Back in March I explored conflicting perceptions of the meaning of “woke” and “racism” as applied to the original Star Trek, describing social media as “a gold mine of jargon” that means different things to different people. Today I’d like to take a look at other terminology that obstructs political discussion.
Justice to Monitor Voting Rights Compliance in Swing States
Another part of the Democrats’ post-Election Day strategy taking shape?
Two predicates.
First, the power of the legacy media this election cycle lies not in who believes what they say, but in the ability to bring “themes” into the limelight. The media look for allies that can provide them with the proper hook, witness John Kelly’s Hitler comment that was reported in The Atlantic last week. The purpose of the article wasn’t to inject any new, credible information. Rather, it was to give an excuse for everyone to talk about Trump-as-Hitler (again).
The second is the Democrats’ upcoming reliance on the claim of “voter suppression” and other irregularities, to contest the presidential election result after Nov. 5th. This was part of John Podesta’s ploy to throw the table and deny Trump’s victory in the electoral college in “Game 3” of the Transition Integrity Project war game.
The Democrats have been playing the voter suppression card whenever and wherever possible, essentially claiming that any attempt to clean up voter rolls, have standards regarding ballot access, or have certain requirements for mail-in ballots (like, actually, the ballots actually have to arrive by Election Day) is akin to the return of the KKK. Think I’m exaggerating? In 2021 Georgia passed its Election Integrity Law which required the use of voter ID and tightened regulations on things like mail-in ballot requests and ballot drop boxes. All Hell broke loose. Joe Biden traveled to Georgia and called it “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” in part because it banned outside groups from offering water to voters waiting in line. Georgia was also sued by the Department of Justice, the ACLU, and the NAACP despite the fact that the new law made in-person voting more accessible, through longer early-voting periods and increased funding for more staff and locations.
Just as Hitler would have been confused by the Democrats’ calling Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally (that was festooned with Israeli flags) Nazi, Herman Talmadge would have been confused by his old friend Joe Biden’s characterizing a law that made it easier for blacks in Georgia to vote as “Jim Crow.”
Halloween, Candy, and Confiscatory Fiscal Policy
When I’m in Arizona for Halloween, as I was this year, the night is always a blast. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were in action and there was a great street presence both in terms of yard decorations and people (both kids and adults) in costume.
However, the big talk in the neighborhood among the adults is always about the candy. Everyone has their favorite and each has their own way of getting it.
Mark Antonio Wright writes, in The Top Three Candies to Steal from Your Kid’s Halloween Bag, his thoughts on the subject.
His top three candies to steal?
1) Twix and Snickers
2) Sour gummy candy
3) Twizzlers
His bottom three candies?
1) Milky Way
2) Candy Corn
3) Swedish Fish
This might be one of the few times since the Bush Administration that I have actually agreed with something in The National Review, though I would amend his list by removing Twizzlers and replacing it with the 100 Grand Bar. Furthermore I would remove Milky Way from the bottom and replace it with Dum-Dums.
Yes, I am old enough to remember actually getting candy cigarettes in my bag. When I told the kids about this they were horrified.
However, as far as a means of getting your hands on the sweet stuff, yes, much like Wright we would loot the kids’ bags while they were sleeping.
When they got older and they started to catch on, we had to up our game. So we taught them about taxation and tariff policy, by deducting an immediate 20% of all candy brought into the house with an extra 5% surcharge on chocolate and gummies. I would also teach them how to play cards and we would use their candy as chips. Good times.
Maybe there’s a treatise waiting to be written modeling government on parents and their kids’ Halloween candy; after all, just like we would take the candy and have the kids think they were getting something out of the experience, isn’t the government doing the same with you and taxes?
Why Maricopa Matters
Tens of thousands of citizens wait in line for upwards of an hour to perform a sacred rite of citizenship, to vote for the people who will run the government. Yet when they get to the actual voting booth they are unable to cast their votes because the “tabulators won’t read the ballots.” Many are sent to other polling places, where if they don’t find the same problem with the equipment, they are unable to vote because they are recorded as having already voted. As a stop-gap the election authority decides to place the unreadable ballots into a special box at each polling place so that they can be later scanned, but many of those ballots are mixed-up with discarded ballots and presumably lost.
The race for chief executive was decided by a margin of little more than 17,000 votes out of more than 2.5 million votes cast with the political establishment’s preferred candidate winning.
So where is this place of strange elections and funny results? Putin’s Russia? Early 20th-Century Mississippi or Chicago? The country of some South American tin-pot despot of yore? Nope 2022 Maricopa County, the 3rd largest voting district in the country, and key to what many are calling the most important presidential election in more than 160 years.
Halloween
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye
And the spirits that stand
By the naked man
In the Book of Moons, defend ye!
That of your five sound sense
You never be forsaken
Nor wander from
Yourself with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon
The moon’s my constant mistress
And the lonely owl my marrow
The flaming drake
And the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow
I know more than Apollo
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars
At mortal wars
And the rounded welkin weeping
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world’s end
Methinks it is no journey
(Not specifically a Halloween poem, but it certainly sets the mood, doesn’t it? This is Tom O’Bedlam’s Song, dating from sometime around 1600. There are lots more verses, and many different versions.)