Wrinkle In Time loses ~$100 million bucks.

Incoming.

When you take a popular book or comic, and you jack everything in it around to your "new vision!" for the movie, including changing the race of characters, deleting existing characters and adding new ones, all to make a purely political statement, it will bomb. Like a B-52.

"A Wrinkle in Time" hit US theaters on March 9 after heavy marketing promotion by Disney and abundant media appearances by cast members like Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, and director Ava DuVernay.

The movie bombed. It made $33 million in its opening weekend, compared to $202 million by "Black Panther" and $258 million for "Avengers: Infinity War." It has grossed just $126.8 million globally to date, according to Box Office Mojo and confirmed by Disney.

Disney did not disclose in its earnings report exactly how much it lost on "A Wrinkle in Time," but we can arrive at a ballpark figure using the film's reported budget. The New York Times reported that the movie had a combined production and marketing budget of around $150 million, while Deadline pegged the budget much higher, at $250 million. Studios typically make back around half of the box office gross, which means Disney lost between $86 million and $186 million on "A Wrinkle in Time." (Yahoo Finance has reached out to Disney for comment on the film's losses.)

Disney's 2012 movie "John Carter" famously flopped so brutally that Disney had to take a $200 million writedown on it. (The film had a $350 million budget and grossed just $284 million at the box office.) Disney did not disclose a writedown on "A Wrinkle in Time," but the film was the clear and only big loser in Disney's smash-hit box office performance in the second quarter.

We know that Disney, of all the companies in Hollywood, knows exactly how all this works, and they have mastered getting it right. Infinity War, $258 million, bigger opening than Titanic. Black Panther, huge hit. Huge. John Carter, huge, massive flop, was only six years ago. All those guys still remember that, it is very fresh in their minds.

The same thing that killed John Carter killed Wrinkle In Time. Therefore, it is not an accident. It's a propaganda film. You can tell by the casting alone. A $100 million dollar gift to the DemocRat Party of the USA from the numerous SJWs that "work" at Disney.

I'll be catching it on Netflix, if at all.

The Phantom

English majors and actors to be replaced by robots.

We all know that the actual career path of people majoring in English and Drama (and History, the various "Studies" and etc.) usually involves waiting tables and slinging java at Starbucks. Eventually they either get Real Jobs or they get married, but barista is where a very large number of young scholars end up for a while.

This will no longer be the case.

The robot revolution is here, at least for your morning caffeine fix. Cafe X Technologies is a new, $25,000 automated barista designed by the award-winning team behind Dr. Dre's Beats headphones and speakers: the Ammunition Group. The Jetsons-style coffeemaker can sling 120 cups of joe per hour at specs that satisfy finicky roasters (and project partners) like Intelligentsia, Ritual and Equator.

This is a small-volume, fancy machine that is designed to be a showpiece bit of performance art in the lobby of a fancy hotel or big office building. Even at that, it is only $25k. It replaces a human, and you're going to see a lot of machines like this Real Soon. Because $15 minimum wage, that's why.

She's praying this thing doesn't take her crappy job from her.

The joke of course is the the revolution already happened, and we didn't notice. The machine that makes your Starbucks or McDonald's cappuccino is a fully-automated unit that costs more than $25k. Your "barista" is a minimum-wage schlub who pushes a button and moves the cup from one place to another. They don't know how to make a cappuccino, or a latte, or any of it. The machine does everything.

This is why your Starbucks Italian-style coffee drink tastes boring and crappy. Because it isn't made on a proper cappuccino maker, and the kid running it knows -nothing-. Which is why I don't go to Starbucks if I can help it. I go to Second Cup, or any ACTUAL ITALIAN CAFE that has a manual cappuccino maker, and a manual grinder, and a barista that knows an Americano from a latte. Then I get a good coffee, and it is usually cheaper than the Starbucks trash. And the workers are usually nicer than Starbucks too, without the forced, brittle, fake cheerfulness.

The Phantom Coffee Snob

New York Attorney General resigns because #MeToo.

Another giant falls!

Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, has long been a liberal Democratic champion of women's rights, and recently he has become an outspoken figure in the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. As New York State's highest-ranking law-enforcement officer, Schneiderman, who is sixty-three, has used his authority to take legal action against the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, and to demand greater compensation for the victims of Weinstein's alleged sexual crimes.

[snippage]

Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women.

There you go, another top-level Dem with a taste for S&M and beating women, and he's been pretending to be a big fan of #MeToo this whole time. Massive moral and political corruption in that most socialist of cities, NYC. Wow, didn't see that coming, right?

Leaving aside anything else out there, either legal or moral, this incident illustrates the danger of mainstreaming S&M as an acceptable practice between "consenting adults." People can continue to pretend it's all just sex, and role-playing is good clear fun, and all the rest of that happy horse shit we've been told these last 10 or 15 years. But it's horse shit.

No, beating and whipping random women at sex clubs is not okay. No, tying up your squeeze-du-jour and making the bitch cry uncle is not okay. It is double-plus not okay if she begs for more. Those people are suffering from major mental illness, the kind that is a short step from suicide. Wanting to beat them is another serious mental illness.

Everyone instinctively knows this, but it has become increasingly "edgy" to promote this type of abuse in books and movies.

It's not edgy, you twerps. It's fucked up. Stop doing it. Stop talking about it.

The Phantom

Update: This is what I'm talking about. Metropolitan Art Gallery gala. Lots of creepy "art" involving bondage. Ew.

Hollywood B-list virtue signaling, with armed guards of course.

I'm sure the irony here is utterly lost on all of them. Showing up to an anti-gun, anti-NRA protest with armed, private security.

In video captured by Ben Howe, NRA member Will Haraway asked Milano's security if he was armed and the man clearly wasn't amused by the question.

"I'm going to ask you to leave," the guard said repeatedly, physically backing Haraway up by getting in his face.

"How far do I have to go?" Haraway asked.

"I'm going to need you on the sidewalk," the agent responded.

Yeah, pleb. Get on the sidewalk where you belong. The video is really quite disturbing, pure physical intimidation in its least refined form. Completely illegal of course, the security guard has zero legal power to require anyone to do anything. He's an armed civilian.

I guess Alissa Milano needs another part.

The Phantom

Time crystals!

This is extremely cool.

Ordinary crystals such as salt or quartz are examples of three-dimensional, ordered spatial crystals. Their atoms are arranged in a repeating system, something scientists have known for a century. Time crystals, first identified in 2016, are different. Their atoms spin periodically, first in one direction and then in another, as a pulsating force is used to flip them. That's the "ticking." In addition, the ticking in a time crystal is locked at a particular frequency, even when the pulse flips are imperfect.

It ticks! So cool!

The Phantom

Apparently white people are not allowed to do yoga anymore.

This is so friggin' half-caf latte I can't even.

I had never been to a yoga class where I hadn't lost awareness of my surroundings, but under the pagoda in Tallala, my attention would just hop from one colored Lululemon sports bra to the next.
I felt surrounded by mirrors, like I was watching the classes from outside myself, poised and ready to Instagram the next shape I made and acutely aware of my complicity in Mary-Kate's spectacle of appropriation.

 

Because, y'know, Mary-Kate is a white chick. White chicks can't yoga like brown chicks, everybody knows that. Make mine a soy latte.

I knew that when a cultural practice is co-opted by the masses it wasn't just about class, that there was also the loss of meaning and transfer of power when tradition becomes mainstream, but here I was, taking notes down on my phone about my fellow yogi's favorite brand of carob chocolate.
I knew I was complicit in a festival of self-absorption and cultural appropriation but there was a small part of me that had sipped the kombucha and thought transcendence might strike me. I was secretly waiting for some sort of insight. In the mornings, we were encouraged to write out our thoughts in a stream of consciousness and I hoped for even a single line of profundity but the closest I got was earnest descriptions of how beautiful the beaches were.

 

You want an insight? You are a vapid, catty bitch. Start with that.

The Phantom

Update, welcome you vast unruly horde from Instapundit!

Toronto van attack update.

The update today, two days after Monday's atrocity on Yonge Street, is that there's no update. There is no further news.

Well, there is "news," as in the police are dribbling out the names of the dead one at a time, with lots of coverage of each person. The names of the wounded have been posted too. Fortunately for me, nobody I know.

Then there are the inevitable pictures of concrete barriers rushed into place at Union Station to protect pedestrians, and the equally inevitable bleating by the usual morons about how we are "Sterilizing The City!!!" by putting up barriers.

So far there's no graffiti saying "Thanks, Justin!" on the new barriers, but in the wise guys of the world's defense it's raining today, and concrete doesn't take paint well when its wet. First nice day, they'll be out there.

There is also a continuing buzz about "Incels" on the major Canadian media, which is a confirmed 4Chan troll. Clearly they know its a troll, and they're running with it anyway because they've got nothing and they want to make those Alt-Righties look guilty.

In actual news, the mayor of NYC knew all about this van driver guy on Monday. As soon as the name came out, US authorities said he was on their radar for terrorism. None of that is in the Canadian media. But it is in the Brit and US media, if you duckduckgo the driver's name.

So that's your update today; lots of sorrow, special interest pieces and kvetching about barriers, zero information about the van driver. In two days they've peeled him like a fricking grape, and he's rolling over on his grandmother at this point. We get told nothing.

Welcome to Canada, where "you can't handle the truth!" is public policy. Shut up and get back to work, taxpayer.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome, vast swell of readers from Instapundit! Incidentally, today is May 2nd and we still have nothing better than "Incels" from police and government officials. Apparently the newspapers are printing "some guy in the jail said off the record that Driver guy said..." and that's what passes for news in Canada. Terrorism? Mental Illness? Suicide-by-cop? Something else? We don't know.

#Metoo turns to #ScrewYou!

The much ballyhooed $5 megabuck assault lawsuit against Russell Simmons has been dismissed "with prejudice."

A $5 million lawsuit brought against Russell Simmons by aspiring filmmaker Jennifer Jarosik has been dismissed, according to court papers filed Wednesday and obtained by TheWrap.

According to the papers, the suit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that it cannot be filed again at a later date.

"Mr. Simmons is hereby dismissed with prejudice from this action in its entirety including all claims asserted by Ms. Jarosik in the operative complaint," the court papers read.

The "with prejudice" part is the important bit, meaning the court found the complaint by Jennifer Jarosik to be without merit. Which is legal-speak for "Dude, this is bullshit."

While it was nice to see a lot of disgusting Lefty perverts getting their dicks caught in the car door, the female fruitcakes and gold hunters have frigged it up for everyone. As expected.

So here we are, back at "due process" again. It was a nice tantrum while it lasted, eh Lefties?

The Phantom

Van attack in Toronto.

So today a guy ran over a bunch of innocent people on Yonge Street. They released a name, I'm not going to repeat it here.

Its very hard to know what to say about this. So many people are dead, through no fault of their own, so many more wounded, and horribly wounded too it must be said. They were run over by a van, on the sidewalk.

The perpetrator was captured alive. Everything he knows will be drawn out of him in due time. I can wait before offering an opinion.

However I will say one thing. I'll be strongly reconsidering entertainment events in Toronto. Any situation where you're lined up on the sidewalk is a perfect target for vehicle attacks. As we know from London and Europe, as soon as there's one attack, there are more coming. There is nothing at all the police can do to prevent it, short term. The only solution is a personal one. Don't be a target.

My condolences to the families of the dead, my prayers for the wounded.

The Phantom

A great musician passes: RIP Avicii.

From the press release:

Artist, DJ, and producer Tim Bergling, a.k.a. Avicii, died Friday afternoon in Oman, according to a statement from his rep. He was 28.

"It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii," the statement reads. "He was found dead in Muscat, Oman this Friday afternoon local time, April 20th. The family is devastated and we ask everyone to please respect their need for privacy in this difficult time. No further statements will be given."

Avicii is all over my playlist. This is a real tragedy, whatever the circumstances were. God speed Tim. The music in Heaven just got better.

The Phantom

Nice rant by Sarah Hoyt.

Sarah is in fine form on PJ Media, talking about John Ringo, one of my favorite authors of all time, being DIS-invited to an SF/F convention because the con management was afraid they couldn't guarantee his safety.

I became aware that something was going on between ConCarolinas (a science fiction convention in Charlotte) and my friend John Ringo, in a tiny private group on Facebook.  This is literally the group for my innermost circle, the people I trust.

They were talking about Ringo being Mau-Maued out of ConCarolinas.

I perked my ears up at this, first because of course, ConCarolinas has been a Baen adjacent con, meaning that Baen authors have more or less always attended, and I've heard stories of "so we were at con Carolinas, when—" and second because I lived in Charlotte for seven years and still have friends there.

It's been known for years – as long as I've been published in SF/F – that conservatives get invited to be guests of honor at conventions far less often than leftists in SF/F and infinitely less than red-diaper-babies in SF/F, but ConCarolinas seemed like a weird place for a conflagration of snowflakism.

I went over to John Ringo's page and read about it.  As far as I could tell, a bunch of people on Twitter had been badgering both the con-committee and the other (very leftist) guest about inviting someone who was… what the heck was he?  I don't know.

In the beginning, the accusation against him was that he was "Puppy Adjacent."

Sarah goes on to point out that Sad Puppies has been over for two years. Even the Rabid Puppies of coat-tail rider Vox Day has been over for a year, which tells you that every last candy has been beaten out of the WorldCon pinata. that thing is -empty-.

Which means the SJWs don't have anyone to push back against. We stood up to them, spit in their collective eye, flipped them off, and then walked away. Leaving them there alone, with nothing to do.

So they did what bullies always do. They ran after us and yelled for a while, two years for the Sad Puppies. Every other post from the Usual Suspect SJW blogs (no, I'm not giving those pricks a free click. If you're dying to see, check out Vile666 or floppy cameldung) has been raging on at those evil Sad Puppies. Now, this year, they can't stand it that we're still ignoring them. So they started shoving. I think we're up to three separate incidents of self-identified conservatives being dis-invited or pre-emptively barred from attending SF/F conventions. At least two, could be more as I don't pay that much attention to the drama. Joke's over, right? Moving on, right?

Nope. This is the hill the Lefties have chosen to die on. They're going to see to it that every single SF/F con out there excludes conservatives. One death-threat at a time if need be, apparently.

To which I must say, be my guest, you useless assholes. I can't boycott SF/F conventions any harder than I already am.

I used to stumble through a couple of comic book conventions a year, but last year they started frisking everyone. I have to put up with being frisked at the airport. They have guns. I do -not- have to put up with being frisked at a fucking comic book convention. I am not going ever again.

Conventions are entertainment. They are supposed to be fun. If every panel and every booth and every speech is a political soapbox used to bash my life, my culture and my freaking skin colour, am I going to pay money for that? Am I going to go someplace where people scream at me in the corridors because I have a Monster Hunter International patch on my jacket? No, not really. I'm not that different from other people. I expect that the conventions which allow SJW twitter mobs to dis-invite conservative authors will presently find out that SJWs are too few in number to keep a convention alive. Too bad, so sad.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome, vast wave of Kate McMillan's Flying Monkeys! She's got the Big Wing up tonight. ~:D

Starbucks abases itself.

Starbucks, after this shirtstorm here, will grovel and kiss the feet of SJWs.

Starbucks said Tuesday it will be closing all of its company-owned restaurants in the U.S. during the afternoon of May 29 to conduct a racial-bias education program.
"I've spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it," Kevin Johnson, CEO of Starbucks, said in a statement Tuesday. "While this is not limited to Starbucks, we're committed to being a part of the solution. Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities."
Some 8,000 of the company's U.S.-based locations will participate so that nearly 175,000 employees attend the training program that will address implicit bias, promote inclusion and help prevent discrimination.

This is the Lefty equivalent of the Moment of Silence on November 11th for Remembrance Day.

Update, from Ace of Spades who has this to add:

26. I don't even want to defend Starbucks; I want them to have the full taste of Social Justice Warrior progressivism. If this is the company's ideology, then they should live that ideology to the full.
27. I have a feeling Starbucks is just claiming this policy until the Social Justice Warrior locusts find a new business to harass, and then, when they do move on, they'll quietly shift the policy back to "Paying Customers Only," but I think it would be a hoot if conservatives monitored them to make sure they're sticking with this new, idiotic policy of letting anyone just sit and lounge without actually buying anything.
28. I think it would be funny if rightwing blogs made sure they were continuing this policy and made sure everyone knew they were backsliding when they do, inevitably, backslide into a non-insane position.
29. Because fuck them.

Indeed.

Why #BLM is doodoo.

Dear Black Activists: this is why we don't like you.

Two black guys got arrested at Starbucks. Racism, right? Well, no not really.

"What did they get called for, because there were two black guys sitting here, meeting me?" Yaffe asks in the video. "What did they do?"

Commissioner Ross said in a video posted to Facebook on Saturday afternoon that police responded around 4:40 p.m. Thursday to a 911 call reporting a disturbance. The men had refused to leave the cafe after asking to use the restroom without placing an order, which violated Starbucks policy, staff members told police.

The men were detained after they refused officers' requests to leave as well, Ross said.

"The police did not just happen upon this event — they did not just walk into Starbucks to get a coffee," he said. "They were called there, for a service, and that service had to do with quelling a disturbance, a disturbance that had to do with trespassing. These officers did absolutely nothing wrong."

How to avoid getting arrested at Starbucks: buy the cheapest thing on the menu before you ask to use the bathroom. I, a white dude, have had to do this before.

The Practical Phantom

TV discovers humor. But only in Belgium, sorry.

It seems a show that pokes fun at all kinds of things the New Puritan Progressives have forbidden is getting huge play in Europe. Shockah!

"This is the show that laughs with people who you should not really be laughing at," says its presenter, comedian Philippe Geubels at the start of each Sunday night episode on the Flemish public broadcaster Een.

The line-up of "victims/guests" on the first series included obese and poor people, dwarves, those with terminal and mental illness, gays, blind people and people of colour.

Geubels first invites them to spend a few days in the country with him where they tell their story to him and a documentary filmmaker.

A few months later the comedian invites them to a packed theatre filled with people like them to watch him do a hugely politically incorrect comedy routine based on them or their afflictions.

It's cripple humor. Just not the rubber-crutch kind, which is nice of them. Clearly these people are fascists.

So how many fascists are there out there, who needed a laugh?

The show has been watched live or on replay by more than a quarter of the country's Flemish-speaking population, according to Een, and praised for helping to take on embarrassment and prejudice.

"No matter how bad your situation is, you still have to be able to laugh. Not to laugh at people but to laugh at the little everyday things," Geubels told a theatre full of people with terminal illnesses and their families in one show.

The show's producers Panenka said it had already been bought to be shown or adapted in the US, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Denmark and Norway, even though the first series has only just ended.

Yep, as suspected, everybody in Europe is a fascist. And America. And Britain.

The Fascist Phantom

Actual fascism vs. the pretend kind.

Pretend fascist, Tony Robbins. No, really.

I didn't discuss famous life coach/motivational speaking Tony Robbins much in my series on Jordan Peterson and the wider phenomenon of self-improvement as gateway to fascism.

Point of information, this website, Cameltoe Flopatron, is nominated for a Hugo award for fan sites this year. So really, no surprises here. I advise against going there, that's the first line in that post and it goes rapidly downhill from there. Floppy Cameltron sees fascists everywhere. According to the flopster, Ayn Rand is a fascist. You'll feel stupider for half an hour after reading it

Actual fascist, this guy.

Richard Pan is a far left California state senator.

Pan recently introduced legislation to crack down on free speech on the internet.
Pan's legislation would force online publishers to utilize state-sanctioned fact checkers to approve content before it is posted online.
Jon Rappaport reported:
The bill is titled "SB1424 Internet: social media: false information: strategic plan."
It targets social media based in California. But as you read the bill, you see it appears to define social media as any Internet blog, website, or communication.

Its very simple, really. Under this bill you apply to a government censor for permission to make a blog post. You can say anything you want, as long as its government approved. Just like in Communist China, where it appears Mr. Richard Pan might be from. But he's a good progressive. Great guy.

So remember kids, if you want a Hugo rocket of your very own some day,  Richard Pan is a "brave, freedom fighting progressive." But Tony Robbins, Jordan Peterson and Ayn Rand are all "fascists."

Just so we are all clear what's what.

Update: Welcome, huge wave of visitors from Instapundit! ~:D Sarah Hoyt buried me again!

Update, Richard Osborn-Brooks murder charge dropped.

Here's some news, Mr. Richard Osborn-Brooks has been released by the London police, and they are saying he will not be charged with murder. Somebody blinked.

The pensioner arrested over the killing of a serial burglar who broke into his home has today been released with no further action.

Richard Osborn-Brooks, 78, allegedly stabbed career criminal Henry Vincent, 37, at his home in south-east London this week, leading to the burglar's death.

He was arrested on suspicion of murder but has now been told that no action will be taken following discussions between the Met Police and Crown Prosecution Service.

On Friday afternoon, Mr Osborn-Brooks' house was boarded up and CCTV cameras were installed amid fears the pensioner might be attacked. 

Interesting comments from MPs on the issue:

A former Tory defence minister last night called Mr Osborn-Brooks' treatment at the hands of police 'absurd'.

Sir Gerald Howarth said: 'There's clear law on this. If an intruder armed with a weapon suffers fatal injuries, that's his fault. There should be no mercy for people like that.

'It's not only absurd, it's wholly immoral that a householder seeming to protect himself and his family and his property should be the subject of a police investigation - and he should not have been held in custody.

'There is clear case law on this involving a man some years ago in Fulham who had a sword on his wall. Confronted by an intruder, he ran him through with the sword. The householder was acquitted by a jury. The police force is in crisis. It is completely consumed by political correctness.'

Tim Loughton MP, a member of the Home Affairs Committee, said: 'Due process of law needs to take place but every constituent who has contacted me about it said (Mr Osborn-Brooks) should be treated as a hero rather than being in the frame for a crime.

'You are talking about a vulnerable 78 year-old pensioner with a disabled wife in a house interrupted by two burglars. Why on earth is he being investigated for murder?

There is no question that Mr Osborn-Brooks was innocent of murder. They took the man on Wednesday and didn't release him until Friday, over a mater of lif-or-death self defence. Which is obscene.

The police were clearly operating -outside- the law in this case, for reasons as yet unexplained. The lack of any sort of case must have been pointed out to them rather strenuously by the Crown attorney's office. One suspects higher influence being brought to bear, and then frustrated by publicity.

The Phantom

Knife control: The parody becomes reality.

A common joke of very long standing among firearms enthusiasts is "What next, knife control?"

Last week, TheBlaze reported the number of murders in London, a traditionally safe city, surpassed the number of murders in New York City in February and March for the first time in modern history. The murders were mostly carried out in stabbing attacks with knives.

Now, London Mayor Sadiq Khan is taking action — by implementing knife control.

What is Khan doing?

In response to the spike in crime, Khan deployed over 300 additional London police officers to the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife. In the U.S., such policies are very controversial and possibly violate the Fourth Amendment, but in England, police are able to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife.

The "tough, immediate" measures also ban home deliveries of knives and acid, two of the most common weapons in London today.

You can get home delivery of acid in London? Dang!

But here's my absolute favorite part here. I did not make this up, this is a direct cut-and-paste quote:

"No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law," Khan wrote on Twitter, sharing his new policies.

Seriously, this son of a bitch said "there is never a reason to carry a knife."

Keep voting socialist, my Leftard friends. Pretty soon, they'll be saying "there is never a reason to carry..." and it will be something you need. Like a cane because you have a bum leg. Or an umbrella.

The Disarmed Phantom

Ian Thompson vs. Richard Osborn-Brooks: which is the greater outrage?

In the news today, seen first at Small Dead Animals, is the story of Mr. Richard Osborn-Brooks, who was attacked by two armed men in his own home, and managed to drive them away by allegedly stabbing one of them.

A 78-year-old homeowner has been arrested by murder detectives after a suspected burglar he fought with in his own kitchen died of a stab wound. 

The pensioner, named locally as Richard Osborn-Brooks, was upstairs asleep with his wife when he was woken by the two men breaking into his suburban home in Hither Green, south-east London last night.

He was forced into his kitchen by one of the men, who was armed with a screwdriver, before a struggle ensued.

The intruder, a 38-year-old man, was left with wounds to his chest and local residents say he collapsed in a neighbouring road and died in hospital.  

The homeowner was initially detained on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm but was later arrested on suspicion of murder. The case has been compared to that of Tony Martin, who was jailed for killing an intruder at his home in 1999.

The break-in comes amid a surge in violence in the capital, with 49 people already having died in crimes in London in 2018. Last night's death brings the toll to 50.

So, arrested and charged with murder by the British Crown after defending himself in his own home, and letting the perps escape to boot. That's pretty bad. But I can top it.

Ian Thompson.

Early one August morning in 2010, four masked men shouting death threats began hurling firebombs at Mr. Thomson's home. One of his pet dogs was injured; several fires in and around his home were set.

Mr. Thomson, an experienced firearms instructor, called 911 immediately. He also armed himself with a .38 calibre revolver, stepped outside his home and fired three shots — one into his lawn, and two into a stand of trees. His attackers fled, and were later arrested. All four pleaded guilty to arson and disregard for human life, and were sentenced to between two and three years in prison.

So ended the first threat against Mr. Thomson. The next began immediately thereafter.

Mr. Thomson was charged with four crimes: careless use of a firearm, pointing a firearm and two charges of careless storage of a firearm, one for each of the pistols he had removed from his gun safe (the second, a 9mm pistol, was never fired during the incident). The first two charges were dropped — it's hard to imagine a more cut-and-dry case of lawful self defence than firing on men trying to burn down your home while you're inside it. But the Crown insisted on pursuing the charges of careless storage.

What tyrannical hell hole does Mr. Thompson live in? Port Colborne Ontario, down the road from me.

So while it is plain the the British government has decided that law abiding citizens are not allowed to use force to defend themselves, the Canadian government has decided that we are not to be allowed to even frighten deadly attackers away. We are expected to let them burn our houses down.

Just so we are all clear what the deal is, okay?

The Phantom.

Gun Control: working well in London!

Offered without further comment: London England, (an island, remember) has a higher murder rate than New York City. For real.

Gun control for the win!

The Well Regulated Phantom

Safe Shorts: for when you have no gun.

Gun control and immigration working well in Germany. Seen first at Small Dead Animals, Safe Shorts!

A woman in Germany has created anti-rape shorts, which began as a personal project after she was attacked while out running.

There are two types of Safe Shorts – underpants and running shorts – and both are made from slash and tear-resistant material, and have a lock as well as an alarm.

The shorts are fastened with a cut-resistant cord, which is attached to the waist or pelvic area (depending on which style you have), and then secured with a clip that has a coded padlock.

You can access this padlock in seconds with the code, but if someone else tampers with it, a 140 decibel alarm sounds.

The wearer also has the option of setting the alarm off themselves, should they feel threatened.

The shorts come in black, but you get a choice of lock colours.

The shorts were created by Sandra Seilz from Germany, who was attacked by three men while out running.

Turning personal tragedy, governmental breakdown and societal collapse into a business opportunity! Safe Shorts! For when the government won't let you protect yourself from rapists, the private sector has a solution! Wrap your nether regions in kevlar running pants. Because that will totally work, right?

But hey, at least she's making an attempt, within the obscenely small space left to her by EuroLeftists. Top marks for trying.

I like this bit farther down in the article.

Of course, in an ideal world, men would learn not to rape, and women could go about their lives without fear of being violated.

However, we don't live in an ideal world – not even close – and until these men learn to view women as human beings and not objects, it makes sense that women should want to take preventative measures in high risk situations.

You can exercise your right to not be raped all you want, but it doesn't mean you're safe.

Reminds me of something I said once.

The Phantom

Trump EPA to scrap fuel mileage regulations.

This has the potential to be a true game-changer in our lives, my friends.

The Trump administration is poised to abandon America's pioneering fuel economy targets for cars and SUVs, a move that would undermine one of the world's most aggressive programs to confront climate change and invite another major confrontation with California.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce in the coming days that it will scrap mileage targets the Obama administration drafted in tandem with California that aim to boost average fuel economy for passenger cars and SUVs to 55 miles per gallon by 2025, according to people familiar with the plans.

The agency plans to replace those targets with a weaker standard that will be unveiled soon, according to the people, who did not want to be identified discussing the plan before it was announced.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said a draft determination was undergoing interagency review and a final decision would be made by Sunday.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Trump was elected to do. Who else but The Donald could tell the Greenies to stick it like this?

I fricking love Donald Trump. This is awesome!

The Phantom

Gun Control: No lie too ugly.

Larry King stays classy:

We got the ex-talk show host Wednesday at E. Baldi in Bev Hills, where we asked what he thought of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' NYT op-ed calling for the amendment giving Americans the right to bear arms to be repealed.

Larry says he's completely on board [with repealing the Second Amendment], adding that the antiquated provision needs to be rewritten due to unclear language ... and also, because it's "real" purpose is moot now.

He backs a widely discussed theory that the Second Amendment was pushed for by Southern senators who simply wanted to fend off potential slave uprisings. How about that?

Yeah, how about that? Larry King, historically illiterate douche-bag. So unexpected!

The Phantom

For those too young to remember, adultery is A-Ok!

Thanks to the Drudge Report for pointing this out:

New York Times, DEC. 19, 1998...

Adultery is a private choice. The important rejection of it comes from love, not intimidation. The reason not to commit it is that it is likely to devastate someone you love if he or she learns about it. And the only way that person won't learn about it is if you tell a lot of lies. Telling a lot of lies eventually harms your ability to maintain a trusting relationship; secretiveness undermines intimacy. And tending a committed, intimate relationship is a deeply meaningful part of life, though we all know it has its share of bad days.

While biographers have described people who are exceptions and seem able to countenance adultery and marital intimacy at the same time, by and large the reason not to choose adultery is that the pleasure it offers is taken in trade for harming more enduring love and more important loved ones.

But publicly humiliating anyone for consensual adultery is draconian, and wrong. It teaches children cynicism. What they see is how little respect there is for privacy, and how gratuitously and harshly adults will harm one another to gain a little power. And using adultery or any aspect of consensual adult sexuality as a weapon in political battles is more abhorrent than the act itself.

You might say that how and why we disapprove of adultery is as important as whether we do.

Janna Malamud Smith

Listen carefully: I am lying right now.

Also found at Drudge, this timely reminder:

"Is It Only About Sex?" wrote the New York Times in August 1998.
"Maybe It Is About Sex," wrote Slate the same month.
"High crimes? Or just a sex cover-up?" Time magazine wrote the next month.
That was the tack back then, after 50-year-old Bill Clinton was accused of having sex with a 22-year-old White House intern, often in the Oval Office. Clinton vehemently denied the allegation, wagging a crooked finger as he spat: "I want you to listen to me. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. I never told a single person to lie, not a single time, never."
Before the whole mess unraveled, Clinton also said: ''It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life."

So that's pretty much my whole comment for y'all on Stormy Daniels and her massively dilated pupils on TV last night, talking about an affair that took place in 2006, not in the White House last week. An affair that, to my uncertain knowledge, no one is actually denying.

Now she can get back to her strip club tour of the USA. Peel in peace, Stormy baby.

The Phantom

Gun Control: determined to repeat history?

From today's Washington DC gun control march, a perfect visual: skinny white kid in a black shirt giving a one-arm power salute in support of big government.

Where have I seen this before?

Previously this imagery was written off as tone-deaf, historically ignorant kids, but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't deliberate.

The Phantom

$15 min wage = robots!

This is what $15/hr minimum wage gets you. Walmart is rolling out shelf-reading hardware in California.

The company [Walmart] is launching a small army of autonomous scanning robots.

The robots are 6 feet tall, equipped with an array of lights, cameras, and radar sensors.

It then goes up and down each aisle on its own, at 2 to 3 mph, scanning the shelves for empty spots, and also checking the price tags.

And because its California, they spent a good part of the video on this:

Shopper Deborah Espinoza was at the Walmart store in Milpitas and spoke with an employee about the robot.

"Wow, so it's like taking somebody's job?" Espinoza asked.

A Walmart employee said, "It's not taking someone's job. It's designed to improve the job."

"Oh really?" Espinoza responded.

Espinoza is skeptical. She works at San Jose International Airport and says when automated checkout was introduced there, cashiers were laid off.

Walmart says they are freeing up their associates to provide better customer service. We asked Espinoza if she buys that.

"Uh, no. No," Espinoza said.

Walmart says it is still too early to say how the robots will impact their workforce.

Yes, obviously the store will be laying off shelf reader people. At $15 an hour, PLUS BENEFITS mind you, a multi-billion dollar robotics solution is fantastically cheaper than minimum wage workers. Added benefit, the robots won't steal stuff. Shrinkage at a Walmart from employee theft is ~25%. That's a lot of fricking money over a whole store chain, bro.

But everybody knew this would happen. It is obvious, painfully so. Companies will either fire staff, or go under. So why do people like Deborah Espinoza seem so surprised and stuff when Walmart and the airport lay off workers? Because they are MORONS who believe in magic, that's why. Keep voting DemocRat, everything will be okay. They'll magic it all better.

Better than those Republican fascists, right? They'd have kept the minimum wage low, and Walmart would have skipped the robots. Too iffy, too expensive. Then all these dumb shits would have jobs to complain about... oh, wait.

However, one day soon the fully automated Walmart stores will not have any customers. Because their primary customer base is magic-believing morons who work minimum wage jobs, and they will all be fricking well fired and replaced by robots.

Robots don't steal, but they don't SHOP either.

But hey, keep voting DemocRat/Liberal and it will be okay, my friends. Because magic. And hope! Yeah, that's the ticket. Hope, and change. Say, that's catchy. Somebody should use that.

Cancel English to handle Uni debt?

"At last, one of them has understood." Lord Raiden, Mortal Kombat

The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point is reportedly discussing a plan to eliminate 13 majors including English, philosophy, history and Spanish. 

The campus — one of 11 campuses in the University of Wisconsin system — would instead focus on programs that have "clear career pathways," The Washington Post reported.

Under the proposal, the school would expand areas such as marketing, management, graphic design and computer information systems — areas that "have demonstrated value and demand in the region," according to the school.

The school's administration is framing the idea as a way to increase its declining enrollment and to deal with a multimillion-dollar deficit, according to the Post.

Because a degree in Angry Studies don't put food on the table.

The Phantom

Highschool walkouts: parents not amused.

A whole highschool full of kids out in the parking lot protesting something makes an old hippie feel nostalgic for the 1968 DemocRat convention, when they took over. Look great on TV, generates lots of sound-bites for the news.

But this time, it is different. This time, nobody is buying it.

Chris Cleveland, chairman of the Chicago Republican Party, said he worried that the walkouts, aimed at pushing for tougher gun restrictions in the wake of the deadly Parkland shooting, have provided the template for advocacy groups eager to co-opt the public schools for progressive activism.

"If they get away with this, they'll be free to engage in any kind of political activity in the schools that they wish," said Mr. Cleveland, who has a third-grader in the Chicago Public Schools.

The party is moving to avert that scenario by preparing a lawsuit against the school system, arguing that the district violated state and federal law as well as its own policies by organizing a political demonstration — and pressuring students to attend — on the taxpayers' dime.

 

One thing that happened, while on "walkout" a bunch of Chicago kids trashed a local Walmart. But it isn't merely politicians in crooked Chicago:

He is not alone. Connecticut lawyer Deborah G. Stevenson said she has fielded calls from parents and others across the nation, including California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, after reports about her clash with the New Milford Public Schools.

She urged the district last week on behalf of several parents to cancel the high school walkout, arguing that the schools had "condoned, facilitated, and supported an event that clearly advocates for students to be part of a partisan political 'movement,'" but the district refused.

All over the country, parent groups are doing the same thing. They are suing the schools and school boards for political activism on school grounds using their kids as sign holders.

The Phantom

Decolonize science!

Because skin colour matters more than anything else!!!

If you suggest that the laws of electromagnetism don't dramatically alter depending on the melanin levels of the person doing the maths, then you just don't care about "students of Colour" being "victims of deculturalization" and being "invalidated."

"Yeah, that's right! Science is too White! Its all that Whiteness! Math is murder!"

Too much sciency Whiteness? Or not enough?

Good luck with that, dudes.

The Phantom

Gun Control: doomed to repeat history?

It appears that the kids at that Parkland high school didn't get much out of their history classes.

I've seen this somewhere before, haven't I?

Before you break out the hammer and nails to crucify me, I'm not saying the kids are Literally Hitler. I'm not a leftist, after all. I know their choice of armbands wasn't intentional and they're copying student hippies from the '60s. Alls I'm saying is a group of armband-clad underaged lemmings marching in the name of big government isn't the best look, regardless of their intentions.

People on the Left conveniently forget that everything they are championing with gun control was pioneered by the Nazi Party in Germany. That's not hyperbole, that is an inconvenient historical fact.

Stay classy, Lefties.

The Phantom

Supreme dictator of Iran supports gun control

Offered without further comment:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is calling on America to "make guns illegal" in light of deadly shootings that have taken place across the United States, according to comments made by the Iranian leader over the week.
"In U.S., 100s are killed every week by homicide for no crime,—no reason—not at the hands of police, as US police brutality is a separate issue," the Iranian leader wrote. "The accessibility of guns leads to homicide; it's created problems for a country like U.S., everyone admits, fears, & is concerned about it."
Khamenei also accused U.S. lawmakers of corruption and of kowtowing to the gun industry, which has lobbied against certain restrictions on firearms.
"Gun companies are so powerful that House representatives and U.S. senators don't dare pass prohibition of guns, and U.S. president doesn't dare speak out, rise against it," he wrote. "This is corruption."
"Corruption means domination of a mafia greedy for power & wealth, in a way that the big political & military system like U.S. won't dare stand up for prohibition of guns—which is clearly positive," the leader added. "This is due to lack of spiritual ideals, leading western societies to this point."

There you go, Lefties. The Ayatollah is 100% on your side.

The Phantom

Comic Book Industry digs harder!

Two pieces of utter genius today. Emerald City Comic Con excludes white males from industry "mixer" parties, and a transgender comic artist wishes a guy was blown up by an IED in Assghanistan.

First, Emerald City Comic Con.

The comics industry seems to be doubling down on their policy of completely excluding anyone who is straight, white, male, or conservative. This year's Emerald City Comic Con released its schedule of events on its app recently. Anyone who is male, white and identifies as heterosexual found himself excluded from industry mixers and professional mixers.
A source attending the event who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons spoke to PJM about the blatant discrimination.

I'm not going to post all the tweets, because tedious. Cutting to the chase, there was an "industry LGBQTCIAFBIKGB mixer" party, and a "industry people of colour mixer" party listed. No other listings. So the wise guy "source attending the event who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons" asked the con where he could go, as a straight white cis male. Their response was interesting.

"Hi there. We do not have a specific industry mixer for your category this year."

Okay then.

Next, the reason why "source attending the event who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons" thought he might need to be a little concerned about his safety.

Comics creators really hate criticism. Every time "Diversity and Comics" creator Richard Meyer reviews a comic book he doesn't like, industry professionals lose their minds and wish violence on him. The last time it happened he was threatened by a Marvel professional and told to stay away from Comicon. This time, Image Comics transgender writer Michelle Perez tweeted that he wishes Meyer had died in an IED attack.

Again, it is presented as a tweet list. The money quote, as it were, is Perez: "hes a war veteran, so of course he's a cryptofacist. unfortunately, an IED didn't blow him up." [Punctuation and lack of capitalization preserved from the original.]

This of course stays up on twitter, while they are busy purging conservatives. (I don't mind that it stayed up, it is always nice when fruitcakes self-identify like this. I do mind that twitter is purging conservatives.)

Image Comics, which employs Perez, is utterly dismissive of the issue.

Bounding Into Comics reported that Erik Larson, Image Comics co-founder and board member, responded to the uproar."Larsen's initial reaction was to explain Perez's wish for Meyer to be killed is part of freedom of speech, "I can't control what other people say or do anymore than they can control what I say or do. It's just words, man. Nobody was hurt. That's the freedom of speech in action. None of us have to like it.""

There you have it, wishing death on a critic is perfectly cool, just free speech in action my friends. But don't show up to the wrong industry mixer, or you might get your ass kicked. YEAH!!!

That sound you are hearing is my eyes rolling at the thought of these pasty, pencil-necked dickweeds trying to kick somebody's ass. Like a kindergarten slap fight.

Yes, Twitter IS silencing Conservatives.

Reblogged from Small Dead Animals today:

Twitter caught red fricking handed.

James O'Keefe's Project Veritas released a bombshell report on Thursday that shows Twitter employees admitting to censoring right-leaning accounts, including banning them from the network because they do not agree with their political views.
The report, based on undercover videos, shows Twitter employees admitting that they "shadow ban" right-leaning accounts, which essentially bans them from the platform without letting them know that they have been banned while allowing left-leaning accounts to slip through without the same scrutiny.
Another Twitter employee, Pranay Singh, admitted that the majority of their algorithms are geared in such a manner that they target people with certain political views.

In other news, the Canadian government is planning on making them do it even harder.

"Minister [of Democratic Institutions Karina] Gould has repeatedly stated that while social media companies are taking initial steps to ensure that their platforms are not being used as tools for foreign disinformation campaigns to undermine Canada's democratic institutions, there still remains a great deal of work to be done," wrote Nicky Cayer, spokesperson for Gould, in an email to the Sun. "This is a challenge that is being faced by democracies around the world. We are studying other countries' approaches to see what works and what does not, what would be appropriate in a Canadian context and what — like censoring Canadians' speech — would be unacceptable."

 Given the type of news running on CBC, CTV and Global, they'll just tell Google, Facebook and Twitter to crank the shadow-ban thing up to 11.

And as an aside, since when do we need a fricking Ministry of Democratic Institutions? Are you kidding me? My eyes are rolling so hard I can see my brain.

The Phantom

Left demands more Trump, faster!

There is more very troubling news out of the Parkland Fl shooting incident. Today an EMT is saying they were told to stand down when they arrived at the high school.

Speaking to a WSVN Miami News 7 reporter, an emergency medical responder who was one of the first at the scene, said law enforcement did not follow mass casualty event protocols.

So, even though the link is to InforWars, this is a Lamestream Media report. No doubt a bit of sleuthing will be easy for those who love to hate Alex Jones.

"Everything I was trained on mass casualty events says they did the wrong thing. You don't wait for the scene to be cleared. You go in immediately armed. Retrieve the victims. You can't leave the victims laying there."
"We were asking to go in. Asking the scene commander to go in. Why are we all standing around? Why are we not having patients to treat? Why are we not going into the building and retrieving these kids? The response every time was law enforcement did not clear the scene and would not allow medical personnel in."
"I would hypothesize I could have saved lives. I can't say for sure."
"I would have risked my life to go in. I was eager to."
"I was frustrated the entire time I was there."
"Rapid evacuation of the wounded. All they had to do was drag them out of the building. And we could have started medical care."
"I think they made the decision they thought was right at the time. But I don't think it was the right one. They should have been more aggressive about getting the victims out."
"Can't say for sure if the people were dead inside or if they could have helped."

17 kids and adults died that day. This guy is saying it might not have been that way if he'd been allowed to do his job the way he's trained to do it. He would know, right? He's seen gunshot wounds before, after all.

The Lefties, faced with this massive dereliction of duty by police at every possible level from the top to the bottom...

... are blaming the NRA.

Why? Because they have an agenda, which they cannot follow if Americans are all armed and can all shoot back.

Just think on that for a little while. Consider that idea, in the light of the abject failure of the federal, state and local police apparatus that was shown in this event.

The Phantom

You wanted more Trump? You got it!

Left discovers how to get more Trump.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Thousands of gun enthusiasts -- more so than ever -- flocked to the Florida State Fairgrounds for the Florida Gun Show event.
Organizers say they had a record number of people attend the event on Saturday, Feb. 24, almost 7,000, and expected more Sunday.
The manager for the Florida Gun Show, George Fernandez, says they've never seen such a big crowd.
The company canceled the show in Fort Lauderdale next month after the mayor asked them to show respect to the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting earlier this month.
With the heated debate over gun control staying front and center, Fernandez expressed concerns over proposed gun laws possibly restricting gun owners.

 With Barry the Gun Salesman In Chief out of the White House, gun dealers have been feeling the pinch of reduced demand. CNN has stepped up and taken over from The One. This may well be another record month! Woo hoo!

The Phantom

Update: Google search results for "buy a gun" at record high.

Leftist solution to violent crime: arrest the victim.

Read these two articles one after the other.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/966854507744374784.html

Broward County police allowed high school students to get away with literally any crime to improve county statistics and budgets. Result: 17 dead in Parkland. Plus who knows how many more rapes, armed robberies and murders.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/calgary/okotoks-property-owner-shoots-theft-suspect-1.4551008

One man is in hospital and a property owner is in custody after shots were fired during an alleged theft in progress early Saturday, Alberta RCMP said later in the day.

It happened near Okotoks at about 5:30 a.m., police said in a release, adding officers were on scene within minutes.

"The owner of the residence encountered two individuals rummaging through his vehicle(s). During the confrontation with the individuals, there were an unknown number of shots fired from a firearm. The suspects then fled the scene."

You defend your property and probably your life with a firearm, YOU go to jail. But this is my favorite part here:

Police are cautioning property owners to call them rather than "pursue or engage with suspicious individuals."

Translating from Officialese, this means "Let the punks take it, or we'll bust you down to your underwear and you'll never see freedom again." Probably for the same reason as Broward County, they don't want their statistics to slip. That's the true result of Leftists identity politics, playing itself out through bureaucracy.

The Phantom

Armed cops waited OUTSIDE the school.

We knew that the armed "resource officer" assigned to the Parkland High School waited outside while the shooter killed 17 people. Now it develops that four of them were there, hiding behind their cars.

When Coral Springs police officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14 in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff's deputies were also outside the school and had not entered, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school.

But yeah, let's kill the NRA and burn the NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch. It's their fault, damnit.

The Phantom

Leftist solution to gun violence.

 

*

Update:
 
"I want to make this super obvious point," Loesch said. "The government has proven that they cannot keep you safe. And yet, some people want all of us to disarm. You heard that town hall last night. They cheered the confiscation of firearms. And it was over 5,000 people."

"I had to have a security detail to get out," she said of the Sunrise, Fla. event. "I wouldn't be able to exit that if I didn't have a private security detail. There were people rushing the stage and screaming burn her."

Stay classy, CNN.

More guns, less crime.

This is a timely news piece from Minnesota. Record low crime rate coincides with record high gun ownership.

Minnesota's violent crime rate hit a 50-year low in 2016, according to the FBI.

And in 2017, the state set a new record for firearms background checks.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System reports it processed nearly 683,544 checks on gun buyers in 2017. That includes: 473,975 permits, 94,383 handguns and 125,516 long guns.

Minnesota set another 2017 record, too.

The State Department of Public Safety reports 283,188 Minnesotans now have permits to legally carry firearms in public.

In 2017, the state issued 57,651 permits to carry a weapon in public. That's down from a record 71,156 permits issued in 2016.

Please note that Minnesota is a state that has experienced -massive- immigration from Mexico and also Muslim nations, yet remains largely peaceful.

I lived there a couple years, my impression was that rural people would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it, and they'd give you a bullet just as quick if they thought you needed that. New imports don't mess with the locals much in rural Minnesota. Some mutual respect thing going on there.

I predict, not having done the research myself, that if you looked at a crime map you would find that pretty near all the serious crimes like robbery, murder and rape happened in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in a few very localized pockets. Maybe some in St. Cloud, but not a lot. The state is very discontinuous. There's Minneapolis, run by DemocRats and suffering from all that DemocRat management implies, and then there's the whole rest of the state, where pretty much nothing ever happens.

The Phantom

The Olympics: Statist propaganda since 1936.

Say what you want about Hitler using the 1936 Olympics for Nazi propaganda; at least when he killed millions and starved millions more, he did it in other countries. Not Germany.

Today, 2018, we have the spectacle of the Western media feting a murderous dictator who kills and starves his own people. Imagine what he'll do if we let him out.

Therefore, I'm requesting that y'all do what I'm doing: boycott the shit out of the TV coverage. Don't give them a single click or moment of viewing.

The Phantom

Art does not excuse evil.

The next time some SJW tells you what a great "artist" Marion Zimmer Bradley was, and how the woman's books were so amazing, just send them this:

The Last Closet has been an Amazon bestseller for weeks as a Kindle e-book, and is scheduled to be published as a print book this month. Over one hundred readers have reviewed it, and virtually all have given it five stars.

The book recounts Greyland's life with her mother, who was the author of The Mists of Avalon and many other famous works of science fiction and fantasy, and her father, Walter Breen, who was a world-renowned authority on numismatics. Both identified as "gay," both abused drugs and were involved in occult practices, and both were pedophiles, Greyland says, a claim that has been confirmed by her only surviving brother.

It might also be instructive for the SJW to be reminded that Orson Scott Card, author of "Ender's Game" and other classics, was denounced and written off by SJWs for having an opinion about gay marriage. Yeah.

The reason I mention, is that the book is finally available in print, and y'all might want to go buy it. I can't recommend reading it, because by all accounts it is harrowing, to say the least. But buying it will give the Greylands some money, which would seem a good thing to do.

The other reason is to shine a light on the reluctance SJWs have to admit that MZB was really, no kidding, the worst possible human being. There's a quiet movement afoot to rehabilitate this demon. Don't let 'em do it.

The Phantom

Bermuda "repeals" same-sex marriage.

This is a rather revealing article in the Guardian UK, the pinko paper of record across the pond. Here's the opening:

Bermuda has become the first jurisdiction to legalise and then repeal same-sex marriage, in what critics have called an unprecedented rollback of civil rights by the British territory.

Bermuda's governor has signed into law a bill reversing the right of gay couples to marry, despite a supreme court ruling last year authorising same-sex marriage.

Fairly bursting with outrage, eh? Here's what actually happened:

About half a dozen same-sex marriages that took place in Bermuda between the supreme court ruling in May 2017 and the repeal will continue to be recognised under the new law.

Anyone that was legally married during the time before the new law remains legally married.

But same-sex couples will now have the option only of a registered domestic partnership. Brown said those couples would had "equivalent" rights to married heterosexual couples, including the right to make medical decisions on behalf of one's partner.

Under the law, the rights of "married" people are the same as those with the newly created "domestic partnership."

Meaning, as we all expected, that none of this was ever about rights for gay people.

LGBT civil rights groups said domestic partnerships amounted to a second-class status and it was unprecedented for a jurisdiction to take away the legal right to marriage after it had been granted.

"Governor Rankin and the Bermuda parliament have shamefully made Bermuda the first national territory in the world to repeal marriage equality," said Ty Cobb, director of Human Rights Campaign Global.

"I feel enormously disappointed," said Joe Gibbons, a 64-year-old married gay Bermudian. "This is not equality, and the British government has obviously just said, 'This is not our fight.'"

This is about sticking it to the straights. That's what it has always been about. That and welfare money. Same-sex couples wanted access to spousal payments given to traditional marriages by government. Now they have everything they wanted, and they are screaming all the louder.

Bermuda's Senate and House of Assembly passed the legislation by wide margins in December and a majority of voters opposed same-sex marriage in a referendum.

In Bermuda, the straights stood up for their beliefs and traditions in a way that the Bermudan government could not safely ignore. The people voted, and this is the result.
To the Guardian and the LGBT "community," aka professional activists, the will of the people is of no consequence. A vote of the governed is a mere legal impediment, something to be mocked, scorned and overturned by governmental power as soon as possible.

They don't believe in freedom. They believe you should shut up and do as you're told.

The Cameltron doubles down.

Floppy Cameltron persists in his sea lion attacks on Sad Puppies authors. This is a comment I left there today. He probably won't post it himself, because the truth hurts. So, being a great guy, I'll do it for him.

Still milking it, eh Floppy? 11 days later, everybody else has moved on except you. Interesting.

Just a reminder that this all started because -you- stupidly decided you needed to mock Lou Antonelli and his new writer's guild.

One word of apology from -you-, floppy, and poor put-upon Foz and her (utterly invisible hasn't been heard from) husband will be left in peace. No more Bad Puppies accusing her of being Normal Girl. (The bastards, saying she's happily married to a man! The nerve of them!)

Think of it, Floppy. One little "sorry" from you to the Pups, and the horrifying torture of the innocent could stop! You don't even have to give up your secret identity! Wow! What a deal!

You won't, obviously, because you're getting all this delicious uproar. Sure, poor ol' Foz is suffering, but you don't mind that so much. It isn't like she's married to -you-, right?

You know, flopster, the true proof that you're not married to that woman is that she hasn't strangled you in your sleep yet.

By the way, feel free to play fuckaround with the spam filter business, this is going up at my blog too. Click-whoring has its downside.

The Phantom

Update: Lou Antonelli has had a change of heart, and says Floppy Cameltron is not the guy Lou said he was. This explains why Foz has not been arrested for cameltron strangling.

We will now be treated to a Cameltron victory lap. Oh joy.