Nothing looks neater than a big Harley with an assault rifle strapped on, unless it's the driver cop himself, all decked out in leather, ballistic nylon, and a hi-cap .40 by Glock. The contrast of Officer Charlie McCoppy in tacticals with a peaceful school yard simply adds to his patriotic, law-and-order aura as he strolls around friendly-like, cautioning sternly against reefer madness.
It is a wet dream for some suburban clown who manages to get himself hired by a militarized police force taking its tactical and strategic cues from the same movie and television fantasies as the tyke who beat the "failsafes."
You see, some little kid, probably raised by a flat-panel telescreen, fingers the unattended "AR-15" and makes it go bang. A bullet "disintegrates" and scatters itself or something hot and hard (pieces of the Hawg?) into the wee ones.
That no one was badly hurt signals more of divine grace than of a cop and his bosses possessing, among them, perhaps three functioning neurons. The bracket was secure according to the company that sold it so why bother to unload while Officer Friendly does DARE business? He feared the perceived threat that some some third grader forgot to take his ADHD medicine and might throw an eraser?
Attribute whatever irony you like to the final AP graf:
The shooting occurred while police visited the school for Red Ribbon Week, an annual national event that features a series of activities designed to raise awareness about drug and alcohol abuse.
How about another-colored ribbon week designed to alert kids to the danger of Keystone Kops abuse? I suggest one event for the affair. Governor Brown and Mayor Bloomberg lead a panel re-explaining why the police are the only ones qualified to carry weapons.
Showing posts with label Miscellaneous assholery.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miscellaneous assholery.. Show all posts
Oct 24, 2013
May 4, 2012
Wheeee!
Hey Kids! I almost forgot to tell you. Come to Okoboji. It's Willie Weekend! We have Willies wiggling all over the place. Big Willies and So-So Willies and Wee Willies. One is very special, and if you can grab it it you'll get a wonderful reward. Wink.
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Okay, so it's really Walleye Weekend, opening of the season with great fanfare and an astounding increase in retail prices. It marks the beginning of the annual Fleece -the-Tourist extravaganza which runs through September.
There really is a specialWillie walleye. It's tagged and worth a big bundle ($30k ? I never pay much attention.)
This post results from what is usually a nice quiet, traffic-free jaunt down to the nearest country convenience store. Also from my distaste for turning the quiet, contemplative, solitary art of fishing in to a goddam rave-cum-carnival-cum-lottery.
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Okay, so it's really Walleye Weekend, opening of the season with great fanfare and an astounding increase in retail prices. It marks the beginning of the annual Fleece -the-Tourist extravaganza which runs through September.
There really is a special
This post results from what is usually a nice quiet, traffic-free jaunt down to the nearest country convenience store. Also from my distaste for turning the quiet, contemplative, solitary art of fishing in to a goddam rave-cum-carnival-cum-lottery.
Jan 9, 2012
The Dynasty Lives
A fresh Kennedy kid is trying to decide if the fate of the Republic depends on offering himself for service in America's high councils.
He's Joe . He says he's earned Barney Frank's seat because, in part, of his "experience." Said experience consists of a tax-paid vacation in the Peace Corps and fully 30 months as county prosecutor. Take that, Iran!
Yes, Joe is one of those Kennedys, and in a properly governed nation that would be automatically disqualifying. Consanguinity, however slight, should be sufficient to complete the offense.
He's Joe . He says he's earned Barney Frank's seat because, in part, of his "experience." Said experience consists of a tax-paid vacation in the Peace Corps and fully 30 months as county prosecutor. Take that, Iran!
Yes, Joe is one of those Kennedys, and in a properly governed nation that would be automatically disqualifying. Consanguinity, however slight, should be sufficient to complete the offense.
Nov 16, 2011
Blogging ain't hard
All you really have to do is read the newspaper and pass on the giggles. . The Register decided to see why the U of Ioway laid itself open to another round of ridicule with that silly emergency alert about a man with a gun. (It turns out that there was no gun, no demonstrable threat, and not even a suspect.)
"U of I police director Chuck Green did not return a message seeking comment. Associate director Dave Visin referred questions to fellow associate director Lucy Wiederholt, who did not return a message seeking comment.
"University President Sally Mason’s office referred questions to spokesman Tom Moore and said interviews with Mason must be scheduled in advance. Mason was out of the office Tuesday."
That's an awful lot of fancy footwork coming from a place that calls itself a community of scholars who think at the cutting edge of the most adanced frontiers of human intelligence.
Funny one of the high-level cogitaters didn't say, "Aww, why the Hell don't we just admit we panicked like a freshman who missed her period?"
"U of I police director Chuck Green did not return a message seeking comment. Associate director Dave Visin referred questions to fellow associate director Lucy Wiederholt, who did not return a message seeking comment.
"University President Sally Mason’s office referred questions to spokesman Tom Moore and said interviews with Mason must be scheduled in advance. Mason was out of the office Tuesday."
That's an awful lot of fancy footwork coming from a place that calls itself a community of scholars who think at the cutting edge of the most adanced frontiers of human intelligence.
Funny one of the high-level cogitaters didn't say, "Aww, why the Hell don't we just admit we panicked like a freshman who missed her period?"
Aug 16, 2011
No fair guns
It's official. Your CCW is void at the Iowa State Fair.
We are waiting for a response from Iowa State Patrol Captain Gary Nieuwsma who announced the ban after some Craigslist comments made him or his bosses nervous. The question is: What is the statutory authority for voiding CCWs?
The situation is particularly silly in that the cops announced that there will be no metal detectors, just "no guns" signs. So Honest Abe will leave his piece locked in the trunk outside the gates. Thugeye will giggle and slip his Lorcin in his sock.
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I think I know what the captain's answer will be. Since shall-issue became law eight months ago, local officials have discovered a workaround. With the active encouragement of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, they have banned CCW carry in many public places through a tortuous interpretation of the trespass laws.
---
There is some history behind this nincompoopery. The forces of law and order are under intense pressure from the corn dog lobby to make sure everyone feels safe there on the gritty East Side.
A number of fights/assaults/mini-riots broke out last year just outside the fairgrounds. People at the scenes said aggressors tended to be non-white, the victims Caucasian, and one police officer reported the perps were crowing about "beat whitey night."
Before the official spin machine got going, the sergeant in charge of public relations for Des Moines police publicly quoted the street cop's "beat whitey" report. She lost her job. Since then the city, the county, and the state have spent gobbillions of dollars producing report after report saying, "Nope. Nothing racial here. Move along, folks." (I carefully add that we've also experienced something like "beat blackie nights" in these parts. There's slime at the bottom of both barrels.)
h/t Between Two Rivers
We are waiting for a response from Iowa State Patrol Captain Gary Nieuwsma who announced the ban after some Craigslist comments made him or his bosses nervous. The question is: What is the statutory authority for voiding CCWs?
The situation is particularly silly in that the cops announced that there will be no metal detectors, just "no guns" signs. So Honest Abe will leave his piece locked in the trunk outside the gates. Thugeye will giggle and slip his Lorcin in his sock.
---
I think I know what the captain's answer will be. Since shall-issue became law eight months ago, local officials have discovered a workaround. With the active encouragement of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, they have banned CCW carry in many public places through a tortuous interpretation of the trespass laws.
---
There is some history behind this nincompoopery. The forces of law and order are under intense pressure from the corn dog lobby to make sure everyone feels safe there on the gritty East Side.
A number of fights/assaults/mini-riots broke out last year just outside the fairgrounds. People at the scenes said aggressors tended to be non-white, the victims Caucasian, and one police officer reported the perps were crowing about "beat whitey night."
Before the official spin machine got going, the sergeant in charge of public relations for Des Moines police publicly quoted the street cop's "beat whitey" report. She lost her job. Since then the city, the county, and the state have spent gobbillions of dollars producing report after report saying, "Nope. Nothing racial here. Move along, folks." (I carefully add that we've also experienced something like "beat blackie nights" in these parts. There's slime at the bottom of both barrels.)
h/t Between Two Rivers
Jun 8, 2011
Stunned
It is absolutely stunning in the literal sense of the term.
Tam ferrets out a SWAT raid on the erstwhile home of a woman who hasn't repaid her student loan.
The jack-booted perp of the 6 a.m. raid? The United States Department of Education. Its agents manhandled and imprisoned the man of the house in a patrol car for six hours even though he wasn't who they were looking for. It was his estranged wife. His three kids were also tossed into the hot car.
---
I have always tried to squelch hot-headed cries to water the tree of liberty, post haste. The Stockton travesty makes such advice decidedly questionable.
----
UPDATE, thanks to our friend DirtCrashr: A DOE flack says the raid was not related to a defaulted student loan, but to some unspecified criminal investigation. This doesn't change much. It remains a botched, violent home invasion where a father and his three kids were terrorized because some entirely different person was suspected of some unspecified crime, almost certainly a nonviolent one.
Tam ferrets out a SWAT raid on the erstwhile home of a woman who hasn't repaid her student loan.
The jack-booted perp of the 6 a.m. raid? The United States Department of Education. Its agents manhandled and imprisoned the man of the house in a patrol car for six hours even though he wasn't who they were looking for. It was his estranged wife. His three kids were also tossed into the hot car.
---
I have always tried to squelch hot-headed cries to water the tree of liberty, post haste. The Stockton travesty makes such advice decidedly questionable.
----
UPDATE, thanks to our friend DirtCrashr: A DOE flack says the raid was not related to a defaulted student loan, but to some unspecified criminal investigation. This doesn't change much. It remains a botched, violent home invasion where a father and his three kids were terrorized because some entirely different person was suspected of some unspecified crime, almost certainly a nonviolent one.
Sep 7, 2010
War on Drugs, as if we needed further proof
In the San Francisco Tenderloin district, cops and drug thugs are demonstrating the degree to which the War on Drugs has been lost. The city has conceded defeat and settles for a short cease-fire every week-day morning and afternoon.
Along the route children take to a Catholic school, there is a stepped-up police patrol. Officers shoo away the ubiquitous street dealers so the children aren't exposed to them. When they're locked safely in the school, the cops drift off, and Flydaddy returns to vend his bags of white powder. It's hard to think of a better example of the futility of enforcing laws which are primarily unrealistic words on paper.
Decriminalizing narcotics for adults would have its own nightmare problems of administration, enforcement and education, but what could possibly be worse than a message to drug dealers that, yeah, you've won; we ask, however, that you take your coffee breaks while the wee ones are walking to school. Then you can go ahead with your felonies, and we probably won't get around to annoying you too much.
One of the facts we mention too seldom is the price of drugs. The pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is something like 2 per cent of its illegal -- street -- cost. The other 98 per cent is a government contribution to the net worth and cash flow of drug czars and their serfs.
That 2 per cent estimate is from an old William F. Buckley statement, as is his report that more Americans die from drug-war violence than from the use of the drugs themselves.
Along the route children take to a Catholic school, there is a stepped-up police patrol. Officers shoo away the ubiquitous street dealers so the children aren't exposed to them. When they're locked safely in the school, the cops drift off, and Flydaddy returns to vend his bags of white powder. It's hard to think of a better example of the futility of enforcing laws which are primarily unrealistic words on paper.
Decriminalizing narcotics for adults would have its own nightmare problems of administration, enforcement and education, but what could possibly be worse than a message to drug dealers that, yeah, you've won; we ask, however, that you take your coffee breaks while the wee ones are walking to school. Then you can go ahead with your felonies, and we probably won't get around to annoying you too much.
One of the facts we mention too seldom is the price of drugs. The pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is something like 2 per cent of its illegal -- street -- cost. The other 98 per cent is a government contribution to the net worth and cash flow of drug czars and their serfs.
That 2 per cent estimate is from an old William F. Buckley statement, as is his report that more Americans die from drug-war violence than from the use of the drugs themselves.
Dec 15, 2009
Australia Fair
Down Under has decided to go for it, purity in thought, deed, and download. Despite disarming every law-abiding citizen in the nation, the government remains fearful.
The Aussie feds announce this week that they will seek new laws requiring ISPs to block "harmful material. " So far -- and as far as the politicians down there admit -- the definition covers pretty much just child porn, violent sex, and details on how to do bad criminal things. (Say, adjust the sights on a Daisy Red Ryder?)
By natural authoritarian progression, the definition will expand to any internet statement disputing the official government position that government is not an ass.
Coincidentally, Aussie scientists have discovered a small octopus smart enough to drag two coconut half shells home and reassemble them into a nice hideout.
Next time Australia is looking for a leader, I suggest the octopus.
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