who's to blame here?

Pretty much every bureaucrat who has anything to do with regulating hunting in the Hamilton area, that's who. A long list, because it involves city, regional, provincial and federal levels and tax funded NGOs too. They've created a situation where only ORGANIZED CRIME can cut the Gordian Knot for them.
I can't really blame the thugs for taking advantage of the situation. Its like putting a pail full of money beside the road every morning, sooner or later somebody is going to take it.
Without knowing the details of the Canadian Forces apology situation, one can pretty reliably predict that some military desk pilot is grasping at the only straw he's got, just like Miazga.

What we need therefore is a tax cut.
I'm not talking a Laffer Curve, stimulate-the-economy tax cut. I am talking the Four Horsemen of the freakin' Apocalypse kinda tax cut. I'm talking about a famine here. I'm talking about a tax cut so big, so deep, so wide, so all-encompassing that it STARVES OUT the hundreds of thousands of chair-polishing asses who keep this Catch 22 clown circus stumbling along. A tax cut that reduces government employee head counts like the Black Death in 12th C. Europe.
That is the only way out. We do not need better regulation, better oversight, better control. We need -less- of it. A lot less.

Thoughts to think about in the New Year, my friends.

The Phantom

Update: Greetings to Five Feet of Fury readers! Kathy Shaidle is Da Bomb!

Merry Christmas!!!

Gee, ya think?

From our bulging, groaning, over flowing "No DUH!" file, we have this "study" today.

According to a new study conducted by the Parents Television Council (PTC), Hollywood is shockingly obsessed with sexualizing teen girls, to the point where underage female characters are shown participating in an even higher percentage of sexual situations than their adult counterparts: 47 percent to 29 percent respectively.

PTC’s report, entitled “New Target: A Study of Teen Female Sexualization on Primetime

TV” is based on a content analysis drawn from the 25 most popular shows in the 12-17 demographic throughout the 2009-2010 television season.

It's been my humble opinion for quite a while now that most of what passes for prime time TV these days would have got these Hollyweirdos arrested 30 years ago even if shown in a theater. Bettie Page would have stormed off the set of Glee in moral outrage.

I'd say that anyone leaving a child alone in front of a TV these days is crazy. Even things billed as "kid's" shows are far too adult. Anybody see Toy Story 3? Worse than a Schwarzenegger action flick. Kids are less scared of the Terminator than Toy Story.

My response is: I don't get cable. Don't have a TV antenna. Don't watch at all, ever.

I should pay to have my brain waves assaulted?

Texas skeet shooting.

Everything is bigger in Texas. Bigger guns, bigger clays.

Pull!

A Mexican drone crashed in El Paso's Lower Valley, sparking a federal investigation and raising questions about why the aircraft was in U.S. airspace.

YEEEEEHAW!!!!

Don't stand in front of it!

Special delivery for the ancient denizens of The Arms Chest, from our bulging "Reach out and touch someone" file The Phantom Soapbox brings you: US Navy Rail Gun!

Navy scientists set a world record Friday during a test of an electromagnetic railgun, a tractor-trailer sized weapon that sends a 20-pound projectile rocketing through the air at seven times the speed of sound.
The futuristic gun was tested twice at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., and the first shot generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy, the scientists said.

Their motto: velocitas eradico.

Oh yeah, baby.  Sign me up for one of these.  It won't fit in my truck, but I could tow it...

Photonic lifting device demonstrated.

That's right, photonic lifting, as in you shine a light on it and it produces lift.  And you can STEER it.

...until now, no one thought to use [photon] pressure in an analogue of an aerofoil, said Grover Swarzlander of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

"Here at RIT we have a group that... do ray tracing through objects to render computer graphics stuff all the time," he told BBC News.

"So I said let's just turn this problem onto one of these ray-tracing programs and see what happens."

The team ran computer simulations based on a semi-cylindrical glass rod to see what would happen when a beam of unfocused light was shone on it.

They discovered not only that the rods experienced "lift", but that there were several angles that the rod tended to align itself to.

"The surprising thing from our model shows it has different positions of rotational equilibrium, so it will roll to a given position, stay there, and continue to undergo lift," Dr Swarzlander said.

The team went on to design tiny glass rods, less than a hair's breadth across, to prove the principle.

The rods were floated in water, through which a laser was shone. They behaved just as the simulations had predicted.

Major point of interest here is that the force generated by the glass shapes is directional.  Meaning if you turn the shape, the direction of the force changes.
Steerable light sails equals free trips to the planets and the outer system for robots.  Really BIG ones, if we want.

The Steerable Phantom.

Classic D'OH! moment for DemocRats everywhere.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer introduced a bill Sunday that calls for punishing anyone who misuses. They could also face fines of up to $100,000.

But gee,  were we not told by Chuckie and Barry and Nancy and Barbie and everybody that those naked body scanners DID NOT STORE THE SCANS?!!!  Why yes, I do indeed recall being told that.  I didn't believe it of course, Democrats being the lowest form of lying scum yet discovered on Earth or off it.  But they did tell us that.

So today UpChuck Schumer, senior Senator for Noo Yawk and biggest lying scum of all of them, introduces a bill to prevent what we were all told could never happen?

D'OH!!!

Big Brother's competition, Big Advertising.

For your "I always feel like somebody's watching meeee!" file, you're not wrong.  They really ARE friggin' watching you. Like a hawk watches a mouse.

David Norris wants to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world.

He's off to a good start. So far, Mr. Norris's start-up company, BlueCava Inc., has identified 200 million devices. By the end of next year, BlueCava says it expects to have cataloged one billion of the world's estimated 10 billion devices.

Advertisers no longer want to just buy ads. They want to buy access to specific people. So, Mr. Norris is building a "credit bureau for devices" in which every computer or cellphone will have a "reputation" based on its user's online behavior, shopping habits and demographics. He plans to sell this information to advertisers willing to pay top dollar for granular data about people's interests and activities.

Device fingerprinting is a powerful emerging tool in this trade. It's "the next generation of online advertising," Mr. Norris says.

FYI, this includes cars, cell phones, routers, laptops, ipods, game consoles, anything that uses WiFi, ethernet or cell phone technology.  This method lets the snooper identify your specific computer behind a firewall, so doing your downloading at McDonald's is no defense.

To me this sounds like the beautiful hammering of opportunity on the front door, demanding to be let in. 
As soon as people find out about this fingerprinting/tracking bullshit, there will be a thriving market in "fingerprint randomization" software.  If I'm any judge of human nature, millions of people will pay real money to jam a wrench in this Norris guy's gears. 
For one thing, we know that somewhere between a quarter and a half of all web traffic is porn sites.  Do those people want unseen advertisers (or the government!) to know they spend X minutes per day at Hot Chicks.com?  Because if unseen advertisers know it, how long before that info is for sale?
Besides, do we really want these jerks targeting ads on an individual basis?  For one thing, you'd never find out about anything new by accident, just the same old crap you've been ignoring all along.

Anonymity is the grease that makes the Internet glide.  Money waiting to be made, my friends!

Speaking of propaganda...

The NY Times' David Carr files a typically nuanced view of the media response to the TSA Grope n' Fly program.  It was a false alarm, according to him.

If a squadron of mad scientists surrounded by supercomputers gathered in a laboratory to try to conjure a single news topic that would blow up large, they could not touch the T.S.A. pat-down story.
<snippage>
The pat-down story was the equivalent of vaporware — it seemed as if something huge was about to happen, but it turned out that it was a story about a story, the noisy, fervent sound of a news system feeding on itself.

Yeah, because it -couldn't- be about the TSA shutting the machines off and stepping WAY back on the groping for the Thanksgiving Day travel rush could it?

In the face of such obvious official retrenchment, this Democrat Party opperative is trying to make it look like a public tantrum. Trying, but not doing well.

At a time of incredibly fractionalized politics, the pat-down was a single issue we could all rally around. For liberals, it was Big Brother grabbing liberties (with both hands) and conservatives once again felt the intrusive touch of Big Government in their pocket.

"Fractionalized"?  This is a word now?  Are we talking fractions, factions or fractures?  Retard!

But this here is my favorite, favorite part.

The issue of personal searches and enhanced visibility on scans would seem to be a more acute one for women, given the objectification of women in general and greater history of assault. But discussion on Twitter included two times as many men as women, according to Trendrr. Something primal is at work here, that speaks to both machismo — boys don't touch boys — and certain male insecurities about being visible to strangers. You thought that dream of being in high school in your underwear was bad.

Yep, its all about the homophobia.  Also racism, 'cause only White people in America aren't used to getting "patted down" by the authorities.  Really.

And that my friends is why everyone with a single functional neuron reads the New York Times strictly for the comedy.  Pure propaganda, badly delivered.  Plus, we all know the shrieks of rage this author would have expressed had a Republican been president. 

Here's his email addy, let him know how you feel.
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
twitter.com/carr2n

The Phantom
 

How the Canadian propaganda system works.

Saw this article at Borque today about Toronto being the most miserable city in Canada. "No duh!" said I.
Fairly standard news gruel we get served these days, some bunch of overpaid wankers do a quickie study, issue a press release with a catchy title, newsies puff it, then its gone.

Despite having the country's largest GDP and population, the megacity ranks lowest on the happiness scale. The study used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey for 2007 and 2008 to determine the happiness of various regions of Canada and the factors which contribute to the variation.

Ok, typical publish-or-perish ivory tower grant getter. Major findings were stunningly obvious:

The study also hinted at the reasons for Toronto's relative unhappiness. A key finding of the study is that "the most important reason for geographical variation in happiness in Canada is differences in the sense of belonging to local communities, which is generally higher in small CMAs, rural areas, and Atlantic Canada."

Stress was also an important determinant of happiness, something found in great abundance on Toronto subways and highways each morning. And while household income did help with happiness, the benefits it offered were scant.

Yeah, because in places like Toronto more money does not buy you less stress (not even -way- more money) and population churn gives you a new set of neighbors every three years or so. Duh.

So why bother even doing the article? What's the "Canadian Community Health Survey", who's the frickin' "Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards", and why should I care anyway? Well, I googled it.

Turns out the CCHS is (peeling away the impressive bureaucratese) a telephone survey done by StatsCan every year. One of those things that helps drive your taxes up, an office full of university graduates sending each other email.

The purpose of having it is to provide data for outfits like CCSLS to do POLICY RESEARCH on. I found their list of donors interesting. This is basically a federal government funded liberal lobbying organ. So we paid for this "study". Nice work if you can get it eh?

What's the policy goal this time? Its a beauty!

The report suggests Canada consider a new metric for measuring success, one originally championed by the tiny Buddhist nation of Bhutan and now taken up by France and the United Kingdom: Gross national happiness.

No, really. This thing probably cost a couple hundred grand once you add all the salaries up, all to promote that singular bit of abject stupidity.

This is called "moving the goal-posts" in rhetoric. Your policies measurably suck and cause misery, but you can't change them because they are in place to pay off the guys who bankroll your party. So you change the way things get measured, and then by magic the misery isn't your fault! Over taxation and corruption have ruined the economy, but if we measure by Gross National Happiness (as measured by a two-bit telephone survey overseen by certified Liberal useful idiots) then it doesn't matter if there's no money! Money can't buy you love, right?

Faithfully reported in the MSM too, of course. Like parrots.

That's how the Canadian federal propaganda system works. By Liberals, for Liberals, paid for by you and me. Each province has a duplicate set, and all the large cities too. And it costs us -billions- every freaking year. Great eh?

Stupid shit like this is the reason we have centrally planned health care, mass immigration of peasants with zero skills, Caledonia, revolving door jails, gun control, and et cetera.

I think an excellent piece of political kung fu would be to quietly de-fund all these policy mills by nefarious, back alley accounting measures. Pretty soon all these jackass policy stories disappear out of the MSM, and the Liberals have to PAY FOR THEIR OWN PROPAGANDA. That'd break their backs I bet.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome to Five Feet of Fury readers. Kathy's on a roll today!

Toldja.

The Phantom, proven not paranoid enough again. TSA's X-rated X-ray scanner coming to boats,  trains and buses near y'all, real soon. Janet says.

The next step in tightened security could be on U.S. public transportation, trains and boats.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for U.S. vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary.

"[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through," Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on "Charlie Rose."

"I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?"

Told ya so.

All I can say is this will prove real interesting in states like Arizona.  Where concealed carry of pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, knives, bats, swords, switchblades, ninja stars, kubotans, nunchaku, sai, kukries, bayonets, brass knuckles and Gatling guns... is legal. If you can schlep it you can have one under your coat.  How'd you like to be the official TSA ball fondler at the Phoenix bus station? 

Given the "Hands Off My Teabag!" talk from the Tea Party these days, I don't think Janet Napolitano has a very bright future after January.

An inspired rant.

Linkage courtesy of Kate McMillan's excellent blog, an inspired rant from Stop Shouting. Added bonus, nice battle cry.

The following rebuttal is mine alone. I do not speak for my husband, for my friends, for my children, but solely for myself.

I am tired of being told to sit down and shut up.

I am tired of being told what I can and can not say.

What is "acceptable", while my ideas and values are mocked and trampled.

Enough. I have had enough.

Fix bayonets!

The Sharp and Pointy Phantom

Oh, the humanity.

Why is it we only see these stories in Brit newspapers? TSA grope 'n grab agents whinging about fatties and people who smell. I kid you not.

'It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man's private parts, their butt, their inner thigh,' one told the BoardingArea blog.

'Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!'

Another said he had a huge problem dealing with a 'large number of passengers... daily that have a problem understanding what personal hygieneFur is.'

All the staff said that they had experienced a high level of personal abuse while carrying out the pat-downs.

'Being a TSO means often being verbally abused, you let the comments roll off and check the next person,' one said.

'However, when a woman refuses the scanner then comes to me and tells me that she feels like I am molesting her, that is beyond verbal abuse.

'I asked the woman if she thought I like touching other women all day and she told me that I probably did or I wouldn't be with the TSA.

Gee, I feel so sorry for the poor things, trapped for hours and hours and HOURS in an airport with no way to get out, forced to undergo demeaning and perverted yet utterly useless procedures... oh wait, that's not them, that's ME! They can down tools and walk any time they want, whereas I get tased and arrested or maybe even shot in the ass if I complain.

Hey TSA whiners! If you don't like life as a jackbooted thug, can't handle the abuse as you handle other people's wedding tackle and make their kids cry,

QUIT YOUR JOB.

I know times are tough, but how hard can it be to get minimum wage doing something that doesn't involve sexual assault eight hours a day?

The Fondling Averse Phantom

Proof that DemocRats have not cornered the market on stupid.

Stupid appears to be a bipartisan phenomenon.

Stewart Baker, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security as its first secretary of policy under President George W. Bush, suspects the new security protocols and the aggressive reaction of some passengers is hurting TSA morale.

"TSA has made a lot of progress in training its officers to be professional even in the face of unhappy passengers, but the latest protocols — and press coverage of the most inflammatory stories — have led to a much higher level of hostility," said Baker.

"Instead of making this Wednesday National Opt-Out Day in which a bunch of self-appointed guardians of liberty slow down the line for everyone by asking for pat-downs," said Baker, "maybe what we need is a day when everyone who goes through the line says, 'Thanks for what you do.' "

See?

So,Stewie thinks we should thank the camp guards for their service, then shut the hell up and get on with the groping and the x-rated x-rays because all the mean talk is hurting TSA morale.

Um, no.  National Opt Out day should be EVERY goddamn day, number one, and number two TSA agents need to be made aware they are working for the f-ing Gestapo and need to quit ASA-frickin'-P.  Nobody should be doing that job, period.  It is not a job that should be done, ever.

Some more food for TSA thought,  Americans are the most  well trained and well equipped sons of bitches on Earth.  Americans have cellphone cameras, night vision gear, the Internet, YouTube, and all manner of whatnot at their personal disposal.  And they are CRANKY at their government.  Getting crankier by the day, too.

Time to hang up the rubber gloves, boys.  I don't think Joe Sixpack is going to put up with this shit for long.

Here be dragons.

Change of pace from the politics, here's something you don't see every day: a flying dinosaur the size of a giraffe.

Dr Witton said: ''Most birds take off either by running to pick up speed and jumping into the air before flapping wildly, or if they're small enough, they may simply launch themselves into the air from a standstill.

''Previous theories suggested that giant pterosaurs were too big and heavy to perform either of these manoeuvres and therefore they would have remained on the ground.

''But when examining pterosaurs the bird analogy can be stretched too far.

''These creatures were not birds, they were flying reptiles with a distinctly different skeletal structure, wing proportions and muscle mass.

''They would have achieved flight in a completely different way to birds and would have had a lower angle of take off and initial flight trajectory.

''The anatomy of these creatures is unique.''

Their research, published today in the international Public Library of Science journal, PLoS ONE, follows claims that pterosaurs were too heavy to take off like birds.

But Drs Witton and Habib suggest that the creatures, with up to 50kg of forelimb muscle, could easily have launched themselves into the air despite their massive size and weight.

Previous theories have asserted that giant pterosaurs could have been six metres tall with a wingspan of up to 12 metres but the researchers argue that five metres high with a 10 meter wingspan would have been more realistic.

Dr Witton said: ''The size of the flight muscles in a giant pterosaur would be incredible: they alone would be up to 50kg (110lbs) and account for 20% of the animal's total mass providing tremendous power and lift.''

Q: What does a 15 foot tall flying dinosaur eat?
A: Anything it wants! Bwaha!

Here is the actual journal article, its got math in it and everything. In case any Lefties want to look, there are pictures too. ~:)

The Phantom Flying Dinosaur Hunter

Signs of sickness in British body politic.

Official voyeurism is reaching new heights in Britain, with remote controlled flying cameras being the brand new police toy this season.

Already in the UK police are using drones to track thieves. In February, the Air Robot was deployed by Merseyside police after officers lost an alleged car thief who had escaped on foot in thick fog.

Using the device's on-board camera and thermal-imaging technology, the operator was able to pick up the suspect through his body heat and direct foot patrols to his location.

It led officers to a 16-year-old youth, who was hiding in bushes alongside the Leeds-Liverpool canal, in Litherland, Merseyside.

The drone, which measures 3ft between the tips of its four carbon fibre rotor blades, uses unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology originally designed for military reconnaissance.

The battery-powered device can have a range of cameras attached to its main body, including CCTV surveillance or thermal imaging cameras.

It is designed to hover almost silently above crime scenes and send live footage to officers on the ground, but the unit can also 'perch and stare' from a solid platform, allowing the operator to capture hours of footage from a hidden vantage point.

Merseyside Police is one of a handful of forces trying out the devices which, at £40,000 each, are far cheaper to use for small-scale operations than a conventional helicopter.

They have been using the drones for two years, mainly to help in search and rescue operations, to execute drug warrants and to crack down on anti-social behaviour.

The Home Office is now exploring how the craft can be used to give back-up to police, ambulance and fire services.

Its not enough that there's a CCTV camera on every light standard and fence post in Britain, now they've got to have free flying ones ripping around following people.

Interesting that the Daily Mail choses to view with alarm the prospects of this technology coming into private hands, while the government is gearing up to use it on a grand scale. That would be the sickness I refer to in the title above. Trusting the government while fearing the people is a disease rampant in the British ruling class.

Meanwhile, a strange blue light was seen flying around on Friday evening in Centerville Virginia, pretty close to Washington DC. Gee, wonder what that could be eh?

The Phantom

Signs of health in US body politic.

Freaky Fred Phelps and his merry band of homo-haters got seen off in Missouri on Saturday.

Members of a small Missouri town banded together Saturday to block a controversial pastor and members of his Westboro Baptist Church from protesting the funeral of a fallen U.S. soldier, Fox4kc.com reports.

Hundreds of residents in Weston, Mo. -- as well as people as far away as California and Australia -- rallied in support of Sgt. First Class C.J. Sadell, who died from injuries suffered during a surprise attack in Afghanistan.

Sadly they didn't mob-and-stomp Mr. Phelps and company, because these cretins need a serious attitude adjustment.

Phelps' church has been the subject of intense criticism for holding more than 44,000 pickets at funerals and other events – including the services of fallen service members.

Citing their First Amendment right to protest, Phelps' followers say they use funerals as an "available public platform" to "deliver the message that there is a consequence for sin." Phelps is openly opposed to homosexuality and all government policies they he says supports homosexuals.

What did they do that worked to drive these creeps away?

"We got everybody here early so we could take up all the parking spots," Rebecca Rooney of Weston, Mo., told Fox4kc.com. "We did that so Mr. Phelps wouldn't have a contingency that was really close."

Pretty simple eh?  They also had a large flag to cover the sight line to any unwanted interlopers at the funeral. and they had a large line of "bystanders" waving flags with fairly good sized poles on them between the protesters and the funeral.  Oh, and a good sized sound system too.  Mostly just being there, I expect.

I think this is a VERY good sign that people in the United States are starting to wake the hell up to the fact that their values and traditions are being destroyed by inches, and their government is the main enabler of the destruction.  Having the whole town show up to deny some assholes a chance to grandstand sends a message to a lot more people than just the assholes in question.  I'd say some town officials felt a little frisson of fear in their nether regions, looking at that turn out and thinking about the next election.  I would not want to be the guy who wrote that permit for Phelps next town election.

The Phantom