Month: May 2018

 

During the transition process of moving into a new house – mission accomplished, as of Friday! — I’ve been somewhat out of the loop.  We were without the internet for two weeks, which is both blessing and curse.  On the one hand, being temporarily disconnected from social media felt great.   My blood pressure is lower, I’m sleeping better, and I’ve even had several conversations with my wife and children – I apparently have two beautiful daughters, who have been sneakily turning into top quality young adults.

On the other hand, I haven’t been able to keep in touch with CO or the CO Nation, and that’s too high a price to pay, obviously.

So after just watching a bit of tv news, I’ve finally had a chance to catch up on several stories.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

1.Hostage stories are fun.  Remember when the Left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) praised Obama to the skies when he got that one mostly dead kid back from North Korea?  And then the kid died right away, but Obama was just the best?  And remember when Obama marshalled all of his canny, big-brained horse-trading skills and went into negotiations with the Taliban, and all he had to do was give up five high-ranking Taliban POWs – which seems like a lot, until you consider that what we got in exchange was a creepy little defector whom we probably should have tried and hung for treason.  But instead Obama invited him and his weird-beard dad to a press conference in Mecca, where daddy took advantage of the occasion to praise Allah.

Correction:  that press conference was actually in the Rose Garden.  It only seemed like Mecca, what with all of the Allahu-akbar-ing going on.

I remember all of that, which was why it made perfect sense when the MSM all started shrieking in outrage when bumbling Trump tried his hand at negotiating for hostages.   All he got was three NK hostages returned, but all three of them were deathly ill with rickets, or scurvy, or housemaid’s knee, or a condition endemic to North Korean prisons called “spontaneous orbital bone fractures.”  And to achieve this paltry result, Trump was forced to give up five high-ranking NK terrorists.

HA!  I kid.   All three hostages were not dead, or near dead.  In fact, they were as healthy as little North Korean miniature horses, which for my money are the cutest of all of the miniature horses.  (And please don’t tell me that they are just regular-sized horses who have never grown any larger because they’ve been starving since 1953.) Plus, when they spoke to the media, none of them blurted out anything about infidels or death to America or how much they despise baseball or apple pie.  And Trump did not give up any Nork bad guys, or any pallets of cash, or anything at all, as far as we know.

So naturally, the MSM are incensed at how badly Trump botched the whole deal.

2. Also, they are really, really mad about Trump’s latest despicable insult to immigrants.

You probably haven’t heard about this – because CNN has been obsessed with covering nothing but the historically low black and Hispanic unemployment rates, and the strong economic numbers, and the way Mueller and McCabe and Comey and John Brennan and Clapper and Peter Stroke and his unattractive mistress have all been exposed as a cabal of sleazy perjurers who need to be jailed immediately – but Trump called some immigrants “animals.”

No, really.  He did.  I flipped back and forth through half a dozen channels for the better part of two days, and had it confirmed over and over again.  Apparently, he described as “animals” the following groups: hard-working Mexican single mothers, saintly Guatemalan priests, impeccably dressed Ecuadorian honor students, Costa Rican abuelas who are bravely fighting stage three breast cancer, adorable Chilean first-graders, and Salvadoran first responders who specialize in rescuing adorable Salvadoran kittens who get stuck in an especially sticky species of Salvadoran trees.

Of course, as it turned out, Trump was referring to members of MS-13, a merry bunch of sociopaths who divide their time between beheading innocent teenagers and competing in round robin “who can get the most hideous tattoos” tournaments.

My favorite MSM idiot in this story – in a very crowded field — is someone named Ana Navarro.  Ms. Navarro clambered onto her high horse to say how contemptible it was that anyone would ever refer to any human beings – no matter what they’d done – as “animals.”

Then, because God loves us and has a real grudge against Ana Navarro, 8 million Americans immediately Googled “Ana Navarro” and “animals” and “hypocritical beeyotch” (maybe that last one was just me), and came up with this tweet of hers from 2016:  “Should Donald Trump drop out of the race? Yes. He should drop out of the human race. He is an animal. Apologies to animals.”

Move over, “Boy who Cried Wolf,” and “The Scorpion and the Frog,” because I have a new favorite Aesop’s Fable: “How the CNN Horse’s Ass got Hoof-in-Mouth Disease.”

3.  But if you think that the MSM is mad at Trump about his freeing non-dying hostages from captivity in North Korea, or about his hurting the feelings of foreign tattooed homicidal freaks, you should hear how they caterwauled at his unconscionable decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to – you’re not going to believe this — the capital of Israel!

This story might be the single best indication of how dishonest, morally bankrupt and out of touch with reality the Left has become.   I mean, think of all the ridiculous lies you have to believe to buy into the Left’s coverage of the embassy:

A.  Jerusalem has no connection to Jews, and is not in any way the capital of Israel.  (For rebuttal, I’d like to call the jury’s attention to exhibits A- Z: every book of the Old Testament after the first 5, plus the fact that Jerusalem is also known as “the City of David.”  If you look him up, you’ll find that the David referred to there is not Letterman, or Bowie, or Cassidy, but “as in ‘vs. Goliath.”  Plus, guess which language the word “Jerusalem” comes from?  And before you guess Swahili, Old Norse, Persian, or Arabic, I’m going to suggest that you use your “phone a friend” option.)

B. Palestinian terrorists rushing the wall/fence were nonviolent “protestors.” You know, like the folks marching with Dr. King. Except instead of “We Shall Overcome,” these protestors were singing whatever is Arabic for “Allah Allah Uber Alles.” And you remember how you used to hear about Dr. King’s followers bringing sling shots, and setting tires on fire, and flying Molotov cocktail kites with swastikas on them, designed to try to set fires in the fields around Selma and Birmingham and other Democrat-controlled cities?  Me neither.

C.  Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is an outrage. Even though Obama, Bush and Clinton all promised to do that, the MSM never criticized any of them because of that. Mostly because they knew that Clinton was no more likely to keep that promise than to keep his wedding vows, and that Obama was less likely to move the embassy than he was to provide shovel-ready jobs or let you keep your doctor.  What does it tell you when the most effective leftist response to the charge that their guys promised to do what Trump just did is to say, “Yeah, but everybody knew that they were lying!”  Touche, Saul Alinsky!

D.  Israel is the main problem in the middle east. Not murderous jihadi regimes who control much of the region.  Not the kleptocratic autocracies who control the rest.   Not the near universal oppression and violence against women and gays and religious minorities that reign in every middle eastern country except Israel.  Nope, the big problem is Israel, where gays can go for weeks at a time without being stoned or thrown off of roofs, and women can drive, and religious minorities are elected to the government rather than murdered or driven out of the country.  And where funds intended for infrastructure and the welfare of the citizens are spent on… infrastructure and the welfare of the citizens, rather than on buying weapons and paying terrorists and indoctrinating kids to grow up and become hateful, murderous adults.

Even though it’s been happening for decades, it’s really shocking to see how the Left continually sides with misogynistic, homophobic Islamic theocracies over the one pluralistic democracy in the Middle East.  Most battles in the world involve shades of gray —  the Apaches vs the Commanches (Lizzie Warren stayed on the sidelines for that one, with a big tear rolling down her face like someone just threw a McDonald’s bag into a protected wetland) (#neverstopmockingher), Spain vs. Portugal five centuries ago, Ohio State vs Michigan — but not this one.

In Israel, they fight defensively, and do their best to avoid civilian casualties.  For example, of the 62 Palestinians killed in the assault on the Israeli border last week, at least 53 were known terrorists.  So either the percentage of terrorists in the general Palestinian population is 85.48%  (did I mention that I kicked butt in Finite Math class?) – a ratio that is sadly not that far-fetched, if you read a few reports from MEMRI – or Israel was targeting violent terrorists who were attacking their border.  (Or, as CNN put it, “indiscriminately firing on protestors.”)

On the other hand, Hamas wrote “death to all Jews” into their charter.

So by all means, MSM, tells us how the Israelis are the aggressors, and Trump was foolish for keeping the promise that Clinton, Bush and Obama made before him.

Update: The Washington Times reports that a 23-year-old member of MS-13 just got sentenced to 40 years for murdering a 15 year old.  His given name is Joel Martinez, but his gang name – which I swear I am not making up – is “animal.”

HA!  Ana Navarro is so far unavailable for comment.

 

 

I hope you’re not getting tired of columns about entertainingly stupid people, because here’s the fourth in a row:

Exhibit A: the Hillary Clinton Comedy tour continues.  This week Hillary admitted to a sympathetic interviewer that she was probably hurt in the Democratic party because she was a capitalist.   That is both funny and depressing: funny because she doesn’t know the difference between a capitalist and a crony capitalist. (How’s that income to the Clinton Foundation coming along, now that you don’t have any “quo” to distribute for any “quid” that might come your way?)

And depressing because in one of the two major parties in the most powerful nation in the world, it’s a serious liability to be considered a capitalist, and a plus to be seen as a socialist.  (And that’s after a century since the Russians first put socialism into practice, starting a run that has produced a record of 0 wins,  88 losses, and 3 ties – assuming you count three wildly anomalous Scandanavian countries managing to limp along with a capitalism/socialism hybrid without totally imploding as “ties.”)

But the best Hillary-related news is from a story reporting that she is “gearing up to influence the mid-term elections.”  That’s right – the Achilles Cankle of the Left ™ is getting ready to tug on her dancing galoshes for one more spin around the mine field—er, dance floor.  (And yes, I know I used that joke in a previous piece.  But c’mon – “Achilles Cankle” is funny.  If I were doing stand-up, I’d work that into every set.)

This is so great!  All GOP fans should be praying that Hillary will come tromping through their district, giving off the thick musk of voter repellent that she seems to generate as a part of her normal biological functioning.

Which reminds me of one bit of 2016 post-election analysis that I’ve always disagreed with.  The commentariat seems to have accepted as axiomatic the idea that Hillary’s decision not to campaign in states like Wisconsin and Michigan were fatal errors, the idea being that she lost those states narrowly, and that spending more time there would have allowed her to win them.

But had those people ever heard or seen a Hillary campaign event?  Think a bunch of creaky folding chairs in a community college gym, with a couple of local pols whom nobody knows giving a few banal comments, followed by ferret-like John Podesta or some other listless, unattractive Dem introducing the Candidate Herself.  She takes the stage, stumbling several times before clinging to the podium for dear life, and starts her speech.

“Hello, Ypsilanti!  It’s always good to be here with the deplorable scum—I mean the common people.  CAW, CAW.  Isn’t that Donald Trump just terrible?  CAW.  We’re on our way to a historic victory, after which I’ll be doubling down on the unpopular policies of Obama, only without the glib speaking skills.  CAW, CAW.  Plus, you’ll have a president with different genitalia from all past presidents!  CAW.  In conclusion, I look down on all of you, and I believe the opposite of what you believe about everything.  CAW!  So get out on Tuesday and vote for me, and you can look forward to being condescendingly  lectured to in this grating tone of voice for the next 4 years!  CAW CAW CAW!”

Her opinion polls as first lady almost always went down as she gained visibility – pushing Hillary-care, for example – and went up only when she disappeared from the public stage for extended lengths of time.  So it’s likely that if she had spent more time in the Midwest, she may have lost the popular vote, too.

In other words, you go Hillary!  Please make an extended, nationwide tour of every battleground state in October, stumping for every Dem candidate in sight.

 

Exhibit B: more animal follies.

In a recent column I noted the increasing menagerie of emotional support animals making air travel increasingly unpleasant.  In the last several days, I’ve come across several more animal stories, one depressing and one uplifting.

The depressing one happened at the home of many depressing trends:  Yale University.  The Yale Daily News featured a story entitled, “Emotional Support Animals Proliferate at Yale.”  (“Proliferate” is fancy Yale talk, but it’s not helping:  a headline like, “Holy Crap! We’re Ass Deep in Support Animals” would not make Yale sound any dumber than this story does.)

The trend is what you would expect: last year there was one registered support animal on campus, this year there are 14.  Soon our Ivy League campuses will look like a cross between a Southwest non-stop from San Francisco to Austin and an off-broadway production of 101 Dalmations.

The story also reports that support animals aren’t just dogs or cats anymore – you species-ist jerk! – noting that one Yale student has a support hedgehog on campus.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but aren’t hedgehogs one of those animals that curls into a defensive ball when startled?  Because if so, I’d like to go to New Haven, startle the hell out of that emotional support hedgehog – perhaps by sneaking up on it and screaming a Squanto Warren-style war-whoop (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – and then hurl the hedgehog with great force at the empty head of the Yale student who thought it was a good idea to bring an emotional support hedgehog to campus.

I’d tell you what I’d do with the emotional support porcupine and the moron who brought him to campus, but that would be a hate crime.  (“GET YOUR HATE QUILLS OFF OUR CAMPUS!)

On a lighter note, the other animal story has a much happier ending.  You can find it in the NY Post, under the title,”Man Mauled to Death by Bear While Taking a Selfie.”

Oops.  Spoiler alert.

This delightful tale takes place in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.  (I know: I thought she was married to Jay Z, too.  But apparently she is a state in India.  Live and learn.)

It seems a super genius named Prabhu Bhatara (one of those “B”s might be silent) was urinating beside the road (as one does), when he spotted an injured bear.  I can only assume that he was urinating what had a short time before been some frighteningly potent alcohol, because his next thought was apparently, “You know what would look good in a photo snuggled up right next to that injured apex predator?  My stupid face!”

By the way, it wasn’t just a bear.  It was an INJURED bear.  You may have noticed that you never read stories about how serious injuries are known to improve the disposition of giant predatory beasts.  “Wounded Bengal Tiger is Looking on the Sunny Side,” said no headline ever, or, “Lion with Infected Thorn in Paw Surprisingly Upbeat, Mellow, according to authorities,” reported CNN.

The story offers video of the mauling, which it helpfully identifies as “disturbing.” But I found that if you watch it while listening to the Benny Hill/Yakety Sax theme song, it’s not that bad.

The cherry on this Darwin Award Winning sundae of a story is that this is at least the third selfie-related animal-induced death in Odisha since December!  Early that month a 50-year old man was taking a selfie with an elephant when he was crushed, and not too long after that a younger man, in a separate incident with another elephant, did the same thing.

At least I think it was a different elephant.

How cool would it be if there were one hilarious, photogenic elephant making the rounds in Odisha and Nicki Minaj — and whatever other Indian states there are that I don’t know about – playing the same practical joke on various dim-witted Indians?  Step 1: Spot a guy with a cell phone.  Step 2:  Give him a tusk-y smile.  Step 3: CRUSH! (and for the soundtrack, it’s the obvious choice: “Baby Elephant Walk”)

And, scene.

 

Exhibit C: Speaking of famous Indians in the news…

No.  This is not another Liz Warren story.  That would be too easy.

This is an Apu story.  As in Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian character on the Simpsons.  In yet another example of how the humorless, perpetually offended left is doing their damnedest to rob all life everywhere of its joy, some moron didn’t just object to Apu.  He spent a year of his life making a documentary about how offended he is by Apu.

This alleged comedian whom you’ve never heard of called his documentary, “The Problem with Apu.”  The “problem” is exactly what you’d guess: humor based on the ethnicity of a character – even a cartoon character – is offensive and terrible and a hate crime, you European-American creeps.

Now, you might be thinking that if we have to go to a broadly-written character in a well-intentioned cartoon to find a serious problem, we are officially out of problems.   And you’re right.

In a sane world, this bonehead would be laughed at and then ignored and forgotten.  But not in our world.  In our world, the actor who voices Apu – Hank Azaria — has taken this dope seriously.  He apologized to the Indian and south Asian people, and offered to stop doing Apu.

What a relief it is to know that the Simpsons will no longer feature a hurtful stereotype of a character that some hyper-sensitive group could object to!

I mean, other than angry Scottish Groundskeeper Willie.  And oily Italian mafia character Fat Tony.  And slack-jawed yokel and Appalachian-American Cletus. And drunken womanizing Irishman Mayor Quimby.

Come to think of it, the cops on the show are all incompetent boobs, and the teachers are all lazy, burned-out clock punchers, and those groups both have unions that should be contacting Fox any minute.  And Mr. Burns is a heartless, greedy 1%er, and Barney has a serious alcohol problem that is played for laughs, and Nelson’s single mom might be a drunken hooker.  Flanders and the Reverend Lovejoy make Christians look stupid, and Grandpa Simpson is mocked for his age and incipient dementia.

Homer is a working class idiot, and Bart’s juvenile delinquency and troubles in school are no laughing matter in a nation where young boys are falling behind girls in every significant social category.  And I suppose we are to believe that all comic book fans are obese, sexless nerds like Comic Book Guy?  (Worst. Stereotyping. Ever.)

If the makers of the Simpsons keep caving to these humorless social justice warriors, they’ll have no characters left except Lisa and Maggie.

Wait: Maggie is a voiceless female, the most potent symbol of patriarchal oppression there is, so she’s out.  And Lisa plays blues and jazz on her sax – be gone, culture appropriator!

Ugh.  I hope the maker of this stupid documentary agrees to sign autographs and take fan pictures after one of his speaking engagements, and finds himself posing with one arm around an injured bear and the other around a smiling elephant.  Then let nature take its course!

 

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For those of you who like short fiction, I’ve posted another short story called “Dancing About Architecture” on my site,  Martinsimpsonwriting.com.   Full disclosure: it’s a magical realism piece, with no political snark or Liz Warren mockery, so proceed at your own risk.  If you like it, let me know.  If you don’t, keep it to yourself, bub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As we approach the end of another month, I expected to be writing another “best of the month” piece. But it turns out that the theme of April has been the continuing cavalcade of idiots in public life. So here’s the third consecutive installment:

Exhibit A: Comey Comey Comey Comey Comey Chameleon. (now try getting that terrible song out of your head.)
Watched the Bret Baier interview with Comey, and I agree with the consensus here: if it were a fight, they’d have stopped it. I think the thing that shocks me the most about the whole sordid Comey mess, though, is what a sterling reputation that goof had before 2016 or so. When he first rose to prominence, all you heard in the MSM and on both sides of the aisle were his impeccable credentials, what a straight shooter he was, etc. And now he’s revealed to be a sleazy, unethical, smarmy, partisan creep.
To call him an empty suit would be an insult to all of the fine Mannequin-Americans who are doing yeoman’s work in store-front windows all over this great nation.
I can’t think of another public figure who has had such a dizzying fall from grace. Most scandalized people recently seem to be those who already looked shady from the get-go. Was anyone surprised when it came out that Anthony Weiner was a perv, or that John Edwards was the kind of guy who would impregnate a mistress while his wife was dying of cancer, or that Bill Clinton was playing hide the cigar with an intern, or that Trump had a one-nighter with a porn star? Or that the Mooch was the kind of guy who would have a nickname like “the Mooch?”
But Comey looked the part of an FBI director, and had a superficially sober-minded gravitas thing going for him, so it was a shock to see the real him.
On second thought, Bill Cosby might have fallen as far as Comey. And it’s a sad state of affairs when the best I can say about the former head of the FBI is that, “At least he didn’t drug and rape any actresses. That we know of.”
Still, the Comey story did give me one of my favorite Trump tweet lines: “It was my great honor to fire James Comey.” Part of the reason I love that so much is that I can’t imagine another president ever writing it. Usually when I say that about one of Trump’s tweets, it doesn’t reflect well on Trump… but not this time!

Exhibit B: From England — British kids are morons too.
Just when I was beginning to despair about the state of American youth, I came across a cheerful story in the UK Telegraph, which reports that schools across that nation are going to digital clocks in exam rooms, because so many of the high-school-level students can’t tell the time using an analog clock. Or as we called them, “clocks.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
My first thought was, Good! If you can’t tell the time on a clock, you should automatically fail any test you are taking. What’s next? Students who can’t read an analog calendar all freezing to death because they went outside in December wearing shorts and flip flops? People who can’t read analog ballots accidentally electing Nancy Pelosi fourteen times in a row? People who can’t read analog books descending into illiteracy?
Oh, wait.
Of course the temptation for me is to come across as Ol’ Pops Simpson, who can’t relate to young people. Why, these kids today don’t know how lucky they are to even have analog clocks. In my day, we used sundials, and talk about stress: half-way through finals week the sky could get overcast, and the next thing you know you’ve lost track of time, and the teacher snatches away your papyrus and quill pen, and you’ve flunked calculus. Which was already difficult enough, on account of its only having been invented the previous February.
But I am trying to resist that temptation. I mean, if you grew up with only digital clocks, I guess an old-fashioned clock face could be a little intimidating.
But then I made the mistake of reading to the end of the article, where I came across this additional complaint: a senior pediatric doctor warns that technology usage may be rendering British louts unable to hold a pencil or pen. I would now like to quote Sally Payne – a real person who I am not making up – who is the head pediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust, whatever that is, on the subject of kids who are increasingly unable to hold writing implements:
“To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers. It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them (sic) to do muscle-building play…. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”
That’s an enormous hurdle for youth to overcome? The basic skills required to hold a pencil?!
Not too many generations ago, English teenagers were using their fine motor control to shod horses and harvest wheat with scythes. (And not those new-fangled digital scythes, either – analog scythes!) A few generations later they were using their dexterous fingers to put on gas masks while simultaneously raking charging Germans with machine gun fire. A generation later they were working on the foundation skills to dive a Spitfire into a bomber formation and shoot down some Heinkels and Messerschmitts.
And now they’re struggling to hold a pencil?
After about 30 seconds’ thought, I realized that as bad as things are, they’re not THAT bad. Most teenage girls I know can type 120 words a minute with only their thumbs, a feat of dexterity that far exceeds the difficulty level of managing not to stab yourself in the eye with a pencil.
And teenage boys?
Let me put it this way. I can only vaguely remember when my buddies and I were teenagers. But if I’m not mistaken, all of us had already demonstrated a world-class ability to handle cylindrical objects with dexterity, strength, and control of the fine muscles in our fingers like nobody’s business. Somehow I doubt that technological advances – I’m looking at you, internet porn – has degraded that fine muscle control in our youngsters today. Quite the opposite, if I were forced to guess.
Still, my first official act upon becoming Education Czar would be to issue a ruling: if you can’t read a clock, you can’t take high school exams. So let it be written; so let it be done. (For some reason I picture myself on an Education Czar throne, and wearing an Egyptian headdress. And yes, my forthcoming Education Czar-dom will require me to hold both an orb and a scepter, thanks for asking.)

Exhibit C: GQ Punches Up
In a recent click-bait article, GQ magazine listed 21 supposedly great books that you actually don’t have to read. By far the most attention-getting choice was the Bible, which provoked a lot of people who probably should know better. Even if you’re not religious, the Bible is obviously a foundational document, without which no one can fully understand Western civilization and history, and putting it on this list is the act of an attention-seeking dunce.
Some of the other claims in the article strike me as more or less fair game, especially given the subjectivity of everyone’s literary tastes: I didn’t enjoy The Old Man and the Sea either, Gravity’s Rainbow and Blood Meridian are both impressive but not worth the effort, Slaughterhouse-Five is wildly over-rated.
But in addition to the ridiculous call on the Bible, the article is fatally flawed for other reasons as well. It disses Lord of the Rings and Dracula, and suggests replacing Catcher in the Rye with a tale of an adult lesbian seducing a teenage girl. The list demonstrates the same PC blindness in other selections, bashing masculinity in Lonesome Dove and Hemingway, and racism everywhere.
Two separate writers denigrate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and on the dumbest of grounds: Twain is a racist, and it’s full of the n-word.
Yes, the n-word is offensive, and it can make for some awkwardness in the classroom when teaching Huck Finn. But I don’t think we made a huge step forward when we replaced, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” with “Sticks and stones constitute aggravated assault, but words are AGHH! AGHH! KEEP YOUR HATE SPEECH OFF MY CAMPUS!!”
And it’s really staggering that any sentient person can read that book – which argues for the fundamental, existential worth and equality of blacks and whites – and come away calling it racist.
Overall, in this time of illiterate teens who can’t master the pencil or tell time, do we really need an article discouraging the reading of some great (but in some cases over-rated or dated) books?
Exhibit D: Liz Warren gets hoisted on her own totem pole.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t much care for Elizabeth Warren. So I was delighted to see how Mick Mulvaney has been outmaneuvering her lately. Mulvaney – and if ever a name screamed out, “Let’s go have a beer!” it’s Mick freaking Mulvaney — is now the head of the useless, vestigial tail of an agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This terrible waste of taxpayers’ money was created by the equally terrible Dodd-Frank law. (Chris Dodd used to create “waitress sandwiches” with Ted Kennedy – Google that, if you’ve got a strong stomach – and Barney Frank kept a gay lover who used his DC townhouse as a gay brothel which Barney supposedly knew nothing about. So you know that any law named after those two gems just has to be great!) It was created over the objections of conservatives, and with the enthusiastic support of Squanto Warren, when Obama was in office and busily fixing everything wrong with the world.
Fast forward a few years, and Trump is the president, and he appoints CFPB critic Mulvaney as its head, with the goal of curtailing its powers. (Although why they don’t just close it down is beyond me.) Now Warren is on the warpath (HA!) about one thing or another, and she submits a list of 105 questions to the Mickster, demanding quick and complete answers.
And Mulvaney responds with the most beautifully ironic karmic arse-whupping since a certain future president (CAW CAW CAW) discovered that a complete lack of character was her Achilles’ Cankle in November of 2016.
According to a recent story in the Washington Examiner, he told Senator Forked Tongue that he did not plan to respond to her questions, and that it was her fault that he is not required to answer, because the structure of her pet agency “shields him from accountability.”
Then – in what might be my favorite words ever uttered by a politician –
“I encourage you to consider the possibility that the frustration you are experiencing now, and that which I had a few years back, are both inevitable consequences of the fact that the Dodd-Frank… Act insulates the Bureau from virtually any accountability to the American people through their elected representatives.”
Then he dropped the mic, put on a pair of shades and stuck a giant blunt in the corner of mouth, in a real-life recreation of that “Thug Life” meme that all of the kids seem to enjoy.
The only way his response could have been better would have been to end it with the words, “So put that in your peace pipe and smoke it!”
Say it with me, kids: We must never stop mocking her.

In last weeks’ column, I took as my thesis the idea that people are idiots.  Guess what?  Over the past week, people didn’t get any smarter.  So consider this Part 2 (of a potential 5,000-part series) on the same topic.

Exhibit A, in the “Public Transport” division: boneheads who have convinced themselves and the airlines that they require an “emotional support” animal to accompany them to whatever destination they are traveling to.

And before I get going on the details, trust me: these folks are not flying to the International Symposium on Particle Physics convention, or Mensa-fest 2018, or the Simpson Family Reunion.  No. They are going to the Women’s March, or the Democratic National Convention, or the David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg fan club meeting at the Hilton by the airport.

Anyway, as most disastrous trends in our recent history, this one started out with good intentions.  Blind or physically disabled people needed the help of a smart, well-trained seeing-eye dog, so they were given permission to travel with their dogs.  (FYI, Cassie “the Wonder Dog” Simpson briefly considered a career in the helping professions – assisting the blind, or sniffing out drugs carried by criminals, or giving a vicious and well-deserved mauling to this nation’s enemies as a military dog – before settling on a lucrative position as my faithful companion.)  But immediately after the tiny number of people who legitimately needed a dog to travel with them got that permission, a horde of grifters and ne’er-do-wells and narcissistic scam artists followed hard on their heels.

Seeing-eye dogs were followed by support dogs and then by other support species.  Which was already a bridge too far.  I mean, how much support can your reasonably get from a cat, for crying out loud?  I love cats, my family loves cats, we’ve got several.  But no cat is ever going to pull a handi-capable senior citizen from a burning house, or run-down a fleeing Democrat voter with an armful of stolen loot, or sprint back to town to alert the police that Jimmy has fallen down the well.

Anyway, allowing other support species then devolved into perhaps the best indicator of modern American moral degeneration: the “emotional support animal.”  Ugh.  With 10 minutes of internet searching you can find stories about lost souls traveling with pigs, peacocks and monkeys, all of whom are supposed to be giving vital emotional “support.”   If you can stand to learn more about this, read a recent Dallas News article on efforts of several airlines to curb the explosion of support menageries tromping onto every flight and turning them into a demented Noah’s Ark with spotty wifi.

I’ll mention just one specific example.  A 39-year-old Kentucky resident named Carla Fitzgerald has recently traveled on multiple flights with her emotional support Indian Runner duck, which she named Daniel Turducken Stinkerbutt.

Where do I start with that?  First, the only acceptable animal middle name is obviously  “the Wonder Dog.”  Second, that name you stuck one of God’s innocent creatures with is not cute – it’s really, really stupid.  Other ducks are mocking your duck, and if he could get out of your clammy grasp, he’d gladly launch himself into the airplane’s jet turbines just to end his shame.

When I first read that story, I came to the detail that Fitzgerald was allowed to travel with her mortified duck because she had PTSD.  For the briefest of seconds, I thought, “Ah, geez, if she’s a combat veteran, I don’t know if I can savagely mock her…”  But then I read on: “…PTSD from a carriage accident years ago.”

A carriage accident?  What the hell?   Is this woman an upper-class 18^th century lady whose vehicle suffered a broken wooden axle on the rutted path between Boston and Philadelphia?  Was she taking a romantic horse-drawn ride around Central Park after Kramer had fed the horse something that made it gassy?

And her “accident” took place “years ago?”  What’s the statute of limitations on carriage-accident-related trauma?   Forty years ago I saw a Benny Hill skit where he dressed up like a highwayman and robbed a stage coach, leaving the female riders in only their 1970s-style underwear and garters, for some reason.   Do I still get to drag my three-named platypus through first-class to an aisle seat in coach?

By the way, this might have to be a topic for a future column: the mission creep that has come to surround PTSD.  If you ran over an IED outside of Kandahar, or were raped by the kind of animal that Lil’ Mike Dukakis gave weekend prison passes to, you legitimately have PTSD, and God bless you.  If you had a bad experience in a spelling bee in 3^rd grade, or someone called you the wrong pronoun, or you still can’t leave the house after the 2016 election, you don’t have PTSD.  You have TWS (terminal wussiness syndrome), and need some SKA (swift kick in the arse) therapy immediately.

I know this is a hard issue for the emotionally mature, well-adjusted readership of CO nation to identify with.  None of you reading this can likely imagine a circumstance in which you would ever find yourself calling Customer Support at Delta and saying the words, “Can I bring my therapeutic ocelot on Flight 3245 to Newark?”

Why not just walk up and down an airport concourse wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, “I have no pride, dignity or value to society.  Please commit me to an institution where I can get the electroshock therapy that I so desperately need.”

Or, alternatively, you could just listen to me, as the entire world should: if you are too emotionally fragile to travel in public without your support macaque, please stay home and work on your issues.

 

Exhibit B, in the “International Division,” comes from France, where a hard-working business owner fell afoul of the local socialist labor laws.  During the summer tourist season, the owner of a small French bakery made fresh bread 7 days a week.   “Good for him,” you’re probably saying.

But that’s because you’re an American — who appreciates the free market and individual initiative and a strong work ethic — rather than a leftist French poke-nose bureaucrat who is congenitally unable to mind your own business.

Since the local laws forbid anyone – even business owners working in their own freaking business – from working 7 days a week, the local gallic Bernie Sanderses fined the baker the equivalent of $3600.  For working. too. hard.

It’s hard to imagine a more perverse disincentive to the kind of behavior that any sane nation would want for their citizens.   What can the end result of that kind of world view possibly be?

I’ll tell you: German soldiers sauntering down the Champs Elysees, angry antisemitic Middle Eastern immigrants taking over your suburbs and victimizing Jews and other natives, and the flight of every ambitious French man and woman to countries that have enough on their plate that they won’t bother themselves to be sure that nobody is working too hard!

 

Exhibit C.  In the “academic all-star” division, we have Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar, whom a recent Daily Wire story reports had a unique reaction to the death of former first lady Barbara Bush.  (You can Google the story and see a picture of Ms. Randa.  If you don’t want to do go to that much trouble, or if you value your eyesight: think a much less attractive Carmen Miranda who has REALLY let herself go.)

Barbara Bush was a pretty uncontroversial first lady.  Unlike other recent first ladies I could mention – scowling wookie, and CAW, CAW, CAW! – she was not an abrasive attention-seeker.  She married a guy who became president and raised another president, and unlike other recent presidents I could name – “You didn’t build that.” And “Step into the oval office and I’ll show you a neat trick with a cigar” – both of them did a respectable job.  She seemed like a no-nonsense person, and decent people around the world respectfully took note of her passing.

Not Randa Jarrar, who is described as “an award-winning novelist” (I’ll bet), and “executive director of RAWI, the “Radius of Arab American Writers.”   By the way, what is “Radius” doing in this group’s title, as opposed to in a Geometry textbook, irritating our children, as it’s supposed to be?  (And any group headed by Jarrar should probably have “circumference” rather than “radius” in its title.) (That’s right, a geometry/body mocking joke!  Don’t tell me that I didn’t get anything out of Finite Math class.)(Though, now that I think about it, that joke is absolutely all I got out of Finite Math class.)

Also, while I’m at it, I don’t know if Randa’s group really understands how acronyms are supposed to work.   Because “Radius of Arab American Writers” would form the acronym “RAAW.”  Whereas “RAWI” might refer to “Random Assortment of Worthless Idiots,” for example.   Or “Reprehensible A**load of Windbag Imbeciles.” Or even, “Repulsive Academic Wretches Incorporated.”  And you wouldn’t even have to change the stationery, Kareem abdul Jarrar!  You’re welcome.

Anyway, here are some quotes from tweets written by Repugnant Randa on the passing of a former first lady who never did anything to her: “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F**k outta here with your nice words.” And “PSA: either you are against these pieces of s**t and their genocidal ways or you’re part of the problem. that’s actually how simple this is. I’m happy the witch is dead. can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeeee.”

You know what bothers me most about this nitwit’s tweets?  Not the illiteracy of them.  (Though, here’s a tip for Randa, if she is reading this, which she obviously is not:  We start the first word of an English sentence with a capital letter.  And “Iraqi” would also get a capital letter.  And saying “byyyeeeeee” makes you sound like a dimwitted 7^th grader.) (No offense, dim-witted 7^th graders.)  And not the black-hearted malice of them.

No, it’s what she said in a subsequent tweet, after she quite naturally got a lot of outraged blowback for her creepy comments: “sweetie i work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. i will never be fired.”  (“I” always gets capitalized.  And you need a comma after “sweetie,” which also should be capitalized.  And you had a pretty bad typo: you spelled “colossal douche” as “t-e-n-u-r-e-d p-r-o-f-e-s-s-o-r.”  You’re welcome again.)  She even had the gall to give her university president’s name and email address, daring her critics to contact him and complain about her.

The saddest thing is that she’s probably right – in modern academia, she’ll never be fired.  She’s a far left, hate-filled minority member, and thus unfire-able, unless she commits a triple homicide in front of a roomful of witnesses.  If you think I’m exaggerating, consider the case of Elizabeth Warren, a hate-filled leftist white lady with a mediocre mind who could not write or think her way out of a wet paper bag.  On the merits, she couldn’t have gotten a job as an adjunct at a third-rate school like Fresno state.  But stick a feathered warbonnet on her empty head and call her a Cherokee, and she gets a job and tenure at Harvard.  (#never stop mocking)

So, Randa is a vile person, and it seems cosmically unfair that she will not suffer any consequences for her evil tweets.  On the other hand, she has to go through life looking like that, and thinking like that, and listening to undergrads singing, “Help me Randa, help me transfer out of your class.” (My apologies to the Beach Boys, who did nothing to deserve any association with this hateful loon.)

And when she (finally) dies, she will not leave behind a husband and son who were presidents of the greatest country in the world, but only (I’m guessing) a couple of cats, who won’t even miss her.

Post Script: I drafted the bit on Randa Jarrar a couple of days ago.  But in the last day or two, there are rumblings that Jarrar might actually suffer some professional consequences for her hideous tweets.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but if it happens, I’ll be the first to congratulate the administration at Fresno State for taking action.

Now if we can just do something about the rest of academia…