The Bloody Shirt, maritime version.

Well, the crazed Jew hating Left brought knives to a gun fight and finally got their bloody shirt.  Now they're waving it for all they're worth.

Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing nine passengers in a botched raid that provoked international outrage and a diplomatic crisis.

Dozens of activists and six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the bloody predawn confrontation in international waters. The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel's international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its 3-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

I love this "botched raid" crap.  What's botched about it is they took six casualties, not that they fired on and killed nine armed punks who were running a naval blockade.
The term "naval blockade" does mean they either board or SINK boats attempting to come through.  Imagine the fuss if the Israelis just put a couple of torpedoes in the water like Kim Jong Il seems to be getting a pass for doing.

Oh, and incidentally the Palestinian territory of Gaza isn't impoverished.  It has very nice shopping districts, I'm told.  Stuff they don't tell you about in UN press releases.

The Phantom

How to tell when "tolerance" has become a problem.

When you have people trafficking in human body parts, openly, then you can finally say your society has a major problem.

After years of creating controversy with his "plasticised" dead bodies, a publicity-hungry German anatomist dubbed "Doctor Death" went one step further on Friday, offering body parts for sale.

Gunther von Hagens said in a statement however that buyers of the human parts must be "qualified users such as doctors, professors, teaching institutes and hospitals."

In a process invented by Hagens, the body parts are skinned and preserved with a synthetic resin, laying bare the naked muscles, nerves and tendons underneath.

Dubbed the "Supermarket of Death" by the Bild daily, the centre in Guben, eastern Germany sells items such as a blackened smoker's lung for 3,600 euros (4,475 dollars), while a testicle costs 360 euros.

Arms, legs, what have you.  Sanitary, plasticized and  available at reasonable prices for your collection if you can come up with a fig leaf of paperwork.  And the source of these errant bits?  Dr. Hagens has premises in China.  'Nuff said.

The Phantom

Well shut my mouth!

A reasonable argument from the Chicoms about the Norks.  Who'd a thunk it?

China hasn't followed South Korea, Japan and the U.S. in blaming North Korea for the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors. Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun yesterday repeated a call for "restraint" by both sides and said China had no "firsthand information" on the sinking.

China wants to avoid a conflict on the Korean peninsula, and is concerned that taking South Korea's side may provoke North Korea into further escalations and even lead to war, said Shen Dingli, vice dean of the Institute of International Affairs at Shanghai's Fudan University.

"North Korea is dying, and we can make things worse," Shen said. "We have assumed North Korea is not a rational actor."

That actually makes perfect sense.  Amazing.

New York liberals over-reaching themselves.

Proof positive, if any were still required, that liberals are insane saboteurs. Check it:

Angry relatives of 9/11 victims last night clashed with supporters of a planned mosque near Ground Zero at a raucous community-board hearing in Manhattan.

After four hours of public debate, members of Community Board 1 finally voted 29-1 in support of the project. Nine members abstained, arguing that they wanted to table the issue and vote at a later date.

The board has no official say over whether the estimated $100 million mosque and community center gets built. But the panel's support, or lack of it, is considered important in influencing public opinion.

No, really.  These retards voted 29/1 to build a mosque on the World Trade Center site. In the same town where some freak Islamist just tried to blow up Times Square last month. Because of a TV show.  And would have blown it up too, if he weren't an incompetent wanker.

Its not politics anymore.  Its SABOTAGE.  Vote accordingly, my friends.

The Phantom

Dems can dish it...

but they can't take it.

The Democratic governor [of Massachusetts], who is close to the president, made the comments at a forum at Suffolk Law School's Rappaport Center, where he was asked by an audience member about partisan battling in Congress.

Patrick said that even "on my worst day, when I'm most frustrated about folks who seem to rooting for failure," he doesn't face anything like the opposition faced by the president.

"It seems like child's play compared to what is going on in Washington, where it is almost at the level of sedition, it feels to like me," Patrick said.

D'oh!  Sedition!!! Baaaad Wepubwicans!

Grand Ol' Party comes back:

"Apparently our First Amendment rights are only guaranteed if we agree with the tax-and-spend policies of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama,'' Jennifer Nassour, chairwoman of the state GOP, said.

Hell yeah.

Important day today!

Its Everybody Draw Mohamed Day! Get your pencils busy and draw Mo.

Have fun kiddies! :)

The Phantom

Update! The girlie who started all this is running away from it as fast as her little legs will carry her.

Boycott? Yeah? Boycott THIS.

Arizonans are not amused by recent boycott talk in California.

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-2 to boycott Arizona, although what exactly L.A. council members would be doing at a Diamondbacks game might require explanation to Dodger fans back home -- or spouses.

Now comes some hardball from a statewide elected Arizonan named Gary Pierce. He's a commissioner of the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities there.

Utilities? Interesting! Because it turns out LA gets about a quarter of its power from... Arizona!

Pierce writes:

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation.

I am confident that Arizona's utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona's economy.

People of goodwill can disagree over the merits of SB 1070. A statewide economic boycott of Arizona is not a message sent in goodwill.

"Hmmm, nice air conditioning ya got here. Shame if anything were to ...happen... to it."

I love Arizona. I really, really do.

The Desert Phantom

Packing the Court with more shut-uppery.

Ms. Elena Kagan, Barry Obama's Supreme Court nominee, seems to be on record arguing before the Supreme Court that the government can ban books and/or pamphlets.

In the case in question, Chief Justice John Roberts asked the government lawyer whether the law in question could also prevent the publication of a campaign-related book, if it was paid for be a corporation or labor union.

"If it's a 500-page book, and at the end it says, 'and so vote for x,' the government could ban that?" Roberts asked.

Kagan's deputy, Malcolm L. Stewart, said yes.

"We could prohibit the publication of that book," he responded.

In a later oral argument, Kagan slightly modified that position, but still found herself arguing that the government could ban certain pamphlets, depending on who paid for their publication.

"And if you say that you are not going to apply it to a book, what about a pamphlet?" Robert asked.

"A pamphlet would be different. A pamphlet is pretty classic electioneering, so there is no attempt to say that [law] only applies to video and not to print," Kagan responded.

Shortly after McConnell's comments, his office highlighted the case in an email to reporters, suggesting famous pamphlets like Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and the Federalist Papers could be banned under Kagan's logic.

Classic statist shut-uppery, argued by a classic statist apparatchik.

The Phantom

Packing the Court Shockah!

How unexpected!  Kagan was "not sympathetic" to gun rights argument.

Kagan, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high court this week, made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man's appeal.

The man's "sole contention is that the District of Columbia's firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to 'keep and bear arms,'" Kagan wrote. "I'm not sympathetic."

The lower court ruling in the 1987 case, issued by the District of Columbia's highest court, said the Second Amendment protects only the rights of states to raise militias, and not individual gun rights. The ruling upheld Lee Sandidge's conviction for carrying a pistol without a license, possession of an unregistered firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition.

The high court refused to hear the case, known as Sandidge v. United States. The memo to Marshall, found in his papers at the Library of Congress, includes a handwritten "D," indicating that he was among those who voted to deny review.

So, now we begin to see why the Supreme Court of the USA never heard a Second Amendment case in the modern era until Heller.  Here's what she said about that:

As a nominee to be solicitor general last year, Kagan told lawmakers that she accepted that 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller as a precedent of the court.

"There is no question, after Heller, that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear arms and that this right, like others in the Constitution, provides strong although not unlimited protection against governmental regulation," she said.

"Not unlimited" means "we will find a way to fix you redneck gun huggers, or make one."  Because its easier to make people shut the frack up and do what you tell them when they can't stick a gun in your face and tell you to piss off.

She makes Ruthy Ginsberg look like Rush Limbaugh.


The Phantom

Packing the court: shut-uppery.

Surprise!  Free speech for me but not for thee, my friends.  Aunty Kagan says Uncle Sam can decide when you talk and what you say.

"If there is an 'overabundance' of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action -- which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate -- then action disfavoring that idea might 'un-skew,' rather than skew, public discourse," Kagan wrote.
 
Instead, the Supreme Court should focus on whether a speaker's message is harming the public, argued Kagan in her article.
 
While Kagan does not offer an exhaustive definition of 'harm,' she does offer examples of speech that may be regulated, such as incitement to violence, hate-speech, threatening or "fighting" words.
 
The government, she concludes, may not express its disfavor with an opinion or speaker by burdening them with restrictions or prohibitions, unless it can show that their speech is causing some type of public harm.
 
"The doctrine of impermissible motive, viewed in this light, holds that the government may not signify disrespect for certain ideas and respect for others through burdens on expression," Kagan wrote. "This does not mean that the government may never subject particular ideas to disadvantage. The government indeed may do so, if acting upon neutral, harm-based reasons."

Translation: "Shut the frack up and pay your fracking taxes, peon boy."

Not only is this woman a full-on statist, she's also a moron.  "Harm based reasons", forsooth.  The mind reels.

Section 13 Canadian Human Rights Commissions anyone?  You Americans better get the hell out there and make sure this broad never sees the court, or you are going to have DemocRat apparatchiki reading your frackin' mail by 2012.  Nobody will have a job, and you won't be able to say jack about it.  Mark me, its going to happen.

The Phantom

Ah, one of my pet hates to beat on!

Pet hate number 127: taking attendance at university.  Are you fraking kidding me.

Would students benefit from a bit more encouragement to get up in the morning for lectures? Academics in the US are debating a decision by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff to introduce a monitoring system to check when students attend, or miss, class. Sensors will detect students' identification cards when they enter the lecture theatres. If they don't turn up often enough, they could find it reflected in their grades.

"People are saying we are using surveillance or Orwellian [tactics] and, boy, I'm like 'wow', I didn't know taking attendance qualified as surveillance," NAU's spokesman, Tom Bauer, told the Badger Herald website.

This is where you really get to see the deep down belief structure of the modern day American Ivory Tower in action.  MAKE the students do whatever you think they are supposed to do, and bring any force to bear on them that you have available.  Marks, money, shame, physical force, its all fair game in the American academic mind.  Reward they aren't into so much, I notice.

What's the basis of the Phantom's hate?  Lemme lay it on ya.

In a grade school or high school, the school is legally and morally responsible for the student's physical safety AND their behavior during school hours.  Therefore taking attendance is the proper thing to do.
In university, the students are legally adults.  They are responsible for themselves.    Furthermore, students are paying customers, not the subjects of some government mandated regulation.

Therefore taking attendance is a form of control, which is an imposition on a supposedly sovereign individual able to make their own decisions in life.  Such things are an affront to free men and should be resisted vigorously.

Personally, whenever a sign-in sheet came around during my professional education I signed as Adolph Hitler.  Or sometimes Joseph Stalin, just to slip the knife in a little deeper.  When called up on the carpet, I was told that attendance was mandatory for PT students because of government regulations.  I repeated my paying customer argument above, pointed out my grades were among the best in the class, and told them they could pretty much shove their attendance requirement where the sun never shines.

I got my degree.  And my license.

Fight the power.

The Phantom,

Packing of the court continues!

Barry is busy securing his legacy and maybe even his re-election today. 

Obama will announce his choice at 10 a.m. in the East Room of the White House alongside Vice President Joe Biden and Kagan, who will also speak. The room will be filled with Kagan's Justice Department colleagues and other guests invited to soak in one of a presidency's biggest moments.

Meanwhile, Obama's policy train chugs on with the hope and change we've all been expecting from him.
-More tolerant progressive shut-uppery:

"Tim Rutherford, Senior Citizens Inc. vice president, said some of his staff recently visited the center and noticed people praying shortly before lunch was served. Rutherford said his company provides meals like baked chicken, steak tips and rice and salads at a cost of about $6 a plate. Seniors taking the meals pay 55 cents and federal money foots the rest of the bill, Rutherford said."We can't scoff at their rules," he said of federal authorities. "It's a part of the operational guidelines."

 

Rutherford said the moment of silence was introduced to protect that funding. He said although the change may have been misinterpreted, perhaps his company could have done a better job selling it."It's interpreted that we're telling people that they can't pray, but we aren't saying that," he said. "We're asking them to pray to themselves. Have that moment of silence."

That translates as "Shut up or we take away your food, you racist fundie old bastards."

-More progressive infrastructure maintenance:

To reduce the city's budget deficit, Los Angeles may soon stop repairing sidewalks and driveways on the city's dime.

This month, the City Council will consider repealing a 1974 ordinance that made the city responsible for sidewalk repairs, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The policy was initiated with a federal grant that ran out long ago, according to the newspaper.

"We have no ability to perform these repairs," Councilman Bernard Parks told the paper. "The money ran out in the mid-1970s, yet the city has continued to hold itself responsible."

Given that sidewalks are city property its hard to imagine who else would be responsible, but since responsibility is not a socialist concept I guess we should just roll with it.

-More progressive policing:

A SWAT team raided a home in Columbia and during the raid, shot and killed the family's pit bull. They also shot and injured a corgi. YouTube video of the raid shows a child was also in the home at the time.

The police chief is backing up his officers' actions.

"Every indicator to me shows that this was a justifiable shooting. The dog was aggressive and the dog got shot," Chief Ken Burton said.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that SWAT officers found a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of marijuana in the home.

Must have been one of those deadly Assault Corgis we've been hearing so much about eh?

-More inclusiveness and bringing the people together!

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

Yes friends, with the appointment of Justice Kagan, we can look forward to thirty years of this kind of progressive policy from the Supreme Court of the USA.  Unless of course the Republicans find a pair someplace and block her nomination.  That might be something worth phoning your senator about, eh?

The Phantom

For the "national IQ" fans out there, genetics reality check.

This is an interesting bit of archaeology. 

The biologists, led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been slowly reconstructing the genome of Neanderthals, the stocky hunters that dominated Europe until 30,000 years ago, by extracting the fragments of DNA that still exist in their fossil bones. Just last year, when the biologists first announced that they had decoded the Neanderthal genome, they reported no significant evidence of interbreeding.

Scientists say they have recovered 60 percent of the genome so far and hope to complete it. By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution, they said.

Here's the money quote as it applies to Bell Curve/National IQ style calculations.

So far, the team has identified only about 100 genes — surprisingly few — that have contributed to the evolution of modern humans since the split. The nature of the genes in humans that differ from those of Neanderthals is of particular interest because they bear on what it means to be human, or at least not Neanderthal. Some of the genes seem to be involved in cognitive function and others in bone structure.

At this point I'll say that these results come from three (3) little bones out of one cave, and they haven't finished the entire sequence yet so there's room for more discoveries yet.
However the implication is that the genetic difference between Neandethals  and Humans is extremely small.  So small that the part of human behavior which is -determined- by genetic inheritance must be very, very small.  As we learn more and more about the human genome and that of our close ancestors, I think its likely that these genetic-based theories about human behavior and intellectual performance will be disproven.

The Phantom

More British shut-uppery

Things in England are heating up in this election season.

Dale McAlpine was charged with causing "harassment, alarm or distress" after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of "sins" referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Wokington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.

Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.

Mr McAlpine, who was taken to the police station in the back of a marked van and locked in a cell for seven hours on April 20, said the incident was among the worst experiences of his life.

"I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know," he said.

"My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn't apply."

I don't like bible thumpers.  I've never made any secret of that.  But while this guy is getting arrested and chucked in jail for the day, Muslim Imams are cheerfully spewing -exactly- the same talk about homosexuals completely harassment free.  That would be the "moderate" Imams, the radical ones are calling for homosexuals to be lynched.  Also without interference.

Understanding that this is not about Muslim Imams either.  Its almost as if the Labour government is trying to cause a civil war.  If they were trying to do that, there's not much they would change.

The Phantom

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html

Our worst expectations confirmed... maybe.

The National Enquirer once again doing the job the MSM refuses to do.

A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-old VERA BAKER in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions.

While Baker has insisted in the past that "nothing happened" between them, reports reveal that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.

Among those being offered money is a limo driver who says in 2004 that he took Vera to a secret hotel rendezvous in where Obama was staying.

An ENQUIRER reporter has confirmed the limo's driver account of the secret 2004 rendezvous.

Remember all those jokes about Michelle Obama and her batleth? This is going to get -interesting-.

BTW, just what is it with Democrats being unable to keep it zipped? Its like a disease with these guys.

The Zippy Phantom

Update! pic of Vera Baker. She's hawt. Could be, maybe.

.