Imaginary Hazard Day

About 20 years ago now, my old boss and I came up with the idea of Imaginary Hazard Day. It is always "celebrated" on October 26, for no apparent reason other than that was the day we came up with it. Every year, we urge everyone to take all unnecessary precautions.

As it happens, this year Imaginary Hazard day falls a few days after someone (singular or plural, as yet undetermined) sent a series of devices that may (or may not, and likely not) be bombs to some of our favorite portside politicians.

I don't know the whole thing is a legitimate terrorist activity, or a false flag, or something else. I do know this -- if these bombs were really a danger, we'd have never seen one of them. The bomb squads would have detonated all of them to prevent danger, mayhem, whatever. We have seen pictures of the bombs, though, pulled right out of the envelopes in which they arrived:

Blowed up real good

So, if there was a real threat, we do we have this image? Frankly, the device looks more like a Pez dispenser than a bomb. If this were an actual explosive device, it would have been removed immediately from the place it was delivered and no one would have opened the package. So what's really happening? It's a question well worth asking on Imaginary Hazard Day.

Your government at work -- Mass Shooting Edition

If we want to stop mass shooters, we need to take your gun away. Apparently that's the solution, because we can't even do the basic work:

Documents obtained by CNN show that law enforcement officers responded to Cruz’s house on 39 occasions over a seven-year period. No police reports were immediately available for those calls so it was not possible to determine whether Cruz was involved.

Another neighbor, concerned about Cruz “acting weird” in the backyard took video of him dressed in boxer shorts shooting what appeared to be a BB gun. The man, who asked not to be identified, said his wife watched Cruz shooting bottles, cans and buckets over and over again for two days in October 2017. He sometimes pointed the gun toward their window, the man said.

“She got scared. I got scared,” he said.

I'll bet. There's more:

The FBI received a tip last month that the suspect in the Florida school shooting had a "desire to kill" and access to guns and could be plotting an attack, but agents failed to investigate, the agency said Friday. Florida Gov. Rick Scott called for the FBI's director to resign because of the missteps.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the shooting that killed 17 people Wednesday was a "tragic consequence" of the FBI's failure and ordered a review of the Justice Department's processes. He said it's now clear that the nation's premier law enforcement agency missed warning signs.

No, Mr. Sessions. They didn't miss the signs. They ignored them. And there's more:

Jim Gard, a Maths [sic] teacher, said Cruz had been in his class last year.

“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” Mr Gard told the Miami Herald. “There were problems with him last year threatening students.”

However, Robert Runcie, the Broward County School District Superintendent, told reporters he was not aware of any concerns raised about the student.

“We received no warnings,” Mr Runcie said outside the school. “Potentially there could have been signs out there. But we didn't have any warning or phone calls or threats that were made.”

So at the local level, the federal level, and within the education system Cruz had attended, no one connected the dots or made any moves to change the course he was on. Everyone was asleep at the switch. But we should let these people take your guns away. Sounds like a plan.