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.