Just to make it easy for the idiots,

Re-posted from a comment I made at Mad Genius Club, my Official Phantom Opinion of the trans-gender issue, for anyone who cares.

"In truth, the whole trans-gender thing seems to be a very dangerous mental disorder, leading to suicide in an alarming number of cases. Double digit percentages, its safer to be a crack addict than be trans. (The read-until-offended crowd can stop here.)

The example I had the other day of the trans-woman who decided “she” identified as a dragon is one case that springs to mind. Again, I caution googlers that you do -not- want to see those pictures. The dude looks like Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, except with bad facial tattoos and his f-ing ears and nose cut off. Like, cut off and fed to the beagles kind of cut off. With a beard. One assumes he went off the hormones, they were probably kicking his ass. Because stuff like that has side effects they don’t tell you about in video games.

So my opinion is that I do not want to live in a nation where tattoo artists and plastic surgeons are allowed to mutilate mentally ill men like that and get away Scott free.

Also, I am not a psychologist, but I do know that the treatment for people under the delusion that they are Napoleon generally does not include treating them like the Emperor of France. I’m just saying, as a general rule you don’t see that."

See also, in no particular order:

 http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/06/ontario-legislates-mental-health.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/05/question-for-ladies-about-models-and.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/07/marvel-turning-thor-into-woman-wait-what.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2013/04/dc-comics-march-down-radical-rat-hole.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/07/government-is-always-real-problem.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/06/ice-releases-new-guidelines-for.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/11/lets-compare-art-shall-we.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/07/armpit-hair-is-now-political.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2011/03/and-speaking-of-burning-stupidity.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2005/11/loving-tolerance-of-canadian-left.html

Maybe I missed one where I said all gays/trans/lesbians/whatevers need to all die in a fire. Maybe somebody should spend a couple days/weeks looking for that post, where I hate the hell out of everybody different than me.

Knock yourselves out, you bunch of fucking mental deficients.

Oh and by the way, here's some consequences of official gender-bender stupidity for y'all:

http://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2016/04/10/university-of-toronto-dumps-transgender-bathrooms-after-peeping-incidents/

Because -nobody- saw that coming, right?

This is the stupidest thing I've seen in ages.

The headline says "Google under fire over 'racist' image search."

A tweet by Twitter user @BonKamona has gone viral this week and sparked an international conversation, after she drew attention to the Google Image search results she found when looking up "unprofessional hairstyles for work" and "professional hairstyles for work."

What is being argued here is that Google is RAAAAACIST because of the images that come up when you search "unprofessional" vs. "professional" hairstyles. As if Google had any control over that.

The Phantom

Oh look, Leftists paying people to lie.

From the "This Is Not Surprising" file and Small Dead Animals, it looks like a US mega foundation has actually admitted doing what we all know they did.

In a stunning admission, Lee Wasserman, Director of the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF), today openly admitted that the Rockefellers are pouring millions of dollars into "media" organizations like InsideClimate News (ICN) and projects at Columbia University School of Journalism with a specific mission and outcome in mind.

In an interview with Reuters responding to questions about the RFF climate agenda and mission, Wasserman flatly states:

"No specific company was targeted in our push to drive better public understanding and better climate policy…..We supported public interest journalism to better understand how the fossil fuel industry was dealing with the reality of climate science internally and publicly," Wasserman said. (emphasis added)

Since the Columbia School of Journalism began partnering with RFF, the school has insisted that the Rockefeller foundations – both RFF and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation (RBF) – had nothing to do with the content of the series making erroneous claims about ExxonMobil.

Usually these guys don't admit this type of thing, you have to dig it out of billing records and tax receipts.

The Phantom.

Batman vs. Superman, worth seeing.

Just got back from seeing Batman vs. Superman tonight. As usual, the critics panned it, and as usual they're a pack of idiots. This is a better movie than the latest Star Wars, in my opinion. Worth the ticket.

Why it is a good movie is because they followed the very successful comic book story line. There have been a few movies lately to do this, mostly Marvel Universe ones. Avengers, Captain America, on TV the very successful Daredevil, and Agent Carter. Deadpool is doing well, mostly because of the video game homage in the movie. From DC, the recent Batman movies were about the only ones to even acknowledge the comics, and surprise, they made the most money.

Movies that sucked, there have been a few. From Marvel Universe, the latest Fantastic Four reboot retreading Johnny Storm as a black kid crashed and burned. Mostly because it had nothing to do with the FF comic. The took a fairly pedestrian script, slapped an FF name on it and called it done. Stupid. DC Universe, Green Lantern was rubbish, much the same sort of reason.

Why do they do stuff like that? Here's why:

Yes, I am proposing that a major comic book institution change the race of one of its popular characters as it transitions to a new form of media. In this case, I want Marvel Studios to cast an Asian American actor to play the lead in the upcoming Iron Fist show it is developing for Netflix. It seems logical enough to me, though as always, there are fans who are urging Marvel to resist changing his race.

Yet another idiot is demanding yet another comic book character should be chopped and channeled to satisfy their pretentious racist/anti-racist/SJW horseshit of the moment. This clown has a petition going, apparently.

Is it important to cast a white guy as Iron Fist? No. It's a fucking TV show, nobody cares.

Will it suck if they stray off the story to satisfy some SJWs racist demands? Oh yes, it will most certainly suck. Because if you're going to change the races of the characters to satisfy whining idiots who don't even have any money at stake in the production, you're going to twist the whole story into A DIFFERENT STORY. But somebody already wrote the thing for you, and set up how it's supposed to be, and it WORKED that way. Iron Fist is a long running comic. We're not talking about something like Tigra that lasted a couple years, Iron Fist has been around since the 1970's.

Good on Marvel for ignoring the SJWs. May they continue to do so.

The Phantom

Tuberculosis. Just like I said.

CDC says TB cases are up this year, for the first time in 25 years.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia each had more cases in 2015 than 2014, raising questions -- but no definitive answers -- about a possible resurgence of one of the world's deadliest diseases.

The overall increase was relatively small: 157 more cases, bringing the 2015 total to 9,563. Two-thirds of the total were among people born abroad, with Asians accounting for the most cases (3,007) and the highest rate (28.2 cases per 100,000 persons). By comparison, there were only .5 cases per 100,000 whites last year.

Remember I said this was coming? I hate being right.

But pay attention to this part of the statement. This is the good part:

"After two decades of declining incidence, progress toward TB elimination in the United States appears to have stalled," the CDC report said. The causes are unclear, it said, and the data need further evaluation if the reasons behind the trend are to be identified.

And...
 

 More than half of cases reported in 2015 were clustered in four states — California, Florida, New York and Texas — which have one-third of the U.S. population.

 To be clear, 2015 did not have the most cases of TB in 25 years. The number of cases has been declining for 25 years. 2015 is the first year it increased over the year before.

Meaning, despite everything the American public health establishment and their billions of dollars of funding could do, the number of cases increased. In border states. Which are being flooded with illegal immigrants from places where TB is endemic. Plus NY, which is a destination state because of its generous welfare and medicare programs.

The CDC very, very carefully does not connect those dots.

But I will. TB will continue to increase as long as people get across the US border without being tested for TB. Guaranteed.

The Phantom

Brussels attack.

It's all over Drudge and everywhere else today, a terrorist attack in Brussels. Bombs blew up and killed people.

My opinions haven't changed. I'm very sad for the people who were killed and maimed in this ACT OF WAR.

I am very angry with the Canadian, American and European authorities whose insane immigration policies made this attack possible. The frightening thing is that we can be confident there is a similar cell of killers here in Canada planning the same thing.

You get what you vote for, my friends. Belgians voted for this. Canadians voted for this. Americans voted for this.

Somebody tell me again how eeeevile Donald Trump is for criticizing American immigration policy. Go ahead, I want to hear it.

My problem with Trump is not what he says, it is that I don't think he will actually do anything he's promising. He's a limousine liberal from New York City, and to date he has not walked his talk.

The Phantom

Rob Ford, RIP

Today we lost the former mayor of Toronto Rob Ford at the age of 46, due to cancer. Not much of a run for his money, poor guy.

I was always impressed by the way he dealt with political attacks. Just took it and kept on keeping on.

Godspeed, Rob Ford.

The Phantom

Sylvia Anderson of Thunderbirds fame has died.

Sylvia Anderson, age 88, after a short illness.

Godspeed, Sylvia. You were the voice of some of my favorite childhood characters.  Lady Penelope, Dr. Venus.

I remember.

The Phantom

Gut bacteria can affect skin cancer.

This is pretty cool.

Take your probiotics, kids. ~:D

By-the-mile US car tax proposed by CBO

And there it is, ladies and gentlemen. The tax we've all been waiting for, the pay-by-the-mile tax.

An economist at the Congressional Budget Office suggested on Monday that the federal government could start charging people based on how far they drive in order to generate more government revenues to spend on highway projects.

Chad Shirley, CBO's deputy assistant director for microeconomic studies, gave a presentation that says federal gas tax revenues are falling short of federal spending on highway programs. But to resolve that problem, Shirley didn't propose less federal spending, and instead offered three suggestions.

The first is simply, "charging drivers" more the more they drive on roads.

Shirley said that one way to charge drivers more is to implement "vehicle-miles traveled charges.

CBO's presentation also said the government could get more money from drivers by charging them more when traffic is bad. Shirley calls that "congestion pricing.

A third option, Shirley said, would be "allowing tolling on additional existing interstates."

Side benefit of pay-by-the-mile, a 24/7/365 Panopticon view of the location of every single vehicle in the USA. Just imagine the datamining you could do on a thing like that.

They are going to do this.

War on men opens a new front at Harvard.

SJW's have decided that men's social clubs are the Root Of All Evil at Harvard U, and must be destroyed.

A task force charged with examining sexual assault at Harvard University is recommending that the school bar students from joining its all-male final clubs, blaming the single-sex organizations for perpetuating a "harmful sexual culture" on campus.

The task force argued in a new report that the all-male organizations, which have no formal relationship with the university, should be forced to accept women in order to fix the problem of sexual assault on Harvard's campus. The report, published this week, followed attempts by the Harvard administration to compel the all-male final clubs to accept women, an effort that the Washington Free Beacon previously reported has angered graduate members of the organizations and made current student members fear for their reputations.

The report from the Harvard Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault was accompanied by several appendices, including one from the task force's so-called "outreach and communications subcommittee" that presented a set of "ideas" for the administration to deal with the final clubs. One of the proposals suggested that the school threaten students with expulsion if they join an all-male final club.

Apparently a "final club" is a social club that one attends in one's final undergrad year.

Apparently the "Harvard Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault" has no would-be lawyers in it, it seems they don't understand the magnitude of legal risk that would fall upon the university if they actually expelled a paying student for membership in an off-campus club.

Apparently the SJW's at large have no appreciation of the irony that expelling people for belonging to an all-male club represents, given their commitment to "diversity."

The Apparent Phantom

White men: go kill yourself!

Arthur Chu reaches deep into the Cracker Barrel of Crazy for this one.

It's not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males

Blaming "mental illness" is a cop-out -- and one that lets us avoid talking about race, guns, hatred and terrorism

"I get really really tired of hearing the phrase "mental illness" thrown around as a way to avoid saying other terms like "toxic masculinity," "white supremacy," "misogyny" or "racism."

You know what I get tired of, dicks like Arthur Chu running around pretending that everything from mass shootings and murder down to mild unpleasantness at the checkout in Walgreen's is due to VIOLENT WHITE CONSERVATIVE MALES WITH GUNS!!!1!

Because when you look at mass shootings, assassinations and murder over the last twenty years, socialists, communists and non-whites outnumber white males. By a lot. The number of "terrorist" actions by specifically white male conservatives can be counted on your fingers.

But in fairness, this is Arthur Chu and Salon.com we're talking about. Arty doesn't have a very strong connection to Reality, generally. So expecting reason isn't... reasonable, I suppose.

Bang, white man!

5 qubit quantum computer at MIT.

Factoring large numbers may become much easier very soon indeed.

In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or "qubits," that can be simultaneously 0 and 1—a state known as a superposition that's far more efficient. It typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found a way to pare that down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom, they said this week.

Using laser pulses to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, the new system promises scalability as well, as more atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer able to factor much larger numbers. That, in turn, presents new risks for factorization-based methods such as RSA, used for protecting credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data.

The development is in many ways an answer to a challenge posed back in 1994, when MIT professor Peter Shor came up with a quantum algorithm that calculates the prime factors of a large number with much better efficiency than a classical computer.

Fifteen is the smallest number that can meaningfully demonstrate Shor's algorithm. Without any prior knowledge of the answers, the new system returned the correct factors with a confidence better than 99 percent.

"We show that Shor's algorithm, the most complex quantum algorithm known to date, is realizable in a way where, yes, all you have to do is go in the lab, apply more technology, and you should be able to make a bigger quantum computer," said Isaac Chuang, professor of physics and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

"It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build—you won't be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon—but now it's much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question," Chuang added.

Meaning, if you throw money at it you could decrypt pretty much anything, no matter how big the number of bits used.

The Phantom

Well, that didn't take long. Pedal to the metal on deficits!

Trudeau The Younger to follow in Elder's footsteps.

With falling oil prices eroding Canada's revenue base, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is fully embracing deficits, with his finance minister hinting Monday the country will run a deficit of about C$30 billion ($22 billion) in the fiscal year that starts April 1.It's one of the biggest fiscal swings in the country's history that, in just four months since the Oct. 19 election, has cut loose all the fiscal anchors Trudeau pledged to abide by even as he runs deficits.

Wow. How unexpected.

The Phantom

Why am I a Sad Puppy?

Here's why.

Witch hunt!

The BURN THE WITCH!!!! Phantom

How stupid are Canadian journalists?

So stupid they are doubling down on the same Liberal Party love-fest they've been having for the last 70 years, while they circle the Great White Bowl of corporate bankruptcy.

It's been a dismal start to the year for Canada's newspapers, and investors see little sign of a turnaround.
Postmedia Network Canada Corp., owner of many of the country's newspapers, announced in January it was merging newsrooms in cities where it has two papers, eliminating dozens of jobs. Torstar Corp., publisher of the country's largest circulation paper, closed its printing plant and fired 300. Rogers Media, a unit of Rogers Communications Inc., fired 200 people. The 149-year-old Guelph Mercury shut down its print edition. Some publishers are even suggesting government support is necessary. And that was just in January.
"We're seeing a further cratering of the daily press," Ken Doctor, an independent media analyst at Santa Cruz, California-based Newsonomics, said by phone."The toll that all these years of losses in print advertising has taken is now deadening the enterprises."

Two things are happening, in my estimation. First, people are not getting their news from the papers anymore, because the papers LIE. They lie about every important issue in our society. They lie by ignoring things that are vital for us to know about, they lie by covering shit that doesn't matter at all, and finally they tell actual untruths about the stories they do cover.

Second, because people are getting their news from more reliable sources, print ads are no longer effective. People don't see them.

These are not new things. They've been in motion for twenty years now. The larger media out there has been playing ostrich.

Not one existing media company has questioned The Deal they made with the Liberals back in the 1930's. The Faustian bargain that has set the course of this country since the Great Depression is finally coming apart due to social upheaval, government following policies that are destroying Canada and new technology creating competition for the public's eyeball time.

Clearly, the Big Media Buggywhip manufacturers are going to ride The Deal down in flames. Because they are -stupid-.

Faster, please!

Update: Welcome to all you Small Dead Animals flying monkeys, and thanks for the linkage Kate!

No Twitter for you!

It seems that Twitter has discovered the fun and frolic available in silencing one' s political opponents. Oh, joy.

The folks running Twitter may be too young to have heard of George Orwell, or perhaps they simply do not care that their new advisory council sounds frighteningly Orwellian. Either way, the brand new "Twitter Trust and Safety Council" seems like a board ready to censor comments in deference to political correctness.

It doesn't help that among the more than 40 organizations that make up the council, one finds such groups as the "Dangerous Speech Project," a group with ties to the liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and to financier George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Another council member is GLAAD, formerly an acronym for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (the organization now goes by just its initials). Feminist Frequency, which also seeks to monitor free speech, is another member of the council.

The council does include some groups that appear to do good work preventing cyber-bullying against the young. Absent, however, are any conservative-leaning groups.

Emphasis mine.

Diversity, you see, does not include conservatives. Just so we are all clear.

The Phantom

This is not the least bit racist.

Portland college decides April is White Shaming month. April Fools, parents of students!

"'Whiteness History Month: Context, Consequences, and Change' is a multidisciplinary, district-wide, educational project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins, and heritage," PCC states on its website. "Scheduled for the month of April 2016, the project seeks to inspire innovative and practical solutions to community issues and social problems that stem from racism."

The WHM site makes clear that the project is not a "celebratory endeavor" like heritage months, but is rather "an effort to change our campus climate" by "[challenging] the master narrative of race and racism through an exploration of the social construction of whiteness." ("Challenging the master narrative," PCC explains, "is a strategy within higher education that promotes multicultural education and equity.")

Remember that name my friends, Portland Community College. You will want to know where not to send your young sprouts when they get to post-secondary ed.

Nice article on 'Cultural Appropriation"

SJWs and Progs generally like to bandy about this cultural appropriation thing. A favorite is white girls with dreadlocks. White girls are not allowed to have dreads because dreads are a "black thing".

Now, for my money dreadlocks aren't a thing at all, because black or white they make you look like a haystack and make you smell funny. Dirty hair is not a nice feature, ok?

But never mind, I'm a curmudgeonly old man. I believe in stick shifts on cars too.

Intuitively, anyone with a brain immediatly understands there's no "white things" and "black things". There's things, and we use them or not as it suits us.

Cultural appropriation doctrine as preached by the Progs means that as a white man, I am not allowed to sing songs like "Kumbaya" because that is a Negro Spiritual, and I'm not to be appropriating that for my own use. Only black people are allowed to sing that, it's their song.

By this logic, Indian people are not allowed to make pizza, and Spanish people are not allowed to go to sushi bars.

This article here goes into the logic fails underpinning cultural appropriation as a concept rather nicely. It's worth a read.

Smart phone tethers, now chips.

Finally, somebody decided the time is right to push implanted chips for security at airports.

A man who implanted a microchip containing his airline booking details into his hand was able to use it to pass effortlessly through security to his flight.

Andreas Sjöström, vice president of digital for technology consulting company Sogeti, had the near-field communication chip (NFC) about the size of a grain of rice injected into his hand with a syringe, before using it at Stockholm Arlanda Airport to pass through security and board his plane.

The technology has been used before to make digital payments, control a mobile phone and unlock doors, in the same way contactless payment cards work. All it requires is a scanner to link up to that is compatible with the NFC.

There is going to be a BIG push for this. It's just soooo attractive to a certain kind of mindset to be able to easily scan and identify everybody who walks through a door or past a post on the street. They get all warm at the very notion. Lots of companies and organizations are going to try their best to make this verrrry attractive.

I suggest y'all resist the temptation. Cutting one out is going to suck a lot more than having it put in.

The Phantom

Toldja: Cell phones listen to what you're watching on TV.

Little Brother is getting to be more of an asshole that Big Brother, if you ask me. Big Brother listens to criminals and political agitators, Little Brother listens to ME.

Wait, what? It's using the microphones on cell phones to listen? Who's it listening in on?

The company behind the technology is called Symphony Advanced Media. The Observer spoke to its CEO Charles Buchwalter, about how it works, via phone. "Our entire focus is to add insights and perspectives on an entire new paradigm around how consumers are consuming media across  platforms," he told the Observer.

Cool, but is Symphony listening to viewers without their knowledge?

Short answer: pretty much no.

Symphony collects data with a similar strategy to Nielsen, by inviting users to opt-in to specific monitoring. Nielsen has the set meter and its paper diaries. Unlike Nielsen, Symphony uses a less direct strategy than a box on top of a TV to track what a viewer is watching, because not all the viewing is on TVs and not all the broadcasters want to be tracked.

For the privacy-conscious, Symphony's app isn't hidden inside other apps with permissions buried in user agreements no one reads.

Symphony asks those who opt in to load Symphony-branded apps onto their personal devices, apps that use microphones to listen to what's going on in the background. With technology from Gracenote, the app can hear the show playing and identify it using its unique sound signature (the same way Shazam identifies a song playing over someone else's speakers). Doing it that way allows the company to gather data on viewing of sites like Netflix and Hulu, whether the companies like it or not. (Netflix likes data)

So, this time you have to agree to be listened to.

That is not always the case. Chrome apparently tracks pretty much every click and mouse movement these days, AND harvests your cookies. Meaning the guy who has your Facebook cookie can log in to your Facebook account. Or your gmail account, or any other service you use that has an "instant log-in" feature that remembers you are logged in. You know that little "remember me" box? That works by cookies.

There are other things in Chrome that allegedly turn on your microphone without telling you. I don't have time to verify that right now, I'm just going to assume it's true. We know for sure there are apps like Shazam that work by using the microphone, and Siri uses the microphone.

I do believe there is a shitload of money to be made in a SECURITY APP that shuts off the ability of people to spy on you through your phone. I'd pay $500 right now for an app or service that locked down all my stuff and kept Google, Apple and every other government or non-government asshole from surveiling my behavior.

Next killer app is security. Count on it.

You must have this.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2016/01/11/ar-lowers-with-free-mhi-laser-etching-january-only/

This is the coolest thing. On sale for January, an AR15 lower with the Monster Hunter International logo laser etched on it.

Those of you who are unfamilliar with MHI, go to Baen.com and download the first one for free. Sweetness awaits.

Phantom reviews Star Wars! (no spoilers!)

Went to Star Wars The Force Awakens last night, Christmas Eve.

It did not suck! Amazing! Worth the ticket price.

That said, there have been better movies. There were a few clunky bits, and poor old Harrison Ford was on-screen way more than he should have been. The guy just looked tired and sore, particularly compared to the bouncing ball of energy that is Daisy Ridley. That girl was on freaking fire in this flick.

My movie companion was moved to tears when Carrie Fisher came on the screen. It's really sad how old and busted that woman appeared. I hope it was all movie magic, because damn. She moves like it hurts. A lot. Worse than watching Arnold Schwarzenegger try to run. Don't get me wrong, it works for the movie. But it'll make you cry if you're a Princess Leia fan.

Mark Hamill finally looks like a f-ing ancient Jedi ass-kicker ought to look. Age is better to some than others.

 Finally, Canadians will laugh when the bad guy takes off his helmet. No spoilers, but you're going to say "Don't I know that guy?"

All things considered, it was everything one expects from a Star Wars movie, without the lameness of George Lucas directing. JJ Abrams got a good performance out of all of them. Well done!

Merry Christmas!

This is the next Lefty scam: water scarcity.

USA Today: Oh Noes! We are running out of WATERZ!!!!

Time is running out for portions of the High Plains Aquifer, which lies beneath eight states from South Dakota to Texas and is the lifeblood of one of the world's most productive farming economies. The aquifer, also known as the Ogallala, makes possible about one-fifth of the country's output of corn, wheat and cattle. But its levels have been rapidly declining, and with each passing year more wells are going dry.
As less water pours from wells, some farmers are adapting by switching to different crops. Others are shutting down their drained wells and trying to scratch out a living as dryland farmers, relying only on the rains.
In parts of western Kansas, the groundwater has already been exhausted and very little can be extracted for irrigation. In other areas, the remaining water could be mostly used up within a decade.

Cue the Greenies, with their hair tearing and garment rending, their sack cloth and ashes, to blame Consumerism for this Crisis.

One question, what group thinks it's a good idea to burn corn as ethanol?

That's right kids, Greenies!

Look for this one to start getting pushed good and hard, as Glowball Warmening begins to falter after the 2016 election.

The Phantom Forecaster

Obama "Is my face red?" dept.

Yesterday, Obama gave a speech saying that Americans should not be able to buy gun if they are on the "No-Fly" list.

Today, we discover 72 Department of Homeland Security employees are on the "No-Fly" list.

Really. I couldn't make something like that up.

The Phantom

My comment on the San Bernadino attack.

1) I'm very sorry that people died and were badly hurt because California liberals are afraid of guns. Perhaps if gun-free zones were outlawed this kind of atrocity would be a thing of the past.

2) From Market Watch:

"Shares of the two publicly traded gun makers rallied on Monday, a day after President Barack Obama gave a prime-time address calling for a modest reduction in the availability of firearms."

That is about all there is to say, I do believe.

The Phantom

Told you: FBI reveals depth of information requests.

Further to the SHUT UP!!! they explained post , the FBI 'requests' for information amount to the complete internet history of any named individual, no warrant required.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has used a secretive authority to compel Internet and telecommunications firms to hand over customer data including an individual's complete web browsing history and records of all online purchases, a court filing released Monday shows.

The documents are believed to be the first time the government has provided details of its so-called national security letters, which are used by the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance without the need for court approval.

The filing made public Monday was the result of an 11-year-old legal battle waged by Nicholas Merrill, founder of Calyx Internet Access, a hosted service provider, who refused to comply with a national security letter (NSL) he received in 2004.

Merrill told Reuters the release was significant "because the public deserves to know how the government is gathering information without warrants on Americans who are not even suspected of a crime."

What's bullshit about this is not that the FBI can get all that without a warrant. No, the true bullshit, the real lie, is that they need to ask. ALL that data plus a lot more is already in NSA databases, and they do share it with the FBI.

The FBI sends these letters to provide a fig-leaf for use in court, not because they require the cooperation of the ISPs and the phone company. They already have your complete web history on call, on a whim. The letters are so they can admit in court to knowing things they are not supposed to be able to know.

Anyone not wondering how big the FBI porn stash of sexy selfies has grown is an idiot. I will bet dollars against donuts that any good-looking woman who thinks her 'secret' photos remain secret is dreaming in technicolor. My advice, if you want to take sexy selfies, use a Polaroid camera.

The Phantom

SHUT UP!!! they explained.

The process -is- the punishment. Government appealed a court decision to lift a gag order for 11 years, lost every single time. Kept it up anyway. No particular reason, just because they could.

For years after receiving a national security letter from the FBI, he was an anonymous litigant and unnamed op-ed writer, barred by a gag order from revealing that he had received a warrantless demand for customer information. Now, Nicholas Merrill's gag order has been lifted in full, and – apparently for the first time – an NSL recipient can speak openly without fear of punishment.

Merrill, owner of now-defunct Calyx Internet Access, provided Internet service to about 200 customers when he received the order in February 2004. He refused to turn over the records of the targeted customer and went to court with American Civil Liberties Union representation. 

Merrill won the right to identify himself in 2010, but could not say what the ultimately withdrawn letter said. In August, a federal judge ordered the associated gag order lifted, with a 90-day pause to allow the Justice Department time to appeal, which it chose not to do.

I'd be fascinated to know how much that cost, and exactly who thought that expenditure was reasonable. Like, with names and faces.

The Phantom

This is where 'eat me last' gets you.

The remarkably socialist, one might even say pinko-led Church of England has received an extraordinary rebuke. From the Left!

They can't run a PAID advertisement featuring the Lord's Prayer in English movie theaters the week before Christmas. No, really.

The advert, produced by JustPray.uk, shows the Lord's Prayer being recited by a members of the public ranging from bodybuilders to children, and also features the Most Rev Justin Welby.
A CoE spokesman said it was initially believed that their minute-long advert had been approved and would be played before showings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens from December 18.
They were later informed that, due to a DCM policy not to run adverts which could potentially cause offence, the video would not be shown.
When asked for a copy of that policy, CoE was told there is no formal policy document but that it had been agreed with the DCM's members.
There is now a formal policy on the DCM's website, which states: "To be approved, an advertisement must ... not in the reasonable opinion of DCM constitute political or religious advertising."

Please note this is not a PSA or some other free donated-time thing. This is a bought-and-paid-for advertisement. A one minute spot of people reciting the Lord's Prayer. Can't show it. Too offensive. Running with scissors.

The delicious irony for me is that this kind of thing is exactly what the Lefty minions of the Church of England have been working toward since World War Two ended. The notion that secular theaters SHOULD NOT feature religion in any way, shape or form is one that CoE upper management embraces wholeheartedly.

We have a similar situation in Canada with the United Church of Canada. If you go to certain UCC churches in Toronto, you may be able to go through an entire service and not hear anything overtly Christian the whole time. The gay minister may not even mention Jesus. Because it wouldn't do to OFFEND anyone, y'know. It's all about Social Justice and doing Good Works and all that great lefty stuff.

All of which boils down to a corporation that defines itself as a church but acts like a retail store, changing it's wares to appeal to new customers and begging the ever-more-rapaciaous taxman regulators to eat them last.

The trouble with eat-me-last as a strategy is that eventually, if you wait long enough, you get eaten.

The other thing is that the movie chains are not banning the ad out of some SJW yearning to make everything fair for everyone and Kumbaya. Nuh uh. They're banning it because they are terrified of having their theaters burnt down by hordes of militant Mooselimbs being offended at the very existence of the Church of England in... England.

The movie chain guys are not wrong of course. Their know their audience. If that ad gets shown, theaters in some parts of England will probably get burnt down. At the very least there will be "unrest", as Monty Python says.

More delicious irony, which denomination is number one for "outreach" these days? Church of England! They just love that multi-cultural exchange stuff, makes 'em feel all warm and fuzzy, and keeps the government grants flowing through their coffers. Gotta keep the roofs patched on all those ancient church buildings y'know.

This is why I don't like churches as a general thing. They behave a lot more like a retail real estate investment trust (REIT) than a religious organization that believes in stuff. If I want to see wishy-washy salesmanship I'll go to the mall, thanks.

The Retail Religion Phantom.

Instant update! Superblogger and fabulous short person Kathy Shaidle sent this in a minute ago: Famous Atheist (and all-round dick, IMHO) Richard Dawkins comes out in support of the Church of England.

“My immediate response was to tweet that it was a violation of freedom of speech,” Dawkins told the Guardian. “But I deleted it when respondents convinced me that it was a matter of commercial judgment on the part of the cinemas, not so much a free speech issue.”

“I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people,” he said. “If anybody is ‘offended’ by something so trivial as a prayer, they deserve to be offended.”

Yeah, the "commercial judgement" was that they didn't want their theaters burnt down, and between the lines Dawkins knows it.

Mr. Dawkins, dick though he may be, realizes that an Islamic England is going to be one where he gets hanged, or possibly stoned to death, drawn, quartered, burnt at the stake or suffers some other medieval atrocity simply for being an atheist. He, unlike the CoE, realizes eat-me-last is not a winning strategy. 

Even a blind pig finds the odd acorn.

Paris

I suppose I have to comment on this, it isn't like if we all ignore it it'll go away.

First, my condolences to everybody who lost someone on Friday night, or who got wounded.

Second, this is all down to policy decisions made back in the 1950s or even earlier. Disarm the average citizen, propagandize them to be passive in the face of violence, make them believe that only police have the moral right to use force.

That mindset is what got us where we are today. The official policy of Western governments is that citizens shall wait for the police, and the police will do the shooting. Any citizen who does not wait for the police will be subjected to The Process, which will be long, arduous and ultimately pointless.

It's credentialism, basically. The idea that if you want the best job, you get the experts who have been trained and tested. Like a doctor or a plumber. The industrial model of social justice.

Now, this model has it's advantages. It makes everything very convenient for police forces and governments, it creates very large budgets for police forces and justice bureaucracies, and it gives politicians something to campaign on. Lefties run on Compassion, righties run on Law and Order. Two sides of the same coin, credentialism. No one questions the model, because the model is their iron rice bowl.

In Western societies where there basically is no crime to speak of, it works well enough to get by. Meaning it doesn't work at all for the victims of crime, but they are few and don't have a platform to make a fuss. The wealthy and powerful get a special deal from police forces, and the rest of us get by ok. Mostly.

Places where crime is high of course it doesn't work at all, but again nobody cares about non-white ghettos or the poor. Those People don't matter, what can you expect from them anyway. Liberals like to -say- they care, but when you turn the sound off, they act like they don't care.

Now we add one more variable, the politically motivated Mass Migration.

In America back when cotton was king, they imported slaves. In their hundreds of thousands, Africans were purchased from Arab slavers and brought to North America. The one reason this was done, they wanted Cheap Labor.

Fast forward to 2015, South Americans and Mooselimbs from the Middle East are being imported in their millions. Same reason, Cheap Labor. And gee whiz, it's working about the same as slavery did. As in, not well.

Suddenly, the credentialist model isn't working and it can't be swept under the carpet anymore. Cops aren't there when the trouble happens, nobody can do anything about it except run away. People die.

This Paris attack was inevitable. The French imported people from a region where they are having a religious war. Surprise, they continued the war, except now it's in France. Inevitably terrorists are going to attack anyplace where more than three people are gathered and unarmed. It's like magnetism, they'll always go there. In a disarmed population, five shooters can kill a lot of people.

In an armed population, they may not manage to kill anyone. That's why the Palestinians switched to suicide bombs in Israel, their rifle squads were getting eliminated by the intended victims before they could get a round off. Mohamed pulls out an AK-47 at the grocery store, and before he's finished yelling Allah Akbar some old lady shoots him in the  head. That's how it goes in an armed population.

Of two things we can be certain, therefore. There will be terror attacks. They will grow in number and intensity, because it's like a popular movement. All the cool kids are doing it. The official response will be to rearrange the deck chairs on their ship of fools. More cops,bigger guns, security checks, the whole Police State trip. That's what they're going to do. For sure. And more gun control, because police states like gun control, it makes everything more neat and tidy for the police.

The other thing is, people will ignore the police state and arm themselves when it starts to get bad. Already there are no guns available in European stores and ammo is on back order because it has all been bought up. Europeans are arming themselves, the same Europeans that vote for more-bigger-better gun control every year. Right now they are buying shotguns and keeping them in the closet. After a few more Paris attacks they will be carrying shotguns, and the cops will be looking the other way.

If the Liberal Party of Canada does what they're saying they will right now, that's what our future in Canada will be as well. I'm not looking forward to it.

Those two things are 100% lead-pipe certain. Likely but not guaranteed, a civil war and ethnic cleansing of Europe. Every two or three generations Europe has one of these events throughout history. They're about due. Maybe they'll manage to skip it this time, so far it's not looking good.

The Phantom

November 11th, 2015.

We do not forget.

Wait, I thought casting didn't matter!

This is confusing.

The casting of a white actor as Martin Luther King in an Ohio university production of Katori Hall's acclaimed play The Mountaintop was "a disservice to not just Dr King but an entire community", the playwright has said.

Hall wrote an essay for the African American cultural website the Root on Monday about Kent State University's production of her play, which dramatizes the night before King was assassinated in 1968.

Hall told the Guardian that director Michael Oatman's decision to double-cast the six-show production with a black actor and a white actor as King went "deeper than just casting a white man in the role of MLK".

"I just really feel as though it echoes this pervasive erasure of the black body and the silencing of a black community – theatrically and also, literally, in the world," she said.

Oatman, who like Hall is black, said in a statement in August promoting the play that he chose a white actor for the production "to explore the issue of racial ownership and authenticity".

So casting a historical character who is black with a white actor is racism? But wait! Don't I recall that merely objecting to the casting of a white character with a black actor was racism?

Yes I do recall that. That post is one of the most-read things I've ever written. Every week it gets hits. Objecting that they cast Johnny Storm with a black actor is nerd racism my friends. Lots of people say so.

And you know, they cast a black guy in the movie to play the white character, then amazingly enough, Stan Lee did NOT write an essay for some white culture website complaining that the switch was "a disservice to not just the Fantastic Four but an entire community!"

You know what happened instead? All us comic fans got told to shut up.

I decided shutting up would be boring, so I went out on a limb and said any movie that casts a white character with a black actor to get PC points is going to suck. Behold, it did suck. The FF movie came out and dropped off the face of the Earth two weeks later. Because, of course, it sucked hard.

Casting does matter. Duh. Casting Martin Luther King with a white actor is stupid. The play will suck. It will suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

I'm waiting for J.F. Sargent to call Katori Hall a racist, in keeping with his thesis that objections to race switching in movies is racism. Got my popcorn right here.

The Phantom.

Death marches in Europe. Toldja.

No one. Ever. Listens.

But having encouraged people to move, the Europeans are now pulling up the drawbridge because they have found dealing with the influx overwhelming. Where were the preparations? Why were fleets of buses and trains and boats not laid on at the borders of the EU to bring people safely to Germany, which is, after all, where most people are headed?

Why were arrangements not made? Two reasons, the first being practicality. It is politically and economically unfeasible to do what is currently being done in Europe. If anyone saw their government making arrangements to do it gracefully, they would find out how much it is going to cost, and they would stop it. The cost of trucking that many migrants to Germany is, on the grand scale of government spending, not high. The cost of feeding and housing them, reachable.

The cost of funding their welfare payments in perpetuity? It's not going to happen, is how high that is. Because it will cost more money than there is in Europe. They aren't going to get jobs in Germany and become productive German citizens, because THERE AREN'T THAT MANY JOBS available. And there never, ever will be. And everybody knows it.

But that's not the real reason there are no buses or trains. The real reason is that this is a -spectacle-. This is a circus act! The Great and the Good of the German intelligentsia are putting on a show featuring other people's pain, paid for with other people's money, for political gain. They are happy to have thousands, or maybe even tens of thousands of itinerant Mooselimbs DIE this winter, so that they can run pictures of the corpses in all the newspapers. Then presumably they get the thing that they want, which probably boils down to money.

How many guys had heart attacks so the EU could take this picture?

They are doing this deliberately, because they want that picture. The picture is the reason.

Somebody please tell me again how the socialists are the friends of the Little Guy. And remind me when the socialists INEVITABLY start machine-gunning columns of people in front of hastily dug trenches.

They do it because they care, right?

The Phantom

Tiny House sales job: making poverty cool.

The Cognoscenti have decided you shall live in a refrigerator box on wheels, and you shall be grateful for the opportunity. If you really do well, they will give you a shipping container. You filthy peasant.

Looks like Architectural Digest, don't it?

For San Franciscans, the rent refuge is here in Oakland, where the rates are increasing as well — so much so that young professionals are living in repurposed shipping containers while the homeless are lugging around coffinlike sleeping boxes on wheels.

These two improvised housing arrangements have emerged in an industrial pocket of Oakland where the median rent has gone up by 20 percent over the past year. One, in a warehouse, is called Containertopia, a community of young people who have set up a village of 160-square-foot shipping containers like ones used in the Port of Oakland. Each resident pays $600 a month to live in a container, which can be modified with things like insulation, glass doors, electrical outlets, solar panels and a self-contained shower and toilet.

Container "which can be modified" sounds pretty crappy. Could it be worse? Yes it could!

The artist, with one of his "tiny houses". Note the bucket. It's not for champagne.

Just outside the warehouse doors is another community, residing, too, in containers of a sort. Here, the homeless live in dwellings made by a local artist named Gregory Kloehn, set on wheels and made for the streets. Each is about eight feet long and tall enough for a person to sit up in.

"It doesn't fit our mind-set of what a home is," said Mr. Kloehn, 44, who began creating and giving away the portable homes, which are made of recycled material, in 2011.

Imagine yourself walking out the door of your lovely container, with it's "self contained" toilet that you have to empty by hand. Because no plumbing, my friends! So here you are, walking out the door of your container with a bucket of toilet leavings (don't spill it!!!) and you hump this fifty pound thing down the FIVE FLIGHTS of stairs to chuck it in the communal poo disposal (which you pay for, don't forget, because no plumbing!)

And on the curb, in front of the beautiful, multicolored container stack you call home, is some bum with a brightly painted hand cart. He's setting up camp on the sidewalk and emptying his own poo bucket into the gutter. Where it will stink for all eternity, because this is California and it never rains, therefore the poo will never be washed away.

Sounds like an awesome place to raise your kids, doesn't it?

It isn't recycled material. It's junk. You're living in a makeshift pile of junk that other people threw out.

It's not a tiny house. Its a shack, or possibly a hand-cart.

You're not a hipster. You're a bum.

It isn't an alternative lifestyle. It's SQUALOR, and it isn't good for you.

Oh, and by the way. Mr. Kloehn isn't an artist. He's a would-be aristo with no visible means of support. I'd be fascinated to find out where his money comes from.

The Phantom

Shipping Containers the New Hotness in Architecture

Architecture is yet another field of endeavor hopelessly ruined by Marxism and the shadow of Central Planning. Evidence for today, they would very much like to replace proper apartment buildings with stacks of shipping containers.

Advocates for shipping container homes say speed of installation, cost savings on materials and the capacity to re-use units in new locations make it a serious option for urban housing. The latest exhibition at The Building Centre in central London captures the trend. Designers are offering lunchtime tours of a model shipping container home, asking whether these "highly adaptable and move-able" objects might play a much bigger role in easing the housing crisis.

Instant slums, designed to hide away the excess unemployed and unwanted "migrants" as cheaply as possible. They aren't even pretending otherwise, a somewhat refreshing change from the usual housing project bullroar. They're attempting to hitch on to the tail of the "Tiny House" hipster thing, but that seems to be burning out as more and more hipsters realize "Tiny House" = shack.

I want you to imagine a stack of shipping containers, five high. Each one filled with combustible rug, furniture, bedding. Inhabited by drunks and drug addicts... and you. Because Big Brother said this is where you get to live.

Drug addict Bob is making hash oil out of "medical marijuana"  in his "kitchen" using butane. He lives on the ground floor. Oops, Bob lights his container on fire because he is a brain damaged dumb-ass.

A fire in a stack of shipping containers. Be a hell of a thing, wouldn't it?

The Phantom.

The new war on biceps.

Yes, apparently having muscles is now bad. Who knew?

Political correctness has value, Katz said. Supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump say like they him for "not being politically correct," but what they really mean is they like him "for saying racist and sexist comments," Katz added.

Pop culture also has an insidious effect on masculinity, Katz continued, imploring the audience not to "check your brain and moral conscience when you go to the movies."

He showed clips from his film Tough Guise, in which Katz claims "there has been a ratcheting up of what it takes to be considered menacing in the 1980s and 90s."

As evidence, Katz noted that G.I. Joe's biceps have gotten larger over the years and that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone use bigger guns for their iconic roles as the Terminator and Rambo than did Humphrey Bogart in his 1930s and 1940s film roles.

I want to ask this guy, if biceps and and six-pack abs are bad, how about beard stubble and a beer gut?

The Phantom

The problem with back doors in computers.

My previous post dealt with the possibility that your hard drive my not be deleting things when you tell it to. This is not to your benefit, it is to someone else's. Probably the FBI/DHS/ABCDEFG branch of the US government. They can do things like that, and we know they have been.

Now, there is a problem with this kind of thing, and it is that doors open for whoever has the key. They can also be kicked open.

There's still "only" 21.5-million federal employees whose personnel data have been stolen, but the Office of Personnel Management now admits that they've found that the number of individuals whose fingerprints were swiped is up to 5.6 million.

This is of course the much under-publicized hack of the United States government Office of Personnel Management. Criminals and/or enemy foreign governments have the complete, searchable, exhaustive list of US government employees. With pictures and all sorts of personal info that people are not supposed to know about.

Its a disaster. I don't mean a disaster like a house burnt down, or a storm. I mean a disaster like the Great Chicago Fire, or the San Francisco Earthquake. Foreign governments know -exactly- who works for the US government. It's literally the largest breach of confidentiality in human history. No government has ever fucked up this badly anywhere else, ever.

Question arises, how can something like this happen? How can the government keep their Crown Jewel of digital information on something so crappy that people can steal it?

Well, if hard drives keep secret copies of things that can only be accessed by people with the proper codes, and if iPhones keep track of your movements whether you like it or not and transmit that data to Apple, and if the government has built back doors into popular processors so that they can defeat an air gap if they want, what if somebody else got hold of those codes?

What if somebody reverse engineered those government mandated back doors? Somebody like the manufacturer for example, who resides in China?

The US government runs on computers made in China. Because that's where computers are made these days.

Gee, I wonder how they hacked the OPM? Well, no, actually I wonder wheat else they hacked that nobody told us about.

The Phantom

On the subject of wiping hard drives.

Most of us have a box of old hard drives kicking around. Here's something rather alarming pointed out at Small Dead Animals today by Lance.

From the article on the WIPE utility:

NOTE ABOUT JOURNALING FILESYSTEMS AND SOME RECOMMENDATIONS (JUNE 2004)

Journaling filesystems (such as Ext3 or ReiserFS) are now being used by default by most Linux distributions. No secure deletion program that does filesystem-level calls can sanitize files on such filesystems, because sensitive data and metadata can be written to the journal, which cannot be readily accessed. Per-file secure deletion is better implemented in the operating system.

Encrypting a whole partition with cryptoloop, for example, does not help very much either, since there is a single key for all the partition.

Therefore wipe is best used to sanitize a harddisk before giving it to untrusted parties (i.e. sending your laptop for repair, or selling your disk). Wiping size issues have been hopefully fixed (I apologize for the long delay).

Be aware that harddisks are quite intelligent beasts those days. They transparently remap defective blocks. This means that the disk can keep an albeit corrupted (maybe slightly) but inaccessible and unerasable copy of some of your data. Modern disks are said to have about 100% transparent remapping capacity. You can have a look at recent discussions on Slashdot.

I hereby speculate that harddisks can use the spare remapping area to secretly make copies of your data. Rising totalitarianism makes this almost a certitude. It is quite straightforward to implement some simple filtering schemes that would copy potentially interesting data. Better, a harddisk can probably detect that a given file is being wiped, and silently make a copy of it, while wiping the original as instructed.

Recovering such data is probably easily done with secret IDE/SCSI commands. My guess is that there are agreements between harddisk manufacturers and government agencies. Well-funded mafia hackers should then be able to find those secret commands too.

Don't trust your harddisk. Encrypt all your data.

Of course this shifts the trust to the computing system, the CPU, and so on. I guess there are also "traps" in the CPU and, in fact, in every sufficiently advanced mass-marketed chip. Wealthy nations can find those. Therefore these are mainly used for criminal investigation and "control of public dissent".

People should better think of their computing devices as facilities lended by the DHS.

Emphasis mine. Please note, this is a very informed opinion, but still only speculation.

For no particular reason, I will now link to an article on how to build a forge. Please note, this article has you building something quite permanent and complicated. I've seen good results with a used brake drum, a length of flexible ducting and a hair dryer.

Interesting random science note, did you know that striking a piece of metal with a hammer changes the crystal structure of the metal, and moves its magnetic properties around as well?

Interesting random link to an old article of mine.

Toldja. Templehof airport = new refugee camp.

Even a cursory reading of history, plus the most passing acquaintance with almost any German, tells you that the one thing Germans can't stand is things being untidy. Drives them nuts. They see something out of place, and they go fix it.

What's more untidy than a million Syrians trying to get on German welfare all at the same time? Nothing.

Germans have to fix it. They have to, its a cultural imperative perhaps on the same level as procreation.

Therefore, we are presented with a shiny new CAMP, in Berlin.

Now, the old airport at Tempelhof is about to find yet another incarnation: sheltering some among the massive surge of the migrants and refugees flooding into Germany. Berlin's mayor, Michael Mueller, told the RBB broadcaster over the weekend that one of the airfield's former hangars will be used to provide a roof – a lofty one at that - over the heads of about 800 asylum-seekers, as early as this week.
The need is great. Since the start of the current influx, the German capital has been receiving about 1,000 newcomers a day. More than 65,000 people have arrived in Germany this month, and the yearly tally may run to 1 million or more, officials now acknowledge. With winter fast approaching, housing is a crucial concern, with venues like a disused convention center and former military barracks being pressed into service.

Also mentioned in the article, a new camp on the grounds of the former Spandau prison.

The question that remains is this: How many times can the average German see some random Syrian taking a dump in the gutter before he starts voting for the National Socialist German Workers Party again?

I give it six months.

The Phantom

Big Socialism tightening its grip on your car. You WILL be paying by the mile, and soon.

New York City announces pilot program to track your car 100% of the time.

It's a new city pilot program to track how you drive, when you drive, how fast your drive and how much gas you use.

The Department of Transportation says it will help fix street problems. Others say its like Big Brother is watching you, CBS2's Marcia Kramer reported Friday.

It's a tiny black box about the size of a pack of gum that is installed right under the steering wheel. It will allow city officials under a program called "Drive Smart" to collect and access data about how you drive — if you drive like a maniac, or if you're Mr. or Mrs. Slow Poke.

"It can tell the g-force of hard stopping or hard acceleration and a hard turn," DOT senior project manager Alex Keating said. "So the driver, as well as the service provider, are able to look at speeds, hard-breaking events, time of day and basic GPS."

City officials say they'll use to information to make the streets safer, but drivers can also allow various DOT partners to use the information. Allstate, for example, will give you insurance discounts of 10-30 percent, and Metropia will get you home faster with less congested routes — all of it hooked up to smartphone apps.

I've been over this ad nauseam. I'll spare you the histrionics this time.

What I will say is a word to all you smug idiots out there who don't have a car. You're sitting there thinking you are safe, nobody can get you. Right?

That's because you are stupid. If there is going to be a system in place capable of tracking every car in the city and assessing taxes on them for road usage:

• How long before that system gets extended to track your dog? Dog poo is an issue in NYC.
• How long before that system gets used to track your beloved bicycle? Hmm? Why should you frigging hipster dicks get a free ride?
• How long before you pay a pedestrian tax? Signals cost money, sidewalks are expensive. Water ain't free. Pay to breathe, maybe? We could live to see it.
  

If local governments are allowed to put a black box in your car, you will be wearing an ankle bracelet transmitter within twenty years at the most, all in the name of public safety. Except it will be a non-removable implant, probably stuck in your enormously fat ass so as to make it hard for you to sit down. Gotta lose that weight, citizen.

What is America's overall response to their government at this time? August gun sales hit another new record.

This is not a good thing, because if people feel strongly enough to -use- those guns, life will be hell for a really long time. Please see Syria for elucidation on the issue of what happens when an all-seeing, all controlling totalitarian regime finally comes apart.

"Migrants" now marching through Hungary.

Refugees begin marching to the border of Germany through Hungary, because there are no trains. That didn't take long.

BUDAPEST — After a day of defiance by increasingly desperate refugees, the government of Hungary metaphorically threw up its hands Friday and said it was offering to bus thousands of migrants to the Austrian border, sending the crisis spinning closer to the heart of the Continent.

An aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a statement that the buses would transport the thousands still thronging the Keleti railroad station in Budapest and the approximately 1,200 people who stormed out of the train station earlier on Friday and set off on foot toward the Austrian border.

Now we have a large number of people with zero equipment, zero supplies and zero clue what they're doing, walking from Budapest to Austria. Where they may or may not be allowed in. Let it rain or be cold for just two days, and this little stroll through the countryside will be a death march.

People will die from exposure. At first just the very old and the very young, but soon the middle aged, anyone who needs medication, anyone whose shoes are too tight, and so forth.

This is the socialism in action I've been talking about these many years. As the day follows the night, it always comes to this. You were warned. Don't come crying to me when it all comes unglued.

The Phantom

"We won't be taken to camps!" Uh, yeah you will.

With yesterday's searing picture of the poor little boy's body on the beach (which I am NOT going to post or link to!) seared firmly into the public consciousness, today we get this.

Police have stood down at Budapest's main railway station after a two-day standoff with refugees, sparking chaotic scenes.

Witnesses said people rushed platforms after the station's doors were opened, but officials said no trains would be running to western Europe.

Amid the confusion and an intial pause in which the station ran no services at all, some domestic trains were allowed to leave platforms headed for towns not far from the Austrian and Slovakian borders.

But reports from Hungary suggest refugees were hauled off those trains at the first stop west of Budapest, amid a hardening of the rhetoric surrounding the crisis from the Hungarian government.

The big tweet from this cluster fuck is the line, "We won't be taken to camps!"

But you know, they will. Camps are what is in the immediate future. Particularly in formerly Iron Curtain countries such as Hungary, but eventually there will be refugee camps in Germany and Britain. Most likely they will be official ones, with fences and guards. Less likely but still possible, they will be unofficial flops where refugees congregate because no place else will have them.

Camps, either way, are inevitable. As the day follows the night, there will be camps.

Because this is EUROPE, my friends. Camps and camp guards are a tradition in Europe. This is not their first rodeo, as the saying goes. There have been wars across the face of that continent that spanned HUNDREDS OF YEARS. There is -always- somebody on the run, some group displaced by war, some bunch of bastards on a killing spree.

What is remarkable in the Twentieth Century is not the wars, it is the really long peace in Europe. They had SEVENTY FABULOUS YEARS of peace! That never happens over there. Thirty to fifty is the most they ever get, historically. Typically it was about twenty five, just long enough to grow up a new crop of cannon fodder.

And of course, inevitably, instead of making the most of it and getting their shit together, they pissed it away on socialism, beer and skittles. The first fifty years I believe were peaceful due to the constant threat of the Soviet Union, the last thirty have been an orgy of stupidity as ever more asinine economic and political maneuvers have taken hold of the West.

The whole reason there even ARE any refugees is down to Socialists. This is their last frantic grab at power, to dilute the pool of ever-more-conservative voters with new serfs dependent on handouts from Big Jimmy Government.

So the Independent and every goddamn paper who rant that picture of the dead kid can kiss my ass. I know who's responsible for the little boy's death, and I am not the guy.

Here endeth the rant.

P.S. You know what comes after camps, right? Death marches and mass executions. Because European socialists are the ones in charge of this freak show, and that is how they roll.