Month: August 2017

Call this “The Tale of Two Columns.”  Because it was the best of times (I’m going to introduce you to a new hero) and the worst of times (Charlottesville).

Let’s take our medicine first.   But I’m not going to say a lot about Charlottesville, because:

1. Some people have complained that my pieces are too long. (How dare you!  I slave all day over a hot keyboard, and this is the thanks I get?  I’ve got half a mind to go back to mother.)
2. Lots of people who are smarter than me (including CO) have already commented on it.
3. I’m sick of everybody involved.

But here goes:

White racists are a sad little group (emphasis on both “sad” and “little”).  Hateful Antifa jerks are equally sad, but I fear/know they are more numerous, and more influential on their side of the political aisle.

Taking down confederate statues is 10% understandable and 90% ill-thought out.  Already, some are wondering where this might stop.  Bulldoze the Jefferson Memorial?  Blow up the Washington Monument?  They both owned slaves.  And Lincoln didn’t make a move to emancipate until very late.  Plus, he was a Republican – so…

Anyway, if we do decide to take down confederate statues — because racism — that won’t break my heart.  But I hope that we can then also agree to take down any statues or plaques and change any roads or buildings named after whitey-hater Malcolm X, and genocidal anti-black racist (and Planned Parenthood founder) Margaret Sanger.  Plus at least half of our Democrat presidents. (Have you heard how LBJ talked about blacks, or Wilson talked about any non-WASPs?)  And half the public buildings constructed in the South in the last 30 years are named after Grand Wizard (and member of guess which party?) Robert Byrd.

So gentlemen, start your jackhammers.

The most aggravating part to me is that the far-far fringe white racist groups are such a small and impotent group.  But our horrible MSM has a vested interest in hugely exaggerating their numbers and influence, and trying to tie them to mainstream conservatism, with which they have nothing to do.

That’s not just galling because they are trying to smear all of us – though Lord knows it’s galling for that reason!

It might be even more galling because for the last several years, the MSM has gone out of its way to NOT notice or cover all of the violent leftist hate groups – Antifa, BLM, Occupy Wall Street, plus a menagerie of various “red” subgroups flying hammer-and-sickle flags — and their consistent hateful rhetoric, violence, and crimes against persons and property.

The murderous loser in VA who drove into those people – and I’m an old school (even Old Testament!) conservative, so here’s hoping he hangs himself in his jail cell – has gotten wall-to-wall coverage.  But that John Goodman-figure who opened fire on GOP congressmen on the softball field while screaming, “Bernie Sanders Akbarrrrrrrr!”?

The MSM covered the story, because they had to.  But remember that flood of stories about him being a Bernie devotee, and a symbol of a threatening and disturbing trend on the left that the entire Dem leadership is complicit in, and must answer for?

Me neither.

Anyway, to quote Mr. Gump, “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”

 

And now for something completely different:

I have a new hero.

Usually, being dead is almost a prerequisite to be a hero, partly because it often takes a lifetime of good deeds to qualify for hero status, and partly because having passed confers a kind of fixed, larger-than-life gravitas.  Thus, most of my heroes – Johnny Cash, Walter Payton, Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, my dad – are no longer with us.

But this new guy is alive and kicking.  Despite the fact that he shot himself in the heart with a nail gun.

You read that right: Shot.  In the heart.  With a nail gun.

Let me introduce you to Doug Bergeson, 52, from Green Bay, Wisconsin.  His story is here: http://abc11.com/man-accidentally-shoots-nail-into-heart-drives-to-hospital/2313245/

I first learned of him while avoiding work by browsing the internet, and coming across this arresting headline: “Man accidentally shoots nail into heart, drives himself to hospital.”

It’s not the nail-in-the-heart part that got me.  I mean, we’ve all been there, right?  You’re doing some rough carpentry, your focus drifts for a moment, and bing/bang/boom – you’ve got a cement-coated ring shank stuck in the old aorta.

It’s the driving-himself-to-the-hospital part.  Read the amazing story, because each paragraph is better than the last.

After the nail ricochets off some wood and lodges in his chest, Mythical-Olympian-Figure Bergeson says, “I thought it just nicked me. I looked down. I couldn’t see anything.  I felt OK. I wasn’t worried about the injury. I couldn’t feel any pressure or blood building up.”

But when he found the nail, “he realized only about 1 inch of the 3-inch nail was sticking out of his chest.”   Then, in the second-best quote of 2017 (Maddog – and I don’t mean Rachel – is still on the gold medal platform with, “Nothing.  I keep other people awake at night.”), Bergeson said, “I could see the nail moving with my heartbeat. It was kind of twitching with every heartbeat.”

Read that again, puny mortals.  The nail.  In his chest.  Was TWITCHING WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT!

The next lines of the story: “He was more annoyed than worried. He knew he had to go to the ER.”

Because you know how annoying it can be when you perforate your pericardium with a piece of sharp metal.  I mean, I wouldn’t exactly get “worried” about it.  Let’s not get carried away.  But annoyed?  Sure, I guess.

“I was frustrated because I knew I wasn’t going to get home until late and I couldn’t get anything done,” Bergeson said, adding that “common sense” told him not to pull the nail out.”

He calls it common sense.  I call it the most counter-intuitive thought since Napoleon said, “Hey, winter’s coming on.  Why don’t we attack Russia on horseback?”

What would I have done in that situation, you ask?

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I would have run around in circles, waving my arms over my head and defecating all over myself, squealing like a 10-year-old girl, “Get it out, GET IT OUT, GETITOUT!”  Then I would have closed my tear-filled eyes and pulled out the nail.   Then I would have staggering around the room in quickly degenerating figure-eights, splattering my DIY project with arterial spray before collapsing to die in a mound of sawdust and ignominy.

(And, scene.)

Not Achilles Bergeson.  He “washed up, hopped [HOPPED!] in his truck” and drove himself to the ER.

I must interrupt the story for just a moment.  If you don’t know the work of comedian Brian Regan, you must watch one of his routines on YouTube right this minute.  Google “Brian Regan” and “Emergency Room,” and watch the funniest 8 minutes of comedy since Sam Kinison died.  Regan also drove himself to an ER, and the story, though not as amazing as Bergeson’s, is hilarious.  (Full disclosure: I want to be a cross between Brian Regan, Clint Eastwood and Doug Bergeson when I grow up.)

Back to Samson Bergeson.  He parks, walks into the ER – because wheelchairs are for wussies — and alerts a security guard to his annoying situation.  “If you could find someone, that would be great, I’m just going to sit down.”  Then he texts his wife, Donna (whom I can only assume requires weeks to recover from each time her bad ass husband has carnal relations with her), “to bring him a new shirt because medical staff had cut off the one he was wearing.”

By the way, this situation constitutes the first time in human history that this combination of words have ever been transmitted – by telegraph, telegram, letter or text:  “Honey, I blasted a nail into one ventricle or another this afternoon.  So my darn shirt is ruined.  Could you stop by the hospital with another one?  Sorry for the inconvenience.” (By the way again, all of the quotes in this column, except the last one, are real.) (And the Napoleon one.  You knew I made that one up, right?)

The surgeon who worked on Bergeson, Alexander Roitstein, “confirmed the nail hit [his] heart, saying it was also 1/16 of an inch from a major artery. He said it was difficult to assess how deeply the nail penetrated, but the nail left bruising and a nail-sized hole.”  (So you’re saying that a nail penetrating one’s chest would leave a “nail-sized hole?”  Thank you, Sherlock Descartes Roitstein.)

Apparently there is something in the water in Green Bay that makes men prone to stoic understatement.  Because Roitstein also praised Bergeson for letting doctors remove the nail.  “It shows the great composure this gentleman had after a very bad day’s experience.”

Yes.  A very bad day’s experience.  Like when your cell coverage is spotty.  Or when the Bears win, but don’t cover the spread.  Or when your Gender Studies prof gets your pronoun wrong, even though you’ve told him/her 1000 times that you prefer “ze.”

Or when you fire a nail into your heart, and it gyrates along with your heartbeat while you are driving and walking and canoeing and cross-country skiing your way to the ER.

And how does Hercules Bergeson sum up the experience?  “I feel pretty good. I’m back to doing things carefully,” he said. “It was a pretty awakening experience.”

We salute you, Doug Bergeson.

Now, let’s give this guy a 10 penny nail and some beef jerky, and air drop him over PyongYang, with instructions to find the guy with the worst haircut, shove the nail into his heart, then pull it out.  Then prepare for a million North Koreans to hoist you onto their shoulders and parade you thorough the city, chanting “Belgeson, Belgeson!” and make you their Emperor.

Problem solved.

I have a lot of thoughts about the North Korean situation.  Well, not a lot of thoughts.  But I do have 5 thoughts:

Thought 1:  We should probably be more worried about this than we seem to be — it should be a huge story, involving as it does the potential for someone using nukes for the first time since we provided a couple of teachable moments to the empire of Japan. (You’re welcome, Japan.  Let this be a lesson to you.)  Instead, most people’s reaction to this whole situation is muted, and I think that’s because this is a classic case of the boy who cried wolf.  Since November 9^th the left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) has been so deeply (and laughably) immersed in drama queen anti-Trump mode over every tiny story, no one is listening any more.

Trump gets petulant about the size of his inaugural crowd?

MSM:  He’s a dictator!  Dictators do that!  It’s the END OF THE WORLD (EOTW, for short)!

Trump compliments the looks of the French president’s considerably older wife?

MSM: That kind of sexism is what sexist dictators do, and it causes millions of women to have anorexia and low self-esteem, and probably shingles and psoriasis!  It’s the EOTW!
Trump says that he’s going to withhold some federal funds from sanctuary cities who defy ICE and proudly break federal law?

MSM:  This is the first step dictators take when they commit genocide!  First they force people into the shadows, and then – yada yada yada – Auschwitz!  EOTW!

Trump responds with juvenile insults to the juvenile insults from Mika Consonant-filled-last-Name?  (If you think I’m going to spend my precious time looking up how to spell Mika’s ridiculous last name, you are crazy.  I know her dad had the same last name, but that was balanced by one of the coolest first names ever: Zbigniew.  The fact that no rapper has taken that as his stage name – Z-big — shows just how stupid rappers are.)

MSM:  He’s punching down!  You know who else punches down?  (The bored-out-of-his-skull union camera operator mumbles, “Dictators?”)  That’s right – dirty, rotten, down-punching dictators.  EOTW!

So now, when an actual dictator actually does threaten to use nukes, we’re all watching Game of Thrones and tuning the MSM hysterics out.

 

Thought 2: I also have a hard time taking North Korea seriously because I’ve seen Team America: World Police a dozen times.  This probably does not speak well of me, but what can I say?

If you haven’t seen that movie yet, you are doing yourself a disservice.  Yes, it is a puppet movie.  And yes, the puppets’ every movement and gesture is as awkward and graceless as you would expect.  Yet it transcends all of that and provides what can only be called an eerily accurate presentation of Islamic terrorists (Fun fact: Arabic vocabulary consists entirely of the words, “Dirka dirka, Mohammed jihad!”  True story.) and of whichever Kim was dictator at the time.  (Does it really matter?  Am I alone in thinking that poor North Korea has been ruled by a series of interchangeable Kims for 1000 thousand years?)

(And if you mean to tell me that there is a better name for a Korean improv comedy troupe than “Interchangeable Kims,” I can only say an emphatic, “Good day, sir!” and slam a metaphorical door in your face.)

Seriously, Team America has the three essentials for drama that Aeschylus first laid out 500 years before Christ:  1. Rising tension between protagonists that is eventually resolved in the final act.  2. Disturbing puppet sex.  3. Hans Blix (“Brix”) being eaten by a shark.

Plus, it features what has to be the most impressive, nuanced performance of Matt Damon’s career.

Anyway, enough about the movie.  I’m just saying that once you’ve seen one of the assorted Kims wandering the over-sized palace hallways — in those ginormous Harry Caray glasses, singing, “I’m so  ronery!  So ronery!  So ronery and feering so brue.” – it’s hard to feel threatened by North Korea.

 

Thought 3. One other reason it’s hard to be too worried about North Korea?  They threatened to shoot a missile at Guam.

Not Hawaii.  Not San Francisco or LA or stately Simpson Manor.

Guam.

Now I don’t mean to disparage Guam, or the Guamians.  (Guamese?  Guam-bats?  I don’t know.)  But is it unfair to note that Guam has not occupied a preeminent position in the thoughts and hearts of the West in general, or Americans in particular?

Is there a Guamian dream that stirs your heart?  Have you ever choked up at the first notes of the Guamian national anthem (“Guam, Guam, Uber Alles” for all you know), or found yourself reciting the national motto of Guam (“Vive la Guam?”  “Semper Guam?” “Live Free or Get out of Guam?”)?  I think not.

Picture the scene at the White House.   The latest Kim is addressing his starving, twitchy, fearful nation.  Trump and his advisors and generals are on the edge of their seats around a huge oval table, watching a big screen as the speech reaches its zenith.  “And if America does not agree to our demands, we will attack… Guam!”

The generals and advisors look at each other for a long moment.  Then they all slump back into their chairs in relief.

Advisor 1: “Did he say Guam?”

Advisor 2: “Oh thank God!”

General 1: “I was sure he was going to say Hawaii!”

General 2: “I know, right?”

Trump (with a big sigh of relief): “Okay, how many people are in Guam?”

Advisor 3: “Dozens?”

Advisor 4:  “It’s got to be thousands, at least.  Right?”

Shrugs all around.

Trump: “How about the economic impact?  If there was a strike on Guam’s capital…?”  (looks around the room for help)

Anthony Scaramucci:  “Guadalupe?”

Trump gives him a dirty look.  “Mooch?  What are you still doing here?  I fired you weeks ago.”

Mooch hangs his head, slowly gets up, starts for the door.

Trump (to the rest of the table):  “Economic impact?  If Guam was hit, God forbid, would that interfere with our supply of…?”  (looking for more help, while his advisors study the ceiling or their shoes)

Mooch: “Guava?”

Trump: “Out!”  (Mooch shuffles the rest of the way to the door, and closes it behind him.)

Trump:  “It’s not guava, right?”

Shrugs all around.

Trump: “All right, somebody Google Guam, and we meet back here in 10.”

And, scene.

Thought 4.  It’s not the Kim haircut that makes me dismiss him.  It’s the judgment call that he made AFTER getting that haircut.

He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror – the poor barber trembling beside him, sure he was going to be executed for creating such a ridiculous look – and said, “Yeah, that’s it!  My biggest problem now is that once my people get a look at this, they’re ALL going to want it.  General Kim?  You and the other generals Kim are to issue a nationwide decree: No one else can have this haircut.”

General Kim (with a straight face):  “That’s going to be a tough one to enforce.   I mean, with that haircut being so awesome and all.”

Kim:  “I know, right?  Hey, get my publicist in here, what’s his name?”

General Kim:  “Kim?”

Kim:  “That’s right.  I need to get some publicity shots taken right away.  I’ve got to share this haircut with the nation.”

 

Thought 5:  I don’t care for the professional wrestling language going back and forth between Kim and Trump.  Kim always talks like that:  “We’ll reduce you to jelly!”  (Millions of starving Norks then begin salivating at the thought of sweet, sweet jelly.)   And Trump is usually half-way there too (“We’re bringing Fire and Fury, baby.   Believe me.  It will be like nothing the world has ever seen.”)  I find myself agreeing with Trump’s critics: a president shouldn’t talk like this.

But on the other hand, we all know how presidents are supposed to talk, right?  Diplomacy-speak:  The world community won’t stand for this.  It’s in all of our interests that we avoid conflict.  We can get past this misunderstanding.  With mutual respect, we can move forward to a settlement…

How’s that worked out for us?

After a little Trumpian tough-talk, Bill Clinton arrived at a diplomatic coup that would appease the Norks and keep them from developing nukes.  (Spoiler alert: they developed nukes.)

Bush mixed some tough talk with some diplo-speak, carrot-and-sticking the Norks to stop testing their missiles.  (Spoiler alert: they kept testing their missiles.)

Obama muttered his way through the kind of banalities that most of us outgrew by the spring of freshman year (No one wins in a nuclear war, you’ll be on the wrong side of history if you don’t agree with me, the entire world community agrees that…), in an effort to stop the Norks from developing and testing longer-range ICBMs.   (Spoiler alert: they developed and tested longer-range ICBMs.)

Bottom line: North Korea is a mess that threatens its neighbors, and that’s going to continue until the demented socialist regime that has been torturing their people is gotten rid of.  All sarcasm aside, the recent history of NK is a devastating story of incredible suffering and almost incomprehensible evil, and it’s tragic that China has enabled it, and that no other nations have been able to stop it.

But I don’t think anyone has a clear idea of how to solve this.   The only thing that seems clear is that it’s infinitely better to prevent despotic regimes from getting nukes than to try to deal with them once they have nukes.

Speaking of Iran…

I’ve been working about 12 hours a day since this month started, and I fell out of the current events loop a bit.  I’ve got a couple of old, restored rental houses in a college town, and this is the hectic time of year when the tenants turn over, and I turn from trying to fix the world through the magic of sarcastic mockery, to trying to fix the damage to a two-story Craftsman left by marauding undergrads.

I even spent less time reading Cautious Optimism than usual, which is obviously a sign of a life in danger of going off the rails.  So over the last two evenings I caught up on CO and some of my other favorite media sources.

And now I feel like I may still be feeling the effects of a Percocet hangover.  Has everyone lost their freaking minds?

Of course, one place where they have not is at CO.  CO himself continues his unerring streak of picking All-Star CO Follower of the Month selections with Don Deere.  Laura Belveal introduces me to the story of an amazing woman I’d never heard of named Temple Grandin.  (It’s a sign of our society’s decay that you can find a million people who know Lena Dunham for every one person who knows Grandin.)  And the site continues to enlighten and entertain, through the story selection and the sparkling commentary.

But the rest of the world?  Bah!

There were so many odd stories that it was hard to pick just a couple:

• Google bloviates about how much they value diversity, and welcome all sorts of divergent viewpoints. Then they fire a guy because he expressed a divergent viewpoint.
• The MSM keep up their 0-for-August accuracy record by smearing the Google guy’s memo without quoting any of it. In fact, their claims about his memo are Schumerian in their dishonesty.  They claim that he is against diversity.  (Quote from the memo, “I value diversity.”)  They claim that he says women aren’t biologically capable of succeeding in tech jobs.  (Quote from the memo: “I am not saying that women are biologically incapable of succeeding in tech jobs.”) etc.
• A German newspaper reports that the German military is now actively recruiting transgendered people and disabled people as soldiers. Now I know that Germany has a little bad karma to work through, military-history-wise.  But no matter what happened in the past, can any conceivably rational solution possibly involve fielding a Panzer division headed up by Caitlyn Hawking-Rommel?

(Okay.  I know that at this point, Caitlyn jokes are low-hanging fruit.  And Stephen Hawking is a pretty prominent disabled celebrity.  And folks who know their WWII German generals will recognize the name of the Desert Fox.  But I ask you, how many website columns have you read that have pulled off that rare reference trifecta in one joke?  Normally I would hesitate to call myself a hero, but…)

Anyway, here’s a round-up of other odd stories that fascinated yet repelled me in the last 10 days or so:

1.Al Gore is apparently still alive.  And he’s made a horrible sequel to his horrible, error-filled An Inconvenient Truth.   And it made $47 in it’s opening weekend.  And in an interview, he suggested that Trump might not finish out his term for “ethical reasons.”

That’s Al Gore, ladies and gentlemen.  Talking about ethics.  The guy who preaches an austere lifestyle, and leaving a tiny carbon footprint, while he owns one of the biggest houses in Tennessee, which uses something like 30 times the electricity of the average American home; the guy who flies everywhere in private jets, and who sold his hideous tv channel to a company owned and funded by an oil-soaked Middle Eastern emir.

None of that keeps Gore up at night.  But Trump’s ethics do.

My faith in God is a little shaken, because He has not stricken Gore with an all-natural, gluten-free, eco-friendly lightning bolt.   I think Sodom and Gomorrah are owed an apology.

2. Royal Dutch Airlines (slogan: “We’re not just wooden shoes and open-air heroin markets. We have airplanes, too!”) decided that the best way to entice people to fly with them was to tout their hyper- extra- super-gay friendliness. So they created an ad that features three sets of rainbow-colored seatbelts.

On top – no offense – is a pair of what might be called “female” seatbelts.   (Those are the ones with the handle that you pull on to release the belt in case you’ve crashed into a rocky outcropping 7 miles from Denver at 350 mph and are now experiencing discomfort, and would like to exit the plane in an orderly manner.)

In the middle is a pair of what might be called “male” seatbelts.  (Those are the ones that you would usually shove into the “female” ones – no offense – until you hear a satisfying click.  Or a less satisfying click, if both of you are tired and your mother-in-law called with some advice during supper and your boss has been on your back at work and won’t those freaking kids ever shut up and go to sleep so I can concentrate on what I’m doing here?!)

On the bottom – no offense – is one “male” piece and one “female” piece.

The tag line: “It doesn’t matter who you click with.  Happy #Pride Amsterdam”

As many commentators pointed out, the flaw in the ad is so obvious that even Paul Krugman could spot it: only one set of those seatbelts actually work, and this ad undermines its point hilariously.

If the Cautious Optimist produced videos – and really, why doesn’t he? – this would be a prime candidate for a response ad.  Here’s the scenario:  The pilot announces that there is turbulence ahead, so he (or she – no offense) turns on the “fasten seatbelt” sign.   Everybody with heterosexual seat belts (no offense) snaps them on, and lives happily ever after.

Everybody with the “alternative lifestyle” seat belts rattles and pokes and bonks them together ineffectually, and then increasingly frantically, until the turbulence hits, throwing them all violently about the cabin, breaking limbs and fracturing T-3 vertebrae hither and yon.

Tag line: “Lufthansa.  We could not care less who you sleep with.  And our seatbelts work.”

3. Some guy named Jim Chambers owns a gym in Atlanta. And because he was once bench pressing 300 pounds when the bar broke, dropping many heavy weights onto his head, he scrawled a sign in his fine establishment expressing the idea that cops were not welcome there.

You know that Jim is a classy guy, because:

1. He hand-scrawls the signs in his windows.
2. He can’t express his hand-scrawled opinions without tastefully dropping in an F bomb.
3. He is a self-proclaimed “activist” who hates cops.

But the story gets better.  When local media heard about his “cops suck” stance and asked him whether he regretted it, he conferred with his p.r. team (i.e. a poster of Arnold from his “Pumping Iron” days, but with Bernie Sanders’ head taped over the Terminator’s – which he hears talking to him on a regular basis).  Then he says no.  He doesn’t like cops.  Plus, soldiers suck too, so no military veterans, either.

When I was doing the coursework for my Ph.D. in Public Relations, I learned that this tactic is called “steering into the scandal skid.”  The textbook example was Ted Kennedy right after Chappaquiddick; when a reporter asked him whether he’d been drinking before he drove off the bridge, he said, “Yes.  A lot.  But that cold water sobered me right up.  And then I left my date to drown.  Any more questions?”

Anyway, back to Jim Chambers.  Before you dismiss him as a bigot and a moron, consider his reasons: he claims that many of his clientele “are minorities, and not comfortable around cops,” and also that law enforcement “serves capitalism and white supremacy.”

Okay, NOW you can dismiss Chambers as a bigot and a moron.

He states that he doesn’t like capitalism… in an interview given in the for-profit business that he owns.  Plus, he is doing classic niche marketing: folks in his part of town belong to a demographic which tends not to like cops, so he caters to that dysfunctional and self-defeating attitude as a marketing strategy.

It’s like Louis Farrakhan and Gordon Gekko had a baby, and that baby was raised by Karl Marx, and then had heavy weights dropped on his head.  And then he opened a gym.

Proving once again that cops are better people than me, the Atlanta PD confirmed for the media that Chambers’ sign and attitude would not prevent them from responding if he ever calls the police.   Whereas I would respond too.   But by laughing, and laughing and laughing.  And then hanging up.

4. But just as I was contemplating giving up on the world, I saw this story: During a minor league baseball game, an autistic boy tried to get the attention of Tim Tebow, who was warming up on deck. Tebow saw him, and came over and shook his hand. (The kid was so happy that he ran back up to his parents in the stands, literally crying with joy.)  Then Tebow hit a 3-run home run.

The only way that story could have be sweeter would have been if the towering homer would have forced a low-flying Royal Dutch Airlines jet equipped with gay seat belts to make a crash landing into a Radisson ballroom, killing only two of the speakers – Al Gore and Jim Chambers — on a panel addressing the topic, “How the Police, White Supremacy and Capitalism are responsible for Global Warming.”

Since my last piece for CO, a lot has gone on around stately Simpson manor.  As our national political in-fighting has gone in a more frustrating, “a pox on both houses” kind of a direction, I’ve turned toward tending my own garden, metaphorically speaking.  I’ve done a few home maintenance projects, took the girls for a visit with their grandmother, etc.   And a few days ago, I went to an oral surgeon to have a troublesome molar removed.

By the way, for all of you CO readers out there who may be studying or practicing the black arts of dentistry, here’s a little advice.  When you are part way through the process of removing a pesky molar that has roots that somehow extend down into the lower abdomen, do NOT say, “This one is stubborn, so I’m going to cut the tooth in half and then remove it in pieces.”

That information helps no one.  Especially when the patient has a powerful imagination, so much so that – numbed though half of his jaw and face may be – he can imagine the vertical sawing through of the tooth, and the violent removal of jagged pieces with what must have been pliers and a very, very small jackhammer.

Anyway, long story short, I survived the kind of violent molar-cide that would have killed a lesser man.  And for 48 hours afterward, I had the pronounced jawline swelling that made my already excellent Godfather impression even more eerily accurate.  Though now that I think about it, the effect was more like Michael after that corrupt police captain punched him in the face, and he had to have his jaw wired shut.   (If you didn’t get those references, for shame.  Stop reading this and watch Godfathers I and II immediately.)

And now, thanks to the wonders of anesthetic and Percocet, I’d like to follow in the footsteps of one of my idols, Thomas Sowell, and present a few Random Thoughts:

First, a toast.  To the inventor of Percocet, who ranks behind only Jonas Salk, Les Paul and the inventor of scotch as a benefactor of mankind.  Hear hear, and well done, Frederick J. Percocet!

Second, a symbolic groin kick to the national GOP leadership.  In my last CO piece I offered 5 options to vote for the Hypocrite of the Year, a list that included such lowlife weirdos as CNN, a Florida woman who left her kid in a broiling car and then complained that the cop car she rode in was too hot, and the national Democrats.  And the mostly conservative and wise CO readership voted about 95% for you, the leaders of the GOP.

After years of pretending to want to repeal the freedom- and health-care-degrading disaster that is Obamacare, you’ve revealed your utter fecklessness.  (Seriously, you people are completely and utterly lacking in even the tiniest morsel of feck.)   And now most of you seem determined to achieve the worst of both worlds, by producing a non-repeal that keeps many of the worst features of O-care, and calling it a repeal.  When that monstrosity inevitably fails, the corrupt media will not point out that it was originally a leftist creation.  They’ll call it Trumpcare and use its failure as a way to smear you, and an excuse to move on to the wasteful morass of mediocrity and rationing that is national health care.

Speaking of which, can there ever be a better illustration of nationalized health care than the tragic Charlie Gard story?  I know that that kid was almost certainly going to die no matter what happened.  But his parents had hope, and they had raised enough money to take him to the states, where a competent doctor proposed a treatment that offered at least a chance of improvement.

But the arrogant health care bureaucrats at the British NHS would not let the parents take their own child out of the hospital to try to save or prolong his life.  Instead, they forced the parents to go through protracted court proceedings, arguing that they had a right to their child while that child’s life slowly slipped away.

Think about that.  The parents didn’t need money or anything else from the State.  They just wanted to take their own kid to another doctor who offered to treat him.  And they had to beg for that chance, while the State kept their son from them until it was too late.

And for everybody who mocked Sarah Palin for coining the phrase “death panels?” I hope that you will one day have a stubborn molar that needs to be removed, but that you end up in a NHS hospital that is running short of anesthetic and Percocet.  And that instead of having the stoicism and strength of ten men – like a certain writer for a great web page whom I could mention – you have the general wussiness and low pain threshold of a Cryin’ Chuck Schumer.

And when you cry out, “But you said that if I liked my Percocet, I could keep my Percocet!”  I’m just going to laugh at you.  And tell you that there’s a 3-month wait for Percocet.  But that you can have this pair of rusty pliers and tiny, tiny jackhammer if you’d like.

Finally, I’ve discovered the purest distillation of a certain kind of misanthropically deranged feminism that you’ll ever see.   Please google “Jody Allard,” and read her article called, “I’m Done Pretending Men are Safe (even my sons),” and prepared to be dazzled by her contemplative open-mindedness.   Allard is a feminist writing about how horrible men are (surprise, surprise), with the added twist of calling out her two young sons as potential rapists, too.

After first throwing her boys under the gender bus in an article for the Washington Post, she writes this follow-up article in which she reports that even though her sons are “good boys,” they aren’t “safe.”  In fact, she cluelessly shows that she’s not just a sexist, but a racist too, by proclaiming, “White people aren’t safe, and men aren’t safe, no matter how much I’d like to assure myself that these things aren’t true.”

The kindest compliment that she can manage is to say, “My sons won’t rape unconscious women behind a dumpster, and neither will most of the progressive men I know.”

Gee thanks, mom.  Love you too.

And by the way, you’re probably asking yourself, does that imply that non-progressive men will obviously be raping women behind dumpsters pretty much every weekend, and on alternating Tuesdays?

Yes.  Yes it does.

At one moment in her written Rohrschach test of a screed, Allard almost achieves a tiny flicker of self-awareness, but then fights it off:  “I love my sons, and I love some individual men. It pains me to say that I don’t feel emotionally safe with them, and perhaps never have with a man, but it needs to be said because far too often we are afraid to say it. This is not a reflection of something broken or damaged in me…”

NO, of course not!  You’re doing great, just the way you are.  You just keep doing you, and I’m sure your boys — Norman Bates Allard and Ted Bundy Allard — are going to turn out just fine.

Or maybe that’s just the Percocet talking.

Anyway, read the whole thing for yourself.  And then raise your kids in the exact opposite way that she is raising hers, and you’ll be fine.