summer patriot, winter soldier

the ineluctable truth of global warming .....

the premise of global warming theory is that pollutants produced by and in the service of man are causing the temperature of the world to rise at alarming rates.

(personally, i find most "research" and "thought" along this line more religious conviction in search of supporting facts, than anything else.  sort of a marxist politics/urban theatre covered in greasepaint.  but, that is apparently just me.   so, for purposes of this very short essay, consider global warming a "scientific fact.")

assume "global warming" as caused by man, therefore, a verity.

any rigorous & disciplined thought on the matter comes face to face with one ineluctable fact, a truth if you will.  a truth that is being ignored by the doomsday soothsayers of global warming.  and, that is, the human population explosion is the root cause of global warming.

it is human population growth the fuels the fire of carbon combustion and therefore emission.  human population growth is the driving force of global warming.  as with most truth, it is simple as that.

any and all measures to decrease global warming are meaningless without reducing population.  this truth is the big foreboding presence brooding in the corner at an otherwise gala event.

without addressing this truth, all pronouncements on the subject are mere posturing, entertaining the rubes, as it were.  or, more simply put, ... , lying.

john jay @ 06.29.2022

 

ineluctable and inextricable update, 07.01.2022 .   it follows, therefore, as night the day, if we accept the above logic, that there are only two alternate paths to reduce the pollution "causing" global warming:  1.)reduce the levels of production of pollutants, or 2.) reduce the human population, thereby decreasing the demand for, production of and consumption of those things causing global warming.***

o.k., who is gonna be the first to go, as it is doubtful humans will suddenly become less avaricious?    and, just who or what will send them on their way in the service of mankind?

pestilence, war and famine used to rather admirably perform these functions, in a gender neutral and almost ethically & moral fashion (notice the word "almost" ) in the days before the hopeless muddle of genetic & social engineering.   those "halcyon" days are gone.

suggestions, anyone?"  sun screen?   end update. 

 

*** i believe this covered in several early iterations of "star trek" .

 

 

 

russia and the ukraine war .....

the ukrainians seem to be pushing back in the southeast, and if the russians have made any advances there recently it is hard to tell.

the russians just seem incapable of learning how to deal with the ukrainian defenses.   they really haven't done very much since initiating the fight in the southeast of the country.  (if it were not for separatists having held/controlled territory before the russian invasion, and russia simply stepping into these territories, they would hold practically nothing of the ukraine.)

very curious, indeed.

they simply continue to throw men and equipment into the maelstrom.  not much of a demonstration of intelligence.

john jay @ 08.07.2022

 

go ukraine!!!   keep killing the bastards by the truckload!!!  (in case there were any doubts as to where my sympathies lie.)

 

and, where is whatsherface? .... you know, the cia director who wasn't killed in a gunfight in germany? that one ....

she*** doesn't "pop up" much in public, does she?

john jay @ 08.06.2022

 

p.s.   no, i haven't forgotten.   and, i am not "giving it up."   she was the rosetta stone to "the steal," and she will stay "dead" for a long time.

*** gina haspel.   look her up.   wikipedia says they know where she is, alive and well in kentucky.   i don't believe them.   john brennan knows, i'd love to get him on a "waterboard."

wheat harvest in the walla walla river valley ..... encomparable ..... spectacular ..... no. 2 ..... a bumper crop .....

this morning i dropped in on the crew at the spofford elevator, just north & east of milton freewater, to chat with the crew.  i asked how the harvest was going?   the fella i was talking to essayed the ground for an instance, and picked up two wheat berries, one sort of flattened for want of moisture, the other as plump and round as a grape.   holding up the flattened berry he said, a lot of 'em like this last year.  holding up the nice plump wheat berry he said, almost all of them like this, fully filled out and very nice looking  ...  a good berry.

lots of 'em, i asked.   he said we've got a considerable way to go yet, maybe two weeks of harvest, and we have put a lot of wheat through these elevators, and we've already shipped a lot of wheat out to the market.   and, we both looked to the high foothills, up and off the valley floor and the low hills, and from where we stood there was an awful lot of wheat left to be cut.   an awful lot.

and, yes, i drove by the terribly steep patch just out of weston, oregon and it had been all cut.  the crew had moved a bit up weston mountain, to a more level field though it had a "respectable pitch," as said in these parts.  "respectable," is a word often used to describe fields like that.

i would love to get a kansas wheat farmer, and show him this area.  a stray fact entered my head, (as they often do), and i wondered if a self leveling hilltop wheat combine has ever been sold & bought in the state of kansas.  who would i talk to to find out?

john jay @ 08.06.2022

p.s.   my two older brothers drove crawler tractors for wilbur schubert in the old days, pulling combines that were designed to be pulled by large teams of horses.  to "hold the hillside" they had to aim the crawlers uphill, and they proceeded along the sides of the hills sideways  ....  the rear uphill track gathering huge balls of dirt and stubble in front of the track drive wheel.    every now and again such a "ball" would throw a track of the drive wheel, and then there was a mess to get it back on.

no one thought a thought about it.   of course, 16 and 17 year old kids hardly give a thought about much of what they do, so they were naturals for the job.  each day after work the crew rode in a "crummy" back to wilbur's house in "town," and he gave everyone a crisp & cold bottle of beer, hidleburg, if i remember correctly.   every now and again i would get a tug of cold beer, but, i didn't think much of it.  see?

wheat harvest in the walla walla river valley ..... incomparable ..... spectacular .....

there are lots of places in the world that grow more wheat than we do here in the walla walla valley.   but, there are few places where it is as spectacular as here.   it is, to my mind, pretty much incomparable.

why?

well, it is a matter of flat versus very bumpy, and uneven, and steeply pitch ground.   most wheat is grown on flat plains.   not so, here.

locals wags often note that while the walla walla river canyon may not be all high, it is very deep, and, steep, all the way to the bottom.   and, years ago, someone noticed that the high hills and ridges had a very good covering of rich soils, or soils that were compatible to the growing of wheat and peas.   and, as the years went by, wheat and peas got planted on some very improbable ground, very steep ground.

most of you have probably never heard of a hillside combine, or, a self leveling combine.   for a long time, i didn't know that there was any other kind.  that is almost the only kind of wheat and/or pea combine that is used here.

i've had a bad bout of gout for a bit, and it is getting better, so i just had to get out of the house and look at harvest.   so, i hopped into the jitney, my little 1999 camaro, to go on a little driver.    up milton hill it was, and then to the little side road onto the upper/lower dry creek road, which wends its way along dry creek.  (very aptly named, most years.)   and, back to the highway, across the highway into weston, oregon, and out of weston onto the very best driving road around.

it simply wends its way up a creek bed, up toward weston mountain.   it has long sections of sharp curves, and some switchbacks where you had best observed the (20 mph) road signs.   and, along the way, you go along some very steep sections, which quite improbably, are covered in wheat, currently being harvested.   as i pulled onto the main highway, i glanced into the bottom of a deep draw, and two combines were slowly and carefully maneuvering around at the bottom, "pioneering" a way into a field of grain.  they were, in effect, at the bottom of a bowl, figuring out a way to move along the sides of the bowl to get at the wheat.   it was so steeply pitched that you could see how the seed drill and the cat pulling it had slid down towards the bottom of this place, as the rows of wheat had left open spots.    as i went down the hill, i saw a diesel rig at the side of the road, so i pulled along side to see if everything was o.k.?  

a young women sat behind the wheel having a late breakfast, so i asked her if everything was o.k.?    she said, yup, just fine, waiting for the combines to give me some wheat.   i asked her if she were connected to the cutting i had just watched, and if she farmed the ground?    she said, yes, my husband and i and his brother.   about that time a sweet little face popped up out of the passenger seat, and a little girl holding her breakfast sandwich peered out at me over her mom's lap, and pretty soon a little hand got waved at me.  turns out, she is on the shy side of 3, learning about harvest.

so, this young lady and her daughter were herding a diesel tractor and trailer rig (two trailers) waiting for some grain to take to a local elevator.   not a concern in the world.   laughing.

you can have your flat lands.   oh, you grow a lot of wheat, and there is something majestic about a huge field just harvested, and the machines moving over more of the same in the distance, wheat to the horizon.    but, for picturesque, nothing beats the walla walla valley, and adjacent areas toward pendleton to the southwest, and to dayton and waitsburg north out of walla walla.

come see it.   drive around for a week.   plenty to see, and experience.

john jay @ 08.04.2022

gout attack. ...

not fun at all.  twice this year, this one the worst.

still in all, not as bad as being afflicted w biden/obama, no getting over that.  at least I will get over my gout .

 

john jay.  8.1.22

wheat combines driving through "downtown" milton freewater ..... five green combines in a row .....

the state of oregon highway through milton is also milton's main street.  you may rest assured that a wheat combine (even with its "header" removed, e.g., the part that cuts the wheat and puts it into the innards of the combine for threshing) easily takes up two traffic lanes, so you can get a pretty good picture of what five of them in a row does to traffic.

the combines came to milton on the state highway, went through milton in a "consist" of five combines in a row, and proceeded up milton hill in the same row of big old green (that's "john deere's" to you slickers).  motors roaring.   ponderous beasts bouncing and hopping around (at about 12 miles an hour, near as i could figure following them) on big old float tires, way taller than a good "6'5"-incher."

without a pilot car.   with no pickups preceding and following with blinking lights and signs "wide load."

so far as i can tell, not an eyebrow was raised.   no city police, no state police, with lights flashing and siren blaring, stopping the combines wanting to know what in the hell they were doing.   to anyone with a brain in his or her head, the answer was completely obvious, requiring no explanation or excuse making.--   they were simply on their way to a wheat field to thresh it, and then move along to the next field, most likely in similar fashion.

it is all perfectly obvious.

it's time for the wheat harvest in these parts.   it's why we exist.

you don't question the people who raise, harvest and supply the wheat to the mills who make the flour who make the bread, and pancakes and confections by which we live.

it's harvest time.   and, harvest time demands harvest machines.   period.

john jay @ 07.22.2022

loading some "wildcats". ....

an unused loading/workbench gets a bit cluttered after 4 or 5 years of disuse, so it took a couple days to clear it off.  and, i finally "found" it again, to make a "short story."

so, i loaded some cartridges, not any mainstream things, but "oddballs.". they are way more fun.

first some 8mm mausers w rebated rims to fit into a model 91 carcano that i cobbled together.  what,s that, you say, they didn't make carcano's in 8mm mauser?  well, as a matter of fact several italian firms did, at the "request" of the germans.  as a gesture of good will, perhaps?

then, I loaded some "jj's brit," my take on the .280 British, a round the british actually adopted, but gave it up when the u.s. prevailed upon them to adopt the .308 nato cartridge instead.

some gentle arm twisting was involved, perhaps some outright bribery, who knows?

it is a cute little round, made in a .473" case head, with the same basic length as a 6.8mm rem spc, and the various "corners" and length as the 6.8, so as to function in an ar-15.

now comes the tricky part .....  I am gonna try to import a photo, and i am not too sure that i know how ....  we'll see.

well, i will be go to hell, it worked in the phone, i will check with the computer. 

(yep, the computer got the whole shebang from the phone.  ain't technology wonderful, sometimes.)   it,s the 6.8 in the left, my wildcat in the middle, and the .308 in the right.

fun.  more fun than writing about it.  but, russians beware.  if they come to these parts looking for trouble, they might leave wishing for "the good old days" with the ukrainians.

john jay  @07.29.2022

p.s.   this does illustrate what you can make at home ...  well, sorta.  it took a good machinist to modify some 7mm-08 loading dies, and to cut a new chamber on an old remington barrel in 7mm, but other than those little things, it was pure "seat of the pants" conjuring.  laughing.

proof positive that the russians know what i know, that they are loosing the war w/ the ukraine ..... (hint: they attribute it to super lab created ukrainian soldiers) ..... bugs bunny, "it is to laugh, it is to cry" .....

1.)the russians have come up with a cockamamie theory as to why the ukraine's soldiers fight so fiercely, and that is that they have been "created" and "engineered" in labs in the ukraine.   and, that the labs are run and supervised by u.s. scientists.   hey, i am just relating what i have read .....  i didn't make this up.

2.)some guy named medvedev (it doesn't matter which one, hosts of them are manufactured by soviet scientists in biological labs ..... well, i made that up, sort of in the spirit of the day!!) has threatened a doomsday scenario if the ukrainians invade the crimea. 

which means, of course, that they are deathly afraid of that eventuality.   the russians may be good chess players, but as high stakes poker players, they suck.   they have too many "tells," they twitch, for instance, when they have a bad hand, and they sweat really badly, with an acrid odor, when they have over bet a hand.   right now, they really smell, because they are loosing a war to the ukraine, having seriously over bet it.

they "claim" an important town, in an "offensive," and then decide to "take a break" from the fight, "for a bit."  this means, 1.)they have done relatively little, and what they have "accomplished" is to occupy territory largely controlled by ukrainian separatists prior to the start of their war.   now, when you "take" something in war, you redouble your efforts to try and get more.   instead, the russians take a break.

what this means is that they are starved.--   for food.   for supplies.   for ammunition.   for tanks, and for armored vehicles.   and, come winter, they will in all likelihood not have winter uniforms and clothing, all over again.   stupid is, as stupid does.

they are badly overextended.   their intelligence has been dismal.   they have squandered huge assets in tanks, armored vehicles, and jet fighters, (of which they cannot "spare" a one, their stock is so low with planes, and the pilots they have are very poorly trained.   the ukrainians have an air ace.   the russians tried to bomb the island they "voluntarily departed," and they missed the whole damned island.  amazing.***

in the meantime, the dumb shit putin threatens poland, and, by extension, the western alliance known to us as n.a.t.o.   if the russians cannot beat the ukraine, and they are loosing badly to ukraine, how can they hope to even survive a war with n.a.t.o?   it is a mystery to everyone on the face of the planet, save to the russians.

"raise the drawbridge."

john jay @ 07.20.2022

 

 

***this means the pilots did not want to get close to the damned place, for fear of being shot down.   i am surprised that they found their way home.

what biden and his idiot band of lefty idiots just cannot comprehend ..... the view from milton hill, somewhere in oregon .....

you just cannot kill the american economy with a little dipstick contagion.--

i like to have my mickey d's breakfast up on milton hill, where i can watch the highway traffic, and new houses going up just south of milton freewater, oregon.  now milton freewater is just a little podunk town between walla walla wash. and pendleton, oregon.  in short, a not so metropolitan aggregation of little towns.

but, the highway teems with traffic of all descriptions, passenger cars, and the like, but especially heavy trucks of all descriptions.  trucks pulling container vans, delivery vans, with tanks of liquid petroleum gas, and laden with grain and freshly cut hay, or burdened with heavy equipment, some requiring pilot cars for heavy or wide loads.   delivery vans.  buses.   those big motorized mobile homes, most towing passenger "runabout" cars.  motorcycles, (for which fat people have a peculiar affinity.)

it is an unending stream, in both directions.

as i was munching away this morning up by the sub-division, a big cat backhoe was loading a couple of dump trucks full of dirt from a couple basement excavations making ready for the erection of houses.   into this scene rolled a very long truck, laden up over the cab with lumber for delivery to a building site.   the driver clambered out, loosed the ties, and lowered one of those silly-assed 3-wheeled lift trucks from the back of the bed, and commenced off-loading the lumber.   no sooner had it hit the ground, and the waiting carpenter's crew was packing lumber to set the forms for laying the foundation.   before he was done, a similarly loaded truck pulled in behind, loosed his ties, and before he was completely done the little lift truck was waiting to unload it.

all the while, trucks and cars were easing past the lumber trucks, laden with appliances and fixtures for newly completed houses, and delivering stuff to the realty trailer hawking home sales at the site.   a nearby field, marked with red flags, was being cleared by a tractor for the excavator.

friends, this little burg, milton freewater, is a town of some  7,044 souls by the last census.  (up from 4200 when i graduated high school in 1966.)   we are an agrarian community, raising wheat, green peas and orchard crops, with the wine industry making steady inroads into the wheat ground.   there are a couple of feeder and milk cows in the mix, and some very light industry.

that's it.

yet, it is a busy little bee hive.

and, one that is repeated countless times over this great land of ours.   there is prosperity here, and there is some poverty.  but, everywhere, and in everyone, there is resilience and in most there is ambition and industry.  the elites may do as they will, and those who control things may stage and fabricate all of the contagion that they will, but they cannot destroy the initiative and reliance of the people.

they'll have to shoot us first.  and, we will shoot back.   you can count on it.   but, don't bet your bottom dollar on biden and his idiot band of lefty idiots understanding all of this in the slightest.  not one little bit.

john jay @ 07.20.2022

"raise the drawbridge" ..... putin, the egomaniac ant*** .....

when i was a kid (a very long time ago, indeed) there were a series of jokes about a small ant with a vivid imagination and a very expansive ego.

my favorite involved the little guy floating down the river on a small piece of bark, lying on his back, massaging his hard on, yelling "raise the drawbridges."

vladimir putin, with his new threats to go to war with poland should they continue to supply the ukraine with weapons, reminds me very much of the little benighted ant.   a big ego, a very overworked imagination, and completely without memory.  it was just five (5) months ago that his armies invaded the ukraine, and to date they have accomplished very little, and what they have accomplished has been at tremendous cost to them in terms of lives lost and war materials destroyed and squandered.

what little navy they had either lies at the bottom of the black sea, or fears to go near ukrainian shores.   they have lost tanks and other armored vehicles by the thousands.   they have yet to win superiority over the skies of ukraine.   and, i have lost track of the number of general grade officers they have lost, and their supply of experienced nco's has been severely depleted.

they have captured a pitiful amount of ukrainian territory, little more than what separatist ukrainians held at the beginning of the war.

n.a.t.o. countries have rallied to ukraine's defense, supplying ever more sophisticated weapons for use against russian forces.--

and, this is precisely what putin hopes to forestall by his threats and bluster, none of which he dares utter himself, but has to content himself with statements uttered for him by his "supporters."

he cannot go to war with nato, and he knows it.  after the capture of a key town in southeast ukraine, he declared a halt in the fighting, to try and recoup them.  it remains to be seen whether russia has the ability to resume the war in ukraine full scale, let along provoke a war with nato.

he is, for the most part, and arrogant little bastard and loudmouthed bully.  he will content himself by what he can get with being a bully, and expending russian lives.

"raise the drawbridge."   that's putin, the joke.   except this joke costs the lives of others.   it is about time that someone in russia gets up the nerve to kill the little bastard, before he brings absolute ruin and disaster upon all their heads. 

john jay @ 07.16.2022

*** complete with little hard on.