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.