To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever,

over such District, (not exceeding 10 Miles square), as may by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance by Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States… 

US Constitution Article I Section 8.

This was an issue back in 1789.  The one lucky state that got the federal capital in its territory, Philadelphia, or Boston or Baltimore or even New York, would gain humongous influence over federal policy and lawmaking.  And benefit from federal tax money getting spent in their state and hotel bills paid by all the federal lobbyists.   To prevent an unseemly squabble and endless bad feelings, and not jeopardize acceptance of the Constitution by having such a clear fighting point in it, the Founders decided to create a new green field federal capital city, not to be part of any existing state, location to be specified later (TBSL). 

Now, in 2020 we have a bunch of DC people whining that they don’t get any votes in Congress.  I don’t feel sorry for them.  The river of federal money pours into DC and gives the city a subway, best museums on the planet, Secret Service and FBI and who knows what else for law enforcement, good paying federal jobs that will not quit, Navy Yards, and the home office of every federal agency that ever was.  In the face of this avalanche of largess, I don’t feel sorry for DC.  And, any DC residents who really really want to have a vote in Congress can jolly well move a couple of miles into Virginia or Maryland and vote from there. 

Now I hear the Democrat US House as passed a bill to make DC a state, with two senators and one representative.  They say that DC has a larger population than several long standing states.  It got them a lot of favorable press from all the Democratic operatives with bylines.  It would give the Democrats two safe senate seats and one safe house seat.  As a matter of pure politics, as a Republican, I am against the idea.  As a matter of process, I think they would have to do a Constitutional amendment to rewrite Article 1 Section 8.  I don’t believe they can change the Constitution with just an ordinary federal law.

  With Corona virus loose in the land, the economy shut down tight, and George Floyd riots every night, does the country have time for this kind of Mickey Mouse legislation from Democrats? 

What is "Qualified Immunity" for police officers???

I hear the phrase.  Police reform bills in Congress mention it.  I never heard the phrase before a couple of weeks ago.  Just what is "qualified immunity"? 

Should the police department be enforcing some law that some people don't like, they ought to vote the mayor out of office, and if they want to bypass the democratic process, they can sue the police department, which has a budget, lawyers on staff, and can defend itself.  It is unfair the sue the individual officers who are merely carrying out department policy.  I'm OK with that.

  I am not OK with offering immunity to cops who kill arrested citizens in handcuffs.  Or other lesser bad stuff. 

  For all the bloviating on TV about institutionalized racism raging across the land, I have not yet heard a clear definition of "qualified immunity".  Could it be that the newsies lack the education needed to explain a legal buzzword? 

Absentee Ballots cannot show picture ID.

When the voter goes down to the polls to vote, we can check his picture ID, make sure the face in front of us matches the photo, we can ask for address, we can check him/her off on the voter rolls.  It may not be perfect, but we can do a first order reasonableness check on the voter to see if he/her is legitimate. 

  When a mail in ballot arrives at town hall, we cannot do any of this, except maybe check that the name on the ballot is on the voter list.  Anyone could have filled out the mail in ballot.  I think we should restrict mail in ballots to only the most necessary cases, say a member of the armed forces stationed overseas, or even just stationed on the far side of the country.  For the elderly and infirm, both political parties are more than happy to provide a ride to the polls, if family cannot do it. 

They oughta make

A car remote with a "roll up all the car windows" button.  I could be sitting  on the deck or in the kitchen.  On hot summer days I like to leave the car windows down to get some air in the car and keep the in car temperature down.  Come rain, or nightfall, it would be nice to punch one button on the remote and all the car windows roll up to keep the rain out. 

   The safety freaks  make this hard to do.  They claim that some child in the car with its head out the window might get hurt by the power window  rolling up and strangling it or worse.   That has prevented the car companies from offering a "roll them all up" button on the drivers power window control panel.  But there ought to

Executive Action. Tom Clancy 1996

One of the last Tom Clancy novels.  Jack Ryan gets to be president of the US.  Iranian bad guys infect the country with Ebola.  President Ryan takes most of the quarantine steps that modern US governments have taken against Corona virus.  There are a few bits of dialog that date the book.  Such as "He owns a blue Oldsmobile wagon.  Every cop in the state is looking for it."  Wagons used to be in, my family's first wagon with a 1949 Chevy Carryall, the last one was a 70's Oldsmobile.  But I haven't seen one on the road for years. 

President Ryan's America is paralyzed be an Ebola outbreak that kills only 9000.  Our America is paralyzed by Corona virus that kills 120,000 so far and shows few signs of letting up. 

Words of the Weasel Part 60

"Gun violence"  vague term indicating the writer supports more anti gun laws.  Try "Shooting" or "shot".  I is clearer and it does not take sides in the gun law political wars.  Or try "gun fight".  That's what you get after a no-knock raid at 0 dark thirty.

Xmen, Dark Phoenix

  Latest Xmen flick.  Released last year.  I didn't hear about it.  Efficient work of publicity there.  I came across it browsing Netflix the other day. 

  It has a whole new cast.  No more Patrick Stewart or Hugh Jackman.  They had a couple of names in the new cast that I had heard of before, Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender.  Jennifer had a low speed part.  Michael played Magnito but wasn't very good at it.  The rest of the names in the cast mean nothing to me. 

   Special effects in plenty.  We see a child Jane Grey survive a terrifying car crash.  They show the whole big old 70's sedan flipped clean up into the air, to come down with a serious crash.  Lots of battle scenes, hand to hand and laser zaps. 

   I rate this Xmen flick as meh.  Not is good as the first one.  Died in the wool Xmen fans will see it, but us ordinary fans need not bother.

So I got a bigger monitor

It was a deal, a used 27 inch Sceptre monitor for only $88.  It replaced my 19 inch Dell which was working fine but I'm finding it hard to read the teeny tiny lettering thrown up by my ancient version of Word and Excel.  I ordered the monitor thru Amazon.  They told me if I signed up for Amazon Prime, I would get a $100 gift card that could be applied to the monitor immediately.  That dropped $188 down to $88.  What else Amazon Prime might do for me or cost me is unclear. 

The monitor showed up a few days later.  I plugged it in and it works fine.  No dead pixels.  It's bright, so bright I thought I might turn brightness down a notch.  That does not work.  The monitor has 5 black on black buttons hidden on the back of the screen to control those things we used to have knobs on side of our TV sets to adjust.  Brightness is set to 80 and the setting is grayed out, meaning you can look but not touch.  PITA  And the stand is flimsy.  The entire screen rocks gently back a forth every time you touch it. 

  Anyhow the bigger screen is nice.  My eyes are not what they used to be.  I can read everything now without squinting.  Nice. 

Law enforcement

Our society is composed of law abiding citizens and lawless citizens.  We need police to keep the lawless citizens in line and out of trouble.  Without police the lawless will form gangs and loot and pillage and worse at will.  Defund the police is just a weasel’s way of saying abolish the police.  The cops I know are decent, hardworking, well informed, polite and professional, and brave.  And we need them, on duty.

Needless to say, there are a few things we could do to make law enforcement better and fairer. 

First we ought to forbid no-knock raids.  A no-knock raid simply provokes a gun fight.   Bust down some one’s door at o’dark thirty and that some one will shoot to kill every time.  The no-knock raiding cops are up, dressed, had their coffee, and are juiced for the operation.  They outnumber the victim, and they are usually better shots.  Most of the time the cops shoot the victim dead.  That’s how Breonna Taylor died this year.  Occasionally the victim gets lucky and kills some cops.  Which gets him put on trial for murder. 

   The usual excuse for no-knock raids is to surprise the drug dealers before they can flush the evidence down the toilet.  In real life a lot of no-knock raids are conducted simply to give the SWAT team something to do.  Neither reason is a decent excuse for putting every one to extreme risk of their lives.

Second we need an effective method of purging the few bad apples off the force.  Cops stick up for one another.  A plucking board, or internal affairs unit, manned by cops is not going to discipline fellow cops, and the cop’s union will defend the guiltiest cop to the death.  We need an organization that can take complaints, investigate, prosecute, and press the paper work thru to conclusion to get the few bad apples off the force before they do something awful.  This organization must be made up of responsible civilians, not cops.

Third, cops should wear blue uniforms, not black.  Black uniforms look like the SS in Nazi Germany.  We don’t want cops to look like that in America.  Smokey the Bear hats are good.  Crash helmets should be limited to motor cycle officers.

Fourth we need to purge unneeded laws from the books.  Eric Garner in New York died as a result of cops enforcing a city ordinance against selling single cigarettes (loosies) on the street.  That ordinance should never have existed.  In a free country citizens are free to sell any legal product.  There has got to be a lot more trouble making laws on the books that ought to be removed. 

 

 

CHAZ out in Seattle

Had a phone conversation with eldest son, who lives out in Tacoma Washington, about the CHAZ situation.  He said the west coast TV isn't giving it all that much coverage and that nobody he knows thinks it is all that big a deal.  He figures it will blow over in a few more days.  He sees it as more street fair and long term demo than gang takeover of a Seattle neighborhood. 

  All I know is what I see on TV here on the east coast.  Eldest son is only 20 miles away, I am 3000 miles away.  His opinions are as good as mine. 

Confronting the Civil War.

  We fought it.  It was the worst war we ever fought.  Casualties in the Civil War were higher than casualties from all our other wars all put together.  It took the South 100 years to recover from the physical and psychic damage of the Civil War.  Down there, south of the Mason Dixon line, they still  called it the War of Northern Aggression when I was going to school.  It was fought for a noble cause, ending slavery.  It succeeded in that.  There were other reasons, but ending slavery, goal of the Abolitionists, was the real driver, without that cause, the North-South differences would not have come to war.  Civil War is a formative event in American history; you cannot understand how America got to where it is today without knowing about the Civil War. 

   It has been over for 150 years since Appomattox, but every single New England town still has a Civil War memorial on the town common listing the names of all the fallen.  If we northerners can do that, I think it is OK for southerners to put up statues to Civil War figures like Lee and Jackson and Jefferson Davis. I do remember visiting the Texas capitol years ago and walking up to the building past a solid line of Confederate statues.  I think we ought to leave them in peace to remind future generations just what happened back in 1860.  I don’t like Nancy Pelosi’s call to remove Confederate statures from the US Capitol.  I think President Trump has it right saying that places like Fort Bragg have their own history and should be left alone.  Once a place gets a name it ought to stick. 

   Somehow we managed to patch over the wounds of the Civil War back in the 1800’s.  By WWI time the old South was as loyal a part of the country as any other.  Naming some US Army bases after Confederate officers had something to do with this.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  Let’s leave it that way. 

So what do we do about "CHAZ" out in Seattle?

A what do we call them (a gang? terrorists? rebels?)  has taken over a dozen blocks in downtown Seattle and is thumbing its nose at Seattle city government and the state of Washington.  And they are shaking down businesses in the CHAZ  (acronym for the 12 block area) for protection money. The Seattle police have withdrawn or been driven out of the CHAZ area.  Neither the mayor of Seattle nor governor of Washington wants to tangle with the gang.  They fear attempts to drive them out by force, police or National Guard, could be bloody.  Which would make them look bad.  President Trump is on TV making noises about cleaning the place up using federal troops.  He hasn't actually moved any troops into place and he is probably hoping that some threats and some pressure will cause the CHAZ group to break up and disappear.  Like the mayor and the governor, Trump probably fears that moving in on the CHAZ could  lead to bloody street fighting, lots of people getting hurt, and generating endless unfavorable TV coverage.  Certainly all the TV people are anti Trump and would do their best to paint the whole scene in the mot unfavorable light possible.

  Stay tuned for film at 11.

Speech

When did our ancestors begin speaking?  Myself, I always think in words.  Thinking about how to fix this device, or where is the game lurking or how to exert leadership of a hunting band, or how to chip flint, or how do I fell this tree without dropping on top of my dwelling or how do I get across that river short of swimming it, all these things I think of in words.  Raw emotion, love, fear, hatred, awe, does not need words, but thoughts such as “why is this engine running rough” or “How do a fix this bug” I always do in words.  I assume most other people do too. 

    Thinking is our magic wand.  Looking at the fossil record we see brain size increasing as time goes on.  This was a successful evolutionary strategy that has made homo sapiens master of the planet.  Would increasing brain size do us any good without words to put our thoughts into?  I always think in words.  If I didn’t have words, I could not think.  Does this mean that our earliest ancestors could speak too?  Without speech would our larger brains do us any good? 

This is all pure speculation of course.  I am not aware of any evidence one way or the other.  And I cannot imagine finding speech in the fossil record. 

 

D-Day

D-day was an incredible Allied achievement that hastened victory over Nazi Germany.  American officers were unanimous in their belief that only a huge army, landed as close as possible to the German border, to drive on Berlin, and hang Hitler from a sour apple tree, would bring victory.  Americans, backed by a large and loyal population, endless fertile farmlands, plentiful natural resources, and the world’s largest industrial base, felt that this was possible,  If German resistance was stiffer than anticipated, it could be crushed by sending more troops and tanks and guns, of which America had a goodly supply. 

   The Brits, who put up many of the troops for D-day and much of the airpower and shipping and naval support, had been fighting Hitler for five long years.  They had learned, first hand and to their sorrow, how effective the German army was.  Norway, Dunkirk, Tobruk, and The Blitz were not happy memories for the Brits.  They counseled caution and thought the Americans were reckless in their outlook. 

   By 1944 the Allies had accomplished two major successes, both of which wee absolutely vital to the success of D-day.  First they had solved the U-boat problem.  In the “happy days” of 1941 and 1942, the U-boats were sinking hundreds of merchantmen every year.  But in the winter of 1943 the Allies got their act together and drove the U-boats out of the Atlantic.  They had allocated just a few B24 bombers, with extra fuel tanks in their bomb bays, to close the Atlantic air gap, the black pit the merchant seamen called it.  The B24’s could supply good air cover to convoys all the way across the Atlantic.  And all the destroyers had been equipped with good radar, Talk-Between-Ships (TBS) radio, and High Frequency Direction Finders (Huff-Duff) which gave a vector pointing right at any U-boat that used its radio.  And two years experience at sea had trained up the escort vessels to a high pitch of effectiveness.  A couple of vicious convoy battles in the winter of 1943 resulted in the Allies sinking more U-boats than the U-boats sank merchant vessels.  For the rest of the war U-boat sinkings remained heavy.   This victory allowed the Americans to build up a huge army on the British Isles.  Had the U-boats sunk half of this traffic on the way across, D-day would have been impossible. 

   The second victory was the extermination of the Luftwaffe.  This was done by the P-51 long range escort fighters that accompanied the bombers all the way to the target and shot down the Luftwaffe fighters that rose to attack the bombers.  There is a scene in “The Longest Day” where a Luftwaffe fighter pilot complains that his was the only sortie flown against the Normandy beaches.  Had the Luftwaffe been strong, the JU-88’s would have been dropping 500 pound bombs into the open landing craft as they approached the beaches, and on the Allied destroyers.  For larger naval targets the Luftwaffe had Fritz-X, an early model smart bomb that had put an American cruiser out of action at Salerno and sunk an Italian battleship in the Mediterranean.  But due to the RAF and USAF actions the Luftwaffe no longer had the planes, or the pilots, or the gasoline to oppose the D-day landings. 

 

Have we arrested any Antifa members? Yet?

The Administration was saying that Antifa was organizing and leading the riots.  Have we arrested any Antifa members connected with any of the riots?  Perhaps someone who attended Antifa meetings and paid Antifa dues?  I am perfectly happy to believe that all the rioting and property destruction is caused be some evil and secret organization.  But how about some proof, some evidence, some Antifa members arrested for doing bad somewhere.  Any one caught carrying an Antifa membership card?  Like the commies were thought to do back in the day? 

  I have no trouble believing that the riots started the old fashioned way.  A lot of people gather somewhere in town.  A bunch of our lawless citizens join the mob.  Shop windows get smashed, stores get looted, fires get set, stuff gets thrown at the cops.  No evil secret organization required. 

   The cops ought to move in and arrest everyone they can catch looting and burning.  And people arrested should be kept in custody until all the paperwork is completed.  That might take a week, or even longer, you know how it is with paperwork.

40 Million Out of work. Probably free to go to a riot.

This week’s riots were probably made worse by 40 million out of work people who need some entertainment after a couple of months on lockdown at home.  That 40 million is out of work because of state government orders closing down their employers. 

Many of our citizens are law abiding.  I don’t have any numbers, I hope that the law abiding are the majority.  A large number of citizens are lawless.  Again, I lack numbers but I sincerely hope we have more law abiding than lawless citizens.  The most lawless have close encounters of the cop kind and wind up in jail.  The medium lawless will take advantage of a riot to pick up a new TV or a new computer, but usually don’t engage in burglary and shop lifting for fear of getting caught.  Only the police and the courts keep the lawless citizens in check.  I am hearing calls from the left to abolish the police.  God help us if that ever happens.  The lawless will over run the country.  We need police and courts to keep the lawless in check.

   The police have a strong sense of comradeship.  They stick together.  It is extremely hard for a police department to lower the boom on misbehaving cops, because the department is made up of cops and all cops feel they need to protect and defend fellow cops from hostile citizens groups.  I’m thinking every department has a few, one or two, maybe more, bad cops who ought to be off the force.  But they don’t get the boot like they should because of the feelings of solidarity with everyone on the force.

  The only fix for this problem is an independent group of non-cops running an agency that finds bad cops and indicts them and pushes the paperwork thru to get them kicked off the force.  Maybe a federal agency like the anti-trust lawyers group at the Justice department. 

  Or we could use the Cambridge solution.  Cambridge MA, better than twenty years ago, had a very offensive Officer De Luca.  He patrolled the public housing projects in Cambridge and was a real pain in the ass to project residents.  One fine day Officer De Luca’s cruiser became stuck in Cambridge traffic.  Suddenly the doors of his cruiser were yanked open, Officer De Luca was pulled out of the cruiser, and the locals beat the stuffing out of him.  It was noticed that Officer De Luca’s behavior in the projects improved greatly after that.

Words of the Weasel Part 55

We should not call them looters, we should call them "protesters who just happen to carry stuff out of a store".  That's the AP style guidelines this week.  Wow!  For that matter the TV people don't use the word "riot" or "rioter".   Nor have they carried stories of shop owners shooting looters.  I know some shop owners who would put a bullet into a looter without even thinking twice about it.  There has gotta be a bunch more out there. 

Peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government…

 

For a redress of grievances.  First amendment.  We are talking about people carrying flags and signs and posters.  Marching in daylight, down routes coordinated with local authorities.  Singing and chanting.  Making speeches.  Listening to speeches.  Dispersing and going home when the demo is over.  That’s peaceable assembly.

Riots are something else.  Breaking shop windows, looting, setting fires, throwing stuff at cops.   We citizens expect law enforcement to break them up, suppress them.  Surround them; arrest a bunch of ‘em.  Use fire hoses and tear gas on em.  Keep them from destroying our livelihoods.   Authorities that permit, or worse encourage, law enforcement to shirk their duty should be turned out of office at the next election.  Or impeached immediately.