From our "Trigger Happy Cops" file...

If you're an armed civilian, keep that roscoe covered when the cops are around. The life you save may be your own.

Those close to the family say the victim lived nearby and heard his neighbor's burglar alarm. Neighbor Jerry Wayne Waller then apparently went outside to see what was going on.

The 72-year-old man didn't even make it to the house across the street before he was shot. He died on his own property.

The elderly man, who was armed at the time, was shot and killed in his own driveway by police responding to a burglary call. "We heard five shots," Haskin recalled. They were just rapid fire one after the other."

Just bear this in mind the next time you feel like going and checking on that noise or that weird guy hanging around. The cops are a hell of a lot more likely to shoot you than any robber ever will be.

Oh, and the cop who shot this old man pop pop pop pop pop? He or she is going to walk. I prophesy this. It'll be workplace stress or some such bullshit, but the cop will stroll.

I also prophesy that there will be no violent demonstrations, car burnings or other uproar over this obscene execution. Not now, and not when the cops are acquitted. It'll just be "one of those things".

Which may be a bad thing in the long run. I mean, if WHITE people went and burnt some cop cars and maybe burnt down the local cop shop the odd time over something like this, maybe the friggin' cops would learn some trigger control and "check your target-check your backstop" drills. And maybe they'd put schmucks like this shooter on the rubber-gun squad BEFORE they kill some old guy in a PTSD flashback. There's no excuse for this shit. None.

The Phantom

Woolwich: why no help for the victim? Two words for ya.

Yesterday a whole bunch of people watched two Muslim freaks cut a guy's head off while yelling Allah Akbar, and then watched them stand around for twenty minutes while they told people to take their picture.

Now, on the internet today there are a variety of people bemoaning the lack of any man in the crowd with guts enough to stand up to these two cowardly murderers. Wondering why nobody in England has any balls anymore.

Here's your answer: Tony Martin.

Don't want to end up like THIS, do ya?

They all stood there, every one of them thinking to himself "If get into this, I'll go to jail for sure." And they were 100% right. The guy who capped one of those pricks WOULD go to jail in England.

Ask yourself what's scarier. Two skinny assholes with knives and a crappy pistol, or Her Majesty's Ministry of Justice? MoJ for sure, that's a no brainer.

So if you plan on traveling to Britain anytime soon, just remember: ain't nobody going to help you if trouble starts. Its illegal.

The Phantom

Face punching JF Sergant redux: Educating the young.

Well, I had some comments on Five Reasons I Should Punch JF Sargent In The Face. One for, two against.

First, the two against. Lets look at their arguments.

Kier said some things.

First: "So disagreeing with someone over pop culture is license to punch them in the face now?"

An extremely passive/aggressive method of claiming my argument to be of no value, which is notable in how completely it misses the point of what I said. This is not an argument about pop culture, this is an argument about JF Sargent's claim of racism against a large group, of which I am one member.

Then: "Even in the words were meant as an insult directly to you (and they certainly weren't) that's all they are-- words."

Again, the passive/aggressive calling into question of me, my argument, plus a new assertion that "words" are of no consequence. No support for his assertion of course, we're just supposed to take it on faith that words are of no consequence.

And finally: "As for punching the author in the face just because you perceive an insult that's not even there, no man. That's ridiculous."

Finally, an actual strong statement. My perceptions are incorrect, there was no insult, and I'm ridiculous for wanting to punch JF Sargent in the face. Argument from invisible and unstated authority. "Everybody knows" that's ridiculous.

The other guy is "anonymous", his argument is much lamer. First: "Yeah... you know he wasn't specifically addressing you right"

Um, yeah. I know. He's addressing a class of numerous individuals. Of which I am but one. We covered this.

Second: "But 1960 was during Jim Crow, so... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws"

This is just stupid.  FF#1 came out in November 1961. The laws that finished all the Jim Crow bullshit were the Civil Rights Act of 1964^[1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The movement to finally end discrimination against Black people had fully taken over the country by 1961 when Lee and Kirby published FF#1. The only holdouts were hard core Democrats.

So to recap, "words are just words", "he wasn't insulting you personally anyway", and (being generous) "the 1960's really were racist".

Words are just words.  By extension, comics are just comics and movies are just movies. Except when they're an attack on the character of an entire class of people. Except when movies are two hundred million dollar instruments of propaganda, being used to further a particular political agenda.

Looking at what JF Sargent said, piece by piece (and leaving out the lame asides and feeble jests):

"News has broken that Michael B. Jordan is being considered to play Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) in the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot. Naturally, comic book fans across the Internet are furious... because Michael B. Jordan is black. And in the comics, Johnny Storm is white.  But these Fantastic Four fans aren't mad because they're racist (they insist). No, their reasons are much more complicated, because ..."

#5 "It's Not About Race."  See, these complaints aren't about the character's race; they're about not changing the character's race. If that sounds confusing and contradictory, that's because it is.

Except that it isn't. Sargent quotes two different fans (alleged anyway) who make the argument I did, that Hollywood execs constantly do this chopping and changing stories, and it always sucks. One example of  a book bastardized beyond recognition by Hollywood springs forcibly to mind, Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Sticking a black guy in as Johnny Storm is the same crap they always do. It never works, and its always annoying to fans who just want to see the damn book/comic/whatever done as it already exists. They don't want to see some schmuck's bright idea of how to stroke all the right target groups in some marketing campaign. Every time a popular book or comic crashes and burns as a big budget movie, this shit is why.

What does that piece of historically verifiability get us here?

"Revealing that a big chunk of our fans are racist cockholes" doesn't seem like a great publicity stunt to us, but that's probably why we're not big-city publicists."

 

Nice!

#4. "You May as Well Just Change Everything Then!"  ...making Sue taller and changing Reed's hair color don't sound that weird to us because, you know, they're fictional people.

Yes they are. From a storyline that's been going on since 1962. That's the story we want to see, not some bullshit that got thrown together based on some executive's lame-ass, warmed over re-do of the same thing that sucked last time. But if you think that's true, you're a "racist cockhole."

Definitely need to punch this asshole.

#3. "This Ruins the Lore!"  Since Sue Storm (the Invisible Woman) is Johnny's sister, many objectors have pointed out that making Johnny black will mean that Sue must also be black, at which point the Earth will apparently explode...  ... which you should probably be thankful for, actually, because once people start trying to defend why having a black Sue Storm is a bad idea, things get awful pretty fast...

In other words, if you liked the Fantastic Four the way it was written, and not the New Improved Fantastic Huxtables that Mr. Sargent is all excited about, you're a "racist cockhole". 

#2. "It's Unrealistic!"  "If the silliest part of a movie about interdimensional gods with magic lightning hammers is that one of them is black, you are clearly racist."

Or maybe, just maybe, people are complaining its unrealistic because its a glaring non-sequitur. As in, it doesn't follow from the story line. Having one character be black in a white family -for no discernible reason- disrupts the narrative and makes the movie annoying. Why is Heimdall black in the Thor movie? Because they needed to stick in a black guy for marketing, not because it follows from the plot. Its Norse mythology, there are no black guys. Glaring plot hole, adds nothing to the story. Why is it there? Racism. People are afraid of being smeared with it.

#1. "Why Don't We Make Black Characters White, Then?"   "...because everybody likes comic books, not just white people."  "So actually, maybe racist nerds do have a good reason to be angry -- they're angry because the comic industry has outgrown them."

Why don't we make male characters female then? Why don't we make them ponies, everybody likes ponies right? Why don't we change every possible detail about the story to fit whatever bullshit political and marketing strategy the green-light guys come up with? Because then it won't be the comic book everybody likes. It won't be John Carter of Mars the famous and successful classic book, it'll be the Disney John Carter which lost so much money it nearly broke the studio. 

 

But I can't have that opinion, JF Sargent said. I'm a RACIST NERD for thinking that.

That's five things you'd get punched for if you said them to a random stranger in a bar. People really do get punched for saying shit like this. I've knocked guys down for less, and I'm not a particularly violent man. 

 

Because this isn't about a movie. Its not about race. Its about leveling a dire insult at an entire group of people because you think you're better than they are. Smarter. More moral. Racists are people its ok to hate, to revile. You label a whole group like that and make it stick, you can do pretty much anything you want to them. Beat them up, take their stuff, whatever. Hey they're RACISTS, they deserve it.

Words have meaning. They have weight and power greater than any bullet. Ask a Japanese man who lived in Canada during WWII, they'll tell you. Ask any Russian. Ask a Jew. They know.

 

Questions, comments from the hipster gallery?

Vince Li needs to get out more.

Do we all remember Mr. Vince Li, the friggin' nutjob that cut off Tim McLean's head on a Greyhound bus in 2008? And then ATE him? Yeah?  Ok then, get ready for this:

A man who beheaded a fellow Canadian bus passenger should be allowed to spend more supervised time in the outside world, his treatment team recommends. Two psychiatrists taking care of Vince Li at the Selkirk Mental Health Center told a review board that Li has stopped having hallucinations and has been a model patient, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Yep, poor ol' Vince baby is getting all poorly from being cooped up in the looney bin there, and he needs to go for walkies out with the rest of us. None of us predicted that, did we?

I feel for the guy. Really, I do. And I think he should be able to have his "supervised" community visits. I have only one condition. Vincent Li can hang out here with me on the same day ALL the Canadian laws against concealed carry of firearms get repealed. If he gets to come out of lockup, I get to carry a .45 Colt. In honor of Tim McLean, if nothing else.

I think that's eminently fair. Don't you?

The Phantom

Update: Missing Ancaster man found dead.

Tim Bosma has been found. Sadly it was too late, police discovered his body in Waterloo. One man is in custody and presently charged with the murder of Mr. Bosma, police are continuing their investigation to discover any accomplices.

Google it to discover any unseemly details, the little bit I saw was more than what I really wanted to know.

One detail that is worth spreading as far as possible, Tim Bosma had no known connection to the man charged with his murder. As well, Mr. Bosma has no record with police. He was a good man, with a good family. Utterly random happenstance that these killers picked him.

The Phantom

Five reasons I should punch J.F. Sargent in the face.

What is it about comics these days that pushes all my piss-off buttons? I think the fact that the medium has been hijacked by a bunch of Lefty propagandists who have no respect.

Latest annoyance courtesy of Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury, who posted an excellent snarky comeback in response to this piece of Leftist hipster assholery by  J.F. Sargent :

The 5 Most Insulting Defenses of Nerd Racism.

News has broken that Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle) is being considered to play Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) in the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot. Naturally, comic book fans across the Internet are furious, because they've had it with all the reboots and just want to preserve the magic of the 2005 original -- oh, wait, no. They're angry because Michael B. Jordan is black. And in the comics, Johnny Storm is white. But these Fantastic Four fans aren't mad because they're racist (they insist). No, their reasons are much more complicated, because ...

...and then he goes on to list five completely bullshit excuses to call ME a racist.

Because yeah, I used to read a lot of comics. and yeah, I liked Fantastic Four. And hell yeah, I think the notion of casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Freakin' Storm in an FF movie makes exactly as much sense as casting Latoya Jackson to play Harry Potter. Or John Hurt as Shaft.

Oh wait, I'm not allowed to make that argument, because its RACIST!.

#1 "Why Don't We Make Black Characters White, Then?"

"The thing is, the only reason these characters were white in the first place was that comic books were created in a time when nobody would have printed a book about a non-white superhero (having female superheroes was difficult enough, and they were handled with something less than dignity). But nowadays, the people responsible for these characters are trying to make their properties as inclusive and welcoming as they possibly can, because everybody likes comic books, not just white people."

Uhm, dude, the Fantastic Four was created in the 1960's, not during Jim Crow. So really, just fuck off.

Of course what its really about is power tripping studio corner office types who think they're smarter than... well EVERYBODY. Smarter than Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, for sure. Smarter than the audience, who all either know who Johnny Storm is supposed to be or don't care at all about the Fantastic Four. That would be ladies more than eighty years old like my mother, or recent immigrants who don't know what a comic book is. Illiterate goat herders from the Somali desert, for example.

Everybody who would ever give a shit to see a Fantastic Four movie knows Johnny Storm is a blonde white guy. But some RETARD is trying to make his way up the greased pole at Disney by playing PC politics with characters. That is the -only- reason for making that decision.

Why does this upset me? Because I like the Fantastic Four. I would like to go see a Fantastic Four movie that does not SUCK. I would like to see a Fantastic Four movie that is fun and exciting the way Iron Man was. The way Spider Man was. The way The Avengers was. Hell, even Superman.

A Fantastic Four movie with a black guy playing Johnny Storm? That will not be the movie I want to see. It will suck, because clearly the production will have no respect for the source material. It will suck even harder than the Thunderbirds movie directed by Johnathon Frakes back in 2004. And that's saying something, because that flick lost thirty million bucks due to sucking like a two dollar hooker.

Johnny Storm as a black guy? Genius! They can cast RuPaul as The Thing, Carol Pope from Rough Trade can be Susan Storm (what do you mean she's too old? Ageist!)  and Mr. Fantastic can be George Takei  in a wheelchair! Cover all the bases.

No? It'll be stupid, you say? You're such a racist.

On the bright side, when the new Fantastic Four movie crashes harder than John Carter of Mars, and for exactly the same stupid ass reason, and  loses a hundred MILLION dollars, and ends up in the $5.99 bin at Walmart six months after its release, Disney will fire the living shit out of Mr. Corner Office. All I have to do to ensure that happy outcome is stay the hell home and save my money. Which I will most certainly do.

The Racist Phantom. (Whatcha gonna do about it, hipsters?)

 Update: Welcome hipster dweebs. Please read the arguments -carefully- before spouting off in the comments section. Work on that reading comprehension, gentlemen. 

Upperdate: Well, here we are in July 2014 and this post is still getting traffic. Comics movies are if anything even more full of shit than before. The new Pinacle of Perversity is DC's Wonder Woman. First teaser picture of Princess Diana is a skinny little girl in bondage leather. Because OBVIOUSLY the Amazons would be right into the S&M scene, right? And obviously a woman who was practically born with a sword in one hand and a bow in the other would have little teensy arms like pipe cleaners and delicate little clavicle bones like a sparrow.

Upperupperdate: I'm confused now.

Why yes, the IRS -does- have an official enemies list.

IRS admits that they've been deliberately targeting Conservative groups. No, not on The Onion.

The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added.
Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.

Oh, and if you believe Lois Lerner about the "not motivated by political bias" thing, I understand she has a bridge in Brooklyn she'd like to sell.

The Phantom

Another day, another vicious state clampdown.

Well, the Defense Distributed guys finally got what they wanted. Their download is shut down by the US government and DEMOCRAT Senator Chuck U. Schumer of Noo Yawk is demanding that the creation of guns on 3d printers be made illegal. He's demanding that the print files for the printers be made illegal. He's demanding that distributing the print files on the InterTubes be made illegal. Because everybody knows:

'We're facing a situation where anyone - a felon, a terrorist - can open a gun factory in their garage and the weapons they make will be undetectable. It's stomach-churning,' he said.

Yeah, that's right! Because a plastic zip gun is SO much more dangerous than a pot full of nails.

I get so TIRED of this Schumer guy and his incessant lying. Let me count the ways.

1. The gun requires a bullet. Which is made of brass and lead. Metal detectors can catch a dime in my pocket at the airport, they can catch a .22 cartridge inside a bulky plastic zip gun. Making Chuck U. a LIAR.
2. The printer which this particular gun is made on costs $8,000 to $10,000 dollars. With that much money I can buy a metal lathe AND a  Bridgeport mill AND tooling AND steel and make REAL GUNS instead of these plastic zip guns. And I'd have enough left over to buy a car too. Making Chuck U. a LIAR.
3. The printed gun in question is a ZIP GUN. I'd link to one of the millions of sites and YouTube videos which detail exactly how to build one of these shit-simple devices, but I don't want a visit from The Man and I don't want my blog taken down, so I'll resist the temptation. Suffice to say I can make a zip gun better than the plastic printed one out of a piece of iron pipe (or anything else that's vaguely round) with nothing more than a hacksaw, a rubber band and a nail. Mythbusters made a cannon out of a tree stump. Making Chuck U. a LIAR.

So chuck you, Mr. Schumer. And the horse you rode in on.

Disclaimer: Because I know that every blog post and email in the entire world is archived forever by the US government, I would like to make it known to any and all government officials of whatever capacity at whatever future date that
A) I am a Canadian citizen,
B) I do not own a metal lathe nor a Bridgeport mill, nor a 3D printer,
C) I have never made a zip gun and have no plans to do so, and finally,
D) Because I am a law abiding citizen of Canada, fully cognizant of the present de-facto policy of Canada that forbids armed self defense to its citizens, should I find myself in need of a gun I will call 911 and have the police deliver one to my residence just like I'm supposed to. Who knows, I may still be alive when they finally get here.

The Ever So Law Abiding And Harmless Phantom Peasant Dude. (Please don't hurt me!)

Big Brother don't need no warrants!

Yesterday we saw that Big Brother NSA records every phone call and email made in North America.

Today we see that Big Brother FBI can search and read all that stuff without a search warrant. ACLU here, and CNET News here.

From the CNET News piece:

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don't need a search warrant to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files, internal documents reveal.

Government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET show a split over electronic privacy rights within the Obama administration, with Justice Department prosecutors and investigators privately insisting they're not legally required to obtain search warrants for e-mail. The IRS, on the other hand, publicly said last month that it would abandon a controversial policy that claimed it could get warrantless access to e-mail correspondence.

The U.S. attorney for Manhattan circulated internal instructions, for instance, saying a subpoena -- a piece of paper signed by a prosecutor, not a judge -- is sufficient to obtain nearly "all records from an ISP." And the U.S. attorney in Houston recently obtained the "contents of stored communications" from an unnamed Internet service provider without securing a warrant signed by a judge first.

Really, why would the government go to all the trouble of recording EVERY FREAKING THING that gets said in the entire freaking country if they weren't going to listen to any of it?

Of course they listen to it. They probably have "pre-crime" watchdog programs that preemptively identify "pre-criminals" by who they call, who they email and what web sites they visit. Making the Boston Marathon bombing even more of a stunning fail than previously. There's probably hundreds, maybe thousands of little search-nerds beavering away producing intelligence on potential terrorists that then gets ignored by the corner-office types up the food chain.

Unless its on an NRA type, a Tea Partier or a Republican. You know, -dangerous- people. That probably goes right to the top like a treed cat.

The Phantom

Ancaster man missing, heads up.

A man was kidnapped in Ancaster on Monday night, here's the CTV page with particulars.

Suspects are two white males around 6 feet tall, more particulars at the Facebook page here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/635646136465008/

Saw the poster at the gas station this morning, and talked to some of his relatives in Caledonia later. I'm told his cell phone was found at the on-ramp to the 403 at Highway 52. Satellite photo of that can be seen on google maps by entering "Ontario 403, Hamilton, Hamilton Division, Ontario, Canada".

So heads up and eyes open out there. Maybe we could get lucky and find this guy.

The Phantom

Update: Tim Bosma's body was found yesterday, May 13th 2013, by police. One man is in custody and charged with murder, investigations continue. Police are making it very clear that Mr. Bosma had no connection to his killers that they have been able to discover, that Mr. Bosma had no police record of any kind and was an upstanding, good man.

My personal condolences to the family, of whom there are many.

Big Brother records EVERY phone call you make. CNN says.

Big Brother's big plastic ear can hear you.

I have for quite a while now been saying, without any proof mind you, that the US government records and stores every single thing that goes across American servers and American wires. I believed it to be true because A) they can and B) that's the kind of people we have working in government these days.

Now I have some backup.

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two [Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased Boston bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev]. He quite clearly insisted that they could:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

"All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak".

Taken alone, one ex-FBI guy talking tough on CNN could be anything. However we have had a lot of other people come out and say the same thing, that the American government alphabet soup types have been collecting and storing every single email, phone call, web surfing request, Google search and etc. You name it, they've got a record of it.

With the active compliance and support of the phone companies, software companies, hardware companies, ISPs and etc. Google and Apple both have minute-by-minute records of everyplace your Android or Apple device is. Apple records and stores every Siri search request. They say you can turn that stuff off (and I have!) but come on, would any of us be shocked and appalled to find out that it doesn't -really- turn off? Or that it can be turned on remotely by a government official?

So, I just thought it was worth telling y'all that EVERY DAMN WORD you utter into an electronic device gets stored forever, by people who are not your friends. That's not tinfoil hat, that's the fact Jack. I speculate that they've been doing it for at least the last ten years too. That would be my wild-assed guess. Could be quite a bit longer for all I know, they have had all the money in the world to do it for a really long time. Technically I suppose its been possible since Regan left office.

Canada? Yes, us too. I would not be shocked to find that the RCMP has been quietly recording everything without telling anyone. The Americans probably record us anyway. Because they can.

Oh, by the way. We know for a fact that -any- phone can be turned on remotely and used as a listening device. Yours, the one the guy you're talking to has in his pocket, or some lady next to you. If you're out in public, they can hear you if they want.

Just sayin'.

The Phantom.