In Amerika, your car watches you.

New rules from NHTSA, cars starting in 2018 will have backup cameras.

The final rule issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will require all new vehicles under 10,000 pounds and built beginning May 1, 2018, to meet the new rear-visibility standards. The rule includes buses and trucks; motorcycles and trailers are exempt.
The rearview cameras can be mounted on many different parts of the vehicle somewhere on the rear of the car. They must give drivers a field of vision measuring at least 10 by 20 feet directly behind the vehicle. The system must also meet other requirements including dashboard image size, lighting conditions and display time.

No word on if the camera can be turned on remotely like your iPhone camera can, but I assume the answer is yes. No word on if it RECORDS what it sees too, but again, I assume yes. Because a couple gigs of flash memory is the size of a rice grain these days.

This is actually a multi-gig flash drive. Imagine how small the chip is. Now go find one in your car.

Think how handy that would be for NSA spies, not to mention insurance companies in court! Of course they did it.

When 2018 rolls around and we get news stories about cars keeping their rear-view camera data forever, remember you read it here first.

The Phantom

"Atheists" defend the burning of babies for heat.

Previously I reported that aborted and miscarried fetuses (of uncertain age) were getting burned in hospital heating plants instead of crematoriums in England.

Then we had the predictable response from the Left.

Commenters have noted that these pukes don't even have the decency to render the dead down for Soylent Green, they're just burning them as a coal replacement. Soylent coal.

These days it takes a lot to really offend me. We see a large amount of really heinous activity on the internet and in the news pretty commonly, and most of it just washes over me.

Ok fuckers, now you've pissed me off.

But this time, they've managed to get a barb under my skin.

Proper ceremonial cremation or burial of human remains isn't to placate the dead. They're dead, they don't care. If you've ever seen a dead body (and I have seen a few) you can see it lying there not caring.

It is to comfort the living. Its to help the doctors and the nurses who helped some poor woman with her miscarriage get through the night. It is to foster respect for the hospital among its patients and staff.

Its to show respect for life, something that must be done constantly or there will be no respect for life. Countries where the dead are left in a ditch for the buzzards are not known for their great achievements in Human Rights, yes?

These concepts do not need to be discussed. They form the basics of Western culture. Everybody knows them, everybody acts in accordance with them because everybody acknowledges the truth of them.

What's the argument against, as served up by our freaky fundamentalists on the Atheistic Left? Well, they don't really have an argument. They claim a miscarried fetus is the same as a removed appendix. They refuse to make the distinction everyone else has always made throughout history. They claim the right to declare human nature foolish and wrong, only they are clever enough to see things clearly.

This despite the fact that there have been burial rites since before there were human beings to have them. Neanderthals had burial rites.They buried babies, they didn't dry them and chuck them on the fire when wood got scarce.

The reason these fundamentalist atheists even bother with the argument is to protect one of their political sacred cows: abortion. They fear that if they admit a dead fetus is qualitatively different than a dead toenail or a section of excised colon, they will let the Conservative's get a fingernail's grip on the issue and abortion will be banned forever more the next day. Rush Limbaugh says abortion is a sacrament to the Left, this behavior argues that he's correct.

And that, my friends, is what pisses me off. This is a STUNT. Its some miserable, hateful Leftist/Labour Party fuck in the medical disposal department middle management, sticking it to the squares one more time. "It's the Twenty First Century you creaking old Victorians, get over it!"

Burning dead babies with the medical waste, for heat, as a -stunt-. For politics.

Everybody got that? Goody.

The Phantom

Further to the "Even In Hell They Don't Do This" post,

Further to my last post on the subject, some reaction from our moral and intellectual superiors on the Left. Blazing Cat Fur alerts us to this cretin here.

I’m not in the least disturbed by the fact that patients were not consulted on how their dead fetus was disposed. When you go in for an operation, are you concerned about what is done with the bloody towels afterwards, or how your appendix or tonsils or excised cyst are treated? Did you think there was some special room deep in the bowels of the institution where they were reverently interred, attended by a weeping chaplain who said a few kind words over your precious bodily fluids? Nope. They’re sealed up in a bag, dealt with according to appropriate protocols for medical waste, and incinerated.
Get over it.

Comments generally in the vein of:

richardelguru

26 March 2014 at 9:05 am (UTC -5)

I am really distressed by this news!!
I had my appendix (PBUI) removed in the UK fifty years ago…
AND I WANT TO KNOW IF IT WAS TREATED WITH DIGNITY AND GIVEN A DECENT BURIAL!!!1

So in case anyone was wondering why aborted fetuses as well as miscarriages were getting the same treatment as a surgically removed appendix or ingrown toenail, it seems there has grown up quite a vocal constituency for that sort of thing.

Which individuals would probably be driven out of a meeting of Satanists for being a bad influence.

Just the right size for stoking the furnace.

For my part, I think an individual who refuses to make a distinction between surgical waste and a tragic miscarriage or aborted fetus, such a person is very dangerous indeed and not to be trusted at all.

The Phantom

In case you were wondering about the US crime rate...

... and wondering what's being done about it by your federal officials, I have news America! They're deliberately making it worse.

President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security caught then released 68,000 aliens who had previously been convicted of a crime, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows.

President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security caught then released 68,000 aliens who had previously been convicted of a crime, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows. The report, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its late Sunday evening release, reviews internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) metrics to conclude that the Obama administration released 35 percent—or 68,000—convicted criminal aliens back into the U.S. general population when they could have been deported. “The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims,” CIS’s Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, added.

Catch and release, on steroids. But that's not all, folks.

“In 2013, ICE targeted only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered,” CIS’s Vaughan wrote. “Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.”

Basically, they don't deport anybody sent to them by police forces across the country. They take them in the front door, fill out some forms and then push them out the back door.
And please people, let's not pretend that this is little Pedro and his mama who only want to live in the Wonderful country of America and work real hard, ok? These guys are deadbeats, dirtbags and drug dealers.
They didn't get pulled over in some bogus traffic stop either, they got busted selling drugs, or robbing people, fighting, vandalism, car theft, shoplifting, beating their girlfriends and etc.

The Obama administration is making America worse deliberately to buy votes from illegal Mexicans. That is all.

The Phantom

Socialist family portrait.

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/03/25/Police-Find-Corpse-Sitting-on-Sofa-Watching-TV

Dead lady found sitting on the chesterfield watching TV... for six months.

No family.

This is the future your socialist overlords have planned for you.

No word on whether the old girl was buried/cremated properly, or if they just chucked her in the power station furnace with the dead babies.

The Phantom

Taser armed Drone.

You read that title and said "No Way!" didn't you? Yes. Way. There's video at the link.

A new drone, armed with a taser, is gaining a lot of interest from military and law enforcement agencies.

It is called the ‘Cupid Drone’ and was developed at Chaotic Moon Studios. The newly developed Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone can shoot 80-thousand volts of electricity into a subject.

People don't usually know that the "Eighty THOUSAND Volts!" generated by a Taser comes from a nine volt battery.  The same kind you put in a smoke alarm.  The actual guts of a taser are -small-.

There's no particular technical hurdles to be conquered here, just get a camera-equipped drone and zip-tie a taser to it. If you look at the pictures that's about what they did here. In fact, I'm pretty sure a teenager could hack one together for the school science fair, if they were allowed to fiddle with a taser. First year university types could probably put laser range-finding and targeting on there as well. Oh, and autonomous control.  Arduino is your friend.

All this hardware and software is available to the enterprising young on the Internet as Open Source code and off-the-shelf hardware. Including targeting lasers. They're cheap. Like, under five bucks kinda cheap.

So are infrared cameras and light sources. Flying armed drone with night vision. Made in your kid's bedroom. For a couple hundred bucks.

Time to get working on my autonomous anti-drone defense turret. I'm thinking a multi-thousand dollar gold plated government taser drone probably won't fly well if you turn a hose on it, and even the Ontario government is going to have a hard time justifying banning water hoses.

Oh wait: autonomous anti-drone defense VEHICLE. Because= power washer!  Yeah baby!

The Phantom

Even in Hell they don't do this.

The Abyss

 If Dante Alighieri was any judge, Britain's NHS has now surpassed Lucifer himself.

The remains of more than 15,000 babies were incinerated as 'clinical waste' by hospitals in Britain with some used in 'waste to energy' plants.

Let's see how many camels get their backs broken by -this- straw.

The Phantom

EPA = you can't build that!

EPA proposes to fine some guy $75,000 a day if he doesn't do whatever they tell him, with a smile. Oh, and he already has a permit to do what he did, on his own land.

The government says he violated the Clean Water Act by building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. Further, the EPA claims that material from his pond is being discharged into other waterways. Johnson says he built a stock pond -- a man-made pond meant to attract wildlife -- which is exempt from Clean Water Act regulations.  

The property owner says he followed the state rules for a stock pond when he built it in 2012 and has an April 4-dated letter from the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office to prove it.

“Said permit is in good standing and is entitled to be exercised exactly as permitted,” the state agency letter to Johnson said.

Now, if I were the guy in charge of  the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office, I'd be on this thing like white on rice. Because if my state-issued permits aren't worth the paper they are printed on, my job is in grave danger.

Anyone have any questions why they are teaching "shelter in place" to your kids? Here's your answer.

The Phantom

"Shelter in place" sounds better than "cower".

Infowars reports that the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in New York and New Jersey is holding unannounced "lockdown drills" in schools.

“On Thursday, March 6, a team comprised of ten officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, and the NJ Department of Education’s Safety and Security Task Forces visited Glen Ridge High School to conduct an unannounced school lock-down drill,” reports Georgette Gilmore. “With the exception of Glen Ridge Superintendent Dr. John Mucciolo and Chief of Police Sheila Byron-Lagattutta, no Glen Ridge Public School personnel received advanced notice of the exercise.”

The federal/state “security team” later reported their satisfaction with GRHS Principal Dirk Phillips for activating the school’s lockdown procedure when ordered to do so by DHS officials and police.

“The NJ DOE team told us that of all the schools they have visited, GRHS was one of the best,” said Superintendent Dr. Mucciolo, confirming that the drills are now becoming commonplace throughout the region.

A prominent feature of these drills is the command to students to "shelter in place". Note the word command, note the phrase "shelter in place".

The article raises some rather alarming points.

While authorities justify school lockdown drills as necessary exercises to prepare for potential school shootings, the likelihood of one happening is miniscule. Critics have pointed to the fact that the drills achieve little else than traumatizing school children.

Some have also argued that teaching kids to “shelter in place” rather than evacuate the scene of a shooting is bad advice because it is likely to lead to more casualties. The process of having children submit to armed masked men during school lockdown drills is also contradictory in that it teaches them to behave exactly the same way towards an actual gunman.

Yes. Actual shooting attacks in schools are exceptional events. As in, they are the exception to the rule. Your kid is more likely to be eaten by a tiger than to die in a school shooting. We don't have armed tiger patrols to prevent that eventuality, do we? So why do the authorities feel the need to have federal police agencies conducting school lockdown drills?

Because: lawyers.

From a tactical point of view, getting all the kids to huddle in a corner is the stupidest possible response. You have just made a pile of immobile children, commanded them not to move and reinforced those commands with drills. That's the perfect environment for a crazed shooter, as proven by Adam Lanza.

However from a bureaucrat's point of view, this is the only possible response. State politics dictate that schools be Gun Free Zones, so you can't get the kids all into the school gym and defend them. You can't teach them to escape out the windows etc. because then you have a bunch of kids running around the schoolyard with no coats on during a drill, and their mummies will get all upsetted. But as long as you have a PLAN and a PROCEDURE, and DRILLS for that plan, the lawyers are happy. That it is the worst possible plan is irrelevant in court.

The Feds are involved mostly because DHS is searching for new and innovative ways to expand their power and throw their weight around, plus they have all this shiny new combat gear they want to drive around in. They have more and better stuff to play with than the Gestapo ever did, and they're looking for places to show it off.

Best part is, a whole generation is being taught to -cower- in the face of authority. That's what "shelter in place" means. Cower, and hope the alligator eats somebody else. Excellent behavior to have in a population when you're installing a police state.

Ladies and gentlemen, free men do not cower.  The proper response to a lockdown drill is for your kid to GET OUT NOW!!! and call you up on his cell phone after he or she has escaped. If necessary the kid needs to bite and claw their way out past any officials who try to restrain them. Teach your kids to FIGHT, not cower like mice.

I think its time for parents and students to start up some serious civil disobedience to this.

The Phantom

Finally some video push-back!

Yes friends, it IS legal for Americans to videotape the cops. In Maryland, anyway.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A Baltimore City lawsuit settlement sparks major police policy and training reforms that affect everyone with a cell phone camera.

The police department is putting it into writing so their officers fully understand. You can record them and they can’t do anything about it. First Amendment advocates call it a major victory.

Only took four years and a major lawsuit to convince the cops that the law really does say what it says. That being that anybody can video anything as long as they aren't underfoot in a police situation. If you're across the street, you're good.

No word on the legality of video recording the cops in Canada, that's an experiment for somebody with lots of time and money I'm pretty sure. As with most things cop related here, they can do whatever the hell they want at the time, somebody may make them apologize later but that will be about all.

The Phantom

Does EPA work for the Saudis?

Things like this make you wonder.

In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the protected list by 2018. The two species with the greatest impact on private development are range birds—the greater sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken, both about the size of a barnyard chicken.

...

Huge swaths of land that would go off limits to development are some of the nation's most productive oil and gas fields. The prairie chicken sits atop Texas's Permian Basin oil bonanza, and the sage grouse is near the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. An Interior Department report describes the impact on the sage grouse of oil and gas operations as "universally negative and typically severe," even though modern horizontal drilling leaves a much smaller footprint than in the past.

 As to drilling, according to my spies in the trade, "much smaller footprint" for a horizontal drilling rig amounts to an acre or so, most of which is where the pipes sit and the trucks drive around. Call it four or five suburban lots. Not blocks, lots. A drill rig can sit there and drill all summer long while Farmer John grows a crop on the same field.

Which brings up an interesting thing. Nobody gave a shit about the lesser prairie chicken and the greater sage grouse when a zillion acres got put under the plow to grow corn for ethanol.

Not that I mind, really. Since I'm a Canadian, and our Conservatives in Ottawa are not busy trying to tank oil extraction by any and all possible means. Anything the USA doesn't dig up for themselves they can buy from us, and pay handsomely for it as well.

If I were an American though, I'd be -pissed-.

The Phantom

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!

The "drought" in California is not due to government interference because of the "endangered" Delta Smelt. No no no, you bad people, COWS did it. Yes they did, the New York Times says so.

Meat Makes the Planet Thirsty

By JAMES MCWILLIAMS MARCH 7, 201

Money quote, waaaay down at the bottom after you get past a whole lot of "hundreds of thousands of gallons per ton" bullshit is this:

It’s understandable for concerned consumers to feel helpless in the face of these complex industrial and global realities. But in the case of agriculture and drought, there’s a clear and accessible action most citizens can take: reducing or, ideally, eliminating the consumption of animal products. Changing one’s diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent.

Feeling thirsty yet?

See, its important to understand that this drought, and all the displaced farm workers and all the social injustice in California is YOUR FAULT, America!  If you would only give up your horrible Redneck ways, particularly the disgusting practice of eating poor helpless animals and become a wholesome, morally and politically correct liberal Vegan like Mr. James McWilliams, then you could atone for your sins and reach Enlightenment.

Or possibly suffer a slow decline from protein starvation and vitamin deficiency, which is what usually happens to pinheaded liberals who become Vegans. I think the fact that there is even a word like "Vegan" in our modern lexicon is entirely due to propaganda from the Caring Left, and is yet another demonstration that there's a sucker born every minute.

Sadly, my caring liberal friends, Human Beings are omnivorous for quite a few really good reasons. Chemistry and physics are what you call "inflexible boundaries" in the sciences. A purely vegetarian diet violates quite a few of those boundaries.

Here's another inflexible boundary that's been violated: The Imperial Valley of California is THE most productive agricultural area on Planet Earth, by a looooong way. The -entire- reason there is a drought in California has nothing to do with rainfall. The reason is the Greenies have decided that fish and birds are more important than human beings, Greenies have taken over the water management systems of California AND the federal system as well, and Greenies have wasted the stored water on increased flow through the creeks and rivers instead of storing it and spending it on agriculture the way they were supposed to.

The reason there are dams and reservoirs in California at all is because the place is an uninhabitable DESERT, and without water it will return to its previous uninhabitable state. That is I believe the main goal of Greenies generally and the ones infesting the California state government in particular. To destroy human habitation wherever it is found, and return the land to its primeval condition.

No word on what they plan to do when the Russians and the Chicoms move in to the deserted territories and put up coal fired generating stations all over the place.

The Phantom.

Ivory Tower is the cutting edge of fascism in America.

State university of Tennessee will require all students and staff to wear remote trackable ID badges at all times on campus.

He [Dr. Curtis Johnson] said the new ID card, with software managed by Stanley Security, would include a color photo, name, ID number and campus classification. On the back of each ID card would be a large magnetically encoded stripe with the wearer’s ID number and additional pertinent data.

“However, we are replacing the key FOB (for students) with ID Cards containing a Proximity Chip, along with a magnetic strip on the rear of the card that provides greater capabilities, such as access control to residence halls, computer labs, athletic events, concerts, digital media labs, Post Office Services, and several other academic locations,” Johnson said.

Why do they need remote trackable ID on every frickin' human body in the place? SAFETY!

“Our primary concern is always to provide a safe and healthy environment for all of our students, employees and visitors,” said Dr. Curtis Johnson, associate vice president for Administration, who is in charge of Emergency Management. “Safety on our campus is priority number one, and with the new policy, we want to ensure that our students, faculty and staff are safe at all times.”

 Yes, in order to make you safe, the authorities must track your every movement 24/7 and watch you every second through chip activated camera systems, and control your passage through the facility with computer controlled doors.

Nobody at this august institution of higher learning and intellectual freedom seems to have a problem with any of it, either. Because deep down they LOVE the idea. Fascists love to control the masses.

No word on how they will react when the Engineering Society hacks the lame-ass security company's encryption and clones those stupid cards for five bucks a piece. The "Proximity Chip" RFID tags in the cards are available on the open market, ten for a dollar. Add a programmer and a laminating press, instant ID card.

If I were a computer science prof in this place, I'd make it a lab unit for first year students to design and build a quick and dirty ID card hack. Extra credit if you capture the university president's ID code.

The Phantom

New one, "Prepper" SWATed, pleads out.

Found this one here, at World Net Daily. In a story about the Pentagon giving multi-million dollar combat vehicles to police departments as Obama cuts back the military to pre-WWII levels, they mention this gem here.

In one case in Sharpsburg, Md., population 706, for example, police used two “special response” vehicles, helicopters, SWAT teams, snipers and an excavator for a no-knock raid on a single-family home during a search for its owner.

So I looked it up. Oh baby, did they ever screw the pooch that time!

Today, in Washington County Circuit Court, Porter plead guilty to two charges, one for violating public safety and another for owning some rifles and shotguns (no mention of assault weapons now!) which  he was not permitted to have in his possession due to a twenty-year-old felony conviction.  Those charges could have netted him 20 years in jail.  Instead, the “dangerous” man who was the subject of an eight hour “manhunt” last fall walked out of court with no jail time, no fine, and only two years of unsupervised probation.

Yeah. 20 years ago the guy was busted for pot possession.  Major criminal. Probably pissed off the local sheriff at a traffic stop and had a doobie in his pocket. What does an "eight hour manhunt" look like?

It looks like two of these Bearcat bad boys right here, stuffed with snipers.

On Thursday, November 29, 2012 at about 12:30 pm, the quiet was shattered by an invasion of over 150 Maryland State Police (MSP), FBI, State Fire Marshal’s bomb squad, and County SWAT teams, complete with two police helicopters, two Bearcat “special response” vehicles, mobile command posts, snipers, police dogs, bomb disposal truck, bomb sniffing robots, and a huge excavator. They even brought in food trucks.

The raid was one of the largest in recent U.S. history, twice the size of the 1993 Branch Davidian raid in Waco, Texas, which initially involved 76 ATF agents. It almost rivaled the recent 200-strong statewide manhunt for California cop-killing cop, Christopher Dorner.

What's a thing like that cost?

 Simpson estimated the cost of the raid that lasted from approximately 12:30 p.m. until it was called off at 7:30 p.m. at $11,000 per hour.

Fast bit of arithmetic, allow for bureaucratic creative accounting and "shrinkage", call it a hundred grand. Because overtime, and those guys all got paid all the way back to the cop shop too.

Why? Because Obama wanted a white, right wing, gun owning male's head to spike on the White House fence. Preferably one of those militia types. The blog author says the following:

Shades of the IRS targeting scandal?  You will never convince me that Governor Martin O’Malley (looking for Obama brownie points) was not looking for a high profile take-down of a conservative gun owner just before the Newtown, CT nut tragically provided Obama with all the reason he needed to push the gun control issue to the forefront in Washington.

And none of us heard jack shit about it, did we? Biggest raid since Waco Texas. Big things on the move in the US of A, my friends. Big things.

The Phantom

MIT Radar course-ware. SWEET!

This is so cool, I'm geeking out.  MIT course on how to build and use your own radar set out of a coffee can. AWESOME!!!

Now a radar as well as a yummy drink!

The Phantom Mobile will look very badass with its own radar kit sticking out of it.

The Phantom

Gun carnage: check your barrel is clear, my friends.

Cleaning rod left in .338 Lapua bolt gun. One word: OUCH!

On the bright side, the guy lived and got to keep his face.

Check your barrel, check your barrel, check your barrel.

The Phantom

Update: Just checked my stats. It appears that this is blog post number 1000! Wow. One thousand blog posts since 2005.

Many thanks to those of you who read and comment here, your input makes this a fun thing to do. Plus I don't feel quite so much like I'm yelling into a bag. :) Yay!

On to two thousand!

Kid suspended over fishing knife found in Dad's car.

Schools are getting very Stalinist these days. Check this:

On Thursday, Duren-Sanner, a senior at Northeast High School drove his father's car to school. During a random lockdown, his car was chosen to be searched.

Duren-Sanner gave permission because he said he had nothing to hide.

His father is a commercial fisherman on the West Coast and had apparently left a fishing knife in the car. Duren-Sanner's father said it might have been wedged between one of the seats.

Duren-Sanner said he told school officials and the Sheriff's department the car was his father's and he didn't know the knife was in it.

"He's like 'it doesn't matter it was in your possession anyway,'" Duren-Sanner said.

School officials suspended him for 10 days, the maximum allowed under school policy, and then he was reprimanded to attend 90 days at an alternative school.

Peggy Duren is Duren-Sanner's grandmother whom he lives with. She said she tried explaining the knife didn't belong to her grandson, but claims school officials wouldn't listen.

"Unfortunately (the vice principal) said that's the way it is now: Guilty until proven innocent. It's part of this zero tolerance policy," she said."

Duren-Sanner also faces weapons charges with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department.

 
First of all, "random lockdown"? That's what they do in jail when they toss your cell looking for shivs. A high school with a random lockdown program, that's pretty messed up.

Second of all, "his car was chosen to be searched"? WTF is that? They search cars at school? The COPS search cars at school on a "random" basis, "random" being in scare quotes because we know d@mn well they don't stand there and go "eeny meeny miney moe" when they pick a car.

Third of all, and perhaps most damning, "Duren-Sanner gave permission because he said he had nothing to hide." Question, can a minor child below the age of majority even give permission for a police search? Can a school legally demand permission from a student under 18 in any case, given that the school has standing as a legal guardian during the time the child is in attendance? I'm thinking the answer to both those questions is probably "no". Possibly "HELL NO!", with a side order of lawsuit for denial of basic human rights and breach of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, with multi-million dollar payout.

Fourth, weapons charges for a fishing knife found jammed under a seat in a locked car? As if. BUT, its going to cost money this family doesn't have to fight the bogus charge in court. The process is the punishment.

Here's the important take-home lesson from this parable. The answer to all requests for permission from all government officials at all times is always, always "NO". Because if you are attending a school where they have Random Lockdown and Police Searches as part of a regular school day, and you live in a town/city/county where school officials think that kind of thing is an appropriate use of school and police resources,
 you have something to hide.

Even if you just cleaned your car out to the bare carpet, and removed every lint spec and corn chip fragment from there with a vacuum cleaner, you have something to hide.  Because in Random Lockdownville, if cops don't find something, they might plant something. They might be bored that day. They might think it was funny. Their kid might want your kid's spot on the football team. You don't know, and you can't afford to take the chance.

Cops are not our friends and neighbors anymore. Neither are teachers or school principals. They are unionized minions of Big Government, and their interests and agendas diverged from the general welfare of the populace some time ago.

The Phantom

Alec Baldwin, of all people, hates the MSM now.

This is a surprisingly good piece by Alec Baldwin today. So good that it makes me wonder if he had a whole lot of help, but perhaps that's a bit unkind of me.

Seems Mr. Baldwin is rather upset at being made into the male Sarah Palin. It begins:

I flew to Hawaii recently to shoot a film, fresh on the heels of being labeled a homophobic bigot by Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others in the Gay Department of Justice.

Which sounds kind of whiny given the reports of what Baldwin has said to some people, until you get to this part:

What happened is, a TMZ videographer ambushed me as I was putting my family in a car, and I chased him down the block and said, “Cocksucking motherfucker” or whatever (when I have some volatile interaction with these people, I don’t pull out a pen and take notes on what I said). I knew that guy. This was a guy who is on a bike usually, and when we get in a car, he follows us. Very aggressive. The same guy who followed my wife on a bicycle, and when she slipped and fell trying to dodge him and hurt her leg, he laughed at her and said, “See what I made you do?” At my wife. How would that make you feel?

Here's the thing. This Baldwin guy is being stalked like an animal by paid big game hunters. If some guy did to -my- wife what Baldwin describes here, and then he got up in my face with a camera while I'm putting my baby in the car? Let's just say my behavior would have been a lot less vocal and a lot more... vigorous.

He continues along in this vein, explaining his side of events in recent history, 2012/2013. What's interesting is the fallout upon him personally of these events.

I went to the opening of the play Machinal, put on by Roundabout, where I’m on the board, and I can’t tell you how frosty the reception was toward me. These are all people who are heavy-hitting theatrical artists in that community and many of them are gay. And I was thinking to myself, These people think I’m a homophobe. And that makes me incredibly sad.

Every time people throw this mud on me, there are very serious consequences in my life. The single most painful episode for me was last year when a New York Post photographer, an ex-cop, accused me of ­calling him a “coon.” This was totally false, as was revealed on his own tape. A D.A. in the hate-crimes unit called me in. At the time, I had just been asked to join the board of the Arthur Ashe Learning Center, so I had to call Jeanne Moutoussamy­-Ashe and ask her, now that I was on the cover of the New York Post labeled as a racist, if she still wanted me to attend a coming event. Jeanne was her ever-gracious self and said yes, but that broke my heart.

Then we get to this part here, which shows he still just doesn't understand what's going on, and who is doing what to him:

Broadway has changed, by my lights. The TV networks, too. New York has changed. Even the U.S., which is so preposterously judgmental now. The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred. Who would ever dream that Obama would deserve to be treated the way he has been? The birth-certificate bullshit, which is just Obama’s version of Swiftboating. And all for the electoral nullification that seems like a cancer on the American system. But this is Roger Ailes. And Fox. And Breitbart. And this is all about hate. It’s Hate Incorporated. But the liberals have taken the bait and run in the same direction—and it’s just as corrosive. MSNBC, in its own way, is as full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox.

The Conservative sphere, as I recall, reacted to this by pointing out that Paula Deen was given the MSM full-monty of career ruination and the public stocks. For saying this passage here, during a lawsuit.

Lawyer: Have you ever used the N-word yourself?
Deen: Yes, of course.

Lawyer: Okay. In what context?
Deen: Well, it was probably when a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head.

Lawyer: Okay. And what did you say?
Deen: Well, I don't remember, but the gun was dancing all around my temple ... I didn't -- I didn't feel real favorable towards him.

Lawyer: Okay. Well, did you use the N-word to him as he pointed a gun in your head at your face?
Deen: Absolutely not.

Lawyer: Well, then, when did you use it?
Deen: Probably in telling my husband.

Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin was getting a PC hall-pass for allegedly screaming "faggot" at the above photographer on a public street and writing “toxic little queen” on Twitter about some reporter who lied (or just got stuff wrong) about Baldwin's wife. Getting a pass for generally running around New York being photographed and filmed behaving like a berserk Viking too. And doing stuff like this on Twitter.

My reaction is here. which was basically that the Left protects their own, and that Alec Baldwin was teflon-coated because he had all the right friends and paid off all the right causes, while Paula Deen got sacrificed to the PC Gods because of her accent and lower class Southern status/image. That was pretty much the consensus I recall at the time in the Breitbart/Fox/SDA Echo Chamber of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy,

Well, I guess I was wrong.  Behind the scenes, Mr. Baldwin was getting quite a kicking. Don't have too much sympathy for him given how much he's been dishing out onto Conservatives all these years. But still. Can't be fun having your "friends" and associates turn on you like rabid dogs.

Mr. Baldwin ends off by taking his bat and ball and going home.

It’s good-bye to public life in the way that you try to communicate with an audience playfully like we’re friends, beyond the work you are actually paid for. Letterman. Saturday Night Live. That kind of thing. I want to go make a movie and be very present for that and give it everything I have, and after we’re done, then the rest of the time is mine. I started out as an actor, where you seek to understand yourself using the words of great writers and collaborating with other creative people. Then I slid into show business, where you seek only an audience’s approval, whether you deserve it or not. I think I want to go back to being an actor now.

Proving once again that there is no hawk so fierce as a liberal who's been mugged. Job one for Alec Baldwin today, close that Twitter account.

The Phantom

Dems really want that cellphone kill switch.

 Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., tech guru.

Here's well known cellphone expert and all-round tech guru Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. telling us how awesome an idea it is to  give the US government the power to turn off your cell phone. Oh, and everyone else's cell phone too. At the same time, like.

Mikulski and three Senate colleagues, all Democrats, introduced The Smartphone Theft Prevention Act on Feb. 12, proposing that the technology be mandatory for new smartphones. The senators, led by Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, cited the Federal Communications Commission’s estimate that phone theft costs consumers $30 billion annually.
The bill would give the FCC authority to compel phone companies to develop and implement technology allowing victimized and absent-minded phone owners to disable their devices and clear personal information on request.
Mikulski touted the proposal Thursday at an event in Landover, Md., alongside Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority General Manager Richard Sarles and Metro Police Chief Ron Pavlik. During her speech, she says, AT&T sent a text message hawking insurance for her phone.
A kill switch would be even better than insurance, Mikulski says, because it would deny thieves a payday and thus a motive for robbing people. 

Yeah, the theft of a phone seems like a big enough deal to warrant a law -forcing- the cell phone makers, who are mostly foreign companies incidentally (you know, like Samsung?) to include a "kill switch" so some as-yet un-named federal agency will be able to "turn them off", otherwise known as "bricking" them. Meaning scrambling their EPROM and flash memory.

The alert reader will note that according to the Wiki article linked here, it is quite possible to re-flash a phone that's been bricked. Unless the "turn them off" means physically destroying the CPU or major piece of hardware in the phone, there's still going to be a payday.

But Barbie knows best! Don't question Barbie!

“First of all, if they’re worried about a hacker, they could do that to your cellphone now, a kill switch won’t affect that one way or the other,” she [Mikulski] says. “In terms of your government shutting off your cellphone, I think that’s conspiratorial.”

Its a... conspiracy, Mr. Anderson.

Technically this is true. The FBI has the ability to turn on your cell phone by remote access, and turn on its microphone and its camera as well. Presumably they could turn it off the same way. They can certainly turn it off by calling your cellphone company and telling them to discontinue your service. Calling the FBI "hackers" is a bit of a stretch, but technically true.

As to the conspiracy bit, after I stop laughing I'm going to say one name: Edward Snowden.

A guy who escaped -to- Russia. Jeeze.

What kills me is that some reporterette didn't instantly yell "SNOWDEN!!!" at her. These people say this shit, and they never get called. Ever.

As a Real Man(TM) I object in principle to men striking women, no matter what the provocation. Women striking women, that I'm perfectly ok with.

Wait, you said what to me?

Come on ladies, somebody step up. Its got to be done.

Smart Roads: Nice name for Big Brother is watching you.

DHS tendered and then revoked for tender a license plate reading system for the roads of the USA. Looked bad doing it too.

Question: WHY do they want this? Why be able to identify and track all the cars on a roadway? Other than pure urge to spy, of course.

Answer: Its a necessary piece of infrastructure if you want to have self-driving cars. More and more it seems to me that the Powers That Be in the USA have been massively sold on the goodness of the idea that cars drive themselves. Its so Buck Rogers, they just love it!

Clue as to who sold them on it, it seems that Cisco the router company is in this neck deep. Also IBM, be it noted.

Tech giant Cisco thinks there's something to all this talk of ”smart cities”--and that connecting roads or license plate readers to the Internet is going to be big business.

In the latest installment of their ongoing expansion into the Internet of Things, Cisco recently announced an agreement with Swiss security firm AGT International to develop smart traffic systems for cities around the world.

In early February, Cisco and AGT unveiled the details of an upcoming Internet of Things-enabled traffic management system that incorporates sensors embedded in pavements, license plate-reading systems, social media feeds, and video cameras to “identify, respond to, and resolve” traffic incidents in real time. According to a press release, the system is designed to provide long-term analytics on traffic accidents and to allow different agencies to share video feeds.

Because why? Because Cisco will make a shitload of money selling hardware to the government for this thing, is why. The government will buy it because the government has lately become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that citizens might be doing things they don't know about and don't control. Cell phone tracking is not enough, they want to be able to physically watch you every minute of your day. Just to be sure everyone is ok, y'know.

By the way. The techie buzz phrases "Internet of Things" and "Smart Roads" are circumlocutions. They both mean full time surveillance by all the devices in your life, from your phone and your car to your TV and your toaster and your refrigerator, stove, washer, dryer, furnace, light switches, water faucets, air conditioner, thermostat, electric Smart Meter, internet useage, computer, printer, and every other freakin' thing you own.

Network-attached-appliances is the new awesome. Its not that awesome for the user/owner, because being attached to the internet does not enhance the function of a TV, a toaster or a light switch very much, if at all. But it IS awesome for the manufacturers, because the machines phone home back to Head Office with all kinds of valuable data on what the customers are doing all day. Your nettwork attached fridge for example is designed to record the RFID tags on everything inside it. This is supposed to be so it can tell you when you have run out of milk or when the bacon has gone bad. But really that information is MUCH more valuable to all sorts of food companiues and retailers, and you can be super duper sure that your fridge will be phoning home all that juicy data to the manufacturer, who will then sell it to WalMart et al for a handsome profit.

Example, Samsung Smart TVs phone home back to Samsung and report every single button press you make on the remote, everything you watch, etc. And the Smart TV has a CAMERA in it, so it can watch you back. And if you don't think that thing has a switch in it so it can watch you when somebody from Head Office tells it to, you are dreaming in Technicolor.

If you have one, I suggest you find that camera and stick a post-it over top. Same for the hidden microphone. That way at least you can be sure they aren't taping you making out with the missus in front of the Pr0nz channel.

Eventually they'll be sending Robocop around to your house to pull off the post-it, but in the meantime forewarned is forearmed.

The Phantom

Hollywood: It isn't that they never learn. Its worse.

Hollywood has a very loooong history of making movies that SUCK when they make them "based on" a popular story, comic book, novel, what have you. They chop, channel and modify the story like it was some kind of mutant hot rod, twisting it out of all recognition from the thing they were basing it on. In fact, if you see a Hollywood movie "based on" pretty near anything, you know its going to have no resemblance to the original.

They have no respect for the source material.

Today's example, the new Fantastic Four movie.

The long rumored, "That Awkward Moment" pals Miles Teller (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic) and Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm/Human Torch) will star alongside Kate Mara (Sue Storm) and Jamie Bell (Ben Grimm/The Thing) in Josh Trank's reboot. And it seems there will be some changes to the canon, with The Wrap pointing out that the Storm siblings may not be from the same parents. Are they adopted or perhaps they'll just do away with the unnecessary requirement that they have to be related? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Michael B. Jordan is a short, skinny, wise cracking black kid. Johnny Storm in the comics is a white kid with platinum blonde hair. He is a jock and an adrenalin junkie. He is platinum blonde Susan Storm's brother. Cue the screams of "RACIST!!!" but any circumlocution they come up with to explain this substitution is not going to add to the movie. Its going to be -stupid-, as these things always are. In addition Jamie Bell is another skinny, pencil necked dude, making it a stretch for him to play The Thing, a giant muscle-bound rock monster with a 24" diameter neck.

Now, you would think that recent major box office disasters such as John Carter of Mars, Green Lantern, The Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim would have these Hollywood money guys paying attention. This is hundreds of millions of dollars going down the tubes.

But no. Having EPICALLY failed by casting Johnny Depp as Tonto in The Lone Ranger, they're casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm. Johnny Depp is a fine actor, but he failed as Tonto in large part because he's not an Indian. What hope does Michael B. Jordan have depicting an irresponsible blonde white kid? Or even, dare I say it, what hope does Jordan have of accurately depicting a black kid raised in a white family? What possible hope is there that the writers will script his lines that way? They're going to have him cuttin' his g's and slangin' his jive talk, fo' sho' bruthah. Which is so 1970's it make me want to hit somebody. Maybe I could punch J.F. Sergeant in the face.

There is no reasonable purpose for this casting, its like a whole two-four of bottled fail. That leaves unreasonable purposes.

It is not mere ignorance, because everybody in Hollywood talks about what's hot and what's not pretty much all day long. 
It is not mere stupidity, because guys with two hundred million dollars to invest did not get that way by being stupid, and they don't entrust that money to people who are stupid.
It is not a mistake, because we have examples of movies like Iron Man 1,2, & 3, the Avengers, Thor 1&2, four Spider Man movies, Captain America, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit 1&2, Batman ad nauseam and so forth all making -huge- money by being as true as possible to the source material.

It is hubris. It is Hollywood mocking us and our beliefs and especially our heroes, fictional though they may be. Like always.

This is Big Money Hollywood packaging up the same tired old bullshit in a new wrapping. Stock characters called the Nerd, the Hot Chick, the Tough Guy and the Wisecracking Black Sidekick Guy will be following the same liberal PC script as always, wrapped up in some fancy CGI effects and jammed down our collective throats like we're a bunch geese on a foie gras farm. Because they know what's good for us, and they're going to give it to us whether we like it or not.

The problem for me, and the reason I wrote all this, is that I actually LIKE the Fantastic Four comic books. I didn't even mind the first two movies, even though they completely mangled the character of Doctor Doom. They managed to be fun anyway.
This FF movie here, this isn't going to be fun. This is going to be another PC lecture with some explosions in it, maybe a ray gun or two. It will suck, but worse it make the Fantastic Four completely radioactive as a movie franchise. There will be no more FF movies after this one crashes and burns. Which pisses me off, frankly.

Hey Hollywood money men! You think I'm going to pay fifteen bucks a ticket to go see this turkey? Not a chance in Hell.  I'll wait for Netflix if I bother with it at all, and watch you assholes lose your shirts. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Phantom

DHS blinks: no license plate registry.

"Just kidding!" says DHS, as they hurriedly cancel their license platre registry thingie.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of a plan by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative.

The order came just days after ICE solicited proposals from companies to compile a database of license-plate information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers. Officials said the database was intended to help apprehend fugitive illegal immigrants, but the plan raised concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.

I would say that an underling got screamed at for this one. Too soon after Snowden.

The Phantom

License plate tracking, its the new awesome.

Old and busted: cellphone tracking.

New sweetness: license plate tracking!

The Department of Homeland Security is now seeking a vendor to build and operate a smartphone-based national database of vehicle license plate information that would be shared with law enforcement.

Under the DHS plan, an agent could snap a photo with a smartphone, upload it to the database, and immediately be notified whether the plate is on a "hot list" of "target vehicles."

"This system is supposed to be for the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement branch of DHS, for the tracking of illegal immigrants," says WTOP National Security Correspondent J.J. Green.

ICE spokesperson Gillian Christensen tells Federal News Radio, "the database could only be accessed in conjunction with ongoing criminal investigations."

DHS officially solicited the vendor on the Federal Business Opportunities website, for a National License Plate Recognition Database.

Green says a similar plate recognition system has been in use in the United Kingdom, using an extensive network of closed-circuit television cameras.

"It pretty much catches all the movements of cars, people, buses - pretty much anything that moves, at least in the cities," says Green.

If I had to guess, I'd say the "DHS is now seeking a vendor" part is probably bullshit, because we know that lots of US state police have been doing extensive license plate capture for at least five years now. Just a matter of connecting up the databases, and the NSA already does that, don't they?

Forgiveness is easier to get than permission.

Meaning just leaving your phone at home is not enough. You'll have to have James Bond license plate switcher things for the plate tracking and Groucho Marx nose glasses to foil the facial recognition. Or a bandana and a can of spray paint.  Or DUCT TAPE and a hoodie.

Somebody out there is REALLY interested in knowing every fricking place you go, aren't they? Alarming? I think so!

The Phantom

DHS is buying -more- ammo now.

Surely the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to purchase 75.1 million rounds of ammunition at a cost of $22.7 million this year, according to a newly released report from the Government Accountability Office.

GAO reports that DHS has over 70,000 firearm-carrying personnel and that the ammo purchases go largely to firearm training and qualification requirements.

“DHS components maintain inventories of ammunition to help ensure they have sufficient ammunition for the training and operational needs of their officers, as there can be months-long delays between placing an order for ammunition and receiving it,” GAO reports. “As of October 2013, DHS estimates it had approximately 159 million rounds in inventory, enough to last about 22 months to meet the training and operational needs of its firearm-carrying personnel.”

According to the GAO, DHS’ annual ammunition purchases have been on the decline since FY 2009 and are about at the same level as the Department of Justice’s ammo purchases.

In other words, Mr. and Mrs. America, their explanation of why they need 75 million rounds of hollow point combat ammunition at a cost of $0.30 per round when they could be having ball ammo at half the price or less, is that they are burning your money.

Literally. They are using expensive hollow point combat ammunition for practice, not for on-duty carry only as sane and fiscally responsible police forces do.

Remember that for the next election.

Dangerous retard of the day.

This is apparently the guy who shot a buggy horse in a random drive-by. He's a beauty, you've got to admit.

FEBRUARY 12--Police today announced charges have been filed against a Pennsylvania man in connection with the fatal drive-by shooting of a horse pulling an Amish buggy.

Timothy Antonio Diggs, 22, is facing seven misdemeanor counts, including reckless endangerment, cruelty to animals, and firing into an occupied vehicle, according to the East Lampeter Township Police Department.

Let's hope this little misunderstanding doesn't encumber Mr. Diggs' promising careers as a brain surgeon and concert pianist.

The Phantom

Sending a message to the rubes.

No-knock SWAT raid on man's home in Washington DC nets one (1) decommissioned shotgun shell.

A Washington, D.C. man is facing a large fine and possible jail time after he was arrested for having an inoperable shotgun shell in his home. The shell was a souvenir that Mark Witaschek decided to keep from a hunting trip years earlier.
...
Witaschek said there have been seven court hearings set since his arrest that summer, and he's still waiting to hear the government's justification for the raid.

 He's been in court seven times since July 2012 over a spent shot shell. As in, it had no propellant in it, no primer and no lead ball. It was already fired and not re-loadable. Spent. 

A spent shot shell taken in a full-up tactical raid that was conducted one full month after a complaint was lodged against the man. So obviously a raid conducted for effect and headlines, not to stop an emergency situation.

Just think for a second how much MONEY this is costing the DC taxpayer. The raid alone would run into the tens of thousands.  This is a major budget line item, and therefore police management considers it a major priority.

The message is clear: Big Brother USA is going to stomp on you if you have a gun, or even want to have one.

The Phantom

Hollywood officially doomed, doesn't understand its own customers anymore.

Seems the guy who made The Black Swan and Pi wanted to make a movie about Noah's Ark.

The trouble began when Paramount, nervous about how audiences would respond to Aronofsky's fantastical world and his deeply conflicted Noah, insisted on conducting test screenings over the director's vehement objections while the film was a work in progress.

Friction grew when a segment of the recruited Christian viewers, among whom the studio had hoped to find Noah's most enthusiastic fans, questioned the film's adherence to the Bible story and reacted negatively to the intensity and darkness of the lead character. Aronofsky's Noah gets drunk, for example, and considers taking drastic measures to eradicate mankind from the planet. Hoping to woo the faith-based crowd, Paramount made and tested as many as half-a-dozen of its own cuts of the movie. "I was upset -- of course," Aronofsky tells The Hollywood Reporter in his first extensive interview about the film's backstory. "No one's ever done that to me."

The problem is of course that Aronofsky wants to make a movie "inspired by" the Noah's Ark story, and he can't understand that a lot of Christians (and Jews!) would have a problem with him taking "artistic" liberties with it.

By contrast, Aronofsky would never make the same mistake with the Koran, I'm sure. Or if he would, his backers wouldn't.

The thing that makes me say Hollywood is DOOMED is the budget. These idiots bet $125 million bucks on something that is guaranteed to piss off anybody who's been to Sunday School. They don't have a single clue who their audience is, and they are too stupid to be afraid of what could happen if they enrage that audience.

Bankruptcy is what's going to happen, obviously. People in ever increasing numbers are just not going go to their movies at the theater,  or purchase their movies on video, or download them off Itunes, or even watch them on Netflix.

Worse, sooner of later some brave visionary is going to make a movie that actually caters to and respects the audience. A movie that makes them feel good about their values and their beliefs instead of getting their backs up and making them defensive. Something that does for the Big Screen what FOX News has done for TV. And they will keep doing it, and they will make billions and billions of dollars at it.  Can you say "Captain America?"

Then you'll see some serious carnage in Tinseltown. Heads rolling, guys jumping off the "HOLLYWOOD" sign, the works. I can hardly wait.

And no, I'm not going to go see "Noah" at the theater for fifteen bucks. I'll wait for that sucker to come out on video, for sure.

Dept. of Homeland Security prepares for the Zombie Apocalypse. Really.

US government seems to be on a roll for questionable purchases. DHS has posted a new solicitation for ammunition. They want 141,000 rounds of match-grade .308, otherwise know as sniper ammo. Not just any garden variety though, they want Zombie Max!

Can't you see some fat DHS guy just jonesing over this in the Cop Stuff catalog?

According to a solicitation posted on FedBizOpps, the federal agency is looking to procure 141,160 rounds of Hornady .308 Winchester 168gr A-MAX TAP ammunition.

Such ammunition is sometimes retailed as “Zombie Max,” a marketing gimmick alluding to its power.

This is plastic tipped, hollow point,  match-grade rifle ammo made to reach out and hurt someone really, really bad at 400 yards plus. DHS will be paying about $1.20 per round, you can get some for about $1.95 each, retail price.

 Yowsa. That's some boom boom, baby.

Question: why does an American POLICE AGENCY need 141,000 rounds of very expensive high grade sniper ammunition? Are they going to use it for practice, like they've supposedly been using all that hollow point 9mm they bought? How many freakin' snipers are they training? Wikipedia says the course of fire for a Marine Corps sniper in training uses maybe three hundred rounds or so. That makes 470 guys they can train up, using super expensive ammo.

Do they think they -need- 470 snipers able to reach out and hurt somebody at 400+ yards? Is there really a Zombie Apocalypse in the works and we just don't know? Is Raccoon City going to be ground zero, and will Alice save all our sorry asses all by her lonesome?

Tune in tomorrow for the Ritual of Denial, when the random DHS spokesbeast will say: "Really, just kidding about the zombie thing folks."

The Phantom

In other news of stupid laws, New York!

Lesson to New York State legislators: Never piss off an engineer.

Prototypes for the newly designed AR-15 are hitting gun shops across New York, as gun shops and machinists have designed a rifle that complies with the anti-gun law. At least one gun shop has received a letter from state police saying that the new AR-15 style rifles should be legal in the state as long as they don’t have some of the features that the law prohibits.

This man is smarter than all of you fuckers.

Morons write the law, geniuses invent a way around it.

The Phantom

Something to remember for the next election.

"We have met the Enemy, and he is us." Its supposed to be a joke from Pogo, not a government policy. But now, in modern Western governance, this is the reality.

Documents from an Ohio National Guard (ONG) training drill conducted last January reveal the details of a mock disaster where Second Amendment supporters with “anti-government” opinions were portrayed as domestic terrorists.
The ONG 52nd Civil Support Team training scenario involved a plot from local school district employees to use biological weapons in order to advance their beliefs about “protecting Gun Rights and Second Amendment rights.”
Portsmouth Chief of Police Bill Raisin told NBC 3 WSAZ-TV in Huntington, West Virginia that the drill accurately represented “the reality of the world we live in,” adding that such training “helps us all be prepared.”
Internal ONG documents provided to Media Trackers after repeated delays provide further context to what WSAZ-TV reported last winter.

First the insult, then the ass covering. The usual, in other words.

Just one more straw on the pile on your back, my friends. And one more example of what I've been saying. Muslim hillbillies in Buttcrackistan are not the biggest danger we face. Liberals are.

The Phantom

Big Brother will now kill your phone.

New proposed California law: remote kill switch for your cell phone. It isn't enough that they be able to track your phone every second of the day, now they want to be able to shut it off, too.

A bill has been introduced in California that would mandate a kill switch for cellphones that have been stolen, prompting concerns that such a system could be abused by authorities in order to stifle dissent.

SB 962 would require that all cellphones sold in the state include software or hardware, “that can render inoperable the essential features of the device, as defined, when the device is not in the possession of the rightful owner.”

Although the owner would have the option to disable the function under the language of the bill, sales of any cellphone that didn’t include the technology would be prohibited.

Although the ‘kill switch’ would ostensibly be included to discourage theft, a scenario where authorities could hijack the technology to shut down communications in a sensitive area in order to limit photo and streaming video coverage, such as at a demonstration or at the scene of unfolding police brutality, is easy to envisage.

Looks like State of California has surveillance envy.

Hate to tell you folks, but this capability is already inherent in cell phones by virtue of the way they work. All you have to do is shut down a couple of cell towers in one area and that's a blackout. Cell providers can black out every phone by remote already with a mouse click. One warrant accompanied by one cop is all you need to black out an area, a town, the whole state, or just one person. All this bill does is formalize the thing, call it a special name, and hand the "switch" to state authorities so they don't have to go through the fuss of getting a warrant.

Oh well, just something to take people's minds off the Great California Drought I guess.

The Phantom