Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Heat....

I'm sure, you've heard that before, the US Postal Service Creed.

However, the Creed does not mention Cold, which apparently stops deliveries dead, even when its no longer -5F out and its now a balmy 19 degrees and sunny - practically t-shirt weather in Michigan.

Verily, the creed doth some more aspirational and not a code but more like guidelines.

I had a package ordered a couple weeks ago, properly and promptly shipped by the vendor in Texas on January 17,  the same day as it was ordered even which is great service, and it was supposed to be delivered January 20.

It arrived on January 20 at the Pontiac, Michigan Regional Facility and has not moved an inch since.  Tracking gives a deceptive message that it is "In Transit to next facility. Arriving Late."

No kidding USPS. No kidding it is arriving late, as the transit to next facility seems to be done by snails at best.  There have been no updates as to the whereabouts of the package since January 24, so I;m beginning to doubt the veracity of the statement that it is "in transit" - unless that means put in a postal worker's pocket and taken in transit to their home.

Update: Finally arrived after sitting at the Pontiac "Distribution" Center office for 9 flipping days.  Sheesh.

77 Minutes

77 minutes.

That's how long five fully armed and armored police officers were inside the Uvalde School in a hallway outside the door where the killer was located, and yet failed to even try to enter or engage the shooter, or even go as far as to try to open the door, even as shooting was still going on inside the classroom and innocents were dying.

Even after a second series of shots are fired, they wait another half an hour and still do not enter the room - which was unlocked.

Those police officers failed to do anything at all except stand around, check their phones, and apply hand sanitizer - as hand sanitizer is always an important part of any ongoing counter-killer operations.

It took a Border Patrol Tactical team to finally go past them enter and neutralize the a-hole, long after the damage was done.

No, the  police have no duty to protect you.  You sure as heck are on your own, even when police are within arms length or closer and could render aid but choose to not do so.

The tin foil hat crowd should have a field day with this video, in that there's a decent argument to be made that the Democrats in charge of the response may have decided that once the school shooter was in the school, the police might as well be stood down to let him rack up a decent score to increase the horror to push for more gun control?

But, let's not assume malice in the clear face of abject stupidity and complete incompetence. 

It appears the Uvalde School Police Chief totally lost the plot and ordered his police not to engage the killer - even after they were inside, in numbers, and more than well-equipped complete with ballistic shields.  This is contrary to absolutely everything that has been known about how to handle school spree killers since Columbine. He's now saying he didn't know he was in charge when he issued those stand down orders.  The mind doth boggle at that, not to mention the claim that they were delayed by the door being locked when it has been shown the door in fact was not locked.

77 minutes.

77 minutes is nicely outside the "Golden Hour" for trauma care. How many kids bled out or died from what otherwise would have been survivable injuries, or will now suffer form injuries that would have been less severe had the police decided to act as actual police officers?

Uvalde should put to rest, once and for all, the progressive's claims that you don't need a gun to protect yourself because "the police will protect you".  

But it won't. They'll still keep claiming it knowing that it is beyond question an abjectly false statement.  

You're unfortunately very much on your own and waiting passively for police to respond in a life or death situation can no longer be considered a viable option, and it never was.

Those five Uvalde Police officers, and their chief need to, at the very least, resign for their abject failure to do their moral, even as it was not their legal, duty that day.

Mail Delivery Blues - Now They're Just Making Stuff Up

So I was expecting a package in the mail yesterday.  The tracking info stated it would be delivered.  The rest of the mail was delivered, but the package was not.  Tracking though still said it would be delivered yesterday.  Nope, not so much.

Funnily enough, the tracking reports an exception that they were unable to deliver it:
 

Seriously now, you managed to get the rest of the mail delivered to the same location as always, but now have "No Access to Delivery Location".  What, did the house and mailbox shift into another dimension temporarily between delivering the rest of the mail and the package?

This is just straight up lying. 

Probably being done to get out of refunding the postage for priority mail not being delivered on time.  Instead of just admitting it was delayed or they could not get around to delivering it, they now claim they can't access the location which is nonsense.

On the upside, they will allegedly try and deliver to the same location today they could not access tomorrow, so there's that.

Sheesh.

Update: Mirabile dictu, the package is delivered. They managed to find the mailbox today, right where they left it yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. 

Iowa Primary Update

With still no official winner announced as of 11:30 am the next day, multiple candidates have declared victory!

In the void, several campaigns leaked unverified internal campaign data – submitted by their own precinct captains – to claim a strong showing.

Pete Buttigieg effectively delivered his victory speech to supporters, saying, “By all indications we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.” Bernie Sanders’s campaign also released a ranking that showed Sanders at No. 1. Amy Klobuchar’s campaign said she outperformed Joe Biden for fourth place.

With no clear winner, the only truly Democratic thing to do is declare them all winners and give each of them a trophy, as after all, since they all showed up and tried, they're all winners, which is how it works, isn't it?

A Lesson Of The Iowa Democratic Primary

What lesson does the utter hash the Democrats has made of their first caucus offer as to Democrat governance?

Well, these are same Dem bulbs that want to control your healthcare, control your electricity, and control how business do business.

They promise they can efficiently manage all that, yet they can't even effectively manage to accurately, efficiently and credibly conduct a caucus of a couple thousand people in a setting that has had the same basic process since 1972.

Think about that for a bit.

What We Knew About Parkland Was Bad, Now We Know It Was Even Worse

I did a summary awhile ago of all the myriad failures that led to, and occurred during, the Parkland shooting.

The incredible sordid failure of the school system to deal with him can be read in the school's own censored report. Well, their own report had 50% of the content censored and blacked out. But not to worry, in yet another demonstration of the spectacular failure of the school system in dealing with the situation from start to finish, the censorship can and was easily removed in Adobe and can be read at the Sun Sentinel's site for it.

Reading it and you can see all the myriad of behaviors exhibited, all the indicators that the schmuck was likely to commit the act and the complete and utter failure to appropriately respond by the school system. Add to that a complete failure of security at the school, including a failure to follow up on recommendations a security expert hired by the flipping school board had made prior to the shooting. None of the recommendations were implemented and most were pretty darn common-sensical.

But wait, it gets worse.

The latest article by the Sun Sentinel on the work of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement shows the law enforcement response was even worse than we had known then.

The Sun Sentinel: Who made key mistakes in Parkland school shooting? Nine months later, no one held accountable

Some highlights of the new information:

We knew that Deputy and Coward Scott Perterson, now getting a pension of over $8,000 per month, did not even try to engage the shooter, enter the building or rescue anyone. But did you know the first supervisor to arrive similarly not only did not enter the building but stayed far away from it? He did not get on the radio and supervise and in fact did nothing for 10 minutes?

The senior sheriff's officer eventually on site Captain Jan Jordan was apparently frozen and completely ineffective on scene, and called for a perimeter to be setup rather than a rapid entrance to engage the killer and save people?

Capt. Jan Jordan, the sheriff’s Parkland district commander, was “overwhelmed,” a Coconut Creek Deputy Chief Greg Lees told commission investigators. “I could see it,” he said. “I tried to help her.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Stephen O’Neill described Jordan’s manner of speech during the crisis as “dream-like” and called the command structure “ineffective” and “not engaged with the problem.”

Oh, and if you ever wondered, in a mass shooting event if someone is coming to save you, you don;t need to wonder any more you are really on your own:

Eight deputies arrived in time to hear shots but didn’t go in after the shooter,

Let that one sink in. Eight deputies on scene failed to enter while the shooting was going on. Not just one, eight.

The worst part is the commission isn't near done yet and I expect even more failures to be brought to light.

Blaming the NRA was an easy distraction from this massive ball of suck and fail.

The School turned a blind eye, Law Enforcement dropped every possible ball, the sheriff lied, and a whole lot of people died. Their deaths, or at the very least many of their deaths, could have been avoided had people just done the jobs they signed up for and were getting paid, and paid damn well, to do.

So Whose Fault Is That, Exactly?

The Detroit Free Press Editorial from the rather vacuous Nancy Kaffer is quite the read:

The Detroit Free Press: We should be more outraged about rape in Detroit

From the title on down, the editorial is pretty strange. After all, I don't hardly think anyone is not outraged nor ok with rapists plying their crimes in Detroit or elsewhere.

The howler in the article though is this line, basically, after noting over 11,000 rape kits sat untested in Detroit, it's a women and minorities hardest hit quote:

It's impossible to separate this casual dismissal of this crime from its most likely victims: In Detroit, African-American women.

"If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board — across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently," Worthy told me last month. "And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true."

So sayeth the Black, pretty much elected for life, Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy who has been in her present position since 2004 -- as the head of the prosecuting organization responsible for prosecuting rapes in Detroit mind you -- in a city that has had a Black mayor during the time the test kits were ignored, and a Black police chief to boot.

In a city that has been run solely by Democrat mayors since 1962, and with Blacks running the institutions responsible for fighting crime during the time the rape kits were ignored, it's a little facile to make a claim of structural racism or classicism against women and minorities is somehow at fault for this failure to prosecute rapes fully and competently. Especially when its the women and minorities running the show - unless they're going to argue with a straight face that thewomen and minorities running the show have been brainwashed or conditioned into treating "a person of color, if you're a different economic class" differently, which would be quite the trick.

Better to blame structural racism and classicism than have the people in charge step up and take responsibility for this colossal malfeasance.

The Overcivilization Of The American Male

My neighborhood, like many others, has a website forum where people ask various questions such as referrals for tradespeople and complaints about stuff, etc.

One message in this morning's digest had me shaking my head in disbelief:

Dead possum in backyard

We have a dead possum in our backyard in one of our bushes. Our dog has been going after it all day. Can anyone recommend someone who would be willing to dispose of it and remove it from our yard?

Thank you!

This was from a guy, no less.

That a modern male cannot handle the disposal of a dead possum in his own backyard is a pretty damning indictment of the lack of some very basic life skills for a modern male in today's society.

Pajama boy just doesn't do well outside his sheltered happy bubble especially if something as little as a dead possum is beyond his ken to handle.

Sheesh.

Detroit Democrats Helping To Lose The Real War on Women

It's not just the corruption that's endemic to one-party controlled cities. It's the incompetence. That incompetence, combined with a revolving door justice system leads to criminals being allowed to remain free to prey upon their victims, in some cases repeatedly.

The Detroit News: 2nd backlog of untested Detroit rape kits found

A second backlog of more than 500 untested Detroit rape kits languished in storage for years after more than 11,000 other unprocessed evidence packages were discovered in a warehouse in 2009, prosecutors say. Out-of-state laboratory workers discovered 555 additional untested rape packages while testing some of the untested rape kits that were found in 2009 in a police warehouse, Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller told MLive.com. The additional rape kits were collected by Detroit police in 2010 and 2011, and eventually sent for testing in 2015.

The failure to process these kits have allowed rapists to remain free to commit other crimes against women. You can read the article for plenty of examples of criminals who would have, and should have, been caught had those tests been done rather than shuffled away, but one statistic leaps out:

Worthy said earlier this month that testing of the pre-2009 kits resulted in 78 convictions and the identification of 784 suspected serial rapists believed to have committed sex assaults 10 to 15 times each.

That's 784 uncaught criminals committing in total between 7,840 to 11,760 rapes on women in Detroit alone.

Think about that - 7,840 to 11,760 rapes in one city alone by a small bunch of criminals allowed to go free due to the failure to process basic evidence from the scenes of the crime. Considering Detroit is a city of less than a million in population, that's a horrific statistic. That's your real war on women right there.

Maybe Obamacare's Failure Is Just The Democrat's Strategy For 2014?

One should generally not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.  When you're talking about the Obamacare fiasco, there's a ton of stupidity to go around.

Instapundit monitors this train-wreck that is leading to millions of people having their health insurance cancelled and their rates increased for inferior Obama-approved plans. Each bit of news he finds is even worst than the last.

Can the Democrats and Obama, heralded by the media as being so very, very smart have made this many incompetent and negligent mistakes? Probably.

On the other hand, it may be the most brilliant rope-a-dope in history - The Democrats create a government-dominated and implemented system designed to fail, then blame the free market and Republicans for it's failure. 

After all, Democrats have always been wanting government-run and paid healthcare, not this hybrid dog's breakfast that is Obamacare.

So Obama and the Dems can campaign in 2014 that they need to retake the House because, due solely to the Republican's intransigence and greedy insurance companies of course, Obamacare has failed to deliver. After all, it can't be the Dmeocrat's or the government's fault.

Since it is the Republican's and insurance companies' fault for all this misery, the only cure for this (in reality government-caused) fiasco is more government control and a move to their fabled single-payer system of government healthcare, which will make everything all better.

To do that of course they need to take the house and dominate both the legislative and executive branches to get their agenda run through so we can see what's in it.

With their lapdog journo-listers running the media narrative and selling the Democrat's line, they just might pull it off too.  After all as Democrat California Governor Jerry Brown stated recently: "Government can best solve the problems it first created itself."

Nah, they really can't be that cunning, now can they?  Let's just chalk it up to some of the most incredible displays of governmental incompetence extant and move on.

Courting Disaster In Detroit

It's not just Detroit's city government, nor the corrupt county government for which Detroit is the seat, the rot and incompetence has similarly infested the Detroit District court.

The 36th District court, just like the city and county, is over-budget, inefficient, and stuffed with lots of featherbedding jobs with fat pensions while service and the administration of justice suffers.

Every lawyer I know hates going there due to both the waste of time to get anything done, and the expectation that the court will lose a document or even an entire file, which is met just about every time you go there or file with the court.

In one of the many long-suffering cases I had there, not only did they fail to process the proof of service for three months, leading to them dismissing the case for lack of service, but even after that was corrected they then took an additional six months to enter a default judgment after service was made - apparently the default application was sitting on the judge's desk somewhere and they'd eventually get around to it. Most other courts in Michigan by comparison will get a default application entered the same day it is filed or at most a week. The client was most unimpressed with the combined nine month delay in what was a very simple matter and the level of incompetence shown was only explicable in five words: "Forget it client, it's Detroit."

On another occasion, it took three hours to be heard on a traffic stop matter for a client, who had the misfortune of being stopped in Detroit, which was dismissed on a double technicality - not only did the officer leave the courtroom after two hours when we were finally heard in hour three, but the court had also lost the traffic ticket itself. It then took an additional hour to get a copy of the dismissal of the case, as you simply do not leave the court without written evidence the case was dismissed, for very obvious reasons.

The court is quite simply too big, too badly disorganized and too badly run to serve the city.

Change can't come soon enough to the worst-run court in Michigan, and The Michigan Supreme Court is finally stepping in:

The Detroit News: Detroit's 36th District Court faces big reforms

Talbot, who was appointed last month by the Michigan Supreme Court to oversee operations at the troubled court, said his plans include streamlining the way traffic tickets are processed. He said he will introduce an e-ticket system in which tickets are electronically transmitted from the police car to the courthouse. Under the current system, most officers write paper tickets, which are delivered to the courthouse.

Well, that may just end the easy string of technical dismissals based on the court consistently losing tickets.

Layoffs of unionized workers are likely and could include as many as 81 people, Talbot warned. Barring layoffs, union employees could face 10 percent pay cuts, he added.

Forty-nine non-union employees have already taken wage cuts and other benefit concessions, including changes to their health care plans and 13 unpaid holidays.

Talbot was assigned to the court after the National Center for State Courts found the 36th District Court was plagued by financial mismanagement, a backlogged docket and bloated payroll. Its report concluded the court was run by administrators unable or unwilling to change.

The court is $4.5 million over its $31 million budget and the report said the court has failed to collect on $279 million in driving tickets, ordinance violations and misdemeanor fines.

“They never followed the budget,” Talbot said of the court, which houses 31 judges and handles misdemeanors, traffic offenses and violations of city ordinances. “They didn’t seem to care.”

When you leave $279 million in unpaid tickets out there, yet run 4.5 million over your budget, the solution should have been quite simple to anyone with the competence to do some very basic math.

Competence in the Detroit District Court has, however, always been in short supply.

More Tales Of The Detroit Mess - 25 Years Worth Of Untested Rape Kits

Just when you thought Detroit's incompetence couldn't get much worse they reveal this:

11,300 untested rape kits, 25 years worth were found after sitting forgotten in storage in a Detroit Police Storage facility in 2009. To make matters worse, only 569 have since been tested after being re-discovered 4 years ago ostensibly due to lack of funds.

This is one of the many reasons Detroit's crime clearance rate sucks.

The Detroit Free Press; $4M sought to test old rape kits found in Detroit

Armed with a $1.5-million federal grant to the Michigan State Police, officials said roughly 1,600 of the backlogged kits already have been submitted for testing, and 569 of those have actually been tested. The testing resulted in 136 “hits,” or identifiable suspects, including suspects from 11 states. Of those 136 hits, 32 serial rapists — people who have committed more than one rape — already have been identified.

That number is especially tragic, Worthy said, because if the kits had been tested in a timely manner, many rapes could have been prevented. One of the hits came back for a man who had been prosecuted for raping seven women, Worthy said.

When a Detroit or Democrat politician says you don't need a gun, and not to worry the police will protect you and catch the criminals, do be sure to laugh in their face.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Detroit."

The Detroit News: Demolition of dreams: 12 Detroit homes razed by mistake

Kristine Diven thought she had her dream house.

For $500 at a tax auction in October, she and fellow artist Micho "Detronik" McAdow bought an empty two-story home on Detroit's east side. Thrilled with its crown molding, hardwood floors and fireplace mantels adorned with Pewabic tile, the pair planned to fix it up and move in by spring.

As a first step, Diven, 36, prepared to board up the Morningside neighborhood house to protect it against vandals and wintertime damage. But when she and McAdow drove down Beaconsfield Street one evening in December, their new house was gone.

"Instead of taking measurements for the boards we needed, we found our house in a pile," she said.

The structure had been demolished — mistakenly — by the state's Land Bank Fast Track Authority as part of a program to eliminate blight near three east-side schools.

At least 11 other properties, purchased by a local investor, also were demolished by mistake, said Karla Henderson, director of the city's planning and facilities department.

Between the tons of corruption, on top of corruption, racism, and crime, it can't be unexpected that you'll have this level of incompetence piled on top.

Detroit PD Denied Decent Dependable Directors

In yet another tawdry example that responsible adults are just not running the City of Detroit, we have the latest scandal to emerge.

It is alleged that Detroit's Top Cop can't keep it in his pants. Do note he's a replacement for the previous chief who was also having, shall we say, a departmental internal affair.

The Detroit News: Warren Evans criticizes Bing over Godbee suspension

The city's former top cop has lashed out on social media over Mayor Dave Bing's decision Tuesday to place Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. on paid suspension as allegations swirled over the chief's involvement in a love triangle.

Warren Evans was replaced as chief in 2010 by Godbee after Evans' personal life came into question. He was asked by Bing that year to resign over a video for a proposed television show, along with a number of complaints about Evans' girlfriend, Police Lt. Monique Patterson.

It was also then when Evans' attorney showed city officials a series of sexually charged messages Godbee sent to Patterson, with whom he also had a romantic relationship.

Patterson, who remains on the force, was represented two years ago by the same attorney now speaking on behalf of Officer Angelica Robinson. Detroit Police sources told The Detroit News on Tuesday that Robinson, an internal affairs officer, has had her department-issued weapon confiscated and was sent for a mental evaluation out of concern for her welfare after she learned of Godbee's alleged involvement with another woman in a new scandal.

You may need to read that again and indeed the entire article to keep track of all the players in this love quadrilateral at the top of the DPD.

Do these people use the Jerry Springer Show as a how-to guide for personal relationships?

There is some irony that the last two Detroit police chiefs, both former and current are/were having affairs with people in internal affairs.

You would think that even before, but certainly once you get appointed chief of a major (Ok, Detroit is in rapid decline but still major-like) metropolitan police force you will have learned to keep it in your pants and not to have affairs with underlings. Such goings-on are never good for force discipline or morale. It's also not good for your own morality, especially in one of the two chief's situations above you're married and apparently a minister to boot.

Putting Detroit into bankruptcy or an EFM and having competent and mature adults put in charge of this clown show really can't come soon enough.