So my favorite month of the year has started, and I’m in a great mood. Family traveled to our place this Thanksgiving, and a good time was had by all, including Cassie, who met her new puppy cousin Sylvia. The appropriate amount of sniffing and circling and chasing and tugs of war took place. I’m already in the Christmas spirit; tomorrow is the first Wednesday evening advent service, and cold weather has come to north Florida, which means that I’ll be making my first fire in the fireplace after I finish this column. So even as the country teeters on the verge of another week of mind-numbing impeachment shenanigans, life is still good.
Speaking of impeachment, I was surfing the web on the day before Thanksgiving and came across a story in Politico that was very entertaining, in a schadenfreude-tastic kind of way. The title caught my eye: “Dems see one last chance to boost public support for impeachment.”
The story is a great example of the obliviousness that people fall into when they surround themselves with their own little clique of like-minded true believers. After two weeks of reporting every day of the hearings as one explosive/devastating bombshell/IED after another, you’d think that typing the title – “one last chance to boost support?” – might give the writers (there were three of them!) pause.
But it did not. Because a few paragraphs in, they wrote this sentence: “Many Democrats are skeptical that anything they do or say can further tick up backing for impeachment, keenly aware of polling this week showing that support has plateaued in the wake of an explosive set of House Intelligence Committee hearings that unearthed evidence suggesting an abuse of power by Trump.”
First of all, a “plateau” usually suggests that you’ve risen to a certain very high point, and then leveled off. So if the impeachment support leveled off at, say, 95% or so, I think the House Dems would be happy to proceed directly to the impeachment, trial and drawing and quartering. Alas, most polls show that support for impeachment has actually dropped during the hearings.
So I guess you could say that they reached a “plateau,” in the same sense that a guy who jumps off a 10-story building reaches a plateau… on the sidewalk!
Second, according to Politico, the Dems reached this lofty plateau “in the wake of an explosive set of House Intelligence Committee hearings that unearthed evidence suggesting an abuse of power by Trump.”
To which any sentient biped might logically respond, “What?!”
There were no explosions, and the only thing unearthed was the phoniness and dishonesty of Schiff and the assorted moral dwarves (Sleazy, Shifty, Whiny, Scowly, Twitchy, Snarly and Nadler) around him. And if that phone call constitutes an abuse of power, language has lost all meaning.
If that’s an abuse of power, what you could call Obama’s single-handedly overturning border policy, or sending the IRS after his political opponents? Or Bill Clinton getting serviced by a girl his daughter’s age while he was on the phone with Castro talking foreign policy? Or Ted Kennedy’s entire life and career?
And does it ever occur to the three stooges who wrote this article that if there REALLY had been any explosive evidence of abuse of power, the public support for impeachment would have actually gone upward to a plateau, rather than downward?
No, it apparently does not ever occur to them. Which is why they should never be taken seriously.
In Democratic primary news, a lot has happened in one short week. Sadly, we won’t have Kamala Harris to kick around anymore, as she has dropped out of the race, disappointing her literally dozens of supporters. After a campaign that started with great fanfare and fawning MSM attention – She’s black! She’s female! She’s neither white, nor male! – she made a fatal mistake: she appeared before the public, and gave them the chance to get to know her.
Also, she cackled in a terrifying way that hasn’t been heard since a certain former Clydesdale-ankled sure-thing candidate bonked her cement-thick noggin against the surprisingly resilient glass ceiling – hilariously! — in 2016.
Here is my requisite farewell Haiku for Kamala:
She loves ganja, mon.
She slept with Willie Brown – gross!
But no one bought. HA!
On the other hand, we still have Joe Biden to kick around, and I could not be happier! This guy is the gaffe that keeps on giving.
In one short week, he did the following:
- Nibbled his wife’s outstretched fingers while she was giving a speech supporting him.
- Recommended that we deal with domestic violence by beating the hell out of it.
- Heard newly surfaced excerpts from the Corn Pop speech that recounted his story about how kids used to sit on his lap in the pool, and smooth down his blond leg hair.
- Named his bus tour around Iowa the “No Malarkey” tour.
I’ll cut him some slack on those first two. I mean, we all know Joe well enough to know that you don’t let your unprotected fingers get anywhere near those frighteningly white choppers of his, or you deserve what you get. And whenever I think about domestic violence, I just want to start punching everything in sight, too.
But the leg hair thing was weirder than it sounds. (Which hardly seems possible, right?) Because after that creepy little vignette, Joey Gaffes turned the creepy up to 11: “So I learned about roaches and I learned about kids jumping on my lap,” Biden continued. “I love kids jumping on my lap,” he concluded.”
Yikes! I’d think that after Bill Clinton and #metoo and Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and Charley Rose and Al Franken and Jeffrey Epstein (who definitely didn’t kill himself) and Carlos Danger, etc. the last thing that any Dem campaign aides would want is ANY reference to laps. No sitting on Plugsy’s lap and stroking his leg hair, no sitting on Slick Willie’s lap and telling him what you want for Christmas, no reference to lap dances, or lap dogs, or CAW CAW snapping a fetlock and falling on the last lap three Novembers ago.
But my favorite self-inflicted gunshot-to-the-foot Biden move of all is the name “No Malarkey.”
Because when one of your biggest liabilities is that you seem to be 100 years old and completely out of touch with modernity, what better way to kick off your tour than by naming it with some sweet 1930s slang?
I can’t wait to see Joe’s stump speech in Des Moines. If Jill Biden is still willing to risk her phalanges by introducing Joe on stage, I picture him awkwardly hugging her, as she flinches. “Let’s have a big hand for Dr. Jill Biden! She’s a real tomato, am I right? I mean, she’s got gams that go from here to there and back again. All right folks, this election is going to be a real donnybrook, so we all need to drink some java and then hit the road. We can’t afford to take a powder during this election. In foreign policy, Kim Jong-Un is a bad egg, and Trump has been sitting on his hands while Kim gives us the high hat. You don’t have to be a gum shoe to see that Trump has been making a lot of cabbage from his hotels, but not paying his fair share of taxes. And don’t believe him when he brags about economic growth, because when I get elected, it’s going to be 23 skidoo for the economy! In conclusion, you’re aces with me, Vermont! Now I’ve got to dangle.”
Did I mention that this guy is the front-runner in the Dem primaries?
Speaking of front-runners… let’s change subjects entirely. To Elizabeth Warren. She had her best week of the year, in my eyes at least. Because I didn’t see or hear from her at all. So I guess I don’t have much to say about the Pale Powhatan this week. Except #wemustneverstopmockingher
Finally, in a heartwarming story out of Washington state, a domestic disturbance unfolded just before Thanksgiving. It seems that a 36-year-old woman had been having some trouble with a 47-year-old man, so she got a restraining order that prevented him from contacting her. Nevertheless, he broke into her home on November 27th, armed with a knife. But when she told him that she had a restraining order, and held it proudly up in front of her, he read it carefully. Then, gnashing his teeth in frustration, he muttered, “I guess I have to leave you alone, then,” and left peacefully. The end.
HA! I kid. The violent, armed jerk who broke into her house was not impressed with the restraining order, and he attacked her with the knife. Luckily for her, she was able to make a swiping movement with the restraining order as he charged, creating a papercut that opened his jugular. Seeing the error of his ways, he dropped the knife, clamped both hands over his wound, and left to seek medical attention. The end.
HA! I kid again. I am truly an unreliable narrator.
The violent POS actually did break into her house and attack her with a knife. But because she is fond of the 2nd amendment, and had a pistol, she exercised the best type of gun control: she held her weapon in both hands and aimed for center mass when she shot him. He died, and now she can enjoy her house in peace. And if she has a fireplace, she can use the otherwise-useless restraining order to start a cozy fire. The end.
Avenatti/Harris 2020!
Martin Simpson 