This touches close to home for me, since our now WA state gubnuh “found” enough votes after recount after recount, to turn a loss into a victory.  Ann Coulter gives us more detail from the Minnesota senatorial race than you’ll find anywhere in the Old Media;

According to Michael Barone, an examination of King County [Washington State] records showed that nearly 2,000 more mail-in ballots had been “cast” in King County than had been requested.

I was immediately suspicious when WA state went to an all mail-in voting system.  Now I’m not suspicious– I know.

But Gregoire got to be governor — having done unusually well among the imaginary voters of King County.

The head of the Washington State Democratic Party orchestrating this ballot theft was Paul Berendt. Guess who is advising Al Franken on the Minnesota recount right now? That’s right: Paul Berendt.

Surprise, surprise.  We now have evidence of an interstate rent-a-cheat.  Coulter adds;

And, per usual, the Republicans clearly haven’t the vaguest notion what is about to hit them.

Clearly.  The Republicans are too busy trying to appear nice, and can’t be bothered with vague abstractions like the rule of law, or the state and federal Constitutions.  I never could, and can never refer to them as the Grand Old Party.  For now, it’s the Party of the Perpetually Clueless, or PPC.  The trouble with the clueless is that they never know they’re clueless, and cowards always have a perfectly good rationale for doing nothing.

I’ve referred to Jim Jones and the “People’s Temple” several times.  They represent my ideal of the ultimate fate of a socialist organization.  I visited San Francisco twice in the mid to late ’70s.  My older siblings had spent time in West Coast quasi-religious, socialist communes (all very, very “hip” you understand) and I’d visited them, spending several nights at one of them in Oregon.  I was even “touched by the spirit” at one of their rallies, and I’m here to tell you; that s#^t is real and it is powerful (something about human evolution having selected in us a tendency to bond tightly with our group, with extremely powerful emotions, in times of stress, but I’ll leave that to the sociologists, anthropologists and biologists).  I learned all I wanted to know about these groups.  Specifically, that I never wanted anything to do with them ever again.

These groups had sprung up in a lot of places back then, accepting the assertion that “All You Need is Love” or other similar nonsense.  They were very socialist, as any description with the word “free” in it was super cool: Free love, free food, free store, free drugs, etc..  Everything belonged to everyone and all was love, love, love…  Only trouble was, as you would expect, the takers always seemed to outnumber the givers, and so the givers (most anyone with options in life) would become disgusted at some stage and leave the group.  You had to use extreme measures to coerce members into staying on, much as the Russians had to build the Berlin Wall and Jim Jones had to imprison his followers in a remote jungle.

I’d seen the History Channel’s documentary on Jim Jones, but there is a ton of stuff in Dan Flynn’s account that was never mentioned.  I mean, Wow!  Take some time to read the article (hat tip to Micheal Savage).

By virtue of producing rent-free rent-a-rallies for liberal politicians and causes, Jim Jones engendered enormous amounts of good will from Democratic politicians and activists. They allowed their political ambitions to derail their governing responsibilities. Frisco pols like Harvey Milk never seemed to care how Jones could, at the snap of his fingers, direct hundreds of people to stack a public meeting or volunteer for a campaign. City Councilman Milk just knew that he benefitted from that control, and therefore never bothered to do anything to inhibit the dangerous cult operating in his city. Instead, he actively aided and abetted a homicidal maniac. It wasn’t just local hacks Jones commanded respect from. He held court with future First Lady Rosalyn Carter, vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and California Governor Jerry Brown.

When I was five, my first-grade teacher taught us to repeat a random string of syllables she called “the Pleh-juh, Vuh-Lee-junss”.  We were to recite it every day at the beginning of class for the next several years, while holding our right hand to the left side of the chest (reportedly, this is where our hearts were to be found inside the chest cavity).

Prolific writer, economist and historian, Thomas Sowell, gives us some frank talk about our self-appointed intellectuals.  I post it here for some who have felt it necessary to tell us that they are smart, or that those from whom they get their ideas are smart.  Seriously, if I haven’t noticed it already, your telling me won’t help either of us, one way or the other.  Here’s a small sample of Sowell’s piece on the subject;

What is more telling, form [rather than substance] was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed…

That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.

How right you are, Mr. Sowell (I mean, yeee haaww, Baby!)  He continues;

The intellectual levels of politicians are just one of the many things that intellectuals have grossly misjudged for years on end.

During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model— all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food.

New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for telling the intelligentsia what they wanted to hear— that claims of starvation in the Ukraine were false.

Things never seem to change, do they?

As an aside, when I use the word “socialist” to describe people who express anti-capitalist ideas, I mean it.  I know what the word means and I know where the ideas came from even if socialists don’t.  I’ll use it when it fits, even if the socialists protest, scream, hold their breath, or try to brow-beat me into silence.  If you disagree, get a bloody dictionary, or better yet, a history book.  A very old one.  If you consider yourself a progressive intellectual, never mind.  It won’t help (see above quotes).

But that’s not the main subject of Sowell’s piece.  I’ll summarize it with a simple thought; logically, if you had some horrific defect in your ability to perceive reality, surely you’d be the last to know.  Wouldn’t you?  Keeping that in mind, go ahead and read the whole piece.  It won’t make you comfortable but it will certainly interest you, personally, one way or the other.