Nothing is ever really gone from the Intenet.

Mr. Camestros Felpatron (clearly a nom de plume) has taken to deleting my comments at his blog. Him being a Leftist, this is not surprising behavior.

Me being me, I kept a copy of my comment. Here it is:

[In a previous comment, Camestros asks:] "Can you actually think for yourself."

This from the man who thinks sucker punching "Nazis" on the street is a legitimate political tactic.

But while we're on the subject of argle-bargle, I have yet to see any of y'all argue coherently against the posted link. Not one.

NOAA made a claim about Africa. Where did the NOAA Africa data come from? The link is to Tony Heller, who proposes that they pulled it out of their ass. He has supporting arguments, with supporting data.

I find his presentation reasonable, and consistent with the previously noted behavior of people like Michael Mann, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and others. Also consistent with a photo survey that found a large percentage of NOAA US data units sited in artificially hot environments. Famously, the Death Valley stations at Furnace Creek and Badwater are a particularly egregious example of the trend. Sited deliberately to create a new record high temperature.

You, rather than address Tony Heller, his arguments and his data, deleted my comments. That's not thinking. That's finding a "Nazi" and sucker punching him in the street, internet version.

That's why I try to resist posting links to logical arguments here, Camestros. It's a waste of time.

Now, if you have some -insight- into Tony Heller, his presentation and his conclusions, that might be interesting. And by insight, I mean something other than character assassination.

That's the sort of thing getting deleted by Camestros Felpatron these days. A bald admission that he has no argument, just poo flinging. Again, not a surprising state of affairs for an avowed Warmer and Lefty.

DC Comics races to the bottom, adds turbo and nitrous.

Snagglepus rebooted as gay southern playwright.

The eight-page story will debut this March in the Suicide Squad/Banana Splits Annual #1, before turning into a regular DC series this fall. "I envision him like a tragic Tennessee Williams figure," writer Marc Russell told HiLoBrow.com. "Huckleberry Hound is sort of a William Faulkner guy, they're in New York in the 1950s, Marlon Brando shows up, Dorothy Parker, these socialites of New York from that era come and go."

The sexual orientation was never affirmed in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but Russell, who has also done an updated take on The Flintstones for DC Comics, is making Snagglepuss' sexuality a key part of the story, in which the pink mountain lion is dragged before the Communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He's accused of being a pinko, get it?

Yeah, we get it. Next up, furry-shipping with Deputy Dawg and the Pink Panther.

We have four years of disgusting bullshit like this to look forward to, as DC Comics drags out and kills every character in their back catalogue. Eight years if Trump wins a second term.

The Deplorable Phantom

Orange Pi, like Raspberry but less filling :)

Coming in over the transom today, Orange Pi. Yet another amazingly cheap single board PC.

Orange Pi is a family of Linux-powered, single board computers manufactured by Shenzhen Xunlong Software Co., Limited, and sold on AliExpress. As with anything sold on AliExpress, be patient and plan ahead for shipping times of two to four or more weeks, because the products are shipped directly from mainland China to locations around the world.

Unlike the Raspberry Pi, which has had a small but growing family of single board computers for different price points, form factors, and features, the number of Orange Pi boards is much larger. The good news is that you have a tremendous amount of choice in the application you want, but the bad news is that amount of choice could be overwhelming. In my case, I went with the Orange Pi Zero 512MB version, because it has the right balance of features and is priced for use in high school, academic environments.

To see a high-resolution image with all the specs, go to the Orange Pi Zero website.

Key point, the boards range in price from ~$48US to $12US, all of them quad core. The $48 one has HDMI with 4K output, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, WiFi, SATA2 for hard drives and a bunch of other goodies. Perfect little box to make a low-energy cloud server/NAS/router out of.

These little machines are getting very capable. At $12US, the Orange Pi is cheap enough to use as the brain for a wireless audio speaker. Or attach a camera and have a fully PC controlled security camera, able to identify and track objects in its visual field. It is very small and low power as well, good for semi-disposable uses. Like a Pirate Box, ferinstance.

These babies are only going to keep getting smaller, cheaper and more available. You have been warned.

The Phantom

Why Liberals are stupid. A rant.

Liberals are stupid, because their answer to everything is more/bigger/better government. The stupid part is that when the more/bigger/better government they wanted DOES something... they complain.

Case in point: NEXUS cards being revoked at the US border.

Nexus memberships have been revoked from all Canadian permanent residents with citizenship in any one of the seven majority-Muslim countries affected by the U.S. travel ban, the Canada Border Services Agency has confirmed to CBC Toronto.
Citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a CBSA spokesperson said in an email that FAST memberships have also been revoked from all such individuals. FAST is a program similar to Nexus that is meant to speed up commercial shipments across the border.
The email goes on to say that memberships of dual citizens have not been cancelled. But CBC Toronto has learned of multiple Canadian-born and dual citizens who have reportedly had their Nexus memberships revoked in the wake of a U.S. executive order barring entry to passport holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Toronto-based lawyer Cyndee Todgham Cherniak said she has been contacted by at least two Canadian-born citizens with Muslim-sounding names who received notices.
And five others — a mix of dual citizens and permanent residents with direct connection to the restricted countries — have also reportedly received revocations from U.S. CBP, she said.

The NEXUS and FAST programs are for getting across the border in an expedited fashion. Meaning, the Border Patrol assumes the holder of the card is pre-vetted, and -generally- chooses not to run them through the usual questioning and possible search when they enter the USA at an airport or a border point. Issuing a card like that to nationals from countries that the USA is currently AT WAR with seems, what's the word I'm looking for here, irresponsible? Rash? Retarded?

Additionally, these are not people with landed immigrant status in the USA. They are landed immigrants in -Canada-. Which is, let us recall, a foreign country. The USA ran those people through the same background check they would run me through. Which was designed to catch Canadians who have misbehaved in Canada. Not some guy who might or might not have a record in Syria, but has kept his nose clean in Canada.

Therefore, suspending expedited crossing for people from nations at war with the USA is only reasonable, and should have been done in the Bush administration. Suspending any crossing at all for people from those nations is also reasonable, with the exception of those who already have an arrangement with the USA through landed immigrant status, Green Card program or similar. Banning Green Card holders was a piece of stupidity arranged by political partisans in the INS, I'm sure. They hate Trump too, he's making them work for a living.

As for the business of random people having their NEXUS revoked because they have a Muslim sounding name? This is where my eyes are rolling, my friends. Oh, Holy Mother of Pearl.

What do you think is going to happen when you give that kind of power to the small minded, unionized public employee types who work for a government institution? They're going to throw their weight around, obviously. Have you never been to the DMV? Its the same assholes behind the counter, different shoulder patch. You want that guy to have power over you?

Graphical explanation of more government.

No, you really don't. Unless you are a Liberal. Then you do. Until you visit the DMV, or some other government  office. Or, heaven help you, an airport. Then the screaming starts.

That is why Liberals are stupid. /.rant./

The Deplorable Phantom

AP publishes Trump phone call?

This is up on Drudge, and I'm sitting here stunned and amazed. Associated Press has published what it says is part of Trump's phone call to the President of Mexico.

President Donald Trump warned in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart that he was ready to send U.S. troops to stop "bad hombres down there" unless the Mexican military does more to control them, according to an excerpt of a transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press.

The excerpt of the call did not detail who exactly Trump considered "bad hombres," nor did it make clear the tone and context of the remark, made in a Friday morning phone call between the leaders. It also did not contain Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's response. Mexico denies that Trump's remarks were threatening.

So the AP alleges that they managed to get the no-shit transcript of a phone call between the President of the USA and another head of state. I got a question: how does that happen?

If true, that's the biggest security fail since Hillary's email server. Wow.

If true, way to go Donald Trump for telling the President of Mexico to get his shit together. The border region of Mexico is in chaos, and Mexican drug smugglers are killing both Mexicans and Americans in the Arizona desert.

If not true... then that's a story also.

The Phantom

We need to talk about Judith Timson. I fear for her sanity.

This is some serious crazy right here:

We need to talk about this. We need to connect all the dots. Leitch has said, emboldened by surveys, that "70 per cent of Canadians agree" with her proposal to screen for values, which while she never says it out loud, seem at every turn to be referencing Muslims.

 snip

I am not blaming Leitch directly for the mosque killings. I am simply stating that all her words and proposals matter, and those words can help incite fear, hatred and violence.

snip

Leitch, however derivative — she has been called Trump Lite — and those like her should now be asked at every turn how their views differ from the ones that Alexandre Bissonnette admired. 

And the rest of us? We need to challenge ourselves, too on our own words and thoughts. We need to stand up not only to obvious demagogic bullies like Donald Trump — that's kind of the easy part — but to soft talking "otherizers" like Kellie Leitch. 

The lives of our fellow citizens and maybe even our own may depend on it.

Kelly Leitch is running for the Consevative Party of Canada leadership right now. She is now my new favorite Canadian politician.

Stagecraft in Quebec City: Talk Radio kills!

It has emerged that French language talk radio took up a gun and killed a bunch of people in Quebec City.

After a shooting rampage at a Quebec City mosque, the Canadian province's popular conservative talk radio hosts have come under fire for allegedly spreading intolerance and hate.

Critics say the talk shows fuel a divisive climate that allows extreme ideologies to take root and flourish -- a charge that has taken on heightened relevance after a gunman with far-right sympathies opened fire on Muslim worshippers, killing six and wounding eight more.

While not pointing a finger at any specific person or organization, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard emphasized Tuesday that "words do matter."

Residents of Quebec City tend to vote more conservatively than the rest of the province.

Some say that radio stations like local FM93 and Radio X -- which are respectively the region's second and third-most listened to, with a combined 30 percent market share -- simply reflect their audience's views.

But others say the shows stoke dangerous beliefs.

"These are right-wing talk radio stations with little substance but a lot of opinions," said Stephane Leman-Langlois, a criminologist at Laval University, where the alleged shooter studied.

These "trash radio" stations, as they have become known locally, "contribute to legitimize increasingly adversarial discourse against minorities in general and Muslims in particular," he told AFP.

Leman-Langlois said they tout "white supremacy, white victimology and repeat over and over that Quebec is in grave danger."

The Left and more chillingly the Premiere of Quebec are now arguing with each other. They're trying to decide if it was the guns that dragged the kid along for a massacre, or if it was the radio dragging him along.

Meanwhile, stagecraft continues. We still don't know what kind of gun was used, we still don't know any motive, we still don't know jack shit except what was on the kid's Facebook page. That page looks just like any other kid's page. At this point, Katy Perry could have made him do it.

Therefore, Canadians should expect a new legislation push in the next year. It will have two prongs. First will be a new gun registry, probably at the provincial level this time. Second will be a hate-speech law. That new law will make it a crime to say anything in criticism of multiculturalism. It will be called the Ernst Zundel* Memorial SHUT UP!!!! Law. I hereby prophesy this.

(*For boilerplate purposes, Ernst Zundel was and remains a psychotic liar about the Holocaust, and was one of the last 'Real Nazi' fanboys in Canada. He was also the canary in Canada's free-speech coal mine, and went toes-up in 1984. The irony of pursuing a man for speech under an unconstitutional law, in the year 1984, was apparently lost on the government of the time. I'm entirely happy with anything bad that might ever happen to Ernst Zundel, he is an evil man. I'm less happy with what his opponents did to Canada in their zeal.)

The Deplorable Phantom

Finally, the assault weapon boilerplate for Quebec City.

I think the media is slipping. Normally, this would have shared the news about Quebec City's mosque shooting on the day-of, Sunday. But this is the first I've seen, and it's three days later already.

Way to go, Global News:

Quebec City mosque shooting: Despite strict Canadian laws, illegal guns still within reach

Wow, what an amazing observation. Yes, -criminals- can still get guns despite there being laws against thing like that. There's laws against murder, but we have a bunch of people shot dead. Gee, who could have foreseen that? You can buy weed at the local high school too.

Canada's gun control laws ban dozens of assault rifles, but some permitted firearms are easily modified for greater damage, and more lax regulations in the United States make smuggled weapons accessible, experts said after a rare Canadian mass shooting on Sunday.

Damn those Americans. It is totally their fault that some random asshole in another country decided a bunch of people needed to die. Donald Trump is a Nazi!

Police have not commented on the type of gun used, but sources said it was a semi-automatic weapon.

Yeah, "police have not commented" is the interesting part of this sentence. Three days after the Sandy Hook shooting, everybody knew the make/model/serial numbers of the firearms involved. But in Canada, the matter of what kind of firearm was used is a state secret. It is more important to stage-manage the rubes than to let us know what happened, so we can plan accordingly. Global News seems totally fine with that.

Now we get to the part where they start making shit up from whole cloth.

Semi-automatic guns can legally hold magazines up to five rounds in Canada, but many military-style semi-automatics are easily modified to 30 rounds, said A.J. Somerset, an author on gun issues.

And while some rifles are banned by name, knock-offs are allowed, he said.

"Canada's classification system is a mess," Somerset said. "If someone wants to do the shooting at the mosque, they can obtain a non-restricted firearm in Canada that is functionally the same as an AK-47, illegally modify it, and they have exactly the rifle we don't want them to have."

That's nice, AJ. Yes, a guy with a bunch of metalworking tools and knowledge can modify a firearm illegally. See above for laws against killing people and selling weed in the local high-school.

Who's this A.J. Somerset guy, that he gets quoted as an "expert" though? He's a block captain who wrote a book, that's who he is. He thinks, because he has a really swelled head I suppose, that he is so smart he can decide for you how things should be in your life. You run into these guys every so often in the military, the cops, the fire department. He's the "Use your common sense, man!" guy, the guy who never saw a law he didn't think was justified. Law and order, hell yeah! Support the authorities, first last and always!

Freedom? Well, no. Freedom is for your betters, rube. You can't be trusted with freedom. Get back to work.

My complete rebuttal to Mr. A.J. Somerset is Ivan the Drunk Russian. This is what gun control and laws get you, AJ baby: A semi-auto AK-47, built out of a shovel. Note the lack of precision machine tools used in construction. Add a Bridgeport mill and a four foot long metal lathe, under $8K bought new from the store, and Ivan has himself a little factory. He can make as many as he wants.

Imagine what a Scottish engineer could do, without the vodka. But that's not the real argument. The utter futility of a regulation is no impediment to a guy like AJ.

Here's the rebuttal part, AJ. I made a car once. All by myself. Frame and everything. Should you be worried I might take my car that I built and drive it up on the sidewalk to kill people with it? No, but I bet you are. Block captains worry about shit like that. They face the nagging fear that somebody, somewhere is stepping out of line without proper authorization.

So, to recap: Angry White Men are to blame, and the Americans of course, how dare you question authority?! Nothing to see here, get back to work your taxes are due.

The Deplorable Basket of Phantom

More Liberal tolerance: beatings at airports.

Week Two of the Trump Apocalypse, and Liberals are behaving as usual: beating anybody who dares to disagree.

It the video you can tell it was ten on four… Ten thugs against four Trump supporters.
You can see them CHASE DOWN and BEAT the Trump Supporters.

The leftist mob start screaming at the man has he lay unconscious on the ground!

They were screaming, "That's right Nazi boy!" as the man lay on the ground!

This is getting to be pretty standard procedure lately. Guy shows up someplace wearing the wrong hat, a bunch of self-righteous assholes beat him unconscious. Also as usual, the 'security' personnel on hand seem singularly useless. Almost as if they weren't trying very hard, you know?

Now, this will lead to one of two outcomes. The unlikely outcome, Trump supporters and other, regular people will stop wearing Trump hats, and will hide from the edgelord SJW retards in public.

The likely outcome, some serious asskickings as Trump supporters start taking the SJWs as more than a bad joke. That will spread, and pretty soon showing up with an anti-Trump hat will earn you an instant beating.

Neither outcome is desirable, nor civilized. I'd expect better, but this is the Left we're talking about, and their comeuppance is looooong overdue.

The Deplorable Phantom

Voter fraud study, Illegals did vote.

Trump famously said vote fraud was a thing, back in the debates, and was widely pooh-poohed by the media.

Well, it looks like vote fraud was a thing.

Political scientist Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has worked with colleagues to produce groundbreaking research on noncitizen voting, and this week he posted a blog in response to Mr. Trump's assertion.

Based on national polling by a consortium of universities, a report by Mr. Richman said 6.4 percent of the estimated 20 million adult noncitizens in the U.S. voted in November. He extrapolated that that percentage would have added 834,381 net votes for Mrs. Clinton, who received about 2.8 million more votes than Mr. Trump.

Liberal media is still raging on that there is no vote fraud, of course. CNN is all over it. Trump is a racist/fascist/bigot/homophobe/pussy-grabber for even mentioning it.

I guess that shows what CNN is up to. Vote fraud takes Mrs. Clinton from 2.8 million to 2 million in one bite. Couple more bites like that, from dead voters and other shenanigans we have previously seen them doing, the Dem "lead" in popular vote starts looking pretty sad.

Just thought y'all ought to know. ~:)

The Helpful, yet oh-so Deplorable, Phantom

"The Geek Feminist Revolution" not a huge sales hit.

Kameron Hurley, Intellectual Badass (that's what it says on her blog, I'm not being a dick about it,) is upset. Her new book came out to critical acclaim, social media buzz and positive reviews. Sales, not so much.

There was a huge amount of buzz around the release of The Geek Feminist Revolution last year. More buzz than I'd seen for any book I'd ever written. People were telling me on Twitter that they'd bought three or four copies and were making all their friends read it. I heard from booksellers that the books were flying off the shelves. We went into a second printing almost immediately. I did a book signing in Chicago that sold a bunch of books. The reader response at BEA was surreal. It was magical.

This, I thought, is what it must feel like to have a book that's about to hit it big. This was it. This was going to be the big one. It was going to take off. I gnawed on my nails and watched as big magazines picked up articles from it and it got reviewed favorably in The New York Times, and I waited for first week sales numbers.

Sales for this august tome were... meh. About what she always does. Not a nightmare, but not a breakout, as she says. The stuff was not 'flying off the shelves" as some had said.

But what about all that positive buzz? What about those people crying when they said they loved the book? What about the New York Times?!!! Shouldn't that be good for something?

Well, no. That's because Kameron Hurley lives in a social bubble. There's a whole universe of people who see a title like Geek Feminist Revolution and think that is the cat's fricking whiskers. Kameron's big problem is, it isn't a very big universe. She's getting big PR push and good sales penetration in a pretty small population slice. She's got a Hugo Award

Her other problem is, she's done that by pissing the rest of us off. She's a big name Puppy Kicker and a Trump hater. She goes out of her way to reflect that in her work. Which is fine, it is her work after all, she can do what she wants.

None of this has anything to do with the quality of her work, of course. I have no idea how good or how bad it is, I've never read any of it. Because "Geek Feminist Revolution" is a title that evokes a healthy feeling of "I do not want to read that," as do the cover blurbs for a lot of her books. She brags about a book that has no male characters, for example. (Why is that good? Half the Human Race is male. We're not going away, either.)

But the publishers and the magazines LOVE her. Because they live in the bubble too.

Some years ago Larry Correia pointed this out with his now famous Sad Puppies campaign. There's a bubble, and if you're not in it, you don't get a Hugo Award. Since Sad Puppies 1, the people involved with the Hugo Awards have gone out of their way to prove him right. Kameron Hurley was certainly one of them.

Now, while it is entirely acceptable and proper to have political opinions, and I certainly have mine, it is generally not polite to accuse others who do not share them of being racist/bigot/homophobes. You can think it, but saying it out loud in a magazine article is generally considered to be in poor taste. Particularly when they aren't actually racist/bigot/homophobes.

Well, what happened in microcosm at the Hugos in Sad Puppies 1-4 happened this year in the election. Average working Americans were called a "basket of deplorables" by one of the most corrupt presidential candidates in American history, and they voted for Trump, the pussy-grabbing rodeo clown. Kameron is upset about it, as might be imagined.

Personally I am less upset, Trump hit the ground running hard in the right direction. HJe had the bust of Winston Churchill back in the Oval Office before the ink was dry on his Presidential transfer paperwork.

This could be construed as a watershed moment in American political discourse. The People, as a whole, appear to be divided into two, geographically isolated factions. One wants European Socialism, the other wants American Freedom. As in, less government, lower taxes. The socialists rule in the little ribbon of cities on the East and West coasts, pretty much. The freedom types rule everywhere else.

As a writer, that's the reality of how things are. Social Justice Warriors are now officially not driving the narrative. I predict this Trup election will be the last time a DemocRat politician runs on Global Warming, the Ecology generally, Feminism, gun control, gay rights, and transgender bathrooms in government buildings. It is over. The next battle will be fought over something else, probably some scandal dug up about Donald Trump peeing on a bed.

So if you are writing exclusively for that SJW/Worldcon/boys in the girl's bathroom crowd, you shouldn't be surprised if your sales numbers are meh. Writing is hard enough without deliberately making yourself unpopular with regular people.

To that end, I would love to see writers abandoning one simple premise: "You are bad!"

Humans are bad, straights are bad, men are bad, Americans are bad, Army men are bad. Let me see something where the plot doesn't hinge on how bad society is to some guy or girl or whatever. Show me something where Humans are not the destroyers, the Bad Guys come to wreck everything. Write me something where the wonderful aliens are not coming to show us all how to do it right.

You know, just for a change.

The Deplorable Phantom

Trump proposes 75% cut in regulation.

This is almost as if he'd been reading The Phantom Soapbox. Trump wants to cut business regulations by 75% or more, he says.

President Donald Trump told business leaders on Monday he believes he can cut regulations by 75 percent or "maybe more."

At the White House with 10 senior executives, he repeated his campaign pledges to roll back corporate rules, arguing that they have "gotten out of control."

Now, saying you want to do something is a long way from getting it done. But everything starts with expressing the goal. This is the right goal. CUTTING GOVERNMENT INFLUENCE.

This puts the pussy-hatted minions of George Soros into a rather stark perspective. Here's Trump The Scoundrel, and what he's talking about is cutting the size and scope of the US federal government. Increasing personal freedom.

That's what the pussy-hats are afraid of. They do not want you to have more personal freedom. You are an idiot. You must be controlled. That's their message.

Message received.

The Phantom

Very cool infrared scope.

This is an infrared monocular seen at the SHOT show that can be hand held, helmet mounted or used as a gunsight. It also records video. Very, very cool.

Reposted from The Firearm Blog.

Trump Day

I see from the MSM dorks that today the End Of The World has come. Eeeeeevile Donald Trump has vanquished the Powers of Goodness and is set to ascend his throne of skulls at noon today.

This is YUUUUGE!

This is why I don't pay for cable TV, I don't subscribe to any newspapers or news magazines, and I don't listen to the radio. All is quiet and beautiful here at Chez Phantom. Even the aligators in the mote are content, happily gnawing on the bones of unfortunate postal workers who didn't read the signs.

Just to rub a little more salt in the wound, dear SJWs and fat-headed Libtards, I will observe that if the government were smaller and less all-encompasing, if it didn't take more than half your income every year, if so many able bodied people didn't depend on it for their livelihoods...

...it wouldn't matter a damn who the President is.

Just sayin'. Maybe we should all work on that together, hmmm?

The Helpful, Yet Deplorable Phantom

USA: Is treason now legal?

Obama just commuted Bradley "Chelsea" Manning and outright pardoned  General James Cartwright.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday commuted the 35-year sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who was convicted of leaking classified material, and pardoned Marine General James Cartwright.

Manning, who was convicted in 2013, will be released in May 2017. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI in connection with a leak investigation. The retired general will have his crime forgiven, according to a statement from the White House.

Who cares?

Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, criticized the decision.

"When I was leading soldiers in Afghanistan, Private Manning was undermining us by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks," Cotton said in a statement. "I don't understand why the president would feel special compassion for someone who endangered the lives of our troops, diplomats, intelligence officers, and allies. We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr."

Um, yeah. And maybe the media should ease back on the whole "Chelsea" thing, which BRADLEY started up with -after- he was convicted. Because gee, anybody think he might have been trying to get some attention from the MEDIA and an easier billet?

Just sayin'.

The Deplorable Phantom

Legal Insurrection kicked off YouTube.

Looks like the Silicon Valey types are taking the election hard.

The YouTube channel of influential conservative politics and law website Legal Insurrection has been removed by the video sharing service, citing copyright infringement claims.

"This account has been terminated because we received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted," explains YouTube, in a notice posted to channel's page.

Legal Insurrection founder and publisher and Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson voiced his anger and astonishment at the channel's removal. "It's very frustrating, it's very scary, to have 8 years of content removed without a chance to defend yourself," he told FoxNews.com.

Hope you kept backups, dude.

Let that be a lesson to all of us out here in Non-PC Land. Google can pull your plug, and there's f-all you can do about it.

This site, for example, is hosted on Google Blogspot, listed on Google Search, and posted using GMail. They can put me out of business ten seconds from now, and I have -zero- recourse.

If the Phantom Soapbox disappears from the web with no warning some day, without an announcement or a final place-holder post saying what happened, assume foul play.

May I suggest there is now an opening in the market for a web service provider that is not run by shrieking SJW assholes?

The Phantom

Warm socks and a fire = RAAAACIST!!!!

This is so perfectly SJW I had to repost it. Originally seen at Small Dead Animals: I give you Slate, jumping the shark, turbo-nitrous version.

... Helen Russell, in The Year of Living Danishly, calls hygge a "complete absence of anything annoying or emotionally overwhelming." Hygge is against conflict and discomfort, distrustful of newness or challenging viewpoints. It is a closed system. Or, as Charlotte Abrahams, author of Hygge: A Celebration of Simple Pleasures, Living the Danish Way has it: "Hygge is very gentle. There is no discussion of politics or anything controversial that makes you feel uptight."

Hygge's turning inward against the world outside comes with a more sinister edge, however. As Charlotte Higgins pointed out in her deep dive for the Guardian last month, hygge's ties to the far-right in Denmark are remarkably strong. Pia Kjærsgaard, the leader of the right-wing, anti-immigrant Danish People's Party, has publicly extolled the virtues of the lifestyle, insisting that her office remain cozy and hyggelig at all times. Denmark's welfare state and reputation for tolerance may be admired by progressives in the U.K. and U.S., but, as Higgins points out, the country's love of hyggefied thatched cottages with closed doors suggests a conservative undercurrent. "Anything that threatens that safe community, including alien values and ideologies, cannot be tolerated," she writes.

There you have it. Socializing over hot chocolate in front of the fire with close friends and family, staying home with your fuzzy slippers and snuggling with your honey, or even leaning back in the easy chair with your feet up and a good book. All hopelessly RACIST.

And those morons at Slate are still wondering why people voted for the Cheeto-coloured rodeo clown, Donald Trump.

SJWs: People who's defining trait is the crippling fear that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying themselves.

The Phantom

SJW breakthrough: Superhero Culture is bad for kids!

Yes friends, you heard it here first. "Superhero Culture," meaning Saturday morning cartoons and so forth, is bad for your kids.

BYU family life professor Sarah M. Coyne decided to study what it was, exactly, that preschool-aged boys and girls took away from exposure to superhero culture, and it wasn't the many positive traits that shone through.
"So many preschoolers are into superheroes and so many parents think that the superhero culture will help their kids defend others and be nicer to their peers," Coyne said, "but our study shows the exact opposite. Kids pick up on the aggressive themes and not the defending ones."
Coyne found that children who frequently engage with superhero culture are more likely to be physically and relationally aggressive one year later. She even found the children were not more likely to be defenders of kids being picked on by bullies and were not more likely to be prosocial.

The article goes on to note:

Last spring, Coyne authored a study on the effects of Disney Princess culture on young children, finding the perpetuation of stereotypes that could have damaging effects.

I'm having a flashback to the Comics Code. These retards never give up.

Adobe Arcrobat update has a spy in it.

According to Slashdot, the latest Adobe Acrobat update contains a Google Chrome extension AND a nice little thing that phones your data home to Adobe.

From the article:

The extension requests the following permissions: Read and change all your data on the websites you visit; Manage your downloads; Communicate with cooperating native applications. According to Adobe, extension users 'share information with Adobe about how [they] use the application. The information is anonymous and will help us improve product quality and features,' Adobe also says. 'Since no personally identifiable information is collected, the anonymous data will not be meaningful to anyone outside of Adobe.'"

Otherwise known as a trojan virus. At some point these large data companies are going to need to be made aware that this kind of secret data collection is theft. They're not entitled to know anything about my computer, particularly when they don't ask first.

The Phantom

Happy New Year!

From Phantom Southern Command in rainy, wet Arizona, Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

From the Phantom Southern Command, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas.

The Phantom

Soylent Green, now almost a thing.

Cheesy SF movie buffs will remember the movie Soylent Green, wherein megacorporation Soylent Inc. grinds up captured humans and turns them into food for the cities. Spoiler, Soylent Green is people.

Well, as usual, somebody took that as an instruction manual, not a warning.

Start-ups are trying to revolutionise the food industry and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from venture capitalists to do so.

Many are motivated by a desire to wean humanity off meat and other foods that have big environmental and social impacts, whether in the methane emissions and land use of cattle herds or additives in typical processed food.

"The traditional food system is broken in every way," says Seth Bannon, founding partner at Fifty Years, an early stage venture fund in San Francisco that has invested in food technology companies. "It's terrible for the environment, it's economically unfavourable and it's not great for human health."

The best-known of these would-be disrupters is also the most extreme in its approach. Soylent was founded in 2013 by a group of Silicon Valley engineers trying to cut the time and money they spent buying and preparing food. The company has expanded from producing a powder that was mixed with water to ready-made drinks and nutritional "food bar" snacks. 

Yeah, those damn farmers are fragging the ecosystem with their amazing production and low cost. The bastards. We better fix that! By marketing shit that is really and truly called "Soylent."

Here's another better way, food from slime.

Insects, blood and faeces may not sound particularly appetitising, but they are among the produce we should consider eating if we want our food to be sustainable and healthy, according to a team of chefs and scientists in Denmark.

The Nordic Food Lab was set up on a boat in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in 2008 by Michelin-starred Noma head chef René Redzepi and culinary entrepreneur Claus Mayer to better understand the flavours and the gastronomic potential of Scandinavia. 

But in almost a decade – and now based at a laboratory at the University of Copenhagen – its researchers are travelling the world to piece together a holistic approach to eating. Scientists, artists chefs, designers and specialists in education are all rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in to the cause.

A reminder my friends. This year these people are fricking looneytune nutjobs on the fringe of the fringe. In ten years, given the slavish following of the media to yet another Good Cause, you will be seeing this shit on the school lunch program. And I do mean shit, note above that the Nordic Food Lab is talking about processing and including animal poo in their offerings.

The Lefties lost the Gun war, they're in the process of losing the Global Warming war and the Race war, and they need another war. Next up, the Food War.

The Delicious Phantom (Excellent with a nice dry merlot.)

Obligatory Hillary Clinton post.

Hillary Clinton's robot pantsuit fights on, even though Hillary herself is a zombie jazzed into life with drugs and possibly a remote control unit.

In news that surprises no one, the Clinton campaign is contesting the election, despite losing by a wide margin. Because it is always about the Clintons, fuck the nation.

All those who booed when Trump said he wouldn't accept defeat because of possible DemocRat cheating will now shut up in embarrassment. (I don't really expect that from such baying mongrel dogs, but if they had the decency of a goat, they would.)

Phantom Prediction: On Monday the stock market will fall off its new all-time high, as uncertainty mars a US election, and the nation spends millions on waste motion.

Clinton: The Thing That Couldn't Die.

The Deplorable Phantom

Obligatory Fidel Castro post.

Fidel is dead. Liberals hardest hit.

The Phantom

New hack turns headphones into a microphone.

Just when you thought you knew all the ways your PC can spy on you:

Security researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University have created a proof-of-concept exploit that lets them turn headphones into microphones to secretly record conversations. The PoC, called "Speake(a)r," first turned headphones connected to a PC into microphones and then tested the quality of sound recorded by a microphone vs. headphones on a target PC. In short, the headphones were nearly as good as an unpowered microphone at picking up audio in a room.

I will add that there is no reason at all that -speakers- can't be made to do this. They don't have to be headphones.

"Most of today's built-in sound cards are to some degree retaskable, which means that they can be used for more than one thing. …the kernel exposes an interface that makes it possible to retask your jacks, but almost no one seems to use it, or even know about it," wrote Linux sound engineer David Henningsson. That's exactly the exploit Speak(a)r uses.

This isn't a driver fix, either. The embedded chip does not allow users to properly prevent this hack which means your earbuds or nice cans could start picking up conversations instantly. In fact, even if you disable your microphone, a computer with a RealTek chip could still be hacked and exploited without your knowledge.

Perhaps its just my tinfoil hat is a little tight, but when I see experts in a field say "no one uses this or even knows about it," my radar starts to ping and I begin thinking about back doors and three letter agencies in the USA.

Maybe might be good to put a physical "off" switch between your PC and the speakers/headphones.

Just thought y'oughta know.

The Tinfoil Phantom

Best article yet on the US election polling failure

This is a great article.

Now that the initial dust has settled from the historically surprising 2016 election, we all have one question: What went wrong with the polls and predictions? They showed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, sometimes handily. Just about everyone blew the call.

Well, not everyone: There were some people who got it right. Whether by a quirk of their polling, a model that relied more on history or by sheer accident, a handful of predictors bucked the crowd and told us something else was going on.

In a move unheard of in the mainstream press, this author went and talked to some pollsters who called it right.

Highlights:

The "shy voter," those being people who did not want anyone around them to know they were voting Trump.

The "lapsed voter," people who hadn't voted in many years but came out for Trump. That's a major notion right there. He inspired people that had given up.

The "herding effect," where the polling companies didn't want to be too far off the accepted norms in the polling industry. Go-along-to-get-along.

The "bubble effect," media people and Blue Staters not having anyone in their social circle saying anything good about Trump.

Very good read, I recommend it.

The Recommended Phantom

The Left moves to shut everyone up.

Twitter has just suspended a large number of accounts for political purposes.

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter suspended a number of accounts associated with the alt-right movement, the same day the social media service said it would crack down on hate speech.

Among those suspended was Richard Spencer, who runs an alt-right think tank and had a verified account on Twitter.

Well now, that's interesting. Who decided what accounts were "Alt-Right?"

Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told USA TODAY that the center had asked Twitter to remove more than 100 accounts of white supremacists who violated Twitter's terms of service. She also pointed to two alt-right accounts that had been verified by Twitter, including Spencer's.

The article does -not- say that the SPLC made the decision and Twitter implemented it. However, the article does say the following:

 The alt-right used social media to spread its cause of white supremacy, operating largely unchecked by social media giants Twitter and Facebook.

So, the author approves of this decision, and is part of the pol;itical spectrum who no doubt lobbied for it. Probably thinks the SPLC is a noble cause.
 

Now, I've not been paying attention to Milo Yiannopoulos  who was suspended by Twitter back in August, and I don't know who Richard Spencer is or what his "think tank" says.

If they really were George Wallace-KKK-style White Supremacists then I'm sure I'd at least have heard. Richard Spencer is the white Louis Farrakhan? Who knew? So I find it unlikely, given the frantic scramble on the Left to label everyone and everything RAAAAACIST!!!1! that I wouldn't have heard of a -real- racist.

Important to note here, and this is my entire point, Noam Chomsky and the e-zine "EcoWatch" both are not on the Twitter suspended list. Noamy can come out and say:

"On Nov. 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government—executive, Congress, the Supreme Court—in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.

False news. A lie. A heinous lie, in fact.

But allowed, because it is a lie that works for the Left. Lies that work for the Right (assuming for the sake of argument that everything the SPLC says is true) will not be allowed.

Some animals are more equal than others. How long before The Phantom Soapbox gets banned?

The Phantom

Hyper stupidity: Mansplaining hotline.

Today in the latest witch burning news, a Swedish labor union has started a telephone hotline for women to call when men explain things to them. I hope this is a joke, but I'm afraid it isn't.

Unionen, Sweden's largest union, is encouraging members to call up when male colleagues give them unsolicited lectures on things they already understand. 

The organisation, which represents 600,000 private sector workers, launched the advice line on Monday and said it will be open from 10am to 4pm everyday for a week as part of a campaign to highlight and stamp out the insidious and damaging practice.

For those who might not be familiar with the modern portmanteau, the union defined mansplaining as when "a man explains something to a woman without being asked, particularly something which she might already know more about than the man".

Unionen said the commonplace practice diminishes women, by making them appear less competent than they are.

No word on when the men's "anti-Harpy" hotline goes live.

I have a prediction. After a brief and disastrous flirtation with all-female workplaces, profitable companies will segregate their employees. Men and women will not work together in the same office. There will be the Boys section and the Girls section. This will happen because the men will simply stop interacting with the women.

If every time you talk to a co-worker you get a phone call from Mansplaining Central, you will most definitely stop speaking to the female staff. You will in fact shun them at all costs. Simple self defense.

Another prediction, the Girls section will get smaller and smaller over time until it disappears. I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm saying that is what will happen. This is how businesses used to run, and they will go that way again.

The Phantom

Chinese Android phones home. To China.

I keep having this argument with tech heads. Android is LESS secure than Apple.

Apple of course is famous for storing your location data and sending it to an Apple server every ten minutes whether the phone is in use or not. It sends the data to Apple servers in the USA.  Android sends stuff to Google, also in the USA. Unless you bought an off-shore phone.

Kryptowire, the security firm that discovered the vulnerability, said the Adups software transmitted the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, location information and other data to a Chinese server. The code comes preinstalled on phones and the surveillance is not disclosed to users, said Tom Karygiannis, a vice president of Kryptowire, which is based in Fairfax, Va. "Even if you wanted to, you wouldn't have known about it," he said.

Security experts frequently discover vulnerabilities in consumer electronics, but this case is exceptional. It was not a bug. Rather, Adups intentionally designed the software to help a Chinese phone manufacturer monitor user behavior, according to a document that Adups provided to explain the problem to BLU executives. That version of the software was not intended for American phones, the company said.

Sure. "...was not intended for American phones..." Uh huh. If you believe that, I can get you a deal on this nice bridge in Brooklyn NY.

In case you were wondering why some phones are so amazingly cheap, wonder no more. They collect and sell your data for more than the phone is worth.

My approach is to buy my phone from somebody I can sue if they rip me off. You can't sue Random Chinese Company, they're completely unreachable. But you can sue Apple, Motorola, Blackberry, etc. My other line of defense is to never put anything on a phone I don't want my worst enemy to know. Because they will know.

The Phantom

Media: We weren't wrong! Shut up!

Doubling down:

One big complaint about the latest U.S. election is that "the polls were wrong." It reveals a complete misunderstanding of what polls -- and statistical forecasts in general -- are supposed to do.

This article explains to the gentle reader that it is all far too complicated for your feeble minds to comprehend, math is hard, and we should leave these difficult decisions to our betters.

Nice.

The Phantom, who took statistics in graduate school, thanks all the same,

Cellphone hack: wifi can read your keystrokes.

This is getting very interesting. In a new paper, some guy has used wifi signals like radar to track finger movements on a cellphone screen.

Because the user's finger moves across the smartphone when he types text, his hand alters CSI properties for the phone's outgoing WiFi signals, which the attacker can collect and log on the rogue access point... By performing basic signal analysis and signal processing, an attacker can separate desired portions of the CSI signal and guess with an average accuracy of 68.3% the characters a user has typed... but it can be improved the more the user types and the more data the attacker collects.

Research paper here.

That's getting pretty good as imaging goes. You can use that level of resolution for a really cheap radar set. Spot squirrels in the back yard, maybe?

The Phantom

p.s. Your phone is insecure as shit. Don't do -anything- involving money, banking or cheating on your girlfriend with a phone in the same room. Stick the damn thing in a steel box.

Update! Reader Secret Sam writes:

" ...this is a hidden secret, you can do this (if close enough to a person) on any electrical device by intercepting the IF frequency most common channels depending what band the phone runs on."

From the Wiki link: 

In communications and electronic engineering, an intermediate frequency (IF) is a frequency to which a carrier wave is shifted as an intermediate step in transmission or reception.^[1] The intermediate frequency is created by mixing the carrier signal with a local oscillator signal in a process called heterodyning, resulting in a signal at the difference or beat frequency. Intermediate frequencies are used in superheterodyne radio receivers, in which an incoming signal is shifted to an IF for amplification before final detection is done.
Conversion to an intermediate frequency is useful for several reasons. When several stages of filters are used, they can all be set to a fixed frequency, which makes them easier to build and to tune. Lower frequency transistors generally have higher gains so fewer stages are required. It's easier to make sharply selective filters at lower fixed frequencies.

That password on your phone is mostly cosmetic, my friends.

Twitter-pocalypse: death threats!

It would seem many special snowflakes are upset.

But that message of inclusion was apparently lost in social media circles, particularly Twitter, where a simple search can reveal dozens and dozens of calls to gun down the next leader of the free world. Some posts called for both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to be assassinated, and there's even an #AssassinateTrump hashtag.

Never forget my friends, Lefties are sore losers.

As for those eeeeevile Republicans who are going to do all manner of horrid things... I don't recall there being a #assassinate tag for Barry back in 2008 and 2012.

So really, liberals, we can see you. I hope the US Secret Service is kept very busy hunting down and charging all these assholes over the next couple of years.

The Phantom

Why did nobody say they were voting for Trump, anyway?

This might have something to do with it.

The CEO of Grubhub, an online food delivery service, sent a company wide email Wednesday suggesting employees who agree with President-elect Donald Trump's behaviors and his campaign rhetoric should resign.

"If you do not agree with this statement then please reply to this email with your resignation because you have no place here," wrote Matt Maloney, Co-Founder of Grubhub. "We do not tolerate hateful attitudes on our team."

Mr. Maloney was moron enough to expose his company to lawsuits by stating his policy in writing.  A hell of a lot more tech companies are probably doing exactly the same thing, just more quietly.

So if you were the guy with the "Make America Great Again" hat on your desk at work, you should probably be getting your resume together. But Mr. Trump Supporter would have been told that months before. It would come as no surprise.

That's why Hillary lost. Because in a free country, people do not take kindly to being told who to vote for by their boss.

Incidentally, this would be a great reason to NEVER do business with Grubhub. Clearly they don't want my filthy Trump-stained money, and I'm happy to oblige them.

The Unemployable Phantom

SciFi SJWs: "Hit back twice as hard!"

Response to the win by Trump yesterday in the US election, by greater than the margin of fraud, has been decidedly mixed.

Conservatives such as myself are delighted that Hillary Clinton lost. Less enthusiastic that Trump won, but on the whole reasonably content. Making fun of people on the Internet is as malicious as we get.

Liberals are checking to see how hard it is to move to Canada (very hard, don't bother, we don't want you anyway), they are having emergency counseling sessions with their shrinks, and in several cities they are breaking windows, burning shit, and beating white people up.

So, the usual. Damn conservative fascists!

In the tiny world of science fiction, the head of TOR publishing appears to have learned nothing from the four year old Sad Puppies Campaign, learned nothing from two complete meltdowns of the Hugo Awards, and nothing from the massive repudiation of his party, the DemocRats.

Last night, I found myself very grateful that I work in science fiction.

Science fiction came into being in response to a new thing in human history: the understanding that not only was the world changing, but also that the rate of change was speeding up. That in a normal lifetime, you could expect to experience multiple episodes of rapid, disorienting change. Science fiction at its best has always been about examining and inhabiting those experiences when the world passes through a one-way door.

In short: if you're a Conservative, or you're writing a story that doesn't tick the right SJW checkboxes, you should probably not bother submitting to TOR Books or its parent company Macmillan. If you're a reader with a Conservative turn of mind, probably you're not going to find anything you like very much with the TOR imprint on it.

In other words, TOR is doubling down. Again. Clearly the beatings will have to continue. All the more for Amazon, it seems.

Sad Puppies Five! Let slip the dogs of war!

The Ex-deplorable Phantom

H. Sapiens got it on with Neanderthals.

Some more DNA evidence that Great to the Nth Grandad and Grandma used to hang out with the Neanderthals and git it on. Woohoo!

The researchers conducted thorough searches for outsiders' DNA in four groups: Europeans, East Asians, South Asians and Melanesians. They estimate each group boasts 10 to 20 stretches of beneficial DNA from close human relatives. Many of those DNA stretches influence either the immune system or the coloration of body parts such as skin, the researchers found.

Previous experiments identified bits of DNA from other species that helped Homo sapiens get ahead — for example, a Denisovan gene that enhances modern Tibetans' ability to cope with high altitudes. But the new research provides welcome confirmation of the kinds of genetic benefits that humans reaped from their relatives, Janet Kelso of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who has collaborated with Akey on previous research, says.

So the next time some atrocious Leftist trots out that old turkey about us Humans killing off the poor helpless Neanderthals, let him/her/it know that they are SO Twentieth Century, and they need to get with the program.

Then smack them one for me, just because. ~:D

The No Longer Deplorable Phantom

Trump wins, snowflakes riot.

I feel pretty good this morning. The rodeo clown won, which at least demonstrates the USA hasn't descended into complete barbarism yet. I'll take that as a good sign.

Better sign, the Republicans now have both the House and the Senate federally, and they picked up a bunch of governorships and state houses along the way. That's an even better sign.

Best of all, all the right people are having a really bad day today.

Burn on, you special snowflakes.

The Deplorable Phantom

Election day condolences, America.

Well here we are, November already and my American friends are stuck choosing between the evil overlord Robot Pantsuit and  the rodeo clown with a cat on his head. Proven criminal and insane socialist Hillary Clinton vs. limousine liberal with the stench of New York City corruption lingering on his coat, Donald Trump. Either way, you boys and girls are pretty screwed.

Two things to bear in mind.

First, apart from anything else, Hillary Clinton is so ill she couldn't drive down to the supermarket and bring home a sixpack by herself, much less drink any of it. You might want to consider that in your calculations.

Second, if this election proves anything, it is that government can't be relied upon to keep you safe, fed and happy.

If it was me, I'd take a deep breath and vote Republican across the board. They at least say they want smaller government, even though for the most part they lie.

Good luck, America! Vote early, vote often!

The Deplorable Phantom

AT&T copies NSA, sells your data.

Quick heads-up, AT&T data-mines its call and billing logs, and sells the info to the FBI. American taxpayers are paying the phone copmpany to spy on them with their own telephones.

Just thought y'oughta know.

The Deplorable Phantom

The new bullies: women.

This is somewhat terrifying. Some guy writes a letter to the editor of some newspaper in the states, says he doesn't like to see fat, middle aged women in yoga pants. This is like a letter complaining about death and taxes, right? Nobody likes that, not even other fat, middle aged women. You can see them rolling their eyes at the yoga panted hippos every day.

But then the Perpetually Offended crowd got involved.

The saga began Wednesday with a letter to the editor in a local Rhode Island newspaper criticizing women over 20 who wear yoga pants in public. Quickly, it snowballed into a "Yoga Pants Parade" Sunday afternoon with hundreds of people walking past the letter writer's house — and a few death threats, according to the author, who said he had only intended satire.

"To all yoga pant wearers, I struggle with my own physicality as I age," wrote Alan Sorrentino, 63, in the letter published by the Barrington Times last week. "I don't want to struggle with yours."

It's a funny letter. The guy ended up with a parade in fron of his house, hundreds of women telling him to shut the fuck up. They pretended it was "peaceful," but I think he got the message.

Sorrentino disagreed as the walkers passed his Knapton Street home, where he had put up a sign bearing the words "FREE SPEECH."

Barrington police officers stood on the edge of the property while some people in the street paused to take photos of the home.

Sorrentino said he received death threats, which he reported to the police. Someone wrote in chalk on the street outside his house that morning, identifying him as the resident.

All this from a random letter in a small newspaper? Yep.

But Sorrentino said that even if the letter was offensive to some, the event was an "improper reaction."

"This is bullying," he said.

He asked whether a woman would feel comfortable with a similar crowd walking by her home after death threats.

Burke said Sorrentino had "impolitely declined" her invitation to participate in the parade. Sorrentino said her invitation to wear yoga pants and join in the parade was "humiliating."

And people wonder why I comment as The Phanton instead of Real Me.

It was the shaming and the policing of women's bodies that struck a chord with the attendees, said organizer Jamie Burke, who lives in Barrington and called the parade a "positive response to casual sexism."

 
Here's what I'd like to see: a parade of fat old men like me in front of Ms. Jamie Burke's house in Barrington RI. Maybe we could all wear Speedos and carry "Don't Tread On Me!" signs. Bet that would make her feel all safe and comfy, right?

The Casually Sexist Phantom

Today's burning outrage: pets.

I have maintained for some years now that it is fundamentally impossible to lampoon the Left anymore. If you mock an idea they espouse with hyperbole, you need only wait a season or two, and they will propose something even more maliciously insane than your wildest imagining. I bring you now, in support of this thesis an essay:

The Case Against Pets.

We live with six rescued dogs. With the exception of one, who was born in a rescue for pregnant dogs, they all came from very sad situations, including circumstances of severe abuse. These dogs are non-human refugees with whom we share our home. Although we love them very much, we strongly believe that they should not have existed in the first place.

We oppose domestication and pet ownership because these violate the fundamental rights of animals.

The term 'animal rights' has become largely meaningless. Anyone who thinks that we should give battery hens a small increase in cage space, or that veal calves should be housed in social units rather than in isolation before they are dragged off and slaughtered, is articulating what is generally regarded as an 'animal rights' position. This is attributable in large part to Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation (1975), who is widely considered the 'father of the animal rights movement'.

The problem with this attribution of paternity is that Singer is a utilitarian who rejects moral rights altogether, and supports any measure that he thinks will reduce suffering. In other words, the 'father of the animal rights movement' rejects animal rights altogether and has given his blessing to cage-free eggs, crate-free pork, and just about every 'happy exploitation' measure promoted by almost every large animal welfare charity. Singer does not promote animal rights; he promotes animal welfare. He does not reject the use of animals by humans per se. He focuses only on their suffering. In an interview with The Vegan magazine in 2006, he said, for example, that he could 'imagine a world in which people mostly eat plant foods, but occasionally treat themselves to the luxury of free-range eggs, or possibly even meat from animals who live good lives under conditions natural for their species, and are then humanely killed on the farm'.

We use the term 'animal rights' in a different way, similar to the way that 'human rights' is used when the fundamental interests of our own species are concerned. For example, if we say that a human has a right to her life, we mean that her fundamental interest in continuing to live will be protected even if using her as a non-consenting organ donor would result in saving the lives of 10 other humans. A right is a way of protecting an interest; it protects interests irrespective of consequences. The protection is not absolute; it may be forfeited under certain circumstances. But the protection cannot be abrogated for consequential reasons alone.

This essay is a collection of ideas so insane as to not pass the giggle test, but I guarantee there are myriads of tiny-minded bunny huggers and "animal rescuers" out there right now having seizures of pure delight over it.

Humans have had a symbiotic relationship with dogs for over 30,000 years, estimated by molecular biology. That's when the dogs were different enough from wolves to change their very DNA. How long humans and wolves had to hang out together for that to happen, no one seems to be hazarding a guess. Probably quite a while.

Against that reality, the authors of this piece say:

Non-human animals have a moral right not to be used exclusively as human resources, irrespective of whether the treatment is 'humane', and even if humans would enjoy desirable consequences if they treated non-humans exclusively as replaceable resources.
When we talk about animal rights, we are talking primarily about one right: the right not to be property. The reason for this is that if animals matter morally – if animals are not just things – they cannot be property. If they are property, they can only be things.

These people advocate the abolition of all animal husbandry, all pet ownership, all wildlife management. They cannot be mocked or lampooned, at this point. They can only be defeated. The best weapon for that is MONEY.

Rutgers University, my friends. Send them a letter explaining why your kid will never go there.

The Phantom

Scott Addams gets shadow banned by Twitter

Twitter is now going after big fish, not just little minnows. As seen at Small Dead Animals, author of the Dilbert Cartoons Scott Addams started drawing some fire from the Big Hillary Machine.

This weekend I got "shadowbanned" on Twitter. It lasted until my followers noticed and protested. Shadowbanning prevents my followers from seeing my tweets and replies, but in a way that is not obvious until you do some digging.

Why did I get shadowbanned?

Beats me.

But it was probably because I asked people to tweet me examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supporters in public. I got a lot of them. It was chilling.

Since Mr. Addams mentions it, this is a big deal that's been going unreported in the major media. Being a Trump supporter, having a Trump sign on your lawn, a Trump bumper sticker, that is getting people beat up and harrassed in some places in the USA right now. Posting "Blue Lives Matter" on Farcebook got one kid put in a coma the other day, some Social Justice Warriors broke his skull for him in three places.

Apparently the Hillary campaign is deathly afraid of that.

Good to know. ~>:D

The Deplorable Phantom

Toldja: Yahoo scans ALL emails for NSA.

Finally it is admitted out loud, Yahoo scans ALL email on its servers for the NSA.

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.

Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency's request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.

And if you think its only Yahoo doing this, you're dreaming.

Experts said it was likely that the NSA or FBI had approached other Internet companies with the same demand, since they evidently did not know what email accounts were being used by the target. The NSA usually makes requests for domestic surveillance through the FBI, so it is hard to know which agency is seeking the information.

In the above quote "approached other Internet companies with the same demand" we can take as understood the assumption that the NSA and FBI kicked their front door down, stuck a gun in their face and threatened them all with jail. Google and Microsoft are talking tough, saying they would NEVER!!!, no way! But I'm sure the FBI with the gun and stuff, in the face, the geek squad folded like origami.

So welcome to Post Freedom America, where Uncle Sam read your mail while he eats your lunch.

The Deplorable Phantom

17 months of record gun sales.

Another month, another record:

Gun sales hit the 17th consecutive monthly record in September according to FBI data released on Monday, and overall sales are up 27 percent compared to the same period last year.

A total of 1,992,219 background checks were processed through the bureau's National Instant Criminal Background Check System for the month of September, higher than the 1,795,102 conducted in September 2015.

You want to know how people feel, you look at what they spend their money on. Nearly two million Americans bought guns in September. That's a lot of guns.

The Deplorable Phantom

Who is considered dangerous these days?

This is rather revealing, I must say. It's a little window into the minds of Federal Law Enforcement in the USA these days, an indication of where they are spending their money and time.

They're tracking gun show customers.

Federal agents have persuaded police officers to scan license plates to gather information about gun-show customers, government emails show, raising questions about how officials monitor constitutionally protected activity.

Emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crafted a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers—devices that record the plate numbers of all passing cars—at gun shows in Southern California, including one in Del Mar, not far from the Mexican border.

Agents then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation.

Now, I have to say that as bullshit goes, this is pretty weak. Gun smugglers from Mexico would not have much luck at a gun show. All dealers have to fill out the same paperwork at the show and observe the same waiting periods etc.they do at a storefront. Contrary to popular belief, there are not thousands of armed men wandering the tents hawking full-auto AK-47s to any teenage puke with a hundred bucks in his pocket. More like five or six geezers walking around with a clapped out hunting rifle on their back, hoping to sell it to some other old geezer.

And don't forget, in 2010 the border was in the same state its in now. Wide open. Smugglers come and go pretty much at will.

Just so you know.

The Phantom