summer patriot, winter soldier

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.

"are they chickenshit?" asked a citizen .....

the uvalde school shooting just gets worse.   a tape was released to the media showing police officers standing around waiting to do something, this at the school.   officers arrived at the school about 1 1/2 minutes after it was reported.   they did nothing for over an hour as the tragedy unfolded, as i am given to understand.

at a public meeting over the film, one member of the audience stood up on his two hind feet, and asked point blank of the police, "are they chickenshit?"

the answer must be yes.--  civilian police have all the equipment they need to intervene in an active shooting, lacking only courage and resolve to save lives.   how they could just "stand by" as children were being killed is simply beyond me.   even the most timorous person should be motivated to act in this kind of case.

each of the officers present at the scene who did nothing should be prosecuted, in criminal court, for the negligent infliction of homicide for allowing the killing to go on in their presence.  at least the shooter was eventually killed  .....  if killed later, what prevented his killing when it could have saved lives?

the cost to the police in killing an attacker in this situation is besides the point.

put bluntly, it is what they are paid to do, from time to time.  soldiers who will not enter battle face court martial, and are punished appropriately.   so should police be treated, for an act/acts of cowardice which lead to the deaths of innocents.

if they are not up to it, they should get out of the policing business.   period.   and, the sooner the better.

john jay @ 07.15.2022

russia scores a big victory, and now they pause .....

they are played out.   simple as that.   depleted, and they must rebuild.

the ukraine should not let them do this, and should press the attacks on russian soil.  imho.

john jay @ 07.05.2022

reinstate the death penalty for mass shooting cases .... for multiple 1st degree assaults, life in prison w/out parole ....

the individual states my provide the definitions & criteria in which such statutes shall apply.

if the requisite number of persons die as a result of any such incident or incidents the case shall be tried as a death penalty case, and any voluntary pleas to such charges shall result in the imposition of the death penalty, the same as if a guilty verdict were returned on trial.

execution shall take place within 3 months from a guilty finding or plea.

all court proceedings, including preliminary appearances and arraignments shall be filmed and recorded, and transcripts prepared swiftly.  two death penalty qualified defense attorneys shall be appointed to represent any person accused under such a statute/in such proceeding.  the local prosecutor's office shall appoint a senior death penalty qualified prosecutor in such cases, and another attorney, also death penalty qualified shall be appointed to assist the local prosecutor's office.

a check list of procedures shall be specified, and each item on the list shall be heard, as quickly as possible.  no item on the check list, to include motions to dismiss for cause, for lack of probable cause, for habeas corpus, etc., shall go unheard.   such list of procedures shall include items set forth by the state legislature, and by the supreme court of the state involved.

trial shall be had within two months of arraignment, unless continuance shall be applied for and approved.    the state courts shall set forth the criteria to be applied.   at trial, the defense team shall make all such motions related to sufficiency of evidence and proof as set forth on a prescribed list of such motions.

if the defendant is found guilty, he shall be executed promptly.   the time period set forth shall give due and proper time for the defense to appeal the matter directly to the state supreme court, and shall be set on an expedited docket so that appeal may be promptly heard by the state supreme court.   such appeal shall be written and argued by a death penalty appellate team, not to exceed two lawyers.

appeal to the federal courts shall be taken promptly, and only acceptance of such appeal by the federal courts shall operate as a stay of execution.   execution shall be by hanging, gas, electrocution or firing squad at the defendant's choice.   it shall not be delayed or stayed simply because appeal to the federal courts shall have been filed, but only upon the acceptance by the federal courts for substantive reasons of constitutional dimension.

the aim of such a process is to eliminate the elapse of time between a guilty verdict and judgment of death by the trial court.

in all such cases of the infliction of mass killings by firearms it is to be preferred that states authorize law enforcement officers considerable latitude in the use of lethal force in effecting the arrest and apprehension of a shooter if necessary.   no cause or appeal to the federal courts should be allowed or encouraged in such instances.

society is paying to high a price for the molly coddling of such killers.   there is no utility or justice involved in this.  we should rid society of them as quickly and expeditiously as possible.

john jay @ 07.05.2022

 

swift execution upon guilty judgment, by plea or trial.  i would prefer execution of anyone found guilty of a mass shooting/murder to be within 10 days.   actually, if they marched someone from the courtroom (after a judgment of guilty) to the gallows and executed him or her, right then and there, i would prefer that even more.   that is why everything, and i mean everything under case law and state and federal statute to be covered by very experienced and zealous lawyer at the trial stage, so that no reviewing court will ever have any basis to grant review.

and, a pauper's burial, or, better yet, disposal of the body at sea.  let the sharks spit them out.

i want no more of this "three hots and a cot" for all the rest of a worthless life.  get done with it, get rid of the killers, and get on with life.  no more celebration of killing, and of killers.  no mass killer of innocents should ever be lionized, in any respect.

 

things are happening on russian soil, not far from the ukrainian soil ..... "uneasy is the head that wears the crown" .....

ukrainians?   russians?

i find it unlikely that putin would do them simply to provoke war.   preposterous.    he's already got his war.

it seems unlikely that the ukrainians would attack targets not really very significant in a military sense.    why do that, when it might engender some support for putin's policies among russians, which is not very strong.   it is, at this point, putin's war, and not particularly the war of the russian people.   why change that, if you are the ukraine?

nope, i suspect that the damage and deaths on russian soil are putin's acts, not to provoke the war, but to try and get some popular support from the russian people, which has not even risen to lukewarm levels.  he is simply trying to create and manipulate some fervor among "his" people for a tragicomedy of epic proportions, that being his conduct of the war.

so, put simply, putin likely is killing russians so he can get some support for killing ukrainians.   why not, he isn't going to run out of russians any time soon.

now, he is dictator, right?   if he is absolute dictator, why does he need popular support?

maybe it is because his dictatorship isn't that absolute, and that he needs to garner support to prop up his stupid policies.   he has put spending and resource allocations before his duma, as though they were necessary, as though some enthusiasm from the duma would grant him more authority to conduct his failed war.

perhaps shakespeare's old observation, "uneasy is the head that wears a crown," king henry 4th, shakespeare is apt in this circumstance.  no one, not even putin is free from such apprehensions, and looks for "popularity" among his fellow cut throats, some of whom might gladly sever his head from his apprehensions, so to speak.

john jay @ 07.03.2022

south american politics .....

south america seems poised to go through another one of its torrid romances with leftist/marxist politics, and i expect the usual hostility toward the u.s. of a.  this is further evidenced, if not borne out by history, with brazil's flirtation with russia and china in an economic bloc designed as a counter balance to n.a.t.o. and the u.s. & european dominance of world markets and economies.

well, who can blame them?   they have to blame someone for their maladies, after all.

but, it always amuses me to think of the peron's, and all the other south american politicians who have spent their countries into the oblivion of inflation, recession, depression and collapse.  i suppose it is a petty yankee thing to remind the south americans that the u.s. did not force any of that upon them, nor the descent of military strongmen upon these countries in the times of economic and social peril that invite repression, and eventual dictatorship.

things seem to happen quicker these days.   i suspect revolution and dictators within about 10 years.

and, they seem to have that theatrical flamboyance which makes the spectacle all the more engrossing.

this is what happens when you have universities, professors, unemployed and unemployable graduate students to do all the thinking, great numbers of unemployed to do all of the dying, and a military bent on killing to perpetuate its own political existance.  it is, in short, the perfect combination of historical tendency, personality and intellectualism that creates an atmosphere perfect for generating an endless supply of "colonels."  it's always colonels, who manage perpetual advancement in rank once they accede to power.

always fun to watch.   from afar.   i sure as hell would not want to live it.

john jay @ 07.03.2022

 

p.s.  i suppose it is simply "tiresome" of me to remind you all, that the south american populace does not have a constitutional and legislative right to own their own firearms.  it is a paucity of imagination, i suppose, that the south americans have not invented a good weapon using cross bolts, or some such  .....   hard to make automatic, i suppose.