Editorials for 2020 | Logical Conclusions

Poll Dancing

I said in the midst of the campaign season that for President Donald Trump to win the election, he would have to do so in spite of the blatant opposition of the mainstream media, social media, Hollywood elites, academia, billionaires, deep staters inside and outside the administration, and the polling organizations.

That last one mystifies me. Why would private organizations cook the books so to speak when you end up being so publicly wrong? These for the most part are private companies and universities. Well, the latter probably don’t care about loss of revenue as result of being inept, but you’d think private companies would be more careful. You’d be wrong.

But how do you slant the polls? You ask. Well, you could deliberately poll more Democrats than Republicans. You could be more subtle and carefully choose heavily Democrat precincts, such as those in Pennsylvania that voted after the polls closed on Nov. 3. You could write your questions in such a way that you get the response you want, as in, “Do you prefer that murdering bastard Donald Trump, or that nice old family man Joe Biden?”

However they do it, they did it again. I have some examples.

In Alaska, usually a reliable red state, polls just before the election were reporting a close race between Republican Dan Sullivan and Democrat Al Gross. For instance, Harstad Strategic Research’s polling from Oct, 2-6 put Gross with 46 percent to Sullivan’s 46 percent. For Oct. 10-13, that same company put the race at Gross 47 percent, Sullivan 46 percent. A combination of all polls just before the election gave Gross 45 percent, and Sullivan 48 percent. Final result: Gross 41 percent, Sullivan 53.3 percent. This could serve as a cautionary note for those who bet money on elections.

Let’s go to Florida, where Democrats were hoping to end the election early with a win in that state. CNN gushed just before the election, “Democrats were buoyant. Opinion polls had Biden with the edge in Florida.”

Indeed they did. In March, FiveThirtyEight had Biden with 50 percent to Trump’s 46 percent. From April through November, that company had Biden ahead in Florida every month by up to eight points. On Nov. 3, FiveThirtyEight reported Biden at 49.1 percent, and Trump at 46.6 percent. But when all the votes were counted, Trump won with 51.2 percent of Biden’s 47.9 percent.

Let’s go to South Carolina where Democrats poured $104 million into the state in an effort to unseat Republican Lindsey Graham (and let’s take a parenthetical moment to thank God that American voters can’t be bought … in this case, anyway). On Sept. 30, Quinnipiac had the race tied. On Oct. 12, CNN gushed that the race was “neck and neck.” An average of all polls had Graham at 47 percent, and Jaime Harrison at 43.3 percent. Final result: Graham 54.5 percent, Harrison 44.2 percent – not even close.

Let’s move on to Iowa, another senate race Democrats hoped to win by pouring in tens of millions into an effort to unseat incumbent Republican Joni Ernst. On Oct. 28, RABA Research had Democrat Theresa Greenfield with 51 percent, and Ernst with 45 percent. Quinnipiac on Oct. 29 had Ernst with 48 percent and Greenfield with 46 percent. Emerson College (ah, these bastions of higher education) on Nov. 1 (!) had Greenfield with 51 percent and Ernst with 48 percent. Final result: Ernst 51.8 percent, Greenfield 45.2 percent.

Couple footnotes. FiveThirtyEight, a company formed by Nate Silver, who is a statistician who analyzes baseball and elections and is a correspondent for ABC, graded Emerson College as a A- with respect to polling. FiveThirtyEight graded another polling organization – Insider Average – at B-. Insider Average on Nov. 1 said Ernst would get 51 percent to Greenfield’s 45 percent. So the polling organization with the best prediction got the lowest grade.

And the pollsters blew the presidential race in Iowa too. A New York Times/Siena College poll on Oct. 21 said Biden 46 percent, Trump 43 percent. Quinnipiac on Oct. 29 said Biden 46 percent, Trump 47 percent. Public Policy on Nov. 2 (!) said Biden 49 percent, Trump, 48 percent. Actual results: Trump 53.2 percent, Biden 45 percent.

So why would polling organizations do this? One theory is that there are too many variables involved, especially when you throw human nature into the mix, to actually predict an election. Another theory, to which I subscribe, is the polling people in cooperation with the news media want to say their candidate is so far ahead, the opposition might as well not even vote. That might not be true of all pollsters, but we wouldn’t know; the news media is unlikely to report on polling results with which they disagree.

So in conclusion, let’s look at another poll. Gallup/Knight took a poll that found 46 percent of Americans think the media is very biased, and 69 percent are concerned about bias in the news others are getting. “Most Americans have lost confidence in the media to deliver the news objectively,” Gallup/Knight said, and other polls on the subject had similar results.

I agree with those polls.

Why I Love America

I entered this is a “Why I Love America” contest. It didn’t win, but I kind of like it. The style is called “Prosetry.”

So The Epoch Times asks me to explain, why I love this land, these fruited plains, these mountains and shores, cities tall, so much to absorb while explaining it all.

The first problem presented is that troublesome verb. So many have endeavored to define that word. Poets, and thinkers and desperate teens, put on parchment or paper what they think that it means.

The condition needs not be precisely that clear, we may not know what it is, but we know when it’s here. It’s the symptoms we know, the tear in our eyes, the lump in our throats, the swelling of hearts, at the sound of those notes, that ring out our Anthem as our flag waves above that we realize we stand in a nation we love.

She’s a beautiful lady, America is. If love needs illustration, recall your first kiss. This lady’s a beauty, you can readily see, but what of her nature, temper, and mien? Do you want to stay with her, or do you move on, and regret what you had, now that it’s gone?

These are the things that you learn as you grow, how this lady was born in Valley Forge snow, at Cowpens and Yorktown and Fort Ticondero. She matured as the Founders laid down laws of the land, and asked for God’s blessings and His helping hand.

A Constitution they wrote, and it stands yet today, sometimes amended and sometimes ignored, but defended by musket and cannon and sword. It’s the idea, you see, of inalienable rights, that caused us to march out and led us to fight.

And though we regard this lady with awe, we can’t help but notice that she possesses some flaws. Slavery, exclusion, and at times rights denied, what were we thinking as we stood by her side? We were thinking of Venus de Milo, having no arms, yet retains timeless grace, beauty and charms. So she changed her ways, washed out those stains; America grew ‘neath Liberty’s flame.

She beckoned to all, your tired, your poor, to cross the great oceans and come to our shores. Millions and millions thus crossed the sea to make a new life in the Land of the Free.

So you see millions loved her, this American girl, who had more to offer than the whole rest of the world.

Just eight hundred words they gave me to write, to tell of the Teslas, Edisons, Wrights, the Roosevelts, Wilsons, Sinclairs and

Tafts, the tale of a black man and a kid on a raft, the Thirteenth, and Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, and ten Bills of Rights for all her descendants.

And so did we prosper with both engine and plow until parts of the world fell under a cloud, a darkness of evil in the East and the West, both enslaving whole peoples and killing the rest. What would the earth look like, I honestly ask, if the Lady had not answered and rose to the task?

But my Lady donned her armor and sharpened her sword, launched her ships and her airplanes to take on the hordes. GIs, and marines, nurses and tars, rode carriers, cruisers, tanks and armed cars, to places like Iwo, Saipan and St. Lo, Normandy, Guam, sad Anzio. They fought in the Bulge, flew over the Hump, triumphed at Midway, and up in Holland where paratroops jumped.

Battered and torn, she emerged from the fray, looked at the world and gave treasure away, to rebuild the broken, and to our surprise, our former opponents became our allies.

Americans filled the world with largesse, lifting up countries beset with distress. We give more, during these sad times, than the next ten largest nations combined.

Even in peacetime, she reigns supreme, keeping the peace and building machines, interstate highways and wondrous vaccines. And in one great effort that made some of us swoon, she actually put a man on the moon.

Now you’ve examined her whole resume, you really can’t ask why you’re feeling this way, with a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye, at the sight of Old Glory, bright in the sky, red, white and blue, waving above, the Land of the Free, the land that I love.

By James E. Dustin

970 723-4012

dustinbooks@yahoo.com

So the Epoch Times asks me to explain, why I love this land, these fruited plains, these mountains and shores, cities tall, so much to absorb while explaining it all.

The first problem presented is that troublesome verb. So many have endeavored to define that word. Poets, and thinkers and desperate teens, put on parchment or paper what they think that it means.

These are the things that you learn as you grow, how this Lady was born in Valley Forge snow, at Cowpens and Yorktown and Fort Ticondero. She matured as the Founders laid down laws of the land, and asked for God’s blessings and His helping hand.

And though we regard this lady with awe, we can’t help but notice she possesses some flaws. Slavery, exclusion, and at times rights denied, what were we thinking as we stood by her side? We were thinking of Venus de Milo, having no arms, yet retaining her grace, beauty and charms. So she changed her ways, washed out those stains; America grew ‘neath Liberty’s flame.

She beckoned to all, your tired, your poor, to cross the great oceans and come to our shores. Millions and millions thus crossed the sea to make a new life in the Land of the Free.

So you see millions loved her, this American girl, who had more to offer than the whole rest of the world.

Just eight hundred words they gave me to write, to tell of the Teslas, Edisons, Wrights, the Roosevelts, Wilsons, Sinclairs and Tafts, the tale of a black man and a kid on a raft, the Thirteenth, and Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, and ten Bills of Rights for all her descendants.

But my Lady donned her armor and sharpened her sword, launched her ships and her airplanes to take on the hordes. GIs, and marines, nurses and tars, rode carriers, cruisers, tanks, armored cars, to places like Iwo, Saipan and St. Lo, Normandy, Guam, sad Anzio. They fought in the Bulge, flew over the Hump, triumphed at Midway, and up in Holland where paratroops jumped.

Battered and torn, she emerged from the fray, looked at the world and gave treasure away, to rebuild the broken, and to our surprise, our former opponents became our allies.

Americans filled the world with largesse, lifting up countries beset with distress. We give more, during these sad times, than the next ten largest nations combined.

After the war, she still reigns supreme, keeping the peace and building machines, interstate highways and wondrous vaccines. And in one great effort that made some of us swoon, she actually put a man on the moon.

Welcome to the Party

D is for defunding the police.

E is for ending all these probes.

M is for the money that we fleece

On trips that Hunter takes around the globe.

C is for the court that we’ll be packing,

R is for restrictions on your guns.

A as in we’re against all fracking,

T is for new taxes by the ton.

P is for pleasing AOC,

L is for letting cities burn,

A is for the alien hordes we’ll see,

T is to take what business earns.

F is for free, and free, and free,

On school and health and bail,

R is for enriching the Chinese,

M is Marxists, in every hill and dale.

The Path to Permanent Power

This may have been on the minds of Democrats back in 2016. It wouldn’t have taken a Nostradamus to predict that two or three seats would become vacant on the Supreme Court during the reign of Hillary Clinton, and her election seemed inevitable.

Her nominees certainly would have been liberal interpreters of the Constitution just as Barack Obama’s nominees were during his presidency. Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have been dependable liberals on all important cases heard by the court to date. With two or three more appointments by Hillary Clinton along with the sitting Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, the liberal wing of the court would have had a five- or six-vote majority.

Well, so? You ask. As an amateur historian, I doubt that the Founders would have gamed this out, but control of the Supreme Court is the linchpin is seizing one-party power for the next few generations, a revolution without a shot fired if you will. And it might have worked in 2016 except that the pesky American voters got involved and elected Donald J. Trump as President.

Now, if the plot is to succeed, several things need to happen. President Trump needs to be defeated, Democrats have to take control in the Senate and have to hold a majority in the House. This could certainly happen. So what then?

With control of the Legislature and the Presidency, Democrats could salvage control of the Supreme Court by “packing” it, or increasing the number of members to eleven, thirteen, fifteen, or whatever. Because there is nothing in the Constitution regarding the size of the Supreme Court, this would become a legislative issue. It’s been done before.

So, say Joe Biden is President (for a while, anyway) and Democrats hold both houses of Congress. A bill is passed, is signed into law, and now the court has fifteen seats. President Joe Biden, or more probably President Kamala Harris, could nominate six individuals with the correct ideological bent, and the 2016 debacle can be forgotten.

And I am not just making this up. This from The New York Times: “The idea of expanding the Supreme Court has caught fire among some Democrats in recent days, as the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has ignited a Washington power struggle that could drag on for months, long after the Senate votes on President Trump’s nominee to replace her.”

Nominee Joe Biden, who in 2019 absolutely opposed the idea of packing the court, now won’t answer questions on whether or not he favors the idea. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says, “nothing is off the table,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren says, “It’s a conversation that’s worth having.”

It’s a conversation they will have if the Democrats, and especially the radical left wing of the Democrat Party, win this year. Imagine, after a respectful period of celebration, a Democrat President in one year could appoint four to six Supreme Court justices.

And thanks to Harry Reid trashing about one hundred years of tradition and rules in the Senate in 2013, federal judges require only a simple majority to be confirmed. Building on that, the Republican majority followed a couple years later by making Supreme Court judges a simple majority proposition also.

So now the Democrats have the Supreme Court. What might follow? I would say a plan to gain permanent control of the U.S. Senate, and therefore permanent control of all judicial appointments. Some niggling problems, like those Republican and Independent voters, would become irrelevant.

First, the Senate. The Democrat National Committee’s platform includes this plank: “Making Washington, D.C., the 51^st State.” It would help them. Democrats almost certainly would gain two more seats in the Senate, and they are also talking about increased political powers being granted to Puerto Rico, which, if statehood were granted, would probably add two more senators to the Democrat caucus.

There are some legal arguments about how these two entities could become states. Some argue Washington, D.C., could not become a state without a Constitutional Amendment. Other territories can become states simply through an act of Congress.

Going back to the Democrat Platform, we see that party making overtures to both Puerto Rico and other territories. “The unequal treatment of Puerto Rico’s residents must end. We will invest in the island’s future through economic development initiatives, increased education funding, construction of affordable housing, and innovative energy and climate resilience programs,” the platform says.

And, “Democrats recognize and honor the contributions and sacrifices made in service of our country by the Americans living in the territories of Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The people of the U.S. territories have played a vital role in American democracy for more than 120 years, and have for too long been met with unequal treatment by the federal government.”

There are four more potential states. If you read deeper into the document, the Democrats promise all sorts of expenditures and aid to the territories should they desire statehood. The marriage hasn’t been consummated yet, but the courting has begun.

So let’s say the Democrats in the next two years do manage to accomplish what I have outlined above. Their next move would have to be the destruction of the Constitution.

Their main target would be the Electoral College, that fundamental building block of the nation that prevented Hillary Clinton from becoming President and therefore must be eliminated. Changing the Constitution is difficult; any change or amendment requires the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Democrats couldn’t recruit enough territories to become states to gain a three-fourths majority there.

They would have to circumvent the Constitution to bypass the Electoral College, and again, they already are laying the groundwork through the National Popular Vote campaign which promises: “The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia … It has been enacted into law in 16 jurisdictions with 196 electoral votes. The bill will go into effect when enacted by states with an additional 74 electoral votes.”

Well, maybe. There are some serious Constitutional problems with that statement. One is that the Constitution clearly lays out how the President shall be elected, and the National Popular Vote doesn’t qualify. Another roadblock is that the Constitution forbids the states from entering “into any compact or agreement with another state” without the consent of Congress.

Nevertheless, the governor and the Legislature of the state of Colorado, like other Democrat-controlled states, blithely passed a law giving all the state’s electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, which is tantamount to telling the state’s voters to, “Go pound sand. We don’t care what you think.” Too judgmental? If Colorado votes for Trump, and the popular vote goes to Biden, Colorado’s votes go to Biden. Period. Is that what we want?

Is such a National Popular Vote law even legal? Well, let’s remember who ultimately would settle that question in this dystopian future: a Supreme Court dominated by Democrat-appointed liberals. I sincerely doubt that the Founders ever in their wildest nightmares believed that the Fourth Amendment would ever be used to sanction the killing of babies up to and even after the moment of birth. But Roe v. Wade came out of the Supreme Court, not any legislature.

I believe what I have described could happen because of the vast number of uninterested and ill-educated voters out there who simply don’t see what’s going on. They don’t believe their high school education was woefully inadequate, they don’t believe they’ve been indoctrinated at colleges and universities, they can’t see that the main-stream press is biased, they don’t recognize that basic rights granted by the Constitution are being infringed, and a huge number of them have only a vague idea of what the Constitution even is. So when all their basic rights have been taken away, they won’t even know what they’ve lost.

That will be the end of the United States. There also are huge numbers of people who value what this nation has, and they won’t put up with having those values taken away. States will break off from the whole. If Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma formed a new nation, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world. Alaska could stand alone. If the basic foundational principles on which this nation was founded are removed, the building falls down. There would be no mortar to hold it together.

What They’re Not Telling You

So where are the accolades?

The U.S. Marshals Service rescued thirty-five missing children ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen years old who were being held in several cities in Ohio. Several of the teens were victims of human trafficking rings.

The marshals worked in conjunction with local police forces in an effort to find forty missing teens in the area. Another similar operation led to the discovery of an additional twenty-five missing children. Joint operations found five more missing kids in Oklahoma. In connection with these operations, two-hundred and sixty-two suspects were arrested.

Earlier this year in Georgia, thirty-nine missing children, including one that was three years old and one who had been missing for two years, were found by the Marshals Service “Operation Not Forgotten.”

Authorities arrested nine people, many of whom already have faced charges that included sex trafficking, parental kidnapping, registered sex offender violations, drugs and weapons possession.

In yet another operation, the U.S. Marshals Service rescued eleven missing children in New Orleans following a two-month investigation.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been conducting these operations and has rescued more children than any other previous administration. That’s according to PolitiFact, the left-leaning site that has never found a conservative accomplishment that couldn’t be downplayed and/or dismissed.

You probably didn’t hear about these events because the main-stream media gave little attention to these operations by the U.S. Marshals Service.

In my day as a journalist, we would have reported on the initial rescues, and then followed up with at least interviews with the families who went through hell while their children were missing. We maybe would have video of the families reuniting with their missing children. How would you like to be a mother whose daughter was taken by a sex trafficking ring?

Instead, we get to hear about Black Lives Matter every day and the constant reminder that America – like most nations on Earth through the first four thousand years or so of recorded history – engaged in slavery one hundred and fifty years ago. We are told that we who have never owned slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves.

Well, what about the current administration that is working to prevent slavery today? Where are the accolades?

“The scourge of human trafficking is the modern day equivalent of slavery, brutally depriving victims of basic human rights,” said U.S. Attorney General William Barr at a roundtable on human trafficking held recently in Atlanta and covered by The Epoch Times newspaper are apparently no other national papers or networks.

The efforts continue. At that same roundtable, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the awarding of more than $100 million in grants to organizations that fight human trafficking.

An estimated twenty-four million people around the world are trapped in some sort of human trafficking. That kind of thing can include sex slaves, forced labor or servitude, or even forced marriages.

President Trump issued a proclamation in January that noted his Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team has, as of this year, more than doubled the number of human traffickers arrested.

So where are the accolades?

I’ll tell you where: the same place as the news stories on the federal crackdown on MS-13, probably the most brutal and savage gang operating in the United States. The recent investigation resulted in more than twenty arrests of gang leaders and gang members, including those gangsters suspected of killing with machetes and baseball bats two teenage girls in Long Island.

It seems apparent that such success stories from this administration get no sort of priority in news coverage for the simple reason that such stories might make President Trump look good. We can’t have that in an election year.

Race to Excellence?

Here’s a copy of a letter I sent to USA Today. I don’t expect them to publish it, so you can read it here:

Editors,

Thought you’d like to know I’ve bought my last edition of USA Today. That would be the edition of Aug. 21-23 in which you used two-thirds of a page to label everyone in your newsroom by race and gender. Do you not understand that racial labeling is the basis for racism?

When you, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other agencies and organizations put so much effort into labeling people based on skin color, or national origin, or religion, you completely miss the point of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech in which he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

He did not say, “I have a dream that someday my four little children will try to get a job with USA Today and will be judged on the color of their skin and not the content of their journalistic abilities.”

Do you actually feel that your next hiring decision should be based in a large part on the race or gender of the applicant so you can better “balance” your staff? Are you going to put out help wanted ads that say, “We have openings for two blacks and one female?”

Your quest to achieve “parity with your communities” by 2025 smacks of quotas in hiring, affirmative action, and other race-based programs. I don’t want a newspaper that weighs its effectiveness by the racial makeup of its staff and leadership, that is more self-absorbed with skin color in the newsroom than bias on the news pages. Yes, bias. Having been a journalist for forty years at all levels of the newspaper business, I didn’t have to read very deep into your stories to find evidence of bias.

Just one example from this same edition: “That message has been underscored by a pandemic that has added to the confusion and complexity of voting in person and Trump’s efforts to undermine the U.S. Post Office as he charges, without evidence, that universal mail-in ballots that several states are considering is racked with fraud.”

I couldn’t help noticing there is no attribution for several of those assertions. That wouldn’t have been allowed when I was an editor, but really, “without evidence?” Did you not cover the election in New York where 84,000 mail-in ballots were thrown out, then thrown in again? Or the one thousand, six hundred uncounted mail-in ballots found in New Jersey? Or four hundred mail-in ballots sent overseas with the Democrat box already checked? “Without evidence?” (Plus, one can’t help but wonder at the expertise of your copyediting staff, letting that tortuous sentence pass.)

But here’s the big question to consider before you begin your crusade for balance: how do you decide who is black, white, Asian, Hispanic or other among your employees? Did you use the old Confederate definition of “one drop of negro blood,” or follow how the Nazis used to decide who is a Jew with a generational test? Or did you just ask everyone with what race they identified? So where would have put Kamela Harris? Asian? Black? You identified her both ways in the news story on Page 1. Can she be both? Labeling people can be so difficult sometimes.

Why don’t you label your staff according to their political bias so all your readers can understand why you report stories the way you do. My guess, based on past studies, is that your newsroom from top to bottom is about 90 percent liberal. I’d bet most of them have donated to or supported in some other way Democrats. Let’s see a chart based on ideology similar to your racial or gender breakdown charts.

You’ve fallen into a trap. You think you can solve perceived racial bias problems by labeling everyone and then making sure everything is “balanced.” You would do better to ignore racial and gender identities entirely and try to publish a respectable newspaper. Or, you can step back into 1950s. You seem to have made the latter choice.

Facebook Mommy

Boy, was Mom mad! Actually, it was Facebook who was mad, but it sounded like Mom, as in, “Jimmy, I told you what the rules are, and you disobeyed me and tricked me and made me look stupid in front of my friends.”

Except Mom never had friends so far on the left side of the political spectrum, but anyway, here’s what happened with Facebook.

I don’t hunt anymore, so I put my Remington 30.06 up for sale on the North Park Bargains along with a photo and description. For you non-gun people, a Remington 700 is not an assault rifle, it’s not semi-automatic, it’s not a weapon of terror. I don’t believe a Remington 700 has ever been used in a mass shooting anywhere.

But Facebook doesn’t like guns of any kind, so when I put the ad up, I got a message that said I violated Facebook’s “Community Standards.” Well, these aren’t exactly community standards. They simply reflect Facebooks political agenda. Mark Zuckerburg, founder and Arbiter of Thought at Facebook, not only would like to make several billions dollars off you, but he also wants to filter your opinions so as not to disturb his acolytes.

But no humans at Facebook look at these things. Whether the content is acceptable or not is determined by an algorithm, an artificial intelligence acting as sentry to block any non-liberal thoughts from escaping into the light of day.

However, I think I’m smarter than an algorithm, so I posted this:

Because a non-government company – Facebook – has decided it can infringe on my right of free speech, I have to phrase this carefully to fool the algorithms that run our lives. I have had a companion for the last 30 years. Her first name is 30 and her last name is .06. I have taken good care of her and in return she has put a lot of meat on my table. She had a slight vision problem, but that was corrected by Dr. Tasco Scope, so now she can see clearly 200 to 300 yards in low light. I love her dearly, but the time has come for us to part ways. She is very shy, so I couldn’t add a photo. $500 or best offer.

And it worked! The ad was up on Facebook for three days and got over 90 “likes” until someone commented on it and used the word, “Remington.” Busted! (And I wondered at the time if I would be able to put up an ad to sell a Remington painting or sculpture and if Facebook’s watchful algorithms could tell the difference, but I digress).

So either tipped off by the Remington reference or by some liberal offended that someone might want to sell a perfectly legal hunting rifle, Facebook lashed back at me like an angry mother:

You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you’re temporarily blocked from using this feature, Facebook stormed, and added like a mother reminding me to do my homework, Please make sure you’ve read and understand Facebook’s Community Standards.

Actually, I can live without Facebook for as long as I need to, which I mentioned to a friend, and that must have got back to Mom because then I got this message:

Facebook has removed your content 2 times in the past 90 days for going against our Community Standards, so we’ve turned on post approval. An admin or moderator will have to review anything you post until January 13. You’ll be notified when your posts are approved.

So I guess I’m grounded for two weeks while Facebook, a private company run by an ideologue reviews my posts to determine if the posts are worthy of wider dissemination in America. I would like to believe that my posts are being reviewed by one of two people named Admin and Moderator, but they’re not. They’ve just aimed a couple of algorithms aimed at little ole me to keep me in line. Like a mom.

But me being me, before Jan. 13, I’m going to try and sneak in something heretical, see if I can fool them again. And if I get caught, maybe they’ll put me on double-secret probation like the students in “Animal House.” Or maybe reach through the computer screen and slap my hand. They’re working on that, you know.

Mail Pattern Boldness

A pool of perhaps 3.5 million voters in the nation that are registered to vote but who may not actually exist presents a persuasive argument against a mail ballot in the upcoming national elections.

Judicial Watch, a not-for-profit that has been doing the work the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission should be doing, has unearthed the astounding revelation that 378 counties in the United States have more registered voters than eligible voters.

Think about that. It means that a county could have a greater than 100 percent turnout. You may be wondering how this relatively unknown organization – Judicial Watch – could know that, but they’ve been proven right again and again. Last year, as a result of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a federal judge ordered Los Angeles County to remove up to 1.5 million voters from its registration rolls. That’s just one county in California.

These are voters who have not voted for years and may have moved either out of the county or out of state, have become incapacitated in some way, or have died.

And it isn’t only Los Angeles County. Judicial Watch’s lawsuits resulted in the state of California now working on removing possibly 5 million voters from its registration rolls.

One immediately looks back to 2016 and Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory in heavily-Democrat California. She got 4.2 million more votes than Donald Trump. Did these non-existent voters cast ballots? We don’t know. We do know it could have happened. John Cenkner of Los Angeles died in 2003. Yet a CBS news investigation found that he voted in elections in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010.

More recently, a deceased house cat in Atlanta received a ballot in the mail.

And it’s not just blue states. Judicial Watch recently filed a lawsuit against North Carolina for failing to clean up its voter rolls. The organization alleged in its lawsuit that North Carolina has nearly 1 million inactive voters on its rolls. Judicial Watch found similar problems in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Judicial Watch has a novel approach to journalistic investigation. Advised of a problem, the organization usually files a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the governmental agency to get original documents. In an alarming number of times, the government simply refuses to comply, or stonewalls, or delays. Judicial Watch then follows up with a lawsuit in state or federal court. Judicial Watch nearly always wins.

The basis for the lawsuits against the states on cleaning up the voter rolls is the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which requires jurisdictions to periodically clean up their voting rolls. Like many federal laws, it quite apparently has been ignored by red states and blue states alike.

In its June, 2020, publication, Judicial Watch said, “Despite successful litigation by Judicial Watch to bring counties and states into compliance with the NVRA, voter registration lists across the country remain significantly out of date. Judicial Watch’s 2019 study found 378 counties nationwide that have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote, i.e., counties where registration rates exceed 100 percent.”

What that should tell you is there exists a pool of potential votes out there that could be used by unscrupulous politicians in a mail vote process. Would they do that? Yes.

• Paterson, New Jersey, went to mail-in ballots due to the Covid-19 epidemic. The U.S. Postal Service alerted the city that hundreds of ballots were found in two different waste depositories. Four city officials now face charges of voter fraud.

• According to the federal Election Assistance Commission, between 2012 and 2018 about 23.8 million mail-in ballots remain lost. “The missing ballots amount to nearly one in five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters in states that do elections by mail,” said Real Clear Politics.

• The Heritage Foundation began keeping a data base four years ago that now lists 1,285 instances of voter fraud in the U.S.

• In Massachusetts, six Department of Motor Vehicle employees now face charges as a result of issuing IDs to illegal immigrants that would allow them to register to vote.

• In 2018, a congressional race in North Carolina was overturned due to voter fraud.

• The mayor of Gordon, Alabama, was removed from office due to voter fraud.

• A mail carrier in West Virginia pleaded guilty to altering party affiliations on absentee ballot requests.

Obviously, the list goes on. I would encourage you to talk to either County Clerk Hayle Johnson or Town Clerk Sherry Cure to find out what a meticulous process is used to verify mailed-in ballots lovally. I think they do an excellent job, but these are small jurisdictions where the vote counters are our friends and neighbors. In big jurisdictions, crooked politicians have proved over and over again that they can manipulate election results. Vote-by-mail just gives them better opportunities.

Science Fiction, or ?

Once upon a time on a planet far, far away from Earth, two great and powerful nations contended to see which would become master of their world. There were other nations, states, and cities to be sure, but none could even come close to matching the wealth and power of the two mightiest countries.

One nation was located in the East, and it was called Masteria. The Masterians were ruled by an absolute monarch, and they had all kinds of problems. They had a huge population, massive pollution, a pig epidemic, concentration camps where one million people were incarcerated, and its richest city was almost in a state of rebellion.

In the West was found Simolea where the people prided themselves on freedom, capitalism, a work ethic, the rule of law, and other virtues. Simolea was the richest and strongest nation on the planet. They laughed at the thought of Masteria, with all its structural problems, ever becoming the world’s dominant nation.

And Jee Jingle, the absolute monarch of Masteria, also found it difficult to believe his nation could ever triumph over Simolea. So he called in his smartest counselor, Cha Ching, who was said to be a master of international finance. “Counselor Ching,” said King Jee, “I’m told you have a plan to destroy Masteria.”

“I do, your majesty. It might cost Masteria several million deaths, but what does that matter when we have one and a half billion citizens, not counting the ones who are incarcerated,” said Cha Ching.

“Tell me more,” said the monarch.

“Well, the Simoleans have a fatal flaw. The citizens of that country give their taxes to a few rulers who can spend the money any way they choose. Lately they have paid for a statue of a rock star in a foreign country, promoted cheese produced in a small, insignificant country, given millions to people overseas who hate them, more millions to people at home that don’t work or may not even be citizens, businesses that have failed spectacularly, businesses that don’t need help, and on, and on. They are deeply in debt.”

“How can that be so?” the monarch asked.

“Because it’s easy to spend money that isn’t yours,” Counselor Ching said.

“So what is the essence of your plan?” asked King Jee.

“Let me explain,” Ching said, and the two of them huddled in secret for the better part of a day. Later, the king came out laughing and chuckling. He decided to release one hundred thousand prisoners, so good a mood was he in.

Later that year, a laboratory deep inside of Masteria “lost control” of a disease that would later be called Red Pimple. It was highly contagious but not very lethal. The disease spread rapidly throughout the world.

Simolea reacted quickly. It closed off most of the country to any foreign visitors, shut down its marvelous economy, and handed out trillions to its incapacitated citizens and businesses. Simolea’s government actually handed out more money in a few months than it usually spent in a year.

But it worked. There were some disputes about the actual death rates attributable to Red Pimple. Sometimes it was hard to tell if the victim died of the Red Pimple or the car accident. But the curve flattened, as the Simoleans liked to say. Many, many citizens complained about the draconian measures taken to control the disease, but consoled themselves by saying, “This has only happened once in our entire lives. It probably was worth the inconvenience.”

Back in Masteria, King Jee summoned his counselor, and exclaimed, “We killed ten million of our people, unleashed a disease throughout the world, and Simolea comes out of the entire thing whole and happy! What was the point of it all?” he asked Counselor Ching.

“This,” said the sly Masterian. “Simolea has no more money. They are twenty-six trillion in debt, and most of the countries in the world are equally insolvent. The Simoleans won’t tolerate another economic shutdown, or more orders to shelter in place because of a disease that didn’t kill hardly anyone under forty-five. Now, we can release a really deadly disease. They will be helpless.”

And so it happened. And when the Chinese space ships came to visit the planet a thousand years later, the Earthlings were greeted by a society very like their own. They got along famously.