HeyJackass.com Hiatus

Stepping back for a break:

• After 13½ years of daily tracking of silly decisions and other non-demonizable actions, we’re hitting pause. This site and its archives aren’t going anywhere, and ShopJackass.com will still be selling stupid crap, but updates will be minimal going forward, likely once a week or less. This isn’t the end, it’s just a pause in a very long, very stupid journey.

Thirteen-and-a-half years is quite a long time (A) for a blog and (B) keeping track of violence statistics that show just how hopeless segments of our society have become. It's exhausting, depressing and it wears you down. We've felt the same way many times.

Hopefully it's not the end as they provide a valuable service to the lies put out by the politicians and the Department statisticians. 

Lighter Font

A couple comments complaining about the text in comments being a lighter gray color, harder to read and annoying as all get out.

It appears to be something Google (that owns eBlogger) did and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it yet.

We're looking into it. 

Light Posting

We are traveling at the moment, so posting the rest of the weekend will be light.

Open post for now.

Comments may be delayed. 

CWB Doing Great Work

Yesterday, they called Conehead a liar and proved it....again:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday once again defended his decision to disconnect the city’s gunfire detection network, claiming that a University of Chicago study found CPD responded “four times faster to the city’s most serious 911 calls” in some South and West Side neighborhoods after the city ended its relationship with ShotSpotter. But that is not what the study says.

And what does it actually show?

• Robert Vargas, a sociology professor who leads the UChicago Justice Project, told CWB Chicago the study “was motivated by a specific set of claims made by elected officials that decommissioning ShotSpotter would have serious consequences for police response times.”

  However, Vargas also acknowledged that before analyzing response times, his students removed all 911 calls involving shots fired from the city’s dataset. In other words, the study’s conclusions about faster response times, if accurate, did not include gunfire calls, the only type of emergency ShotSpotter was designed to address and the specific response times elected officials had been discussing.

They took out ALL of the gunfire calls? Seriously? 

So this is yet another "Higher Education" bullshit program similar in nature to the crooked Northwestern "innocence" crap where they bribed convicts, lied under oath, slanted reporting, solicited perjury, aided and abetted by members of the Chicago media.

And the day before CWB had a little retrospective on fifteen years of wilding:

• What has gotten into kids these days? These “teen trends” and “teen takeovers?” This didn’t used to happen, did it? Well, as it turns out, it’s been happening a lot longer than even we remembered, stretching back at least 15 years across three mayors and eight police superintendents. Many of the 50-plus people arrested during this past weekend’s three mob-related incidents weren’t even born when it all started.

  The problem, it seems, isn’t kids these days. The problem is a steady refusal by mayor after mayor to directly address what’s happening.

They recalled McCompStats lies about closing a beach because of "heat," attacks on bikers, the Mag Mile, Millennium Park....like we said, fifteen YEARS of mayhem, much of it covered in our archives.

Give them a visit and read the only decent crime reporting in Chicago any more. 

Rule #4

We don't know who need to see this, but it's happening more and more.

Review the Rules on the right-hand side of the main page. Read them all, but especially #4:

• RULE #4: We reserve the right to delete novels. If you have that much to say, start a blog. Same goes for off topic stuff. Also, multiple "hard returns" making blank space.

We've been very lenient since reactivating the site, but it's getting out of hand. Someone or someones (with a couple good points to make) are ending their posts with five, six, seven hard returns for some reason. 

Sure, it's easy to type, but it messes with our comment moderation, so we're just deleting them all without reading them. In fact, we've been doing it for a week or more now. 

(comments closed here - informational post only) 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all.

As usual, blogging will be light today and comments might be delayed depending on what and where we end up celebrating.

If you're home, enjoy the day. If you're working, stay safe and stay alert. 

Post Under Review

This post "Oops (Again)" was flagged by the tech overlords for being "misleading" even though it quoted an actual lame-stream media source (WGN) and an actual medical study by Stanford regarding cardiac damage by the "vaccine." 

Evidently, they don't like when thinking people apply their interpretation to events affecting billions of lives. Our twenty-thousand daily hits are a threat?

We toned down the harsh language to see if it passes through their censorship regime. 

They're still hanging their hats on the "scamdemic" even though every single week another brick gets knocked out of that wall.

Stress-Con Meter

We might be using a version of this whenever Conehead does something stupid....so maybe on a weekly basis?

 We can change things up if readers have better content.

Light Weekend on Tap

We might be out of town for a little while. 

Nothing serious, but attention is needed other places occasionally.

Posting might be sporadic along with comment moderation.

Stay safe. 

SCC Returns Tonight

We missed you, but we're readjusting our sight alignment, so perhaps we'll hit what we're aiming at next time.

Comments are re-opened.

Thanks for the break....posting returns overnight as usual.

Be safe.

SCC Has Left the Building

That temporary comment disabling we talked about has been activated.

We tried an internet cafe nearby, but the protocols for logging in and such made us think of government overreach gone wild, so we're going with the disabled comments for a few days while we travel. If we didn't, we'd come back to around 2,000 comments and we'd be going through stuff for days.

Archives are open for your reading pleasure. We'll be back early next week. Stay out of trouble and stay safe. 

Massive Scandal Admitted

Remember how the blog disappeared a while back after one of our regular informants alerted us to the fact that Google (which runs Blogspot) was going to circumvent our security efforts as part of a coordinated effort to deplatform conservative voices?

Turns out to have been 100% true:

• Google on Tuesday promised to restore YouTube accounts that have been banned for political speech, admitting that the Biden administration pressured it to censor Americans that did not violate the company’s terms of service, in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH).

  “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” a lawyer representing Google wrote to Jordan.

Funny how all the threats of fascism and censorship are claimed to be right-wing ideas, but always end up being launched and landed by the left. Unfortunately, we don't see any sort of remedy from the inevitable class-action lawsuits forthcoming.

And when they can't win via open dialogue, they always turns to violence. 

SCC is Leaving the Country

To an non-extraditable country where.....just kidding.  

Next month, we're going to be taking a short vacation. It's someplace where we need a passport to travel and where we wouldn't feel secure bringing a laptop along and attempting to access the internet.

So for a short period of time, we'll be locking down the blog comments so we don't come back to a few thousand comments that went un-moderated for the duration. Unlike our previous absence, we'll leave the lights on so you can peruse the archives and entertain yourself.

Just so no one is surprised when they can't comment and we aren't answering emails. 

Review the Rules

Someone....or a couple someones....have been posting comments and ending their tirades with half-a-dozen hard returns that leave a large blank space at the bottom of the comment. Someone even did it in the middle of their comment. 

So we're back to enforcing Rule #4 - multiple hard returns in comments will be deleted without being read by anyone, including us. Same with ALL CAPS and "wall of text" type posts that go on forever without paragraph breaks.

Just letting people know. Informational post only. Comments closed here.

A Better Podcast

Speaking of podcasts, The Contrarian has started a podcast, and what they discuss will probably have more bearing on your every day life than any propaganda that CPD puts out:

•  Contrarian Podcast Link

Give it a listen. 

A Podcast?

Remember "Checkerboard Chat," that ill fated propaganda effort by Pat Camden, John Henry and a number of politically connected house mice as a counterweight to the blog?

For those unaware, it was supposed to be an open forum, give and take, where rank-and-file cops could ask questions to combat "misinformation" on the blog. It was started specifically because our network of informants had started to really expose corruption, political malfeasance and general bedroom shenanigans of the exempt staff. 

We had a bit of fun at their expense (post #1 and post #2) and pretty much exposed how they were useless political tools censoring everything and only spouting approved messaging. They went out of business within weeks and we went on to millions of visits, tens of millions of page views and fans worldwide. 

Seems they're trying it again (click for larger version):

Gee, an interview with Larritorious!  

Perhaps it will touch on how he got so many "merit-clout-orious" promotions in such a short time, especially as he spent as little time as possible on the actual street. 

Or how he cost the City tens of millions as an alleged Use of Force expert, testifying against Police Officers in Federal Court? 

Or how he avoided and continues to avoid accountability for a trail of "#metoo" accusations that dogged his entire career at the Academy, but resulted in more than a few promotions for accusers. What file cabinet are those CR files in over at IAD Confidential?

And it's being promoted by Hein? Good Lord, we'll bet it's gone by the end of the year.

Some Notes

First up, thank you for all the kind words and wishes in our 20 Year post. We appreciate them all.

Second, we aren't going anywhere quite yet. We've been looking and keeping options open, but at the moment, we're stuck here in town for a few reasons. And once those reasons head off  - to their adult lives or to their heavenly rewards, more options open up to ourselves. Obviously, it would be weird blogging from hundreds of miles away, 

Third, as it's been twenty years, we've lost a few passwords, misplaced a few log-in credentials, the blogging platform has gone through a few changes and we're having an issue uploading the twenty-year star into a suitable graphic format. So we're stuck adding a fourth "service bar" at the moment. It's on our list of things to puzzle out, but nearer to the bottom than the top. 

We think that covers it for now. Open post in the meantime as the weather hits the 90s the next two days. Perhaps the first real test of Conehead's violence interrupters actually having something to deal with? 

Twenty Years....Pension Time?

Aside from that eighteen month hiatus - call it a Leave of Absence - it's been twenty years blogging. 

7,305 days with just shy of 25,000 posts (24,876 we think) and over 1.6 MILLION comments posted.

We don't think the internal counter on blogger is completely accurate as it didn't exist when we started, but it currently shows 98.8 MILLION visits. It probably missed the first couple years (as many as eight), so 100 million pretty much a given, and probably closer to 110 million. 

Where do we even begin to thank everyone? It isn't truly possible to do so in any meaningful way. This was a hobby....a distraction....from what we saw as the slow decline of an honorable and enjoyable profession that granted us so much:

• the opportunity to make a decent middle class living;
• the ability to provide for our spouses and kids;
• a world class city with mediocre sports teams, awesome restaurants, incredible museums;
• lifelong friendships, on the job and off, most of which we maintain at some level;
• the chance to Serve and Protect

Corny? Sure. True? Absolutely. 

But even at the beginning in the 90s, we were told by old timers of clouds on the horizon. We saw the seeds planted, the shortcuts and undercutting coming back to haunt the Department, the political winds constantly shifting direction, the endemic rot within the command structure. 

And we decided to "not go quietly into that good night." So we started a blog. And it was amazing and tedious and horrible and worrisome and God knows how many other adjectives we could come up with. We were inspired by the old SecondCityCopNetwork, run by a sergeant out of 025 who got sued when his name become known and we tried like Hell to avoid that. We only bailed out for those eighteen months so that we could top off our pension without spending it stripped at callback, awaiting a political decision that was already pre-determined and would have cost us tens, maybe a hundred thousand dollars in legal battles.

But it was mostly fun, which is what a hobby should be.

In any event, thank you for twenty years. So much has changed. The kids have all moved on. The Department changed, very little of it for the better. Chicago is in a death spiral along with Illinois and we don't see a good way out of it. We're attending retirement parties almost every other week, but not too many funerals which is good.

God Bless and stay safe. We'll be around.

Pope Chalkie?

This one made us laugh:

If there's a dime to be made, someone will find a way, and in this case, it supports the HeyJackass.com website. Hop over and check out the merchandise. 

(SCC is not associated with any sales made over there. This is our ONLY web presence. Nothing else on social media is us and never has been. The only thing we ever wanted credit for was inventing Chalkie.)

Christmas Week

With Christmas fast approaching, posting may be a little light and comments may be delayed as we fulfill family obligations this Holiday Season.

Stay safe and thanks for your patience.