We all know (or were) the child who is constantly asking, from the moment the car pulls out of town on the journey, “are we there yet?”
Many of us feel like that when it comes to the 2024 election here in the States for Massa – and are upset when we realize that the actual election day is still almost two months away (sigh – the cup is half empty, right?). And even more when we realize that day is probably just phase ONE (or TWO) of the election melodrama this year.
Melodrama? Why? Phase ONE is the pre-election day voting madness. No we are not talking about military personnel overseas, who must mail in their absentee ballots by Saturday, 21 September, to ensure they are counted. We are talking about States like Minnesota and Virginia which allow “no-reason” voting in person or by mail starting on Friday the 20th of September.
Phase TWO is actual “Election Day” of Tuesday, 5 November. (Only for Libertarians, Green, Prohibition, and Natural Law Party members: Republicans vote on Wednesday and Democrats vote on Thursday of that week: unless they are already dead.) Seriously: that actual standing in line and punching or marking ballots or pulling levers or touching screens on Tuesday is just the beginning.
Phase THREE will be the vote counting and certification by local elections officials. Done in essence simultaneously with massive numbers of attorneys filing suits and very loud volumes of screams from everyone concerned – accompanied by ballots disappearing, appearing, accusations, and more.
Phase FOUR will be the Electoral College casting the real votes – and the grand drama around that.
Phase FIVE will center on the Capitol and possibly the SCOTUS building behind it as Congress does this and that and more lawyers jump into the dog-pile.
Plus whatever other Phases are triggered by all and sundry – even if the violence more and more people are predicting does not come to pass.
And you thought water torture was bad?
But all of that is in the future. Right now, the screaming and the ranting and raving and posturing are reaching levels of hysteria that are rare in American history. (And unfortunately becoming more common.)
As an example: the pundits and prophets and published stories make you wonder how many versions of reality exist. And how long you can see and hear these and still retain your sanity and rationality. For example:
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The Price of Liberty 
Lo, the poor Indian…
For more than 150 years, the white regressives (they call themselves progressives and compassionate conservatives and liberals – corrupting the meanings of all the words) of these States and many in Europe and Canada have bemoaned the so-called racism and oppression of the AmerInd people in North America.
And have sucked up to the “Tonto”-like leaders of the various nations (tribes) and demanded more and more government welfare to people based on how much of their ancestry (“blood quantum”) supposedly came from ancestors who migrated to this land before the magic date of AD 1492.
A recent example of this was featured in the Rapid City Journal, with this headline and picture:
There are a lot of things wrong, which can be seen just in this picture. And more if you know a bit about the West, the Paha Sapa (Black Hills), and politics.
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