Bullet Points:
** How Corrupt is the American Government? 2020 was the year that our government decided that they don’t need the approval of The People. It was our government that stole the election from Trump and The People. Until there are actual consequences for the theft of the highest office in the land, you can bet the election will go to the party most willing and better equipped to steal it.
Yes, I remain annoyed.
** Eliminate the US Department of Education – Lew Rockwell says it better than I do…read his rant. The Department of Education should be abolished, but not because it has too many bureaucrats, is too intrusive into state and local affairs, doesn’t actually educate a single student, or because U.S. students have science, math, and reading scores below students in many other countries…
** Hanging is too good for them. Alabama continues to have issues with convicted murderers surviving its attempts to kill them.
Eight people are currently on death row in Idaho, but the state can’t find the drugs needed to rid itself of murderer Gerald Pizzuto Jr., who has received numerous extensions in recent months. State lawmakers recently drafted what one of them called veto-proof legislation that would bring back the firing squad as an option for the condemned.
** Just because you don’t agree with me, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Entertainment Points:
** Book Series Review – Michael Connelly is a reporter turned author and the force behind the TV Series: Bosch. He has written a five-book series focusing on LAPD Detective Renée Ballard.
Ballard (based on an actual detective) works the midnight shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing few, as each morning she turns everything over to the daytime units. The Late Show is the first book in the series. Connelly spends a lot of time talking to LAPD people and has a handful of LAPD readers to QC his work before it hits print. As a result, the books have a solid ring of truth even though they’re fiction. I’m reading book 4 of 5 now. Highly recommended.
** Chapter 4 – With the price on his head ever increasing, legendary hitman John Wick takes his fight against the High Table global as he seeks out the most powerful players in the underworld, from New York to Paris to Japan to Berlin. Everybody wants to kill everybody. That’s the standard plot line.
Well, John wasn’t exactly ‘The Boogeyman.’ He was the one you sent to kill the f**kin’ Boogeyman.
From the Mailbag:
Q – LL, How could the 300 Spartans hold their position for 3 days at the Battle of Thermopylae? How did they eat, rest, and sleep during the continual, ongoing fight?
A – I should just hand this over to Lord High Executioner Beans but I won’t. (Captioned Photo)
First, the Greeks wore armor. The captioned photos represent the worst of Hollywood history. If they’d just shown up with capes and loin cloths, they wouldn’t have lasted as long as they did.
The Persians wore armor too and they didn’t have monsters in the army with 4 arms. Hollywood does a massive disservice to heroic men (no Amazon women) who fought to buy time for Greece.
During the Archaic period, Spartans were armored with flanged bronze cuirasses, leg greaves, and a helmet, often of the Corinthian type. It is often disputed which torso armor the Spartans wore during the Persian Wars.
Second, there were 300 Spartiatai hoplites present at the Battle of Thermopylae. However, there were about 700 Spartan helots and 6,000 other Greek warriors also present and fighting during the battle.
The 300 Spartans are famous for their final stand, on the final day of the Battle of Thermopylae. They didn’t fight for three days without food or rest. Thermopylae was chosen by the Greeks for a defensive battle because there was enough sustenance to keep a 7,000-man army provisioned, whereas the much larger (between 70,000–300,000) man Persian army would be relying on an extensive supply train, which became impossible to maintain once winter set in.
The 300 Spartans are well known only because they fought to the last man during the battle. Only two Spartans survived, and both were labeled as cowards, forcing one to hang himself and the other to throw himself into battle with no regard for his life in order to redeem himself, which he did during the battle. The contingent from Thespiae also fought to the last man to buy time for the retreating Greeks, but their sacrifice is unheralded in modern literature and film.
Stats
Water Bottles
Buying bottled water is a luxury that not everyone in the world can afford. A 1.5-liter bottle of #water from a local brand costs an average of $0.70 globally, according to 92 countries analyzed in September 2022 by the website GlobalProductPrices.com
There is always a question of purity from “local brands” in the third world/fourth world.
Greeks
More than 1,000 Greek city-states were founded in the Iron Age and Archaic periods.
This map from National Geographic Book The Greeks shows the most important Greek colonies and their mother cities in the Mediterranean. by @NatGeoMaps
Infant Mortality
Change in infant mortality from 1950 to 2020. Source: reddit.com
Memes-of-the-Day
Infant mortality. Wow, huge improvement, I do wonder what 2030’s stats will look like though.
Death penalty. I am against it in its current form. It simply costs too much money to house a prisoner for 25 years while the sentence goes trough umpteen appeals to get to the Supreme Court for review. At most just one level of appeal to verify evidence and that should be it. Sure there will be problems such as witnesses that perjure themselves but that is solvable. If it takes more than a year we are doing it wrong. Firing squad, hanging and lethal injection should still all be on the table. Let the victim’s survivors decide mode of death.
Like the memes!
The system is broken and so is the method of execution. Lawyers complicate everything because it’s their nature to do so. Nobody wants to see an innocent person stand in front of a pockmarked wall, but you’re right. It can easily be done in under a year.
One lawyer joke: an engineer and an architect were discussing whose career field came first. The engineer said that when God created the world out of chaos that was engineering. The architect said that before making something you plan it out first and that is architecture. A passing lawyer stepped in and said “Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?”
I am not opposed to the death penalty. BUT, there are innocents on death row, and innocents who have been executed. That I am uncomfortable with……
That is true. Demonstrably innocent people have been put to death in the past and it’s incumbent on states and jurisdictions to pay the sort of wage that allows them to hire the best and brightest.
I am always bothered by George W Bush as governor not commuting Karla Fay Tucker, against the wishes of everyone in the prison administration including the warden.
Regarding infant mortality. There are still places in Europe where deaths during childbirth or up to a year (or more) aren’t recorded for statistics. It’s the same way that Europe can say its crime rates are so low because they’ve decriminalized everything up to and including grenade attacks.
“Numbers, figures, charts, and graphs.” This will be their epitaph.
The other problem with making the death penalty work is that most modern people are too stupid to grasp that innocent people will always suffer. We’re only human, perfections is not attainable. The some innocents will be convicted and punished or killed is not a cogent argument against the death penalty, any more than it is against any other penalty. We should try to get it as right as possible, but if the only acceptable justice system is perfection, then all we can have is legalization of everything.
Personally, I wish that we were executing 10,000 people a year, or more.
At least until we got through the backlog of vicious career criminals clogging up all our prisons. Of course, there’s no money in that so forget it.
-Kle.
Until you are the innocent person on death row.
(I know, “nobody is innocent.”)
Bottled water… In the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” the brothers had a job in a fancy restaurant kitchen refilling the disposable water bottles from the tap and resealing them.
Exactly my point.
Bottled water from the tap in New Delhi Hilton inspires no more confidence than bottled water from the Siesta Motel in Chihuahua.
Why is Australian water so much more expensive? Is it actually vodka, cleverly disguised?
No idea where they are buying the water!
As of this morning 8 bottles of 1.5 litre is $5.90 at Coles supermarket. They have almost half the Australian supermarket business.
An individual bottle of some of the “name” brands could be up to $2.80. Guess that is what they are using.
The 600 ml bottles we sometimes buy for visiting relatives kids are about $11 for 24 pack.
So the vodka rumor that I just started is untrue?
IDK, but a lot of Australia has zero water. Of course, not much population in those parts.
Also Australia has become pretty “green” in recent years, that tends to make everything, including ordinary natural resources, more expensive.
Water probably costs a lot in Cali, too.
-Kle.
While in the Magic Kingdom (the one bordering the Red Sea) there were numerous trucks with Potable Water signs hanging on the tank portion of the truck, as they drove to some wells in the nearby mountains to bring back drinking water. Other trucks with the same paint scheme were driving around the area with Non-Potabale Water signs hanging on the tank. Many questions were raised about the possibility of the same trucks performing double duty as they may have reversible signs on the tank. Those same Potable/Non Potable Water trucks were often seen in the areas around water bottling facilities.
I was fortunate enough to live in a community that was supplied de-salinated water. But, when venturing into the desert we always took a supply of bottled water. So, the question of whether the trucks did double duty remained open.
Cletus Valvecore
Bottled water: this is a non sequitur, but it triggered a memory of an FBI agent in NOLA during Katrina saying that your best friend was bottled water and dry ammunition.
I also recall that the Blackwater contractors the .gov sent in had to divvy up a single fifty round box of 9mm between their team.
Hen someone asks how many magazines do I need?
I give same answer I give when asked about ammo…there is only one correct answer….”More”.
Re.lethsl drugs:
over the years I have held three dogs in my arms as the vet injected them with phenobarbitol.p
Not twitch or a quiver. Into the arms of morpheus then either crossing the Rainbow Bridge, or swooped up by a Valkyrie depending on their duty in life.
I have had no problem sending a two aggressive dogs on a journey across The River Styx when attacking livestock.
It did not require a firing squad. One round round was sufficient unto the cause.
Re.Infant mortality
The CIA used to yearly publish a book-length report on the nations of the world.
One of the largest factors in determining the stability of a nation was the Infant Mortality Rate.
At that time the USA’s Infant Mortality Rate was not published (if you hunted that info down it did not put us in a positive light). Following up… low birth weight appeared to be the determining factor in not making the first BD.
Side note: I have walked through several pioneer cemeteries, including AZ, not only was the Infant Mortality Rate staggering, but the tombstones of young woe in their 20’s was an eye opener…oft times buried with a newborn.
When you look at the headstones of the dead buried along the pioneer trails west, most of them are babies and children. As you point out, some mothers with their newborn/unborn.
Bill Bennett once told me that he wanted to eliminate the DoE that he headed, but that Reagan told him that was politically impossible.
I’m not entirely sure what they do at DOE. Inspecting nuclear reactors would be a legit mission, but a very small one. Female luggage theft is what they’re famous with under this regime.
I think that they’re in charge of the Hanford cleanup, and building/dismantling nuclear bombs? IDK why we couldn’t just call them the Department of Nuclear Bombs, in that case though.
-Kle.
Bill Bennett was Secretary of Education, not Energy, wasn’t he?
Yes. Different DoE.
A common mistake. I once read about a woman (I forget the actual name, but let’s call her “Susan M. Smith”) who earned a doctorate in Education. Proud of her shiny new EdD degree, she ordered new checks saying “Susan M. Smith, EdD”. (I never list my degrees outside of official documents where it’s required, but good on Susan, aye?) Anyway, when her new checks arrived, they said “Ed D. and Susan M. Smith”. WTF, man? WTF!!!
That’s funny
Re: Spartans. Fighting in a controlled environment with local support at their back helped the Spartans and others hold out for so long. Helped was the slope of the land favored the Greeks as the Persians had a slight uphill fight, which really matters.
And Greek heavy armor of the period ran a out twice the weight of heavy Persian armor, mainly due to the difference in ways the infantry was used. Spartans and other elite Greeks were heavy shock troops, designed to fight in close order and do hard short charges. Even the Persian ‘heavy’ infantry was more well-armored ‘light’ troops, fighting in more of an open order and using their lighter weight for mobility purposes.
Like the Battle of Marathon. The heavy Greeks were charging down a steep rocky beach to attack the Persians trapped at the shoreline. Momentum was part of the plan, and it worked.
This, of course, is a simplistic explanation of a complex series of issues.
Marathon was far less complicated than the campaign that included Thermopylae. 8 ranks of Greek heavy infantry, in order, at the run, cut up the Persians who were disorganized on a landing beach.
300 Spartans,
Yes, Hollywood has really managed to mangle the story, but I do remember back in the 60’s (I think) there was a movie with I believe Richard Egan called The 300 Spartans that did a pretty fair job of sticking to the story.
Yes, that was a far more faithful account.
To be fair,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G19B7lTgwCE
Frank Miller (comic book writer and artist) was mostly responsible for the design of the movie “300”. Zack Snyder merely slavishly followed Miller and Varley’s design and aesthetic.