What Color Are Your Fire Trucks?

 The most minor things get my thoughts moving and into writing something.   Today, I pulled over for a fire engine, no big deal.  (Hint:  For those who live in caves, remember: “Sirens and Lights, pull to the right.”)

Apparently. it was a new or temporary engine because it is a different color from the deep International Orange that the Wheeling FD uses.  This one was red with a broad horizontal black stripe around about 4 feet from the ground. 

International Orange is the color of the broad 45 degree stripe on U.S. Coast Guard ships and aircraft.

I suppose Wheeling FD could be in the LONG process of repainting to a new theme, but I doubt it.  Fairmont FD took nearly 20 years to change from chrome yellow to kinds of crimsony red, not quite to Mack Red.  The equipment lasts in those departments 10 or more years, so getting things repainted or waiting until they are replaced is a long process.

So that started me thinking about the colors of emergency vehicles.  I remembered a study that was done in the 1970’s.  The scientists/psychologists/whatever hooked people up to a camera which watched their eyes move.  They judged their reaction time when they first saw the vehicle in the periphery of their vision.  They discovered that, by fractions of a second, their eyes were drawn first to chrome yellow.  Other studies have been done since and now they show that bright fluorescent lime green is preferred.  Red - the usual color of fire trucks - was somewhere down the list.

(I just saw on Facebook a picture of a parade, a red fire truck followed by a yellow fire truck.  On the back of the red one was a bit sign that said "Real Fire Trucks are Red.")

But the study also found some kind of social ,phenomenon.  When the subjects were shown pictures of actual trucks, when there was a chrome yellow, lime green, or any other color than red, one reaction was “What the heck is that?”  They didn't seem to immediately figure out that the great big truck bearing down on them sounding a Federal Q siren was something to move over for.  The study supported that social visibility by testing other vehicles.  Posting way ahead of any color of emergency vehicles was a big dude wearing black clothes and riding a black Harley.  As one who appreciates that culture, I got a hardy laugh out of it.  (1%-ers are highly moral and ethical people, accepting that their morals don't exactly match with most of society's morals and ethics.)

In the 70’s, we had rigs (now they call them “buses”) with the “federally mandated colors.”   True to the idea of central government as a whole, those vehicles were REALLY ugly.  The base color was a slight off-white, with two tiny half-inch horizontal stripes of International Orange around the middle.  Ugly.  In fact, fugly.

One time, I suggested a really neat color for rigs:  A bright yellow-green-gold body, a fluorescent wide horizontal Mountaineer blue stripe in the mid-body and the lettering inside the stripe in white.  The response to this wonderful idea was not only disappointing, but downright hostile.  Well, I’ve never said that my brothers and sisters had good taste.

 Mizpah!

An Amateur's Thoughts on Love

 I am not a linguist.  I use words.  I understand the common usages. But I’m no linguist.

 Also, I don’t know to any real degree any foreign language.

 With all that in mind, I have still concluded that the English language is very lacking in certain areas, including “love.” 

 To understand what is meant when one uses the word “love,” you must consider cues.  Cues like tone of voice, circumstances, gestures, posture, facial expression, and the history between whoever is in the conversation.  But only “love” is used.

 I have heard that Greek contains at least three words for different kinds of love.  Eros is romantic love; philia is brotherly or friendship-based love; and agape is supposed to be love of God, or the all-consuming love for another person.  (Frequently, the first is taken for the third.)  But I’m thinking that even Greeks have to explain – by other words, by the general cues to language, exactly what they mean.

 Inuit and related languages are supposed to contain 40 to 50 words for “snow.”  That’s natural, for snow is a part of their environment, and they need to know what kind of snow they are talking about.  For example, whether a snowmobile can get through depends on whether the snow is fine or with large crystals, the ice content, whether it is wet snow or dry snow, and probably other conditions I have never thought about.  But they need it; snow is all around.

 Now, Arabic is supposed to contain 99 words for “love.”  That’s what I’m talking about – A precise word for a full description of the love that we are talking about.

 But wait a minute – Isn’t “love” a part of OUR environment?  Why do we restrict ourselves to one word?

 What kind of words do we need?  I think we need words describing:

 The love between romantic lovers.

 The love for Deity.

 The love of your children.

 The love of children in general.

 The love for animals.

 The love of Humanity.

 The love of comrades in arms.

 The love of comrades in other fields.  I know that all people in the responder community feel great love for some of the people they have worked with.  Don’t believe me?  Drop in on a responder's funeral and see how many people are there.

 Brotherly/sisterly love – Maybe one word for your legal brothers/sisters and another for people who have no close DNA-based relationship.  I have one living brother in the first sense; and countless sisters and brothers in the second.

 Now, if you think that list is in some sort of order, maybe in the order of importance that I place on them, you are wrong.

 I don’t think so.  I believe with precisely zero research to back me up, that each kind of love can be experienced and expressed with the same level of commitment.

 When I say “Love you, brother,” I really mean it – in my sense.  I’m comfortable with that.  When I tell my very close friends “I love you,” they do know how I mean it.  Let’s see, I’ve used it twice in letters or emails today to ladies I know, and once to a lady I talked to on the phone.  Each knows what I mean.

 But if you don’t know me, when I say “I love you,” unless you are present and observe all of those cues and can correctly interpret the cues, you will not have a tip nor a clue what I’m really describing. 

 Love is also ever-changing.  It gets better or more intense, maybe over time and maybe over only a short time.  Ditto when it gets worse or less intense.  Not only do you have to interpret love once, you have to do it again and again with the same people.

 Perhaps all we can do is use “Love you (insert name)”, “Love you, (Brother or Sister)”, just an “I love you” or even signing off with “Love, Roger” is all we are permitted to do.

 In a time where we seem to be emphasizing differences (and even creating false differences because we like conflict for the “joy” of conflict), wouldn’t it be nice to focus on all manner of love?

 

 

Note:  Yup, this is a whole lot different from most of my writing.  And I have to tell you that I have no idea where this post came from.  But I had to write it and had to write it in the first person.  It might be the direction of God, although I don’t have much of a history of direct and unambiguous communications from the Deity.  Maybe it is just “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.”  But I had to write this.  

Are We Celebrating Murder?

We refer to physical object or location by some sort of name.  Whether it is a “table” or “Houston,” using the name invokes a vision in our mind.  Acceptance of a particular name for especially a place changes with the times.  Today, I was reminded how absolutely delicious our naming things for people has evoked when we now know that their behavior was questionable.   We name all sorts of places “Columbus” or “Columbia.”  In very recent years, outraged people have destroyed or removed statues of Christopher Columbus.  Yet several towns, cities, one country and our national capital use Columbus or Columbia.  Are we still honoring Christopher Columbus, notwithstanding what he did?

Oh, a point:  Columbus (the guy, not a town) thought he was doing the work of the Lord.  He also did not know that he was bringing disease to the West.  The germ theory was centuries in the future.

By the way, this post is not about Columbus.  Read on.

Some – ok, many – people who rend their garments and gnash their teeth over names are totally or partially ignorant of history.  Among the statues and images attacked were of Lincoln (remember the 13^th Amendment?), Grant (remember the 360K killed in the Army of the Potomac let alone the 260K Confederate killed?) and even Albert Pike, whose true “fame,” if you call it that, is known to substantially less than 1% of the population.

So, let me ask:  When does a name cease to represent or memorialize a person and become nothing more than the symbol for the place or object?  Maybe St. James did some shady deals.  (Probably not.)  If so, I haven’t heard of a movement to change the name of San Diego.

In the history of the “Border Lands” of America – that’s the Ohio Valley, the entire Ohio watershed and the “Ohio Country” during the 18^th Century, one of the prominent bad deeds was the killing of the family of Tah-gah-jute, a Mingo chief.  (The Mingo’s were a recent amalgamation of the Lenni Lenape, Seneca, Cayuga and other groups.)  He was also known as Chief Logan, which was the name of a Virginia friend.  By the way, we have at least one county and one city named “Logan” in West Virginia.  In the recent past, Logan County has been known as an unsavory pit of political corruption which, of course, had nothing to do with Chief Logan 

The murders of Chief Logan’s family were sudden, violent, and were I to try to describe their cruelty in detail, some online provider would quickly censor it.  The murders were publicly condemned by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson (!), Charles Lee and Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia.  The governor called an emergency session of the Burgesses and presented them with a suspiciously complete plan for going to war with the Indians in the Border Lands.  That was “Dunmore’s War,” and killed hundreds before it was over. 

Part of the Cresap-Greathouse party who took an active part was an early settler.  Let’s call him “Joe Blow,” for he might still have descendants around who might be distressed by this bit of history.  A street in one of the towns we serve was named “Blow Street.”  I passed by it as I was passing the county courthouse which got me thinking about this. 

So now we come to my question:

Now that we know that Joe Blow was part of a foul murder 250 years ago – even though we know only his name and very little else – are we honoring the foul murder of Logan’s family by calling a street “Blow Street”?

Or is it just the name of the place?

Are we just waving a bloody shirt?

Mizpah!

The Sorrows of Samuel T. Cogley

 Star Trek provided a view into what the writers thought was the future.  In some things, they were remarkably accurate.  Today, we have personal communication devices we always carry.   We have weapons which stun but don’t kill or even expose a victim to permanent damage.  Today, there are far more machines which examine patients and which show remotely what the docs in the past had to cut a patient open to see. 

 The one thing the writers got ever so wrong are their view of computers.  We got beyond portable discs with limited information 20 years ago.  We already talk to some computers.  Some computers talk back.  Some convert one language to another. 

 Star Trek was noted for the main characters being able to outthink a computer. They could set up a paradox which not only froze the computer, but would cause the computer to self-destruct (in frustration?)

 So let me introduce Samuel T. Cogley.  Captain Kirk was on trial and needed a lawyer.  Somehow, he came by Samuel T. Cogley.  One thing was surprising:  While in that 24^th Century world, all legal research was done by computers.  Cogley didn’t trust computers.  He trusted books, the printed and bound kind.  He was pictured with hundreds of books he moved into Captain Kirk’s quarters.  (The actual books used were regional reporters by West Company, the publisher of all the federal courts and the state supreme courts.)

 It’s been a touch more than 50 years since I first started doing legal research. And I have done the book thing.  I was not known at the law school as a library-infester.  One time, some classmates who were in the library studying stood up and broke into applause when I cracked the library door.  What they did not know, my buddies and I used the law library in Marion County, not the school library.  OK, when we needed to go to the books, which to be fair to my classmates was less often than them.  I also worked during law school for a law firm with a decent library, where I established myself.  I learned law and law school; I learned lawyering from those guys.

 If you are only interested in West Virginia cases, there are still about 150 books with those.  When you do legal research, there is seldom a simple answer.  Some courts rule on an issue one way and some another. From time to time, a Supreme Court will change its collective mind. 

To do manual legal research takes a lot of books, piled across a wide, long table, 3 or 4 books deep.  You have to go from one to another to get an inkling of what the law is on a subject, and to find support for your client’s position.  (I well remember the late Al Lemley coming in the library and hassling me about how many books I spread around.  I miss Al.)

 That’s what Captain Kirk had to put up with books, books and more books.

 Sadly, it did not take until the 24^th Century to escape the clutches of Samuel T. Cogley.  By say 2010, the switch to computer/internet legal research was in full – and growing – blossom. Since then, I may have touched one law book a month, but some months I forgot.  (That doesn’t count my criminal code, which is my constant companion, to keep straight what the Legislature in its collective ignorance.  I have pending a post on the moronic modifications to the state drug laws.)

 The West Virginia State Bar provides us a free research service.  It’s a little hard to use, but which part of “free” do you not understand?  And then there is Google, which has . . . well, a hell of lot more information that I know.  There’s also FastCase, Justicia, FindLaw, WestLaw, and LexisNexus.

 Now – sadly for me – law books are mainly decorations in a law office, stuff which clients expect to see.

 So carry on, Samuel T. Cogley, right along with your buggy whips, button hooks and fireplaces.  But stay under the porch, you no longer belong to the big dogs.

 Mizpah!

God Saved a Life - 48 Years Ago

 

Memory is funny.  You say, well, I’ll never forget that, but then you have less and less recollections as the years run by.  I find that it’s not necessarily intense experiences you remember best, but those which were so odd that you “knew” that God (however you understand Deity) to have planned it.

Tonight, I’m remembering an ambulance call 48 years ago.  Sure, it was intense, but that was what we did.  We were trained for it and, I must say, pretty decent at it.  On this call, God set us up to save a life that - absent His efforts - would have been lost.

Let me add that ALL we did was do what we were trained to do.  We didn’t run any extraordinary risks (unlike the occasionally stupid stuff we did on other calls.)  But that we were placed exactly where we needed to be was and still is a wonder.

Several things had to happen in an exact order to put us where we were needed on that Saturday, December 18, 1976.

1 – The Station was tired, the paint was peeling, the walls needed scrubbed - and it needed a GI party.  I was out of school for the year and had time to dress grungy and work with a dozen others starting early Saturday morning. 

Now, by “the station was tired,” I’m not kidding.  Let me, how can I illustrate it?  OK, the station wasn’t air-conditioned nor well-heated.  When the bunk room got hot in the summer, what could so was just raise the garage door.  (It faced a busy street, so we had to wear shorts to bed – No commando allowed.)  Oh, and the station was rat infested.  For fun, people would bring in pistols for a little rat hunt.  The neighbors upstairs often called the police, but for some reason the police would always find everyone peaceful when they came.  No, they never looked in anybody’s car.  That's where the pistols were.  And yes, it was that kind of place and that kind of crew.

2 – We always, always, always had at least one “duty crew” at the station.   They weren’t much involved in the GI party because they were in neat, neat uniforms.   For things to work out, the duty crew had to leave on a call.  I have no idea what the call was.

3 – Then, another call had to come in.  No, it wasn’t the MVA where the magic happened, it was a psychiatric emergency on the northeast side of the county, in the direction of WVU Hospital in Morgantown.   As Dickens said somewhere, nothing wonderful could have happened otherwise.

4 – We – Lee, John & I – had to be the ones who took the backup bus to the call.  Lee was the state fire training director at the time.  (He died relatively recently after years as the fire chief for the Tennessee Valley Authority.)  John worked for him and probably was the best rescue person available.  I was a 23 year old renegade law student with time on my hands.  Everybody seemed to enjoy having a renegade law student around.  I would study on the kitchen table, take a call, and everyone would leave my books and notes alone so I could go back to it when we returned.  Lee, John and I had to be the ones who responded to the call because we really didn’t care about following the rules.  There was a rule that you took the patient to the nearest  hospital.  That was Fairmont General, in the other direction from WVU Hospital.  However, Fairmont General did not do psychiatric emergencies.   Had we taken the patient there, they would have futzed around for an hour and then sent us to WVU.  Well, screw that.  We took the patient to WVU.

5 – A dear friend, Ann, was working charge nurse at the WVU ER that day.  She was a  member of our company.  Oh, the charge nurse is the person absolutely in charge of the ER.  The ER wasn’t busy, so – for something wonderful to happen – we had to hang around for half an hour, drink coffee and shoot the breeze with Ann. 

From there on, God sat back and watched while His plan unfolded.  He made those five things happen and could relax while we followed the plan. 

We left WVU and got back on the Interstate toward Fairmont.   As we passed Goshen Road, a car coming north on the other side blinked their lights at us.  Well, we figured, it’s Christmas and Lee – who was driving – gave the other driver about 5 cents of the red lights.  That’s the festive thing to do.  Then, another car blinked lights at us. Hmm. Well, it’s Christmas.  Time for 10 cents of red lights.  And then, a third.  OK, something might be going on. Why would you blink lights at an ambulance tooling down the road?   

I was sitting in the officer’s seat and felt Lee accelerating hard.  John, in the back, was reaching for the trauma pack and other gear.  At Warp One, Lee switched on the lights. Warp Two, the siren. As we topped the ridge before the county line, we could see, most of a mile away, a car on its top.  A State Police cruiser was pulling up.  When we hit Warp Three, I picked up the mike and called our dispatcher.   “Have you had a call about an MVA at the county line?”  Closer, closer.  “Negative.”  “Well, you do now, send everything.”  Oh, that’s called a “Y’all come” radio call, really frowned upon usually.  In this case, we were forgiven.  We had another three rigs in the station plus a rescue, and they all started out.

As we pulled up, we could see at least four patients, all out of the cars, perhaps from being ejected.  (Three of them were actually ejected.)  The Trooper was covering one of the patients.  (He turned out to be an old ambulance guy, and became a good friend.  When years later, I was assigned to represent a cop-killer, the first thing I did was call Mike, meet him at McDonald’s and told him that I was going to represent the guy accused of killing a brother officer.  We still talk about that meeting, and he appreciated the heads-up.)  Well, since we were a crew of three and there were at least four patients, we took Mike’s word that one was already deceased.  John went to the nearest patient, a 20 +/- year old lady who was very, very injured.  I went to a baby, who was crying.  (Hey, that’s good; when a baby doesn’t cry, that often means that something is very wrong.)  John needed my help.  Just then a lady came forward, said she was an RN.  Don’t you know, the Lord LOVES a volunteer.  “Take the baby.  Lee put her in the back of the truck.  Ma’am if the baby quits crying, tell us.” 

We quickly checked, packaged, and got the injured lady into the truck.  Sometime in the past few months, we had an in-service training in evaluating trauma patients.  That patient was withdrawing to pain.  Now, we were EMT’s, we didn’t know WHY, but we had learned that was really bad and the only real treatment we had was to beat feet for WVU. 

(In the meantime, Lee had checked the fourth patient.  He was an older gentleman, was from another car and was having some chest pain from the excitement.  As we were leaving, the fire department and our second unit was pulling up, and we left that person to them.)

Off we went, Warp Four, to WVU.  Mike was doing the escort.  There was a WVU basketball game starting and we had to crack the chaotic intersection at the Coliseum. 

We just did our job.  We delivered the patients to WVU and they did their jobs.  It was a close thing, but later we heard that the lady - the mother of the baby – left the hospital in good shape after a rough recovery.

We did nothing special or extraordinary.  But God set it up.  I still remember and thank Him for that.

Mizpah!

 

Rome Relaxes and Ignores The Noise

Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that the ATF could not classify so-called “bump stocks” with rendering a semi-automatic firearm into a fully automatic firearm, i.e., a machine gun.   The case is called Garland (the Attorney General) vs. Cargill.

This decision was (1) unfortunate and (2) eminently avoidable by a rational Congress.  Equally unfortunate is that the United States currently does not have a rational Congress.

Bump stocks are a relatively recent – and simple – innovation to firearms.  It uses the recoil of the weapon to cycle the trigger without constant voluntary squeezes of the trigger by the shooter.  They were largely unknown until 2017.  A shooter from the 32^nd floor of Mandalay Bay casino & hotel in Las Vegas used bump stocks and a LOT of ammunition to kill 60 people and wound 400 more.  The victims were attending an open concert next door to the hotel.  (The shooter suicided before when the police closed in.)

The majority opinion by Justice Thomas splits hairs and says that the action of a machine gun is not precisely the action of a bump stock.  Which is true.  Moreover, the ATF didn’t have the authority to expand the statutory definition of what constitutes a machine gun.  Likewise, true.  Justice Sotomayor applies the old theory that if it walks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.  A quick and steady firing weapon is a machine gun, no matter how it works. And that’s likewise, as a practical matter, true.  A short concurring opinion by Justice Alito says that Congress can easily outlaw bump stocks.   Which is true.

Let’s find expert witnesses to help us understand the effects of bump stocks.  There are lots of them:  The Officers who responded to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.  If one listens to the radio transmissions of the responding officers, you hear several officers describe the gunfire that is still happening as they were transmitting as “automatic fire” or “fully automatic fire.” In other words, the gunfire was steady and fast, like a machine gun.  [See Note 1 for why people listen to those tapes.]

These expert witnesses heard machine gun fire.  What exact mechanism was causing the machine gun fire was irrelevant.    Former President Trump, often endorsed by the National Rifle Association, had the ATF draft regulations to ban bump stocks.  The late Sen. Feinstein disagreed because she did not believe that ATF had the power to do it by regulation.  She said "legislation is the only answer."   Last week, the Supreme Court agreed with Sen. Feinstein.  But so far, no legislation. 

Since 2017, Congress has had the power to ban bump stocks.  Nothing has happened.  Even the NRA hasn’t criticized the limitation of machine guns or the high fees and strict rules regarding machine guns.  There is NOTHING barring Congress from banning bump stocks next week – except inaction brought about by endless political bickering.  Maybe Congress should be ashamed, but that would require the ability to feel shame.  Ain’t likely.

Mizpah!

 

Note 1 – There is a science of quick and proper response to sudden emergencies.  To be good at that science requires preparation and preparation requires study of how others confronted with sudden emergencies have performed.  FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – sponsors National Incident Manage System, a long and involved course of a systematic approach to emergencies.  So emergency managers study the radio tapes – now usually available on Youtube – to see how a real emergency was handled and what could have been done better.  The 9/11 FDNY and NYPD tapes are a record of how confused and then creative was the response to a theretofore impossible set of circumstances; the Aurora FD theater tapes establish that the Incident Command System was pretty closely followed.

Can Donald Trump or Hunter Biden get fair trials?

No. 

And the circumstances are delicious – One can speak what one sees as the Truth without being seen as a Trump/Biden apologist.  (Yeah, right – This ink-stained wretch will be seen as only half right, with the halves split about evenly.  Even that is delicious.)

(Pontius Pilate: But what is truth?)

What is a fair trial?  A fair trial is where:

1 – The government prosecutor is competent and presents a fair case using legally admissible evidence.

2 – The defendant is represented by competent counsel who presents a fair case using legally admissible evidence.

3 – The Judge applies the law equally and doesn’t favor either side.

4 - The jury either doesn’t know anything about the case or will put aside any knowledge they have and judge from the evidence.

You have those four things, and you may have a fair trial.  Most importantly:  A FAIR TRIAL DOESN’T DEPEND TO WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES.

Pretty simple, right?

The devil is in the details and the details make lots of trial unfair.

For example:  Most readers will think that a fair trial for Trump or H. Biden depends on who wins.  Obviously, if Trump is convicted and H. Biden is acquitted, they each got a fair trial.  But, no, wait:  If Trump is acquitted and H. Biden is convicted, they each got a fair trial.  Maybe Jethro Bodine doesn’t have an opinion, but you do. 

Admissible evidence is information which is both relevant and material.  Relevant means the evidence tends to prove something.  Material means what it proves has something to do with the case.  I’ve heard that Booth shot Lincoln.  But I wasn’t there, so my testimony is worthless – irrelevant.  That Trump saved American/caused a million deaths in the pandemic or that H. Biden has used cocaine and hookers might be true.  But it is not material, it doesn’t have anything to do with either case. 

Let’s run down the list –

The prosecutors – The Prosecutor in each case will be competent and on their A-game.  Whether they will be a little underhanded remains to be seen.  Probably not, because everyone will be watching.

The defense counsel – Ditto.

OK, maybe the lawyers will try to get away with a little crap, but they won’t get far.

The Judge – Ok, now it gets a little sticky.  Each is charged in Federal Court, and Trump also has state charges.  Guess who appoints Federal Judges?  The president.  As in Trump, H. Biden’s dad, or somebody in their party.  Almost everyone will think the fix is in on one of the cases.  They may be right, they may be wrong, but they will believe it.  Even if the fix is kind of in, the Judges will honestly not believe it in their hearts.

The jury is the big problem.   The jury produces a “verdict.”  That word comes from the old French word, “verdicto,”  It means “True.”  So a verdict means “True.”  In every case, how does a jury determine what is true?  No juror will be picked who was either at the January 6 patriotic event/seditious insurrection or who works for Burisma.  That would make them witnesses, not jurors. 

God, who knows all and sees all, does not appear as a witness.  If you don’t believe in God, no problem – He still doesn’t come.  The jury listens to the evidence from people who were there, sees videos, photographs, documents, and so forth.  Then, they will decide not on Truth, but on what they BELIEVE the Truth is.  

The jurors form a belief.  We hope that the belief is true.  Sometimes, it isn’t.  Well, that’s just the breaks.

In Trump’s or H. Biden’s trials, if you get someone who has never heard of the cases, you have one dumb juror, a Jethro Bodine doesn’t watch the news and dreams about being a brain surgeon or a fry cook. 

We’ll see three varieties of potential jurors. 

One, some people will sincerely try to put their opinions aside and sincerely try to come to a fair verdict.  They are wrong because they’ve been dipped in constant propaganda, but they’ll try.  Moreover, the propaganda they have seen and heard was intentional.  Both sides have been constantly announcing their talking points – disguised as news – since the cases came about.

Two, some people are narcissists.  They think they are fair.  But they will bring to the jury table a whole heaping helping of confirmation bias.  They will accept evidence which confirms what they already believe and ignore the rest.  Narcissists are tricky.  They actually believe that they will be fair.  They’d pass a lie detector.   We’ll never know if we get a narcissist, even after they write their book at the end of the trial. 

Finally, we will see out-and-out liars.  Those people have zero intention of judging fairly and will lie to get on the jury.  Some liars will be stupid and be exposed.  If someone has expressed an opinion publicly, we’ll know what it was.  We’ll have a constant flow of “good citizens” who will rat out the jurors.  (Oh, the “good citizens” may be liars themselves.)    

The public will never agree that Trump or H. Biden got a fair trial.   It will all depend on who wins.  Nobody wants justice.  They want the rascal to go to prison and the innocent guy to be vindicated.  Only the names have changed to protect the guilty.

A fair trial?  Pull the other one.

 Mizpah!