Month: February 2020

This past week was another interesting one for Democrat watchers.  In the wake of New Hampshire, the race for the Dem nomination is starting to look like an incipient train wreck.  Unless, that is, you like watching trains wreck.

In that case, it’s like watching trains just missing each other.  But then ramming into a semi-truck stuck on the tracks, and driving that truck into a bus full of nuns, and then driving the truck and the nun-filled-bus into a junior high school.  And the train was carrying coal and lighter fluid, and the truck was full of propane, and the train conductor and truck driver were smoking cigarettes, and the nuns were smoking pipes, for some reason.

It was a mess, is what I’m trying to say.

First among the losers had to be Joey Gaffes, whom I’ve always expected to fall apart.  But I thought that he’d slowly lose steam, like the Cheshire Cat, gradually fading away until there was nothing left but those frighteningly white choppers of his.

But instead, this guy imploded at record speed!  He was the undisputed front-runner for almost a year, despite waving more red flags than a suicidal bullfighter in a May Day parade in Red Square.

He bled from the eyes, he didn’t know what state he was in or who he was talking to.  Still the front runner.

He told stories about confronting absolutely fictional ethnic gangbangers named after breakfast cereals, and minority children sitting on his lap and smoothing down his leg hair.  Still the front runner.

He called voters fat, and challenged them to push-up contests and IQ tests.  (Both of which he would likely score less than 20 on.)  Still the front runner.

But then voters get a chance to actually vote, and he can’t crack the medal stand in either of the first two states.

But it was worse than that.  Because when a voter asked him about what his terrible finish in Iowa meant to his electability claims, he famously called her, “a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”

First, great strategy: when confronted by someone you are trying to get to vote for you, insult her.

Second, when you want to insult someone, it shouldn’t sound like you just created a mad lib by playing 52-card-pick up with a pile of cards with random adjectives and nouns written on them.  Could that ever turn out well?  (You hirsute, buck-toothed mammal botherer!)

See.  Even when I do it, it sounds stupid. And I am a famously brilliant insulter.

I have a theory to explain why Biden said that.

Actually I have two theories.  First, the obvious: dementia.

But second, I think he may have been preoccupied with the news that Hillary had just given several interviews suggesting that she might get into the race.  Because “lying” could be an obvious, knee-jerk reference triggered by the thought of Hillary.

And pony?  Enough said.

I’m not going to bring up dog-faced, because I am a gentleman, and I think I’ve made my point.

 

So if the Corn Pop Slayer was the biggest loser, who was the second biggest?

That had to be Grandma Squanto, who as recently as Halloween — she went as Mulan, and fooled no one (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – was the only serious rival to Biden, and was thought by many to be the smart-money pick.

But it turned out that her business was being a terrible candidate, and buddy, business was BOOMING.

She made videos in her own kitchen with her own husband as she drank a beer, and it was so phony that viewers did not believe that she’d ever drank a beer before.  Or that that guy was her husband.  Or that that room was her kitchen.

She took idiotic questions and gave idiotic answers.  She said she she’d have a gender-confused 9-year-old pick her Secretary of Education.

She said that her health care plan would cost $32 trillion. With a “T.”

As in “Tonto can’t count.”

But she also proved herself a consistent leftist this last week, when she recounted the story of a young college kid who came up to her in a selfie line.  The girl told her that she had $6 in her bank account, but she’d just donated $3 of that to Lizzie’s campaign.

Did Liz say, “You WHAT?  I’m a multi-millionaire, don’t give me your last few dollars.  Here.  Here’s $100, go get yourself something to eat.”

Did she say that?  Do you remember the part where I said that she is a consistent leftist?

She took the $3 and fluffed up her headdress with pride, saying, “That’s what we gotta do. We’ve gotta stay in this fight with people who are counting on us.”

Yes, broke and gullible people who are counting on you to tax them at 50%.

Thankfully, Warren did terribly in Iowa.  In New Hampshire, where she’d expected to do very well, she came in a distant fourth.  So it looks like there’s only one thing to say to Grandma Squanto.

You know that juggernaut campaign that you thought you’d assembled, and that you’d fine-tuned into a resentment-fueled vote harvesting machine?

Well, you didn’t build that, Lizzie.  HA!

 

Bernie and Mayor Pete did the best in Iowa and New Hampshire, but both of them are scaring sane Democrats.  They each have positions and attributes that attract far-left Dem primary voters, but repulse most of the rest of the voting public.

I guess you’d have to say that the winning Democrat, by default, was Michael Dinklage — I mean, Bloomberg — whose only hope was that the other candidates would stumble around and step on rakes and scare the horses and vomit on their own shoes.

Done, done, done and done.

Mike’s big move last week was to float the idea of picking Hillary as his VP.

Not Hillary Swank, or the ghost of Sir Edmund Hillary.  Hillary Clinton!

Now I’m no political cartoonist.  But if there are not rough sketches of Mike as a jockey riding Seattle Rodham-Slew on drawing boards all over this country, heads should roll!

What does it say about the Dems that their current front runners both appear to disdain the Democrat party?   Bernie won’t even call himself a Democrat.  After a century during which socialists in Russia, Germany, China, Cuba, Venezuela and dozens of other nations have turned huge swaths of the planet into poverty-stricken, polluted graveyards and wastelands… he’d still rather be called a socialist than a Democrat!

And Bloomberg, who used to be a lifelong Democrat, became a Republican when he wanted to run for mayor of NYC.  Then he became an Independent for 11 years (Mike 3.0), before declaring himself a Democrat again (Mike 4.0) only 16 months ago!

How long do you think it will take for Mike 5.0 to come out as a vegan?  And then for Mike 6.0: gender non-binary Whig?

(And let me save you some time: Mike 12.0? Scientologist.)

Last March – less than a year ago – Bloomberg gave an interview on camera saying that a national presidential campaign wouldn’t work for a guy like him, unless he – and I quote – “was willing to change all my views and go on what CNN called an apology tour.”  When the small crowd laughed, he continued, “Joe Biden went out and apologized for being male, over 50, white…”

Fast forward about 9 months, and the Democrats show that they are incapable of counting portly white people in a gymnasium in Iowa.  They conduct an impeachment so incompetently that it boomerangs on their own frontrunner, and raises the approval ratings of its target.  They put their faith in a bug-eyed dope who couldn’t tell the truth if his pencil-esque neck was on the line, and a harridan so ancient and fragile that she had to pre-rip Trump’s SOTU speech before she could tear it with her trembling, dessicated mummy hands, in a childish tantrum that made Trump look like he had the gravitas of Pitt the Elder by comparison.

And Bloomberg said, “I could actually beat these idiots!”  And what kind of a tour did he embark on, you probably aren’t asking, because you already know?

That’s right: an apology tour.   He’s sorry for redlining.  He’s sorry for working on Wall Street, and for making billions of dollars.  He’s sorry for stop and frisk, even though it made black communities safer.  He is just plain sorry!

I would not want to be a Democrat party bigshot right now.   And not just because I’m winning at life, and they’re a bunch of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers.

In the past, the Dems had distinctive and separate constituencies – the white working class, blacks, unions, and women, for example.  But catering to those wasn’t terribly daunting, since they had a lot of overlap.  Many women are from the white working class.  Many women are black.  Many blacks are working class.  Many blue-collar blacks and whites are in unions, or used to be.

But what do you do when your most energized constituency is made up of people who are animated by a lethal combination of utter economic ignorance – Make healthcare and education free, and then no one will have to pay for it!  Raise taxes and increase regulations and make it tougher to open businesses and more people will open businesses and pay more taxes!  Hooray! – and a toxic hatred of financially successful people?

But at the same time, your major candidates are all multi-millionaires, and two of them – including the one with what may be the best chance to win against Trump – are billionaires!

They’ve spent decades teaching their poor voters to hate the rich, and their female voters to hate males, and everyone to hate whitey.  And now they may need to get all of those voters to vote for a rich, white male, lest they be beaten by a rich orange one!

Oh, sweet, sweet irony.

 

Avenatti/Avenatti’s cell mate 2020!

Late Thursday I wrote a column celebrating what had been one of the best weeks ever – but I wrote prematurely, because I only covered Sunday through Wednesday.  And the good times did not stop flowing on hump day.

In fact, they continued on Thursday, when Trump went after Pelosi… at a prayer breakfast!

Okay, even I have to admit that that was not a good look for Trump.  Hammer the sleazy Dems in a news conference, or standing by a helicopter, or even through a barrage of childish and offensive – and yet hilarious — tweets.

But not at a prayer breakfast!  I agree that the SOTU is not a sacred occasion, nor are campaign stops, Rose Garden speeches, or rallies.  But I wish that Trump could have held his fire until after the prayer breakfast.

That being said, I am a flawed and fallen person, as are we all.  I constantly need forgiveness and grace.  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  That thing I don’t want to do, that is the very thing that I do.  And etc.

So if Trump’s team had asked me on Wednesday night to write a prayer for him to deliver at the prayer breakfast, l would have asked if Nancy Pelosi was going to be there.  And when the answer was yes, I would have said, “Let me think about it.”

Then I would have poured myself a big ol’ scotch, and fired up my computer, and sat in quiet contemplation.  The part of myself I like to call “St. Martin of the CO site” would perch on my right shoulder, wearing a set of angel wings and a halo, and say, “C’mon, man.  It’s a prayer breakfast.

But on my left shoulder would be “Martacus,” with devil horns and a Roman centurion helmet, working on his third scotch, and whispering, “It’s Nancy freaking Pelosi.”

And then I would high five little Martacus (which sounds like a double-entendre, but I swear it is not!) rub my hands together and cackle like Hillary when she’d just bullied one of Bill’s powerless female victims into keeping quiet.  And I would write this prayer – which you should read in Trump’s voice, if you can:

“Oh Lord, — and I don’t mean the pagan god Ra, who was worshiped by a certain person sitting at one end of this table, and who everybody knows was a false god, right?  I mean, the body of a human guy with the head of a bird, and he’s supposed to represent the sun somehow? Ridiculous.  Totally fake god.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: Dear Lord, thank you so much for taking me through the trials and tribulations brought upon me by my enemies.  And by “trial” I mean total sham trial. Everybody knows that.

Thank you for giving me a complete vindication and victory over my persecutors, with their pencil necks and their phony transcripts and their bulging eyes and their made-up charges.  Sad.

During these trying times, I got great comfort from many parts of life.  From my smoking hot wife – love you, honey! — and the record low unemployment, and your generous gift of drones, which I wisely used to kill those three terrorist creeps. Tremendously accurate strikes.

I’ve also drawn comfort from knowing that I am totally acquitted, while you have confused and thwarted my opponents, to the point that they have spent what feels like 40 years wandering in the gymnasiums and VFW halls of Iowa, having lost the ability to do simple math.  That was truly a good one, God.

But Lord, I’m not a perfect man.  My phone calls are perfect – so perfect! — but I am not. And I know that I need to be able to forgive my enemies, and not hold grudges.  And I confess that, frankly, I have been holding a grudge against someone in this room.  From the time I first saw her when I was only a child, and she was starring in one of those great 1930s Universal classic monster movies, she has terrified me.

Even further back, when she was standing beside her pharaoh, and Moses brought your 10 commandments – top notch commandments, by the way.  Just terrific! — down from the mountain, and she tried to tear them into pieces, like a complete lunatic.

By the way, lord, I also thank You for visiting me in a dream last night, and giving me the idea of having my next 4 SOTU speeches carved on stone tablets, just in case.

In conclusion, please continue to bless this most amazing of countries, and defeat its enemies.  Smite them with boils and coronavirus and primary challenges and near-lethal levels of botox, fill their filthy streets with fecal matter and dirty syringes, and make them bleed from the eyes when they say something especially stupid in the middle of a debate.

Amen.”

Okay, so other than Trump letting loose in the prayer breakfast (and I want my president to be better than me, with my sarcastic mockery and hilarious, repetitive mummy jokes), the week ended almost as greatly and bigly as it began.

Later on Thursday, Trump tore some more burial strips off of Pelosi (HA!  I can’t stop myself) in a secular press conference setting.

That same day, Grandma Squanto got off of a private plane in New Hampshire, after thundering against global warming and CEOs with gigantic carbon footprints taking private planes everywhere.  When she saw a camera man nearby, she ducked behind one of her aides, and kept maneuvering to keep that person between her and the camera.  Which was hilarious!

That might have worked when you hid behind your horse as you stalked a US cavalry unit, or snuck up on a horde of delicious, migrating crabs on the plains of Oklahoma, Lizzie.  But it doesn’t work in an airport filled with cellphones in 2020!  #wemustneverstopmockingher

On Friday, another round of great economic numbers came out, highlighted by almost a quarter-million new jobs created.  (Remember Paul Krugman, on election night?  “The economy will never recover from Trump’s election!”)

But there was one job loss announced that day.  That was Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who underwent an unscheduled rectal exam via a drone-fired missile in Yemen.  After he had survived a raid earlier in Trump’s administration, al-Rimi taunted Trump, saying that “the new fool of the White House received a painful slap across his face.”

When asked about that at a press conference, Trump said, “Ooh, I got a rhetorical face slap.  And now al-Rimi is “al-ream-y.” What a loser!”

Okay, Trump didn’t say that.  But he should have.  And admit it, you heard that in his voice, didn’t you?

And after all that – after the Three Stooges show in Iowa, and dessicated mummy hands impotently tearing up the triumphant SOTU speech, and a not-even-close acquittal and another dead terrorist – it was Friday night.  And the Democrats had another debate.

And it was beautiful!

Seven leftist dwarves took the stage (insert your own “Bloomberg is the 8^th dwarf” joke here), and proceeded to stake out the farthest left positions they could.

My summary of the transcript: “I’m more unelectable!” “No, I am!” “No, my outlandish positions will offend and repulse way more regular Americans than yours will!”  “No more malarkey!  23 skidoo!  Remember the Alamo!”

Ugh.  There were way too many idiotically repugnant positions to sort through, so I’m just going to pick one: America is RACIST!

Bernie had perhaps the most perfectly condensed statement of the main idea, when he said, “We have a racist society from top to bottom!”

His statement was slightly more hyperbolic than the others, but all of them joined him in the idea, with Mayor Pete indicting our racist ”justice system, education, healthcare and housing.” Then, when a moderator asked Grandma Squanto if that was “a substantial answer” from Pastor Pete, the Potawatomi Prevaricator™ (copyright by me, right now, in case she gets the nomination and I need to start turning out t-shirts and bumper stickers to supplement my meager writing income) said, “No,” and went on to up the ante even more on how terribly racist America is.

Amy Klobuchar, afraid that she wasn’t going to get a chance to crap on our country too, got the moderator’s attention by heaving a binder right into her skull.  Witnesses differ on whether that pitch was more of a curve or a slider, but everyone agreed it hit the sweet spot of the strike zone.  Or in this case, the moderator’s right orbital bone.

While paramedics gave the moderator medical attention, Klobuchar took advantage of the air time to condemn,` “the systematic racism when it comes to voting.”

Okay, I made up the part about the binder throwing.  Because she is always careful to do that behind closed doors, and only against aides who are unimportant enough that nobody notices when they disappear, and their bodies are never found.

But I didn’t make up her quote, which is much more damning than the niggling question of whether she may have pelted an intern or two – or 28 — with a blunt object here and there.   Because at least her bad temper might pay off in the White House, when she could potentially lose it and bean Soleimani or Al-bag-deady or al-Reamy when they are attacking our country.

Oops – she can’t do that.  Because Trump already killed all of them!

So why do we need to elect an angry little America-hater with a Triple-A level arm, at best?

That’s right.  We don’t.

Sing it, Ray Charles: “Oh happy day…”

 

Avenatti/Al-Reamy 2020!

Before you begin reading this column, let me ask you to go to Youtube, find the video of Ray Charles singing “Oh Happy Day” in front of a choir of the happiest dashiki-wearing folks you’ll ever see, and start that playing softly in the background.  Because a column this happy requires a soundtrack.  (Also, don’t miss the awkward yet adorable little dance/walk thing that Charles does at the end of the song.  Because that is the same exact awkward dance/walk that I did in my living room – with Cassie the Wonder Dog watching me in confusion – as I watched Nasty Nancy P tearing up Trump’s SOTU speech on Tuesday night.)

Was this last week the happiest week in our nation’s history?  I can’t say that definitively.  I got married 30 years ago, and that was a pretty good week.  I’ve been present at the birth of two daughters, and those were pretty good weeks.

We adopted Cassie, the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986, Trump thumped Cankles McPantsuit in 2016 like a 19-year-old Mike Tyson knocking Eddie Richardson into the troposphere in the first round, and George Washington crossed the Delaware and whipped some German mercenaries at Christmastime.

Those were all pretty good weeks.  But this week was right up there.

On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl.  I love Mahomes, the Chiefs hadn’t been on top for 50 years, and though it’s not the 49ers’ fault, they represent the most far-left, feces-filled (but I repeat myself) city in the country.

On Monday, the Democrats ran the greatest caucus in the history of caucuses… right into the ground!  Move over, wax-winged Icarus, and step aside, unsinkable Titanic, because we have a new, perfect illustration of human hubris leading to a disastrous face-plant, with extra points added for sheer hilarity!

Four years after Bernie’s people insisted on changes after Iowa was corruptly and/or incompetently given to Hillary, the woke whiz kids came up with an app that was guaranteed to streamline the process, and demonstrate the flawless efficiency that is the hallmark of leftist rule.

And boy, did it!

End result: 5000 years after the invention of the abacus, 2200 years after the invention of paper, and 350 years after the invention of the pencil, the Democrats are still not able to count a small number of white people in a very small state.

And these white people weren’t hiding in duck blinds, wearing camouflage.  They were standing around in well-lit gymnasiums!

If you haven’t been in a Midwestern gym lately, they have tan-colored wood floors, and dark wood bleachers.  White people in that environment are pretty easy to spot.  Unless you are a leftist bureaucrat with a killer app, apparently.

How bad was it?  After three days, we still aren’t sure who won.  In fact, on Wednesday (and I am not making this up), the state Democrat party said that the partial totals had been certified as accurate, and then later in the day had to admit that some votes that were cast for Bernie had been erroneously counted for Butch Patrick.

I know, that’s what I thought, too: Are you telling me that tv’s Eddie Munster got some Democrat votes in Iowa?   I mean, it makes a little sense, since tv’s Herman Munster won the Iowa caucus in 2004.  But still, I don’t think any pundits were expecting Eddie to have such a good showing.

Wait a minute.  My crack research staff informs me that it wasn’t Butch Patrick, but MA governor Deval Patrick.  Also, Herman Munster did NOT win Iowa for the Democrats in 2004 – that was John Kerry.  Honest mistake.  And by the way, I would sooner vote for the ticket of Herman and Eddie Munster in 2020 than whichever two boneheads the Dems end up nominating from their current field.   (Also, Uncle Fester would make a better Attorney General than Obama’s Steadman Holder or Loretta Lynch.)

Ironically, the biggest winner from Iowa’s Cluster Caucus™ may be Joey Gaffes, because the lack of promptly announced results dampened the effect of his terrible, 4^th place finish.  And he didn’t help himself by his performance when he showed up at one gym in Cedar Rapids:

Biden: “Hello, Boise!”

Voice in the crowd: “That’s Idaho.  This is Iowa!”

Biden: “I know that.  I’ve always loved the amazing potatoes you folks grow here.”

Voice: “That’s still Idaho.”

Biden: “Thanks for coming out.  Go Utes!”

Voice: “That’s Utah.”

Biden: “Listen, fat—”

Biden’s handler (whispering): “These are supporters.”

Voice:  “Why are you bleeding from the eyes?”

Biden: “You want to do some push-ups with me?  Let’s go.”

Handler: “Please don’t do that.”

Biden: “Do you want to compare IQs?  Come on, man!”

Handler: “Okay, we need to get back on the road.”

Biden (waving):  “I love the Green Mountain State!”

Voice: “That’s Vermont.  This is Iowa.”

Biden:  “Give me a break!  Get your facts straight, Jack.” (his handler starts tugging him toward the door.)  “No Mularkey!  23 skidoo!”

Handler: “Okay, Mr. Vice President—”

Biden (as he’s pulled outside): “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”

And, scene.

 

Then came Tuesday, and the best SOTU speech ever.

I don’t care for the modern tradition of the televised SOTU.  They are always a bit of a dog and pony show, with guests used as props, awkward applause from one side and poker faces from the other, and a whiff of monarchy about the whole thing.  I’d rather we went back to George Washington’s practice, and had the prez deliver a letter to be read by a faceless functionary: “Interest rates are low, employment is high, we’re working on a treaty with the Turks, and #wemustneverstopmocking Liz Warren.  The state of the union is solid, and if we could throw some of these leftist bums out in the next election, it would be even better.  Good night, and God bless America.”

But if we have to have a SOTU, THIS is the SOTU we should have.

Trump was at his showman-like Trumpiest, showcasing an effective line-up of guests: the Tuskeegee airman survivor; the non-commie, legitimate leader of Venezuela; the Army wife and kids with the surprise reunion with their vet dad; the black girl who gets to escape her crappy public school.   All of those people should have been non-controversial applause points for both sides, and yet the Dems were grudging at best.

And Trump was also at his trolliest: he had Melania give Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Rush Limbaugh!  At the SOTU!

And the Dems played right into his hands.  A bunch of them walked out like pouting children. AOC ostentatiously did not attend.  Which is par for the course for her, since all of us look at America and see the greatest, richest, most free country in the history of humanity.  But when She-Guevara looks at America, it’s all helipads and ringworm as far as the eye can see.  (I know that doesn’t appear to make sense.  But read my January column at Martinsimpsonwriting.com about her interview with Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) Coates, and it will.)

And just when you thought that the Dems couldn’t come across any worse, Nancy Pelosi said, “Hold my canopic jar.”

She looked like a crazy lady during most of the speech, alternating between fumbling with the speech pages, staring vacantly, and shaking her head and apparently talking to herself.  When it was over, she famously ripped up the speech, in a graceless gesture that made her look like a petulant child.  Which is ridiculous, since she was actually a child during the Ptolemaic dynasty in ancient Egypt.

Trump’s ability to draw his opponents into unforced errors is really amazing.  He has strengths that none of them have.  He also has some glaring weaknesses – a bullying and petty streak, an instinct for childish insults – but those are baked into the cake re: our view of Trump.  People have been so glad to see a Republican who will fight back and get into the mud with sleazy Dems, they forgive him for flaws that would doom another candidate.

The Dems’ only possible path to defeat Trump would be to stick to the high ground, and let his less appealing qualities alienate moderates, independents, RINOs, and suburban women who are offended by them.  But I can’t think of the last Dem who has consistently taken the high road (Obama only seems to have done so in comparison to the latest gaggle of Schiffs and Tlaibs and Ilhan Omars), and Nancy can’t help herself.

Her attacks on Trump as childish and petty are totally undermined by her tantrum after his speech, and Schiff’s wild warnings that Trump’s going to give Alaska to the Russians, and the various Dems’ shrieking about him being Hitler and a fascist and etc.   (I’m assuming that some folks at the RNC are even now cutting some “take back the House” ads featuring Pelosi’s shenanigans at the SOTU.  If any of them are reading this, I’d like to suggest a possible slogan for the campaign: “De-gavel the Mummy in 2020!”)

Similarly, the Dems seemed to be making some political hay a while ago by pointing out the chaotic goings-on in the White House, with appointees being hired and fired and thrown under the bus on a regular basis.  “We,” the Dems tried to argue, “would be a return to normalcy and competent, orderly governance.”

But have you noticed how smoothly Detroit is run?  And San Francisco?  And Baltimore, and Philly, and New Orleans, and Chicago, and every other city and state that the Dems have had one-party control over?

And did I mention Iowa, where it seems like just this Monday when they couldn’t do a simple head count?    These dopes couldn’t pick the winner of a one-horse race.  They couldn’t manage a three-car funeral.    They couldn’t find their Nadler with both hands and a topographical map.  If these guys were coroners, half their patients would survive the autopsy!

And then it was hump day.  And the Dems in the Senate began humping a table leg they’d mistaken for an interested partner, while the bad orange man was acquitted.

They needed 67 votes to get rid of Trump.  They got 48.  As the Democrat leadership in Iowa could tell you, that’s 115 votes less than they needed.  Or, wait, 7 votes.  No… hold on….  By their calculations, Robert Duvall is now president.

No, it’s Patrick Stewart.  Make that Danny Partridge.  Or Danny Patrick.

NO – Deval Patrick.  He won Iowa.   And Cousin It is leading in New Hampshire.

Can you hear that sound?  It’s Ray Charles, laughing softly as his head bobs back and forth, and his gifted fingers start dancing lightly across a keyboard.

“Oh happy day…”

Avenatti/Eddie Munster 2020!

As we await the vote to acquit Trump – and the hilarious wailing and gnashing of teeth that will accompany it throughout the media — I’d like to start a new week with three other stories that brought me joy this past week.

First, Don Lemon’s perfectly emblematic laughing fit with two other non-entities on his insufferably stupid show.

Everybody agrees that among Hillary’s worst mistakes in 2016 – right up there with “being Hillary Clinton” and “running for president” – was her dismissal of half of the country as “deplorables.”  Smart politicians go to great lengths to criticize their opponent, but not voters who might be considering their opponent.

Enter Don Lemon, who had two equally dim bulbs on his unwatchable show who mocked all Trump voters as idiotic hicks.  One guy did a hilarious Southern accent, and the other one mocked the way conservatives can’t spell, or understand a map.   And Lemon could not stop laughing for two solid minutes.

A day later he explained that he hadn’t been laughing at conservative people, but at the joke.

Yes.  The joke.  The one about how stupid conservative people are.

You know what voters really love, elitist hacks?  Being lectured on IQ by people who think that bovine flatulence is going to destroy the earth in 8 years, and that there are no such things as X and Y chromosomes, and that socialist dictatorships produce a thriving economy and a bountiful sugar beet harvest.

This is how you got President Trump, CNN.  And it’s how you’re going to get him for four more years.

 

Second,  the super-satisfying way the Brits left the EU.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Britain, even though their history is a little hit-and-miss.

On the “pro” side, they gave us Shakespeare and the Spitfire and the Beatles and the long bow (my personal favorite of all the bows), and they founded us.

On the “con” side, they got a little too Democrat-y for their own good and started taxing everything that moved, so my ancestors had to send them packing with the help of the Kentucky long rifle and a little something I like to call “grit.”

But as other countries go, they’re pretty damn good.  And lately, they’ve been getting better, culminating with the arrival of my two new favorite Brits: Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage is one of my favorite Brits for several reasons.  First, because every nation should have a most-perfect-first-name for their citizens; that name, for Brits, is obviously “Nigel.”  (For France it’s “Francois,” for Mexico it’s “Juan,” for all Scandanavian countries – and don’t pretend you are not all essentially the same country – it’s “Sven,” for Germany it’s “Hans,” and so on.) (For America?  Do I have to state the obvious?  Okay, I will: “Martin.”)

Second, I absolutely loved the way that Farage led the UK out of the arrogant, micro-managing bunch of swampy poke-noses who run Washington DC.

I’m sorry, make that Brussels.  The arrogant, micro-managing bunch of poke-noses in Brussels.  Honest mistake.

Anyway, Farage has long pushed for Brexit against a gaggle of condescending jerks who said it would never happen, that no one populist and a crowd of freedom-fetishizers could ever win over Cankles McSocialist and the Dem/MSM establishment.

I’m sorry, make that the EU.  Honest mistake again.

So last week, Nigel made a final speech in the Reichstag, bidding farewell to the EU.

Shoot!  Not the Reichstag.  The Javits Center.   He made the speech in the Javits Center, under many suspended bags of blue and white pieces of paper meant to symbolize the glass ceiling, which the Brussels Brain Trust (great wrestling tag team name, by the way) intended to release in the celebration over the anticipated British vote to stay in the Eu.

Good lord!  Where is my mind today?  It wasn’t the Reichstag or the Javits Center, but the EU Parliament building.  Honest mistake yet again.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Google Farage’s speech, which was so perfect that I thought I’d hallucinated it when still gripped with my flu fever last week.   Everybody who appreciates freedom and standing up to bullies should watch it.  But the ending is especially great.

He closes by pulling out a small Union Jack flag (his colleagues all do the same), and he waves it around as he says that he is waving goodbye.  “We look forward in the future to working with you as a sovereign—”

At that point – in a moment that couldn’t be better scripted to more clearly illustrate what’s wrong with unaccountable, leftist, big-government entities – the Euro-crats cut off his microphone.  Because he was in the middle of stating that the Brits would be happy to interact with all European peoples as one sovereign, self-determining people, but not as a vassal state, as the arrogant elites in Brussels see them.

And those elites literally silenced him.

A moment later, a sour-looking lady who looks like she identifies as an 1880’s librarian said, “If you disobey the rules, you get cut off.  Could we please remove the flags!”  As she said this, she looked at Farage as if what she’d really like to cut off was not his mic, but what Bruce Jenner cut off of himself.

But Nigel just smiled at her.  Because guess what, angry old Euro-weasel spinster bureaucrat?  The Brits don’t have to obey your rules any more, and you can replace the Union Jack with that “Six Flags Over Micro-Managemen- Land” goofy EU flag of yours.

And I think Nigel might have a suggestion as to where you can stick that flag pole.

 

Last but not least is that fan favorite, Grandma Squanto.

As Liz Warren’s campaign seems to be heading toward life support, and she contemplates the prospect of returning to her previous place of employment – and yes, I do mean a cigar store (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – I came across a report that I thought must surely be some parody story in the Onion.

But then I looked it up and found out that it was real.  I’m speaking, of course, of her plan to choose a secretary of education, when she becomes make-believe president.

She was asked how she would make education inclusive.   (Which is an idiotic question, but I don’t have time for that right now.)  And Warren points to two criteria.

First, “It has to be someone who’s taught in a public school, hello?”

I love when 100 year old white ladies try to sound like a dim-witted character from a third-rate sitcom with a racially diverse group of teens who were what the middle-aged writers thought was hip in 1987.

Then – and I cannot stress enough how much I am not making this up – she told a story about meeting a 9-year-old transgender kid a few months ago, who asked about what she would do to help transgendered kids.  And she said that, “I’m going to have a Secretary of Education that this young trans person interviews on my behalf, and only if this person believes [this] nominee is absolutely committed to creating a welcoming environment … will that person actually be advanced to be Secretary of Education.”

Leave aside the issue of transgenderism, or gender dysphoria, or terrible parents who should be Baker Acted and possibly horse-whipped.  That’s such a politically correct minefield that it can’t be resolved here.

But forget all that, and focus on the core of what she said: she wants us to believe that she’d have a confused 9-year-old child vet her cabinet nominees.  That’s a confidence-builder, isn’t it?

Can you picture Ronald Reagan stopping by the local middle school after his inauguration?  “Hey, kid, are you not sure whether you should pee standing up or sitting down?  Good.  Stop eating that paste, and come over here and talk to Cap Weinberger and George Schultz for a minute, and tell me who you like for SecDef.”

On his podcast, Adam Carolla often plays a game he calls “Stupid or Liar,” in which he takes a clip or a quote from a prominent celebrity or politician, and asks his audience to determine whether that person is an idiot, or just lying.

A recent example was when vacuous Democrat waste of a haircut Gavin Newsom claimed that all homeless people need is affordable housing, because high rents have caused their situation.

As if a guy sitting in his own filth, shooting heroin between his toes and explaining to anyone who will listen that he is Napoleon and is about to make a triumphant march on Paris, would get right back on his feet if the city of Santa Monica would just offer him a 2/1 with off-street parking for $650 a month.

Carolla’s conclusion: Newsom can’t be stupid enough to believe that.  So he’s a liar.

But what do we conclude about Grandma Squanto?  Your first instinct has to be that she can’t be stupid enough to believe that she should give a bunch of kids some crayons and ask them to write out a full roster of names that she can then declare her cabinet.

On the other hand, she stared at her vacant, translucent face and watery blue eyes in various mirrors for 30 years, and was apparently convinced enough that she was an Indian to take a DNA test and then publicize it.

So what you do you think?  Liz Warren: stupid or liar?

 

Avenatti & Stupid-or-Liar 2020!

Now that my fever has lifted and my flu is gone, I went back to see if I had actually hallucinated a speech by AOC on how wealthy people should behave.   And as you probably know – if you’ve got a strong stomach and a masochistic desire to be lectured by uninformed ex-bartenders – I did not hallucinate that speech.  It is a real thing that happened.

Now some people say that AOC is a pretty face stuck onto an empty head.  Others say that she’s the kind of crackpot socialist who wouldn’t be able to start or run a business if her life depended on it.  Still others say that her inability to properly execute a drink order is exceeded only by her inability to understand basic economic principles.

Yet even more others say that her earning a degree in economics from BU is the greatest stain on an American university’s reputation since Bill Clinton spent several years teaching law and Advanced Co-ed Groping (5 credits, counting the lab work) at the University of Arkansas.

And all of those people are absolutely correct.

So why would I take the time to dissect her latest interview?

Because it is hilarious, of course.  But also because she may be the most accurate representative of the outlook, philosophy and agenda of the most committed and influential part of the leftist base of the Democrat party, and is thus worthy of our attention.

She was interviewed by Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) Coates, who is quite an over-rated thinker himself.  But sitting next to AOC, he looks like a cross between Stephen Hawking and Wittgenstein and some other really smart guy whom I can’t think of now because I’m appreciably dumber after having read AOC’s  ramblings.

In an interview to celebrate MLK Day, AOC discussed her plan for a 70% top income tax rate, explaining that the moral question involved is, “What kind of a society do we want to live in?  Are we comfortable with a society where someone can have a personal helipad while this city is experiencing the highest level of poverty and homelessness since the Great Depression.”

First, I’m not sure that the biggest economic boom of the last 50 years squares with the highest poverty rate since the depression.  On the other hand, NYC is completely ruled by leftists, and their ability to create high poverty rates can’t be denied, so…

Second, what?  A HELIPAD?  That’s the problem in NYC?  All of those damn helipads, cluttering up the place?  Why, it’s getting so bad that one of the Democrats’ pet homeless guys can barely get his sleeping bag rolled out before he has to run for cover to avoid the descending helicopter that lands right on his stuff.

Because everyone knows that one of the leading quality-of-life problems facing the homeless is the heartbreak of helicopter landing-gear tire marks on your sleeping bag.

It’s a cliché because it’s true.

When AOC was then asked if it’s possible to live in a moral society that includes billionaires, she said (duh!), “No, it’s not.  I’m not saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffet [and yes, she left me off that list just because she knows how much it bugs me] are immoral.  But a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.”

Ah, yes.  Remember that glorious time before Carnegie and John Rockefeller, when the Western hemisphere was blessedly ring-worm-free?  Well, not anymore.  Thanks, economically super-successful jerks!

She had some more “thoughts” on economic inequality, too:

“I think it’s wrong that the majority of the country doesn’t make a living wage.”  To which I can only say, Source?

“I think it’s wrong that you can work 100 hours and not feed your kids.”  Source??

“I think it’s wrong that corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid by the government, experiencing a wealth transfer from the public, for paying people less than a minimum wage.”  Source???

That’s three sentences in a row that start with “I think,” with nary an actual thought in sight.

But don’t worry, because she did a senior research project at BU in Widget Production.  So when Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) posed the, “I’m a billionaire who made and sold widgets” hypothetical question, he was right in her wheel-house:

“Well, you didn’t make those widgets, did you?” the bottom-quintile bartender replied.  “Because you employed thousands of people and paid them less than a living wage to make those widgets for you.  You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages.”

I love that she is offered a hypothetical about a non-existent product, and she imagines a fully-fleshed out world that is made up out of whole cloth, and yet it just coincidentally corresponds to the hateful, envious world-view of the far left:

How many employees are engaged in widget-making?  Thousands.  (No CAD-heavy widget-manufacturing workplace for her!)

What do those employees get paid?  Less than a living wage.  (Yet somehow they are still alive?  How does that work, exactly?)

What furniture does a widget magnate favor?  A couch.

Oh, wait, now those sub-living wages have plummeted from the last sentence… now they’re “slave wages!”

Um, Ms. Cortez?  I’m no antebellum history buff, but if I remember correctly, slaves didn’t have “wages.”  That was a pretty big part of being a slave, I think.

Anyway, AOC believes that the idea that Americans should aspire to “be a billionaire and own more than millions of families combined’ is not an aspirational or good thing.”  (By the way, I wonder if she’s offended that I pay more in federal income taxes than “millions of families combined?”  Not because I’m super-successful – though, have I mentioned my amazing wife and family, and world-class dog? – but because 48% of Americans pay no federal income taxes.)

Her main take-away quote is that, “No one ever makes a billion dollars.  You take a billion dollars.”

Got that?  If you produce a good or service for which millions of people voluntarily exchange their own money, and your piece of that ever totals a billion dollars, you are a thief – a taker, not a maker.  And AOC says that our system “should not let [you] exist.”

Yikes.  Is there any other way to read that other than you should either be killed, or at least robbed?

And what is the magic number where net worth tips over from “good/aspirational” to “must not be allowed?”

I know that it’s not six figures, because she went from bartender’s wages to that when she got elected, and she doesn’t seem troubled.  And if she’s a typical pol, she’ll have a net worth in the millions very soon, and I’m guessing that that amount of wealth won’t perturb her.

Because you “make” $100k, and you “make” $1 million.

But you “take” $1 billion.   You ring-worm-spreading, fascist helipad-enthusiast!

The scariest thing isn’t that the way she looks at the economy and our society is so uninformed and malevolent.  It’s that when she spouted this garbage, she was in a giant, public space full of people who were supposed to be there to honor MLK Jr., and she got repeated rounds of applause for doing it.

No, I take that back.  There’s one thing scarier.

In fact, consider this a trigger warning: If you are faint of heart or weak of stomach, please stop reading right now.  Because I’m about to share with you the single scariest paragraph I’ve read since years ago, when I came across the part in Pet Sematary where that unutterably creepy dead cat shows up back at the house.

Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One of the fawning articles about AOC’s interview ended this way:

“The representative was recently appointed to serve on the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees Wall Street. ‘I’m looking forward to digging into the student loan crisis, examining for-profit prisons/ICE detention, and exploring the development of public & postal banking,’ she said in a tweet.”

Avenatti/Ring Worm, 2020!

I’m just on the tail end of a killer flu. Fortunately, I have the strength of 10 men, because my heart is pure, and so I think I’m almost over it.  But while in the grips of heavy doses of Nyquil, a Z-pac and some doctor-recommended, purely medicinal scotch, I had some fevered sleep experiences.

The kind of troubled sleep that – if I were of a poetic bent – might have resulted in me waking up with a fully formed poem in my head.  (“In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree…”)

But because I’m more inclined to politician-mocking, I kept dozing and waking, but no matter how much time had passed, Mr. Mackey from South Park was still yammering on tv.  “Trump is bad, mmmkay?  And his phone calls?  Those are bad.  And we can’t let voters decide who gets to be president, because that would be bad, mmmkay?”

(And okay, there was one bout of troubled sleep from which I woke with this going through my mind:  “In Washington, did Adam Schiff, a mock-trial dumpster fire decree…”)

Now that the fever has broken, I realize that those were only partly delusions.  Because Pencil-Neck has apparently been on tv all week, telling the same stale lies with the same bug-eyed expression that has earned the House Dems a popularity rating right down there with heat rash and Cats: the Movie!

Since CO and many COers have already dissected the Dem’s sham-peachment performance in detail, I thought I’d piece this column together from some notes I wrote on various other stories over the last week or so.

Sure, I wrote these notes on a yellow pad as I slipped in and out of consciousness and a high fever, so they might not be as cogent as I might wish.  But I’d still stack them up against anything that Nadler or Schiff said in the past week:

1.I saw that the MSM spent approximately 1000 hours warning all of America that the 2^nd amendment rally in Virginia last week was going to be a flashpoint attracting neo-Nazis and white supremacists from all over.  “This will make Charlottesville look like a walk in the park!”  “These gun nuts will be marching down the street like a cross between Yosemite Sam and Al-Qaeda, firing six-guns and AK-47s into the air.  Run for your lives!”

Net result: 0 disturbances, 0 vandalism or crime, 0 shootings.   Total hours of MSM news time devoted to the totally peaceful results: 0 hours.

I was a little surprised that there weren’t any incidents there, just because I figured there would be some lefty or ANTIFA troublemakers infiltrating the proceedings, and firing off a few shots that the media could then blame on 2^nd amendment supporters.

But then I remembered that the marchers were all carrying.  So the first evil jerk who opened fired would be like the evil jerk who opened fire in that church in Texas recently.  (If you haven’t seen the video – and if so, is there something wrong with your television, son? – one armed deacon put him down with a head shot in about 3 seconds, and his body was then surrounded by three other parishioners with pistols.  God bless Texas!)

Also, keep beating that “the Nazis are coming!” drum, MSM.  Just because you’ve been laughably wrong the last 327 times in a row, doesn’t mean you will be again, right?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you could fit all of the neo-Nazis in America in an average community college gym, and the bleachers wouldn’t be completely full.   It’s hard to believe that the MSM can’t see how stupid they’re making themselves look.  They’re the Boy Who Cried Himmler, and nobody is listening anymore.

2. Speaking of people who are oblivious to how they come across to everyone else, Hillary cantered her way back into the public eye this week. First, because she’s being sued by Tulsi Gabbard for calling her a Russian agent.  (Would it be lookist of me to point out that Gabbard seems a little too easy on the eyes to be a leftist politician?  She’s not the least bit mummy-like or equine, which I’ve come to assume are pre-requisites over there.)

Second, because she tore into Bernie, sneering that “he’s never gotten anything done, and nobody likes him.”   The latter charge is pretty rich, considering that within the last 20 years, Hillary has taken over first place in the “Least Liked Leader in the History of the World” competition.  (Good news, Ivan the Terrible and Vlad the Impaler – you’re both off the hook!)

The former charge has the benefit of being true, but I see that as a good thing: I’d rather that our socialists get nothing done.  Because when socialists accomplish a lot, it ends in gulags and poverty and starvation and mass executions.

Also, is Hillary the one to point fingers about people not accomplishing anything?  I mean sure, she was Secretariat, but other than that?  She came to prominence and won a senate seat because of her husband, and in the one race she ran on her own merits, she lost to an orange caricature whom no one thought could win.

I’m sorry, my crack research staff is telling me that Hillary was Secretary of State, not Secretariat.  Honest mistake.  (Make your own joke here.  Mine:  One of them had broad, powerful flanks, tremendous ankles and did her best work in the mud, and the other one was a famous race horse…)

Third, Hillary gave an interview to the Hollywood Reporter in which she defended her association with Bill Clinton-doppelganger Harvey Weinstein.  She said, and I am not making this up, “How could we have known? He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general…”

Yes, how could anyone ever have known?  I mean, other than the fact that at least three influential lefties (Lena Dunham, Tina Brown, and Ronan Farrow) reportedly warned Hillary or her campaign about Weinstein.  Also, his lecherous, predatory ways were so widely known for so long, that Seth MacFarlane could make a famous joke during the Oscars in 2013 congratulating five supporting actress nominees because they would “never have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein again.”

Of course, Hillary is the same woman who was married to Slick Willy for decades, and yet never seemed to notice that every intern leaving his office was straightening out her hair and clothing, rubbing her behind or muttering, “I can’t believe that law professor/governor/president Bill Clinton just sexually assaulted me!  If only there were a woke, powerful feminist around here that I could report this to.”

Yes, Hillary.  How could you have ever known?

3.  Either I fell asleep with F-Troop on, or Grandma Squanto is looking more and more like a bullet that our body politic has dodged.

I’m sorry – make that an arrow.  An arrow that we’d dodged.  #wemustneverstopmockingher

She stepped on several political rakes recently, the first of which was her galling open-mike confrontation with Bernie after the debate, which showed what a terrible person she really is.  It’s bad enough that she sits on this supposed bombshell until the eve of a debate and then spring it on him, but then she has the nerve to accuse HIM of lying about HER?

I love the way the dopes on CNN and MSNBC all rallied around her, saying that they believed her version over Bernie’s.  I mean, why wouldn’t you believe a white lady who claimed to be an Indian, and who claimed that her kids went to public schools, and that she was fired for being pregnant, and that she could spend 32 trillion on a bloated health care bureaucracy without any middle class payer paying a single extra cent for it?

Her next fantastic gaffe came when a regular guy confronted her several days ago, saying that he took extra jobs and sacrificed to get his daughter through college without debt, and wondering if her free college giveaway means that he’ll get his money back?  She laughed at him and said, “Of course not.”

And then he gave the most concise summary of the effects of leftist economic policy that I’ve ever heard: “A friend of mine who makes more than I do bought cars and went on vacations and didn’t save, and his kid will get to go to college for free.  But because I worked hard and did the right thing, I get screwed?”

That about sums it up.

Liz gave some interviews the next day to try to undo the damage, but if she were to win the primary, I’m assuming that she’ll get to hear that little exchange again in some totally justified attack ads.

But best of all, Warren lost the endorsement of the Sioux City Journal to Joe Biden.  Sure, on the same day she got the Des Moines Register’s endorsement.  But when the paper with “Sioux” in its name  spurns Talking Bull, you know that’s got to sting.

It would be like The Indiana Gay Times dissing Mayor Pete in favor of straight Joey Gaffes.   Or Kiplinger’s Billionaire Quarterly going for socialist Bernie over Mike Bloomberg.  Or Binder-Thrower Illustrated picking Biden over Amy Klobuchar.

Finally, I’ve also got several more notes that I’m assuming represent my fever and heavy doses of Nyquil talking. See if you can make any sense out of them:

What would happen if AOC gave a lecture during which she explained that billionaires don’t earn their money, and explaining to them how the economy works, and how they should turn their businesses over to her?

Mr. Mackey and the house Dems are screaming that they now require tons of witnesses and evidence to prove the case that they spent months insisting they had already proved?

What do Mr. Peanut and Jeffrey Epstein have in common?  Neither of them killed himself.

Avenatti/Mr. Peanut 2020!