Real oppression vs. imagined

Dear Lefties and idiot journalists,

Everybody has been going wild about how Trump is a fascist, and how Trump voters are racist terrorists, and how tyranny is here and America is a hellhole. Oh, and there needs to be a ban on guns right away, because crazy White racists are going to kill everybody!

Let me show you a place where the government can do every single thing you say you want.

Hong Kong.

Cops are gassing, beating and shooting protesters. So far the action has all been taken by the Hong Kong Police Force, who all live there in HK and have to get along with everybody after the shouting dies down. They've used essentially the same crowd control techniques the cops in the USA do, if quite a bit more vigorously. That is all about to change.

The fork is a cattle prod. Ouch.

The Chinese government is massing troops on the border in preparation for a nice healthy purging of all the "troublemakers" in HK. Just like Tienanmen Square, the troops and not local. They have some special crowd control weapons, like a giant fork with electric cattle prods on the ends, gas that will do more than make your eyes water, and AK-47s with live ammunition. Not to mention the vehicle-mounted water cannons and all the other happy-slappy horseshit they haven't told anyone about.

The cattle prod fork, cleaned up for propaganda purposes.

And why, oh why do they think they can get away with that?

Gun control. That's why.

Could the US Army roll up to Phoenix AZ with a bunch of cattle prods and think they would win? No way. They'd find themselves in pitched gun battles with the citizenry all over the city. They'd need to send the whole fricking army to do it without blowing up the whole city.

That is not going to be a problem for the Chinese People's Liberation Army. They will face a citizenry armed with bats and pieces of pipe. And they will kill them all. The ones they don't kill will be sent off to "camps", aka slave labor for the rest of their lives.

That is the true purpose of gun control. That's what it is for, and that's what it has accomplished in every single place it has been tried.

Gun control allows governments to oppress and destroy the governed.

So I hope all you IMBECILES will understand when I don't agree with your screeching and REEEEEE!!!ing that gun control is the only acceptable answer.

The Phantom 

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!

White man + gun = RAAAAACIST!!! But not in Jamaica.

I came across something yesterday, and I was going to comment on it, but I couldn't bring myself to bother. It is so fundamentally stupid, it isn't even wrong. Hat tip to Blazing Cat Fur, which has all the links. First, TeenVogue:

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is a tool of White Supremacy.

Earlier this year, for the first time in a quarter century, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a major piece of gun control legislation. Its provisions are modest at best — it would expand background checks, mandating them for all person-to-person sales, which would technically close the gun-show loophole — and the bill has stalled in the Senate.

But before the legislation was voted on, Representative Doug Collins of Georgia took the opportunity to sneak in an anti-immigrant provision. Capitalizing on the bill's mandate for widespread background checks, Rep. Collins'a addition requires the background check system to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if an undocumented immigrant tries to purchase a gun.

Earlier this week, President Trump signaled support for the anti-immigrant provision, proclaiming via tweet that "Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying…this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform." Trump's call for for stricter immigration laws came in response to the mass shooting in El Paso that left at least 22 people dead. Notably, the alleged shooter posted a white nationalist and anti-immigrant manifesto online just before launching his attack.

This is just another self-refuting Trump hatred piece of journalistic malpractice. But the point being made is being made out there a lot. They claim the 2nd Amendment is there to empower white people and dis-empower everybody else.

The truth of the matter is that GUN CONTROL has always been used to keep guns away from blacks in the USA, starting with the Sullivan Act in New York City, and this article actually shows that history of calculated racism. But then blames the 2nd Amendment, because... well no reason, really. He just does. Fairly typical of journalism these days.

Then there was this beauty here: the book Dying of Whiteness.

Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? It's the question that people around the world keep asking.

According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America's gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.

Same argument, even more vague this time,  guns are about "Whiteness". That's so fundamentally stupid it can't be refuted. There's no point in arguing against it.

All of the above just makes me tired. What tires me is that this is the type of shit that gets traction with a sizeable minority of the public. There's about 20% of the population that eats this stuff up.

So lets cut to the chase. The island of Jamaica, which makes a lot of its income from tourism, has issued a TRAVEL WARNING telling people not to go there on vacation in case they might get killed.

The government of Jamaica has extended a state of emergency across several of its popular tourist destinations to Oct. 28, citing a significant increase of violent crime.

The warning, which applies to St. James, Westmoreland and Hanover Parishes also includes the popular Montego Bay, a frequent destination for Canadian vacationers.

Global Affairs Canada updated the emergency status on its website, which was previously set to expire on Tuesday.

Well, Jamaica is a nation of black people you know. No toxic Whiteness there, right? How bad could it be?

A local newspaper, the Jamaica Gleaner, reported that 1,616 murders took place in 2017, with 335 of those taking place in St. James alone.

Global Affairs Canada released a list of areas in Greater Kingston and Montego Bay that is reported to have high levels of violent crime, as well as citing petty crime and fraud being a common problem.

Vacationers travelling to affected areas were warned to cooperate with security officers, carry valid ID and to avoid leaving their resort after dark.

That's not the whole country, by the way. That's just the three parishes: St. James, Westmoreland and Hanover. St. James had 335 murders. That's Detroit-level numbers for St. James, the three taken together tops Chicago by a wide margin.

Jamaica also has a complete ban on firearms. Owning one is illegal. Very, very illegal. Has been since the 1960s, I think. Give or take a decade.

So there you go. Tropical island paradise that depends on tourism for money, black majority, black government, black cops, gun ban, everything the Lefties say they want. Murder rate higher than Chicago.

The Phantom

 

THIS is how its done, my friends.

You know how I talk about not hitting people with your hands, use a chair? Case study in proper use of the chair as an improvised weapon, taking down an armed murderer in Sidney Australia.

'I didn't think he'd go this far': School friends of Sydney knifeman reveal his chilling final Facebook post and claim he planned to launch attack at a music festival – as they say he was 'always weird' and recently converted to Islam

Sydney stabbing: British heroes from Manchester take down knifeman on rampage

There's some very satisfying video of this guy getting stomped on by some beefy guy in a suit who used a stacking chair on him.

And you know, despite how horrible and racist and toxic White men are, they didn't kick him to death and then drag him around the city behind a car. Weird, right?

The Phantom

Animal Rights Whackos attack UK farm.

In our continuing series on assholes attacking farms in the name of Animal rights, this is a great one.

A devastated Kent farmer has accused animal rights activists of killing thousands of pheasant chicks.

Eloise McDonald, 23, said activists stormed her small family game farm in Ashford last month and let out thousands of chicks.

She woke to find hundreds of chicks gasping for water and starving after the raiders cut through fencing and gas pipes. Around 3,000 birds are estimated to have perished, The Times reported.

Ms McDonald wrote on Facebook: "Some lowlife scumbag so-called 'animal lovers' let out 20,000 of my birds, cut all the fencing, cut gas pipes, hundreds of week-old birds dead, gasping for water and starving!"

Her cousin, Andrew Farris, who manages the farm, told the Fieldsports Channel that although they had found about 80% of the birds, a repeat incident could finish their business.

That's one side of the story. Here's the other side:

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has claimed claimed responsibility for the raid on its website.

It said: "We hit a game farm in the South East UK breeding pheasants for the shooting industry. We've heard that 9,000 birds managed to escape.

"It was quite an easy job, we simply cut through the netting with scissors and knives and rolled it to avoid birds getting tangled up in it. Then we entered the pens and made them fly off.

We are meant to conclude that this was a great blow for all that is good and holy, eeeevile farmers growing birds just so that eeeeevile hunters can SHOOT at them! The horror! So much better for the birds to die of thirst.

Just remember folks, its the HUNTERS that are the terrorists. Keep repeating that, and maybe these lunatics will kill you last.

The Phantom

Fandom: DISSENT IS TERRORISM!!!!

The title is a -little- bit of hyperbole, as the following quote only comes from "Fandom's Prolapsed Anus" rather than an official WorldCon, Fan-type source. I'm not going to link to it, because why give the perverted bastard a free click? But here it is, and its a beauty.

Chris M. Barkley:

This is why I love fandom, especially our family reunions each year. When the World Science Fiction Convention convenes, it boldly endorses and embraces the diversity of literature, art, criticism and culture the world has to offer. We stand as one against the bullies, liars and false pundits who would see the world burn.
Because those politicians, religious leaders, bigots, racists and white supremicists (sic) who inspire and perpetuate the violence are terrorists.
We don't negotiate with terrorists.
Neither should you.

This cri de coeur comes at the end of a big, long, rambling spiel where Mr. Barkley assures us that America is a dystopian hellhole, that Americans are racists, and that:

As far as I'm concerned, one of America's most urgent problems is that it is awash in firearms and in the grip of generations of a virulent and ugly gun culture.

So if you like science fiction and fantasy, but you're part of that "virulent and ugly gun culture" then you are not a Fan. You are a terrorist. Mr. Barkley is serving notice, he and his friends will not negotiate with you.

Hey Chris, do we get to pick our own rooms at the new gulag you're planning? I want one with a view of the gas chamber and the ovens. I like to be able to see where I'm going.

The comments section is good too. Steve Davidson, well known Puppy-kicker and publisher of Amazing Stories mag:

I'm all for doing what makes sense, but one of the things that concerns me the most is that cons/fandom does not yet have a clearinghouse for information regarding serial harassers and trolls and other troublemakers, and it should, let alone a network for disseminating solid info on people within the community who might pose a risk. Somehow, we have to reconile the fannish desire to deal with these things on the local level with the needs of the environment we currently find ourselves in.

Yes, there should be an "information clearinghouse" for "harassers, trolls and other troublemakers." They could call it the WorldCon Dept. of PreCrime. Because you never know when one of those "bigots, racists and white supremicists (sic)" might show up and do some terrorism.

Makes me wonder sometimes if any of these overweight douchbags has actually read 1984, or if they just refer to it as a manual.

The Phantom

El Paso vs. Chicago vs. Kyoto vs. Hong Kong

Dear Lefties and other assorted idiots. I'm going to try to make this as simple as I can for you.

Every time some white guy shoots more than one person in the USA, the news media goes into tear-jerker overdrive. Dayton Ohio and El Paso Texas, plus the garlic festival in California. White men with serious mental health issues, running amok with firearms in gun-free zones. New wrinkle, the on-line manifesto. I'm not linking to it, I won't give the sickos a free click. DuckDuckGo is your friend.

Nobody in media or government was screaming when Chantell Grant,and Andrea Stoudemire got killed while standing on a street corner in Chicago, attending a peacful anti-violence demonstration. That was a week ago, give or take. Down the memory hole, double quick.

And lets compare today's breathless gun control rhetoric with an atrocity in another nation, the attack on Kyoto Animation Studio. 33 dead, 35 injured, by one nut with a jug of gasoline and a lighter. This one lone diseased individual killed more people than the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and more than any of the much celebrated American nutjobs.

Oddly there are no politicians screaming for lighter control, or gasoline control. Because that would be IDIOTIC, wouldn't it? Anyone can get gasoline, any time. Right? Just the same as anyone can get a gun any time.

So really, none of this is about public safety. Nor do any of the petty pontiffs out there pontificating about Gun Free Zones believe even for a single second that it will work. Because its an idiotic idea.

Let's turn our eyes to Hong Kong to see what it is actually about. A million people turned out into the streets to tell their government to fuck off a few weeks ago. Hong Kong is famously an island of gun-free civilization in the middle of the warlike craziness that is Asia. Given to the PRC by the Brits in 1997, the people were not thrilled and are less thrilled now. They've gone on strike. Peacefully, because they don't have any GUNS in Hong Kong. Even the cops don't carry them except in special squads.

What's building up on the border with the People's Republic? The Chinese People's Liberation Army, that's what. Tanks, troops, the lot. In the coming days or weeks, I expect the PLA will roll over Hong Kong like a lawnmower, and the body count will be really something.

They'll be able to operate with complete impunity and do anything they want because the people of Hong Kong have been disarmed for a very long time.

That's why socialists like gun control.

The Phantom

Tuberculosis: I Told You So.

Sometimes is sucks to be right, and this is one of those times. Hat tip to Blazing Cat Fur

Health officials on Thursday examined a school in the southwestern German town of Bad Schönborn where a tuberculosis outbreak has infected dozens of children and adults.
A total of 109 students, teachers and other school employees have been infected, the district administration of Karlsruhe said.
Four people, including at least two students, have active cases of tuberculosis. That means they are presenting symptoms and could be contagious.
The actively sick students have been removed from the school and are receiving medical treatment, the district administration said.
"We cannot rule out the possibility that there will be new cases of active illness," Ulrich Wagner from the Karlsruhe health department told the Badische Neueste Nachrichten newspaper.

I've been talking about this for a decade now. There's a REASON that everyone gets screened for TB at the border, and that reason is what we see in action here. It is an airborn, persistent bacterial infection, and it can be fatal. Untreated, it is usually fatal. There are new, drug-resistant strains emerging in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Not all the same one either, there's a variety.

The way you stop it is with screening, aggressive treatment and the quarantine of infected individuals. Quarantine is a necessary, unavoidable part of defending the population from this disease.

This is not a cold, ladies and gentlemen. This shit can and will kill you. If you get timely treatment, it may only scar your lungs and weaken your immune system for the rest of your life.

But here we are, fucking around with tuberculosis outbreaks because the Left likes to call people racists.

Time to put on the big boy pants, people.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!

LIGHTSAILS WORK!!!

The Lightsail 2 spacecraft has raised its orbit using its light sail. WOO HOO!!!

Since unfurling the spacecraft's silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.

One of the life-limiting problems with spacecraft is consumables. If you use rockets of any sort to move the spacecraft and maintain an orbit, eventually it will run out of fuel.

The light sail allows this satellite to change orbit upward without expending fuel. This technology can be used to keep satelites in space much longer, and allow them to replace mass that used to be fuel with more payload, such as cameras and related electronics.

It really works. Wow!

The Phantom

Global warming scam caught red handed again.

Here's ANOTHER official thermometer sited to increase temperature. This one is in Australia.

Count the ways this site breaches the Bureau of Meteorology own rules:

Ken Stewart finds the relevant BoM guidelines. Clearly this site is on a slope, too close to buildings, too close to tall foliage, too close to heat sinks, it should not be artificially watered, or near asphalt. It should have a 30 meter buffer zone, and not be shielded from the sun, rain or wind. BillinOz points out that it is totally screened from the southerly cold winds, and the cold air will be drained from the spot down the slope.
How much do the Bureau of Meteorology care about climate change? — About 1m out of 30m or 3% of their advertised "care" factor.  That's a a 97% Junk-Science rate. The future of life on Earth is supposedly at stake and the "experts" can't even be bothered accurately measuring the climate change they tell us we need to pay billions of dollars to solve.
Obviously every record claimed at this site is scientifically meaningless. This sort of error can't be homogenized or adjusted away, but taxpaying Australians might think that installing a proper site would be possible when we pay them over a million dollars a day.
Mt Barker's temperatures are published at their Latest Weather Observations page. As Stewart points out this flawed site is used to adjust temperatures at official superstar ACORN-SAT sites at Adelaide, Cape Borda, Nuriootpa, Robe, and Snowtown. And thus does bad data pollute Australia's temperature records and the press releases that are used to scare the public into paying more money to fix a climate problem no one can be bothered to even measure properly.
The bottom line? Ask our M.P.'s to audit the Bureau of Met. If the environment matters, there must be an independent audit. Skeptics have asked, and the Bureau threw out the whole dataset to avoid the audit. They admit they won't describe their methods. If the Greens or Australian Conservation Foundation cared about the environment, they would demand an audit like we do.
In 2015 this site was on the other side of the block next to the driveway and car. "Lucky" the BoM realized, and … moved it to another inadequate spot.

This is a common theme in official weather stations. One or two that were put up by idiots is noise. But as we've seen, hundreds of stations are like this one. Next to a house, on a hill, air conditioner peeking around the corner, next to a driveway... it goes on and on.

One or two is noise. Hundreds is a policy.

Next question, if the weather officials in Western nations have a policy of constructing lying ground stations, what else are they lying about? You'd have to assume they're lying about everything.

The Phantom

Update: Lest anyone think for a moment that the above is a mistake or an oversight... this is another one, and they included the official plan in the blog post.

Another day, another lesbian blocked on Farcebook.

Big Tranny is flexing it's muscles these days, beating up women and getting them kicked off social media.

On Sunday evening, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being booted over her sexual orientation, told PJ Media she had been banned from Facebook for 30 days. Her crime? Saying that lesbians like her are not interested in intercourse with males who have male anatomy. She has been outspoken against transgender activists, who — among other things — insist that males who identify as women are really women, so lesbians must be romantically interested in them.

When PJ Media asked about the offending post, Ben-Shalom pointed to a photo with two t-shirts.

"It is a picture of 2 red t-shirts in 'Your photos,'" she wrote in an email. "One says 'D*kes Don't Want D**k Get Over It' and the other says, 'Women Have V*g*n*s Get Over It.'" The vulgar photo may be seen here.

So vulgar! I'm clutching my pearls!

My second most favorite part of this story is that the Farcebook page is private, for members only. The "offending" picture (of t-shirts with printing on them, for fuck sakes) is not public and no one can see it. So Farcebook management is looking pretty red-handed today, censoring an old lady over nothing.

Of course to the Woke(tm) activists, Ben-Shalom is literally worse than Hitler, for daring to suggest that men can't be lesbians. They called the cops on some radical TERFs the other day in England for the same thing, a banner that said "Lesbians do not have penises."

There's something about a bald statement of the obvious that sends these tranny-activists into a frenzy. Meanwhile, actual transgender people are starting to disavow all this stuff. Blair White, for example.

But then actual transgender people tend not to be pedophile perverts trying to rope town councils into paying for "topless pool parties for 12 year olds" and using the law to make unwilling immigrant women wax their balls. Which they still have, while declaring themselves a whamyn.

My most favorite part is that radical lesbian man-hating feminist Miriam Ben-Shalom is being defended, not by the Left, her comrades in arms, but by PJ Media. The Right. The horrid NeoCons, the Hitler Youth, the Nazis, the Fascist swine that Antifa exists to punch. Yeah.

Dear Lefties, we can see you for what you are.

A list of themes I've seen enough of.

From Sarah Hoyt's post yesterday, following the chain of links to the original, I came upon this list:

• There is no truth, only competing agendas.
• All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West's history of racism and colonialism.
• There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
• The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
• Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
• The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
• For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But 'oppressed' people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
• When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist's point of view, and make concessions.

 
The title of the original post was "Gramscian damage," which I have seen around but I never knew what "Gramscian" meant. So I looked it up. It is for Antonio Gramsci, a Marxist propagandist and general issue a-hole.

Reading the list, I'm struck by how often these themes are the entire basis of fiction and films. Not a complete list, but good for a start. These themes infest recent science fiction to the exclusion of all else. Anti-colonialism is particularly popular as a cause in itself.

For me, the presence of any of the above bullshit in a story is reason to put it down. As soon as I come to "the poor are victims" or "violence and war are never justified" I'm putting the thing back on the shelf and moving on.

So, all you authors out there, fair warning. Free country so you can write whatever you want, but if anything on that list forms the basis of your book, I will not be reading it. I'm done reading about that.

The Thematic Phantom

#MeToo is over because Dems need Al Franken's senate seat.

Sometimes it is truly amazing, watching these socialsts maneuver.

Democrats and liberals in the news media have found a sudden nuance when defining "sexual misconduct," though the concept was conveniently a lot more clear-cut when a Supreme Court seat was on the line just 10 months ago.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer published a lengthy article Monday that all but clears disgraced former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., of the multiple accusations of sexual assault he faced in 2017, which ultimately led to his resignation from the Senate.

Mayer offers a sympathetic ear to Franken, who believes he was wrongly shafted. She gets testimonials from Senate Democrats who have since come to regret their initial demand that Franken resign. And she casts doubt on the allegation that started Franken's pursuit because the victim, Leeann Tweeden, may have misremembered insignificant details about the time Franken forcibly kissed her and touched her breasts while she was unconscious.

Yeah, so don't #BelieveTheWoman if there's a DemocRat senate seat involved.

Amazing that some random journalist bozo thinks she can stuff the #MeToo tsunami back in the bottle over a frigging senate seat.

The Phantom

"Shut up, bitch!!!" explained the Canadian Government.

Apropos of the men "competing" as women in boxing and wrestling, and essentially beating up girls, I present this fairy tale:

Once upon a time in the Frozen North, some guy decided he was a woman, put on a dress and went around demanding everybody treat him as a woman. Most people decided it wasn't worth dealing with the guy, and said "Fine, whatever." This made him very angry.

Where he finally got the push-back he wanted was by demanding "Brazilian Waxing" services from ethnic women who work out of their homes.

Naturally, young and physically small Indian and Philippine women were his targets. He did not attempt to get a Brazilian from Fraulein Greta the shot-put champion because she would have punched him out. He picked little 98lb brown women. They, obviously, told him: "No, I am not going to wax your balls in my home where my kids are, your weirdo."

Yes, there is a real-world case that resembles the above fairy tale:

This is the case of Jessica Yaniv, born Jonathan Yaniv, who has filed complaints against more than a dozen female waxers with the Human Rights Council (HRC) in British Columbia. Yaniv claims that the women's refusal to give him a Brazilian – that is, to handle his penis and testicles and to remove his pubic hair, activities these women did not want to carry out – is discrimination. Yaniv says that self-identifying as a woman is sufficient to be treated as a woman and to get access to services typically reserved for women.

It is not enough to force a Christian baker to make wedding cakes for gay weddings. That's so last year! Now you're going to wax that woman's balls! Because women have balls now! [wait, what?]

The author concludes:

The suggestion that these Canadian female waxers are 'transphobes' because they refused to wax a dick confirms the cynical, sinister nature of that term 'transphobic'. It really is just a way to demonise and punish anyone who refuses to bow down to the ideology of genderfluidity. It is stick used to beat those who refuse to buy into the Orwellian notion that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and a penis can be female. You can now be a bigot simply for believing in reality itself, in this case that people with penises are not women. Pressuring women to handle male genitalia against their will is dreadful and it suggests woke politics has now crossed the line from irritating to disgusting.

I would contend that "woke politics" crossed the Disgusting Line with the #BakeMyCake! thing, but that is a mere quibble.

Where we're really at today is White men oppressing women of colour and attempting to sexually abuse them, under force of law.

Like nobody saw this coming. And you Lefty fuckers wonder why we look at you sideways.

Update: Ms. Jessica Yaniv has a "history" as they say.

Upperdate: A clarification for the lawfare inclined: I have no problem with Ms. Yaniv being a woman, and I have no problem with Ms. Yaniv bringing a suit before the BC Human Rights Commission. My problem is that the BC HRC exists at all. It is an affront to freedom and human decency, and should be dismantled immediately.

UppityUpperdate: Ms. Yaniv is (possibly, maybe, we're not really sure because Twitter didn't say) the complainant who got Lindsay Sheppard kicked off Twitter. And previously Megan Murphy (maybe, because again, Twitter never said.)

New Upperdate: Ms. Yaniv wants to host a "topless pool party" for "LGBT" 12 year olds, at a public pool, with no parents allowed, and she wants the Township of Langley BC to pay for it. As one does, apparently.

You know, it is remarkable how wrong this stuff looks when all you do is report the bare facts. No bold accusatory rhetoric or embroidery required. You just repeat the request in plain language, and the fundamental wrongness fairly boils off it. Gives you an idea what kind of MUTANTS are working in the Canadian civil service, and what they are working toward.

UppityUpUpperdate: Conservative weighs in with a hearty "I Told You So, You Lefties!!!" Bro seems to be missing the point though:

I’m all for letting bygones be bygones. But can we now please finally all realize that there are real policy and personal implications to this rash decision to suddenly change the definition of men and women?

 No, dude. There will be no bygones, no gracious apology. There will be more, harder and faster as the Left frantically clings to this issue like a dog fucking a football. This isn't about "policy," as all you Conservative wonks persist in thinking. This is the Left moving to oppress and cow normal people into hiding. Yaniv is a temporarily useful tool, which will be used up and abandoned when it breaks. The Left hates Yaniv, they hate women, they hate brown people, and they hate you.

Once you understand that the Left is motivated by nothing but the urge to destroy, then you'll be dealing with Reality.

ItIsOnNowUpittydate: Looks like one of Ms. Jessica Yaniv's alleged 14 year old victims saw Yaniv's picture, and came out with guns blazing. Alegedly there's a whole swarm of them out there.
You know that thing they say, that there's no such thing as bad publicity?  They're wrong about that. 

Nobody wants Jane Bond.

The great uproar of the interwebz this week is the casting of a black lady as the new 007 in the next Bond movie. Nobody is down with it, everyone knows its going to be stupid.

Trina Parks says she is against the potential plot twist - insisting the Bond movies have already done huge amounts for Hollywood diversity, she said in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV.

Parks famously made history as the first black Bond girl appearing in Diamonds Are Forever as assassin Thumper alongside Sean Connery in 1971.

Speaking from her New York home, the 72-year-old actress said: 'Lashana is a great actress, but I don't really agree with her becoming 007. It is not about her color, but just because Bond, the spy code-named 007, was written by Ian Fleming as a man.'

She continues,

'So a black James Bond sure, I don't see why that could not be a move, but as a man. Miss Bond doesn't have the same ring to it. 

'I think that there are lots of movies already where you have a woman taking center stage, defeating men - and I like that.

'But I don't feel that the James Bond franchise has to go there.'

Because a 110lb woman killing 220lb men in hand-to-hand combat doesn't look any less ridiculous when a black woman is doing it than when a white one does it. Its a stupid idea.

The other, glaring issue is that they're doing a James Bond movie that doesn't have James Bond in it.

I think what most people are concerned about is that the movie makers have succumbed to the illusion that progressive Leftist themes sell movie tickets. They still don't understand that the only BIG movies of the last ten years are the ones with the least amount of Leftism on screen.

Or worse, they do understand and they're destroying these franchises deliberately.

"Shut up, Canadian!!!" explained the Chinese sponsors.

I would say, offhand, that these boys are buying themselves an ass kicking. You do not come to Canada and tell the people who live here to shut up. It is really not a smart idea.

A Falun Gong practitioner (who is a Canadian and a white guy) says the CEO of Ottawa's dragon-boat festival ordered him to take off a T-shirt advertising the Chinese spiritual group, citing in part China's sponsorship of the popular event.

John Brooman also threatened to have other Falun Gong practitioners removed from the public park in which the festival took place last month if they didn't leave voluntarily, says Gerry Smith, a retired Nortel Networks employee.

Emphasis mine. Why would John Brooman, CEO of the Ottawa dragon boat race festival, another Canadian white guy, give two shits about Falun Gong as a group, or people doing the exercise in the park?

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa is listed as a "gold sponsor" of the Tim Hortons Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, which also receives funding from companies and federal, provincial and city governments.

Because money. That's why.

Also Mr. Brooman appears to be some sort of Liberal Party of Canada apparatchik, factotum or other sort of minion, so he probably got orders to see those dangerous troublemakers off. This is the exact equivalent of chasing a bunch of old ladies out of a public park for doing Tai Chi. Or playing checkers, for that matter.

But you know, Canadians are funny. We put up with an awful lot of shit from our governments, but one thing we don't put up with is officials throwing their weight around and breaking the rules. You don't get to throw Canadians out of a public park because they are inconvenient to a foreign power. That's a Rule. Nobody will put up with that.

Therefore, this little issue is going to go exactly the opposite to the way the Chinese Embassy wants it to. This has the potential to become an issue in the national election.

More girls on the bench in New Zealand

The headline says it all:

Transgender weightlifter wins two gold medals in women's competition

Actual woman who competed gets silver, and told to shut up.

In second place was Samoa's 18-year-old weightlifter Feagaiga Stowers, who won her nation's second gold medal last year after Hubbard was forced to withdraw due to an elbow injury.

Humanity is a sexually dimorphic species. Males are bigger and stronger than females. That's how it is. Politics does not change that, any more than Canute could order back the tides.

As people who used to be men increasingly compete in these sporting events, women will increasingly remain in the also-ran category. For a while anyway, until they become angry.

The correct course of action would be to create a special category, and let trans compete against each other. But that is not what's being done, because politics.

The other course of action is rebellion. Women athletes refuse to compete with them, and let the chips fall where they may. I expect that's where we're going to end up, and probably soon.

Lindsay Sheppard kicked off Twitter

New development, Lindsay Sheppard kicked off Twitter for... well we're not sure really, they didn't actually say why. Apparently straight white women are not allowed to talk anymore.

Why is anyone still on Twitter? Seriously. Let them go bankrupt, ladies and gentlemen.

The Phantom

What white people -really- are.

I hear a lot of chatter on the Interwebz about Whiteness this and Whiteness that. 

Dear Ivory Tower Socialists and Feminist Theory weenies, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. All those micro-agressions and colonialism this and every other thing you think white people are, we're not those things. 

Our culture, our nations, our Western civilization, this is us trying to be good. That's our nature harnessed and made to work. Unleashed, its so much worse than that.

This is Whiteness.

Do not pull on this thread. You will not like what is in there.

(And all you White people who watched the whole thing, go ahead and tell me you didn't feel the monster trying the bars of its cage.)

The Phantom

"Shut up, Jews!" they explained.

You don't see that one every day, do you? Jews have been holy to the Holier Than Thou intellectual community since 1945. But now they are under the bus, ladies and gentlemen.

The world of literature, where Jews have made so many invaluable and long-standing contributions, is succumbing quickly to the new anti-Semitism.

The most recent example comes from the United Kingdom. Two cultural organizations in England have just rejected hosting talks by novelist Richard Zimler—explicitly because he's Jewish. In the Guardian, Zimler writes of the conversation with a friend in which he learned of the trouble: "'They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,' he said. "'They even stopped replying to my emails and returning my phone messages.'"

Zimler had been hoping to promote his new novel, The Gospel According to Lazarus, and up until his friend confirmed the author's Jewishness, these unnamed organizations had been interested. And then they weren't. "It made Britain seem like a place I didn't know and maybe never knew," Zimler writes. "Even just asking about my religious affiliation struck me as outrageous.

It gets a bit more outrageous when you consider what Zimler's publicist had to say to the Observer—while not revealing his own name: "I was very shocked and surprised. People in the literary world are not usually narrow-minded. Everyone who knows Richard knows he is his own person."

Zimler "is his own person"? That's a curious defense, isn't it? It's hard not to think that what he meant was that Zimler, while Jewish, isn't a Zionist puppet and can, therefore, be tolerated.

 Of course that's exactly what he meant, and its why he didn't reveal his name. Jews are "tolerated" based on the quality and amount of their virtue signaling. Unless you are a trans-ally, post-feminist, atheist and leader of the local chapter of Divest Israel, you are not to be tolerated. You're a Deplorable. Just like every other white man out there.

In Britain the purity spiral has accelerated to such a degree that Jews have become persona non grata right along with those odious Christians and [shudder] Americans. And TERFs. Oh, and gay men, they are also now officially uncool.

So, ladies and gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion, welcome to the under-the-bus experience. Feel free to relax with a cigar and some of this lovely port we White Men have over by the differential as the purity spiral accelerates.

The Deplorable Phantom

"Shut up, Christian!" they explained.

An uproar in Oz caught my attention, apparently some Aussie Rules football player lost his multi-million-dollar job because he dared to have an opinion.

The firing of one of Australia's best-known sports stars for saying gay people are headed for hell has exposed social fault lines and sparked debate about what constitutes religious expression.

Rugby Australia tore up Israel Folau's multimillion-dollar contract last month after he posted on Instagram in April that gay people, adulterers and atheists were living in sin and would go to hell unless they repented.

The sport's national governing body said Mr. Folau breached its code of conduct, which calls for the respectful use of social media, and was fairly dismissed. "This is an issue of an employee and his obligations to his employers within the contract that he signed," Rugby Australia said.

To be perfectly crystal clear, that view is not controversial in Christianity. According to the bible, Hell is where unrepentant sinners go. The whole purpose of having Christianity and churches, historically, was to keep people out of hell. Like it or hate it, that's what Christianity is about.

Where we are right now is that mentioning your Christian beliefs on Instagram can legally get you fired in Australia. Mr. Folau is about to test that legality in court, something that in a free country he wouldn't have to do.

Canada is in worse shape, someone already tested this in the Supreme Court of Canada and lost. His crime was leafleting cars in Calgary, if I recall correctly. You can't say that sinners go to hell in Canada. You'll go to jail. Probably not what the people who made those laws had in mind, but that's how it turned out.

However there are quite a few people quite openly preaching that Israel should be destroyed, and none of them have gone to jail for it. So the law does seem to be squarely aimed at traditional Christianity and its adherents, two of whom have gone to jail so far. The leaflet guy, and some old lady praying in front of an abortion clinic.

How long before the law gets used to suppress any speech not approved by the ruling party? Thus far the government of Canada (and Britain, Australia, America) has let the private sector do all the censoring of political speech, but it is only a matter of time before openly supporting the party not in power becomes a criminal offense.

Dear liberals and useful idiot SJWs, this is not going to turn out the way you think. Sooner or later, people will start going to jail for stuff they said. That's how this type of thing inevitably ends up. Just letting you know that history predicts it 100%.

Just keep voting Liberal and we'll all presently find out.

The Phantom

New property of light discovered.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/06/29/0039231/new-property-of-light-discovered

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain and the U.S. has announced that they have discovered a new property of light -- self-torque. Their findings have been published in the journal Science.

So very cool.

"Shut up!" explained The Guardian.

No, you morons don't understand. In order to protect Free Speech we need you to shut up!

Free speech advocates also misunderstand the motivation of those who might want to shut down a debate: they see this as a surefire mark of intolerance. But some debates should be shut down. For public dialogue to make any progress, it is important to recognise when a particular debate has been won and leave it there.

Even the most passionate free speech advocate might not wish to reopen the debate into whether women should be tried for witchcraft, or whether ethnic minorities should be allowed to go to university, or whether the Earth is flat. No-platformers are not scared – they simply think certain debates are over. You may disagree, but it does not mean they are against free speech.

Oh, and if you disagree that some debates should be shut down, you are a bigot, a boor and probably very stupid as well.

 Martha Gill is a political journalist and former lobby correspondent. She has worked as a staffer at the Economist and the New Statesman.

Where she was probably manhandled by the perverts who run the place, but lacks the fortitude to come forward about it because the #MeToo debate is officially over.

In other news, it was discovered that Martha Gill's head is completely filled with wool. A co-worker noticed a bit of yarn protruding from one ear and pulled on it. Ms. Gill exhibits no ill effects from having 400 feet of red number 5  pulled from her now empty skull, but was heard to complain there was a bit of an echo when she speaks.

The Echoing Phantom

Most People Are Not Assholes.

If you look at TV or the movies, and increasingly fiction, the Human Race is mostly depicted as worthless assholes who don't deserve to live.

This turns out to be untrue.

If you find a wallet stuffed with bank notes, do you pocket the cash or track down the owner to return it? We can each speak for ourselves, but now a team of economists have put the unsuspecting public to the test in a mass social experiment involving 17,000 "lost" wallets in 40 countries.

Overall, 51% of those who were handed a wallet with the smaller amount of money reported it, compared with 40% of those handed an empty wallet. When the wallet contained a large sum of money, the rate of return was 72%.

72% of the people returned the -large- amount of money. This disproves the "Everybody Does It" excuse so beloved of scumbags and politicians everywhere. No, you assholes, everybody does NOT do it.

Authors and movie makers please wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah!

Hatred in the public sphere: why is it there?

We all know there's plenty-plenty hate out there pointed all over the place. I'm going to talk about a specific and extremely virulent hatred, that of liberals toward gun owners, because I found a great example of it: "How Guns Literally Go to Men's Heads" by Thom Hartmann, a "writing fellow" of the "Independent Media Institute." (I'd be fascinated to know where they get their money.)

Mr. Hartmann is also the author of "The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment" which is one of the most breathtakingly false books about American history I've seen in a long time.

So let's see what Mr. Hartmann has to say about men, shall we?

People are asking why the shooter in Virginia Beach used a gun to settle his workplace score. The answer is probably pretty simple.

When a man has a gun, he literally holds the power of life and death in his hand. That kind of power is extraordinarily seductive.

The Virginia Beach shooter was seduced by the Power of the Gun. That's his whole take.

With a gun in his hand, a man can look around a room, a building, or a public area and specifically identify who will instantaneously die and whom he will allow to live. It's a power that traditionally has only been held by doctors, priests, police and soldiers.

I can tell you from personal experience of carrying a gun, that isn't what I was thinking when I got into a "situation" one time. I was thinking "If I have to shoot this prick, I'm going to lose my job and probably go to jail."

Also, that whole "doctors, priests, police and soldiers" list is bullshit. Every adult male in the world has the power of life and death in his own two hands from puberty onward, and he knows it. You don't need a gun to kill somebody. You can do it with your fingers. Or feet, elbows, a nice handy rock, whatever.

This is largely a male problem because men commit 85.3 percent of all homicides and 97 percent of all homicides where the shooter and victim don't know each other. In the case of school and workplace shootings, the shooters are also more than 97 percent male.

As a result of this male aggression provoked in part by handling guns, in America guns are the second leading cause of death (just behind car crashes) among children between 1 and 19 years old.

Couple things here. First, extending childhood to age 19 is a way to lie with charts. They want to bring in that huge number of teenage shootings which is gang-bangers killing each other over drugs.

Second, "male aggression" as the prime motivator in gun related murder is an interesting notion. We can TEST that theory right now.

Here's Mr. Hartmann's "science" section:

This goes way beyond the joke of the Small Penis Gun Club or its Facebook site. Men, it turns out, are actually hardwired by evolution and biology to react to having power over others with a boost in testosterone and an increase in aggression.

A 2006 study published in Psychological Science by Klinesmith, Kasser and McAndrew found that men who simply handled a gun were significantly more likely to give other men a higher dose of hot sauce (a commonly used research measure of aggression) right after handling the gun than were men who handled a child's toy.

For men who feel that they've lost control of their lives, or who feel dismissed or disrespected by others, this is pure catnip.

Firing a gun, in addition to raising testosterone levels like simply handling one does, actually produces a feeling similar to intoxication. As UCLA Law professor Adam Winkler points out, shooting guns triggers higher levels of adrenaline and endorphins, producing a high like riding a roller coaster.

In this regard, guns can be thought of as a drug — an intoxicating, mind-altering, power-conferring drug that leads to aggression and, in the United States, to around 40,000 deaths a year.

That whole section and all those linked studies are obvious bullshit, and If I had the leisure I'd go over each one and show y'all why. Study design, sample, all chosen to prove the hypothesis. Which isn't science, its propaganda.

But, because I'm busy, we are going to take all that at face value. For the sake of the argument, we will assume a gun in your hand is a powerful drug that makes you want to kill people.

That would mean two things. Where guns are most common, that would be the place where the most murders happen. Right? The gun is a drug, you take the drug and you go kill somebody.  That's the thesis.

Testing time, what do we actually see out there in the world? 50% of murders happen in 2% of US counties. But it is actually worse than that, because a county is a big place. When you break it down, you find that the vast majority, by which I mean over ~75% of murders in those hot-spot counties, are restricted to a few bad neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods in the "bad" counties have zero murders.

Conversely, more than half the country has no murders at all. None. And those counties which have no murders in them, do they have men there? Yes. And do those men have guns there? Yes, usually ALL of the adult men in those counties have guns. More than one, in fact. The usual number is three, a .22 rifle, a "full power cartridge" rifle like a .3006 or .308, and a shotgun.

So much for Mr. Hartmann's theory, right?

Next question, and the point of this post, there's a whole host of Leftist organizations out there beavering away, publishing bullshit like this piece every single day. All of it can be refuted with a 30 second Google search, yet they persist. WHY BOTHER?

Well, here's why:

If a driver must carry liability insurance because his car could kill somebody, why not a gun owner? Why is it that if the Newtown or Parkland kids had been killed by a drunk or even malicious driver, their survivors would have gotten a million bucks each from Geico, but the families of kids killed with guns don't?

Required liability insurance, by the way, is the most Republican/conservative of all gun control measures; it's a "free market solution."

Just as no insurance company will cheaply write insurance for a driver with a few DWIs, so, too, would they restrict people with domestic violence charges, etc. No government involvement necessary for this one, other than the simple requirement to have the policy so long as one owns a gun.

Money.

I'm sure the insurance industry would LOVE to write mandatory policies on every gun in America.  We're talking about a market of roughly 9 million new guns a year. Roughly half the households in the USA will admit to owning a gun, a wild guess tells me another 25% won't admit it. There are more guns in the USA than there are people, by a healthy margin. And the other thing we know is that none of those guns will ever kill people. How do we know? Because all the murders are concentrated in 25 large cities, leaving the entire rest of the country essentially murder-free.

Mr. Hartmann is spreading lies and hatred for money.

I'm glad we cleared that up.

Worth repeating: 50% of crime happens in 2% of America (and Canada!)

Here's the situation:

Data from 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available, shows us that 54% of counties (containing 11% of the population) had zero murders. 69% of counties had no more than one murder, and held about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country.
The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders. The study shows more than half of all murders occurred in just 2% of counties nationwide.

Note that 2% of counties is OVERSTATING the land area involved here.

In Chicago, the story is almost identical- with admittedly higher numbers. In the first four months of 2017, 222 murders took place in the heavily gun-controlled windy city. Lott writes, "But 23 of the 77 neighborhoods in the city have zero murders, and most of the 40 neighborhoods have only one murder. Twelve of the neighborhoods have 10 or more murders."

Yes. When you look at Cook County, you see 222 murders in four months and you think "holy shit Mabel, its open warfare!" But then you look at a Chicago crime map and see that there is a thin scatter of red dots across the map, with a few forest fires of red dots. There are a few streets where somebody gets killed pretty much every night, and the rest of the place is quiet.

Now lets talk about gun control.

When the reality is that ALL the murders take place on a few streets in Chicago, and the State of Illinois is talking about banning AR-15 rifles to "save lives", what does that mean?

The first thing it means is that either the State of Illinois can't do anything about the murders on those streets, or they don't care. Outside third option, they arranged it and they like it that way.

Hanlon's Razor says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Going by that, we will assume that the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago are so profoundly fucked that they can't arrest a bunch of murderers and throw their sorry asses in jail.

This leads us to the second thing: gun control is what they are doing instead of fixing the problem.

Its genius, really. You have a problem you can't solve, so you blame it on a visible minority and you make their lives hell instead of doing something constructive. Kind of like what Hitler did with the Jews, but slower.

Canada, four wounded by gunfire at the Toronto Raptors victory celebration. City of Toronto doesn't know what to do about that. They know why it happened, for sure. There's a lot of assholes wandering loose who should be in jail. That's why. But the City of Toronto as a body is unwilling (or unable) to do what it would take to get those assholes in jail where they belong.

Enter the Federal Liberal Party. They propose to outright ban ownership of the AR-15 rifle, and make it harder for farmers and hunters to keep their rifles. Because they think they can sell the public a fairy tale one more time. Its an election year, and telling the people of Toronto how evil and bad those rednecked farmers are out there with their assault weapons and their pickup trucks is a lot easier than building a new jail and filling it with career criminals. And besides, those farmers are never ever going to vote Liberal anyway, so fuck 'em.

That's what's going on.

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!
Upperdate: Welcome Northeast Shooters blog! 

Reviews: from the merely ridiculous to the Fully Woke (tm)

Reviews and awards have become an issue in our increasingly divided society. For probably 30 years I've used bad review scores as a guide to which movie I should go and see. Likewise I've used the Academy Awards for film and the Hugo/Nebula Awards to science fiction as "do not watch/do not read" list. Lately things have gotten worse, with "award winning" being code for "avoid at all costs."

There has been some uproar around one particular review this week, so I thought I'd have a look and see just how bad it was.

I give you Carlos Aguilar's review of "The Secret Life of Pets 2" at TheWrap. There will be spoilers (but not really because y'all can probably recite the "plot" of Pets 2 without even thinking about it).

This is a cartoon movie explicitly marketed for children. Keep that in mind as we roll through this thing.

The title shows us what we're in for:

'The Secret Life of Pets 2' Film Review: Cartoon Offers Outdated Messages About Marriage, Manliness"

Because a cartoon about cute puppies for children is an appropriate vehicle for messaging about marriage and manhood.

Subscript:

Come for the adorable puppies, stay for the toxic masculinity and antediluvian notions regarding love and family.

From which we are to understand that this movie has fallen far short of Full Woke (tm) and the author is very disappointed.

Milking human's collective affection for our furry and feathered pals, the original "The Secret Life of Pets" imposed the "Toy Story" formula on animals living in New York City in order to show us what they do when we are not looking.

He doesn't have a problem with the first movie in the franchise. (I should interject that I haven't seen Pets 1 or 2, but I did see Toy Story 2 and I found it to be CREEPY AS HELL. The toys are -people-? Oh, dude. That's fucked up.) But let us continue.

"The Secret Life of Pets 2," on the other hand, for which both Renaud and Lynch reprise their roles, effectively acts as an animated ode to heteronormativity, toxic masculinity and patriarchal worldviews, passed off as harmless plot points to entertain young audiences.

That's simply fascinating. Say on, O sage.

 "Pets 2's" descent into the bowels of what reads as conservative messaging begins as Katie (voiced by Ellie Kemper), Max's owner, randomly meets a young man, quickly marries and has a child.

Okay, so "girl meets boy, they get married and have a little family" is now bad conservative messaging. Got it. Uh, why is it bad?

In this fictional universe, that's clearly the only natural progression of events in a woman's life. That trope is later reinforced through the pet characters.

Oh, I get it. Getting married to a member of the opposite sex and breeding is a trope, and we're supposed to be presented with the whole QUILTBAG of pervy third-sigma from normal sex options instead. In a kid's cartoon. Okay then. Onward to complaining about the female characters!

To achieve this, she partners with dismissive cat Chloe (Lake Bell), but in no way can "Pets 2" possibly pass the Bechdel test.

So we do have some non-male-oriented scenes between two female characters, yay! But they don't pass the hallowed Bechdel Test, so boo! Because that's what's important in a kid's movie, the Bechdel Test. For fuck sakes. But let us move on...

In case it wasn't obvious, "Pets 2" makes no attempt at diversifying the notion of what a family is today. No same-sex couples are in sight as pet owners, much less as parents. Nothing that deviates from the default straight married couple is even hinted at.

Oh, the horror.

But now we get to what really got under Carlos Aguilar's saddle, the toxic masculinity part! (I know you were waiting for this ~:)

 Making matters worse, Harrison Ford is cast as Rooster, a hyper-masculine shepherd dog brazenly teaching Max how to toughen up.

That sounds terrible!

Rooster is the embodiment of phrases like "Men don't cry," and " Rub some dirt on it." This alpha dog rejects vulnerability by preaching about how sissified city dogs are. The character is disturbing in his unapologetic validation of behavior society as a whole is trying to eradicate. He equates courage with arrogance and other outdated perceptions of manliness.

Yes, apparently society as a whole is trying to eradicate cowboys who suck it up and work through the pain to get the job done, whatever job it may be. But why do we care that a cartoon dog character is a leathery old cowboy?

Defenders may argue it's absurd to attribute such weight to an animated feature, but on the contrary, this is the content to which we should be paying the most attention. Family-friendly releases have the power to communicate nuggets of knowledge to young viewers, and when the information transmitted is this regressive, it's worth raising the alarm.

Yep. There you go. It makes it harder to groom little boys into drag queens when they've seen legendary hard ass Rooster the dog git 'er dun in the cartoons on Saturday morning. They see that old cowboy, and feel the echo in their hearts. They see the mom and the dad taking care of the little baby on the screen, and they start wondering where their dad is. They begin to question if poor little Heather is getting ripped off because she only has two mommies.

Bottom line, Carlos Aguilar's complaint is that the normal nuclear family and the normal Western adult male have been presented in a positive light in a film for children. He is angry that the little tiny segment of society waaaaay out at the skinny edge of the bell curve, that 3% of humanity, has not been given center stage. Its fucking up his propaganda campaign, is why he's angry.

And that, my friends, is why awards and reviews should be used backwards. This review is different from most only in its boldness, not in its aim. Carlos Aguilar actually says what he wants, the rest try to hide it while they worm away at us. The more the critics like Carlos Aguilar hate a movie, the more likely it is to be fun.

IMPORTANT NOTE! For the reading comprehension impaired: if you are in some form of non-standard relationship, this is not about -you-. Really, I don't care what you get up to. It is none of my business what other people do in a free country. Just don't get any on my lawn, or expect me to do it your way, and we're good.

The Phantom

Update: Secret Life of Pets 2 beats XMen Dark Phoenix at the box office. So everybody agrees that little Carlos is a dumbass.

Just how dangerous are synthetic canabinoids?

This dangerous.

THE "zombie" man who died after setting himself on fire outside the White House was "hallucinating after taking Spice laced with Angel Dust".

Police sources are said to have confirmed that Arnav Gupta, 33, had taken the drug K2 which had been laced with PCP.

...

An unnamed eyewitness said: "Like a torch, his whole body was on fire.

"He was just walking like a zombie or something. Just straight, he wasn't running and screaming or anything. He was walking straight. Then they put the extinguisher on him and put his [fire] out and that's it."

He later died in hospital from burns covering 85% of his body, according to the article.

K2, also known as "Spice" is a -synthetic- cannabinoid. Meaning that it attaches to cannabinoid receptors in the human body like THC does, but it is not THC and doesn't come from the cannabis plant. They mix it up in a test tube like paint.

Watching the video (I recommend against it, because you can't un-see shit) you'll see the man standing and moving as if he doesn't feel the fire burning him. He just stands there. On fire.

That level of dissociation from the five senses is not a good thing, for a lot of reasons. It isn't good for the person taking the drug, because I very much doubt they'll ever be right again afterwards. It ain't going to wear off, my friends. We're talking brain damage so severe the victims won't be able to tie their own shoe laces or wipe their own butts.

It isn't good for anyone else either, because now we have brain-fried zombies that don't feel pain wandering around looking for more drugs. Most hand-to-hand combat techniques work by inflicting pain. These guys don't feel pain. The guy who set himself on fire didn't feel it. You could have cut off one of his limbs and he wouldn't have felt that either.

K2/Spice is one of 80+ synthetic cannabinoids currently making the rounds in the black market. K2 is not even the worst one. It is apparently pretty easy to make, as plenty of these back-yard chemists are cranking it out.

Therefore, my advice to one and all: if you or your kid wants some weed for whatever reason, get it from the legal source.

Smoking cannabis to get high is probably not good for you long term, and it is certainly a huge waste of time, but at least it won't destroy your kid's brain and the rest of his/her life with the first puff. There's plenty of very determined stoners out there that have been smoking a ton of weed since the friggin' 1960s, and they can still tie their own shoelaces.

The Advising Phantom

Lesbians join white males under the bus.

Welcome, ladies. Mind the axles.

On the very first day of Pride Month, British police accosted a group of lesbians protesting against transgender activism, asking if they were a "hate group." The lesbian group Get the L Out made a stir last year at the London Pride parade by marching with a sign reading, "Transactivism Erases Lesbians." On Saturday, the group protested transgender activism again in the northern city of Bradford, with signs reading, "Lesbian = Female HomoSEXual."

Regulars at the Soapbox will recall my penchant for saying that Leftists actually hate gays and lesbians. They basically use them as props.

Dear gays and lesbians: what do you think politicians do with a prop that isn't propping anymore? They ditch it. They throw it under the bus.

Remember five years ago all those soft-voiced, soft-handed "allies" that swore up and down they were there to support the Sisterhood forever? They were lying. They hate your guts. They'll find a way to throw you in jail, just like the 1950s.

2019 hate crime in progress. The sound is my eyes rolling.

Remember all those horrible conservatives from five years ago who told you it was a free country, and they didn't care what you did as long as you didn't get any on their front lawn? We haven't changed. We're the closest thing you've got to allies now.

Told ya.

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!