Month: March 2018

Last week I began by observing that I don’t usually laugh when senior citizens fall down the stairs, but that I’d make an exception for Hillary.

This week I’d like to begin by noting that I don’t usually finding myself aching to punch a teenager in the face, but I’d make an exception for little David Hogg.

If you haven’t seen young master Hogg in the media lately, consider yourself fortunate.  He’s one of the kids who go to Parkland High School in Florida, where a colossal failure of local government (and the FBI) allowed a red-flag-waving misfit the chance to shoot a bunch of kids in a gun-free zone.  So naturally Hogg blamed the NRA and law-abiding gun owners, who had nothing to do with said shooting.

The “arguments” he makes are as threadbare and simple-minded and thoroughly debunked as you might expect, and at first I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  He’s 17, with all of the obnoxiousness that most of us have at that age, a toxic brew of ignorance and unearned self-assurance.   Until now, I’ve saved my ire for the dishonest MSM jerks who have been exploiting the Parkland kids, using them as puppets to spout the MSM’s own anti-gun and anti-conservative talking points.

But at some point the grace we should grant to kids who don’t know any better runs out.  And that point has arrived.  In countless appearances, he’s smeared everyone who appreciates the second amendment as evil child murderers, as well as accusing the NRA of desiring and profiting off of such murders.

It’s not his fault that he’s an adolescent.  It’s not his fault that he has a Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI ™) of 9.8.  It’s not his fault that his parents apparently dropped the ball on the old “don’t drop the F bomb every other sentence on national tv” moral training.

But he’s been spouting off for long enough now, and since he seems to lack any self-awareness, and is blessed with a young leftist’s immunity to self-reflection, someone should probably give him a good jab to the snout.  Possibly followed by a right cross, delivered with just enough force to pierce his thick cloud of self-regard.   And make his eyes water.

Ironically, if someone were to give him such a pummeling, he’d likely find himself wishing that he had some way to defend himself.  Some sort of a device that could level the playing field.  Maybe a device guaranteed to him by a crinkly old document written by a bunch of dead white male geniuses in the 18^th century.

If only his cramped and bile-flecked world view allowed for the existence of such a device, and the right to use it for self-defense.  (Cue Nelson Munch:  HA HA!)

 

Well, Stormy was on tv last night, and the result was apparently not quite as earth-shattering as the MSM had hoped.   I didn’t watch it – life is too short – but I read a couple of quick recaps of it today, and apparently Trump had a consensual one-nighter with a porn star in 2006.

That’s not a good thing.  I’d like to go out on a limb here, and say that I wish that married presidents wouldn’t have one-nighters with porn stars.

Of course, I also wish that past presidents didn’t carry on strings of affairs, and use interns as humidors, and rape Juanita Broaddrick.  And that presidents before that didn’t deflower teenagers while being married to Jackie O, and bully other teenagers into sex with his corrupt dirigible of a younger brother.   And that that brother didn’t leave Mary Jo Kopeckne to die in a car.   And I wish that the MSM wouldn’t cover up and downplay those sleazy actions, while waiting for a GOP prez to do something 1/100^th that bad, and then pull their dresses over their heads and run around shrieking in feigned outrage until they ran into the nearest wall, leaving an ugly divot in the drywall and concussing their already pitifully weak and frail brains.

While I’m at it, I also wish that Hillary would tumble down a flight of stairs and land on David Hogg, and that the two of them would then careen into Elizabeth Warren’s teepee (we should never stop mocking her), flattening it and her.

But if wishes were horses, I’d have a ranch.

In the end, my guess is that Stormy’s wished-for Trump-killing scandal will turn out to be a tempest in a D-cup teacup (HA!).   I like to imagine Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, Don Lemon et al sitting around in a dive bar, drunkenly singing the following lyrics:

“I walk around, heavy-hearted and sad/Night comes around, I’m still feelin’ bad/Rain pourin’ down, blindin’ every hope I had/This pitterin’, patterin’, beatin’ and spatterin’ drives me mad/Love, love, love, love/This misery is just too much for me.”

That verse, of course, comes from an old standard called “Stormy Weather.”   Stick it, mainstream media.

And, I guess, don’t stick it anywhere else any more, Donald Trump.

 

I’d like to thank everyone in CO nation for your kind words about my aunt last week.  I’m back home now, after the visitation and funeral, with a renewed sense of gratitude for my family.

The whole small town turned out; the visitation was packed, as was the funeral.  During the funeral, the pastor preached on hope, and they played three songs: Johnny Cash singing, “I’ll Fly Away,” and my uncle Don singing two songs for Donna, which he had recorded for her on a little tape deck more than 20 years ago, a few years before his final sickness started.

Then the drive to a hilltop Illinois cemetery.  (Lots of tombstones with names of my family and those related to us, plus a nearby grave over which a Cubs “W” flag – placed there two Novembers ago, over a man who never lived to see the World Series victory — snapped in a brisk March wind.) We pallbearers carried her to the spot next to Uncle Don, and some words were said, some Scripture recited, a few jokes were told.  And then off to the VFW hall for a feast prepared by some ladies from the Baptist church.  (Guess how many of the dishes were either gluten-free or vegan.)  (Then guess a lower number than that.)

(Unless you guessed zero the first time.)

(In which case, bingo.)

(Quick: name that movie:  “That’s a bingo!  Did I say that right?”  “Ya just say ‘bingo.'”)

I know that a few pharaohs and kings over the centuries have had some elaborate funerals, probably accompanied by the best singers in their respective lands, with some nice arrangements of Gregorian chants or pan flute recitals or whatever music was in vogue at the time.

But if you tell me that any of them had more moving singers than Johnny Cash and my Uncle Don, I’m going to call you a bald-faced Schumer.

Oops.  Liar.  Bald-faced liar.

 

On a happier note, we are still working on the house we’re hoping to move into next month.  My youngest daughter is thrilled with her room, which is an anachronistic wood-paneled time capsule right out of Mad Men.

But she’s decided to recreate a wall-sized version of one of her favorite paintings, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, on one of those walls.  She’s part-way through, and I’ve posted a picture of her at work – along with Cassie the Wonder Dog, who is supervising the production.

First, let me say that I’m not usually the kind of guy who enjoys watching senior citizens falling down the stairs.  Not usually.

But I’ll make an exception for Hillary Clinton.  I probably watched her slipping down that stone staircase in India half a dozen times, before I searched the internet, and sure enough, somebody has put together a montage of Hillary slipping, stumbling and falling, set to “Stairway to Heaven.”  Pretty good stuff.

But if I had any tech talent, I would do a mash-up of Hillary’s India trip (ha!) with Cagney tap dancing down the White House steps at the end of Yankee Doodle Dandy, and maybe for a little extra salt in the wound, Gene Nelson dancing up and down the stairs (and a bannister) in Tea for Two.

I can almost hear you saying, “Martin, we didn’t know you were 112 years old, and gay.”  Well I’m not.  I had to search “funny staircase dancing clips” to find both of those.

But once I found them?  I wish I could put them together with Hillary’s wild ride, maybe with a little Trump coming down the cheesy escalator, too, just for good measure.  By the way, whoever is in charge of Hillary’s security these days?  You might want to consider having the advance team build escalators every place she’s going to visit.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not concerned for her safety.  I just want to see what it looks like when a septuagenarian tumbles down a freaking escalator!

My favorite part was after Hillary slipped the second time and decided to kick off her shoes to give her a better chance of making it down alive.  And yes, the shoe did look familiar, to anyone who follows the Indianapolis Colts.  (That’s right, a subtle helmet/horseshoe joke.)

“Come on now, Simpson” you’re probably thinking, “You’re better than that.”

First, obviously I am not.  Because while you were thinking that, I was thinking that it might be cool to also inter-cut an old Howard Cosell fight call (“Down goes Frazier!”) in with Hillary’s staircase debacle.

Second, it’s not just Hillary.  I’ve also appreciated other presidents’ physical gaffes.  I thought it was pretty funny when Bush 41 vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister.  (Though I wished it had been on Arafat instead.)  And when Bush 43 dodged those shoes thrown by an ungrateful Iraqi at a press conference.

But I have noticed a subtle bias in media coverage of such things.  (The hell you say!)   Gerald Ford was a college athlete, yet he fell once or twice, and Chevy Chase turned that into a long (and painfully unfunny) career.  41’s vomiting makes lists of all-time presidential gaffes, and the media thought the shoe-throwing was hilarious, even though Bushie showed some pretty good reflexes while successfully dodging.

But compare Bush’s throwing out the first pitch in a major league game in 2001, to Obama’s attempt in 2010.  (Someone has already put those together on Youtube.)  Bush throws a strike.  But Obama’s pitch?  If Bush’s dad saw that, he’d pull another “bow to the Japanese Prime Minister” move, as I’m going to call it whenever anyone vomits on anyone else, from now on.  I’m surprised that half the dictators in the world didn’t start planning to invade the US after watching our commander-in-chief make that Malibu Barbie throw.

As unbelievably bad as that pitch looked, I’ve got something worse.  You’ve probably never seen this video before, but once upon a time, Barack did a photo op in which he showed off his basketballs skills.  The slick, cool, collected first African-American president started putting up shot after shot.

And – in the most perfect metaphor for his presidency that I can imagine – he looked great doing it, while getting terrible results.   He’d catch a pass gracefully, and square up, and follow his shot with a deft wrist-flip, like you’re supposed to.  But he Missed.  Every.  Shot.  Shot after shot.  With a clank clank here and a clang clang there, here an air ball there an air ball, everywhere a missed shot.

The guy built a brick house.  Then a brick guest house, with a brick six-car-garage.  Then he started on a brick driveway.  It got so embarrassing that he got closer, but still missed.  Then he missed a lay-up that was worse than his baseball pitch.  Then he missed a shot from right underneath the basket.

When he finally made a shot from about 6 feet, the crowd cheered the way you’d cheer if Stephen Hawking drained one from the top of the paint.  (Too soon?)

 

Anyway, lots of other stuff happened this week, and all of it was more important (but not more enjoyable) than Hillary falling down the steps of the Temple of Clutz-a-coatl.

(Okay, I know I’ve got the wrong continent and the wrong culture.  But c’mon, how many jokes combining Quetzalcoatl and Stumblin’ Hillary are you likely to read this month?  That one has to be in the top three, at least!)

Andrew McCabe got fired – and fired like a boss, only 2 days before he would have been eligible to collect his full (and fully UN-deserved) pension!  The only way that could have been better was if Sessions had waited to call him just before midnight on the last day before.  Don’t let the door hit you, you leaking, perjuring weasel!

When she wasn’t tumbling down the architectural treasures of India, Hillary also spoke, and you know that’s never good.  This time she blamed all the little American ladies who were bullied into voting against her by their big, mean husbands and bosses and sons.  That’s right, the Feminist Icon Who Would be President said that women are too weak and malleable, and that’s why she’s auditioning for a Falling Wallendas tour of the third world instead of barking orders from a double-wide recliner in the White House.

Crazy Walter Brennan released the tweet of the year, full of vitriol and drama-queenery and not-so-veiled threats against the president.

No, wait.  Not Walter Brennan.  He was a hell of a character actor, played Stumpy in Rio Bravo.  (I didn’t have to look that one up.)  My grandpa introduced me to him in some westerns when I was a kid, and we both developed a limping, old-timer-voiced impression of Brennan that cracked my grandma up.

I meant John Brennan.   He played a CIA head, but he wasn’t much of an actor, and had no character at all.  It’s hard to believe how many of these empty suits with formerly good reputations – Comey, Mueller, Strzok, McCabe and now Brennan – have shown themselves to be bitter, partisan hacks.

Finally, on a sad personal note, my aunt passed away this weekend.  I’ve written about her here before – she got a cancer diagnosis back in October, and by Thanksgiving it looked like she might not see Christmas.  But she rallied, and held on for a couple of more good, mostly pain-free months with her kids and family.    I’m heading up to Illinois to be a pallbearer for her later this week.

She had the best spouse-meeting story I know:  She was waitressing in a diner in the late 50s on a Thursday night, when my uncle was driving past after a shift at a chemical plant.   (I’m not making that up: my relatives are all straight out of a Tom Waits song.)  He saw her through the window and made a u-turn, went in and had a cup of coffee, and introduced himself.   His name was Don; her name was Donna.  (Really.  Not making this up.)  They went out on Saturday, he proposed on Sunday and they were married the next Saturday.   And they stayed that way for over 40 years, happy as clams, until he passed in 2003.

The moral of the story: marry someone after you’ve known him/her for 10 days, and everything will work out fine!

I’ve spent a big chunk of the last few days listening to some music that reminds me of her, and that comforts me.  I know that many in the CO nation are likely not Christians, and that very few are likely quasi-hillbillies like my dad’s family.  But no matter your background, if you haven’t heard some of that old time rootsy/gospel stuff, you’re missing out.  Especially when it comes to burying a loved one, the consolation of faith is all the sweeter when accompanied by some fiddle, banjo, mandolin and accordian.  (As a general rule, most 15^th English hymns/drinking songs are at least 23% better when some small self-taught Bluegrass group sings in southern accents and “grasses it up” with an acoustic arrangement.)

For anyone interested, you could do worse than this list:

All My Tears – Julie Miller wrote this, and I like her version that appeared on the Songcatcher sountrack.   But some crazy Norwegians called the Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra do a pretty cool version too, until they go all Whitney Houston and overdo it at the end.  (Something about the idea of a bunch of Viking descendants named Ole and Magnus and Joakim singing Kentucky Simpson songs cracks me up.)

By the Mark – Gillian Welch wrote this one, and the Appalachia in her version is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Nothing But the Blood – this old standard works just about every way it’s played, but Nathan Drake does a good, stripped-down acoustic version.

I’ll Fly Away – Aussies Ashleigh Dallas and Kasey Chambers play a live duet version that is imperfect but somehow better for it, and there’s a little violin business in the middle that always gets me.

Because we’ve got some Irish background too, I couldn’t skip the Wailin’ Jenny’s doing the best version of The Parting Glass that I’ve heard.

 

Here’s to you, Aunt Donna, until we meet again.

There’s a lot to hate, unfortunately:

1.Trump took a couple of left turns that resurrected some conservatives’ worries about his ideological consistency.  His post-Parkland statements about guns may have been well-intentioned, but were not helpful.  I think the left’s instinctive gun grabbing dishonesty has earned our slippery-slope-based resistance to their efforts: they say they’ll only go after “assault-style” weapons, or automatic weapons, or energy-pulse weapons that only exist in science fiction movies.  But the next thing you know, they’re talking fondly of British or Australian-style handgun confiscation.

That being said, I’d rank Trump’s proposals — from justified to unjustified — as follows: allowing teachers with gun training to carry at school, banning bump stocks, and raising the age to buy rifles from 18 to 21.  I like the first one, don’t care a lot about the second, but am bothered by the third.

In a perfect world, I’d like to see us decide on a single age of maturity, and make that consistent across the board.  Let’s decide when people are old enough for adult responsibilities:  consuming alcohol, voting, buying rifles/guns, etc.  Let’s make up our minds whether that age is 21 or 18.  I wouldn’t mind seeing it raised to 21, if that meant we’d have fewer 18, 19 and 20 year olds voting!  (No offense, 18-20 year olds.  But c’mon.  Too many of you know who DJ Khaled is, but not who Johnny Cash or John Prine is.  Plus, very few of you pay taxes, and a lot of you voted for Bernie in 2016.  So a lot of you would do way more damage at the polls than at a gun range.)

In fact, I’d rather see a mandatory IQ test before you vote:

Question 1: Is Elizabeth Warren (we should never stop mocking her) a Cherokee?

Question 2: Would you rather trust Sheriff Steve “not an Israeli” Israel to protect you more than you would trust yourself with a gun to protect you?

Question 3: Should any country be forbidden from controlling its own borders?

Question 4: Does socialism work better than free market capitalism?

Anyone answering “yes” to any of these questions should be banned from voting.  Problem solved, and you’re welcome.

The worst part of the gun debacle, for me, was Trump’s castigating GOP pols for being “afraid of the NRA.”  That’s the kind of shoddy talk that we expect from Dems, and it’s not justified.  The NRA has sway in Washington – to the extent that it does – because millions of Americans value the 2^nd amendment and support the NRA’s agenda.  The NRA doesn’t give nearly as much money as Big Labor or George Soros or a bunch of other interest groups, and it’s lazy to make the ad hominem “bought and paid for” charge.  I love to see Trump slap around GOP pols when they deserve it, but in this case they don’t.

Next: tariffs.  Ugh.  CO knows more about this than I do, but even I know that trade wars aren’t great things, and easy to win.  Again, Trump’s heart is in the right place, but his head isn’t.

Finally: Stormy Daniels.  I think this story has been overblown by the hypocritical media and Dems, who were more than happy to cover for girlfriend-murdering Ted Kennedy and rapey perv-meister Bill Clinton.   And don’t get me wrong: if the alternative is voting for leftist Clydesdale Hillary or socialist mummy Bernie, I wouldn’t care if Trump came down the escalator with an unconscious stripper draped over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, he’d have my vote.  But it’s still depressing to see a GOP president credibly accused of affairs with strippers.

It’s also depressing that someone named “Stormy” is involved.  At first I assumed that that was a nom de nude, but it turns out that her sisters are Misty and Sunny.  (Oddly enough, her other sister, “Occluded Front Daniels” went into accounting.   True story.)

2. On the other hand, the Dems have engaged in a lot more hate-worthy behavior, as always:

Creepy CA senator Kamala Harris said that she 100% supports creepy Oakland mayor Libby (HA!) Schaaf’s decision to warn a bunch of criminal aliens about pending ICE raids, allowing hundreds of them to avoid capture.   If there were any justice in the world (full disclosure: even though I’m a Christian, I sometimes think I’d prefer my Deity with 10% more Old Testament in Him, with the wrath and the smiting and the plagues of boils), the very next victims of criminal alien attacks or robberies in CA would be Schaaf and Harris.

Skeevy Hollywood lefties rolled out another unwatchable Oscars, and proved themselves impervious to all objective feedback about their condescending politics.  My favorite part was when Jimmy “waaaah!” Kimmel defended a movie featuring a 17 year old gay kid having an affair with a 24-year old man, and admitted that the Best Picture nominees were mostly financial losers.  Old Quiver Lips said, “That’s not the point.  We don’t make films like “Call Me By Your Name” for money. We make them to upset Mike Pence.”

So let me get this right: if Trump sails a few “Stormy” seas, that’s an outrage.   But when moral dinosaur Mike Pence – with his anachronistic “fidelity” and “wedding vows” and “Christian principles” – seems to object to adult-adolescent sex (even when both parties have the same genitalia!), he’s also outrageous.

Okkkaayy, Jimbo.  And by the way, re: “we don’t make these movies to make money?”  Mission accomplished.

 

Thankfully, there’s been more to love than to hate:

1.Along with the Bad Trump, we’ve had a few servings of Good Trump, as during his boisterous speech the other day, when he laid into many worthy targets, including labeling Maxine Waters as a “low IQ individual.”  And before you object that that isn’t presidential, let me point out that truth is an absolute defense to charges of slander.

Also, to say that Waters has a room temperature IQ is an insult to the temperature in most rooms, which in my experience is usually quite comfortable.  Okay, sure, she might actually have a room temperature IQ … but only if that room is in an uninsulated house in northern Minnesota in the third week of January, and the house is heated only by solar panels, and the sun hasn’t been out since St. Crispen’s Day.

Once someone explained to Mad Maxine – repeatedly, and slowly, and in very small words — what the president had said about her, Waters shockingly accused him of being a racist.

2. The unwatchable Oscars turned out to be… unwatched, with the lowest ratings in years. The preening leftists in Hollywood have made it clear that they hate more than half of their (former) audience, and that audience is saying, “Right back at ya, you bunch of preaching Polanskis!” It always warms my heart to see people vote with their remotes, and their feet.  Although there are some good people in high-tax, business-hostile blue states, it is gratifying to watch productive citizens fleeing CA and IL and NY for places like TX, TN and FL.  It’s also satisfying to see big gains in NRA membership after the shameful post-Parkland straw-man bonfire.   Reap what you sow, you condescending jerks.

3.  Ah, Elizabeth Warren — the gift that keeps on Indian-giving. (HA!) She went on Fox on Sunday, and be-clowned herself yet again.  When John Roberts told her that a local MA paper had asked her to take a DNA test to once-and-for-all settle the question of her alleged Indian heritage, she declined, saying, “I know who I am,” and repeating the slanderous stories about how her Injun’-hatin’ paternal grandparents objected to their son marrying a (blue-eyed) squaw like her mom.

Because who would believe something as sketchy as DNA evidence, when you’ve got family gossip and rumors?  The Party of Science™, that’s who!

Tragically, Warren said that she won’t be running for president in 2020.  Say it ain’t so, Liz!

4. Finally, my favorite kind of favorite stories: another dumb criminal tale.

This time, let me take you to Hartford, Connecticut, where an upstanding young man named Jonathan Rivera went to Superior Court to answer a charge of car theft from February.  While he was in court talking to the judge – mentioning how he was the victim of a corrupt judicial system, and racial profiling, and the kind of brutal capitalism that prevented him from getting access to transportation, I’m guessing – parking enforcers were scanning license plates in the courthouse parking lot.

One set of plates came up stolen, and when the parking cops checked the VIN on the car, it turned out to be stolen, too.  So they set up an elaborate sting operation.  By which I mean, they stood around until someone came out of court and got into the stolen car, and they grabbed him.

Guess who he was?

Anthony Weiner!

Ha!  I’m kidding of course.  Because the car was not in fact a 15 year old girl, but a 4 year old Subaru.

And the driver was Jonathan Rivera.

That’s right.  This criminal mastermind went to court to contest a stolen car charge, driving a stolen car, with stolen plates on it.

I give you the next Democratic candidate for Governor of Connecticut: Jonathan Rivera!

The last half of February was a target-rich environment of leftist shenanigans, from the Dems’ vaunted memo dropping (and then sinking without leaving a ripple), to leftist Olympians mouthing off and then under-performing.   But two stories — one that no one noticed, and the other that we can’t stop talking about — most caught my attention.  Both happened on Valentine’s Day.

First, Elizabeth Warren gave me a sweet, sweet present.  She spoke at the National Congress of American Indians (am I wrong to have never heard of this group before?), and steered into the skid of her ridiculous, oft-told fairy tale that she is Native American.  She reaffirmed her transparently false family story – grammy was part Indian, granddad’s family didn’t like that, so they eloped.

This story has been extensively researched – and extensively debunked – and the smart thing would have been for Warren to let that old story get older.  But she hasn’t learned the old Clinton scam:  grope and then force yourself on the interns, and then claim they are all trailer trash who are lying.

No, wait.  Not that Clinton scam.   The other Clinton scam: start a phony foundation to sell influence to a Star War’s bar scene full of miscreants, ne’er-do-wells and jackanapes, making millions doing it.

No, wait.  Man, you need a score card to keep the Clinton scams straight.  Let me go through my Clinton Scandal rolodex:  sell missile technology to the Chicoms, put an illiterate bouncer in charge of going through the private FBI files of your political enemies, rent out the Lincoln Bedroom like it was a mob-controlled hot pillow joint in Hell’s Kitchen, spread STDs far and wide like a priapic Johnny Appleseed (but instead of Granny Smiths, you’re tossing gonorrhea in your wake)…

Got it: this is the scam where you lie and dodge and fight in the courts to delay news of your terrible behavior coming to light.  Then, when the scandal is ultimately proven, shrug your shoulders and call it “old news,” and say that it’s time to move on.

THAT’s the old Clinton scam that the Nordic Cherokee has not learned.   She used fake Indian ancestry to get an affirmative action job at Harvard, and launch her academic and later political career.  And she contributed a few alleged Indian recipes for Oklahoma Crab Bisque to a cookbook called (I’m not kidding) Pow Wow Chow.  (This clever recipe would definitely fool anyone who has never seen a crab, or been to Oklahoma, or is otherwise unable to look up either crabs or Oklahoma.)

But that’s done.  It’s in the past.  Or it would be, if she wasn’t stupid enough to bring it up again in front of the National Congress of American Indians!

Look, Liz, you’ve got to face facts.  You’re the least convincing Indian since Cher put on a bedazzled loincloth with a ginormous headdress and sang Half Breed.  (Watch that on Youtube right now, if you haven’t seen it.)  Or since an entire cast of buckskin-wearing vaguely ethnic extras made the tv show F-Troop (Youtube.  Right now!)  Larry Storch, who was supposed to be a white soldier, was a more convincing Indian than you.

Remember Iron Eyes Cody, the Indian who cried over litter in commercials? (Youtube, I tell’s ya!)  He was not an Indian.  He was an Italian guy named Vito Lucchese Siciliano, or something like that.  But at least he had dark skin and dark eyes, and changed his name to “Iron Eyes.”

You’re blonde, and blue eyed, and you look like a New England WASP who is none too pleased that the help is getting a little chatty as she dusts the cherry wood harpsicord that great-great-great-grandfather brought over with him on the Mayflower.   And your name is ELIZABETH!  First it was Elizabeth Herring, and then you married some sap named Warren.

And you know what no librarian has ever said, when surrounded by a semi-circle of bright-eyed four-year olds, on a faded carpet near the circulation desk?  “Gather round, kids, and I’ll tell you story of when the noble Sauk Herrings went on the war path against the fearsome Chickasaw Warrens!”

You’re a doddering old white lady, Liz, and you’re as phony as a Clinton wedding vow, and we will never stop mocking you.

 

Right now, some of you are probably thinking, why is Martin still on the warpath (HA!) against Forked-Tongue Warren?  I didn’t hear anything about her talk to the wigwam convention.

That’s because the same day Lizzie was addressing the Indians, a lunatic was murdering school kids in Florida.

This is such a sad story, and I’m sure you’re all sick to death of it by now.  So I won’t dwell on the details, other than to say the obvious: this kid presented more red flags than a May Day parade in Moscow.  Consider: 39 previous police calls to his house, his own mom met with the police about him, he had violent and threatening social media posts going back several years, and many people saw something and said something to the local FBI.  Who promptly dropped the ball, and didn’t follow up.

Which makes sense.  Because as long as phantom Russian hookers might be allegedly peeing on hotel beds somewhere in the Eastern bloc, you can’t waste valuable man hours (no offense) on trivial things like powder keg loons threatening school massacres.  Priorities, people!

Ugh.  Rather than re-hash the tragic story of that day, I’ve got a few thoughts about the aftermath, when CNN hit a new low, even for CNN.

I’m referring, of course, to last Wednesday night’s Howling Mob Straw Man Bonfire– er, Town Hall Meeting.  The whole thing was sickening, from Jake Tapper’s egging on the knuckle-dragging no-nothings in the crowd, to Sheriff Scott “Barney Fife’s less competent cousin” Israel’s dishonest blame-shifting, to the way that Dana Loesch and Marco Rubio were ambushed and abused by screaming morons.

I do see a silver lining in that town hall, though.  I think it is likely to be a moment of bracing clarity, when the bad-faith gun grabbers showed their true, and truly ugly, colors.  After watching that, everyone but the farthest left slice of the population knows two things:

1. There are some really angry, ignorant and bullying people in this country who are determined to take all guns away from law-abiding citizens if they can ever get the power to do so.
2. You cannot count on law enforcement – even well-meaning and well-led law enforcement, which the Parkland police and local FBI office clearly were not – to protect you when a bad guy with a gun goes on a rampage.

I can’t think of a better motivational advertisement for the 2^nd amendment and the NRA than showing any given two-minute segment from that town hall debacle.

And while a couple of the smug, uninformed kids (whom CNN is busy turning into celebrities) may be truly grating, you’ve got to cut them at least a little slack because of their youth and naivete and (I assume) terribly under-performing parents.  Not so with Scott Israel, the new front runner in “America’s Worst Sheriff” competition.

By the way, the Jewish state has just released a statement, which I quote in its entirety:  “The State of Israel would like to clarify that we are in no way related to Sheriff Scott Israel.  Really.  His last name is a total coincidence.   Wait.  Okay, it turns out he is Jewish.  But he’s not a resident of the State of Israel.  And we’ve got some of our best people working on having him convert to something else.  Anything, really. Scott, if you’re watching, Episcopalian might be the way to go.  Also, we’ve heard good things about Zoroastrianism.    So, in conclusion, and to summarize: Scott Israel — NOT an Israeli.  Thank you.”

That reminds me: I am NOT related to famous running back and wife-murderer OJ Simpson, or creepy Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.  (Any resemblance to either Bart or Homer are also completely coincidental.)  But I may be a distant relative of Ulysses Simpson Grant, because he was a bad a** Republican who whipped some slave-holding Democrats and looked mighty fine in a greatcoat, sitting on a horse.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, colossal hypocrite and non-Israeli Scott Israel.  The guy had the gall to pander to the crowd and go after Dana Loesch, but from the minute that televised would-be lynch mob ended, one damning fact after another about Israel (the terrible sheriff, not the nation) has come to light.  His department was called to the shooter’s house dozens of times, his armed deputy stood outside the school, etc.  His reputation is in tatters, and if there’s any justice, he’ll soon be fired and driven from polite society

Hey, I just got another great idea.  (“ANOTHER one?” I can hear the sarcastic among you saying.) (I’m not going to dignify that with a response.)

Every state should have a “most infamous Democrat” associated with it, just to remind citizens of every state how bad that party is.  In fact, maybe some CO readers would like to nominate a high profile Dem candidate from their state?

I’ll start: from California, how about malevolent multi-millionaire mummy (ahhh, sweet alliteration) Nancy Pelosi?  From Pennyslvania, depraved abortionist Kermit Gosnell.  From Illinois, two nominees are battling it out: Rahm “dead-shark-eyes” Emmanuel, and Dick “no one ever calls him Richard” Durbin.  From Colorado (specifically South Park, CO), Adam “Mr. Mackey” Schiff (m’kay?).  From Massachusetts, the afore-mentioned Pale-Faced Pocohontas Warren (never. stop. mocking.).

Until recently, Florida was most ably represented by cowboy-pimp-hat-wearing moonbat Frederica Wilson.  But step aside FW, because there’s a new Sheriff in town: Scott Israel.

 

So I survived the flu, and a trip to Illinois to see some snow and my tough-as-a-two-dollar-steak aunt – cancer, schmancer, is apparently her philosophy, and she’s hanging in like a champ! — and I’m back home, catching up on work and world events.

And man, have there been a lot of shenanigans going on already this month.   Let me just hit a few high points.  By which I mean low points, at least when they apply to people who irritate me.

No discussion of low points would be complete without at least a brief mention of the Grammys, the annual self-congratulation fest put on by a cavalcade of vapid, talentless hacks and alleged musicians.  I watched about 10 minutes of that – I blame the Nyquil and my fever – after which I had not recognized a single “artist.”  Or “song.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and risk my reputation as a hipster with his finger on the pulse of modern American culture, by saying that I used to appreciate music more when it involved some discernable talent.   When musicians could read music. Or play an instrument.  Or sing.  Instead, there’s now a guy called “D.J. Khaled,” who has made a career out of being chunky and tramping around a stage gracelessly, while hollering into a microphone such lyrics as, “Uh huh huh, huh huh,” and “Less go!” and “Get yo hands up,” over and over again, while he is surrounded by people who can at least sing a little bit.

So, to summarize my review: Get off my lawn!

But that wasn’t the most egregious crime against humanity at the Grammys.  For that honor, you’d have to go to the compulsory segment on all modern award shows in which brainless leftist celebrities foist their room-temperature-IQ political thoughts on their rapidly dwindling audience.   The Grammys’ entry took the form of a line of “Who’s that?” illiterates stumbling through excerpts from the anti-Trump smear “book” Fire and Fury, culminating in a surprise special guest reader.

At first she’s holding the book in front of her face (not a bad strategy for her, by the way).  But you don’t need to see her, once you’ve heard the first nasally “caw caw caw!” from her pie hole.  And then she lowers the book, and it’s Hillary Clinton.

And the (very small, mentally infirm) crowd goes wild!

By the way, if you had told me that Hillary would make an appearance on a national television event in the winter, my money would have been on her showing up in one of those adorable Super Bowl Budweiser ads, as lead Clydesdale.   Which is why I don’t gamble on sports.   (Well, that, and the fact that the Bears haven’t covered a spread since Mike Ditka had a buzz cut.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, Cankles McPantsuit and her dramatic reading.   Please keep it up, leftist celebrities and Hillary fans!  Please keep trotting that hideous woman out to remind us of how happy we are that she lost the election.

 

Speaking of schadenfreude, how about that memo, and the collapse of the Russian collusion story, and the smoking rubble that used to be the reputations of Comey, and Buck Naked (um, I mean “Peter Stroke”), and his unattractive mistress, and Hillary and Obama and the entire MSM?  Look upward if you dare, at a sky blackened by the swirling flocks of chickens coming home to roost on the leftist liars who pimped the Russian story for over a year.  (I mean, if chickens could fly.  Stupid, flightless birds, ruining my picturesque metaphor!)

Oh, I know.  The media is doing their best to not report any of this, and to gloss over their hypocritical reversals at every turn.  But it’s still fun to watch those weasels squirm.

Remember when the Dems and MSM made such a huge deal out of the revelation that Don Jr. had agreed to meet with the Russian team of Boris Badanov and Natasha, on the promise that they’d have some political dirt on Hillary?  Though nothing came of that meeting, it apparently really did happen, and I agreed at the time that it did not exactly cover Don Jr. with glory.  But it also seemed to me as pretty much commonplace rough elbows politics, played by both sides from the dawn of time.   Every campaign does oppo research, and it was grotesquely entertaining to watch the MSM pontificate on what an unspeakable horror it was that the president’s son was interested in hearing scandalous information that might damage his dad’s opponent’s chances to win.

But now it turns out that Adam Schiff has been caught on tape being pranked by a couple of Russian comedians.  If you haven’t heard that yet, go listen to it now.  Those knuckleheads, posing as authentically evil Russians, working on behalf of evil Russia, and the even more evil Vlad “the Impaler” Putin offering Schiff photos of “naked Trump.”  And Schiff audibly salivates on the phone call, and had his minions follow up afterward to secure the imaginary damaging information.

But the MSM is in full “nothing to see here” mode, and will not cover the story.

By the way, Rush has labeled Schiff “Pencil Neck,” which is perfect.  But I must also point out that since Harry Reid mercifully left the scene, Schiff has the highest Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI ©) of any active politician of either party.  (9.95, if you’re scoring at home.)  Plus, he bears an uncanny resemblance to South Park’s Mr. Mackey (m’kay?).

How ironic is it that after more than a year of coordinated pursuit and smearing of Trump, the only one in Washington who apparently WASN’T in bed with the Russians was Trump!

• Obama was caught on a hot mic creepily collaborating with Putin, when he told Medvedev, “Tell Vlad I’ll have more flexibility after my election.”
• Hillary and the DNC paid for creepy Steele to get false info from Russian spies to interfere in an American presidential election.
• Pencil Neck Schiff (m’kay?) definitely tried to get dirt from Russian spies, except that he was too stupid to tell Yakov Smirnov from Lavrenti Beria. (That’s right – a Beria reference in the same sentence with a Mr. Mackey reference.  Boom!)

 

Finally, I read about an event that so perfectly sums up the apogee of leftist governance that, after my fever broke, I thought that I had imagined it.  But no, ‘tis true.

I give you: the San Francisco poop map.

If you haven’t seen this – and you’re not sitting down to a meal — check out the story on Redstate.   It turns out that someone had the idea of charting all of the 311 calls to city officials reporting waste in public.  When I saw the phrase “urban poop map,” my first thought was that thoughtless dog owners were not taking responsibility for their animals.

But no.  It’s human poop.  A map of one of the formerly great cities of our great nation, liberally sprinkled with emojis to indicate the reported sites of human excrement.  (Insert your own “sh–hole” city joke here.) Can you think of a better way to sum up the result of decades of elitist Democrat rule?  We’ve always been able to point to the architectural ruins of Detroit, the graffiti-defaced desolation of Baltimore, and the soothing night-sounds of small arms fire on the south side of Chicago.

But now we have the specter of neighborhoods of multi-million-dollar houses in SF, the streets in front of them ankle-deep in human waste.

By the way, the SF city map on the website lists various neighborhoods by name.  The one neighborhood called “Dogpatch?”  Ironically, no poop emojis.  But the neighborhood just north and west of there, called “Democrat Base Patch?”

Completely covered with poop emojis.  True story.

 

I’m not going to end on that morose note.  Instead, let me leave you with three stories that have brought joy to my heart so far in February:

1.It seems that poachers have been running rampant in a South African national park lately.  But there is now one less of them, after – prepare yourself for some great African names — Limpopo police spokesman Moatshe Ngoepe (pronounced just like it’s spelled, duh) reported that some local lions apparently expressed some strong anti-poaching sentiments.

By which I mean, they ate a poacher.  Apparently they left just his head and “some remains,” along with a crudely lettered sign reading, “This one’s for Cecil!”   (Okay, I made that last part up. But how cool would that have been?)  Along with, I’m guessing, a nearby poop emoji that would not have been out of place in a large, Democrat-run city.

I love animals, and I hate people who are cruel to them.  So good on you, poacher-eating lions!

2. During my flu-induced delirium, I spent part of a post-Grammys evening on Youtube, watching various videos of actual, talented musicians. (For example, Tom Waits singing “Martha,” Kasey Chambers and Bernard Fanning singing, “Bittersweet,” Blossom Dearie singing “Someone to Watch Over Me,” anything by Bach. I defy anyone to listen to any of those and think, “You know what this song needs? Big fat D.J. Khaled strutting around screaming, “Put Yo Hands Up!” and “We duh best!”)

And I came across a video piece on Dave Grohl talking about playing drums for Tom Petty on SNL in 1994 on “Honey Bee.”  Watch that video, and the manic, ecstatic way Grohl hammers the drums.  I want to live my life the way that guy attacks that song!

3. This past weekend, there was an event that I only just now heard about. It was sponsored by Tim Tebow’s foundation and called “Night to Shine;” it was a coordinated event on several continents, during which a lot of churches and volunteers put on a prom for mentally and/or physically disabled people.  If you can watch any video of that event and not tear up a bit, you’re dead inside.

I could sit for hours, watching those sweet, life-loving people – all of whom can dance better than I can (I am absolutely not joking about that), and whose joyous expressions make Dave Grohl wailing on “Honey Bee” look only mildly pleased – and the good-hearted Christians doing their makeup and escorting them down the red carpet, and high fiving them.   I can’t see those giddy people with Down’s Syndrome, though, without thinking about the darkness in the world, and what so many people would do to them, if they had it in their power.  (I’m looking at you, Planned Parenthood.)

What a gulf there is between the best and the worst of us, and our impulses!

That’s probably a good thought to end on:  Yes, there are people in the world like Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff (m’kay?) and Lieawatha Warren (we should never stop mocking her) and Roy Moore.

But then there’s Tim Tebow, and Tom Waits, and the Cautious Optimism page, and my daughters, and my wife.

And that’s not bad.