summer patriot, winter soldier

"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.

what in the hell is going on in putin's russia ..... is it "putin's" .....

the russians are running out of stores, supplies, weapons and ammunition to fight the war in the ukraine.***

that's interesting enough.   but, putin has gone to the duma, asking for spending measures to replenish the war chest, and asking that certain sectors of the economy be cut back in order to allocate available monies to weapons and rebuilding the armed forces.

what's going on?   since when do absolute dictators request things of government agencies via channels and the legislature?   for that matter, when do top level cabinet types, get found shot dead in hallways in moscow?

is putin's "rule" not as absolute as most of us supposed?   is he not as secure as we all have assumed?   it looks to me as if he is looking for others to "share" the blame for a very failed war effort, for the ongoing debacle that is the ukraine.

john jay @ 07.01/02.2022

 

***  those of us who pay attention to this sort of thing have predicted it for months, being for the most part roundly ignored by everybody.  i don't mean by just the lefties, but people with more sense on the conservative side don't give much ink to this, either.  so, you can just assume that the ukrainian accounts of russian hardware destroyed by their troops is pretty damned accurate.   and, they are now claiming about 35,000 russians killed, which i take to be pretty accurate as well.

lots & lots of russian wealth lying rusted and dead on ukrainian soil, seems to me, for what they have got out of it, ... , which, is nothing right now, and looks more and more like nothing down the road.  is putin "looking down the road?"

anybody ever given any thought as to the temperature of the earth without hurricanes, tornadoes and other "natural disasters?"

well, the fact is, such storms do not create heat, they consume it, they are fueled by heat energy.   about the only negative thing that can be said of them is that they move heat energy around to different places, and they get the bad press only when the places they move it to, in the forms of wind, wave, storm, rain and the like, (to places of dense human habitation.  (which places should be getting the drift of things by now, one would think.)

no, such thiings do not generate heat/temperature, they consume it and moderate it.

what ocurred to me, as i sit here working through a gout attack on my right big toe, is whether anyone has attempted to quantify the precise effects of these tremendous transfers and movements, and consumptions, of heat energy over the surface of the globe.

matter, as the old saying  (and assumption)   goes, is neither created nor destroyed, and the sum total of energy is a constant.  throughout the universe, and, one would assume, on our little orb.

now, take the matter of a solar flare, an eruption of matter from the sun, that goes hurtling from the sun and through our solar system.   scientists claim that they know that the interior of the sun is actually substantially cooler in its interior regions than at the surface, where it for some reason is very much hotter than the interior.

now, when one of these solar flares erupts from the sun, say a big one which reaches a huge distance from the sun's surface breaking away from the sun's gravitational pull at enormous velocity, how much mass does it take with it, and how much heat energy?  and, how much speed does it take to escape the sun's gravity.

the damn things are huge, and hot, and they are moving at enormous speed  .....   they have to be.

when the earth gets directly into the path of one of these solar flares it causes tremendous disruption to the gravitational belts surrounding the earth (think of the little lines surrounding the poles of a magnet, which for most purposes the earth is).   communications systems get overloaded, and are disrupted.   all sorts of mischief.

how much of that energy and solar mass does the earth absorb?

does it impact the temperature of the earth?

does anyone know?    has anyone ever attempted to quantify it?   if not, why not?

as i age, and as my feet hurt like hell at 3.30 a.m., i think about these sorts of things.    and, the more i think about the enormity of the sun's power, i am coming to view the earth not particularly distinct from the sun, but at part of its structure, to be sure on the periphery of things, but, still, part of the workings of the sun.

especially in terms of these gigantic solar flares.

the sun goes through cycles on these things, some of which are sufficiently distinct as to be noticed by we earthlings.   what do they contribute to our weather.   and, what about those cycles and phenomena that we are not yet clever enough to note?   what do they do?

now, by our own lights, we are clever and appreciable.  but, in terms of other scales, we are the proverbial ant floating down the mississippi on a blade of grass, yelling "raise the drawbridge" as we pass underneath.   in our arrogance, in our haste to claim some significance in the grand scheme of things, we ought not to forget this, especially in our quest to understand some things that are perhaps still a ways beyond our reach.

i counsel humility and care not to overreach in our zeal for significance.   in all things.

john jay @ 07.01.2022

some more on "economies" ..... money for layabouts and lazy bastards is worthless ..... simple as that .....

money is worthless, unless it is premised upon a labor market in which the working man is paid fairly for his labor, so that he may acquire goods and services with it.   it is the bedrock exchange of values which supports a fee society.

i didn't say a society without strains, or conflicts, or unrest ...  i said a free society in which the exchange of values is worked out daily through the market.

government can print all the money it wants to "stimulate" things, but, it stimulates nothing unless supported by labor.   no labor, no value, and most certainly, no "value added."

this is why the biden administration dumping 17 or 18 trillion dollars of currency into the money supply immediately upon biden taking office was about as stupid and harmful to an economy as possible.  this act, all by itself, fueled inflation  .....   it was done purposefully.

john jay @  06.23.2022

 

p.s.   my favorite history professor in college was frederick breit, a graduate of the university of chicago back when that meant something.  his ancestory was german, his country of allegiance acquired very late in the history of his family.   his antecedents lived through the german weimar republic, a post wwi government which paved the way for the acquisition of power by adolf hitler via its stupid and misguided economic policies.

as in sri lanka, the weimar first bankrupted the government and then laid waste to the economy of germany.    professor breit told stories of family and society rushing home with worthless currency trying to pay the landlords rent, before the currency was once again reduced in value by runaway inflation.   perhaps the stories are/were apocryphal, but they related people carrying wheel barrows full of the stuff to pay bills.   it got so bad, that the ink of the bills cost more than the "face value" of the currency being printed.

well, we are on the way towards this very situation, as the left rushes headlong into a policy of destroying our industry, both in good made, and in the incentive of people to work for their upkeep by dint of the sweat on their brows.

money paying for nothing (as in layabouts and lazy bastards, to put it bluntly), is worthless.  period.

i used to think that joe biden was just a demented fucking idiot .....

.....   but, now i think he is an evil & malevolent demented fucking idiot.***

and, that is the name of that tune.

john jay @ 06.23.2022

 

***  everything that is happening in america is part of a leftist plan, a scheme to break american power and influence.  nothing is accidental.  this will result in civil war.  the sooner, the better, as far as i am concerned.   they want it, let them have it.

sri lanka collapses .... it didn't "just happen" ....

the sri lanka prime minister says that not only is the government bankrupt/broke, but that the sri lankan economy has collapsed, and is no longer functioning.

this should be a reminder that such things as "economies" are not something that is "automatic and guaranteed," but are creatures of an intellectual and ideological system that supports them.  in short, no underlying belief system(s), and nor any notions free exchange for value, trade and the value of currency, and there is no "economy."

for most of human history "economies" did not exist.   there were markets, and barter and such, but economies on the scale of modern conceptualizations simply weren't.

this is something the idiot biden and lefty demagogues cannot wrap their heads around, and something that will end up being a curse to us.  they haven't values that support "economy" and "trade," and their beliefs will destroy "economy."  whatever your belief system, and whether you think this good or bad, this is just the way it is.

"economies" weren't built in mere days, it took centuries for their underpinnings to endure, but they sure as hell can be destroyed in mere day.

john jay @ 06.23.2022

p.s.  the south & central america's are embarking on another fling with marxist socialism.  you can watch sri lanka all over again.  putin gloats that russia will have trade with the america's, and the america's will discover all that that entrails.  poor bastards.