I’m aware that Canada, unlike its southern neighbor in which I live, has just recently, ever so slightly, stood up to certain of the horrors of the Saudi government. I’m aware of the role Canada has played, albeit imperfectly, as refuge for people fleeing U.S. slavery and U.S. wars and general U.S. backwardness. I’m aware of how many times through history the United States has attacked Canada. I’m aware that just several yards in front of me as I sit in my outdoor office (the downtown mall of Charlottesville) a small army is gleefully creating a police state on the anniversary of a Nazi rally at which similar numbers of soldiers, similarly armed, stood by and watched fascist violence last year. I agree with Robin Williams’ characterization of Canada as a nice apartment over a meth lab.

Dispatch: Campus Police, recorded line.

Reporting Caller: I was just walking through here in the front foyer of [REDACTED] and we have a person sitting there laying down in the living room area over here. I didn’t approach her or anything but um he seems to be out of place … umm … I don’t see anybody in the building at this point and uh I don’t know what he’s doing in there just laying on the couch.

Dispatch: Can I have your last name please?

Reporting Caller: [REDACTED]

Dispatch: I’ll send someone over and check it out.

Reporting Caller: Alright. I’ll wait over here.

– Campus Police call transcript, July 31, 2018,
as released by Smith College on August 3

At least that’s the hope of those who elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, aka Peje, on a platform of sweeping out the corruption — a platform promoted in Obrador’s book, A New Hope for Mexico. That Barack Obama did not permanently decommission the word “hope” for credible electoral campaigns on this continent may be the least of the book’s surprises.

In the first Star Trek movie, 1979’s unimaginatively-titled Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there is a scene where the USS Enterprise gets sucked into a wormhole. This spatial anomaly wreaks havoc on time (or something) so everyone on the bridge is suddenly rendered blurry and left speaking in deep, distorted voices.

Kirk is lunging to-and fro in his captain’s chair. A bald lady is there, giving ominous countdowns to impact with some rapidly-approaching celestial body. I’m pretty sure the dad from “Seventh Heaven” is in there somewhere, maybe firing photon torpedoes as he drones on in his slow, time-warped voice.

It’s a truly awful movie, remembered only for its ambition (and failure) to live up to the spectacle of Kubric’s 2001 or the fun of Star Wars, and does not bear rewatching for clarification on any of this. The point being, the scene in question is slow, sucks, and seems to take forever to get anywhere.

Secretary of State Jon Husted:

Ohio has a long and unfortunate history of election irregularities. In recent years millions of Ohio citizens have been purged from the voter rolls. Large numbers of electronic voting machines have yielded dubious results that indicate manipulation and hacking.

In light of this, a number of serious issues have arisen surrounding this year’s special election in the 12th Congressional District.

First, let us consider that Ohio, and U.S. elections in general, are undemocratic. They fail the basic tests of transparency by allowing private, partisan, for-profit companies to secretly program the computer voting machines.

In all seven counties that comprise the 12th Congressional District in Ohio, easily hackable Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines were used. Many of the counties used the notoriously rigged Diebold AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machines.