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.

ADHD = lazy psychologist syndrome.

From France today, via Drudge Report, a paper in the British Medical Journal.  Convoluted path, yes?

At any rate, BMJ published this article regarding the recent surge in Attention Deficite/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the researchers noted treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) had risen massively in recent years, even though its causes are unclear and drugs can have adverse effects.

ADHD is a disorder blamed for severe and frequent bouts of inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity. Children and young adolescents are those who are most diagnosed with it.

But some experts fear the term ADHD may "medicalise" problems related to a child's personality or maturity level, the effects of poor parenting or other home problems.

In Australia, prescriptions for the stimulant Ritalin and other ADHD drugs rose by 72 percent between 2000 and 2011, while in Britain and the Netherlands prescriptions roughly doubled between 2003 and 2008, said the paper.

Having had some experience in this regard, I'm comfortable saying these guys seem to be on the ball here. If your kid gets a prescription for Ritalin from somebody, it better because he's climbing the walls 24/7 and has the attention span of a chicken. If its just that he doesn't pay attention in school, you should consider a second or even third opinion.

Bottom line, kids are getting ADHD diagnoses and Ritalin because many teachers and many psych professionals are lazy, sub-competent bastards. Let the buyer beware, my friends!

The Phantom

Washington DC: eight years, 39,000 gunshots

This is some alarming data.

About 39,000 separate incidents of gunfire have been documented by ShotSpotter's unseen web of at least 300 acoustic sensors across 20 square miles of the city, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The data, obtained through a public-records request, offer an unprecedented view of gun crime in a city where shooting a firearm is illegal in virtually all circumstances.

The gunfire logged by ShotSpotter overshadows the number of officially reported felony gun crimes by more than 2 to 1. More than one-half of the incidents detected by the network have involved multiple rounds of gunfire. In 2009 alone, ShotSpotter captured more than 9,000 incidents of gunfire.

This is the capital of the United States of America, which has the tightest, most restrictive, most fully DemocRat approved gun laws in the country.

Now, the really -interesting- thing is that the sensors don't cover the whole of DC. They only cover the parts where the cops already know all the crime is. There's a map included that shows in detail where all the shots were recorded. The areas where all the shooting is taking place are VERY SMALL. Which means the number of people involved in all this gunplay is also very small. Like a few hundred to maybe a couple thousand at the most. So few that a determined force of men could collect them all and chuck them in jail inside of six months. Just lie in wait, and when the ShotSpotter system hears gunfire, run over and bag them.

One might almost think that the police have orders not to arrest these guys.

The reality of liberalism: Face, meet gun.

Call it what you will, call it liberalism, socialism, collectivism, statism, Fascism or Communism,
the main feature of this mental disorder is the eagerness of its proponents to shout "There oughta be a law!"

Best possible example for today, a DemocRat's response to doctors opting out of Obamacare and Medicare/Medicade generally:

FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted. 

Usually DemocRats cover up their totalitarian impulses better than this Kathleen Murphy beeotch, but we all know this is the end-game they have in mind. Doctors won't play along with the regime's new health plan? If they don't accept Medicare/Obamacare patients then they will lose their license to practice medicine. New federal licensing "guidelines" will be introduced to make it impractical for them to practice in other states, and so restrict them to the one they presently reside in. No license portability, no freedom to accept cash payments or indeed any payments other than government ones, no solo practices outside major hospital groups because solo practitioners can't get hospital privileges.

Basically, just stick a gun in their face.

After all, it worked in Canada, didn't it? After a brief flirtation with civil disobedience and rebellion, Canadian doctors rolled over for the Douglas/Pearson/Trudeau single payer farce which now runs Canadian healthcare. And incidentally runs doctors into early retirement, nervous breakdowns and burn-out syndrome in ever increasing numbers.

But hey, healthcare is a RIGHT, right? People got a RIGHT to see the doctor and get fixed up, and for free too! Because you can't charge money if its a RIGHT! 

Friggin' doctors better toe the line!

That's the reality of the liberal agenda. Use of main force to cram all those square pegs out there into the nice uniform round holes liberals have prepared for them.

As for the rest of you who are not doctors, if you think the 50% taxation you are presently subject to is burdensome, wait until the liberals crank it to 75%. And they will, because The People have a RIGHT to your money.

Just so we are all clear on the stakes in the game.

The Phantom