Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.
The character Evey, in the movie V for Vendetta (2006), relaying her father’s wisdom. Writing credits to Lilly Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, and David Lloyd as well as Alan Moore (for the original story).
On November 1, 1765, the British Parliament enacted the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies. Officially called the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765, it was a direct tax requiring many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper from London that included an embossed revenue stamp. Though created to help defray costs of British military operations in North America, British subjects in those colonies objected to it strenuously, eventually leading to secession and the Revolutionary War.
There is a funny exchange of emails between Carol Beecher, director of Alaska’s Division of Elections, and Republican candidate for the Senate, Dan J. Sullivan — who is challenging incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan! This challenge makes much of a middle initial.
You can find the exchange on Dermot Cole’s web page. You can read the actual documents yourself there. Here’s the gist:
Ms. Beecher interprets this as bad faith on Dan J.’s part. Reporter Dermot Cole judges all this to prove that Dan J. “did not ask to use Dan S. Sullivan’s middle initial.”
Which is correct?
The best face one can put on the exchange appears to be that Dan J. made a mistake when he “accidentally” used his opponent’s initial in an email response. He said as much in the next email. “Apologies.”
But this has consequences for one interpretation of the whole squabble. Two comments on Paul Jacob’s Thursday Common Sense essay heap scorn upon critics of Dan J. and the Democratic challenger for implying that the critics must believe that Alaskan voters are stupid. But since Dan J. himself made the mistake, that must make him stupid, and the marginal voters’ deficiencies understandable.
If the candidate cannot keep his own middle initial clearly in his mind, why would we expect voters to do so?
But then, that was the whole point of the stunt, no?
Civil institutions are constructed to protect, either directly or indirectly, the property of men and the honor of women against the vices and passions of human nature.
William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (1918), final chapter, “The Forgotten Man” (1883).
As if to perform a Day of the Dead act, Josef Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s Tomb on October 31, 1961.
Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and other nations celebrate Halloween on October 31.
The word Halloween or Hallowe’en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin, meaning “hallowed evening” or “holy evening.” It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows’ Eve (the evening before All Hallows’ Day). In Scots, the word “eve” is “even,” and this is contracted to “e’en” or “een.” Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en shortened into Halloween.
It is one of those darker-themed celebrations, often conjuring up images of death and horror. Randall Carlson notes that this autumnal celebration is ancient and global, and speculates that it originates in ancient comet approaches that had terrifying and deadly results on the surface of the planet.
So there I was, working hard on citizen-only voting measures in state after state, and also within Congress to create a new constitutional amendment, when a bigger non-citizen voting issue exploded.
And it has nothing to do with me!
It’s all about “Ilhan Omar.”
I give her those scare quotes around her name because, the Department of Justice alleges, that name wasn’t the one she used to get into Britain. It’s just the one she used to get into America. Her father had served in the Somalian military and was persona non grata in these United States.
She and her father lied to get in. Allegedly. She also lied about her age on her forms, though this may be the weakest charge — she probably didn’t know her date of birth.
Richer yet, she “married” (or pretended to marry) her brother in 2009, to finagle a visa for him.
Then, when MS Now’s Chris Hayes asked her, point blank, if she had actually married her brother, she responded with “Not to my knowledge.”
Skepticism about one’s own marriages shouldn’t take that form.
And it is marriages plural. In 2011, she separated from her brother-husband in a “faith-based” manner, then married and divorced another, and is now married to political consultant and ersatz vintner Tim Mynett — about whom scandals have swirled.
The latest wrinkle to the story is from the New York Times. Contrary to Democratic accusations that the very idea that she married her brother was just so much partisan lawfare, The Times reports that, during the Obama Administration, the DOJ did indeed have evidence of her visa frauds but shelved the issue.
Why? Statute of limitations.
Besides, she was in Congress!
Ilhan Omar is one of those politicians who sends chills down my spine. Criticism and reform are helpful, but she strikes me as dangerously anti-American.
Still, innocent until proven guilty. Follow the law. This applies to Ms. Omar as well as her prosecutors.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The history of the human race is one long story of attempts by certain persons and classes to obtain control of the power of the State, so as to win earthly gratifications at the expense of others.
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), Chapter VII, “Some Old Foes Under New Faces.” This sentence immediately precedes the sentences quoted here on Tuesday.
On October 30, 1941, Nazis sent 1500 Jews from Pidhaytsi to the Bełżec extermination camp. Three years later, to the day, Anne and Margot Frank were deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died from disease shortly before the end of WWII.
According to her then campaign manager, Peltola was “definitely aware,” The New York Times reported yesterday, that her campaign worked closely “for months” with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to successfully recruit a candidate with the same name as her Republican opponent, incumbent U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.
“[N]ot only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader,” the paper explains. “The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.”
In fact, on Alaska’s four-person ballot, the choices are incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan; Democrat Mary Peltola; the other Dan J. Sullivan, recruited by the Peltola campaign and the DSCC; and a registered Republican, Gerald Heikes, also recruited into the race by the Peltola campaign and the DSCC.
All while lying about it, of course.
“Peltola advisers seemed to make fun of voters while watching a focus group,” The Times disclosed, “surmising the participants would be susceptible to being tricked into voting for a ballot spoiler.”
In that same chat, a pollster with the Peltola campaign referred to it as “our ballot strategy plan :)”
A spokesman for Dan Sullivan — Alaska’s U.S. Senator, not the DSCC-recruited replica — reminded that Mary Peltola has “spent months gaslighting Alaskans” about this matter . . . which turns out to be a very obvious plot by her campaign to manipulate voters.
Not illegal. Just deceptive and anti-democratic.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The enchanting Unicorn boasts no favoured zone. He runs around the globe. He is of all ages and climes. He knows that fantastic land of Gautier, which contains all the divine lost landscapes ever painted, and whose inhabitants are the lovely figures created by art in granite, marble, or wood, on walls, canvas, or crystal. Betimes he flashes by the nymph in the brake, and dazzled, she sighs with desire. Mallarmé set him to cryptic harmonies, and placed him in a dim rich forest (though he called him a faun; a faun in retorsion). Like the apocryphal Sadhuzag in Flaubert’s cosmical drama of dreams, which bore seventy-four hollow antlers from which issued music of ineffable sweetness, our Unicorn sings ravishing melodies for those who possess the inner ear of mystics and poets. When angered he echoes the Seven Thunders of the Apocalypse, and we hear of desperate rumours of fire, flood, and disaster. And he haunts those ivory gates of sleep whence come ineffable dreams to mortals.
He has always fought with the Lion for the crown, and he is always defeated, but invariably claims the victory. The crown is Art, and the Lion, being a realist born, is only attracted by its glitter, not the symbol. The Unicorn, an idealist, divines the inner meaning of this precious fillet of gold. Art is the modern philosopher’s stone, and the most brilliant jewel in this much-contested crown.
James Huneker, from “In Praise of Unicorns,” the first chapter of Unicorns (1917).