Gee, I wonder what it could be....

Merry Christmas everyone! ~:)

The Phantom

Rawesome Foods Update: Big Brother was watching!

My previous post about police over-reach reminded me of the Rawesome Foods raid by the Dept. of Agriculture SWAT team. So I Googled for a news update, and found this:

In court proceedings last Thursday, LA County prosecutor Kelly Sakir turned over 1,097 pages of "discovery" documents to the defendants' attorneys, revealing an utterly astonishing campaign of spying, surveillance, and entrapment that has targeted Rawesome Foods for at least the last two years.

NaturalNews has learned that at least three undercover operatives were hired by the LA County prosecutor's office to infiltrate Rawesome Foods and sign up as members while covertly filming their actions using hidden cameras in their purses. These cameras almost certainly captured video footage of other members at Rawesome Foods, meaning the government itself stands in violation of wiretapping laws that it often uses against innocent civilians who try to videotape traffic stops by local police.

NaturalNews has also learned that there are 42 discs of additional evidence which has been gathered by the LA County prosecutor — including interviews with the operatives, covert camera footage, documents and even video footage from a surveillance pole camera that LA County set up across the street to spy on Rawesome Foods.

NaturalNews makes the point that LA County has spent millions of dollars and countless hours of police time on a food club. Which is utterly insane, given the open warfare in the streets between rival drug gangs that also happens in LA County. Then there's the minor detail that LA County and the entire State of California are for all intents and purposes BANKRUPT and very close to defaulting on their bond payments.

One case, who cares right? But in -other- news we learn that all kinds of police departments all over the USA are getting Predator drones to use for surveillance as they see fit.

...Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

"We don't use [drones] on every call out," said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. "If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don't call them."

The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite "interior law enforcement support" as part of their mission.

As we know from Afghanistan, an "unarmed Predator" can be made into an armed one in the field by guys with wrenches. Because that's how the Predator got armed in the first place, some Air Force gearheads hacked one together to go whack some Taliban fighters who were hiding really well.

So unless I'm hopelessly paranoid, it won't be long before local police in Podunk North Carolina can call in air strikes on targets they chose. Now, I'm not saying that its completely impossible that Podunk SC coppers might need an air strike some day. 9/11 showed that to be wrong. What I'm saying is that given the equipment, some guy one of these days will want to find a reason to use it.

If you're rolling your eyes having read that, please look above at the multi-million dollar, sooooper high tech surveillance case assembled against the dreaded Milk Pirates of LA. Oh, and the dangerous criminals the Predator drone was used on in North Dakota in the3 LA Slimes story, were they terrorists? Murderers? Drug smugglers? Black market gun dealers?

Nope. Cattle rustlers. For real. They used a Predator B to catch frickin' cattle rustlers. Total value of stolen cattle, $6000.00.

A single neuron finally fires in Leftistan.

The Daily Beast, Lefty-retardoblog par excellence, has "discovered" something that Conservatives have been raging about since Clinton first got elected: Cops in America are seriously over-armed.

Nestled amid plains so flat the locals joke you can watch your dog run away for miles, Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota's largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there's not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade.

But that hasn't stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars.

Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it's been parked near the children's bounce house.

Fargo North Dakota needs an armored car like the Department of Education needs a SWAT team. Which is to say, not even a little.
In fact, its much worse than simply a waste of money. Its an active danger to our free society.  If you give a bureaucrat a SWAT team, they will find a reason to use it. Or make one.
Local cops given an armored car will find or make a reason to use it too. Because who doesn't want to lead the charge up San Juan Hill with two blazing .50 cals on the roof of a freakin' tank?!
Now, Conservatives have been having a very long, very loud cow over this since the ATF started acquiring AV8 Bronco ground attack aircraft back in the 1990's under Clinton. As a principle, and under the Constitution of the USA (and English Common Law) the police are meant to keep the peace and enforce the law in cases where -individuals- act up. They are not supposed to be there to enforce the will of government on the general p[populace by armed force.

But that is what they are doing.  In Canada too, I might add.  Google ETF and see what you get. Its a commando squad.

The Daily Beast, being a bunch of freaking Leftist morons, has just now woken up to this. It has -finally- occurred to some young progressive that a police force in possession of serious arms can do things that they really shouldn't be able to do. Like round up the whole population of a small town and stick them in rail cars, just for example. Or maybe burn to death 80 women and children as has already happened in Waco Texas.  You take the serious up-arming of local state level and Federal cops together with the ongoing effort (by the Left!) to DIS-arm the rest of the population, you get North Korea or Cuba as the logical end point of that progression. There are no end of historical examples to demonstrate the point.

Smell that coffee, Beasty boys. Yum yum.

Today is a GOOD day! :)

Yes, a good day indeed.

Kim Jong Il, North Korea's mercurial and enigmatic longtime leader, has died of heart failure. He was 69.

I hope it hurt like shit.
In other news, AP is staffed by weirdos who just loooove sucking up to murderous dictator types even after they've assumed room temperature.
If you listen hard, you might hear the starving millions in North Korea cheering inside their heads.

The Phantom

How to read a Canadian newspaper.

There's an art to getting useful (or any) information out of a rag like the Ottawa Citizen.  Case in point, today's article entitled

DND looks to sell gear to free up funds

Yes friends, it looks like the Conservative Party is going to [gasp!] -sell- Army stuff!

The Defence Department is looking to get rid of or sell off equipment as it tries to save money and free up funds for the purchase of new gear, according to documents obtained by the Citizen.

Holy crap, that news! ... Well no, truth is they do that all the time. So what is the news?

Buried in the middle, we find this nugget:

The moves come as all federal departments try to contribute to the Conservative government's plan to reduce the deficit.

Various departments have announced that the jobs of thousands of public servants will be on the line. Some workers have already received notices they will be laid off.

They're going to FIRE federal employees? Wow! Now that is news! You have to go alllll the way to the very bottom to find out the point of the DND selling equipment:

Nearly 70 government departments and agencies have or will submit scenarios for a five per cent and 10 per cent cut to their budgets. The Conservative government is expected to unveil its reduction plans in the spring budget. It is relying on the savings to help it eliminate a $31-billion deficit by 2015-16 at the earliest.

Now, had this been a Liberal government the headline would have been "Liberals take bold steps to cut government fat". The relevant information would have been right at the top, and selling military equipment would not have been mentioned.

That's how you read a Canadian newspaper.

The Phantom

Gun control working well in Belgium today.

Some guy showed up at the mall today with pistols, what looks from the pictures to be a .308 rifle and several grenades. Thanks to his simply stunning incompetence there are only five deceased victims so far. 

Five people died and 123 were injured when a rogue gunman lobbed grenades and shot into crowds of shoppers at a Christmas market in Liege, Belgium.

The shoppers, many of them children, ran screaming for safety in the panic as the gunman, named as career criminal Nordine Amrani, 33, opened fire.

The dead included an 18-month old girl who lost her fight for survival in hospital this evening, the BBC reported . A 15-year-old boy, a 17-year-old girl, and a 75-year-old woman were confirmed as the other victims.

Police said tonight that the killer was a convicted sex attacker and drug dealer, who had recently been released from prison.

As is becoming a pattern with these atrocities in Europe, the shooter was basically given the run of the place by police until he got bored and shot himself. Or possibly blew himself to Hell with a grenade, they aren't quite sure yet. Because Belgian cops apparently can't tell a gunshot to the head from being blown to shit by a grenade.

Incidentally, the "funny" part of the story is the police statement:

The 33-year-old Amrani was well known to the police before he went on the rampage in the eastern Belgian city of Liege, opening fire on a square packed with children and Christmas shoppers, killing three people and wounding another 75.

He had previously been convicted for drug dealing and illegal arms possession, as well as for holding stolen goods and other crimes, said Daniele Reynders, the public prosecutor for Liege.

In September 2008 he was thrown behind bars for 58 months when police uncovered a weapons arsenal in his home.

They found 10 firearms and 9,500 gun parts along with 2,800 cannabis plants, but a prison official said Amrani was granted early release last year.

A weapons aficionado, he was said to be able to dismantle, repair and put together all sorts of weapons but was never linked to any terrorist act or network.

Ms Reynders said there had never been the slightest hint he was unhinged enough to mount the kind of deadly attack he launched in Liege.

"At no moment in any of the judicial proceedings against him was there a sign of a disturbance," she told a news conference.

Yeah, no disturbance, just a house full of illegal firearms and pot plants. He was a regular guy, y'know.
No word on whether or not he screamed "ALLAH ACKBAR!!!!" while throwing grenades into the crowd of mums, grandmas and little kids.

Remember friends, its DIY or dial 911 and die.

The Phantom

Flyin' Terror Granny update!

The previous border crossing story reminded me to go have a look at old Mrs. Zimmerman, last I heard the TSA was calling her a liar.

Five days after Long Island grandma Lenore Zimmerman claims she was strip searched at John F' Kennedy International Airport, the agency in charge of security offered her an apology. But, the Transportation Security Administration flatly denies she was strip searched.

"TSA contacted the passenger to apologize that she feels she had an unpleasant screening; however, TSA does not include strip searches in its protocols and a strip search did not occur in this case" said a spokesman for TSA.

Yer lyin' Lenore, you old bat. Shut up or next time you fall down the stairs after the strip search.

  Look what I found today!

In response to ongoing criticism for removing the back brace from an elderly woman who claims Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officers strip-searched her an airport, the TSA issued a "clarification" about their position on the incidents, claiming -- contrary to an earlier TSA statement -- that the woman's back brace was removed because the security personnel thought it was a "money belt."

"There was a bit of a miscommunication and our officers were told that the passenger was wearing a money belt," explains a TSA blogger. "Unlike medical braces and supports, money belts must be removed since they're not providing any type of medical benefit." Last week, the TSA blog reported that the woman "told the officers that she was wearing a back brace or support belt which required private screening."

In today's update, the TSA acknowledges that the security agents did not return the brace to the woman immediately upon realizing that it was not, in fact, a money belt. "Since the item had already been removed, our officers had it X-rayed and returned it to the passenger who was then clear to travel," the TSA says.

The TSA denied that any strip-search ever took place, adding that they "truly regret that these passengers feel they had a bad screening experience."

Yeah, it wasn't a "strip search", they just took all her clothes off until they got to her BACK BRACE. Which would be right next to her underwear, normally. Or part of it in some cases. Because TSA employs people so utterly brain dead (or perverted) that they can't tell the difference between a money belt and a back brace (or they pretend not to).

So friends, don't let your elderly relatives fly without a lawyer, a nurse and three armed Samurai.  And a big f-ing dog.

The Well Braced Phantom

How serious is the US about it's borders?

NOT VERY.

By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.

The crossing, which would be the nation's first such port of entry with Mexico, has sparked opposition from some who see it as counterintuitive in these days of heightened border security. Supporters say the crossing would give the isolated Mexican town long-awaited access to U.S. commerce, improve conservation efforts and be an unlikely target for criminal operations.

Meanwhile, old ladies still getting sent through the naked picture machine at the airport or strip-searched if they refuse.

Somebody phone up the Republican National Committee and tell them they better get out there and kick their presidential candidates in the balls, baby. Republicans: The Party of Stupid.

The Phantom

CBS News amazing scoop, ATF involved in propaganda!

Amazing news, Fast and Furious was a propaganda scam!

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

Wow, you can't slip anything past those news guys, eh? They're sharper than a bag o' wet hammers!

The Phantom

Time to point and laugh at the Fruitfly Guy.

I spotted this wail of anguish by Dr. David Suzuki at Borque Newswatch and had to post it.  Seems the good doctor is displeased. Seems that his limpet-like grip on the national media has been challenged by those dastardly upstarts, SUN TV [booooo, hissssss].

In one of those "revolving door" scenarios that the Greenpeace research highlights, Kory Teneycke left his position as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's communications director to join Sun TV before its launch. Several reporters who were considered for positions at the TV channel have said that Teneycke told them part of their job would be to go after me. Sun Media has also campaigned to have the David Suzuki Foundation's charitable status removed. Of course, one of Sun TV's major personalities, Ezra Levant, has strong ties to the Harper government. He also launched the "ethical oil" campaign, which was taken over by Alykhan Velshi, who was recently hired as Stephen Harper's planning director.

Yeah, those fascist bastards! This is nothing like what Suzuki and friends have been doing with the Liberal Party and the CBC for thirty years! Right? ... Right?

Alas poor Fruitfly, I knew him well.

The Phantom

Another potential terrorist gets what they deserve!

Shifty looking woman refuses to be scanned, gets strip searched! Booyah!

Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.

"I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist," she said sarcastically. "I'm tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched."

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows "proper procedures were followed."

Well, that's really the problem here isn't it? "Proper procedure" includes strip-searching frail old women for absolutely no reason at all. Oh wait, they had a reason!

When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.

She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.

Because you know, it might actually frig up a defibrillator. They can be touchy sometimes, cell phones can frig them up too. Grandma doesn't want to DIE in the fucking NAKED PICTURE scanner, so her other choice is strip search by two ham fisted minimum wage Dyke Of The Year winners.

Thus, by inches, the United States of America has become a country where you can't put your old mum on an airplane and expect her to be ok.

I don't know how many incidents like this one its going to take before the people of the USA say they've had enough. Maybe they'll have to kill a few grannies first.
That will only be a matter of time. I'm sure the type of brain-dead, power-tripping @ssholes being hired by the TSA won't shrink from tazing old girls with pacemakers if they get unruly about the naked picture scanner. Pepper spray would kill an old broad like that too, or even a bit of rough handling. Broken shoulder from being grabbed and tugged? How about a nice hip fracture with added cerebral hemorrhage from being bounced off the wall?

Vote carefully. The life you save might be your mum's.

The Phantom

McDonald's update: Justice is served.

By an amazing fluke, the kid who served up a heaping helping of whup-ass on two counter jumpers at McD's is cleared of all charges.

The McDonald's cashier arrested for his supersized smackdown of two women who came around his counter to pick a fight has been cleared of all charges.

Rayon McIntosh, 31, was expected to be released from Rikers Friday night.

Prosecutors said a grand jury heard testimony for 11 days and voted to toss the case.

"We asked that Mr. McIntosh be released," Assistant District Attorney Jaime Hickey-Mendoza said.

What the assistant DA meant to say was that the cops found out McIntosh was an ex-con they threw the book at him. The Grand Jury sat there for 11 days being lectured to by all manner of authorities who tried to make this McIntosh guy look like Satan, then at the end of it all told cops, experts and lawyers to shove it up their asses. Clear case of self defense, the two women could have stabbed, shot or even beat him to death (because they could have grabbed that steel bar first, right?), he did the Right Thing.

The sad thing here is that the guy's been in the slammer ever since this thing happened, and all the evidence required to make this call is on the video.  He defended himself. He stopped hitting them when they stopped trying to get at him. That's all there is to it.  Anything else is Monday morning armchair quarterbacking, and that's just unacceptable in a free country.

Armchair quarterbacks are the enemy. Do not let them win.

The Phantom

Know thine enemy.

Here we have a case of a 7 year old boy charged with... wait for it... sexual harassment.  Its a doozy!

A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch.

The first grader's mother, Tasha Lynch, says she was shocked by the school's decision.

"He's 7 years old. He doesn't know anything about sexual harassment," she said.

Lynch's son, Mark Curran, said the boy that he kicked had been bullying him on the school bus ride home from Tynan Elementary last week.

"He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him. He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, 'I couldn't breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles,'" said his mother.

That sounds pretty open and shut, right?  Kid chokes your kid, your kid kicks him in the balls, that should be about it.
Nope.

Lynch described a phone call she received from the school explaining that the case will be treated like sexual harassment, due to what it considers inappropriate touching.

"'Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment,'" Lynch said the school told her.

Now, the thing here is that we all have to finally admit that a school official -cannot- be that stupid naturally. For my money, that decision right there has departed the bounds of incompetence and moved firmly into the realm of malice.
There is a strong social movement in North America that seeks to forbid self defense.  I'm going to call them "militant pacifists", just to make it as ridiculous as possible.

It is not enough for these people to eschew violence themselves. No, these nannies require that no one be allowed to defend themselves from attack using violence. To them, there is no circumstance in which it is right and proper to hit back. Ever. And irony above irony, their chosen method is to use the power of the State to FORCE compliance on everyone else.

This in this case we clearly have some nameless apparatchik using the school board rule book with shall we say excessive creativity, to advance their militant pacifist agenda. Knowing full well the particular rule they are quoting does not apply, naturally.  I'll go out on a limb here and predict that the apparatchik is a fat, ugly, middle aged woman of limited intelligence, with a fondness for cats. Probably has a unicorn on her desk somewhere too.

Branching out from gun control and knife/stick/jagged rock control to ban the use of hands and feet. We could live to see the martial arts banned altogether if these creatures are allowed to stay in the bureaucracy. They really won't rest until government has all physical and legal power, and we all bow the head and do what we're told.

Know thine enemy.

Positive sign in a sea of crisis.

Taking a break from our impending DOOOOOOM at the hands of whatever media boogyman they have on tap this week, I note this positive sign: Ownership of televisions declined a bit this year.

According to Nielsen's annual "Television Audience" report that was released this week, the number of households with a TV set will decline. The rising trend of TV ownership has been leveling off in recent years, and now the number has dropped from 115.9 million homes in 2011 to an estimated 114.7 million in 2012. As TV Barn pointed out, that's a 1 percent decline despite the number of households rising.

TURN OFF YOUR TV!!!

The Phantom

Guess the sentence!

A guy shows up at your house drunk, starts in wrecking the place and punches you out. Oh and you're an old guy, 73, he's 50, you're pretty sure he's going to kill you. So you find the ancient .22 revolver you've got kicking around and you shoot him in the leg. And he lives.

What do you get from the judge?

1) Good citizenship medal
2) House arrest
3) Hard jail time
4) suspended sentence
5) The cops says "Way to go, Grandad!" and doesn't charge you.

Well, it depends where you live and who you are. If you're some random old guy in Arizona, you get a medal or at least the cop just gives you a pass. If you're a White AngloSaxon taxpaying senior with no criminal record in Ontario, you're going to the Big House baby. If you're The Phantom they probably take you out behind the court house hang you from the old oak tree.  With an ugly rope.
Here's what happens to Canadian ex-diplomats:

A former member of Canada's diplomatic corps[Foster] was sentenced to house arrest Thursday after pleading guilty to shooting another man [Cantwell] in the leg during a scuffle.
The guilty plea allowed Foster to avoid more serious charges that could have resulted in a four-year mandatory prison term. Crown prosecutor Julie Scott said the circumstances of the shooting were "troubling," but the issue of self-defence would have been a live one at trial.
Foster received an 18-month conditional sentence, including nine months of house arrest.
Cantwell, who had once dated one of Foster's daughters, received a 12-month conditional sentence last year after pleading guilty to assault, mischief to property and disturbing the occupants of a dwelling house.

Foster got "house arrest", meaning pretty much nothing, because he's probably connected out the wazoo and got the Special Plea deal. The other guy got "conditional", meaning pretty much nothing, because... well really there's no good reason why they let him skip, but he did.

By the way, the penalty for possessing an unregistered pistol, not using it mind you but just having it, is ten years in jail. Just so we're all clear why its good to be connected.

The Phantom

When you've lost Chris Mathews...

... and you're a DemocRat... you're done like dinner.

The Phantom

OWS retards rediscover the reason we have health regulations.

In a word, tuberculosis. Some bum had it, now siad bum is sharing with the brave, moral freedom fighters.

The home base for Occupy Atlanta has tested positive for tuberculosis.

The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact.

There's a reason we don't all camp out in public parks whenever we want, live in tents in winter and generally not wash. Its called DISEASE. You camp out in winter in large numbers, good chance you're going to get sick and die.

I'm waiting for these dumb bunnies to rediscover the need for FIRE REGULATIONS next.  Open cooking fire, closely spaced nylon tents, maybe a couple dozen propane canisters and a nice can of camp fuel or two, BOOM baby!

If you build it they will come... and burn it down.

The Phantom

Wow. More Fast & Furious worms rocketing out of that can.

Wow.  That's all you can say to this. Wow.

Former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Arizona, who resigned in the wake of a congressional probe into the Fast and Furious undercover investigation his office oversaw, has admitted leaking a sensitive document about a federal agent who blew the whistle on the gunrunning operation, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.

Mr. Grassley, in a statement late Tuesday, said the leaked document was "deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department that it was not provided to Congress, except in a secured room at department headquarters."

"Leaking sensitive documents to the press and retaliating against whistleblowers is not good faith cooperation with Congress," Mr. Grassley said.

Apparently although Burke has admitted providing a journalist with said "extremely sensitive" document, he was not the only one who had done so.

Mr. Burke's Phoenix attorney, Lee Stein, said in a Nov. 8 letter to the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General — which was posted on Politico — that his client had provided information to a reporter who was working on several stories involving Fast and Furious. The attorney said "it was clear" to Mr. Burke from their conversations that the reporter already was aware of a memo about Agent Dodson and he wanted "to give context to information the reporter already had."

Because hey, the horse is already out of the barn, right?  Why not open the other door too? Right?... Right?

John Dodson's lawyer was less than impressed, it seems.

Agent Dodson's attorney, Robert Driscoll, said in a statement: "Special Agent Dodson demonstrated both tremendous courage and fidelity to the mission of ATF when he came forward to discuss the misguided Fast and Furious investigation. It is unfortunate that his superiors at ATF and DOJ did not listen to his attempts to address the matter internally, and instead chose to attack him once he, out of necessity, stepped forward." 

 

Mr. Driscoll described Mr. Burke's public acknowledgment that he "participated in such misguided efforts to smear Agent Dodson is welcome, but unfortunately Burke did not act alone in attempting to ruin Special Agent Dodson's career."

If I were Agent John Dodson I'd be moving to Aruba right frickin' smartly.  On a non-US charter, oh yeah.

So if you're an ATF/FBI/Border Patrol/Homeland Security/CIA/ other Man in Black, and you have irrefutable evidence of officials in your agency acting in recklessly stupid and even criminal fashion, you now know that:
A) your superiors will not only ignore you, they will not only order you to shut up, they will not only use every legal and procedural means to punish you,  they will do their very best to crush and smear you publicly. And:
B) you won't even be able to find out how high the rot goes, because the government is rotting from the head down. It goes all the way to the top, baby.  The President himself may have ordered the hammer job on this Dodson guy.

Holy crap my friends.  Interesting times. Keep that powder dry, watch your six.

The Phantom

French media so polite!

Try to imagine what would have happened here if George Bush or Ronald Regan had been President.

The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: "I cannot stand him. He is a liar." According to the report, Obama replied: "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!"
The remark was naturally meant to be said in confidence, but the two leaders' microphones were accidently left on, making the would-be private comment embarrassingly public.
The communication faux pas went unnoticed for several minutes, during which the conversation between the two heads of state – which quickly reverted to other matters – was all but open to members the press, who were still in possession of headsets provided by the Elysée for the sake of simultaneous translation during the G20 press conference.

Open mic three minutes long? Oh, there would be a FEAST on this sucker.  What do we get? One comment.  Why?

A member of the media confirmed Monday that "there were discussions between journalists and they agreed not to publish the comments due to the sensitivity of the issue."
The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that reporters present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the subject of the embarrassing comments.
He added that while it was annoying to have to refrain from publishing the information, the journalists are subject to precise rules of conduct.

Yeah, there's rules for when the POTUS is a Democrat.  Otherwise, not so much.

 The Phantom

This is what happens when you just keep voting DemocRat.

As is well known, Detroit has been a DemocRat Party bastion since Prohibition.  Latest from Motown, no buses downtown.

People who catch the bus in Detroit may be waiting awhile Friday. About 100 Detroit Department of Transportation bus drivers are at work, but are refusing to drive their buses.

Is this some kinda union thing, work slowdown, another taxpayer shakedown?

WWJ Newsradio 950′s Scott Ryan spoke with Henry Gaffney, spokesman for the D-DOT bus drivers union AFL-CIO Local 26, who said this was not an organized maneuver by the union.

Gaffney said it's a matter of bus drivers fearing for their safety, citing an incident that happened Thursday afternoon.

"Our drivers are scared, they're scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit," said Gaffney.

Wow.  They won't drive the BUS through downtown because its too -dangerous-. For real, and no kidding.

I'd like to be the very first to say, POOR BABIES. You sowed the wind, and now you are reaping the whirlwind. Maybe y'all should have a big cup of Shut the F- Up and try WALKING.
For why is the Phantom so dyspectic?  Let us consider for a millisecond the fate of a bus driver who defended himself with a firearm instead of waiting half an hour for the cops to show up.
Would he be fired? Indubitably.
Would he be pilloried in the press? Incorrigibly.
Would he be charged with murder should one of his attackers die of being shot while trying to kill him? Inevitably.

Therefore I say, "Detroit, it looks good on you. Wear it, you illiterate chumps."

The Unsympathetic Phantom

ACORN showing true Leftist form after FOX news story.

Deny, lie, censor and oppress.

Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group's involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

Weenies dumb enough to take the money are getting the full-on Soviet treatment.

NYCC is also monitoring its staff's behavior, cracking down on phone use and socialization. Officials have ordered all papers -- even scraps -- to be shredded every night, the source said.

"And all the supplies—everything around the office that said 'ACORN' -- is now all in storage until this blows over," the source said. "People literally have to cover up the cameras on the back of their cellphones in the office."

"Now there's no texting in the office, no phone calls in the office. They tell us to take our phone calls out into the waiting room where there's an intercom, and then they turn on the intercom to hear our conversations. They're installing new cameras and speakers around the building so they can hear everything. 

"It's almost like working at Fort Knox."

Love it when these roaches get caught in the middle of the counter as the kitchen light comes on.  SMACK SMACK SMACK!

The Phantom Roach Smacker.

National Post, Canada's CONSERVATIVE newspaper?

I think not.  Comments made in response to this article in the Toronto (Red) Star.  Which, predictably, is 100% fear and loathing propaganda.

The point of getting rid of the gun registry was supposed to be that it criminalized farmers and hunters. But now the Conservatives are delisting sniper rifles and the kind of semi-automatic used in the Norway massacre. Why do farmers and hunters need sniper rifles that can pierce armour from a kilometre away? If the registry is to be killed, shouldn't the government tighten up other controls on dangerous weapons?

Here's three big time "conservative" scribblers take:

Barbara Kay: I think guns are fine for people who need them to hunt or just like them for shooting at targets. But I don't get the semi-automatic thing, since it's only purpose is to mow down enemies by spraying bullets around so promiscuously some of them will kill. They're unsportsmanlike for hunting, obviously, and it doesn't take any special marksmanship to use them.

Kelly McParland: The issue is whether anyone needs to own these guns. The whole anti-registry battle was fought over the issue that farmers and hunters should be allowed to have guns. But no one needs these weapons, so why aren't they just banned?

Jonathan Kay: I don't pretend to understand the gun obsession. But my sense is that gun nuts see their guns as a sort of symbolic totem that allows them to control their fate and protect themselves in a society that is chaotic and communalistic. And that the bigger the gun the more powerful is their sense of self control.

Are you frickin' kidding me?

And they wonder why their damn newspaper keeps losing money.

The Phantom

Security theater... of the absurd!

Apparently, the United States of America has quietly stopped policing its borders.  Amazing.

"Orders have been sent out from Border Patrol headquarters in Washington, D.C., to Border Patrol sectors nationwide that checks of transportation hubs and systems located away from the southwest border of the United States will only be conducted if there is intelligence indicating a threat," the release says.

Those who have received the orders said agents may still go to train and bus stations and airports if they have specific "actionable intelligence" that there is an illegal immigrant there who recently entered the country. An agent in Washington state said it's not clear how agents are supposed to glean such intelligence, and even if they did, under the new directive they still require clearance from Washington, D.C., headquarters before they can respond.

 What are they doing instead?

The situation is similar in upstate New York, where an agent told the AP - also on the condition of anonymity - that a senior manager relayed the new directive during a morning roll call last month. Since then, instead of checking buses or trains, agents have spent shifts sitting in their vehicles gazing out at Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, where few illegal immigrants cross.

"They're already bored," the agent said. "You grab the paper every day and you go do the crossword."

Why does this crossword need done  so urgently by so many agents?

Current and former Border Patrol agents said field offices around the country began receiving the order last month - soon after the Obama administration announced that to ease an overburdened immigration system, it would allow many illegal immigrants to remain in the country while it focuses on deporting those who have committed crimes.

In English, that means the Border Patrol has been ordered not to arrest illegals so the INS doesn't have to process them, and so that Barry can get more of that much needed illegal Mexican vote.

All in all, a great time to be a drug mule.

The Phantom

Sometimes... one is at a loss for words.

Coming to you from Small Dead Animals, a link to a person so fundamentally mental... I'm unable to really grasp what his malfunction is.

The Conservative government's bill to scrap the requirement to register long-guns comes with a surprising clause: it requires the Commissioner of Firearms destroy all records of registered long-guns.
<snippage>
But, personally, I find the destruction of any kind of government data utterly abhorent and contrary to the concept of open government.

In response, I'm posting publicly a copy of the gun registry database I received via the Access to Information Act in 2007.

We used this data in an Ottawa Citizen series called "Rapid Fire" that explored issues involved in gun ownership in Canada.

So here we have a guy, Glen McGregor, who views government records of private citizen's personal property as being so holy, so important, that he's going to post HIS OWN REGISTRY. To, you know, save it. Or something.
Here's what he says about himself, right off the mast head of his web page:

Ottawa Citizen reporter covering government, politics and anything else that interests me. Specializing in data journalism and Twitter evangelism. This is just a place to dump Hill droppings and other found items that are too long for Twitter. Follow me there at @glen_mcgregor or email me at sushiboy21@gmail.com.

Ottawa Citizen reporter. Uh HUH. Nice three day beard dude. You look mahvelous.

And we all wondered -why- the media never ever EVER gives us the straight unvarnished goods in a gun related story. Its because DICKHEADS run it.

My comment on Little Glenny's blog was this:

So Glen, is it ok if I dig up your address and post it on my blog? How about a Google map and a StreetView of your house too? And maybe a list of your major appliances and more expensive possessions, you know, just in case anybody's interested?

Love to hear your opinion on that little undertaking, dude.

Currently awaiting moderation, as of 10:22 pm. So we'll see what Little Glenny has to say. I'm not expecting anything too coherent, I must say.

The Phantom

Barry gathers his troops.

Barry must be having a cow.  He's in Hollywood assembling the First Propaganda Division of Barry's Army.

Among the small group of industry insiders who were invited to attended the early-morning meeting with the president at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel were: Weinstein Co. studio head Harvey Weinstein, CAA managing partner and music head Rob Light, ICM president Chris Silbermann, Modern Family creator Steve Levitan, Atlantic Records chairman Craig Kallman, producer/songwriter Bruce Roberts, talent manger and producer Jason Weinberg, UTA music agent Rob Prinz, talent manager and producer Eric Ortner, Island Def Jam senior vice president Karen Kwak, Warner Bros. Records president Livia Tortella, talent manager Greg Mertz, ID PR publicists Kelly Bush and Mara Buxbaum, talent managers Bruce Flohr, Michael Green, Steve Moir and Bill Silva, Universial Music Publishing Group executive vice president and head of creative Tom Sturges, entertainment attorney Chuck Ortner and actor/activist Kal Penn.

The event was not a fundraiser, and attendees were not asked to donate to the Obama reelection campaign. But those invited have been ardent supporters of the president and were identified as "influencers" with the ability to help Obama shape the national political conversation heading into a tough race in 2012.

Their donations will be more in kind than in money, no doubt. I do believe we will be treated to a big bunch of socialist propaganda movies over the next year.  Huzzah.  And as previously noted, people wonder why media company stocks are circling the bowl...

The Phantom

Duh alert... Media company execs are MORONS.

This just kills me.  Check it out:

The rapid adoption of tablet computers like iPad has not reversed the slide in paying customers for news, as many media company executives had hoped the devices would.

Are you kidding me? There are actually executive corner office types who were doofus enough to think that the -shape- of the computer people surf on would change their willingness to pay for something they can get for free?

"When it was launched, many observers believed that the tablet might help change the experience of news consumers and the economic ground rules of digital news consumption," writes the authors of the Pew Research Center report. "That belief was based on the sense that people would consume information on tablets largely through special applications or apps that provide content from a favorite news organization like the New York Times or one's local newspaper." The survey showed more than 70 percent still use the web browser or a combination of the web and apps to get their news. Just a fifth of tablet users use apps as their primary source for news.

Truly, there are some guys out there living in Fantasy Land. The reason nobody is willing to pay for the "news" is that it ain't NEWS.  Its propaganda for the American DemocRat party and obviously so. The whole blogosphere basically exists as a fact check on the "news". Furthermore nobody wants to live in the walled garden of the Apple Ap-store when the whole web is sitting there free to surf.

Sell that media stock my friends.  Those companies are dead ducks walking.

The Phantom.

Self Inflicted Wounds.

Apparently the people who live around Zuccotti Park are getting tired of the smelly hippies. Poor babies.

New Yorkers who live near the park where anti-Wall Street protesters have been camping out for more than a month are complaining that their quality of life has declined.

At a two-hour meeting Thursday night, some neighbors said protesters urinated in the streets and beat drums in the middle of the night.

"They're defecating on our doorsteps," said Catherine Hughes, a member of the area's community board, a representative panel that helps funnel local concerns to city officials.

That's what you get when you vote the way they always do. You asked for it, you got it. Toyota.

Lets be clear whose doorstep is getting crapped on here.  You live near Zuccotti Park, you've got some -serious- dough to blow on housing.  We're talking millions of bucks for a two bedroom condo.  That would be "million-S" in the plural.
So, what does a big huge bank account get you in NYC?

Some neighbors who attended the packed meeting called for the protesters to vacate Zuccotti Park, the plaza where protesters have set up their base camp.

But the board voted unanimously for a resolution that recognized the protesters' First Amendment rights while calling for a crackdown on noise and public urination and defecation.

Three local elected officials praised the resolution in a statement Thursday.

It gets you nuttin', is what.  Because the "three local elected officials" are  DEMOCRATS, one of whom is Gerold "The Mouth" Nadler. This doorstep-crapping, stairwell-pissing astroturf freak show is -their- personal clown circus, bought, paid for and put on by DemocRats, for the benefit of DemocRats, and screw everybody else.

My questions for today: how stupid are the hyper-rich of New Yawk?  Will they continue to vote for the guys who are happily throwing them under the bus just to get a cheap propaganda show on the TV? Do they realize that this mob could decide to BURN DOWN their apartment buildings pretty much any time?  Do they comprehend that their "local elected officials" are the sole reason that these Occupy Somebody Else's Private Property imbeciles are taking a dump on their twenty million dollar real estate?

Or is it more a matter of going along with the gag so the gravy train your zillions are coming from doesn't come off the rails?  Because zillionairs aren't primarily known for stupidity.

Just wondering.

The Phantom

Wag the dog 2011-style.

Reposted from Small Dead Animals, -proof- of the connection between Big Media, Barry's 2012 campaign, and the collection of pinheads known to the media as "Occupy Wall Street".  99% bullshit, 1% useful idiots.  We've got the email archive, which a mole helpfully posted to the web. Big Journalism's post on the subject is here, and really worth a look.

So just in case you've been wondering why the media is paying so much attention to some smelly hippies leaving raw sewage on private property they don't own in NYC, while they utterly ignored about a third of the country turning out for the Tea Parties, wonder no more.  Its a put up job.  Otherwise known as, the main stream media of the USA (and Canada!!!) is bought and paid for.  And we just proved it.  Again.

The Phantom

What is THE difference between the USA and Canada?

In Canada, this would be legal:

On September 22, 2011, H.R. 3011 was introduced in the House. It is entitled the "Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act of 2011" and it contains some curious language.
...

The language states that it would be illegal to "convey the impression" that you are representing the TSA, but this interpretation would likely be left to federal prosecutors.

In the past, satire was protected under the First Amendment, but it may soon be illegal to poke fun at the TSA or use its logo or even utter its name. Notice there is no exception in the above language for parody.

Political satire is as old as the Greeks and the Bible. But it may now become a punishable crime if this legislation is enacted.

Yes, my fellow Canadians, let's not fool ourselves.  In Canada the Parliament really can pass a law making it illegal to lampoon, parody, or otherwise mock government agencies and/or employees.  In fact, its been done already.  Right now our Supreme Court is grappling with the weighty issue of whether or not to ALLOW us to say mean things about members of certain protected groups.  Not to be mean to them mind you, just to say things about them.

In the United States, this law can't survive its first day in court.  Well, unless Barry and friends find a way to pack the court, of course.  Then all bets are off. 

Kind of like they are here in Canada, our courts got packed in the 1970's.  Frankly, its been pretty much down hill ever since Pierre Trudeau declared war on freedom in this country.

The Phantom

Ass-Backward into the Future!

One of the things I rage on about here constantly is that we have too much government.  This is best seen in the small things, like this:

A tree house is causing controversy in one Falls Church neighborhood after a father built it for his two young boys. Fairfax County officials are considering tearing it down because the tree house violates county rules because it was built in the front yard. He needed a permit first to build the tree house.

One of the other things I rage on about is our too-much-government looking the other way and allowing outrages to be perpetrated.  This is best seen in the large things, like this:

Occupy Wall Street is on the move ... uptown.

Why uptown? Because that's where the rich folks live!

Organizers are planning a march on Tuesday that will visit the homes of JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) CEO Jamie Dimon, billionaire David Koch, hedge fund honcho John Paulson, Howard Milstein, and News Corp (NWSA, Fortune 500) CEO Rupert Murdoch.

The millionaires and billionaires are being targeted for what event organizers called a "willingness to hoard wealth at the expense of the 99%."

Just so we are clear here: you CAN mob the house of people you don't like if you are part of a rent-a-mob for the DemocRat Party, but you CAN'T build a tree house for the kids without a permit.  And likely a bribe for the building inspector.

The Phantom

Andrew Coyne has been reading my mind.

It takes a little while to get to the good part, but this column by Andrew Coyne has goodness in it.

The Ontario Conservatives have lost three elections in a row with this same nicely-nicely, Clever Dick approach; the Manitoba Conservatives, four. At some point, you'd think it would occur to them: this isn't working. But it never seems to.

So let me spell it out for them. Conservatives: unless you give voters a reason to vote for you, they will not. Until you trust in yourselves, they will never trust you. They can smell fear, and they can tell when people aren't being straight with them. Don't want to be accused of hidden agendas? Have an agenda. Don't think you can sell that vision? Find another line of work. You're in the persuasion business.

That's what I'm talking about.  You want to be a Conservative?  BE ONE THEN.  You don't think Conservatism can win? Join the Liberals!!!

The Phantom

Liberals win Ontario election.

We are -so- fracked...

The Phantom

BUSTED!

Eric Holder knew about Fast&Furious in July 2010. 

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

He lied to Congress. Like a Persian carpet.

How unexpected!

The Phantom

Russel Smith: dude, who cares what you think?

Here's an article by Russel Smith in the Blob and Snail that I read while sitting in the doctor's office yesterday.  Happily, I didn't have to buy the paper, because it generated a very strong wave of "WHAT! EVER!" through my neural network.  To wit:

We old farts did that tiring reporting/interviewing stuff for years before we were allowed to write our opinions on things. I still don't even aspire to this ideal of not being edited; not being edited doesn't seem like a benefit to me. I still have a deep-rooted (and unjustified) instinct telling me that something published has value only if it has been commissioned by someone else.

I am biased in this debate: I don't care so much about the young people's careers, I care about mine, and if they don't play along in the work-for-pay convention, then all of our incomes are undercut. This is why other trades have unions. But creators are not very good at solidarity.

Now, speaking as an Old Fart who writes for free, and purely for the purpose of expressing my opinion before the top of my freakin' head blows off, I have only this to say:

Dear Russel, if it wasn't for the likes of you infesting the Canadian publishing establishment for the last 50+ years, making the whole thing into nothing more than a machine for cranking out Liberal Party of Canada propaganda, maybe your career wouldn't be circling the bowl along with every other print media worker in this country.  You and yours have made Canadian newspapers, magazines, television and radio into a monolithic boulder on the Left side of the political spectrum.  Anybody who wants to do something that hasn't been given official approval by the LPC re-election committee is doing it on the Internet, and there's nobody to blame but YOURSELVES.  I bet almost as many people will read this little rant of mine as read your blather in the Blob, too.

Its probably not too late to change your career to welding.  Better hit the gym, steel is heavy.

The Exploding Phantom

Iggy speaks!

Here's an article in the National Post by none other than our dear ex-Liberal Party leader. Count Iggula.

It shows me two things.  One, the guys who ran this man's election campaign were utter morons.

Evil is a moral problem for everyone, difficult to acknowledge in ourselves, hard to understand in others, and difficult to defeat without committing lesser evils. Liberals - I count myself as one - have a special problem with evil, connected to our particular form of selfregard. Liberals like to believe we are tolerant, but evil, by definition, cannot be tolerated. We believe that politics ought to be deliberative, but we can't deliberate with evil. We think compromise can be honorable, but there are no honorable compromises with evil. We think politics ought to be governed by reason, but evildoers, while they may reason, are not reasonable.

If Iggy had showed up to the election with some of the uncompromising morality of that paragraph, he would have done very well indeed.

Two, thank God the guys who ran this man's election campaign were utter morons because this man can't walk his talk, even inside his own brain.

It is when Wolfe moves on from these general sentiments, which seem both admirable and true, to detailed examples of "fighting politics with politics," that the questions about his approach begin to arise. What would Wolfe do differently? No to the war in Iraq certainly, no to the torture memos. That much is obvious, but on other issues, his skeptical liberal realism is less clear as a guide to action than he supposes. Is Wolfe saying no to intervention in Libya, on the grounds that Qaddafi, while a thug, posed no strategic threat, and his crimes, while vicious, did not rise to a level that had to be stopped?

Its possible I've misunderstood The Iggster's intent here, but that reads to me like the Iraq War was a bad thing while the current Libyan Unpleasantness is a good thing.  Which is preposterous. And also is 180 degrees opposed to his previous views on the matter.

So, I'm content that Iggy is safely contained at Massey College, indoctrinating another generation of Torontonians  in the fine art of Liberalism, sucking and blowing both at the same time.  I'd prefer he be selling apples on a street corner in New York, but you can't always get what you want.

The Phantom

More home invasion fun in Philly.

Hits just keep on coming.

A critically wounded 2-year-old girl was among four people shot Tuesday night in South Philadelphia when a mob of girls charged a house and gunfire erupted in a dispute stemming from a high school fight, police said.

Turns out the high school girls were balked in their home invasion attempt called for backup.

Police spokesman Lt. Raymond Evers said a fight among girls at South Philadelphia High School led to another altercation and, ultimately, the shooting.

Some of the girls from the high school fight showed up at the house of another girl on Bucknell, Evers said. "The girls were pushing into the house," Evers said.

Some neighbors got involved, and one girl called an unidentified man, Evers said. A group of men arrived at the scene and the fighting escalated. Two men pulled out guns and one of them began firing.

So, what does the police chief have to say about this?

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey also responded to scene and denounced a culture of violence among young people.

Uh huh. No help there, then.

My question is, at what point do the people in Philly sandbag the whole front of the house and start stealing road plates to armor the baby's bedroom?

The Phantom

You just can't escape the insanity.

As I've said many times, I never, ever buy the newspaper, I do not have cable TV nor rabbit ears broadcast TV, I do not listen to commercial radio.  And yet still I can't completely escape this sort of thing:

Outsourcing Christmas: Why the new Toronto disgusts me

Michael Babad's article (mbabad@globeandmail.com) is in the Blob and Snail today, and the headline was on my Report On Business news feed. I had to click on that, since Toronto disgusts me also.  Turns out for a different reason.

I know this is an obvious attack point for a bleeding heart, and I also know that governments at every level are scrambling to cut in the post-recession era. But still, getting rid of an agency that pulls together Christmas toys for underprivileged kids?

That's what Toronto's politicians decided yesterday with the Christmas Bureau, one of several measures to save about $28-million, The Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Church and Patrick White report. That's less than what had been proposed, and many things survived Mayor Rob Ford's quest to cut down the gravy.

Toronto is Canada's financial showcase, home to its banks and its premiere stock exchange, drawing business visitors from around the world. With a jobless rate of 8.1 per cent, is this really what we want to show the world?

City of Toronto has a nine billion dollar annual budget. That's $9,000,000,000 samoleans, kids. Rob Ford tried to cut some fat out of it, but every attempted program cut had its little base of support, its own little constituency of outraged simpletons up in arms. 
Examples from the article of things that were not cut are:

Last week, the executive committee removed several contentious cost-cutting proposals, including the closing of library branches and the elimination of 2,000 subsidized daycare spaces funded by the city alone.

An additional $600,000 in cuts were removed Tuesday. Services that were saved include:

– community environment days

– city staff support for the Toronto Youth Cabinet and the Seniors Forum

– the Public Realm's Neighbourhood Improvement Program

As well, a recommendation to sell the Toronto Parking Authority was removed.

Community environment days were too important to Toronto's survival to cut?
But, give them credit, the city council did manage to find sufficient spine to cut $28,000,000, that's TWENTY EIGHT MILLION BUCKS, among which was The Christmas Bureau. The cutting of which "disgusts" Mr. Babad.  He's disgusted the city won't be paying union workers for doing something churches already do faster/better/cheaper. This kind of thing is why we have churches.

And this guy is a business writer?  Are you kidding me?

The comments echo my discontent with Babad's apparent lack of fiscal common sense.

However the best part of this is the Mop & Pail didn't get a penny of income from my wasted ten seconds of reading this dreck.

The Phantom

Another good reason to disable cookies.

Turns out Facebook has been observing your internet browsing even when you are logged out.

Most would assume that Facebook stops monitoring them after they leave its site, but technology bloggers discovered this was not the case.

In fact, data has been regularly sent back to the social network's servers – data that could be worth billions when creating 'targeted' advertising based on the sites users visit.

The website's practices were exposed by Australian technology blogger Nik Cubrilovic and have provoked a furious response across the internet.

I used to think I was paranoid for disabling cookies, popups, Flash, Java and Active X crap.  Turns out no, I wasn't. It's not just that they know your name and where you live, they know every damn website you've ever visited.
Seems to me there's a real market out there for software to secure your browser against people like Facebook and Google.
Imagine what the -government- must be doing.

The Unfortunately Not Paranoid Enough Phantom

Gun control working as intended.

Gun control operating in the Real World.

ABOUT 11 P.M. on Sept. 9, dozens of youths with bats and pipes descended on a tidy residential area of Port Richmond looking for white teens who allegedly had attacked an African-American kid at Stokely Playground a couple of hours earlier.

Two fearful white teens [yeah, try little kids] spotted Mark LaVelle on Indiana Avenue near Belgrade Street and asked for help. Suddenly, the mob appeared. LaVelle, who said that he didn't know the two kids, who looked to be 13 or 14, ran with them into his nearby house.

Then it got ugly.

They were standing on his steps. One shouted, " 'Something's going to happen now!' " LaVelle recalled in an interview Friday at his house. LaVelle got nervous and went back inside, locking his door with a deadbolt.

But the attackers pounded on his front windows and kicked his wooden door so hard, it flew open and some of them entered his house.

"The first guy hits me with a pipe. The second guy knocks me in the face. All I'm hearing is my wife and kids screaming," said LaVelle, who feared that the next time they saw him, he would be in a casket.

He said that he was able to push the attackers out the door, but then a third man - who had a gun - tried to extend his arm. LaVelle grabbed onto the gunman's lower arm and shoulder so he couldn't raise the weapon. Then, police sirens screamed in the neighborhood, and the mob turned and ran.

I don't know what to say about this.  The same type of thing happened to me at age 19, and it scarred me for life even though I WON the engagement and left the other asshole bleeding on the floor.  First thing I did was go take up martial arts and become a fearsome looking son of a bitch.  Works great at scaring punks, sucks in a job interview, the nightmares don't go away.

This is a failure of not just social policy, this is a failure of basic civilization.  Roving bands of armed teenaged punks confident enough to attack a grown man in his own home, over nothing?  That's serious shit my friends.

When we hear about mobs of Muslims hauling a Hindu family out of their house in New Delhi and beating them to death in the street, we say "tsk" and wonder how a nation could allow such things. 

WELL NOW WE KNOW, DON'T WE.

The Completely and Utterly Disgusted Phantom

A hopeful sign: Hippie Punching back in vogue.

This picture is dedicated to Kathy, who'd have punched the hippie bitch herself had she been there.


Wall Street, 80 arrested, some pepper sprayed.

Police said 80 protesters were arrested or ticketed at multiple locations for disorderly conduct, blocking traffic and failure to obey a lawful order but the number could rise.

Officials said protesters did not have a permit for the march and one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer, causing a shoulder injury. The NYPD was investigating the use of pepper spray.

That's the total content of the article that deals with what actually happened. The rest of it is a tale of woe, poor little innocent protesters unjustly attacked by the Blue Meanies.

Hippie punching is never a bad idea, you ask me. Frigging little weenies want to play flash mob, push people around and screw up traffic, they should feel some pain.

A fine won't make much of an impression, but pepper spray in the eye is a memory that will last a lifetime. The stupid chick in the picture above won't be quite so quick to lip off to the cops next time, no doubt about it.

The Phantom Meanie

Update: Welcome Five Feet of Fury fans. Kathy Shaidle should have her own program on Sun TV. Or at least Ezra should shut up and let her talk when she's a guest. ~:D

Big Brother wants your medical records.

The latest shoe to drop from the Obamacare nightmare: Health and Human Services will have access to your medical records. Yes, for real.

In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.

Yes friends, the federal government WILL have complete access to every shot you've had (or skipped) since you were born, your meds, your vision tests, any psych info you may have confided to your doctor, hospital visits, medical tests like colonoscopies, blood tests or CAT scans, the WORKS. Pictures too.

Just imagine what a well-meaning bureaucrat could do with that. Ever had a depressive episode? No guns for you! Ever had a heart murmur? You get the Special Diet and a fine if you're seen at McDonalds! Over weight? EXERCISE PROGRAM! In front of the TV that watches you! We even have that already, its called a web cam. Funny how 1984 keeps cropping up all the time.
And just imagine the sheer cost of doing it. The database alone will probably cost more than a squadron of B2 bombers, government computer systems always do. Then there's the staff, the policy wonks, the oversight committees, the scamming...

Two words my friends. Tea. Party.

The "I can seeeee you!" Phantom

Stingray is watching you.

Very informative article about how the cops track cell phones that are not even in use.

Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it's not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.

A stingray's role in nabbing the alleged "Hacker"—Daniel David Rigmaiden—is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.

Cops are behind the times with their Stingray.  Check it: right here on the Phantom Soapbox, the semi-autonomous flying WiFi and phone sniffer. Geeks built it for a giggle.  Its better than FBI kit.

Sometimes it is a burden to be so right, about so many things.  ~:D

The Phantom

Toldja!

Barry's going to have to fight for his nomination.  Told ya, told ya, told ya.  The giggle?  They think he's not LIBERAL enough!  It is to die laughing!

President Obama's smooth path to the Democratic nomination may have gotten rockier Monday, after a group of liberal leaders, including former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, announced plans to challenge the incumbent in primaries next year.

The group said the goal is to offer up a handful of candidates from various fields and areas where the president either has failed to stake out a "progressive" position or where he has "drifted toward the corporatist right."

"Without debates by challengers inside the Democratic Party's presidential primaries, the liberal/majoritarian agenda will be muted and ignored," Mr. Nader said in a news release. "The one-man Democratic primaries will be dull, repetitive, and draining of both voter enthusiasm and real bright lines between the two parties that excite voters."

I don't think these morons have a hope, but they DO have some MSM noise going now.  Enough noise for the Clintons to step into.

Barry = dead duck walking.  Stick a fork in him, he's done like dinner.

Go Tea Party!

The Phantom

This is the trial balloon for Hillary.

Here we go.  Remember I said Barry wasn't going to make the Dem nomination next year?  Here's the setup.

The most popular national political figure in America today is one who was rejected by her own party three years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans hold a favorable view of her and one-third are suffering a form of buyer's remorse, saying the U.S. would be better off now if she had become president in 2008 instead of Barack Obama.

The finding in the latest Bloomberg National Poll shows a higher level of wishful thinking about a Hillary Clinton presidency than when a similar question was asked in July 2010. Then, a quarter of Americans held such a view.

"Looking back, I wonder if she would have been a stronger leader, knowing the games and the politics and all that goes on," said Susan Dunlop, 50, a homemaker in New Port Richey, Florida. "I don't think she would have bent as much."

I've been noticing a lot of anti-Obama chatter on the MSM lately.  You don't normally see that kind of lipping off to a DemocRat prezzy, they save it for the Republicans.  So the shine has worn off, and now some of the other Great Powers in the 'Rat Party are going to buck the Chicago Machine and try to get their own horse to run.

IMHO, not being an expert or anything, we are going to start seeing a lot of these manufactured polls in favor of Hillary.  Possibly some more candiates will pop up as the deadline for the Dem nominations approaches.  Could be this is the trial ballon that launches the avalanche. Or not. 

But we shall see.

The Phantom

P.S. Even Hillary the grifter would be less of a disaster than Barry.  He's not even a thief, he's a saboteur.  Our one bit of good fortune is that he's an inept saboteur.