Author: Redactor

Today

Hallowe’en

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.

Forever Be Changed

I’ve discussed Kamala Harris’s support, as district attorney and attorney general in California, for an abusive law enabling the arrest of parents if their children miss “too much” time at school, how the law has been deployed against parents like Cheree Peoples, whose daughter has sickle cell anemia.

I’ve quoted Harris’s words.

Now I will quote more of them. But let’s also listen to those words and observe her demeanor and tone, how Kamala Harris gloats about her use of power.

“As a prosecutor . . . I have a huge stick. So I decided I was gonna start prosecuting parents for truancy. . . . ‘If you don’t go to school, Kamala’s gonna put you and me in jail.’ [laughs] . . . I said [to prosecutors] ‘when you go over there, look really mean.’

“I learned that with the swipe of my pen, I could charge someone with the lowest-level offense. That person could be arrested, they could lose time from work and their family, maybe lose their job. They’d have to come out of their own pocket to help hire a lawyer. . . . Weeks later, I could dismiss the charges. But their life would forever be changed.”

Video of Harris saying such things is part of a political attack ad about why men needn’t be prejudiced against female candidates in order to oppose giving Kamala Harris power over everyone in the country.

In the waning days of the campaign, we could do worse than to share this evidence, her own candid, joyous testimony about herself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Isabel Paterson

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943, p. 250.

Today

Martha and Rose

Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, was born on October 30, 1748.

On the same date two hundred twenty years later, American journalist, novelist and author Rose Wilder Lane died. Lane is perhaps best known, today, for her editorial work — some say “ghost writing” — of her mother’s Little House on the Prairie books for children. Her non-fiction The Discovery of Freedom was published in 1943, the same year as a similarly themed book, The God of the Machine, was published by her friend Isabel Paterson.

media and media people

Down the River

Washington Post, endorsement, journalism, objectivity

The Washington Post joined The Los Angeles Times, last week, in not making an editorial page endorsement for president — the first pass for The Post in 36 years; in two decades for The Times.

“Recent episodes involving major U.S. news organizations have stoked fears that outlets are preemptively self-censoring coverage that could offend former President Donald Trump,” National Public Radio began its report.

“Two Billionaires, Two Newspapers, Two Acts of Self-Sabotage,” headlined Nancy Gibbs’ New York Times essay, which bemoaned that “one more bulwark against autocracy erodes.”

Are these billionaires — Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, the American and South African businessman and transplant surgeon — really shaking in their expensive boots about possible political retaliation from a future Trump presidency?

Hardly.

Do they really think so — the folks hyping that media’s now caving under authoritarian pressure?

Real journalist Glenn Greenwald noted that Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh), his former colleague at Salon, writing now for The Nation, tweeted “I just canceled my subscription to @washingtonpost. You should too.”

Deano (@dshav2), an art director, graphic designer and dad from Minnesota, offered, “A more effective protest would be for everyone to stop shopping on Amazon.”

“Much harder,” responded Ms. Walsh, “but considering. . . .”

“So, in other words,” Greenwald mockingly summed up on his podcast, System Update, “‘Look, I want to do everything possible to stop fascism and the new Adolf Hitler from taking power, so I’ll cancel my Washington Post subscription’ and then when someone said to her, ‘Hey maybe you should also boycott Amazon,’ she’s like, “I’m not going to miss my shows on Amazon Prime!”

Having principles is hard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Heraclitus

κύνες γὰρ καὶ βαΰζουσινὃν, ἂν μὴ γινώσκωσι.

Dogs, also, bark at what they do not know.
Heraclitus, Fragment 97.

Today

Cyrus

On October 29, 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon as conqueror. His general policy of religious toleration would be extended to the exiled Hebrews, who were, not long after, allowed to return to their homeland.

On the same date in 1923 A.D., the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.

crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Censors Slapped at Start

Kamala Harris, satire, free speech, censorship

Californians may now be allowed to see and laugh at “falsehoods” after all.

The Golden State legislature and Governor Newsom will probably fail in their attempt, made in open violation of the First Amendment, to ban certain parody and satire that communicates what they call “falsehoods.” (California hasn’t yet outlawed political novels.)

The battle isn’t over yet. But a court has issued a preliminary injunction against recently passed legislation, declaring that it “does not pass constitutional scrutiny.”

Cited in the ruling is this excellent insight: “‘Especially as to political speech, counter speech is the tried and true buffer and elixir,’ not speech restriction.”

Further, by “singling out and censoring political speech, California hasn’t saved democracy — it has undermined it. The First Amendment does not brook appeals to ‘enhancing the ability of . . . citizenry to make wise decisions by restricting the flow of information to them.’” Though the judge determined that California has “a valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,” the current legislation “lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.”

What could such “narrow tailoring” have consisted of? The repudiated legislation has everything to do with speech that should be unhindered and nothing to do with protecting the electoral process.

AB2839 and a related law, AB2655, were the rapid response of California’s kingpins to an effective parody video of a “Kamala Harris” “ad.” In it, “Harris” explains that she is a vacuous “deep-state puppet.”

The First Amendment protects the right to utter truth, falsehoods, and the kinds of satirical fictions and parodic exaggerations that everybody but opponents of free speech understand to be fictions and exaggerations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

William Cullen Bryant

Weep not that the world changes — did it keep
A stable, changeless state, ’twere cause indeed to weep.
William Cullen Bryant, “Mutation: A Sonnet” (1824).

Today

Statue of Liberty

On October 28, 1886, in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, despite the fact that the monument was not a federally funded project and that Cleveland was adamant in sticking to the private funding of the project.