Growing up I played baseball from Little League through Jr. and Senior League and one year of Legion ball. As we grew up through the system so did the umpires and the coaches. My father worked long and unusual hours and seldom got to watch a complete football or baseball game, but he attended every game even if for only a few minutes. One hot summer day I got called out on a third strike by the home plate umpire—”Augie” who had umped games for me from the time I was 7 years old on. It was a terrible call. The ball was high and inside and before I walked back to the dugout I reversed the bat in my hand and showed him that the ball was 6 inches off the plate by drawing a line in the dirt. And then I heard loud and clear—”THE UMPIRE SAID STRIKE THREE”. Unbeknownst to me my dad was behind the backstop. All three of us knew (Augie, my Dad and me) that it was a bad call, but I was showing up the umpire and that was not part of the deal as far as my Dad was concerned. It didn’t matter if it was right or wrong or a ball or a strike the umpire said “strike three”.
That night my dad gave me a lecture that I am sure many fathers have given to their sons and daughters. There is no such thing as fairness or even justice. In my dad’s words you either get too much or too little of either. I have had attorneys tell me the same thing about judge’s rulings. What the judge says is what matters. Nothing else.
But in that discussion with my father, he told me that in retrospect in any competition you never lose a game with one play, but you can win the game with one play. In my case, I swung at strike two and the ball was in the same location as the called strike 3. I had shown Augie where I thought my strike zone was and he followed with the same call on the next pitch… If I hadn’t swung at a bad pitch on strike 2 there would not have been strike three.
I believe that President Trump received more votes in the November 3rd election than any Presidential candidate in history—including Joe Biden. Go ahead and call me a “Trumper” or “deplorable”, or even “insurgent”—what could be more ridiculous. The extent that the left has gone to caricature or delegitimize conservatives didn’t begin with Mr. Trump and his supporters. Remember when Dan Rather called into question President Bush’s (surely a RINO his) National Guard service. People that fly jets and helicopters are brave even in peacetime—we all became aware of that in Boise this week, and what about the bravery of Sarah Palin who decided to continue her pregnancy knowing her baby had Down’s syndrome. Remember Joey Bahr and Bill Maher making fun of her? The same people are trying to make anybody who doesn’t agree with their Marxist ideology “insurgents” and “radicles”. Ad Hominem attacks happen when those who differ from us cannot present their case with facts based on principles…
And most of our detractors aren’t “brave themselves” Do they fly jets or go to boot camp? Do they own their own businesses and provide jobs for fellow citizens? Do they work the land or are they tradesmen. Are they stay at home mothers—the toughest job in the world or fathers- —the second toughest job in the world? When somebody says they are a “public or government servant” who are they serving? For many but not all they are serving themselves.
But then the Electoral College voted. The umpire called strike three. We didn’t lose the vote on Nov. 3rd because of the shenanigans—and there were several well documented schemes. I was reminded of Stalin’s comment “It doesn’t matter who votes but what matters is who counts the vote.”
November 3rd happened because the Democrats caught our side off guard. In State after State, they changed the “strike zone” in front of our eyes using the political Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to not only shut down the economy, but also alter legal voting rules—in many cases without the Constitutional requirement that only the legislative branch of State government has the ability and duty to make those changes. Before our eyes and long before Nov. 3rd we saw rules for absentee voting, mail-in voting, dropbox voting, and ballot chain of custody laws altered. What is ballot “curing” anyway? We should have been making these arguments months before the election. I believe many on both sides of the aisle knew exactly what was happening—including the RINOs.
But we can’t keep looking back. We need to make sure that in 2022 the rules in every state are prescribed by the legislatures and not by the commissars and government bureaucrats making up rules on the fly. Are we doing all we can in our Idaho Legislature to secure our votes in 2022? And is our Federal Delegation in Washington doing all they can to make sure the other States are playing by the rules also securing the validity of Idaho votes?
Republicans better start early on securing the voting process, counting, archiving and reconciliation of votes or the same thing will happen next time around.
We swung at strike 2. Let’s not let the Dems make a bad call on strike 3—2022, and strike us out on another bad pitch.
