Boo!

Smart guy Dave Neiwert is on the case of the GOP scare tactics.

These pinheads are yet again doing their level best to turn the attention of the sheeple away from the legitimate issues of the election and get them to focus on the strawman of voter fraud.

I, as usual, have an opinion on this.

Every Halloween for the past three decades, we've heard horror stories of children's candy being riddled with syringe marks, lysergic acid, needles, various poisons and things generally agreed to be bad for the little tykes that go out trick or treating.

Lemme ask you...do you personally know, or even know of anyone that someone who has ever witnessed any Halloween candy tampering? No? Me neither. Take a load off and I'll tell you why.

Because it never happens. Now I'm not saying that there may have been a rare occasion where something may have been poisoned or some such thing. But it's mostly a non event and by now probably only done because some idiot heard it on the news and wants to be a celebrity.

The reason of course is commercial in nature. When I was a kid, there were two types of treats that you'd get when hitting the streets on the 31st of October. You either got home made goodies such as candied apples, fudge, popcorn balls, cookies...or you'd get full size Clark Bars, 3 Musketeers, Hershey's with Almonds...whatever.

The not rich peeps handed out the home made stuff and the not so poor folks gave out the most excellent full size candy bars. Well guess what...the candy companies took notice.

Now everything is single wrapped and miniaturized. This way, everyone can hand out hermetically sealed, safe, inexpensive BRAND MARKET items and we all win...especially M&M Mars, Hershey Corp. and the various international banks that probably own them.

Now I'm not saying that these large multi-nationals are perpetuating these urban myths, okay...maybe I am, but they certainly don't seem to want to engage in suppressing these stories as they would lose their primary source of annual revenue if homes across the United States returned to handing out domestically manufactured treats instead of their commercially made bite sized items.

So, that's what the GOP is doing this Halloween. They're scaring everyone about something that rarely, if ever, happens...with poisoned ACORNS. Too bad too, because it's taught and reinforced an institutional distrust of our neighbors that the GOP embraces which will never return to American life. Like I've said before, right-wing thinking people have ruined our country and it's up to those of us with adult brains to take it back from them even if only in little increments.

Here endeth the lesson.