Edward Snowden takes questions.

Some very interesting answers to some pointed questions about Snowden and the NSA here. Worth reading the whole thing.

Hopeful signs.

Obama regime astroturfing event faceplants at terminal velocity.

Last week, Obama's political action arm, Organizing For Action, held rallies throughout the country advocating for stricter gun laws. Their rallies drew small numbers as seen here and here. 

We can thank the vigilant San Bernardino Sun for putting a spotlight on perhaps the smallest of the rallies.

Protest pictured here just before the other two idiots showed up.

Organizing For Action picketed a gun show in Orange County California. With three guys. If the most they can come up with is three useful idiots to take their money, in California no less, I'd say that's a hopeful sign.

Idiot Leftist endangers kids to make a point. Must be Tuesday.

My Month With a Gun: Week One

Heidi Yewman, author and stupid person.

Yes, I bought a handgun and will carry it everywhere I go over the next 30 days. I have four rules: Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.
Why? Following the Newtown massacre in December, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, told the country, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  I wondered what would it be like to be that good guy with a gun? What would it be like to get that gun, live with that gun, be out and about with that gun. Finally, what happens when you don't want that gun any more?
I decided to find out.

Here's what she found out:

Today, I'm surrounded by five-year-old boys sitting with their moms at the next table. Now I'm the one with a gun on her hip. The gun makes me more fearful than I could have imagined.
In some way, I feel a certain vindication. I was right to protest Starbucks policy. Today, they have a woman with absolutely no firearms training and a Glock on her hip sitting within arm's reach of small children, her hands shaking and adrenaline surging.

Translation, she's an incompetent idiot with a shaky grasp on reality who is complaining that Big Brother won't stop her from endangering others with her incompetence and incipient lunacy.

If she was one of my relations I'd slap her. How selfish and stupid is this woman?

The SLAP HER! Phantom.

Why do Lefties always assume Big Government will be on -their- side?

LAX TSA officer to 15 year old girl: "Cover yourself!"

Dear Lefties, you are not the only intolerant statists in the world. What on earth make you think religious fruitloops won't get jobs in the Big Brother Corps and push your skinny little Lefty asses around?

Definitely a thong wearer, am I right?.

By the way? Lulu Lemmon see-through yoga pants and a too-small tank top are -not- an appropriate travel outfit for a 15 year old girl on a school outing with no parents. You're welcome.

The Helpful Phantom

Update: Some boneheaded Grrrrl thinks this bit of official harassment is a reason to "Be Shameless!" Like that's going to help.

Some of the comments are hilarious! From "Azteclady":

Where, pray tell, is the responsibility of the attacker?
You are implying that it’s the responsibility of women to keep themselves safe–is it not the responsibility of men NOT to attack women?

Man, you just can't make this stuff up.

Here's what's really going on with the NSA thing.

Here is a map showing the actual scope of what has been revealed the last week or so on the NSA spying thing.

The map, called Boundless Informant, is among documents released by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor who says he is the person who this month leaked information about the U.S. metadata collection program known as PRISM.

About 3 billion pieces of metadata information were collected in a 30-day period, the map shows. That data includes calls made, location of the phone, time of the call and duration.

A handbook for the map says it uses "big data technology" to "produce near real-time business intelligence."

If you know time and location, you can physically track people. What this doesn't say is that you don't have to be making or taking a call on your phone for the cell network to track you. Your phone does that every few seconds the whole time its turned on.

In Canada? Yep you betcha!

The Globe and Mail reported Monday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay authorized Canada's super-secret Communications Security Establishment (CSE) to conduct its own "metadata" surveillance program in November 2011.

So, this gives whoever has access to this system the ability to track anybody they want, 24/7/365, in real-time or back in history for as long ans the data goes. We have other mentions in the news that this has been going on in Canada since at least 2005. That's what we -know-.

So there you go. Think up what -you- would do with 24/7 tracking of anyone you want since 2005, that's probably less than half of what they can actually do right now.

This is what I voted CPC in the election to PREVENT, and I'm sorely disappointed.  CPC take note.

The Phantom

Oh look, a convenient study! People LIKE ubiquitous surveillance.

A convenient study from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.  "Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic"

Interesting datum from withing the study, as noted on the Drudge Report, DemocRat partisans like the NSA under Obama, hated it under Bush. Table from the article:


The convenient part comes in when you consider that the Bush admin statement says they were getting court orders, while the Obama admin are not. One of those is not like the other.

Next table:



Convenient again, because as we know considerable monitoring of guys they KNEW were dirty did not prevent the Boston Marathon bombing. Ask the question plainly, "Should government be able to monitor EVERYTHING YOU DO ON-LINE for purposes unstated?"

Funny how these types of studies pop up suddenly whenever Barry steps on his whatsit.

The Phantom

Big Brother Finally Hits The News Cycle.

As we know from about a zillion blog posts and minor news stories scattered around the web since 1998 or so, Big Brother is tapping your web activity.  Lately we have had news that Big Brother is recording -everything- that we do on-line, from phone calls to Google searches.

From the main stream media we have heard muted mutterings of "yeah, they might be kinda listening sometimes." Should be front page and top of the hour on every outlet that every freakin' thing you do on-line gets recorded and archived -forever!- by American government agencies, but all we get are these little breadcrumbs.

So finally a -BRITISH- newspaper has been unable to ignore the stinking dung pile any longer, and has gone public.  Its all over Drudge.

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.
Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.
In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Perhaps a bit less so at the New York Slimes.

PRISM is the new search word my friends. And don't forget about CARNIVORE and all that other alphabet soup. CARNIVORE is so old they retired it in 2005.

Its official now. Big Brother knows what pr0n sites you visited in 2009. And 2003. And probably 1997 for that matter. They have the Great Mother of all keyword searchable databases with all this crap stuffed in a series of server farms someplace, probably a hundred acres of blade racks consuming the entire electrical output of a 1000 megawatt coal fired generating station. Enough waste heat to keep New York City warm in January.

Google server farm, now under NSA management.

Remember, this is just what we KNOW they're doing. The mind boggles at what they might be doing we don't know about. Enemies lists? Tapping political party phone calls? Given the IRS I think we can assume "YES!" on both those possibilities.

And hey Americans, the very best part? They're listening to you with YOUR money. They're listening to -me- with your money too, and I'm not even American. Isn't that special?

The Phantom

From our "Trigger Happy Cops" file...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Phantom

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

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

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

Here's your answer: Tony Martin.

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

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

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

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

The Phantom

Face punching JF Sergant redux: Educating the young.

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

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

Kier said some things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does that piece of historically verifiability get us here?

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

 

Nice!

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

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

Definitely need to punch this asshole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

Questions, comments from the hipster gallery?