As Father’s Day is upon us, I’d like to wish everyone in the CO nation a happy holiday.
Last June I wrote a tribute to my own dad whom I lost a few years ago, and I won’t repeat any of that here. But if you’d like to read that column – and hear the last joke he told me from his death bed, for example — you can find that in the archives from June 2017 in the column to your right.
I’ve been thinking about dad a lot lately, partly because our move to a new old house has given me the chance to set up an organized workshop. Dad was always very organized, but I’ve been storing tools haphazardly for years, and I know that he would be so pleased to see me setting up such an orderly work space. The first step was to put doors on the old garage, and with the help of a guy who built two steel frames, and a carpenter who let me help him put wood over those frames, I now have some functioning garage doors. (I’ve put a pic of those doors on my website, too.)(I know…that’s what the public wants to see: hot carpentry project action!)
As I was moving one of the toolboxes I inherited from him into my new space, I looked inside, and found a wood plane. The plane still held some wood shavings in it, and it suddenly hit me: the last time this was used, dad drove it across something that he was working on, and then replaced it on his tool bench. Those shavings suddenly seemed almost like a part of dad himself, and it felt like he was right there with me again. It’s funny what can catch you by surprise and choke you up when you’ve lost a loved one.
Okay, so writing about pop always constitutes “things I love.” But as is always the case, there are plenty of “things I hate” to deal with in our public life, too. Things such as the MSM, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton, for example.
It’s still too soon to tell what may come of Trump’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim, but if it has done nothing else, it has given the lefty, Trump-hating MSM another chance to beclown itself. They are so transparently biased that they’ve flipped positions half a dozen times in a perverse game of “heads Kim wins, tails Trump loses.”
Remember when Trump spoke rudely of Kim, calling him little Rocket Man, and noting that he was fat? I thought that his words weren’t wise, but the MSM acted like it was Armageddon: “You can’t talk about world leaders like that! Trump should be diplomatic, and temperate, and stick to the niceties of etiquette. His idiotically insulting language is going to start WWIII!”
Then Trump spoke positively about Kim (he’s talented, he’s a tough leader). And the MSM lost it again: “You can’t talk about dictators like that! This is no time to be diplomatic, and temperate, and stick to the niceties of etiquette! To compliment a dictator is as bad as being a dictator. Trump’s cuddling up to Kim is going to start WWIII!”
When Trump originally announced the summit, the left dismissed it: “You don’ t just schedule something like this so casually! It takes months of working through diplomatic channels, and an intricate series of negotiations. This thrown-together set-up will never amount to anything!”
Then Kim gets aggressive, and Trump cancels the summit. “HA! This summit could have accomplished so much, and now Trump has blown it! Presidents work for years to arrange for diplomatic breakthroughs like this, and now a precious opportunity has been squandered!”
Then Kim reverses course, Trump declares the summit back on, and the MSM spins so fast they get motion sickness: “This meeting won’t accomplish anything. Nothing to see here.”
Don’t misunderstand: I don’t have high hopes that a totalitarian regime like Kim’s is going to give up its nukes and become a responsible citizen on the world stage. But it’s worth a try. And it’s not like Trump is going to upset some marvelous status quo: NK is a nightmarish moonscape of oppression and starvation and dysfunction, and decades of diplomatic efforts on the parts of a half-dozen presidents have done nothing to prevent or change that.
Bill Clinton said all the right platitudes and tried a combination of scary talk and diplo-speak and bribes to prevent NK from getting nukes. And they got nukes. Bush talked tough, and Obama talked smoothly, and neither of them made a bit of difference. The traditional approach has gotten us to here; how bad could an unconventional approach by Trump be?
Regardless, the MSM have once again demonstrated their bad faith. If Trump is nice to Kim, he’s being played and tacitly approving evil; if Trump plays rough with Kim, he’s needlessly rude, and provoking Kim. If the meeting happens, it will mean nothing, but if the meeting gets called off, it’s a golden opportunity lost.
We hate you, MSM. We really, really hate you.
Speaking of things we hate, Lizzie Warren was talking to cute little guy Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and she admitted that she’s “filled with terror” about the possibility of the GOP hanging on to the Senate and House in November: “If Donald Trump remains in control of the House and the Senate, and the Republicans won’t stop him, I don’t know what happens in the next two years.”
Don’t get your headdress feathers ruffled, Liz. If the past year is any guide, what happens might turn out to be continuing economic growth, lower unemployment than King Hussein ever achieved, and maybe even an end to the Korean war. Sure, there will be a downside for you: more judges who try to follow the constitution will be appointed, we’ll likely get more regulation reform, and ordinary people will get to keep and spend more of their own money. But you’ve got to take the good with the bad.
On the other hand, you are also up for election in November, and the dopey voters in MA have not shown any inclination to toss out the cranky old papoose with the bathwater. (#wemustneverstopmockingher) So you’ve got that going for you.
Finally, it’s been fun to watch the incipient fallout from the IG report, which appears to be every bit the broadside fired into lefty Washington that we thought it would be. It turns out that Peter Stroke and Comey and McCabe WERE dishonest and unprofessional, and Obama DID lie about not knowing about Hillary’s private server, and that Hillary WAS treated with kid gloves instead of competently questioned and exposed.
It’s been very frustrating for those of us on the right to see another Clinton apparently getting away with terrible behavior again. Yes, she lost the election. (giggle) And yes, her behavior since losing has revealed just how awful she is (chuckle), and what a nightmare of a president she would have been (snort). But it feels like she still hasn’t been called to account, and forced to answer for her actions. In any fair system, she should be facing prosecution.
On the other hand, I’m Mr. Glass-half-full. An inveterate optimist. I like to stay on the sunny side of life.
So I’ve been thinking hard, trying to come up with some silver linings on the dark cloud that is Hlllary’s eluding prosecution for her intentional, reckless mis-handling of classified materials. And I’ve come up with two.
First, if she was standing trial and on her way to jail, she would not be free to stay in the spotlight, and go on a terrible book tour and give terrible speeches and CAW CAW CAW her way through one television appearance after another, and thus remind the American people of exactly how terrible she and her party are.
Second, if she were charged, she would have to post bail, and then be released on some kind of modified house arrest while she awaited trial. And you know what that means: (cue scary organ sting) an ankle monitor.
That’s right. Some poor, unlucky member of the law enforcement community would draw the short straw, and would end up with the job of trying to get an ankle monitor onto one of those fetlocks of hers.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is more than we can — in clean conscience — ask of any man or woman.
Happy Father’s Day!
Martin Simpson 