Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Vol III – Episode 137: Ballots and Voters and Shrimp and Scallop Soup

Political Satire:  Having trouble surviving these times?  You’re not alone.  Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:

Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…

Note: We are sharing approximately every other story from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, and are now sampling Volume Three’s ninety chapters. In today’s episode from the first year of his regime, his soup aide inquires about the recent Arizona recount results.

Ballots and Voters and Shrimp and Scallop Soup

Dateline: September 24. Begin Transcript:

“Good evening, sir! Hope you’re hungry!”

“I’m sleepy. Come back tomorrow.”

“Why, what have you been doing, sir?”

“They’ve had me rehearsing the same things all evening, in case I get any questions this weekend. They want me to be ready.”

“Ready for what, sir?”

“Well, for the questions, of course!”

“Oh, well, yes sir… but I mean, on what subject, sir?”

“Arizona. Hey, do you have soup for me or not?”

“Oh, yes sir. Shrimp and Scallop Soup, sir. Here you go, sir. Looks delicious.”

“Little things, aren’t they?”

“Shrimp, sir?”

“Well, yeah. Little shrimp, little scallops, little pieces of carrot, little pieces of potato, little pieces of onion… but they all add up to a great soup, don’t they?”

“Oh, you’ve had it before, sir?”

“No, I’m just looking at it. I’m not a complete idiot, you know! Where are my crackers?”

“Right here, sir. Soup, crackers, napkins, soup spoons That’s everything, sir.”

“Better be. You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you?”

“It’s always the same four things each night, sir. Soup, crackers, napkins, spoons, sir. No change, sir.”

“Mmmm… this is good. All these little shrimps…. they all add up…”

“Yes indeed, sir.”

“Just like votes.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Well, you know, how votes are little things too. One vote isn’t enough in any precinct. But you pour a whole bunch of them together, and you can pull out a win!”

“Ah. I see what you mean, sir. Yes sir.”

“Yup, you get one vote, it’s nothing. But you take that one vote and put it in a photocopy machine, and WHAMMO!, before you know it, you’ve won in a landslide!”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Oh? What did you do?”

“What, me, sir?”

“What were you convicted for?”

“Huh? I haven’t… oh… OH!!! I see, sir. No, I wasn’t asking you for a pardon, sir. I just said, I beg your pardon, sir. You know, it’s an idiom, sir.”

“You’re telling me! There are idiots everywhere.”

“No, sir, I meant, idiom, sir… I just said ‘I beg your pardon’ because I didn’t understand you, and I hoped you would repeat or clarify what you said, sir.”

“Oh. Good idea.”

“So… what did you mean when you said that thing about feeding a vote into a photocopier, sir?”

“Me? Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t know what photocopiers eat. Grass, probably. Or hay, or oats…. that’s what most things eat, right, kid? I mean, except the ones who eat meat?”

“No, sir, that’s not what I meant, sir. You said ‘feeding a vote into a photocopier,’ sir… that’s not a meal, it’s about duplication, sir.”

“Oh, I’m a big fan of duplication. One thing our shop stewards always impressed into me: never hire one worker when you can stretch the job into two. It’s all about creating jobs, you know.”

“Well, yes, sir, to an extent, sir, but if you create too many more jobs than the work really requires, sir, the company will have to have too expensive a product, and it will lose marketshare to more productive competitors, sir… or countries, for that matter.”

“Countries?”

“Well, sure, sir, if the unions talk our companies into hiring too big a workforce due to unnecessary duplication of efforts or personnel, well then, sir, we’ll lose business, sir.”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“I thought you wanted to, sir. I just asked about your comment on photocopying, sir, and you went on a bit of a tangent.”

“No, I don’t like tangents.”

“Pardon, sir?”

“I’m a guy. I like tan gals. Now, you show me a cute gal with a nice tan, and oh yeah, I’m all for that… but not gents. They didn’t go in for that sort of thing in my day. Not when I was growing up in Scranton. Hmm… Don’t know if you know that about me, young man, I was born and raised in Scranton PA. Great little town.”

“Yes sir. I think I’d heard about that once or twice, sir.”

“Yup, those were the days. What were we talking about?”

“Well, sir, you were telling me how you photocopy ballots to win elections, sir.”

“OH, no…. I didn’t do that. Never. Never would ever have done a thing like that. Candidates can’t get our hands dirty. We have people. And our people have people. And they have people. And they have dogs.”

“And they all vote, sir?”

“Certainly, they do!”

“Even the dogs, sir?”

“Sometimes. Why not? If they’re important to their owners, and their owners are voting, then…”

“Forget I asked, sir. So are you saying, sir, that there’s a lot of vote fraud being committed nowadays, sir?”

“Come on, man! No, I’m not saying that! I would never say that! There’s no more reason to believe that there was more vote fraud this time than there was any other time! …Hmm… let’s see… did I get that right? There’s no more reason to believe that there was vote fraud this time than there was any other time. Yeah. Right. That’s it.”

“Umm, sir, are you saying that there’s no evidence of fraud this time, just like there was no evidence in the past, or are you saying there has always been the same amount of evidence of vote fraud, and 2020 was no different… sir?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what, sir? that there’s no evidence of fraud or that there’s always been lots of fraud, sir?”

“Mmm… this is good soup. I like shrimp.”

“But in Arizona, sir, they just finished a recount, or an audit, or something, and they both seem to have said that there was just absolutely tons of vote fraud, and also, that no miscounts were made and you still won Arizona! I don’t get it!”

“Don’t get what?”

“Both. I don’t get that it can be both, sir.”

“Let me tell you something I learned in law school a hundred years ago, kid. Maybe the only thing I still remember from those days, kid. Hey, what’s your name again?”

“Rhoades, sir. First name is Rocky, sir.”

“Oh, right. I’ll never remember that.”

“I know, sir. What was that lesson, sir?”

“Doesn’t matter if you did it, all that matters is if they can prove it.”

“Well, sir, I understand that that would be good advice to a criminal, but that kind of advice wouldn’t be of any use to an honest man, sir.”

“I was headed to Washington. Where was I ever going to run into an honest man?”

“Ah. I see your point, sir.”

“When you go to school, you’ve got to take something with you. That lesson… that touched me… that’s guided me in life.”

“Well, sir, that explains a lot, sir.”

“This is good with the crackers.”

“Yes sir. Well, so what I was wondering is, sir, from the way I heard it, the Arizona audit said that they counted things again, and the counts came up with about the same numbers of votes…”

“Obviously! Count the same stack ten times, you’ll get the same total ten times. So what?”

“Right, sir, but then they also said, they don’t trust the source of those ballots. That’s the weird thing. There are all these ballots, and they don’t think they counted them wrong…”

“In Arizona.”

“Right, sir, in Arizona. But they distrust the origin of the ballots, sir. And they also don’t trust that all the ballots that should’ve been there, got counted.”

“Huh?”

“Well, sir, they said that they think there were a lot of good-looking, valid-looking, normal-looking ballots, that were cast as the second and third and fourth votes of a lot of voters, sir.”

“Oh.”

“And lots more that were probably cast by, or on behalf of, people who lived in other states, or people who weren’t even citizens, or weren’t even alive at the time of the election, sir.”

“But they couldn’t prove it, could they, kid?”

“Rocky, sir.”

“Yup, it’s rocky, all right. They can’t prove it. Heh heh.”

“Is it going to be like this in every state, sir? Are they going to just keep on looking, and finding good questions, and tons of evidence of gaps and missed documents and missing evidence and hidden records… but never actually find anything to actually answer the question for sure, sir? State after state, just agonizing over it all and thinking, they’re sure there’s something there, but they just can’t prove it, sir?”

“Heh heh.”

“Just between us, sir… you know I don’t have any power, there’s nothing I could do about it… I’m just curious… Did you really get 81 million votes, sir?”

“Sure! Of course I did! Just don’t ask me if I really had 81 million voters. Hey, how about seconds on that soup, kid?”

Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo

Excerpted from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three: How Is This Not Over Yet?”, available in paperback or eBook, exclusively on Amazon.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant.  President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes III, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.

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