Editor’s note: The powers that be at WND.com have told Michael Ackley he may submit an occasional column. As Golden State madness has accelerated, Mr. Ackley has succumbed to the urge to get back in the game. Hence, the items below. Remember that his columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell the difference.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that “mental and behavioral health is one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
He wasn’t talking about himself. (Can you say “narcissistic personality disorder”?) He was unveiling the Golden State’s new “master plan for kids’ mental health.”
Newsom declared the plan would “prevent unqualified public school personnel from diagnosing and treating things beyond their ken, like children’s sex dysphoria, clinical depression and autism.”
OK. He didn’t say any such thing. However, he has continued to display some political sense. Remember those “inflation relief checks” he promised Californians in May, which skated through as part of the state budget in June?
News reports say the checks will be issued in October.
Hey! Isn’t that just before the 2022 general election?
New York Post: “California fentanyl bust: Feds seize 1 million counterfeit pills worth up to $20 million”
Fox News: “Drug traffickers arrested in California with 150,000 fentanyl pills”
And from the Los Angeles Times: “California leads the country in meth and fentanyl border seizures by CPB” (Customs and Border Protection)
Thanks to its status as a “sanctuary state,” California shelters nearly a quarter of the illegal aliens in the United States.
And the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the Golden State accounted for a solid 10% of drug overdose deaths in the year ending in April 2021 – and nearly 64% of those deaths were attributed to fentanyl.
So, while California lags in many areas – such as public education and business environment – at least in the areas of open borders and illicit drugs, the governor may declare, “We’re number 1!”
Happy coincidence: We were reading the latest news about efforts to pry loose the affidavit justifying the search warrant for Donald Trump’s little house in Florida when our archaic land-line telephone rang.
It was our old friend Howard Bashford, the archaeologist, calling to say, “Get over to my lab. I’ve something important to show you.”
Knowing Howard’s tendency to exaggerate, we finished a leisurely luncheon before driving across town to his office/laboratory overlooking the city.
He greeted us at the door.
“It’s about time,” he said. “Didn’t I say I had something important to show you?”
He didn’t await an answer, but hurried inside, leading us to his work table.
“As you know, I have been exploring cultural links between ancient civilizations, and I have found a beauty,” he said. “Look at this sequence of documents.”
Laid out on the long table were some actual artifacts, plus photographs from Howard’s field work.
“Working from left to right, these are placed in reverse chronological order,” he explained, “moving from Nordic runes, back to ancient Latin and Greek, to Sumerian cuneiform, to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Do you know what ties them together?”
Of course, we didn’t know, and pressed him to explain.
“They’re all about crimes,” he said. “Do you see what else they share?”
Of course, we couldn’t read the texts, and said so, leading Howard to explain, “Look at these cuneiform tablets. See how some lines have been chiseled out? And how portions of these hieroglyphs have been scraped away? Do you know what those are?”
“Please, Howard,” we asked, “can you get to the point?”
“Today, we’d call those redactions!” he exclaimed, “and all these documents – in their various languages – say, ‘Releasing this would compromise our investigation.'”
“So, what does it mean, Howard?” we asked.
He answered triumphantly, “It means that for thousands of years, in every culture, cops have used the same ploy to keep people in the dark.”
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