Tag: Stratton

Jan. 10, 2024, marked the end of a significant phase — one that outside of God and family has pretty much dominated my life. It is the date that my resignation as an auxiliary police officer took effect, and it is the date that marks exactly 64 years of my having been a certified, sworn police officer.

I am just about fed up with the ever-growing campaign to totally remove any mention of Christ from references to the Christmas season. “Happy holidays” just doesn’t cut it, and I am seeing and hearing so much of that phrase, and just the word “holidays,” that I’m about to scream.

During the calendar year of 2022, the number of line-of-duty officer deaths in the U.S. was 246, swelled somewhat by the COVID-19 epidemic. Covid deaths were in the line of duty as well as those who died at the hands of assailants because police officers could not hunker down and avoid public contact like civilians did. But the number who died from senseless violent actions totaled 78, with 64 officers dying as result of gun violence, and 14 from assaults by vehicle.

Just when you begin to think that the Biden administration couldn’t possibly do any more damage to the mores and values of our society, they manage to come up with just one more thing that is counterproductive to everything that most of us have been taught — the idea that working, paying one’s bills and keeping a good credit rating are positive things.

The U.S. Congress has for months been working on passing a new bill to ban assault weapons. A group of Democrats, now supported by nearly enough RINO Republicans to get the bill passed, claim that the bill is the answer to the problem of mass shootings in this country.

Once I reached an age sufficient to be called a certified geezer, I started giving a standard reply to one certain comment. When someone says, “Good to see you,” I usually reply, “Better to be seen than viewed.”

The term “woke” is being bandied about a lot lately, and several people that I have talked to have no idea what it even means. I know just enough about it to know that I would like to never have to hear of it again, just like I would prefer never to have to deal with political correctness.

In the late 1700s, Congress passed the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dealing with “cruel and unusual punishment.” Over the years, numerous lawsuits have been filed about just what violates that mandate, such as the death penalty and corporal punishment in schools, both of which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled did not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition.

A recent column in this newspaper by Robert Reich, titled “Get democracy back in elections,” presented a pretty convincing case for eliminating, or at least subverting, the Electoral College.

I am basically a Luddite who was dragged, somewhat unwillingly, into the world of modern technology. I only did it out of necessity, and now technology has rapidly become almost impossible to live without. I recently found out the hard way that when technology fails, our own mistakes can quickly exacerbate the situation.