Category: Crime

Black Friday indeed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
A screen grab from video at the scene of a shooting rampage in Bibleburg.
A screen grab from video at the scene of a shooting rampage in Bibleburg.

“Black Friday” got a whole new meaning in Bibleburg today.

It’s certainly too early to speculate about motive, and probably too late to do anything about the shite job the Founders did on that Second Amendment, though we do have options in that regard.

But I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that for sure a whole bunch of folks got shot, again, and taking off our shoes at the airport, letting the NSA peek in our digital windows, and keeping Syrian refugees on the other side of the Big Water don’t seem to be keeping Americans safe from terrorism.

I bet a few people within rifle range of that Planned Parenthood center felt terrorized today. That’s one product we don’t need to import from overseas. Not even for Black Friday. We make it right here at home.

• Late update: The Dumbass is strong in this one. From The Gazette: “There was a moment this afternoon when a man walked up to the scene with a handgun strapped to his waist and ammunition vest around his chest. He appeared to be asking police if he could help. Officers told him to leave immediately because appearing at the scene while wearing firearms and that equipment was a bad idea.”

Can you hear us NOW?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Th' fuck you lookin' at?
Th’ fuck you lookin’ at?

Good news for those of us who don’t like Uncle Sammy listening to our phone calls just, ’cause, like, you know, freedom an’ shit — a federal district judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency’s perma-tap is likely an “almost Orwellian” violation of the U.S. Constitution.

According to The New York Times, Judge Richard J. Leon stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” giving the gummint time to appeal, which could take six months or more.

But the judge said as part of a 68-page ruling that the gummint had failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the N.S.A.’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.”

MoJo’s Kevin Drum notes that “district court judges make lots of rulings that never go anywhere, and this is mostly likely one of them.” But he likes that a judge wants this bullshit to stop, and so do I.

Screen saver

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Refurbished monitor
Good as new.

I’ve committed a grave crime against capitalism.

My old ViewSonic monitor started acting up a while ago. It wouldn’t reliably wake from sleep, and sometimes I had to turn it on and off a half dozen times to get it to work more or less reliably.

A consultation with good old Mr. Google found that monitors from a wide variety of outfits have been getting sideways due to bum capacitors. A competent electronics type probably could have cracked the case and fixed it himself, but we’re talking about me here.

So, rather than bundle up and camp outside the Best Buy in hopes of knuckle-dusting my way to a new one at a door-busting, unbelievable, rock-bottom, low, low price, I hauled the old one over to Voelker Research and had it fixed.

I feel so … dirty.

One bomb deserves another

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments

The best advice I’ve seen so far about the bombings in Boston comes from Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

“If you live in Boston, stay home until things are better sorted out. If you live elsewhere, try to avoid jumping to any conclusions.”

Word. On a related note, I suppose it’s too soon to make a joke about how we’re all gonna have to take off our shoes before we’re allowed to run our next marathon.*

* As an ink-stained wretch of long standing I assume that this bit of black humor or some variation thereof hit the nation’s newsrooms before the smoke cleared.

Cops ‘n’ robbers

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments

Yesterday a neighbor came home from visiting a friend to find a surprised burglar in his house, pointing his own .38 Special at him. I’d call that a Monday times, oh, ’bout a thousand.

So we had cops out the wazoo for a spell, in cars, astride motorcycles, on foot, with dogs. Bupkis. The scumbag got away, as scumbags often do.

I went through our house, checking to make sure that all our various smokepoles were unloaded and the bullets stashed elsewhere, so that I can surprise anyone who points one at me by clocking him with a skillet.

Which once again raises the question: “Why the fuck do I have all these goddamn things in my house if I’m gonna draw down on a baddie with a skillet instead?”

Good question. One of these days I intend to answer it.

Meanwhile, Herself celebrated her (mumble-mumble)th birthday today. I sang her “Happy Birthday” twice and got her a new MacBook Pro to replace the abacus she had been using. She says I can live here for another year if I don’t get shot accidentally on purpose with one of my own guns.