Why the NDP is dangerous.

Big brain Peter Kormos of the Ontario NDP has what he thinks is a great idea.

New Democrat member Peter Kormos introduced a private member's bill Thursday that would presume consent for organ donations from any dying patient who hasn't already made their wishes clear.

It would reverse the current system, which requires people to sign a donor card and obtain the consent of family before any organs or tissue can be harvested.

"Presume consent" means that unless you specifically tell the hospital that you DON'T want your organs harvested, they take 'em.  And since the hospital employs the people who declare you dead, they decide when to take 'em too.

  Canadians have no right to property, as I've been at some pains to point out over the years.  What's yours is only yours so long as there's no law saying otherwise, and such a law is no farther away than three readings in the House and Crown consent.  They could blow that off in an afternoon if there was a hurry on it. Taxes, expropriations, you name it, they can do it. 

The NDP has decided that having the power to take all your money and posessions is not enough.  They want your ASS.  And your liver, heart, kidneys, lungs, corneas, skin, blood and guts too.  In a good cause, of course.  Almost makes you want to take up smoking and liquor, just to fuck them up.

This never knowing when enough is enough is what makes the NDP dangerous.  I look forward to voting against them in every election from now until they part out my still-warm corpse.

The Phantom of many parts.

A study in headlines.

The National Poost: "Tory backbencher says he will kill gun registry"

The Toronto (Red) Star:  "Tories load up to kill gun registry"

The Glob and Snail:  "Tories paint bulls-eye on long-gun registry"

Media message:  Oh no, those scary Tories are gonna KILL something!

Translation from Mediaspeak to real world:  Conservative Party acts quickly to keep campaign promise. 

They are doing what they said they were going to do, dismantle the gun registry ASAP.  Clearly this is not what the Big Three papers want, with all this talk of killing things.  A figure of speech perhaps, but a revealing one.

The Phantom

Top Democrat deserts the sinking ship of fools.

Now THIS is schweeet!

In a stunning break with her party, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the New York Times should be prosecuted for damaging national security by revealing the National Security Agency's top secret terrorist surveillance program authorized by President Bush.

"If the press was part of the process of delivering classified information, there have to be some limits on press immunity," Rep. Jane Harman told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Moderator Tim Russert then pressed: "But if [the NSA leak] came from a whistleblower, should the New York Times reporter be prosecuted?"

Harman countered: "Well, it's not clear it was a whistleblower. You have to prove that first."

I guess not all the DemocRats are blind lemmings in an election year, eh?  Bwahaha!

The Phantom

More on Jonathon Logan.

More about Jonathon Logan's case and the OPP's misbehaviour in court.  The spelling is a bit dodgy but the info is good.

The Phantom

VICTORY!!! Jonathon Logan aquitted, 3 years later.

Victory in a just cause, Jonathon Logan has won his case against the OPP.

A Provincial Court Judge yesterday ruled a police takedown and public strip search of a Baxter man who was legally hunting groundhogs was unconstitutional and illegal.

The ruling came almost three years after Jonathan Login, 32, found himself face-down in the driveway of his rural home in Baxter, Ont., surrounded by a team of OPP and military officers with high-powered weapons trained on his head.

Next thing he knew, his pants were down around his knees while a gloved officer performed an anal cavity search as his weeping wife and children hugged and kneeled on the ground in terror, and neighbours looked on.

“The arrest was unlawful and unconstitutional,” Justice Jon-Jo Douglas said as lawyers and Login stood before him. “The police had not a wit of evidence to suggest he was operating a firearm dangerously.

The really alarming thing about this case was the no-brainer it was.  The cops had BUPKIS on the guy, nothing but an inquiring phone call.  Even the judge says " not a wit of evidence" which is pretty strong.  But here we are after three years still screwing around in court, because the OPP closed ranks.  The previous charges against the police involved were dropped by the Crown in a lovely piece of chicanery.  I guess we shall see if this judgement gives Mr. Logan any traction in his pursuit of justice against these creeps.

I'm not holding my breath.

The Phantom

European leaders, their proudest moment to date.

As we know there has been a carefully coordinated uproar over those Danish cartoons of Mohamed.  The bloody handed dictatorships of Iran and Syria have arranged top burn down their Danish embassies and pull a few more stunts too.  Typical thugocracy behaviour, 100% expected.

Here's the European Union's response:

The European Union may try to draw up a media code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furore caused by the publication across Europe of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, an EU commissioner said today.

In an interview with Britain's Daily Telegraph, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the charter would encourage the media to show ''prudence'' when covering religion.

''The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression,'' he told the newspaper. ''We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.'' The cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper last September before being reprinted across Europe, sparked a wave of protests around the world.

I don't think "cheese eating surrender monkeys" quite captures the craven nature of that statement.  Reminds me of the old WWII joke about Italian tanks having one forward speed and four reverse.

Were I a European newspaper editor, I'd print a new cartoon every single day and dare the EU bastards to jail me for it.  You either have free speech or you don't.

The Phantom

Thank Hollywood for this.

Is America Dodge City?  No.  Even Dodge City wasn't Dodge City, if you read the history instead of the pulp novels.  But abroad everybody thinks it is.  This is the direct result of 90 years of Hollywood and later the TV telling one and all that High Noon was America.  Too many Kojac re-runs eh?

Good going, Hollywood.

The Phantom

What happens when Liberals cooperate with Chicoms

Wakeup call for Yahoo today that they made a deal with the devil.  Google, take note.

Yahoo Inc. provided evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of an Internet writer, lawyers and activists said on Thursday, the second such case involving the U.S. Internet giant.

The company cooperated with Chinese police in a case that led to the 2003 arrest of Li Zhi, who was charged with subverting state power and sentenced to eight years in prison after trying to join the dissident China Democracy Party, writer Liu Xiaobo said.

...

"The firm says it simply responds to requests from the authorities for data without ever knowing what it will be used for," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

"But this argument no long holds water. Yahoo certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals," it said.

I find it hard to believe that there are enough hard eyed capitalists at Yahoo to make this China deal knowing this would happen.  The age of the robber barons is over.  In this age of executive sensitivity training and PC everything, no way.

No, these guy were "given assurances" by "highly placed Communist Party officials".  The officials said "Yes, in the time of Mao it was very common, but we don't do that kind of thing anymore.  Bad for business you know!  Ha ha ha!"  And they smiled and had lunch.

Basically they lied. Like Persian carpets they lied.  Chicoms do that sometimes.  And the Yahoo idiots believed them.  And so did the Google idiots.  In defense of these California doofi, the Chicom spokesman was probably very nice.

Liberals don't really believe in tyranny I think.  You tell them about death camps and people going to jail for anti-Party writing and forced abortions and all that stuff and they nod and say how terrible.  But they don't get it.  At the most basic emotional level they just ignore it, because in their rose coloured world people aren't capable of that.  So when they make deals with the Chicoms they believe what the nice Chicom spokesman tells them. 

Then there's the arrogance of Liberalism.  This time it'll be different!  This time, because its us Liberals on the job, they won't do anything bad because of our superior moral character and Good Intentions.  We will show them a Better Way, and they will be reformed into good people by their association with us.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Bet there's some serious uproar at Yahoo headquarters today, as people realize those assurances aren't worth the fancy paper they are written on.

The Hard Eyed Phantom

What would happen in Kanada?

Here's a story I like.
<http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/metroeast/story/9DB79EBF400323848625710E006F5E3A?OpenDocument>
Grandma kills robber with gun. I like that. Its so much better than
what I read in Ontario papers, which is "Robber with gun kills
Grandma". This one's got extra spice too, because the robber laid there
four hours before the cops came. Check it:

> As the man was breaking through a storm door that leads into the house
> itself, the woman fired several shots through her front door, striking
> Tillman once in the chest.
>
> Police said the shots were fired from a pistol, most likely a gun that
> her daughter had given her after a man broke into the elderly woman's
> house in December, battered her and stole some items.
> <http://oas-central.realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.stltoday.com/news/metroeast/1729907400/Frame1/default/empty.gif/31383864613838393433656130643630?>
>
> The man may have been dead for as long as four hours before police
> arrived. Police said that the woman was not sure that she had hit
> Tillman when she fired the shots about 2 a.m. However, she was too
> afraid to go outside to check and could not call for help because the
> telephone lines were dead.
>
> When the woman's daughter arrived about 6 a.m. to bring her mother
> breakfast, she found the dead man on the porch, police said.

Shit for brains pulled the phone lines before attempting his B&E,
probably because he was planning something real special for Grandma.

I don't generally condone shooting blind through a door because you
never know who that is out there for sure. Better to let them do all
the work of getting the door open and then blast 'em once you know who
it is. But, that assumes a physically fit defender and only one bad
guy. If you're a little old lady with only a pistol, and you don't know
how many there are out there but you know they're robbers, better to
shoot through the door.

However, the question arises, what would happen to Grandma in Canada?
She's not allowed to have that pistol, for starters. She's also not
allowed to fire on robbers, you have to call for the police and you have
to run away first. 100% for certain she'd be charged with illegal
posession of a restricted weapon AND improper storage, probably they'd
charge her with murder and reckless discharge of a firearm too.

Given the high profile of the case they would then plea bargain away the
gun charges and the murder to manslaughter, she might get off. But the
legal fees would ruin her financially, she'd certainly lose any savings
she had and she'd lose the house. All because she didn't let some
goblin in to possibly kill/rape/beat her and certainly rob her. Great
country.

Canada has a ways to go, I'd say.

The Phantom

Liberals can't let go of the gun issue.

Great.  Juuuust great.  We dodge the bullet of a federal Liberal party baning guns, now we are looking at the Ontario Liberal party trying it on.

Ontario should have the right to ban handguns and will, if necessary, go looking for the power to outlaw "these weapons of human misery," Attorney General Michael Bryant says.And if Ottawa doesn't give provinces the power to ban such weapons, Bryant said, Ontario "will have to look at the narrow constitutional opportunities that are available to us."

Bryant, arguing it's time for gun collectors to call it a day, said handgun ownership should be limited to police, the military and Olympic sharpshooters."Nobody needs to have a handgun in their house, and nobody should because of the dangers caused even by safe storage of these weapons of human misery," Bryant said yesterday.

So Mikey, you genius you, how does one become an Olympic sharp shooter if nobody can keep a gun around to practice with?  And we wonder why the thugs are taking over Toronto, Lord thunderin'.

Frankly I think he's flapping his gums, because they don't have the power to do that.  Guns are federal jurisdiction only.  But let us consider the reason for all the gum flapping here.  What happened?  Well, an evile, socially irresponsible, GUN collector allowed his eeeevile collection of "weapons of human misery" to be purloined by the criminal element. 

The attorney general's comments came a day after an Oshawa gun collector reported the theft of 40 registered handguns, stolen from his home as he lay in hospital recuperating from a stroke. The weapons are the latest stolen in a rash of break-ins at the homes of gun collectors in the Greater Toronto area.

The BASTARD!  The nerve of him having a stroke like that!  So what heinous implements of mass death did this NAZI WAR CRIMINAL have in his unwholesome posession?

Prized guns in the collection were 10 mint-condition German Lugers, the kind Col. Klink wore as he ran the prison camp on TV's Hogan's Heroes. They ranged from 1915 to 1940 models and were in their original boxes."These guns alone were worth more than $10,000," he said. Foster estimates the collector value of the entire collection to be more than $50,000

Makes you want to cry.  At least the friggin' cops didn't charge the old man like they did this guy.  Probably because he lives in Oshawa and not Toronto.  T.O. jerks would have charged him I bet, right there in his hospital bed.

The Phantom

Its different for reporters!

On Drudge right now, 10:30 AM Thursday:

**Exclusive** ABCNEWS executives have not viewed the video footage that was being taped when anchorman Bob Woodruff was injured by an explosive in Iraq, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.... The tape has remained in the original camera, a well-placed ABC source explained Thursday morning. ABC executives made the controversial decision not to remove the tape from the camera. "It is not first, second, or third on anyone's mind," said the insider.

Interesting.  I've been saying for years that this kind of tape should not be aired.  In vain, because we keep seeing  people getting blown up, shot, burned, hacked to death, etc. on the news and in print.  How many times did we see the US soldier shoot that wounded terrorist?  At least a hundred.  How many times have we seen the Vietnamese officer shoot the bound prisoner?  Too many.  These scenes are commonplace.  US soldiers dying, people nobody knows or cares about getting the chop are regular fodder for the evening news. 

But Bob Woodruff being blown up?  Well, that's different isn't it?

Do us all a favor ABC, burn the goddamn tape.  At least it will be one atrocity I don't have to have seared into my scarred-up brain tissue by endless repetition.  I really, really don't want to see that.

The Phantom

Good news, Harper snubbed by world leaders.

There's a saying in the computer biz, you can tell a good idea by the enemies it makes.  Seems Mr. Harper has some of those good ideas, he's made all the right people mad.

Canada has been dropped from a global club of "progressive" nations because of the election of a new federal government headed by Stephen Harper.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien and his Liberal successor, Paul Martin, made overseas trips in 2003 and 2004 respectively to join British Prime Minister Tony Blair, South African President Thabo Mbeki, former U.S. president Bill Clinton and a host of other "centre-left" political luminaries at self-proclaimed "Progressive Governance Summits" in London and Budapest.

If they'd invited him I'd have been a bit put out.  ~:D

The Phantom

Next killer app on the computer will be:

Privacy!

Google has been watching you:

Until now, Chinese net users who were blocked from accessing a site knew that the information was there and was being kept from them by their own government. From now on it is Google which will be keeping data from them, in direct contradiction of its own declared mission “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

The reaction to Google’s move has been highly critical. The watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders called it “a black day for freedom of expression in China”, adding that “Google’s statements about respecting online privacy are the height of hypocrisy in view of its strategy in China”. It seemed that the company’s real motto was something more along the lines of “don’t be evil unless the Chinese government asks you to and there’s serious money in it”.

What having the servers in China means for Chinese surfers is that every goddamn thing they do on-line can be observed in real time by some Party apparatchik, or stored and analyzed by some kind of program that pings if they search for the wrong thing.  Like "freedom" or some such dire concept.

But gee Phantom, can't the eeeevile Chimpybushilter gubmint do the same thing?  Technically, yes, the capability exists.  Practically, no.  Its politically impossible for them to strong arm that info out of Google, and if they tried it they'd be sorry.  Besides, that's why they have the NSA watching for specific keywords.  They don't need Google if they can sift out terrorist communiques from the flood.

However this may not always be the case.  Let some terrorist do something serious, and that could turn on a dime.  Google would be falling all ovver itself to offer up whatever they've got.  Or:

So far everyone who has invested in Google has made out like the proverbial bandit; but one day the share price will drop and people who have bought shares will find they have lost money. It is then that Google’s leaders will come under pressure to find some uses for that goldmine of personal data.

Read the whole article, its an eye opener for sure.

At any rate, if I'm any observer of human nature one thing that bugs the hell out of people is somebody looking over their shoulder all the time.  The idea that some government bastard in some cube farm in Maryland is looking at and passing judgement on one's web use, opinions and general existence is galling in the extreme.  But at least we can vote them out if they become annoying.  Free country and all.

The idea that some other, different bastard is going to SELL that data, not only to the highest bidder but to anyone and everyone with the price, that's beyond galling and getting into the danger zone.

So while it probably won't be possible to remain private from government eyeballs, I predict the next killer app for computer users is the Google Spoofer.  I mean, what's the point of using a pseudonym if you're leaving your DNA all over every server on the web, right?

I wonder if Anonymizer is on the stock market?

The Phantom

Why we call The Star "Pravda".

The Toronto Star once again earns its unoffical moniker, Pravda.  This is possibly the most blatantly editorial "news" piece I've ever seen.

Dozens of high-powered weapons that have flooded Toronto streets were stolen from a well-known gun collector and firearms instructor who kept his dangerous stash in a subsidized housing apartment in Scarborough.One of the guns taken from the apartment was used last September in one of the worst bloodbaths in the history of Toronto - a triple murder near the end of the Summer of the Gun, in a year marked by the worst gun violence the city has seen. Today, the collector, Mike Hargreaves, is a fugitive from Canadian justice, living in a modest, two-storey stucco home a few kilometres from Disney World. Many of the 32 to 35 guns stolen from his Toronto apartment (machine guns, Glock handguns and assault rifles) are still on the streets.

That's just the opening paragraph, and already there's a problem with it.  Mr. Hargreaves has been charged with improper storage.  But get this:

Working for two days, thieves used sledgehammers and blowtorches to blast open the 1,700-pound, concrete-and-steel Brinks safe. They made off with about 35 guns, including military assault rifles, machine guns, and semi-automatic pistols, a bullet pressing machine and dozens of rounds of ammunition.

Two days?  It took them two friggin' days to break the safe, and Hargreaves gets charged with improper storage?  I wouldn't come back for that steamroller derby either.  Chance of justice, zero.  Chance of jail, 100%.  Gotta have a fall guy, y'know.

But whatever, here's my absolute favorite quote from the article.

Hargreaves says housing officials were unaware that he was storing firearms near families with children.

Yeah, in a safe that took two days for yobs with cutting torches and sledge hammers to break into.  What a bastard!  What a danger to the community!  Those poor chilllldren.

The Phantom

Ripping off the sheets of the Canadian Left.

This is the response of the peace-love-dove Left to Monday's election:  NUKE THE AMERICANS!

Seems Robert McClelland thinks the only real threat to Canada is America, and we should "accuire" nuclear weapons to use on them if they get rowdy.  This is what passes for thought on the Left.  Robert seems to have forgotten that Canada is a ribbon 3000 miles long and 200 miles wide, tight up against the US border.  Anything large we throw at them will splash on us.  Typical Lefty.  Then there's the whole missile thing, as in we don't have any.  Kinda hard to nuke New York without a missile.

I love watching the Left come apart in this country.  Its sooo good on them.  The more we Conservative leaning types win the louder and more insane the Left becomes.  Louder please!

The fact of the matter is that the only real threat to Canadian sovereignty in the last thirty years has been the Liberal Party of Canada.  If we want to be in charge of the North West Passage (if it ever melts) all we need to do is patrol it.  You know, with airplanes and ships and stuff.  Maybe a couple of submarines to keep track of the Russians.  The reason we don't have that stuff right now is the Liberals.  Maybe the Harperites will buy some, that'd be nice.

Still, if we need nuclear weapons we are in a good position, we have lots of Candu reactors lying around to brew up weapons grade fuel in.  After all, that's what the Indians and the Pakistanis used to make their nuke bombs:  Canadian Candu reactors.  Sold to them by Canada.  No shit.

Didn't know that, didja?

The Phantom

This is a giggle. :)

It would seem that my  Unitarian Jihad name is:  Brother Sharpened Screwdriver of Enlightened Debate.  Odd, yet somehow appropriate.  ~:D  Get yours here.

These wags even have a Wiki article.  Wiki waggy woo.

The Phantom

Question du jour.

The Question of the day is:

How great a fool is Algore?

Quoth he:

"The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

"And the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election . . . and to protect their interests."

Now, I haven't looked to see what corporations gave what money to Harper and the Tories.  But I don't have to.  If Algore's canard had even a grain of truth to it the Liberals and NDP would have been all over it like ugly on a wart hog.  He's flat-out lying.  As usual.

But that just makes him a weasel.  What makes him a fool is that he's lying about something that is so easy to check.  $1000 is the maximum donation for an individual or corporation in this country.  Only the Moveon.dork crowd is going to give this a moment's thought.

The Phantom

Britian quietly takes the next step down the road

British police are begining to show a rather frightening side.  They arrive and start making inquiries after comments are made on radio and TV shows.  Here's a beauty example:

TWYFORD strawberry farmer Eric Jarnet is fuming after police confiscated his shotgun on his 70th birthday because they feared he might emulate Norfolk farmer Tony Martin.

Mr Martin became a national figure after the shotgun killing of a burglar at his farmhouse.

An exasperated Mr Jarnet publicly admitted he might "do a Martin" after raiders stole hundreds of yards of irrigation piping from his 25-acre Twyford Fruit Farm in London Road, effectively putting him out of business.

Moments after he made his remarks police arrived to seize his shotgun, for which he has a licence.

<snippage>

Police spokesman Tim Wiseman said: "If anyone is making these public comments then we have a duty to check them out. Firearms, particularly in West Berkshire, are a sensitive issue."

"Concerns were passed to police following comments Mr Jarnet made on a local radio station. Thames Valley Police have a duty to make sure that no risk exists."

"We obviously had to respond to this and a firearms inquiries officer went round, and Mr Jarnet surrendered his gun."

That's a further step down the road to perdition, eh?  Thieves wipe out a guy's business, he gets interviewed on radio and pops off a bit about what he'd like to do to the scum that just ruined him, and THE COPS COME FOR HIM.  Next step, 2 AM no-knock warrant service on political undesirables.

Good thing the Conservatives just won in Canada eh?  ~:D

The Phantom

VICTORY IS OURS!

VICTORY!

The Conservative party of Canada has won a minority government!  Hoowah!  Martin has resigned.  All is right with the world.

The election results make it clear that most of geographical Canada is Conservative, with Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver addicted to redistributionism.  That's ok, I don't care.  A CPC majority would have been nice, but a minority will keep their heads from getting too big.  That's never a bad thing in government I think.

The real victory today is that the control of the vast regulatory machinery goes to someone who won't use it for his own ends, and will (if he keeps his promises!) start taking it apart.  Begining, I hope, with gun control.

The Phantom

British gun experiment continues on as expected.

Britian's experiment with letting Big Brother do it all is going as expected:  badly.

Record levels of gun crime are being blamed on the fact that more people than ever are carrying firearms as fashion accessories.

Figures published this week by the Home Office are expected to show that offences involving guns have soared by as much as 50 per cent in some parts of the country.

The greatest rises have been in the number of people found in possession of firearms and in the number of attempted murders.

Proving once again that Big Brother cannot keep you safe from the Bad People. 

The important thing to take home from this Independent article is not that the British Police are incompetent.  They are very competent.  Its just that they are trying to do something that is impossible.  As in can't be done.  Nobody can do it.  Not gonna happen no matter how much money gets spent or how many CCTV cameras there are.  Big Brother is a sham.

He can however take everything you have and kick your ass besides, so perhaps voting for the Big Brother party isn't such a good idea.

Here in Canada we have four (4) Big Brother parties, Liberals, NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Greens.  We used to have five, because the Progressive Conservatives were right into Big Brother.  Not a good thing.

With their demise we now have the Conservative Party of Canada, CPC, who are not into Big Brother.  Little Brother maybe.  They think that government is good, but perhaps we could do with just a little less of it.  Canada looks after the poor and downtrodden, but if you are not in dire straights maybe you should just get on with it and not be holding your hand out.

So I voted for them this morning, and their campaign signs are all over my front lawn.  Hopefully tonight will see the CPC form the government, and then we shall see if my assessment is correct.

The Phantom