How to tell when you just SCORED on the opposition.

This is a pretty good sign.

As ever-growing throngs of protesters filled the Capitol for a third day, the 14 Democrats disappeared around noon, just as the Senate was about to begin debating the measure, which would end a half-century of collective bargaining rights for most public employees.

Hours later, one member of the group told The Associated Press that they had left Wisconsin.

When they run away screaming like little girls, you hit 'em. They left Wisconsin altogether and booked it to the nearest commie friendly place, Illinois.
You can run but you cain't hide, sumbitch.

Then there's the "sea of humanity" protesting in Madison.

The drama in Wisconsin unfolded in a jam-packed Capitol. Madison police and the State Department of Administration estimated the crowd at 25,000 protesters, the largest number yet.

When the union blows their "demonstrating" budget on one last ditch freak-out, complete with beatings and all kindsa violent shit going on, you know you pinked 'em. Twenty five thousand is the most astroturf the union wankers could pay to show up. Nice signage too.


I've seen car shows bigger than that. Tea Party events have 100,000 people, and they don't even leave any garbage behind. How much for cleanup on this one you figure, half a mil?

Wisconsin Republicans, x-ring hit boys and girls. Good shooting, change mags and resume!

The Phantom

And now, some gun porn. ~:)

From Small Dead Animals, news about NEW MANUFACTURED Lee-Enfield rifles in 7.62 NATO from the Land of Oz.

Australian International Arms keep building Lee-Enfields--completely new. Some photos, more here (7.62mm M43 Russian rimless versions also available, banana clip):

My comment was:

Oh, I -like- the one with the Picatinny rail. That's got some possibilities. Previously the only Enfield available in 7.62x51 was the Ishapore model, which frankly was kinda crappy compared to WWII vintage .303s Big ugly forgings, nasty machine work.

But put a muzzle brake on that model M10-B2, you'd have a suhWEET piece there. Ten round mag, stripper clips, quickest slickest bolt action ever made... oh yeah.

As it happens, I know the guy who makes the best integral muzzle brake in the universe. Tom Aston, works with Tim Sheehan out of Goshen Enterprises in Arizona. They can port your pistol or rifle, and it will be -awesome-. Main advantage is recoil reduction, I've shot one of Tom's .300 WinMags with the Keeper porting system on it, kicked like a .223. An eleven year old boy shot it too, smile a mile wide.

Here's a link to a little blurb and some pictures.
www.progunprogressive.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1918

Goshen Enterprises website here: www.goshen-hexsite.com/index.php

The HexSight is the real deal too. Effortless target acquisition in low light or bright sun, just the thing for combat shooting or IPSC with pistol or shotgun, maybe less than ideal for driving tacks. I've shot with it, it rocks.

Tom and Tim are quality guys, I did business with them when I lived in AZ and they treated me right. Americans can just go right on ahead and get your kit ported. Canadians may be SOL, unless you can figure out a way to do the import/export paperwork. Maybe take it across the line (legally, need I say) and have an American gun shop send it down to AZ. Alternatively, it might be possible to import a bare ported barrel, which counts as a "part" as far as I know.

Just some guys I know who do some of the best work I've seen. Drop a line to The Soapbox if you want to jaw about it.

So anybody who wants to jaw, comments are open. Don't spill any beer on the carpet. ~:D

The Phantom

Found: Republican Party's spine.

Now THAT is what I'm talking about.

The House of Representatives will vote to block funding for President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan it will consider next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.

"I expect to see one way or other the product coming out of the House to speak to that and to preclude any funding to be used for that," Cantor said at a news conference, referring to an effort to block implementation of the health-care law.

See, you frickin' Rinos?  This here is what a fully calcified spinal column looks like. Senate doesn't want to get with the program?  DE-FUND THEM.
Open warfare between tax-and-spend pinkos and F- YOU! Tea Partiers.  Yeah!

A thing like this could get to be habit forming, I hope. Conservative Party of Canada, pay attention dudes.  This here is the future.

The Phantom!  Woohoo!

Water to the fish: Update!

Couple days ago I was saying that Neil Stephenson can't tell shit from shinola because he's a liberal. Here's some more piling on I just spotted:

European technology firm Astrium is teaming up with US company Alliant to make a "low-cost" space rocket launcher that could one day take tourists into orbit, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

It said the companies plan a 300-foot (91-metre) launcher dubbed "Liberty" to take astronauts and scientific payloads into space for about $180 million (132 million euros) a time, 40 percent cheaper than some current launches.

What's the driving force behind this effort? Tourism.

The newspaper said the project's backers hope to gain funding from US space agency NASA for the project, which they say could lead eventually to commercial projects such as orbiting hotels for space tourists.

NASA is not going to get humanity into space on a large scale on their "multi-national" multi-zillion megabuck International Space Station. But a space hotel chain? That could work.

Best part? Filthy capitalistic consumerism succeeds where high-minded "scientific" socialism fails horribly. Liberals are going to freak. I'm going to love watching them.

Update update: It must be rocket day today, here's an announcement that SpaceX has a moon rocket, and a ride booked. Private moonshot by 2013? Wowser!
Time will tell if Neil Stephenson is right or I am of course, because an announcement is not the same as a successful launch, but things are looking up for space travel. Yay!

More proof of the Peter Principle, as if more were needed...

The Peter Principle:  "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".  Proposed by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their  book The Peter Principle, which was meant as a joke.

But its true.  Here be the proof:

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – AOL Inc will buy Arianna Huffington's influential website for $315 million, looking to the high-profile liberal pundit to rescue it from the dustbin of Internet history.

The move, announced Monday, comes at a hefty premium. AOL is estimated to be paying 32 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for The Huffington Post, said Benchmark Co analyst Clayton Moran.

Yes friends, in corporate America even the least gifted can rise to command great power.  A seat on the Board of Directors does not necessarily require great business acumen, at AOL even a functioning brain apparently is not required.  AOL's stock price reflects the esteem in which this decision is held in the greater community, down double digits since yesterday and still headed south.

This, in a nutshell, is why I am a supporter of free markets over government. It isn't that management of private industry is more moral, more intelligent, more diligent or more effective than government.  Its just that when they screw up, bad things happen to them.

The Phantom

Testing, testing, This is Big Brother Radio... psst, hey is this thing on?

Check one teww...

Everybody has heard the national Emergency Alert System (EAS). Those familiar "duck calls" that reassure listeners "THIS is a test...this is ONLY a test..."

The FCC is planning an upgrade to the tests by including presidential announcements in the system.

Lisa Fowlkes, deputy chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the FCC, explained to the Federal Drive the Presidential Alert isn't new.

"The primary goal is to provide the President with a mechanism to communicate with the American public during times of national emergency," said Fowlkes. The change, she said, is that prior to last week's order there was no rule in place to call for or allow a test from top to bottom.

Fowlkes said, "There's never been a test from top to bottom where it's issued by FEMA and it goes straight down to all the different levels of EAS to the American public. So this is a way for us to glean, okay, if there were an actual emergency and the federal government needed to activate the Presidential EAS, making sure that it actually works the way it's designed to."

Its funny, even with 9/11 and the Iraq war and Afghanistan, in 8 years George Bush never seemed to find a need to issue instructions directly to the American people, from his own mouth.  Barry's been in power two years, there's no emergency, and he's going to use the Emergency Broadcast System to have Presidential Alerts.

Just sayin'.

The Phantom

Canadian government policy: defense of property, life and limb is now officially illegal.

They've finally got there.  According to the crown, self defense and defense of property is now illegal.  Oh, and you are now guilty until proven innocent.  You're welcome.

"If the public are wondering can you run out of your house and [fire a handgun at an intruder], the bottom line is, according to the laws of Canada, no, you can't," said Constable Nilan Dave of the Niagara Regional Police Service, which charged Mr. Thomson. "That's why the courts are there, to give a person an opportunity to explain their actions."

How about if there's three of them, they are masked like bandits in a cowboy movie, and they are firebombing your house with you in it?  Oh, and you have video of them doing it too, how about then?

Mr. Thomson, a former firearms instructor, grabbed one of his Smith & Wesson revolvers from his safe, loaded it and headed outside dressed in only his underwear. "He exited his house and fired his revolver two, maybe three times, we're not sure. Then these firebombing culprits, they ran off," said his lawyer, Edward Burlew.

His surveillance cameras caught the attackers lobbing at least six Molotov cocktails at his house and bombing his doghouse, singeing one of his Siberian Huskies. But when Mr. Thomson handed the video footage to Niagara Regional Police, he found himself charged with careless use of a firearm.

The local Crown attorney's office later laid a charge of pointing a firearm, along with two counts of careless storage of a firearm. The Crown has recommended Mr. Thomson go to jail, his lawyer said.

His collection of seven guns, five pistols and two rifles was seized, along with his firearms licence. Mr. Thomson said he lives in fear that his attackers will return and has taken to arming himself with a fire extinguisher.

Watch the video, it'll drive this home for you like you wouldn't believe.  Remember, Thompson was inside the house when that was occurring.  And remember too, Thompson didn't shoot anybody, although he obviously could have shot them all dead on the spot.  Wouldn't be hard, for sure.

So, after you're done watching the video, be sure to forward your reactions to your MP, and your MPP, and anybody else you think might benefit from a smack with a cluebat.  Remind them there is an -election- on the way.

The Phantom.

Water to the fish.

American liberals just can't seem to grasp that Reality(TM) is not always well captured by their world view. Their liberal, anti-capitalist philosphy makes them blind and deaf. Case in point today, Neil Stephenson trying to be clever about rockets.

He postulates that the development of space-launch rockets was amazingly unlikely, and gives this as evidence:

There is no way, of course, to guess how rockets might have developed, or failed to, were it not for the fact that, during the 1940s, the world's most technically sophisticated nation was under the absolute control of a crazy dictator who decreed that vast physical and intellectual resources should be hurled into the project of creating rockets of hitherto unimagined size.

These rockets, which were known as V-2s, were worse than useless from a military standpoint, in the sense that the same resources would have produced a much greater effect had they been devoted instead to the production of U-boats or Messerschmitts. Accordingly, the victorious nations showed only modest interest in their development immediately following the war. It is reasonable to suppose that little more would have been done with them, had it not been for another event, happening at the same time, even more bizarre and incredible than the seizure of absolute control over a modern nation-state by a genocidal madman. I refer, of course, to the sudden and completely unexpected development of nuclear weapons, undertaken over the course of a very few years by a top-secret crash program atop a mesa in New Mexico.

Stephenson thinks Hitler was a "bizarre and incredible" aberration, something far outside the norm. Sadly, most nation-states historically have been under the absolute control of crazy monarchs, dictators, or priest/kings with war on their minds. The United States of America is in fact the first one I can think of where that wasn't the case. Even today a majority of nations outside Europe have dictators running them. Military action has been driving technology since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Stephenson carries on in like vein for three pages, bemoaning the present situation in which unspecified new space launch tech can't get a leg-up because the darn capitalists won't insure it. If only vast sums of money were available to pursue other launch ideas, maybe stupid rockets would become yesterday's news.

He's probably thinking about space elevators or Verne guns. Space elevators will remain science fiction until somebody figures a way to make either carbon nanotubes or iron whisker crystals that are measured in feet instead of the current millimeters. Another crazy dictator, Saddam Hussein, very nearly built a Verne gun in Iraq. He was going to use it to shell Tel Aviv, but presumably it or its big brother could have been used to chuck small payloads into orbit. Really tough small payloads. It still could, if anybody could figure out a way to make money out of pop-can sized machines in low orbit. Going to be pretty hard to launch the Hubble Telescope out of a Verne gun.

Orion is of course a non-starter until it becomes acceptable to set off atomic bombs in the atmosphere again. Orion is a gigantic metal plate launched by setting off a nuke under it. The payload is protected by shock absorbers. For acceleration you just keep setting off nukes under the plate. Good way to get a really BIG load into orbit, like an aircraft carrier, a little tough on the environment. Always a favorite in SF, because what's not to like about a spacecraft as big as an aircraft carrier that runs by atomic bombs?

Laser launch systems, again a non-starter because its really frickin' hard to build a laser that can provide as much thrust energy as a plain-vanilla rocket. Its not efficient in atmosphere, and outside the atmosphere you still have to provide propellant, which equals weight, which is the one thing a laser launch system is supposed to eliminate. And if the laser wiggles just a wee little bit, ZAP!!! your spacecraft just got a big hole burnt in its butt.

He also ignores Rutan and Branson's space tourist bid, Virgin Galactic. If they make any money at all, those guys will be upgrading their launch machinery to low-orbit status before the end of this decade. Private launch facilities using recoverable space craft are where its going to pop, you ask me. Pretty soon NASA and the Euro space guys are going to be begging rides on Rutan's spacecraft.

Lock-in it seems is in the eye of the beholder.

Does Tony Clement not have a phone or what?

Oh look, the Conservative Party just woke up and fired a gray cell.  Amazing, they finally noticed they'd been shot in the ass by the CRTC.

The Harper government is stepping into a contentious debate over just how much Canadians should pay for Internet service, as Industry Minister Tony Clement says he will review a federal regulator's decision that will raise prices [MASSIVELY] for consumers and businesses.

For the Liberal Party, regulating the Internet downward this way is advantageous, because they 100% own the mainstream media in this country.  There is not a Canadian newspaper, radio or TV station in existence that doesn't carry water for the Liberals.
The Conservatives get their word out 100% by INTERNET.  They live or die by blogs, YouTube, social network.  For them the CRTC decision is a two-by-four to the head.  Where the hell was Tony Clement last week before the decision was given?  He couldn't call up the CRTC and have a quiet word?  Even the frickin' Liberal guy is saying its a bad idea!

Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau, who said he will pressure Mr. Clement to throw the decision back to the regulator, said he doesn't buy the large providers' arguments about Internet network traffic and congestion.

"There's more and more use," Mr. Garneau said. "But to some extent, it's also self-serving as well. And in this case, the ruling of the CRTC has gone too much in favour of the arguments presented by the big players."

Yeah, no duh!

This country just kills me sometimes, I swear.  WTF are these people doing every day?

The Phantom

From our bulging, tearing open "California is F-ed" file...

You can't make stuff like this up.

Citing the pro-democracy unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, Gov. Jerry Brown called it "unconscionable" that GOP legislators are vowing to block his attempt to ask voters to extend tax hikes to balance the budget.  

"When democratic ideals and calls for the right to vote are stirring the imagination of young people in Egypt and Tunisia and other parts of the world, we in California can't say now is the time to block a vote of the people," Brown said in his first State of the State address in nearly 30 years.

He said the budget has tough choices but that the people "have a right to vote" on the package.

Actually what he's asking for are tax hikes to pay for California state employee retirement benefits.  They are the single largest cost that is un-balancing his budget.

And they thought Schwarzenegger was bad. Bwaha!

The Phantom

Mayor Bloomberg, no lie too heinous to tell.

Yes friends, in the world of New York City politics there is no rock too scummy to turn over, no shite-pile too rank to dig into for a cheap stunt, no lie so heinous it shouldn't be told, no wounded woman you can't step on to get a leg up..

Weeks after the shooting in Tucson, sellers at an Arizona gun show allowed undercover investigators hired by New York City to buy semiautomatic pistols even after they said they probably couldn't pass a background check, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

"After Tucson, you would think that people, particularly at a gun show in Arizona, would have been much more careful in enforcing the law," he said. "That unfortunately in some cases wasn't the case."

Bloomberg has authorized similar sting operations around the country as part of a push for tougher federal laws to help keep guns off the streets of New York.

 The lie here is that you can buy a gun at a gun show in Arizona without going through the background check.  Nuh uh.  Not happening.  Those "investigators" got checked, they filled out the paperwork, the works.

Just thought you should know.

The Phantom

Canada: land of the un-free, home of the Special Deal!

Well my friends, its time once again to discover why Canada sucks.  Why nobody here seems to be able to get ahead no matter how they twist and turn.  I give you, the brand new CRTC regulations for Internet billing.

Metered Internet usage (also called "Usage-Based Billing") is coming to Canada, and it's going to cost Internet users. While an advance guard of Canadians are expressing creative outrage at the prospect of having to pay inflated prices for Internet use charged by the gigabyte, the consequences probably haven't set in for most consumers. Now, however, independent Canadian ISPs are publishing their revised data plans, and they aren't pretty.

...

Starting on March 1, Ontario TekSavvy members who subscribed to the 5Mbps plan have a new usage cap of 25GB, "substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC's decision to impose usage based billing," the message added.

I have yet to get a note from Bell Canada regarding my Internet plan, but I have no doubt there's one being drafted right now.  Basically if you do any music downloading, Netflix, Apple Store shopping, YouTube, Skype, pretty much anything other than plain vanilla surfing and email, y'all are about to get CRUSHED.  Obliterated.  Stomped on.

The big question now is how these kind of billing changes will impact 'Net consumption patterns. Many subscribers use minimal data, but that's changing as Internet video becomes the norm. If these new plans simply discourage data hogs from backing up their 120GB pirated movie collection over the 'Net every night, there's no sleep to be lost. But if they scare consumers away from legitimate non-ISP affiliated movie and content sharing sites, that should be a firebell concern to consumers, entrepreneurs, and regulators.

Well, calling it a "question" is being overly generous.  These regulations are obviously designed to protect entrenched interests, namely television networks, music labels, long distance carriers and the very lucrative video rental industry.  That is their entire purpose, and the only reason for them to be implemented. 
The peasants (that's us) have been getting fractious with this new interweb thing, finding ways to get around paying astronomical sums for things like music, movies and long distance telephone service, so government will just have to step in and protect the profits of their good friends at Bell Telephone Company.
And that my friends, in a nutshell, is what makes Canada SUCK.  Bell Canada getting hurt by new technology, new consumer patterns?  No problem, we'll just change the rules to frack over the business models of these upstarts, and then things will go back to the way they should be.  Get those peasants back in line, by God.
If you look into -any- field of endeavor in this country, from mining to manufacturing to education to publishing, you will find exactly this pattern of behavior.  Ever wonder why there's no Canadian car companies to rival the Big Three?  Because once upon a time the Big Three got a Special Deal, that's why.  Why's there no private universities?  Special Deal.  Why our movies and music and radio and TV and books are all such gawdawful liberal crap? Special Deal. Why we pay FOUR TIMES AS MUCH for cell phones here as they do in the States?  Special. Freaking. Deal.


Time to call our MPs again and make another USELESS protest against the inevitable, I suppose.  This is one example of action by the Conservative government that would have been no worse and really no different under the Liberals or even the NDP.  The Ottawa Mandarinate have spoken, and all shall bow or take a kick in the head.  Fascism, pure and simple, in your face.  Pay up suckers.

The Phantom

Getting around censorship

This brilliant tidbit of tech was suggested by an anonymous comment on the Egypt goes dark thread.

PirateBox is a self-contained mobile collaboration and file sharing device. Inspired by pirate radio and the free culture movment, PirateBox utilizes Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) to create mobile wireless file sharing networks where users can anonymously share images, video, audio, documents, and other digital content.

Here's Cringely  on getting around the no-web issue.  The solutions he mentions are mostly ham radio and dial-up. 

PC World's take.

I'm thinking a fellow could set up a 4G/WiMax mesh pretty quick to get high bandwidth video out of an area where the phones and internet are cut off.  If a Pringles can on a stick will get you WiFi (802.11) reception over a couple miles, I don't doubt a properly constructed WiMax antenna could reach 20 miles or more.  It would be cake to set up temporary coverage of a city or rural area using Twitter or Facebook to arrange things, assuming one made the arrangements before the government shut down communications.  Such coverage could be small enough to fit in a compact car trunk, and maybe even drive around while working.  You could have unattended repeaters stuck on telephone poles, bounce things from one server to another to get around damaged or captured links...

Guerrilla WiMax.  That could be a giggle.  Floor is open for suggestions.

Egypt goes dark!

Here's what a "Presidential Internet Switch" looks like in the wild, my friends.

22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

H/T to Mr. Marco for the heads up this morning.

CNN had this to say on the subject:

Hours ahead of what are expected to be massive displays of anti-government ferment across the world's most populous Arab nation, the internet went dark in parts of Egypt early Friday, and text messaging appeared to be blocked.

Noting that "parts of Egypt" is considerably different than " Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses" and moving on...

By the way, did you know that OnStar can turn your OnStar-equipped GM car on remotely?  It can also turn it -off- remotely. Did you know that California (and through them, all the USA) is trying to get remote-disable as a feature on the next generation of "pollution controls" for vehicles?  Uh huh, they are. This would give them the ability to turn off every properly equipped car in a neighborhood, or on a certain highway, or in a whole city, a whole state, or even the whole damn country and internationally as well. 

Not science fiction, nonono, it has already happened my friends.

That's one of the reasons why I have a 1964 car with a carburetor and points ignition as part of the Phantom vehicle fleet. Still need to get groceries during a "national emergency" y'know.  I recommend y'all look into it, or at least find out which wire to cut on your new vehicle.  Might save your bacon some day.

In the mean time, you might want to phone up your US Senator, as well as Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) and Susan Collins (Rino-Maine), and KICK THEIR ASSES for trying to turn the free nation of America into a third world tyranny like Egypt.

The Phantom

"...pour encourager les autres."

Voltair said it about admirals, but it can apply to peasants too. 

Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district. ... She was sentenced last week to 10 days in county jail and put on three years of probation.

Jail time for trying to skate around a school district?  Seriously?  They hired a private eye and everything to catch this woman.  Why bother?

"I don't think they wanted money," Williams-Bolar said. "They wanted me to be an example."
Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove acknowledged as much.  "I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts," Cosgrove said.

Because apparatchiks don't like being ignored, is why.
Behold the true face of socialism, my friends.  Better to see it now than wait until the bread lines start.

The Phantom

Today's media is a death cult.

You can't go to the movies, you can't watch TV, you can't listen to the radio, you can't read the paper, you can't even buy a frackin' comic book.
When I was a young man, I used to collect comic books.  Then one day, I just... stopped.  It wasn't fun anymore.  Right around the time DC comics killed off Superman the first time, be about 1993.
Every once in a loooong while I buy a Spiderman, Superman, Fantastic Four, X Men or whatever to see if its fun again.

Marvel Comics has snuffed out the Fantastic Four's Human Torch.

In the most shocking death to hit the comic book industry since - well, the publisher knocked off Captain America four years ago - the fiery Johnny Storm goes out in a blaze of glory saving his young niece and nephew from an army of insect creatures in Fantastic Four #587, in stores Wednesday.

Nope.

What the hell is the problem with this company, can't they see their sales going in the toilet every year?

Jonathan Hickman, the current writer of the series, says it wasn't easy to extinguish a comic book legend.

"Johnny kind of represents a childlike idealism within the group," Hickman told the News. "And the story that we wanted to tell going forward from my first issue on the book and where I would like to end up, there came a point in the story where it served us to eliminate what was an eternal source of optimism in the world."

Oh, I see.  Marvel has been taken over by nihilistic post-modern assholes. Well, that saved me four bucks I guess, eh?

The Phantom

Report from the RetardOsphere.

Just some things on Drudge that burned my thrusters today.

108-3 girls basketball rout raises questions

It's been called unsportsmanlike. It's been called ugly. The question now is whether Christian Heritage (Utah) High, which routed West Ridge (Utah) Academy, 108-3, in a girls basketball game last week, actually did anything wrong by blowing out an overwhelmed opponent.

There's almost 2000 comments on there right now, a few of which read like this one from RickP, 19 yr old from New Joisey "should never happen in any sport at any level.the coach should be terminated and barred from any and all youth sports "

The question that comes to my mind is,  "Are you kidding me?" One team is such rubbish that the other team can score two times a minute for four quarters, and the GOOD TEAM comes in for abuse?  That's freakin' retarded!

Somebody didn't get their kickback!

In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel said Emanuel does not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Chicago for a year prior to the election. The judges reversed a decision by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which had unanimously agreed that Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor.

I'd just like to say "Yay!"

General Bullmoose sells more cars in China than the USA!

General Motors Co. sold more cars and trucks in China last year than it did in the U.S., for the first time in the company's 102-year history.

Unlike Yanks, the Chinese don't have a problem buying cars from a corrupt government owned institution.

Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch"

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Susan Collins should be kicked out of the Republican party for this one.  This thing is a disgrace!

Shut off your TV!

Last week, my colleague Brian Stelter reported that on Tuesday, the day after the pilot episode of "Skins" was shown on MTV, executives at the cable channel were frantically meeting to discuss whether the salacious teenage drama starring actors as young as 15 might violate federal child pornography statutes.

Senior executives are now considering additional editing for coming episodes, but that's a little like trying to lock the door after a naked 17-year-old has already busted out and gone running down the street, which is precisely what one of the characters does in Episode 3 — with a pill-enhanced erection, no less.

No really, shut it off.  Its worse than there's nothing on.  There is something on, and it could hurt you.  Hopefully this kiddie porno flick will hurt some poobahs at Viacom and MTV, who seem to really need a visit to banckruptcy court and/or jail to slap some respect into them.  If they can't do the right thing, at least we can make them deeply afraid to keep doing the wrong thing.

That's our trip to the RetardOsphere for today.  Now returning you to reality.

The Phantom

Gee, what could have caused this?

I see on Drudge Report that a "suicide bomber" has blown up 31 people at Moscow airport this morning.


Damn Sarah Palin and her damn crosshairs!!! Obviously we need more gun control!

But seriously, I haven't read the story yet, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the bomber was some kind of Islamist, probably with Mohamed somewhere in his name.

Given the casualties, I'm also going to take a wild guess and predict he blew up in the airport security line, where everybody is packed in like sardines in a nice narrow area with concrete walls and ceiling. Reflects the shock waves, y'know.

That probably makes me a RACIST!!! I mean, it could have been an 82 year old ex-school teacher lady from Barrie Ontario who packed her wooden leg with C4. That's just as likely, right? I mean, it could happen...

Update: Well, I was wrong about the location, it blew up in baggage claim. However BBC and Reuters reports were both completely empty of any other information! They don't actually know that it was a suicide bomber, they made that part up. Islamic militants are "suspected".

Transparent steel!

Never let it be said that the Phantom Soapbox just points and laughs at the leftards.  You've heard of Transparent Aluminum from Star Trek, and you've heard some guy actually did it for real because they are testing it for bulletproof windows.

Well, here is transparent steel.

Glass stronger and tougher than steel? A new type of damage-tolerant metallic glass, demonstrating a strength and toughness beyond that of any known material, has been developed and tested by a collaboration of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)and the California Institute of Technology. What's more, even better versions of this new glass may be on the way.

"These results mark the first use of a new strategy for metallic glass fabrication and we believe we can use it to make glass that will be even stronger and more tough," says Robert Ritchie, a materials scientist who led the Berkeley contribution to the research.

The new metallic glass is a microalloy featuring palladium, a metal with a high "bulk-to-shear" stiffness ratio that counteracts the intrinsic brittleness of glassy materials.

"Because of the high bulk-to-shear modulus ratio of palladium-containing material, the energy needed to form shear bands is much lower than the energy required to turn these shear bands into cracks," Ritchie says. "The result is that glass undergoes extensive plasticity in response to stress, allowing it to bend rather than crack."

 Imagine fiberglass made out of that, my friends.  Or how about metallic glass cables holding up a transparent bridge?  Or maybe just really thin windows.

An exciting time to be alive, to be sure. 

The Phantom

Shut-update: Free speech can't exist unchained. US politics needs the tonic of order.

The Guardian says the Tea Party needs to shut the hell up!

Today's culprit is freedom of speech, or at least the speech of the American right and its broadcast cheerleaders. Shock-jock radio presenters feed on biased television news to present a view of the world divided between goodies and baddies. The baddies are always on the brink of victory and must be confronted with virile aggression. Language that might not disturb a balanced mind can clearly stimulate and legitimise an unbalanced one.

Say again?

The vitriol and inaccuracy of the campaign against Obama's public health reforms last year were like those against abortion and homosexuality. To many Europeans, the echo across the Atlantic came from a people isolated from the outside world and unable to handle today's social and scientific progress. The debate was infused with nastiness and xenophobia, as if the US was a land composed of tribes bred only to hate the outside world, and often themselves.

Damn Americans  are too stupid to be trusted with freedom! There oughta be a law!
Maybe the Guardian will change their tune when they all have to get a license to practice journalism.  Or not, possibly that's their aim.
Anyway, my new response when a guy like this tells me to shut up is "Make me, pencil neck."