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Update

Who Lost in L.A.?

On Tuesday, Paul Jacob wrote of the Los Angeles mayoral race, focusing on the top three candidates, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, and the challenger from outside the city machine, Spencer Pratt.

So why is the Babylon Bee making this joke?

While most cities and states seem to be able to figure out who won and who lost by the end of the day of the election, Los Angeles can take days, weeks, or maybe even months to allow for all the mail-in ballots to trickle in, resulting in a spectacular come-from-behind victory for Biden.

Yes, the votes are still coming in, showing Mayor Bass ahead, and Spencer Pratt in second place, as in this from ABC7 Eyewitness News:

But from the same source, we see this headline: “CA primary election results: Bass maintains lead as Raman closes gap in LA mayor’s race with Pratt.” The full graph:

But it is Saturday, and votes in California’s primary elections (with all U.S. House seats and the governor position and more in the balance) are still being counted.

Regardless of who wins, anyone expecting competence in running elections has lost.

Already, rumors of election tampering in the L.A. race are rife on the Internet.

Categories
Thought

John Wilmot

We have a pretty witty king,
Whose word no man relies on.
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, Epigram about Charles II of England.
Categories
Today

A Bolide

On June 6, 2002, a high-energy upper atmosphere explosion over the Mediterranean Sea (c. 34°N 21°E) occurred. Similar in power to a small atomic bomb, the cause of the fireball has been determined to be a small, undetected asteroid entering the Earth’s atmosphere and burning out without hitting the surface, though no meteorite fragments were recovered. One of the several meanings of the word “bolide” is this, an atmospheric explosion of a meteor.

General Simon Worden of the U.S. Air Force opined that, had the explosion occurred closer to Pakistan or India — which were at war at the time — it could have sparked a nuclear exchange.*

* “Near-Earth Objects Pose Threat, General Says,” Space Daily (2002-09-17).

Categories
defense & war ideological culture international affairs state terrorism too much government

The Nerve of Some People

China, Falun Gong, Taiwan, Hong Kong, cemetary, tiananmen square, tiananmen crackdown, June 4

“Police warn families of Tiananmen crackdown dead not to visit graves on 37th anniversary,” reads the headline of yesterday’s story in New York’s Newsday.

How rude of those families! 

How dare they show such utter disregard for the right of the Chinese Communist Party to “grind you up and crush your bones”! Or to have your “heads bashed bloody,” as CCP top Pooh Bear Xi Jinping has more recently been fond of saying.

Especially after all the trouble Xi and Chinese authorities have gone to easing all this unnecessary tension by facilitating a thoughtful and therapeutic four-decade “campaign to erase what happened from public memory.”

For 30 years, they allowed the thousands of teary-eyed Tiananmen Mothers to visit the gravesites, but come on, stop monopolizing the cemetery. I mean, there are millions of Uyghurs waiting to mourn, for heaven’s sake. And don’t forget the Falun Gong religious genocide. Organ harvesting political prisoners sure does quickly fill a cemetery.

Be a team player for the CCP. 

Sans sarcasm, I note that at The Gate of Heavenly Peace no one really knows how many died on June 4, 1989. The Chinese students and workers killed by soldiers who shot into crowds and rolled over them with tanks have never, even to this day, been accounted for by the Chinese government. 

It has only lied about the massacre, continuing to cover the horrors up — the government now even bullying grieving parents away from visiting their loved ones’ graves.

To think that President Bush, père, was so ready to usher in trade for the big boys of business that he sold out, 37 years ago, the protesters on Tiananmen Square!

Having snuffed out freedom in Hong Kong, inserted their hands into virtually everything we consume, and built up the world’s second largest military, what will be next for the Butchers of Beijing? Small cases of Chinese aggression — water cannons, ships sunk, a couple soldiers injured, even killed — have not halted. Asia is under threat.

Americans are not invulnerable. 

We have a serious problem. 

Which I’ll keep talking about in Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Benjamin Franklin

If you wou’d be reveng’d of your enemy, govern your self.

From Poor Richard’s Almanack (1734).
Categories
Today

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

On June 5, 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started its ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper. It had been announced earlier, in the May 8th issue of the paper.

Categories
litigation Second Amendment rights

The 26-Year Assault Is Over

guns, second amendment, 2nd amendmenet, self defense, Constitution, rights

After more than a quarter century of litigation against gun makers, it’s over. The Indiana Supreme Court has called a definite halt to the town of Gary’s long streak of legal harassment by dismissing its lawsuit in a 4-1 ruling.

Gary’s petition to transfer jurisdiction of the lawsuit had been made in order to keep it alive. The court had to decide the fate of that maneuver. After stating briefly that all materials had been reviewed that needed to be reviewed and all parties heard that needed to be heard, the court announced that it “DENIES the petition to transfer,” affirming the decision of an appeals court. The USACarry story about the case links to the appeals court’s lengthy decision.

Both rulings had been preceded by a state law passed in 2024 stipulating that only the state itself — basically, the attorney general — can file such a suit on behalf of cities or counties. The incumbent is uninterested in doing so.

Gary, Indiana, initiated its action against a laundry list of gun makers, distributors and dealers in August 1999. The suit accused them of culpability for crimes committed with the weapons they had brought into the marketplace. At the time, making and marketing guns was legal; still is. 

So the suit was manifestly absurd from the outset.

Perhaps cities contemplating litigation against baseball bat makers and steak knife vendors will accept the lesson.

So it’s finally finished. At least this particular attempt to nullify our Second Amendment rights is finally over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Simon May

The only ‘natural enemies’ are those who take one’s very nature as an offence.

Simon May, The Little Book of Big Thoughts (2005).
Categories
Today

Remember June 4

On June 4, 1989, student protests at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were brutally suppressed by the People’s Liberation Army.

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ideological culture partisanship political challengers

A Perfect Fit?

Graham Platner, Democrat, Maine, The View, democracy

“These are character flaws that I’m tired of hearing about,” offered Whoopi Goldberg, Monday, on The View. 

She was speaking about Graham Platner, the leading Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine currently held by Republican Sen. Susan Collins . . . and of his litany of scandals — the latest to garner attention being his sending of sexually explicit texts to as many as a dozen women during his marriage . . . while having been married for only two and a half years.

“Platner has faced criticism for a series of inflammatory Reddit posts and, more recently, for a Nazi symbol tattooed to his chest,” The Free Beacon reported last year. Mr. Platner says he was unaware that his tattoo was a Nazi symbol but, according to the Beacon, “Two Platner associates have contradicted his claim of ignorance.”

The Reddit posts included calling himself an “antifa supersoldier” and a “communist,” while also using anti-gay slurs and belittling veterans, police, rural white people, and African Americans.

After counting all his various scandals, The View regular Sunny Hostin concluded, “So he’s a liar, a racist, an antisemite,” then added, “He’s a homophobe.”

Nonetheless, Hostin said she is “conflicted.” Meaning she might still want him to be Maine’s next senator?

Now making a play for the Senate, Platner has kindly covered up the tattoo and deleted those deeply offensive Reddit posts. 

The 41-year-old presents himself as a working-class guy, though he comes from a wealthy family that placed him in a $75,000 a year prep school. He is an oyster farmer, but most of his income derives from disability payments. He told reporters that he bought his home with a VA loan, but his father loaned him the money.

“You’ve shown me who you are,” The View’s Sara Haines said of Platner, “and I heard you.” She declared, “This man should be nowhere near Congress.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, begs to differ: “We desperately need somebody like him here in the U.S. Senate.”

Graham Platner should fit right in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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