You are not paranoid enough.

You are nowhere near paranoid enough. Not even close.

Computer scientists have devised an attack that reliably extracts secret cryptographic keys by capturing the high-pitched sounds coming from a computer while it displays an encrypted message.The technique, outlined in a research paper published Wednesday, has already been shown to successfully recover a 4096-bit RSA key used to decrypt e-mails by GNU Privacy Guard, a popular open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. Publication of the new attack was coordinated with the release of a GnuPG update rated as "important" that contains countermeasures for preventing the attack. But the scientists warned that a variety of other applications are also susceptible to the same acoustic cryptanalysis attack. In many cases, the sound leaking the keys can be captured by a standard smartphone positioned close to a targeted computer as it decrypts an e-mail known to the attackers.

That's right. With the right software, a guy can glean the encryption keys off your computer with a smartphone. By -listening- to it. 

Tinfoil hat ain't tight enough, is it?

Camile Paglia agrees with The Phantom

Nice to see somebody famous for being smart saying lots of the things I've been saying for years and years.

She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service. "The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service—hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster," she says. "These people don't think in military ways, so there's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too. They literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality."

The results, she says, can be seen in everything from the dysfunction in Washington (where politicians "lack practical skills of analysis and construction") to what women wear. "So many women don't realize how vulnerable they are by what they're doing on the street," she says, referring to women who wear sexy clothes.

When she has made this point in the past, Ms. Paglia—who dresses in androgynous jackets and slacks—has been told that she believes "women are at fault for their own victimization." Nonsense, she says. "I believe that every person, male and female, needs to be in a protective mode at all times of alertness to potential danger. The world is full of potential attacks, potential disasters." She calls it "street-smart feminism."

On the same Drudge Report page with this article today is another one entitled "Female Marines Not Required To Do 1 Pull-Up". Under the Obama administration the Marines have been ordered to stop pretending that the chicks can keep up with the boys, and just take any female no matter how utterly unsuited for the physical reality of military service.

Go Camile!

The Phantom

Baby Food Jihad.

Courtesy of Small Dead Animals and FrontPage Mag, something you might want to know about.

The world’s largest halal food certification company is the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA), based in Park Ridge, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago. IFANCA’s symbol, a crescent alongside an “M,” can be found on different baby formulas, including ones made by leading brands Similac and Gerber, their Crescent-M dwarfing the O-U kosher hechsher sitting next to it.
Those seeking kosher food – even those seeking halal food – or anyone else who uses these baby food products may be shocked to find out that IFANCA is linked to international terrorism and bigotry.
IFANCA is working with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to create a national halal standards and accreditation body. In 2007 and 2008, ISNA, which was co-founded by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami al-Arian, was named by the United Sates Justice Department as a co-conspirator in the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Just this past September, the Canadian government stripped ISNA of its tax status in Canada for the financing of a Pakistani terrorist group.
IFANCA is an active member of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC). Other members include: the Mosque Foundation (MF), which has held fundraisers for individuals and groups associated with PIJ and Hamas; Islamic Relief (IR), which has been associated with al-Qaeda financing and that was named by the Israeli government a front for Hamas; Helping Hand (HH), which partnered with a Pakistani charity at the same time that charity delivered close to $100,000 to the residence of the head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal; and the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has used the internet to propagate materials degrading women, cursing Christians, and calling for the murder of Jews and homosexuals.

Read the whole article. Its interesting. Then maybe drop a line to your whole email list and your MP/CongressCritter.

I've been pretty consistent in saying that Lefties are a greater threat to Canada than Islamists, but I see no reason to give the head chopping terrorist pricks a bunch of free money.

The Phantom

Some Knockouts are more equal than others.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." George Orwell, Animal Farm.

Federal Justice Department employee on vacation in the Bahamas.

As I've noted many times, Conservatives read Orwell as a warning, the Left use him as an instruction manual.

Today's case:

Nation wide a whole bunch of Black pukes make a game out of punching old men, women and kids in the face, only commonality being that they are all White. Federal Justice Department response... crickets.

These assaults turn up all over the place on YouTube, clearly motivated by nothing other than bored Black pukes taking out their boredom on the nearest White person and making a video specifically to put on the internet... crickets.

Black puke punches White senior citizen in the face and kills him deader than a mackerel... crickets.

Black puke punches old Jewish guy in the face, State of New York charges him with a Hate Crime but from the feds... crickets.

One (1) White puke punches a Black senior citizen... HATE CRIME!!!

The Obama administration filed a federal hate-crimes charge Thursday against a man whom authorities accused of using the “knockout game” to target a black man, videotaping it, and then bragging about the assault to strangers.
The charge marks the first time the administration has taken action on a “knockout” case after the game became an Internet and media phenomenon. It chose a case in which the person accused is white, even though most other cases reported in the news have involved black assailants.
In this case, the man accused is 27-year-old Conrad Alvin Barrett, who the Justice Department says attacked a 79-year-old black man in Fulshear, Texas, just west of Houston. Justice Department officials said they brought the case to make a point about hate crimes.

Well, that's interesting isn't it? If I were this guy's lawyer, I'd be all over that like (excuse the expression) white on rice.  Clearly an unequal and improper application of the law.

Incidentally the White puke accused in this case appears from the article to be a crazy person off his meds. What does the Washington Times make of this?

The “game” has spawned a fierce cultural debate, with some commenters and law enforcement leaders disputing reports of a wave of attacks in New York, the District of Columbia and Midwestern cities such as St. Louis. Many of the victims in news accounts have been white and their assailants have been black, but hate-crimes charges have been rare.

Its a "fierce cultural debate" is it?  "... hate-crimes charges have been rare" have they?

Nobody in Media seems to have the stones to point out that:

• Black teens apparently in possession of all their marbles have perpetrated all but one of these assaults. We have video.
• The single White man charged out of many incidents is a bipolar nutjob.
• The "hate crime" designation is entirely political and has been used entirely to provide cover for politicians both (2) times its been used.
• What the Duck Dynasty guy said about gays in an ambush interview is a national disgrace, but the Knockout Game isn't worth covering. Because they aren't covering it. The internet is, bloggers are, but nobody else is.

So far as I'm concerned there's no difference between a White punk punching an old Black man and a Black punk punching a old Jewish man. Or a White but non-Jewish old man (as if there was an important distinction there.) Or a White woman. Or a White kid. Its an unprovoked assault.

The motivation for the assault is entirely unimportant so far as justice is concerned, because the important distinction is "unprovoked". Extra punishment because the State assumes you were extra hatey in your unprovoked assault is in fact punishment for having the audacity to do a crime while not being a member of a specially State protected pet group.

Some are more equal than others.

The mere fact that there exists in American law a "hate crime" designation should be viewed with considerable alarm by all Americans. The disgusting fashion in which this "hate crime" law is being used by the Holder Justice Department was implied from the moment the law was proposed, and was 100% predicted by anyone who was paying attention at the time.

The Phantom

Merry Christmas from Phantom Southern Command

Merry Christmas to all from The Phantom and the rest of the Desert Rats here in fabulous Phoenix AZ, and to all a good night.

Mikhail Kalashnikov died yesterday, CBC smears him today.

The Conservative habit to not speak ill of the dead is not shared by Canada's national broadcaster. Here's the first two lines of the story.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose work as a weapons designer for the Soviet Union is immortalized in the name of the world's most popular firearm, died Monday at the age of 94.
Kalashnikov once aspired to design farm equipment. But even though his most famous invention — the AK-47 assault rifle — sowed havoc instead of crops, he often said he felt personally untroubled by his contribution to bloodshed.

Now that's classy. I can hardly wait to see what they've got in store for Eugene Stoner.

From the very bottom of the article we come to something positive, perhaps as a reward for the top.

He said he was proud of his bronze bust installed in his native village of Kurya in the Siberian region of Altai. He said newlyweds bring flowers to the bust.
"They whisper 'Uncle Misha, wish us happiness and healthy kids,"' he said. "What other gun designer can boast of that?"

What other indeed?

"God made Man. Sam Colt made Men equal." Sam Colt and Mikhail Kalashnikov.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, with his famous invention. RIP.

The Phantom

Bunny huggers are dangerous lunatics.

Couple gets death threats after -police- capture and kill a -bear- that was rampaging around the couple's house for weeks.

A Lake Tahoe couple filed a police report saying they received numerous death threats and harassing messages after reporting problems with a black bear that was captured and euthanized by Nevada wildlife officials.

Richard and Adrienne Evans of Incline Village filed the report with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office on Thursday, the same day the bear was killed.

The couple says phone threats started coming Wednesday night to their home and Richard Evans' construction office after wildlife officials installed a trap outside their home.

The two say the bear had attempted to break into Adrienne Evans' car twice in recent weeks and succeeded Tuesday night, causing extensive damage to its interior.

Yeah, I'd have fragged the thing after its first attempt too. But the Evans's are nice, law abiding people so they let the cops do it. Now some animal rights fruitcake is sending them death threats. Who does that?

Ann Bryant of the Bear League says members of her citizens group are urged not to break any laws, but "emotions are going to be high as long" as bears are being killed.

There's a Bear League? So it seems. They believe in "People living in harmony with bears." Ann Bryant says "emotions are going to be high", which to me is Activist Speak for "yes I have a pretty good idea who called in these death threats, and I think they're not wrong, but I wish they'd shut up because they're making me look bad."

If I were Richard and Adrienne Evans, I'd be making arrangements with the local cops to make sure I didn't get SWATed in the near future. That's how these nuts roll.

There's also some really bad advice on how to manage bears that come on your property on the Bear League home page:

 If their experience tells them they can expect to find food where humans live, with no resistance from those humans, then look for food they will.

If instead they realize that people will defend their 'food caches and dens' and not allow the bears to feel Welcome, they will not bother us.

When a person is fearful and runs from a bear (something one should never do) by retreating inside he is telling the animal "You are welcome here…I am not going to defend my territory".

Too many bears now believe they can roam neighborhoods and even come into houses as this is what they have been told by humans reacting inappropriately during bear encounters, which often results in the death of a bear. Help us change that.

Sure, I'll help. Next bear shows up in my backyard, I'll give him a real dressing down. Right before he eats my head.  Or the family dog. Or a kid.

There seems to be an ever-increasing number of seriously deluded people living in our midst, and they are becoming bolder and bolder in their activities as they try to make the rest of us conform to their delusions.

Bear in the back yard = shoot, shovel, shut up. With special emphasis on the SHUT UP part, because as we know you can and will get more police action on a wildlife infraction that you will on murder.

Bonus: "Shut Up! Or we'll hurt your kid."

This is another Lefty classic maneuver. I post here the news item in its entirety. Five year old suspended from school for playing Army with his friends.

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. (CBS Charlotte) –  A 5-year-old boy was reportedly suspended from school after making a gun gesture with his hand on the playground.

His father, David Hendrix, was furious when he found out his son was issued a suspension for the gesture.

"He was playing army on the playground," Hendrix told WBTV. "I just felt like the punishment was way too severe."

The boy was issued a one day in-school suspension from his kindergarten class at Pinewood Elementary School.

Hendrix wanted the issue resolved and met with the school principle who did not want to drop the suspension, so he pressed further.

"I requested an immediate meeting that night with him myself and the school board, at their pleasure, anytime that night. And at that point they decided it was not worth the effort, not worth the headache and dropped everything right then and there," Hendrix told WBTV.

In the school's handbook, there is no mention of punishment for making a 'gun gesture' with your hand, WBTV reported.  Calls made by WBTV to the school went unanswered.

Love how the school board folded when it involved them getting off their asses after hours to go to a meeting.

Coming soon to a school near you. Be sure to never give them an inch, and never let anything slide.

The Phantom

"Shut Up!" they explained.

Two examples to add to the warehouse that houses this file. First, CNN descends ever farther down the road to abject Obama toadyism, silencing a man who won a huge victory for Americans in court against the NSA.

Conservative legal activist Larry Klayman got into an argument on CNN with host Don Lemon and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin when he was brought on to discuss his victory this week in a lawsuit challenging NSA surveillance, resulting in Lemon cutting him off the screen and Klayman comparing Lemon to disgraced former MSNBC host Martin Bashir.

Klayman's appearance Tuesday night on CNN was preceded by a profile of him that included a quotation from a former George W. Bush staffer saying his lawsuits were about "fighting for himself and his own, in my opinion, delusions of grandeur."

CNN, always a class act.

Second, Reddit starts actively deleting comments from, and this is a quote, climate change "deniers" on its so-called science boards.

A content editor on Reddit's science forum wrote Monday that the site has banned climate-change skeptics, and asks why more news outlets haven't done the same.

"About a year ago, we moderators became increasingly stringent with deniers," Reddit content editor Nathan Allen wrote in grist. "When a potentially controversial submission was posted, a warning would be issued stating the rules for comments (most importantly that your comment isn't a conspiracy theory) and advising that further violations of the rules could result in the commenter being banned from the forum."

Despite the provocative comments on both sides described by Allen, and Reddit's reputation as "passionately dedicated to free speech," the self-described "PhD chemist" decided it was time for the skeptics to go.

Mr. Allen the free speech hero then goes on to describe how nice and insult-free the comments are now that all the "deniers" are excluded. Or as some might say, now that its a greenie echo chamber where inconvenient truths are not allowed. Like that there is no global warming.

As always, Lefties are passionately devoted to free speech exactly as long as it serves their purposes, and not one second longer.

Remember my friends, Lefties do not have beliefs. They have tactics.

The Phantom

We are governed by -morons-.

Man steals $900,000 in government -salary- from the EPA by claiming to be a CIA operative. The EPA says "Duh? Uh... ok!" and pays him. For years and years. Even after being told he was stealing the money.

The Environmental Protection Agency was warned as early as July 2010 that a senior executive who claimed to be a CIA agent was collecting pay and bonuses not allowed by law but took no action for years, according to a new report from the agency's inspector general.

The EPA are the same assholes who want to seize your land because a puddle forms there in the spring runoff season.

Canadians who think this kind of thing isn't happening all the time here are dreaming in Technicolor. You make a big pile of cheese, pretty soon rats show up to steal it.

The Phantom

Boy, nobody saw this coming.

GPS bracelets ineffective at stopping young offenders. Shockah!

Lilo shows off her new ankle bracelet. And her other prominent features.

The report notes that DYRS  [Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services] is informing juveniles of these consequences but states that the agency is "not regularly holding youths criminally or financially responsible for destroying the devices." "The lack of criminal enforcement combined with the ease of cutting devices has made cutting GPS devices a significant problem," the report says. It goes on to note that DYRS "often returns absconders who tamper with GPS devices to the same or similar community placements with another device, even after multiple tampering incidents."

Catch and release, catch and release, catch and release... at some point your young offender realizes that there is no downside to robbing old ladies and beating them near unto death.

Tyran McElrath was already in trouble with the law when he sneaked through a rear window of a Northwest [Washington] D.C. home last year in the course of a burglary.
Inside, the 18-year-old encountered an 81-year-old woman who was legally blind. He savagely beat her and ransacked her house.
The crime is detailed in court records that also explain how officials quickly caught the youth: He was wearing a GPS tracking device assigned to him by the city's juvenile justice agency.

This is the same thing as cameras. Its nice to have video of the crime, but if nobody comes around and busts the criminals, pretty soon they learn the cameras aren't really watching them.

The point of having jails and such is to DETER criminals. As in, make them afraid of what's going to happen to them if they rob and beat people. If the punks doing the robbing and beating aren't concerned about getting caught, there's not much point in having all that expensive stuff, is there?

In many places, Ontario included, the justice system is becoming a sinecure for the apparatchiki instead of a social service that stops criminals. That is sure to end well, yes?

The Phantom

Connected? You be the judge.

Connected?

President Obama, who is aboard Air Force One on his way to a memorial service for Nelson Mandela in South Africa, will sign a plastic gun ban "via autopen," an aide tells the Huffington Post. 

"We expect the President to sign the reauthorization via autopen before the legislation expires at midnight," a White House aide is quoted as saying.

Then when he got there...

"Castro, he's shaking hands with Raúl Castro," said an excited Christiane Amanpour.

"As Christiane points out, President Obama just shook hands with Raúl Castro from Cuba," Chris Cuomo explained.

I guess you won't be able to buy a gun in the USA pretty soon. But on the bright side, you will be able to buy a reasonably priced Cuban cigar.

The Phantom

Festival of Mammon.

Four million dollar Christmas wreath.

Studded with 16 rubies and 32 diamonds, this Christmas wreath is probably not one to hang on the front door.
The decoration — believed to be the world's most expensive wreath — is on sale for £2.8 million.
Created by a London florist, the wreath, above and below, contains a vivid red 17.49 carat ruby, a 3.03 carat yellow diamond and a Helleborus flower head containing 22 loose diamonds totalling 2.64 carats.

You can run out and buy it right here! Yeah, get right on that eh?

Doesn't look like its worth much, you ask me.

Normally I'm not one to judge, but possibly they may be missing the point of Christmas. Just sayin'.

The Phantom

NYTimes editorial error!

Looks like somebody at the NY Times didn't get the memo. They're running a homeless kids story with a DemocRat in the White House. That's against the rules! According to author Andrea Elliott:

It is no place for children. Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America.

Dasani? Really? Why is this poor kid named "Dasani"?

Even her name, Dasani, speaks of a certain reach. The bottled water had come to Brooklyn's bodegas just before she was born, catching the fancy of her mother, who could not afford such indulgences. It hinted at a different, upwardly mobile clientele, a set of newcomers who over the next decade would transform the borough.

Whose fault is it that Dasani is soooooo poor? Besides the rich people who could afford bottle water that is.

Dasani's circumstances are largely the outcome of parental dysfunction. While nearly one-third of New York's homeless children are supported by a working adult, her mother and father are unemployed, have a history of arrests and are battling drug addiction.
Yet Dasani's trials are not solely of her parents' making. They are also the result of decisions made a world away, in the marble confines of City Hall. With the economy growing in 2004, the Bloomberg administration adopted sweeping new policies intended to push the homeless to become more self-reliant. They would no longer get priority access to public housing and other programs, but would receive short-term help with rent. Poor people would be empowered, the mayor argued, and homelessness would decline.
But the opposite happened. As rents steadily rose and low-income wages stagnated, chronically poor families like Dasani's found themselves stuck in a shelter system with fewer exits. Families are now languishing there longer than ever — a development that Mr. Bloomberg explained by saying shelters offered "a much more pleasurable experience than they ever had before."

It was them damn Republicans did it! Them and their "self reliance"!  And Barack Obama's management of the national economy had NUTTIN' to do with it!!!

Well, there's a picture of the apartment. I've lived in smaller, crappier places myself. My place did not have:

• Big screen TV.
• Electric piano
• Cell phones (yeah, plural)
• unwashed crap piled up all over the place
• Holes in the walls left unpatched by me, the renter
• seven kids.

Because:
I did not spend money on stuff I didn't need and couldn't afford.
I didn't leave my place looking like a disaster area.
I didn't have a bunch of children I couldn't look after or buy food and shoes for.
I didn't leave stuff busted when I could fix it myself. Hell, I even painted it.

So really? Andrea Elliott can pretty much k my a.

The Phantom

TSA: Keeping the USA safe one toy gun at a time.

This time they disarmed a stuffed monkey. Who had a two inch toy revolver made of plastic.

[Phyllis May of Redmond, Wash] and her husband were going through the screening process [in St. Louis Missouri] when she noticed that one of her bags was missing.

"And the (TSA agent) held it up and said 'whose is this?'" she said. "I realized oh, my God this is my bag."

May said the TSA agent went through the bag, through the sewing supplies and found the two-inch long pistol.

"She said 'this is a gun,'" said May. "I said no, it's not a gun it's a prop for my monkey."

"She said 'If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn't know if it was real or not,' and I said 'really?'" said May.

The TSA agent told May she would have to confiscate the tiny gun and was supposed to call the police.

"I said well go ahead," said May. "And I said really? You're kidding me right, and she said no it looks like a gun."

Yeah, I feel way safer now. Thanks TSA!

The Phantom

I was just wondering about Nelson Mandela...

... given the vast outpouring of grief from main stream media outlets upon his death.  I had this question.

Why is this man smiling?

Was South Africa better off while he was still in jail?

Just askin'.

Poor babies!

Shot heard 'round the world:

'Nothing distinguishes pension debt in a municipal bankruptcy case from any other debt."

These thirteen words come from a ruling this week by US Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes. In strictly legal terms, they're part of a larger decision that does little more than confirm the obvious: Detroit is bankrupt.

But make no mistake. The judge has set off a seismic shock that will reverberate far outside Detroit. For he has confirmed something fairly radical in the world of public employees: the law applies to workers for a bankrupt city much the same way it does to workers for a bankrupt company.

BOOM baby! Party over, public sector union geeks. You sowed the wind, now you will reap the whirlwind.

Cue the unionistas to start burning tires in the streets of Detroit. Because it wasn't frigged up enough already.

The Unsympathetic Phantom

Another great reason to turn off your TV.

A few years ago I cancelled my cable and shut off the TV. It was the commercials and movie trailers, mostly. Couldn't stand them. Since then, I haven't missed broadcast TV at all. If a movie comes out that I want to see, I rent it.

I also stopped listening to the radio. Commercials. Can't stand 'em. Media marketing wieners, take note.

Well, today I see that things have gone considerably down hill in TV Land since last I checked.

Violence has long been a staple of US cable television shows, but most producers have been coy about sex -- until recently, when an explosion of explicit content flooded the small screen.

The titillatingly-titled "Masters of Sex" is the most obvious example, but while there are no recent studies most industry watchers say fornication has never been as widely on display on TV.
Pushing boundaries, the series includes multiple simulated orgasms and acres of nudity, as well as sex toys/research tools like one named the "Ulysses," basically a clear plastic vibrator with a camera inside, which films what happens in orgasm.
"Certainly TV, including broadcast TV, seems far, far more able to tackle subjects it previously didn't address," professor of cinema and television Richard Walter told AFP.
Many modern shows "contain sex and violence in ways that would have been unthinkable not too many years ago," added the academic from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Call me a prude if you must, but "a clear plastic vibrator with a camera inside" is not what I want to be looking at for my after dinner viewing on a regular week night.

Now would be a perfect time to get off the electronic teat while your brain and moral fiber is still more or less intact. Because as we know from recent movie history, soft-core porn is not the bottom of the barrel. Ron Jeremy making a comeback in made-for-TV miniseries isn't even the bottom.

Remember, you can't un-see stuff.

Think "Running Man" and "Hunger Games". Hollywood will be showing torture/snuff films on cable TV in ten years in their ever more frantic efforts to titillate and gather viewers. "America's Funniest Fatal Accidents" or "Concentration Camp Booty Call" or some such.

I wish I was kidding, but I fully expect I can't even think of anything as obscene and f-ed up as what's going to be on TV in five years, let alone ten. Just imaging the grossest, most objectionable thing you can, and know you're not even close to what they're coming up with right now.

I think we should all arrange that they go stoney broke. It will look good on them.

The Phantom

Confirmation, NSA tracks your cell phone location.

Toldya:

The NSA does not target Americans' location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones "incidentally," a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result.

One senior collection manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA, said "we are getting vast volumes" of location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. Additionally, data are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones every year.

In scale, scope and potential impact on privacy, the efforts to collect and analyze location data may be unsurpassed among the NSA surveillance programs that have been disclosed since June. Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them.

See?  The Phantom is never wrong. They really do track cell phone location, and have been doing so for some years now.

The All Seeing Phantom

Officials' interests are not public's interests.

One of the reason we are having problems with government at all levels is that the interests of officials do not coincide with the Public Interest.

Case in point, the Associated Press finally woke up to this MRAP armored vehicle give away program.

For police and sheriff's departments, which have scooped up 165 of the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPS, since they became available this summer, the price and the ability to deliver shock and awe while serving warrants or dealing with hostage standoffs was just too good to pass up.

"It's armored. It's heavy. It's intimidating. And it's free," said Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, among five county sheriff's departments and three other police agencies in New York that have taken delivery of an MRAP.

Armored, heavy, intimidating and free. That's what's important to the Sheriff. He gets a new toy to haul out whenever he wants to scare somebody, and for parades, and maybe just to cruise around looking tough in.

Is it in the interests of the citizens in Albany County that the Sheriff's department be thinking about how they need to have a big heavy intimidating armored vehicle? No. There's pretty well nothing that POLICE should be doing that required an armored assault vehicle. They should be thinking in terms of sending one uniformed guy to knock on the door, not sending in a platoon of SWAT ninjas, an assault helicopter and a tank.

Because there's no war on, is there? If you need a tank, you're doing it wrong.

The Phantom

I always feeeel like, somebody's Watching meeee...

...and I got no privacy, woh-oh-oh.

Exhibit A, the Bat Drone.

Cheap like borscht.

With its 12-foot wingspan, the low-flying Bat, which maxes out at 70 miles per hour, was able to jam radar during tests. That means the Pentagon will soon have the option of deploying a flexible, largely undetectable drone with radar-jamming capability to protect manned aircraft against radar and surface-to-air missile guidance systems.

It also has a smokin' camera, the FLIR type you normally see mounted on helicopters and Predator drones. The thing is, those aircraft cost millions of dollars to buy and tens of thousands to service every month. The Bat Drone costs about the same as a decent car or small plane, and maintenance would be in the hundreds to low thousands every month. It launches off a truck from literally anyplace you can drive a truck, and you can recover it with a standing net off a soccer pitch or even a roadway. Its also autonomous, making it a fire-and-forget system.

In other words, its frickin' cheap and easy to use, so cops and others like the EPA will be LOVING this. Need eyes in the sky for something legit or just to stake out your cheatin' wife? Launch the Bat Drone, Alfred!

Exhibit B, night vision for your phone.

Snooperscope. Sticks to your phone.

Launching a crowdsource funding campaign starting tomorrow on HWTrek.com, Psy Corporation is aiming to raise $60,000 to help bring the Snooperscope to fruition.
<snippage>
The Snooperscope connects to your phone via a secure peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection and uses the screen to provide you with a look into the darkness draped world that your eyes could otherwise not see.
<more snippage>
If it is funded via HWTrek, the Snooperscope will retail for $100. But early birds that help with the crowdfunding campaign can score one for $40 if they act fast.

Basically an add-on lens and infrared filtering module with infrared LEDs to provide the light source, it will let you take pictures at night invisibly. Unless somebody else has night vision tech, then it will look like a flashlight in the dark. But if the builders are smart, they will let you turn the LEDs off and just use the lens/filter passively. Won't be FLIR, but better than stubbing your toes.

What do these technologies mean for Joe Sixpack? It means the dark of night is no longer sufficient cover if you want to sneak off for a quickie with the GF. On the other hand, you can watch the watchers.

The Phantom

New EPA attempt to seize power. Yes, another one.

"We're here to check water quality, citizen."

In the future, all puddles and dry ditches will be federally controlled "watercourses". If it ever had water in it, they own it.

The concern is that the move could give the feds authority over virtually any stream or ditch, and hand environmentalists another way to sue property owners. In other words, critics say, the government might soon be able to declare jurisdiction over a seasonal stream in your backyard.
If so, good luck getting a permit to expand building space on your property, or marketing your land to prospective developers.

Or, as a county regulator put it:

When it was released for public comment in October, Nita Taylor, county manager of Lincoln, New Mexico, told her fellow commissioners she interpreted the report as the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers seeking to "gain jurisdiction over all water in the United States, and all activities affecting all water; and to regulate water now considered entirely under state jurisdiction." 
Other commissioners agreed and suggested joining forces with neighboring county governments to fight the EPA on this front. They see federal bureaucracy getting in the way of their land management. "It's bad enough with the state in charge. Turning it over to federal agencies would be disastrous," County Commission Chairman Jackie Powell told reporters.

Lets say you have a nice little rural property. Lets say there's a county ditch in the front of the property, and in the back there's a low spot that fills with water in winter and dries out in summer. Pretty much describes every rural property in the USA.

The new rule says that if the ditch empties into a "watercourse" or "wetland", meaning any seasonal creek, stream, rivulet or swampy bit, the EPA now regulates your property. Meaning they can come around any time they like, walk all around the place, stomping through your house and outbuildings in muddy boots and generally doing whatever the hell they want. No warrants, no nothing. Good exercise for the EPA SWAT team.

Yes EPA has  SWAT teams. Plural. I'm guessing, but I think its safe to assume they have helicopters and armored vehicles too. Every podunk town sheriff has an MRAP armored vehicle these days, I can't see the EPA SWAT goofs doing without.

This is an example of what could happen to you if Somebody Important takes a shine to your nice little rural property.

The Hages owned the targeted property, Pine Creek Ranch, which was a combination of private land and federal grazing allotments that together controlled 1,100 square miles of Nevada's High Desert.  While the cow-calf operation is a normal sized ranch for the Nevada landscape (on average it takes 50 acres to feed one cow), the Hages controlled all the water on this vast landscape.  The water is gravity flow to Las Vegas and gravity flow to Los Angeles.
The Hages found themselves in the crosshairs of those seeking to destroy private ownership of America's resources through environmental regulations.  In July of 1991, after the U.S. Forest Service confiscated their last remaining cattle and believed they had finally acquired this beautiful ranch property without paying a dime in compensation, Wayne and Jean did something never done before – they filed a claim for the taking of the rights they owned on the federal lands and their private property in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Well that case, which started in 1991, was still not settled this year, 2013. The Hages won the case posthumously in 2008, but even now the appeals still grind through the courts.

You notice how the EPA effort to seize land rights has lasted through three US Presidents, one of them a Republican? That's because the federal bureaucracy doesn't really answer to mere politicians anymore.It does what IT wants to do.
What EPA wants to do is beat you up and take your stuff.

The Phantom

Multiculturalism is a Leftist tactic, not a belief.

Title of the piece says it all: "Why I am filing for asylum in my own country, Sweden. By Annika Hernroth-Rothstein"

Its a stunt, but worth doing just to get in the papers if you ask me. Here's why:

This is the self-image—the reality—that Jewish children in Sweden grow up with: being Jewish means being under threat of harm from bad people. This is where we are at.  One by one, our practices are being outlawed. Attacks on us are going unpunished. Politicians, journalists, and intellectuals describe us as barbarians. On November 9, the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a few hundred neo-Nazis marched through Stockholm in solidarity with their Greek allies in the Golden Dawn party. They marched legally, with police permits. Another few hundred leftists turned out in protest; a significant number were waving Hamas flags and sporting Palestinian kefiyahs. It made for a perfect synergy: a solemn anniversary, a day of shame, hijacked, with official permission, by two extreme and nominally opposite sides of the political spectrum, united by their hatred of Jews.

The main problem I see that Ms. Hernroth-Rothstein has is the mis-identification of her tormenters. Neo-Nazis and Leftists "waving Hamas flags and sporting Palestinian kefiyahs" are not "two extreme and nominally opposite sides of the political spectrum". They're two factions on the same side, fighting to be King of the dung hill.

Take this bit from the end of the article for example:

Is Sweden, is Europe as a whole, truly no longer willing to enforce its own standards of justice where European Jews are concerned?    
A month ago, I sought out the parliamentarian responsible for the latest anti-kosher bill and others like it. Feeling at once sad, lonely, and furious, I told him that instead of churning out all these different measures, each one aimed at outlawing yet another aspect of Jewish life, it would be much easier to write a single bill outlawing Jews. At least that would be honest. When he protested, I ended up arguing with him over the kashrut bill for almost twenty minutes, giving him the facts until, unable to refute me, he turned bright red in the face, leaned in, and said: "Well, you know us. This thing you call multiculturalism. All of that. We don't want it. Not here. Not in our country."
I was startled, but also relieved. Finally, some truth.

She shouldn't be startled. She should be expecting that. The differences between a Fascist, a Socialist and a Communist are to be found in the fine details of policy, not in the basics of their world view. They all look to Big Government to get what they want. They all think people are stupid and must be controlled. They all believe that "their" people are superior to all others. They all will use any manipulation to get power and get what they want.

Multiculturalism not a modern European socialist moral value. Is a TACTIC. It is just one more wedge to pound into the society to split groups of people apart and cripple the political opposition. Socialists do not have cherished values.

Dear Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics and Gays: the European (and American, and Canadian) Left does not love you. They are merely using you to beat up on the previous power structure. They are using you as props in their ongoing effort to gather all money and all power unto themselves, leaving most of the population in penurious servitude. You are suckers if you think otherwise.

I think with the Christian tradition on the ropes as it is, and limited government not even on the discussion list anymore, that people in visible minorities and the "special pets" currently benefiting from socialist policy are in for a hell of a shock coming pretty soon. Its not going to be Conservatives or tax cutting types that deliver it either. Its going to be the socialists. Mass immigration got them where they wanted to be, but they will abandon that policy and start shipping them out again as fast as they can the second it becomes convenient to do so.

Here endeth the lesson.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Small Dead Animals! 

Cops follow orders. Even illegal, stupid orders.

Man arrested for picking up his kid at school.

A Cumberland County father didn't want to wait in a long line of traffic to pick his kids up from school. That led to a series of encounters last week at South Cumberland Elementary, and now the dad's facing charges.

You can see the full video on YouTube.

If you calmly and reasonably assert your legal rights in a non-threatening manner... you will be arrested and have your ass chucked in jail. This guy is sooooo lucky they didn't taser him and then kick in his ribs.

Any questions?

The Phantom

More crow for y'all to eat: Black Boxes for your car.

Back on October 27th I said:

Over the years a whole lot of people have heard me say that someday pretty soon, the government is going to come for your car, your furniture and your frickin' washing machine.

That was the day we heard the Eurozone was going to ban the sale of "energy hungry" household appliances. I opined that they'd be coming for your car by 2020, with black-box tracking of every vehicle.

Well, I was wrong. They will not be coming for your car by 2020.

Announcing the 2015 Ford Crown Victoria.

They're coming for it NOW. Yes, right now. Today. For real.

Before the end of this year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will decide whether or not to begin the rulemaking process to mandate that newly manufactured cars include what is being called "vehicle-to-vehicle" (V2V) communications technology that constantly broadcasts via radio wave the car's location, direction, speed and, possibly, even the number of passengers it is carrying.
"NHTSA expects to make a decision on V2V technology by the end of the year," a spokesman for the agency told CNSNews.com.
That point was reaffirmed by NHTSA Administrator David Strickland in testimony in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee today, where he said the agency will "decide this year whether to further advance the technology through regulatory action, additional research, or a combination of both."
"We expect to issue decisions on light duty vehicles this year, followed by a decision on heavy-duty vehicles in 2014," he said.
NHTSA sees this technology as the first step on a "continuum" of automotive evolution that will ultimately lead to fully automated vehicles navigated by internal electronics linked to external infrastructure, communications and database systems. (Emphasis mine.)

If you parse that last sentence with the patented Phantom Bafflegab DeObfuscating Transmogrifier, you get "fully automated vehicles navigated by internal electronics", meaning your car, will be controlled by "external infrastructure, communications and database systems", meaning the government.  The government will control your car.

As in, they will decide if it starts up in the morning. They will decide how many people must ride in it. They will decide what lane you get to drive in on the highway. They will decide your speed. What path you take to work. What level of road tax you pay, on a minute by minute basis. Where and if you can park. If this dink David Strickland gets his way, they will be STEERING your car and you will be a trussed up passenger/prisoner within. If they don't like you, your car may well drive you to the police station. Or off a bridge.

They are going to do this thing my friends. Really, really going to do it. They have the money lined up and everything.

Judging by the Obamacare rollout, it will be an historic disaster. Not a disaster like the Titanic. More like the Dust Bowl, or maybe even the Black Death. Just imagine the geniuses who wrote the Obamacare website writing one that steers every car in New York City. 

Come on you lurking Lefties, use that tiny brain. Think of every truck and car in America running on a schedule created by a government committee. That's what is being proposed.

Now get out there and buy that 1960's/70's computer-free classic you've been thinking about, because it ain't going to be there tomorrow. Somebody will be driving it to work.

Big steaming plate of crow here, hipsters and Lefties. Come and get it. Eat up!

The Phantom

 

Adolph Hitler found alive and well, living in Wisconsin.

Herr Hitler has re-instituted the Gestapo and is currently using it to go after Scott Walker and his associates.

In Wisconsin, dozens of conservative groups and allies of Gov. Scott Walker are undergoing political intimidation from the left at the hands of a special prosecutor.

Subpoenas have been issued demanding correspondence and donor information of right-leaning organizations and individuals and raids have been conducted resulting in law enforcement officers taking computers and files in a secret investigation, according to reports.

"In recent weeks, special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has hit dozens of conservative groups with subpoenas demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaigns to recall Governor Walker and state legislative leaders," the Wall Street Journal writes.

Including raids on private homes!

Eric O' Keefe, director of Wisconsin's Club For Growth and one of the groups being targeted, said that he knows of at least three of the targets who have had their homes raided. During the raids, law enforcement officers confiscated computers and files. A person with knowledge of the search warrants said they came at the requests of a man named Dean Nickel.

"A person who has seen one of the Wisconsin search warrants tells us that the warrants were executed based on the request of Dean Nickel, who filed an affidavit for probable cause.," the WSJ reported. "Mr. Nickel is a former head of the Wisconsin Department of Justice Public Integrity Unit and has worked as an investigator for the GAB. Mr. Nickel told us he is a contractor for the GAB but wouldn't discuss the John Doe probe. GAB Director and General Counsel Kevin Kennedy declined to comment."

Oh sorry, it wasn't Adolph, it was some schmuck named Dean Nickel. My bad.

Looks like Dean-baby read Hitler's manual on how to do things though, eh?

Coming soon nation wide, if the Tea Party gains much more traction.

The Phantom

Can fire hydrants start a revolution? Should they?

This started out as a comment to something posted by Kate over at Small Dead Animals in response to this article here. She's pointing out another asinine regulation from the US EPA here.

Last American revolution it was tea. Will it be fire plugs this time?

I had a minor revelation last night while sleeping. Aka I had a nightmare, which I will now share with y'all. Some of my conclusions have been stated before by others or by myself, I've never seen it tied up in a bundle like this one. Guess the old brain has been chewing on this for a while now.

If you look at the amount of money the government takes off you, between all levels of government taxation and fees etc. it is roughly half of your total income from all sources. Including money you get from government, of course.

Now in the US, they are attempting to make people sustain even more confiscation in the form of health "insurance" which is really just more income redistribution in capitalist drag. If your Arizona "insurance" fee gets spent on mental health care for some indigent illegal in Texas instead of being invested against the day you need a hip replacement or brain surgery, it isn't "insurance" is it? It's a tax.

Please note that these "insurance fees" are being paid with after tax dollars.

Now add to this the burden of student debt incurred by every single person who wants to be more than a coffee slinger at Timmie's. Doctors particularly can carry as much as half a million dollars of debt from student loans on graduation from residency if they become specialists.  Captain Capitalism has been making this point again and again in his posts about the education bubble, and the information he reveals is extremely troubling.

Please note, also paid for with after-tax dollars, and being paid to institutions run by actual Communists and private in name only. Universities are all supported 99% by government one way or another.

Credentialism insures that the productive class lives in debt servitude into their forties. Bankruptcy does not relieve one of student loans either.

Finally, we have the nested regulations that are the subject of Kate's post. EPA demands municipalities replace fire hydrants with new, as yet uncreated parts. Municipalities will have no choice but to comply, raising taxes on rate payers to make up the shortfall from their budget created by needing the new parts.

Once upon a time I visited a pipe company in Hamilton Ontario which specialized in municipal water systems and hydrants. The didn't make the parts, they mostly just stocked them and maybe modified some things. It would amaze you how much they charge for a simple cast iron hydrant. Some of the parts for a hydrant cost over a thousand dollars. Parts, mind you. Simple castings with some machine work, like threads cut. Thousands. Of. Dollars.

Now, thanks to the EPA, the stock of parts for new hydrants is worthless scrap. Off to the scrap man or the after market, to be sold in the third world at a fraction of the price the command here. New parts to be purchased at even higher prices, because they are certified and made of pure lead-free Amazium instead of the usual cast iron, bronze and brass.

America's stock of after-tax dollars just went down another tick, didn't it? Somebody somewhere is making a boatload of money selling Amazium parts to municipalities, aren't they? No-bid contract too, bet you. Most of the money will be going to the "friends" who got that contract for the company, won't they? Donations, hockey tickets, dinners etc.

Multiply that by everything the EPA does, and the Justice Dept. and the Education Dept. and etc.

It came to me that this is the Soviet Union without the overt brutality. It's a web of regulation, tax and debt that insures nobody does anything without having friends in high places to give them a special deal.

For Canadians feeling smug I have two names: Montreal and Toronto. Or SNC  and Ontario Hydro, same diff.

Now cap it all off with the American Fed printing money. The deliberate effort to create run-away inflation in a deflationary market is the final piece of the puzzle. This is how socialism steals the last bit of your effort, by devaluing the money and equity you have saved over the years. Your only defence is debt, which you pay off with inflated dollars. Buy that house now, and use it's rising price to buy the stuff you want with a second/third/fourth mortgage.  Which worked until 2008, and left most middle class people with some semi-worthless toys, no savings and no house. They now rent. From a venture capital company which quietly bought up about two thirds of the empty houses in most markets at pennies on the dollar.

Prices are now slowly rising, as a result of this mass purchase. Where did somebody get the money to buy up half the houses in the USA? Friends, obviously.

The logical direction for this all to go is more of it. More EPA et al throwing their weight around. More unemployment. More tax. More debt servitude. More more more. It will continue until some bloated perv makes one demand too many and somebody with guts has nothing left to lose. Then it will hit the fan.

Showing once again the genius that Benjamin Franklin was: "A Republic, if you can keep it!" He expected failure, and it appears he was right to do so.

This concludes my revelation/nightmare for today.

As to the future now, given we should expect more more more regulation, tax and debt, pushier cops, more rapacious petty officials with more power and fewer scruples, and of course fewer government services, the question is:

what to do about it?

Comments section is open for your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen. My thoughts on the matter will make a later post.

The Phantom

Friendly fire! Confusion in the ranks! Yay!

Got my beer, got my popcorn, got my feet up. Yeah baby!

Poor reading comprehension is a hallmark of Lefty jerkweeds on the Intertubes. Usually its trolls in the comments section (who I delete mercilessly), or more famously elected officials so astoundingly unread that they think the word "niggardly" is a racist epithet.

Meaning that usually its a "Right-wing" blogger/official/media dude on the receiving end of the wrath that comes purely from the burning stupid of people who can't read. But not always.

This time we have what's known in the military as a "friendly fire" incident, which means guys on the same side shooting at each other. One Mr. Richard Cohen discovered this week that the problem with pandering to idiots is that they are IDIOTS and will inevitably turn on you out of sheer stupidity.

Cohen wrote something really slanderous about the Tea Party, and the Reading Comprehension Challenged Left went apeshit:

Like on Tuesday, when The Washington Post columnist wrote about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's chances in the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses and took a detour to consider Bill de Blasio, New York City's newly elected mayor, and his multiracial family:
"People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn't look like their country at all."
The baying for Cohen's head on the Internet quickly ensued — primarily from liberals who might otherwise consider Cohen, who has been a left-of-center presence on the newspaper's op-ed page for a generation, one of their own.

Well didn't HuffPoo and all the other webby types just start screaming! "FIRE HIM!!!" they said.  Mr. Cohen's response was hilarious:

"I don't understand it," said the columnist, who lives in New York City. "What I was doing was expressing not my own views but those of extreme right-wing Republican tea party people. I don't have a problem with interracial marriage or same-sex marriage. In fact, I exult in them. It's a slander" to suggest otherwise. "This is just below the belt. It's a purposeful misreading of what I wrote."

What he doesn't understand is why these idiots are shooting at -him- for slandering the Tea Party (aka Americans generally). Purposeful misunderstanding is a tactic that's supposed to only apply to the Righties, you don't use it on your own side.

I love this. Here's a really hateful media creep getting his just deserts, and the best part is its his own side that's hanging him for saying part of their own hateful catechism. Awesome.

Carry on, HuffPoo! Burn the fucker down! I'll just kick back and watch.

The Phantom

Putting a face to the Evil in our lives.

Since I was a small boy, every year I have experienced some new restriction.  Some new law that you can't do something you used to do, or go someplace you used to go, or buy something you used to buy. For a long time I just called this "life", and thought that it was the way of all things.

Kim Campbell

 Then in 1991 the Canadian government passed Bill C-17, also known as the Assault Weapon Ban. For the first time ever, government decreed that I was not allowed to OWN something that I already owned. Not only that, they were not going to reimburse me for my loss. Nor even pay me back the several hundred dollars of sales tax I paid for it. So I had no right to my own property. That single event was what woke me up and made me the pissed-off individual I am today.  Kim Campbell did that. Thanks Kim.

Alan Rock

 In 1995 the Canadian government passed Bill C-68, also know as the Gun Registry. For the first time ever, police did NOT have to get a search warrant to come in to my house without permission. They could come in at any time to check if my firearms were secured in the approved fashion. So I had no right to the security of my home and person, and no right to recourse against improper search and seizure by police.  Alan Rock and Jean Chretien did that. Thanks guys.

Jean Chretien

So in the space of four years, we lost three of our most important human rights here in Canada. Right to property, right to a secure home, right security from search and seizure.  (Later we lost the right to free speech to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but that's a different story.)

But they don't -look- like the people who destroyed the legal rights of a whole nation, do they?

In America this process is accelerating. 

Here's a face to put on it: Selectman Barry Greenfield, Swampscott Massachusetts.  This guy wants to give police the power to enter homes at will and verify that any firearms within are stored "securely".

Selectman Barry Greenfield introduced an enforcement discussion Wednesday that he hopes will lead to the safeguarding of guns in town — keeping them out of the hands of children.

In school shootings around the country,  guns have been taken from parents and used by kids, he said.

The selectman said state law requires Massachusetts gun owners to keep their firearms locked away or rendered inoperable.

The problem, he said, is that police do not have the authority, granted by a local ordinance, to enforce the law and inspect the safeguarding of guns at the homes of the 600 registered gun owners in town.

The selectman said he has spoken with Swampscott Police Chief Ron Madigan about this.

"We need the ability to enforce the state law," the selectman said.

Yes. Barry Greenfield thinks the town needs to have police inspect the homes of all 600 registered gun owners. For the children. He wants the cops to have the power to barge into your house anytime that is convenient for them, and demand you show them that your stuff is locked away in the fashion they specify. And if not, your stuff becomes their stuff on the spot.

Massachusetts Selectman Barry Greenfield

Barry Greenfield doesn't look like a bad guy, does he? Here's what he said in response to some pointed questions from one blogger:

[excerpted, emphasis mine]...I'm simply asking the question of whether an existing law can be enforced. I'm not trying to add any laws. I asked our board of selectmen whether we could look into potential methods of enforcement. Can the police conduct a investigation with due notice, similar to a building permit inspection or a fire inspection when you want to sell your home? If not, fine.
Can registered gun owners be asked to submit a receipt of purchase of a safe or gun lock to prove they are complying with the existing law? I don't know. My job is to ask questions and find answers. I'm not a constitutional attorney – I'm asking questions to find answers.
I'm a volunteer elected official. I'm trying to do what I can to prevent Sandy Hook happening in my town. And, for that, I get threats to my family and home and person. Not necessary. Whatever happened to civil discourse?
It's ok to disagree, I've spoken with more than 20 people from all over the country today and most have been willing to have a meaningful discussion. I'm trying to answer every call I can since my phone number is all over the internet. Sadly, the emails are not as productive.

It all seems so utterly -reasonable-, doesn't it? So... nice! He's just worried some kids might get hurt, right?

Yeah. He's so worried he wants the cops to come to your house, stomp around the place and maybe find something to charge you with if they don't like the cut of your jib, all because you have the unmitigated effrontery to own a gun.

Wait for him to suggest registered gun owners be charged for police time used up in the inspection, that's coming next.

The Phantom

The limits of tolerance have become weird.

All things have their limits, be they ever so hard to define. The famous phrase "I know it when I see it" was coined by US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart to define obscenity. The signs of other types of tolerance pushed beyond their breaking point are likewise hard to define, but we know them when we see them.

In these modern times one often finds such lines drawn in very odd places indeed. To wit:

Thieves steal and gang-rape pet dog whose owner had tied it up outside supermarket as she did her shopping

• Mixed breed Kessie received internal and external injuries in sex assault
• Owner Lena, 30, contacted by animal shelter who told her of attack
• Vets confirmed that another dog or Kessie could not have caused wounds

Compare and contrast the above article to this one here:

Gang of five men plied vulnerable girl, 15, with alcohol and cannabis before sexually abusing her

• Freddie Kendakuman, Mohammed Rafiq Abubaker, Roheez Khan, Chola Chansa and Abdul Huk all convicted of child sex abuse
• The five men would give teenager vodka then have sex with her
• They were not charged for five years even though she told social workers
• Victim suffered tough upbringing with drug-addicted parents

Maybe its just me, but doesn't the Daily Mail seem a lot more upset over the dog than the kid? In just the little headline blurb we have "gang-rape", "injuries", "assault", "wounds" and "tied up" describing the unfortunate experiences of a DOG.

What does the girl get? "Abused" and "tough upbringing". Doesn't even rate a "denied justice by worthless government assholes who couldn't be bothered".

Message is clear to me. Humans are no longer considered worth getting upset over by the minions of Big Media, only animals can be considered truly Innocent and worthy of a proper protective response. Because, you know, the stupid chick was probably asking for it, right? Besides, she was lower class and probably some sort of wog. And fat no doubt.  But harm a poor innocent defenseless doggie? That's an outrage!

Dear Daily Mail, FUCK OFF.

Clue for the Daily Mail. Express delivery.