"Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right."
Novelist Tom Clancy.
I began my writing efforts trying, in a certain way, to mimic Clancy and his methods. The guy has sold millions of books. So, why the hell not. Some of my favorite reading moments involved his books, back when the real thing represented the medium.
I subscribed to the Book of the Month Club, and would routinely order the latest Clancy book - spaced about a year apart. Ripping open the tough, book-sized cardboard shipping container, along half inch perforations - rarely entirely successfully - I'd relax in my Red Grandis wooden slat rocking chair. Pouring a glass of middle 90s Kendall Jackson cabernet sauvignon into an Arches Winery stem glass, I'd open the book. This wine is perfect for the occasion, I thought. By twirling it in the light of the 60 watt bulb of the portfolio barada floor lamp, I could examine the legs, denoting relative dryness. It occurred to me at that moment that some things in California are done well.
Reading was a welcome respite from the toll a law enforcement career takes. Each day, I'd look over my Gen 2 Glock 19 9mm semi-automatic pistol, ensuring that I had fifteen pristine 145 grain hollow point Federal premium duty rounds in the Glock factory magazine. I would tuck the handgun into a Safariland concealed carry holster and head for work.
But, at night, after the tiny humans were asleep in our tri-level four bedroom single family home - now warmer after our vinyl siding remake - I'd open the new book. At my feet, our diluted breed forty pound Golden Retriever, officially named Darwin. A difficult early life rendered him a somewhat bemused creature, I always thought. His nickname was "Two Dog," because no one dog could be as dumb.
The cloth binding, white pages printed in offset lithography...
I can't keep this up.
I loved the early Clancy novels. They celebrated, aside from the military hardware that commonly dressed the set, the kind of selflessness that accompanies armed service.
In one book (I don't remember which) Secret Service agents battle an armed assailant, bent on some sort of mayhem. Several are killed. As an investigator stands over one body, he mutters "Nice job, buddy." To Clancy, the good guys were good, the bad guys bad and in the end good triumphed.
Some of Clancy's preferences found their way into my writing, at least as much as my editors would allow. In Out of Ideas, a friend of main character Karen Sorenson gets out of a BMW 3 series sedan and hands her a bag containing an H&K 417 rifle chambered in NATO 7.62, with Leopold combat optics. Some habits are hard to break.
Clancy sold a hundred million books writing the way he wrote. A new genre evolved from his novels. But, as I plug my Samsung S8 into the auxiliary jack of my gray 2010 Toyota Tacoma TRD double cab 4X4... I'll be ready for this book to end, and I can find one that allows my own imagination some elbowroom.
Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.
Joseph P. Kennedy
The Colorado Legislature just voted approval of, and our governor signed into law, our inclusion into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. As near as I understand it, this legislation commands that the electors for the state - those votes commonly called the "Electoral College" that determine who will be president - will be chosen based on the national "Popular vote." In other words, if a majority of the voters of the State of Colorado choose Candidate A, but a majority of country-wide voters choose Candidate B, the Electoral Votes are - by law - cast for Candidate B.
Setting aside that this is clearly not the method contemplated in Article II of the Constitution, nor is it something the Framers envisioned or advocated...
Our country was founded on the principle that government derives its just powers from individuals who have a voice in creating the laws under which they are governed. "Taxation without representation" was the rallying cry of the generation who decided they were not all that into taking their orders from afar.
A great deal of evidence suggests that, in the last election, voter fraud existed in any number of polling places. Ineligible voters cast ballots, concocted ballots were counted. People have recently gone to jail for such things. In one district in Michigan, "voter discrepancies" led to a miscount, appearing to show that more votes were counted than individuals registered to vote.
How does all of this happen? In some cases, human frailty led to good faith clerical errors. In others, blatant partisanship has manipulated the process until it is a sham. Lax (or non-existent) enforcement of laws has allowed voting to be influenced, suppressed or artificially inflated.
A number of states are employing imaginative methods to increase voting. One such method, called "Ballot Harvesting," allows for collection of mail-in ballots by third party activists. California is one state that experimented with it in 2018.
Does ballot harvesting lead to voter fraud? While it is too soon to have a definitive answer, there is certainly enough evidence to merit further examination. But...
I have no say in how Californians are allowed to vote. Neither do I have any say - ANY SAY - in who is allowed to vote in California. People who are not eligible to vote under Colorado law surely could be given that right if the people of California decide to make it so. Yet...
In the great scheme of the Popular Vote Compact individuals permitted to vote in their state, who would be ineligible in mine, are counted with the same weight mine is, and as an accumulation will render my vote meaningless. A majority of eligible voters in Colorado could vote for one candidate, only to have State Electoral voters commanded to vote for someone else.
Before our legislature, one witness testified in support of The Compact, saying "(Candidate A) should be president." Of course, Both Candidate A and Candidate B campaigned knowing the rules and expended their limited resources to take advantage of the system as it presented. There is nothing to suggest, were the rules as The Compact envisions them, that Candidate B's campaign efforts would not have been as successful. There is only conjecture, and the disappointment felt by impassioned individuals who believed in their own causes.
The Constitution could be amended to make these changes. But, that is a cumbersome and chancy proposition. Better to circumvent the Constitution in an effort to... What?
That is the great unanswered question.
