What's your comfort number, Lefties?

It's a good question, don't you think?

My question for Congressjerk Eric Swalwell is pretty simple: "How many Americans would you murder to achieve your goal of disarming us?"
It's a fair question.
Swalwell is the MSNBC stalwart who recently wrote an op-ed advocating that the government confiscate the guns that make people like him wet themselves and imprison those of us who decline to surrender them.
...
Now, we know that some Americans would resist this kind of tyranny. People all over the world are resisting the elite's commands. The Brits Brexited. The French are rioting because they don't want to sacrifice their livelihoods on behalf of the global elites' weird weather religion. And a decree that the Second Amendment is not a thing anymore would certainly provoke some serious pushback here.
That's why it's fair to ask Rep. Bloodlust how much blood he's prepared to shed to achieve his goal of disarming Normal Americans.

I think its time this question started being asked of our glorious leaders. Larry Correia has a bruising takedown of the good Eric Swalwell, one which covers all the practical reasons why Swalwell is not even wrong about the issue. Swalwell is saying something like 2+2= aardvark.

But, as I mentioned yesterday and today, people like Swalwell and Occasionally-Cortex have no interest in facts and practicality. When faced with opposition, they will double down every time. Because they are playing to a crowd. And that crowd is angry, they want red meat and lots of it! They don't care what's real, or what's true. They just want a target.

So there's really only one question worth asking DemocRats in the USA and Liberals here: how many people are you willing to throw out of work to get your socialist plan enacted? How many will you imprison to enforce your regulation? How many senior citizens are you willing to freeze to death for your ecological fuel tax? How many resisters will you kill? Hmm?

One?

Ten?

Ten thousand?

The Communist's answer was 100 million in the 20th Century. The entire nation of Canada, four times over, died for the myth of the Worker's Paradise. The Chinese Communists are still at it.

How many injured and jailed this week in France, over a fuel tax? How many citizens will the French government be willing to sacrifice for their regulations? The number is already more than ten.

Next time you go to a town hall to hear a politician speak, you ask them that. How many resisters will you kill to get what you want? What's your casualty comfort number?

The Numerology Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapunditeers!

Muy caliente: Occasionally-Cortex goes full Stazi!

Not content with saying stupid shit about Glowball Warming and nationalizing private companies, Alexandria Occasionally-Cortex confirms all our worst fears about socialists. She threatened to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., a private citizen, because he posted a spicy meme about her.

Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threatened to use the powers of her elected office to retaliate against Donald Trump Jr. on Friday after the president's son posted a meme trolling her on his personal Instagram account.
"I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Please, keep it coming Jr - it's definitely a "very, very large brain" idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month. Have fun!"

The meme is a great one, incidentally. Picture of Occasionally-Cortex with the question: "Why are you so afraid of a socialist economy?" Picture of Donald Trump Sr. with the answer: "Because Americans want to walk their dogs, not eat them."

Again, this is not because Occasionally-Cortex is an idiot. It is because that's what her idiot New York City followers want to see in her Twitter feed. I can see them sitting in bars downtown, showing this tweet to each other and yelling "You go, girl!"

They don't understand that a government official who can and will send cops to you house because you posted a meme is a bad thing. Occasionally-Cortex is like a zoo-keeper, feeding outrage pellets to the monkeys so they'll put on a good show for her.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome vast horde of Instapundit!

Occasionally-Cortex: watch her double down!

Newly elected Lefty Alexandria Occasionally-Cortex demonstrates the one trait that we have all come to associate with The Left: stupidity.

In a week that brought the unprecedented sight of the French Super Lefty government backing down off an Eco-friendly fuel tax because half the population of France were in the streets baying for their heads, Miss Occasionally-Cortex was all about the ecology and taxes:

"As a matter of fact, it's not just possible that we will create jobs and economic activity by transitioning to renewable energy, but it's inevitable that we are going to create jobs," Ocasio-Cortez said. "It's inevitable that we're going to create industry, and it's inevitable that we can use the transition to a hundred percent renewable energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America."

 Ocasio-Cortez also suggested the federal government should nationalize Tesla's technology, following the company's receipt of tax subsidies.

This was a Bernie Saunders event by the way, just so you know what snake oil Bernie Bros are going to be peddling the next two years.

One would almost think she doesn't watch the news. A fully-fledged tax revolt in Europe, as the peons -finally- reach their limit for being pushed around, taxed and told-off by government assholes, and little Alexandria is proposing more of it.

But it is worse than that. She -does- watch the news. She knows there's widespread rioting in the intellectual birthplace of Marxism and Post Modernism, and she knows why. This is her response. She's doubling down. Same message, twice as hard.

Because why? Because that's what sells.

It isn't Alexandria Occasionally-Cortex who is stupid, my friends. She has identified a constituency, she has won them over, and she is throwing them red meat as fast as she can. She's probably above-average smart. She's certainly very high energy.

Its the people who voted for her, who want more and more and more taxes and regulations on every goddamn thing in the world. They see France going up in flames, and they say There Oughta Be A Law!!! They'll keep on saying the same fucking thing until there's literally bodies hanging from streetlamps in front of their house. There is no situation where they smarten up. They'll go to their graves like that.

You can seen the stupid fuckers doing it right now in Venezuela. There's no money, no food, no fuel and no cops, but they're out demonstrating for Maduro because he's promising More Free Stuff again.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: there is no free stuff. Never was, never will be. If somebody promises you free stuff in exchange for your vote, it is a -lie-. You have been warned.

The Warning Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit!

Lefty receives death threats, oh the humanity...

This is something kind of new. I don't recall seeing this type of thing played out in quite this way before.

The LGBT news website INTO has removed the byline for an opinion piece accusing Ariana Grande's new music video "thank u, next" of being "anti-queer" after the writer of the story received death threats.
"We have decided to remove the author's name from this piece after the editorial team was alerted that a high number of death threats were being made against the writer as a result of the opinions presented in this piece," read an editor's note affixed to the top of the article.

Some Usual Suspect SJW writer delivers the expected "That's Anti-Gay!!!" tirade against a new and very popular music video by very popular singer, and the unexpected happens! People, instead of accepting that this sort of thing is the New Normal, are pissed off. They vent their rage on the web site in the New Normal fashion, with death threats. "Ah'mina killz ya!"

Web site management is super surprised by this, removes the author's name. I guess it never happens when they call Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga videos racist/bigoted/homophobic.

This is two brand new things happening in two weeks. The Middle Class rioting in France and forcing the government to back the hell down off their shiny new fuel tax, and now pop music fans telling Lefties to shut the fuck up about their diva.

The death threat thing, I'm unimpressed. I know people who get blood-curdling death/torture/rape rape threats every day. Conservative women receive that shit all the time, they still post their by-lines and tell the little Threat Fairies to come and get them. Milo Yiannopoulos had a mob try to burn down a building trying to get at him in Berkeley. Jordan Peterson gets internet death threats all the time, and has been mobbed and de-platformed at venues in boring-ass Canada.

Even I, your humble host, have things like this said about me out there in Internetz Land: "...the deep searing hatred of free speech, free association and freedom of ideas reveals itself every time." Way to go, floppy camel dork.

But for a gay mafia site to get mobbed, that's new. This is a sign that a segment of young people may have had enough of the gay mafia. Unlike Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande is popular with the Diverse kids, meaning those who tan. That particular group has never bought in to the LGBTQFBICIAKGB agenda. Previously they've settled for writing rude things in the bathrooms of the nation with magic markers, but now maybe they're tired of it.

This is how these popular movements go, you know. They slide along in the grass roots for a long time, kind of simmering away, nobody talks about it but everybody is thinking it. Then some little thing happens, and suddenly half the population of France is tearing down the Arc De Triumph. Or Donald Trump gets elected President of the USA.


Update: Welcome Instapundit horde!

And speaking of white privilege...

Is it still a privilege to be white when people try to kill you and make magic spells out of your innards?

The first Mr. and Miss Albinism East Africa pageant on Friday night in Kenya's capital saw participants from Tanzania and Uganda as well.
Elizabeth James of Tanzania said she was forced to change schools as a child when people, staring and pointing, started trailing her home.
She called for an end to the ignorance that drives some to kill people with albinism for their body parts or even dig up graves in the misguided belief that they will bring wealth and good fortune.

The above question is of course directed at all the SJWs and race-huckster scum who continually rage on about Whiteness.

Nothing but praise and respect for the people in the fashion show, particularly the women. They've got more guts than all the SJWs on Twitter combined.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit!

A war on nerds? Could be.

Fixing your shit for you, because you Normies can't read the manual.

I've noticed, over the years, that everybody likes to push the nerds around. We're "weirdos." We act "funny."

Yeah, we do. Because our fucking brains work different than the Normie brain. Usually, better in most respects. We actually know how to program the VCR. That absent-minded dork you're making fun of? He's doing calculus in his head, trying to figure out how to make your friggin' iPhone work better.

But we can be annoyingly dense in social situations. Its true. We actually annoy each other.

Normies like to pretend that our failings are some kind of choice to misbehave, a moral failing, the result of Mommy Issues or some other need to be nonconformist square pegs in a world of round holes. But that is not the case, my friends. The difference is literally bone deep. We have different DNA than you Normies. We're built to be this way from the ground up.

What's that like? Its like being a Ferrari Dino, living in a world made for Volkswagen Beetles. Everything moves too slow, the speed limit is too low, all the other cars are sluggish and they get in the way. The best part of life is when you find a piece of open road. Then you can put your boot down and hear that engine roar like the raging beast that it is, eating up the miles and leaving the little piss-can Beetles in the dust.

Beetles don't like that. They gang up and trap you in traffic. That's what its like. Thanks, Normies. You pricks.

So how far would the Normies go to be rid of the annoying Nerds?

Two fairly scary news items tell the tale when you put them together.

First, a very large scale DNA survey study claims to have found genetic markers unique to ADHD.

Geneticist Ditte Demontis and her colleagues used data from more than 20,000 people with ADHD, comparing them to a control group of 35,000 people without an ADHD diagnosis. They found 304 points where tiny differences in DNA—like single letter swaps—were distributed across their two groups in a statistically telling way. If any of those variants were very close together, the researchers counted them as representing the same stretch of DNA, grouping them together into 12 important regions.

The authors of the study emphasize that there is no "gene for ADHD," but they have found that in their study population genes common in ADHD were also common in other disorders, like Autism and Schizophrenia.

Which sounds about right. People with Aspergers or more pronounced Autism often are also diagnosed with ADHD. Twenty or thirty more years of research in that direction, they may be able to isolate all or most of the markers for a wide range of behavioral neurology.

Nerds will be instantly identifiable with a cheek swab. How do you like that?

Second, the Chinese have been gene-editing humans. Link to Nature article here.

They finally hatched two that lived.

A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies — twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life.
If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics.
A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes.

Taken with a grain of salt, this claim is a bit questionable. Nobody really knows if they actually managed it. But the thing is, they clearly want to, and eventually they will manage to gene-edit human beings and bring them to term.

Therefore China will be the first country to discover just how bad an idea it is to meddle with the Human genome. If they really did bring two baby girls to term, my prayers go out to those two babies. I really hope that the eggheads didn't frig something up. But they probably did, and nobody will ever know exactly what.

Well, so what, Phantom? What's that got to do with nerds?

If you can identify nerds with a simple test, and you can modify DNA at will, how long before nations (or companies!) start demanding citizens weed undesirable nerd traits out of their offspring? 

Particularly tech companies. They've shown a fine disregard for privacy and basic human rights, and they really don't like depending on guys like James Damore to create their products.

Damore is a great example. He's a huge Nerd. He's famous for being the guy who put his foot wrong in a typically Nerd way, by pointing out the elephant in the room at Google. They need his Ferrari 500hp brain to solve their problems, but they can't stand the way he doesn't know to shut up like any Normie would. He uses his brain to discover Truth in places where they don't want him to. But they NEED him, because they are all just fucking Volkswagens where it counts.

(And you better believe that every Nerd in Silicon Valley was watching that whole thing. If there's one thing nerds all know, its bullies. Like nerds everywhere they made plans to deal with it. Are you watching Google and Facebook stock prices tank? That's what happens when you piss off the Nerds. They are subtle and quick to anger.)

Wouldn't it be nice if the authorities could chop and channel that nerd-brain into something a little more Normie and a little less annoying and loose-cannon? Wouldn't China, and probably Google, love the chance to -make- people get their children edited?

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

We could actually live to see that. And the terrifying Revenge of the Nerds that inevitably followed. It would be legendary.

Dear Normal People: please realize that the last guy on Earth you want to toy with is the guy that designed everything that keeps you alive. There's no more dangerous creature than an engineer with a grudge. So cut us weirdos some social slack and get the fuck out of the way. We've got stuff to do.

The Phantom

Update! In case some of you think I was a little harsh lumping Google in with the Chicom government as a force of diabolical oppression in the world, guess what? You're wrong. I was not harsh enough:

https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/28/google-employees-chinese-surveillance-tech/

Google employees unhappy with the project, which would extend China’s surveillance state by creating an application that would further censor Chinese search engines, renewed their protest in a new letter published Tuesday by Medium, which has about 435 signatures.
 “Dragonfly would also enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely,” the open letter reads.
The signatures on both letters objecting to Project Dragonfly reveal a growing internal concern among employees who do not wish to be part of a company that allows governments to censor its citizens and enable a surveillance state.

However, around twice as many employees signed a letter in April opposing Google’s involvement in a Pentagon program, Project Maven, that aimed to improve drone analysis to better identify civilians, thus reducing the amount of accidental civilian casualties.
This opposition letter was signed by between 3,100 and 4,000 employees between April and June and included dozens of senior engineers, according to another Times report.
Thousands of Google employees addressed their letter to Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive officer, asking that Project Maven be canceled.

 Now, I don't know about y'all, but in my school days 4,000 is more than twice as many signatures than 435. 4,000 is an order of magnitude larger than 435.

An order of magnitude more Google employees object to working for the United States government than object to working for the Communist Chinese government.

Upperdate! The Chicom government blinks!

China’s government ordered a halt Thursday to work by a medical team that claimed to have helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies, as a group of leading scientists declared that it’s still too soon to try to make permanent changes to DNA that can be inherited by future generations.
Chinese Vice Minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping told state broadcaster CCTV that his ministry is strongly opposed to the efforts that reportedly produced twin girls born earlier this month. Xu called the team’s actions illegal and unacceptable and said an investigation had been ordered, but made no mention of specific actions taken.

 I would like to think that this move was brought on by a sudden attack of conscience on the part of the Minister of Science and Technology. I would like that a lot. But the cynic in me suspects it may have more to do with the Party being made to look bad in front of the international community.

The cynic also suspects that Dr. Evile was spirited off by the Chinese Secret Squirrel Squad to a secret lab on a mountain peak somewhere, and set to work making more CRISPR tots.

Self-driving hotel room?

Some things simply demand to be mocked.

Robotic self-driving hotel room, dream version.

The robotic hotel room on wheels - is this the future of travel? Self-driving suite can ferry guests from place to place - and drones deliver room service through the sunroof

• Toronto-based Aprilli Design Studio has designed a hotel suite housed within a self-driving vehicle 
• Renderings reveal how the battery-powered hotel-room-on-wheels includes a double bed and shower room
• The vehicle's designers note that travellers would simply specify the route they wanted to take via an app

Yes friends, the "future of travel" is a camper van.

Actual robot hotel room after 15 years of service.

Also, these geniuses think that "room service" can be delivered by a quadcopter to a moving vehicle that is driving down the highway. Because that will totally work, right?

But best of all:

So that travellers wouldn't miss out on the usual perks of staying in a hotel, Aprilli says it plans to install dozens of hotel facilities across road networks.These stop-off points would house 'public amenities such as food and beverage, meeting room, spa, pool, and gym along with housekeeping, maintenance, and charging services for the travel suites'.

Hotel faclilty with public amenities, dream version.

Trailer parks.

Actual version. Good luck getting room service, bro.

Enchanted Forest Robot Hotel, 2045. Clem cooks meth in the red one.

You know what kills me? Artists and designers got paid good money to come up with this bullshit.

The Phantom

Goalposts have moved again.

It is no longer enough to remain silent on the subject of gay marriage. If you do that, they'll come for you.

A leading Australian bridal magazine has shut after being ditched by advertisers for refusing to feature same-sex couples, one year after the country changed its marriage laws.

The Christian founders of "White", Luke and Carla Burrell, said they did not feature gay weddings in their magazine as they had "no desire to create a social, political or legal war".

In a farewell blog on Saturday, the couple said they were targeted by activists because of their stance and forced to "pick a side".

As a result, several advertisers withdrew their sponsorship making their publication "no longer economically viable", the pair added.

In another fit of "if you're not with us you're against us!!!" the gay mafia managed to get the magazine closed down. Not because the publication or the owners were anti-gay, but because they refused to bow to the Don and kiss the ring. It is no longer sufficient to just be quiet, now you have to actively go along and promote the cause.

I predict this will not end well for anyone.

The Phantom