This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: “Teh Stoopid”

  • DC residents want to “crack down on ski masks”

    Old Trooper sends a link to an article in the Washington Times wherein some locals are blaming high capacity ski masks which are apparently being sold with no background checks in DC stores, and then the masks are free to wreak havoc on the otherwise peaceful community. So they figure they need to “crack down” on the purchase of the item.

    On a Metropolitan Police Department-run listserv, Ms.[Faith Wheeler, an Advisory Neighborhood Commission member] was one of several people who broached the subject of trying to discourage the sale of ski masks in the neighborhood, or asked legislators whether there are other ways to ban their sale.

    The City already forbids people over the age of 16 from wearing the ski masks in public in some circumstances like while committing a crime or threatening someone else, but apparently the law doesn’t go far enough for some of the residents of DC…sound familiar? The DC cops say they don’t keep statistics on how often they enforce that law…which in the language of the DC government means that they don’t enforce it at all. Again, sound familiar?

    “And the next thing you know, the irrational thinkers will be talking about getting rid of scarves. A long scarf can make a good mask. Hmm. What’s next after that?” one woman wrote on the police listserv in response to the ski mask discussion.

    Yikes, it’s almost as if there’s a pattern here. It’s as if people who think that government can solve every little problem in their lives expect more and more government. But that can’t be right. Can it?

    So, those balaclavas that Ranger Joe’s sells – are those assault ski masks? And those ski masks made by that company UnderArmor – are they really armor – who cares, we should ban them because they sound scary? The DC government should have a database of people who can legally purchase ski masks and there should be a three-day cooling off/waiting period. And purchase should be limited to one ski mask every month. The black ones scare me. The opportunities for the “do something” crowd are virtually endless in the unregulated ski mask market.

  • BATFE antics

    Old Trooper and Jeremy sent us a link to the story about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and their Keystone Cops-style sting operation in Milwaukee, where they tried to take weapons and drugs off the mean streets with a storefront operation that was burglarized by locals, the agents skipped on the rent and plugged the toilet, and left $15,000 damage to the property in their wake while having negligible effect on the neighborhood’s crime profile;

    [I]t resulted in a string of mistakes and failures, including an ATF military-style machine gun landing on the streets of Milwaukee and the agency having $35,000 in merchandise stolen from its store, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.

    When the 10-month operation was shut down after the burglary, agents and Milwaukee police officers who participated in the sting cleared out the store but left behind a sensitive document that listed names, vehicles and phone numbers of undercover agents.

    And the agency remains locked in a battle with the building’s owner, who says he is owed about $15,000 because of utility bills, holes in the walls, broken doors and damage from an overflowing toilet.

    The sting resulted in charges being filed against about 30 people, most for low-level drug sales and gun possession counts. But agents had the wrong person in at least three cases. In one, they charged a man who was in prison – as a result of an earlier ATF case – at the time agents said he was selling drugs to them.

    It’s a long article and you really should click over and read the whole thing to get a sense of the incompetence – but you can bet that if their mission was to get legally-owned guns from law abiding citizens, the operation would have been flawlessly executed and they’d still be clapping each other on the back instead of skipping out on their obligations to the private property owner. Yeah, there was a simple reason that the toilet was plugged.

  • More steaming skeet

    OK, so no one can find a picture of the President “doing skeet shooting” so The New Republic tried to help him out by tweeting this photoshop that David Frum, the conscience of the Republican Party, fell for;

    Doing Skeet (fake, you fuck)

    More info at Twitchy and Jammie Wearing Fools.

  • Attention monger’s seasons greetings

    I guess Steve Jordan is missing the attention we gave him last year. He sent us this Christmas card, but it’s postmarked January 25th – I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t send it sooner so it could rest with the others on my fireplace mantle;

    Steve Jordan Christmas card

    We’re not the only ones getting off-seasons greeting. ROS sent me this link this morning.

    So, thanks, Steve, but you’re still a douche.

  • Black helicopters over Houston and Duff’s Sandy Hook hoax

    They were stretching their legs over Miami the other day and now they’re scaring Houston residents;

    I’m sure I heard something about these exercises last year, but it seems they don’t want to remind folks;

    We received a lot of phones calls, Tweets and Facebook posts from worried neighbors, wondering what was going on.

    SkyEye 13 HD was over the south side where at first look, it appeared there was a massive SWAT scene happening.

    With military helicopters flying above her southeast Houston neighborhood, Frances Jerrals didn’t know what to think.

    Well, ya know, if they had some of the American idol finalists in the helicopters, maybe we’d remember better.

    But the thought of Black helicopters reminded me of Gordon Duff and so I shot over to Veterans Today to see what he had to say about it, and oddly, this low hanging fruit for conspiracy theorists has escaped their attention. Probably because they’re so worried about the hoax at Sandy Hook;

    Sandy Hook is the first terror attack meant to be unraveled, exposed and debunked, not once but week after week, month after month, one bizarre revelation after another.

    Were Sandy Hook a television show, it would now be in its third season, another “psyop” to go along with “Homeland” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

    The murders were not about punishment and suffering, not in a primary sense. The sea of lies surrounding Sandy Hook is an outright assault on every institution, including, oddly enough, the press resources that had to have been readied and briefed, not just days but weeks in advance.

    As many had postulated, Sandy Hook, the highly organized brutal murder of twenty small children by military trained special operations monsters is an act of pure political terror nearly identical to the “Breveik” slayings in Norway.

    Ya know, because our special operations soldiers would just go ahead and follow orders to murder American children with no ethical queries whatsoever. Of course, we can’t expect the great and all-knowing Gordon Duff to think otherwise, given his extensive eighteen month military career 40 years ago. Of course, his big problem with the current government is that they’ve restricted access to his sponsors PressTV, the Iranian government’s mouthpiece.

    In much of the West, Press TV has been shut down, censored, blocked or smeared and attacked. This was only a first step.

    Yeah, gee, I wonder why. Couldn’t be because the poisonous anti-Semitic propaganda is out of step with the rest of civilization.

  • Another Anti-Gun Overreaction

    Seems a young man in Ohio was recently arrested for a photo posted on Facebook.

    The photo showed him holding his 1-year-old daughter and a “scary” gun at the same time.

    Allegedly, the baby’s grandmother got wind of the photo and alerted authorities.  The local police came and arrested the guy – for child endangerment.

    This appears to be the photo.  Note  that the “scary” gun is (1) not pointed at the child, (2) is pointed away from both child and father, and (3) there’s no finger on the trigger.  Frankly, I don’t see any evidence of  “endangerment” in the photo.  Stupidity, poor judgement, perhaps – but not endangerment.

    It gets even better.  It turns out the gun in question was a freaking BB-gun.

    Yes, that’s right:  the cops actually went to a guy’s house and arrested him over a picture of him holding his child and a toy at the same time.  Why?  Because that “toy” looked like one of those “scary” guns.  I wonder if they’d have arrested him if it had been a plastic sword or a hammer?  Both of those can be lethal to a small child.

    I don’t fault the cops for checking into this once it was reported.  And yeah – the guy should have probably put the BB pistol down for the picture.

    But an arrest for “child endangerment”?  Give me a freaking break.  A quick interview and a look at the “scary gun” involved – plus a dose of common sense – was what was called for here.  Not an arrest for what was obviously a non-crime.

    Normally, we talk about “stupid criminal tricks”.  Well, maybe we should file this one under “stupid cop tricks.”

    I wonder if any conservative lawyers in Ohio might have time for a bit of pro bono work.  Based on the photo and other facts reported so far, IMO it’s at least possible there might be a wrongful arrest suit in there somewhere.

     

    Correction:  the original version of this story indicated that the ex-wife was the individual who alerted authorities.  In fact, it appears she showed the picture to her mother – the baby’s grandmother – who is the one who actually alerted local authorities.