June 2017 – Martin Simpson

Feel Good Stories of mid-June

I come to you today bearing only good news. I’m back from Illinois, I had a great Father’s Day, and I’m in a great mood. So today we’re going to stay on the sunny side.

In political news, Democrats nationwide scrape together $24 million, and then take a vote on what to do with it. While many of them voted for

Option A – Put it in a big pile, light it on fire, and dance around it wearing Guy Fawkes masks and Antifa hoodies while screaming obscenities aimed at Trump – the narrow winner was

Option B. Which was to donate it to the Georgia House campaign of 15-year-old Jon “Pajama Boy” Ossoff, a ne’er-do-well from two counties over.

And he wisely used it to win… (trumpet fanfare)… a moral victory… (sad trombone fanfare).

By which I mean, he lost. In the most expensive House campaign ever. In a bellwether contest to demonstrate that Trump is done for. In a harbinger of the glorious leftist victories to come.

He lost.

I know, the lefties are already counter-spinning. This was a red district, and the GOP spent a lot too, and Handel under-performed the previous GOP seat holder. And the sun got in our eyes, and the dog ate our homework, and the Russians did it.

You’re probably right. You just need to double-down on the Trump hatred, and things are bound to turn around for you. But there have been 4 congressional elections since November, and you guys are 4-0 in moral victories. And 0-4 in actual victories.

That gigantic cash bonfire idea is looking pret-ty good about now, isn’t it?

In happy international news, an ISIS chief cleric who called himself “the Grand Mufti” – probably because “Grand Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops” were already taken, and his real name was Turki al-Bin’ali – caught an air strike in the face on May 31^st.

I would like to renew my call that instead of a respectful moment of silence, we greet this kind of news with a few moments of raucous and celebratory noise. I’m recommending a garage band playing the first 45 seconds of the Beastie Boy’s Sabotage, followed by the open to Stranglehold, followed by my dad’s 1972 Gran Torino with the pedal floored, and then a wood chipper working through a cedar tree.

(“Hey Martin,” I can almost hear you asking, “What dad joke did you tell your 15-year-old-daughter about this international incident that made her roll her eyes and slap her forehead and mimic the dry heaves?” Since you asked so nicely: That’s one Turki who didn’t make it until Thanksgiving. Boom!)

One news source called al-Bin’Kaboom “one of the most visible ISIS preachers.” Am I the only one who sees the irony in a group who forces their women to wear tarps in public being done in because their Grand Mufti was too visible?

I am? Fine. I get it. Everyone’s sooooo much more mature than me. Moving on…

Crime stories don’t usually make me happy, but this week two of them did. The first took place in Tennessee, where two felons and alleged (HA!) murderers who escaped from prison had exchanged gunfire with cops and were engaged in a high speed chase. A local guy who lives in the area with his wife and daughter got a warning phone call from a neighbor. He did several wise things: he “prayed like I had never prayed before,” and he “load[ed] every weapon I could,” and shortly afterwards he saw the criminals climb over a barbed wire fence onto his property.

They saw him, and before he could even show them the shotgun that he had with him, they both laid down on his driveway and surrendered. One possible reason for their action can be gleaned from the statement of a local resident: “When you mess around out here in the county, most of us here have carry permits and carry (weapons). And it’s our job to protect our families and our homes.” If that statement doesn’t warm your heart, there’s something wrong with you.

(For comparison, consider a typical quote from a Chicago or New York resident in similar circumstances: “We huddled in our living room defenseless, because the leftists who run our lives have decided that we shouldn’t be able to defend ourselves. Thanks, Mayors Emanuel and De Blasio!”)

When I read the story online, everybody in it was straight out of central casting: young Jimmy Stewart-esque gun owning father, pretty wife, adorable 3-year old daughter. The convicts were what you’d expect: an older, mopey looking one who doesn’t have “Born to Lose” tattooed on his forehead but looks like he should, and a younger one who does in fact have prominent facial tattoos – including a sweet set of devil horns that just screams out, “Gainful employment? No thank you!”

I love every bit of this story, but my two favorite details are:

The dad loaded “every weapon he could.” Does that imply that of course he has more than one weapon available to him? You’re damn right it does.
His name, which I’m not making up, is Patrick Hale. Obviously the bloodlines of Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale have merged to produce… this badass guy.

In the second good news criminal story, two model citizens had broken into a woman’s home in Georgia, and were in the process of stealing her tv, when she surprised them by being home, and by yelling at them. They fled the scene, but while doing so, Genius #1, who was in the lead, fired back in the direction of the house. Genius #2 was following him, and graciously stopped the bullet. With his head.

You’ll be shocked to learn that he was a 41-year old career criminal who was out on parole. Maybe he’d been inside for so long that he didn’t realize that you can buy a tv now for $27 at Wal-Mart. Any tv worth stealing would be so big you’d need a forklift to move it.

Also, if you were driving the tv away with a forklift, the bullet that your Mensa-member buddy fired your way might have struck the forklift. Instead of your defective forehead.

Quote of the story goes to the local lawman, Sheriff Buford T. Obvious: “I’d much rather see one burglar shoot another burglar than an innocent homeowner.”

In a media story that threatened to intrude on my good mood, I heard that Reza Aslan was fired by CNN. The headline that I saw said, “Aslan fired by CNN over vulgar anti-Trump tweet.”

Of course, my first thought was, “Why would a magnificent lion/Christ figure be writing vulgar anti-Trump tweets?”

My second thought was, “Why would a magnificent lion/Christ figure work for CNN?”

Then I read the story, and found out that it was Reza Aslan, and that he is an angry, angry little man. The story is still amazing though: would you have believed that CNN would fire someone over vulgarity directed at Trump? How is there still anyone on the air over there?

On a final, personal note, my wife got me a present for Father’s Day.

Before you can ask if it was a man romper, or a little scrunchy thing I could use to give myself a man bun, or a “Now You’ve Pi**ed Ossoff” bumper sticker, I rhetorically slap you. (Though the bumper sticker would have been cool. I thought of it weeks ago as a slogan for the Dems who were supporting Pajama Boy. And I kept it to myself. HA!)

No, my wife gave me… drumroll…a mug with a picture of Mad Dog Mattis on it, with the question, “What keeps you awake at night?” at the top, and his answer below: “Nothing. I keep other people awake at night.” I love looking at that mug first thing every morning.

It’s true that being a good spouse is not a competition. But somehow, my wife is winning anyway.

Father’s Day 2017

As this Father’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad. He died in December of 2014, and time has been doing its work, to the point that thoughts of him have shifted to a mix of many happy memories, to go along with the pain of his loss. I’m a father to two daughters, and have known hundreds of other fathers as friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances, and off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone who carried out that role any better than my dad.

He was born into a family of four boys and four girls to working class parents in Illinois in the late 1930s. He married my mom not long after high school, and had me and my younger sister, and raised us while working at the Northern Illinois Gas Company, until he was forced into an early retirement at the age of 57 by injuries. He operated a variety of heavy equipment, and he took great pride in his work. When I was little, I can remember him pointing out subdivisions or houses that he’d run services to, and whenever we’d pass a parking lot with heavy machinery, he’d claim that he could operate anything on that lot. My mom had to explain to an excited young me (at maybe age 5 or 6?) that no, she was not going to let dad scratch my back with a backhoe. (He’d assured me that he could do so, no problem.)

He was not perfect, as none of us are. He could be short-tempered and impatient, for example. But even then, he was the most unusual of people: he was a short-tempered man whom I never heard swear. Not once in my life. Not when he bounced a hammer off his thumb. Not when the Bears or the Cubs went O-for-a-month. Not when a Democrat got elected. He used ridiculous euphemisms to avoid cursing – “son of a buck,” “dirty rip,” and the like – but as a grown man who rarely makes it across town in heavy traffic without dropping at least one trenchant Anglo-Saxonism at one of my many brain-dead fellow citizens who cannot seem to master a turn signal or figure out which lane is for passing, that’s almost more than I can comprehend. People are freaking idiots all the time — I am too — and my dad was surrounded by them his entire life, but he never swore in front of his son!

In the summer of 2014 dad had cancer surgery that we initially thought had been successful. But a month or so later we found out that it has metastasized, and a month after that we learned that it would be fatal. I spent much of the fall of that year with my mom and dad in Tennessee, and I’ll always be grateful for that time. I recorded dad sharing a lot of memories from his life, and I saw the evidence of how many lives he had touched in the form of a steady stream of visitors who came to see him, and to see what they could do for him and for my mom.

He kept his sense of humor throughout his final illness. One of my cousins was visiting not too long before dad died. That cousin is known for sarcasm and smart-assery – even by Simpson standards – and he has some Scottish background on one side. Dad was sitting in a recliner and drifting in and out of the conversation, and the cousin was joking that he was going to try to learn the bagpipes. He promised (tongue-in-cheek) to play them at dad’s funeral. Dad delivered his line with a perfectly dry tone: “That’s it. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not dying.”

Dad died on a Sunday evening, and he told me his last joke two days earlier. He and I had both been Chicago Bears fans for life, and the Bears really stunk in 2014. (Not just then, I know. Knock it off!) In the last couple of months in that season, they were on tv unusually often for a team that bad. On the final Thursday of dad’s life they were on Thursday Night Football, and dad and I watched from our dueling recliners. He was pretty heavily medicated and drowsed on and off; each time he woke up a bit, he’d ask me the score, and I’d report that the Bears were down by another touchdown or so, and he’d roll his eyes and make some comment before sliding back to sleep.

The next day, he asked me for a favor. He had been unable to make it to church for a while by then, but his church made each week’s services available on DVD for members who had been unable to make it on Sunday. Dad had several of those stored up to watch, and on that Friday, he asked if I could put a DVD in for him. He seemed a little drowsy, but I put in the DVD and handed him the remote, asking if he thought he could stay awake for the sermon.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “But I don’t want the last tv I ever watch to be that stinking Bears’ game last night.”

To end his good life, he died a good death. He had hospice care in his home, and my mom, my sister and brother-in-law and I spent some time with him every day in his final months. He had the chance to tell everyone he knew how much he loved them, and that he was ready to go, and he was solicitous of others at a time when most of us can focus only on ourselves. Because of great hospice workers and morphine, he was able to die at home.

He slept for most of his final day. In the evening, mom and I arranged a schedule; I would stay up with him, and give him morphine twice, and then she would get up early and administer the morphine while I was sleeping in. She spoke to him the last time, kissing him and telling him that he had been a great father and husband, and that he could go. Then she went to bed, and he died before she could fall asleep.

Ronald Lee Simpson was born on January 22, 1938, and died on December 14^th, 2014. In between he lived a loving and generous life. I think it is hard for some people to come to faith in a loving heavenly Father if they have an abusive, or neglectful, or absent earthly father. I am a Christian because of both of my parents, but my path to God was made much easier by the example of a father’s love that I witnessed all my life. I can’t wait to see him again.

I wish for you all that you have had a father like mine, or that you marry a father like mine, or that you are a father like mine. Happy Father’s Day!

What I missed on my Vacation

I was on a trip this past week back to Illinois to see family and friends, and so only caught a few minutes per day of news on either the internet or tv. And oddly enough, by the time I got home my blood pressure was lower, I slept better, the acid indigestion was gone, and my hair had a silky, lustrous sheen. Men wanted to be me, and women wanted to be with me.

But being the wonky doofus that I am, I couldn’t help spending the last couple of days going through my DVR and the internet, trying to catch up on all things political. Which was a terrible idea. Now I’ve got insomnia, acid reflux, blurred vision, my Tourette’s Syndrome is acting up, and my hair is coming out in big clumps like I just finished a third round of chemo.

So read quickly, because after this I might have to take a month off.

The Comey hearings have been talked to death, so I’ll just mention a couple of issues that struck me:

1. Rubio had the quote of the week, when he pointed out (and Comey had to admit) the only fact that hadn’t been leaked during the whole pseudo-collusion farce: Trump was never under investigation for any Russian collusion. What else do you need to know about MSM corruption? They’ve floated 854 sleazy rumors, and somehow managed to NOT report the central fact of the story.

2. Comey admitted that he was one of the leakers, which violates the prime directive for intelligence officials. For the rest of his life, he should be forced to wear a scarlet “L,” and be shunned by decent people everywhere.

3. The only public official discussed in the testimony who likely obstructed justice and deserved a proctological-level investigation was Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch. In fact, Comey said that she directly told him to lie – to call the “investigation” of Clinton a “matter.” Comey said that he felt queasy after that request, because he knew how wrong it was. But look at what he did next: he started referring to it as a “matter,” and he did NOT leak Lynch’s order to anyone. That alone proves that Comey is a partisan hack.
(Also, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: How bad is Obama’s judgment, when Eric “Steadman” Holder may arguably NOT have been his worst AG appointee?!)

4. Trump needs to give his enemies less ammunition in their scorched-earth battle against him. He’s his own worst enemy. (And considering the mangy menagerie of sociopathic leftist loons who are out to get him, that’s saying something!)

Et tu, Lefties? In other news, how about those arts lovers staging performances of Julius Caesar in Central Park with a Trump look-alike as Caesar? The obvious move is the “shoe on the other foot” question: Can you imagine how the MSM and the Dems (but I repeat myself) would react if someone put on a production like this with a leftist pol being killed? Would an Obama look-alike not make a serviceable Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, or Hillary a great wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz? (Or one of the witches in MacBeth? Or Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmations? Or Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? I could go on and on.). Would Joe Biden not make a great Lenny in Of Mice and Men?

I’m kidding, of course. (Not about Biden though. Was that guy born to play Lenny, or what?) We wouldn’t stoop that low, and we’d expect to be raked over the coals if some conservative staged such a performance. Not so with the other side, though.

Three quick thoughts:

1. The only way you can get a lefty crowd to celebrate a classic Western work authored by a dead white male is if you can turn it into political propaganda appealing to base instincts.

2. Predictably, the sweet-tempered, pacifistic, morally superior lefties in the crowd cheer the murder like… well, like a barbaric Roman crowd cheering on a murder.

3. And they made the citizens of NYC pay for at least part of the costs of their little bread-and-circuses performance. Some big corporate sponsors, in a fit of sanity, have backed out of their sponsorship, but last I heard, the city and the “arts community” is hanging in.

Some of my friends on the right want us to boycott, protest or otherwise try to stop such distasteful shenanigans, and while I understand, I disagree.

This is who they are: they shout “’F’ Trump” in front of their children, they use homophobic slurs about the prez and Putin, they fantasize about beheading the president, or stabbing him to death.

Let the country see them for who they are. And let the decent Democrats in the country rise up and disassociate themselves from this repulsive behavior, and the extremist goons who have taken over their party.

Or not. That will be instructive, too.

On a potentially related note, an angry leftist John Goodman-figure from The Big Lebowski shows up at a GOP softball practice. (Google that hateful shooter in his tinted shades, then pull up a picture of Goodman in the movie, and tell me they’re not angry, long-lost twins.) But instead of hollering at Donny and ranting about Nam, this guy’s all hopped up on political outrage, and he starts shooting. Thankfully, that story ends the way many such stories do: the bad guy with the gun gets stopped by good guys with guns. I hope that the victim recovers, and I’m not too torn up that the shooter won’t.
But I won’t do what the other side does, and claim that the hateful rhetoric of Bernie and the other Dems is responsible for this jerk’s actions. Bernie rightfully condemned him, and even though the MSM consistently tries to blame the actions of killers on conservatives, even when those killers are in no way connected to conservatives, I think they’re wrong to do so.

It doesn’t help when the leaders of a political party paint their opponents in hateful terms – and the GOP isn’t totally innocent of this, though I think they do it MUCH less than do the national Democrats. But this guy’s actions are his responsibility, and he has paid the just consequences.

Wow. I was going to end this piece there, but that was too much of a downer. So I’ll close with a happy ending instead.

Google the name Charles Zachary Howard, and you’ll learn that he is a sad little man who called a Republican congressman and left a vile message. He cited many of the popular lefty talking points – Nazis, the Klan – in addition to a few unusual ones. (The Freemasons? Hey Charlie, Nic Cage has his next National Treasure movie in pre-production, and his people will be issuing you a cease-and-desist order shortly.)
Did he close his little love note with a pledge to disagree without being disagreeable, you ask? He did not. He promised to, and I quote, “hunt your a– down, wrap a rope around your neck and hang you from a lamppost.”

Why do I mention this? Because that man is going to be on the 2020 ballot as the Democratic candidate for president.

HA! I kid. (I hope.) I actually mentioned Mr. Howard so that you will go onto YouTube, and watch a short video of him in action. A local reporter confronts him with a transcript of his phone call, and he starts bullying and taunting the reporter, saying, “Is there a warrant for my arrest? Show me the warrant for my arrest! Where is the warrant?!”

Then, because God exists, and He loves us, the police show up. And one of them says, “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

And, as a sad trombone plays (in my head if not on the video), they put the creep in cuffs.

Watch that video – it’s the feel-good hit of the summer!

June Meltdowns

Today’s theme is entertaining media meltdowns.

Exhibit A. The Covfefe Conundrum. (Not surprisingly, the poorest selling Bourne sequel to date.) Okay, Trump is up tweeting in the middle of the night (and yes, it’s not the end of the world, but please stop doing that!), and he makes an odd typo, “covfefe.” And the lefty media goes nuts, with 94,382 stories on it (my rough estimate) in the next 48 hours.

It’s the perfect storm: a nonsense word, with no significance of any kind, and no impact on any issue, foreign or domestic. So let’s bloviate about it for days on end.

My favorite part of the resulting wall-to-wall coverage? A bunch of empty heads — Did I mean “talking heads,” you ask? I did not. — were sitting on a panel discussing this on CNN. Because you can’t deal with a story of THIS magnitude with one presenter. You need a panel.

Anyway, one member of this brain trust was Gloria Borger, who passes for a Chief Political Analyst at CNN. Only the chyron that appeared on the bottom of the screen identified her as “CNN Cheif Political Analyst.”

That’s right. The best minds at CNN discussed the ominous, world-endangering implications of a typo, as they appeared… above a typo.

I like to fantasize that there is one closeted conservative saboteur running the chyrons at CNN. If so, I salute you. And I have a suggestion: the next time Gloria is on tv, try this one: “Gloreeah Bourgeois, CNN Cheef Political Anal-yst.” And the beers are on me.

Exhibit B: Kathy Griffin, Part Deux. After her bloody beheading stunt received (ahem) mixed reviews, Griffin actually apologized pretty convincingly. Rather than going with the usual pseudo mea culpa – “If anyone misunderstood and was offended…” – she gave what seemed like a heartfelt apology.

Then, when that didn’t immediately stop the blow back, she ruined it by calling a press conference, during which she embodied every obnoxious leftist trope of the last 20 years. She played the victim, invoked sexism and racism (“Old white men are persecuting me”), claimed that the Trumps were bullying her, that it’s not right to ruin her career, that she’s not afraid of Trump, that it’s not her fault that ISIS is running wild, and that the Russians cost her the election.

Wait. The second-to-last whine was from Obama, and the last one was from Hillary. It’s getting difficult to tell the delusional jeremiads apart.

Anyway, good news for the authors of abnormal psychology textbooks: you don’t have to write any more! Just transcribe Griffin’s press conference, and label the respective dysfunctions as they rear their ugly heads. They’re all there:

persecution complex — “He broke me.”

projection – “I’m not afraid of Donald Trump. He’s a mean bully.”

delusions of grandeur – “For the first time ever, a President of the United states is trying to ruin a private citizen’s life.” (What’s that? Juanita Broaddrick is on line one? And Paula Jones is on line two? And James Rosen is on line three? And – oops, the switchboard has been overwhelmed.)

delusions of comedic talent — “I’m a comedian, and I’m not going to stop making fun of anyone.”

Okay, that last one is not technically a recognized psychological malady. But c’mon.

Kathy, you enacted a simulated bloody beheading of the President. You broke yourself.

Exhibit C — Hillary Agonistes. Not to be outdone, the former future leader of the free world – and oh, the joy I get from knowing that she will never be president! – sat down with yet more sycophantic interviewers. Many commentators have noted that by now Hillary has blamed nearly every person or group on earth for her sweet, sweet loss. (Piggish men, insufficiently feminist women, Russians and Comey and Bernie, etc.) But this time she added a new culprit: Macedonians. Let’s savor her schadenfreude-tastic quote:

“So this was different because [the Russians] went public, and they were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y’know there’s all these stories, about y’know, guys over in Macedonia who are running these fake news sites, and you know I’ve seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.”

First, there’s no such thing as a “low level CNN operation.” You cannot get lower than CNN without being subterranean. CNN is a low level CNN operation.

Second, “weaponized information?” You mean, facts and things that you and your creepy circle of co-conspirators wrote and said, right? They released things that you said and did, and you’re calling that “weaponized information?” Ohhh-kay.

Third, something goes horribly wrong, and you look around for scapegoats. I get it. Blaming others is always tempting, and often entertaining. For example, when my oldest daughter was toddling around at about age 2, I taught her a verbal trick. In the middle of any conversation, I could point to her and ask, “Who do we blame for that?” And she’d look at me with her enormous brown eyes and say, “The Democrats.” That’s the kind of Norman Rockwell moment that makes the diaper changing and future college expenses all worthwhile. And my lefty in-laws were mortified. So, win-win.

Anyway, enough about my fantastic parenting tips. We were discussing Hillary’s blame game.

There’s hilarious, well-adjusted Simpson-style blaming, and then there’s grim, sociopathic Hillary-style blaming. But she outdoes even herself when she uncovers the sinister Macedonian cabal.

Move over, Jews and Global Warming, because there’s a new scapegoat in town. And it’s the Macedonian Menace. (If this were an old timey radio show, I’d insert a scary organ sting here.) (That reminds me: Anthony Weiner. Boom!) (Admit it: you read “insert scary organ sting” and you beat me to the Weiner reference. You’ve officially sunk to my level, God help you.)

By now, it’s easier to identify groups whom Hillary HASN’T blamed for her loss. By my count, that list comes to: the ancient Etruscans, the Hapsburg Empire, the Hottentots, and Hillary Clinton.

One other note: Did you hear what kind of conference she was speaking to? A tech conference. Hillary Clinton, who set up a server in her back bedroom — using open-source software, with a hardline strung out her window and across country to the Russian embassy, installed by Boris and Natasha Badanov — was invited to speak at a tech conference.

Were there no Amish people available?

Exhibit D. Trump out of Paris. In his fourth-best action as president (after Gorsuch, Nikki Haley, and Maddog), the president pulled the US out of a meaningless non-treaty, and the world’s elite melted down. Big brains like Fareed Zakaria, Jerry Brown, John Kerry and Moe Howard (just seeing if you are paying attention) all agreed that the world is going to end now, and fell to arguing only about which of the Biblical plagues that Trump has rashly unleashed will provide the coup de grace. The early money was on rivers of blood, but the consensus now is evenly split among frogs, locusts and shadowy Macedonians.

The Paris accord might be the most blatant example of empty, leftist virtue signaling of this century. It’s an agreement that has no enforcement mechanism, based on goals that each country came up with on their own, and paid for just about solely by the United States.

What was the vote in the Senate to confirm this treaty, you ask? There wasn’t one. Obama knew that he wouldn’t be able to get enough votes to ratify this feel-good do-nothing boondoggle, so he didn’t even try. He just unilaterally said that we’re in.

So now, Trump can just unilaterally say that we’re out. And he did. So good on him.

Finally, Exhibit E. As in, “Egad, what a moron.” California Representative Barbara Lee – from guess which party? — in a heroic effort to take the heat off of the Macedonians, is blaming global warming for something. But that something isn’t one of the usual somethings, like droughts or melting ice caps or Al Gore’s increasing fortune.

It’s prostitution.

I am not making that up. She says that as the world gets increasingly hot, food will get scarce. And then – yada yada yada — women will naturally have to start with the hooking. Or something. I can’t really follow her “reasoning,” but Google the topic and see if you can make sense of it. (I was going to say “make heads or tails of it,” but considering the topic, I am way too mature for that.)

I guess the voters in her district find this kind of reasoning persuasive, but I can’t believe that the husbands of California are buying it. I picture a typical guy waiting up to catch his wife sneaking back into the house at 3 a.m., wearing heavy makeup and her old college cheerleading uniform.

He snaps the light on, and stands there with folded arms. And the wife says, “Honey, it was 90 degrees out for three days in a row! What else was I supposed to do?”

If he accepts that explanation, he deserves to be represented by Barbara Lee in Washington.