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Maybe Not Obvious

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This news post on the riots in Cleveland pretty much affirmed my suspicion that law enforcement downtown got caught off-guard by the protest. While I’ve lived in the area ne’er-do-wells are able to pull this kind of stunt once, but then thereafter law enforcement in northeast Ohio will be wise to the scheme and squash it. Subsequent protests were much smaller and never gained any of the same “steam”. This is such a consistent pattern I long ago decided this wasn’t by chance and that the city leaders (the oligarchs who call the shots, not the politicians) do not want their city, their home, run into the ground (despite the city’s best efforts).

Contrast this with Minneapolis where apparently the city leaders and politicians want to leave a smoking crater where their city now stands. What is interesting in their quest to close the police department is that they have the paradigm mostly backwards. Yes, police officers are “peace officers” and usually their presence, or the threat of their presence, is enough to keep things somewhat law abiding. However, one of their primary responsibilities is the protection of criminals. Would the rioters have been dealt with more, or less harshly if there was no law enforcement? How long would criminals like Fentanyl Jesus have been around if he was only subject to street justice instead of government justice?

In some ways the elimination of incompetent government law enforcement would be a plus for the law abiding, though certainly actual law enforcement would become more medieval with clans regulating their interactions with other clans and criminals dealt with in harsh fashions. I certainly favor the Cleveland method of law enforcement, but in Minneapolis, if given the choice between law enforcement/city leaders which stand by as the city as the city is burned and looted, and no law enforcement, I’d probably choose the latter, which, is why it won’t come to pass.

Northeastern Travels

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A lot of noise in the New England press speaking up the anniversary and it’s all c-r-a-p like this:

The third anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings Friday was marked by solemn remembrance of the dead and wounded…”When you think about what happened three years ago today, and you think about what’s come of it, there is so much hope and inspiration”

“Remember the victims!” is the cry heard from on high.  Heaven forbid someone spend five seconds remembering the perpetrators so that there might not be any more victims.

It’s certainly nothing contained to this region but it seems more ingrained since these people are, well, insane; they’ve completely swallowed the blue pill.  When I travel to Colorado I always think that I could be one of them, just need to eat a little better, exercise a little more, and learn to breathe a little less.  However when it comes to New England I could ever be one of them.  Just a few pics:

The Tewksbury police headquarters, made famous for their attempt to outright steal a big piece of private property.
A strip mall like this could be anywhere (and everywhere) in America.
Hampton Beach in New Hampshire, where pedestrians and bikers outnumber cars about 2:1.  There were even some people surfing out in the frigid North Atlantic (all men, though some brought their girlfriends along so that they could snap action pics of them with cameras that had lenses as long as my forearm).
The reworked Ford Escape UI; someone’s cousin must be in the “button” business.  At least Microsoft’s Sync is now tolerable instead of painfully awful.  (I love the “Menu” button, I mean really?  They need another menu after slathering that many buttons on the car console?)
Fort McClary in Maine, just past the ginormous Portsmouth naval yard.
Couldn’t resist stopping to get one of these in Maine.  The place wasn’t exactly out of the way, but it wasn’t in the tourist area so the bartender thought I was a native, despite the fact that even people in Northern Ohio know that I’m not a local from the way I speak.

The last picture was extra amusing as a local came in and was talking about how messy it can be to eat lobster and related a tale about buying a lobster and going down to the beach to eat it because, like everyone else up there, she keeps lobster eating utensils in her purse at all times.  Oh to live in such a magical land where one must always be prepared for the threat of the lobster apocalypse!

Completely Unrelated

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On a completely incompetent judge that even her liberal peers say should be sacked:

I’ve detailed complaints about her before, in a 2009 story and 2011 column. In the latter, I urged voters to look past her political name and support her opponent in her re-election bid. I pointed out that Stokes had received a zero rating in the fall of 2011 from four separate legal groups, which go to great lengths to vet judges.
Stokes, on the bench since 1996, easily won another term.

On a (pointless) drive to make testing in Ohio public schools more difficult:

If the cut score were set where it’s expected to be, 77 percent of Rocky River eighth-graders — instead of 96 percent — would pass the math test. At the other extreme, 4 percent of East Cleveland eighth-graders — instead of 37 percent — would pass.

Even more fun in that last story is the high-to-low pass chart listing the school districts. Locals will immediately notice the demographic differences between the top and bottom, though everyone else can make a pretty good guess.