Pun Salad

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden embraced far-left anti-gun extremist Robert Francis O’Rourke during a rally on Monday night in Texas, declaring that the failed Senate and presidential candidate was going to lead Biden’s anti-Second Amendment efforts.

“I wanna make something clear, I’m going to guarantee you this is not the last you’ve seen of [O’Rourke],” Biden told the audience. “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort.”

Under California’s new voter protocols, as many as 4 in 10 Californians may have already voted, either by mail or at voting centers, in the primary set for Tuesday. And what about those who cast ballots for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg or Tom Steyer, all of whom announced in the last few days that they were dropping out? Their votes simply won’t count. As [the Los Angeles Times] reported on Sunday, almost half of the 20 Democrats whose names appear on the California primary ballot have pulled out of the race.

But that’s only the most obvious problem with this infernal fad that puts convenience above citizenship. Early voting also makes strategic voting more difficult. Say you voted for Elizabeth Warren a month ago, on the first day of early voting. It’s not that you loved her; it’s just that you thought she’d be a better general election candidate. Well, she’s now looking like such a long shot that a vote for Warren is likely to be a vote wasted — and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Pundits have argued that younger voters, especially those under 30, are less inclined to be bothered when they hear the word “socialism,” since they have no firsthand memory of the Cold War.

To some extent, this must be true. Those who weren’t alive during socialism’s cruelest catastrophes—or even its many banal failures—will be less put off by the idea.

Then again, if a presidential candidate were praising the excellent public transportation system of the Third Reich or going on about some alleged benefit to American slavery, they rightly would be chased from the public square forever— even though the vast majority of voters have no firsthand knowledge of the Holocaust or slavery. Anti-Semitism and racism haven’t disappeared, and neither has Marx, sadly.

The Pulitzer Center (not related to the Pulitzer Prizes) has designed an entire curriculum based on 1619: “The 1619 Project is more than a magazine issue. It’s a national conversation that demands analysis, reflection and insight from students.”

The material invites students to “come together as a class to create a new timeline of US history. Your timeline should start with the year 1619; work with your classmates to order the rest of the events you compiled.” Yes, students who don’t know anything about US history are being tasked to “create a new timeline” of it. This is what propaganda is. This is what propaganda does.

There are a lot of bad monetary ideas floating around. Few are as awful as the American one-dollar coin, however. Despite almost fifty years of existence, the $1 coin has perennially failed to gain currency in the US.

Unfortunately, this particular bad idea hasn’t expired. Alaska’s governor has just signed a bill into law urging the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to authorize the production of 5 million one-dollar coins for circulation in Alaska. According to Coinworld, this would amount to seven coins for each Alaskan.