Month: March 2020

As week two of our national quasi-quarantine begins, I’ve realized yet again that I’ve married way, way up.

My wife has a medical education background, and of late has been working on a grant involving TB education.  But she has now shifted to an all-hands-on-deck effort to assess at-risk elderly people in assisted living facilities in our community.  My oldest daughter, a senior in college who will become an RN in a few months, is going to spend the coming week helping her mother in that endeavor.

Between the two of them, they may actually save some lives this week.

Meanwhile, I am writing a snarky political humor column, and managing a work force from home while neither shaving nor wearing pants.

Because we all must use the gifts we have, to serve as best we can.

 

Anyway, in my continuing efforts to write about something other than this virus situation, I have a few stories for you.  My theme: in this time of uncertainty, we can take comfort in predictable consistency.

For example, the consistency in the way our media will say virtually anything to cover for terrible leftist political candidates.

A couple of weeks ago, when it looked like Bernie was going to run away with the Dem nomination, I was already pre-loading some “this old guy will never make it to November” jokes.  I mean, there was an actual movie called “Weekend at Bernie’s,” based on the conceit that an old guy named Bernie was dead, but everyone propped him up and carried him around, and nobody noticed.

Talk about “too on the nose”!

But then Biden charged past Bernie – think the chariot race from Ben Hur, only with octogenarians tottering around, grasping walkers instead of horses’ reins – and I realized that the same jokes would work.

Sure, “Weekend at Bernie’s” was out.  But “Super Thursday at Old Joe’s” would do in a pinch.

However, it’s starting to just get sad, even for me.  Did you see the end of Joey Gaffe’s statement after winning last Tuesday?  He was behind a microphone in an empty room because of the virus, and he read his prepared statement.  Then he just stood there, staring vacantly ahead for what felt like 5 minutes.

When his wife finally stepped in – she could have been his sister, for all he knew – he jumped when he noticed her.  (Maybe he thought she was Corn Pop, back for revenge after their epic poolside battle back in 19-clickity-clack!)  Then he kissed her, and muttered, and stared back at the camera, and finally shuffled away.

I’m telling you, this is elder abuse.  The Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) should be ashamed of themselves.

Enter the Washington Post, and perhaps the most oxymoronic job title in the known universe: “the Washington Post fact checker.”  (The other contenders: “the Bill Clinton chastity consultant,” the “Washington DC Chief Executive Officer of Fiscal Restraint,” and “Elizabeth Warren, Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”) (#notquitedonemockingheryet)

It seems the Washington Free Beacon had reported that in their last debate, Bernie accused Biden of not supporting a ban on fracking, and Biden lied, saying that he did support a ban.  (Forget for a moment that fracking has provided great benefits while causing little to no environmental damage, contrary to all leftist doomsday predictions.)  The Beacon agreed with Bernie that Biden was lying, pointing to video of Biden saying he’d allow fracking on private land.

This bit of journalistic truth-telling triggered the Washington Post fact-checker – I feel funny just typing that! – by flashing his warning signal – a giant poop emoji – high in the nighttime sky over Washington.

The fact checker (snort!)  leapt from his desk, abandoning several other hot stories he was finishing up: George Bush really WAS behind 9/11; You really CAN keep your doctor under Obamacare; A man really CAN become a woman by clicking the heels of his ruby slippers three times and chanting, “I am Woman, Hear me Roar!”

He raced across the office and dove into the “Cubicle of Ignorance” – which, to uninformed eyes, resembles a port-a-potty that hasn’t been cleaned since the last Burning Man festival – and came out, an hour later, with a comfortably consistent piece of leftist legerdemain.

To wit, Biden hadn’t technically lied when he claimed that he would ban all fracking, after earlier stating that he would NOT ban all fracking.  No!  What he had done was innocently “describ[e] his fracking stance inaccurately.”    And for that, the Post gave him – I am not making this up — Zero Pinocchios.

Beautiful!

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is staring at a mirror in upstate NY, saying, “When I said that I did not have sexual relations with that woman, I was just describing my earlier stance inaccurately.”  And Harvey Weinstein is sitting in Riker’s Island saying, “When I denied raping all of those women, I was just describing my position – usually reverse cowgirl, but sometimes missionary or San Antonio Sidewinder – inaccurately.”

 

For another example of comforting consistency, consider the national Dems’ love affair with abortion.  When Trump suggested an emergency funding bill to help Americans who are being financially harmed by the virus shut-down, Imhotep Pelosi naturally offered a bill jam-packed with unrelated pork, including a sneaky little provision to make sure that abortion funding would not be affected.

Because wouldn’t it be unfair if a lot of the oldest among us have their lives snuffed out in this crisis, but the youngest among us get off scot free?

In a totally related story, the last pro-life Democrat in the House of Representative has now been determined to be unviable, cut down in his 60^th trimester as a congressman.  Illinois’ Dan Lipinski was first elected in 2005, but AOC-supported newcomer Marie Newman defeated him in the Dem primary last week.

Newman is apparently a talented stand-up comedian, because she describes herself as a “suburban mother” who supports “working families, healthcare for all, and everybody’s rights.”  Good one, Marie!

I know that the great and powerful CO lives in Illinois, and I’m sure many in the CO nation live there, too.  I hereby call on all of you to troll Marie Newman’s debate with her GOP challenger this fall.

She shares her last name with songwriting great Randy Newman, so it will be a crying shame if someone doesn’t hack into the PA system when she begins to recite her pro-abortion bona fides at her debate and play Newman’s oldie “Short People:”

“Short people got… no reason,

Short people got… no reason,

Short people got, no reason to live.

They got… little baby legs,

And they stand so low…”

 

Go to it, CO and CO-supporters.  Make us proud!

 

Avenatti/Washington Post Fact Checker 2020!

I’ve been totally out of the CO Nation loop since late last week, when I found out that my work group was going to be going all online-starting this past Monday.  What followed was a hectic, headlong dash toward minimal technological competence on my part.

Over the past 4 days I’ve held over 30 online meetings to train my employees in some new-to-us software, and written and revised supporting documents, with the help of some amazing colleagues.   I’m an old dog, and I’ve been learning new tricks, and I’m feeling equal parts exhilarated and exhausted.

Now that I’ve caught my breath, I realize how much I’ve missed the CO nation, and am glad to share a few thoughts on recent events, most obviously the virus and its effects.

I hesitate, though.  I don’t mean to make light of the virus – obviously – or anyone who has gotten it – obviously – or who has a loved one who has gotten it – obviously!  And since this thing is going to get worse before it gets better, I know that writing anything sarcastic or mocking at this point might be the very definition of “too soon!”

So let me issue a friendly warning.

Not a “trigger warning,” because CO readers are old-school, grown-ass adults and not emotional hemophiliac, infantilized, bubble children.

But a sincere note of caution: if you are not up for reading some of my usual, light-hearted goofiness, please skip this column, and no hard feelings.   My stuff isn’t for everyone in the best of times, and in times like this, which are sad and scary for many, my writing might sound inappropriate, to say the least.

On the other hand, birds got to fly, fish got to swim, and I’ve got to make childish jokes at the expense of self-important leftists.

So fair warning, and off we go…

 

This isn’t a new idea, I know, but the MSM has really covered themselves in shame once again with their politically hack-tastic coverage of the virus.

Exhibit A:  “Don’t call it ‘Chinese virus,’ because that’s RACIST!”

Never mind that every empty head on the MSM called the virus either the Wuhan virus or the Chinese virus until the beginning of February.  Then Donald Trump said the same thing, so… it’s RACIST!

The knucklehead MSMers seem to think that none of us can remember as far back as a month ago, and that there’s no such thing as video.  Or audio.  Or the DVR, or the internet.

For extra hilarity, they actually claim that identifying a virus by its place of origin is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances!

Which is why you’ve never heard of the Spanish flu.  Or the German measles.  Or the West Nile virus.  Or Ebola (after a river in Africa).  Or lyme disease (after a town in Connecticut.) Or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Or Washington DC TLABFS  (Total Lack of Any Brain Function Syndrome).

Or the IHGS – Illinois Hilarious Genius Syndrome, named after the condition for which I am Patient Zero.  (The “Typhoid Marty” of this affliction, if you will.)

By the way, what do you think MERS stands for?

Mindless Erectile Randiness Syndrome?  (Many young males suffer from this affliction.)

Malevolent Enduring Ridiculousness Syndrome? (Many old white ladies who imagine themselves to be Indians fall victim.  In extreme instances, this can develop into GSD – Grandma Squanto Dementia — and sometimes even late-stage WMNSMHS.  Pronounced roughly like “women’s mess,” this is the dreaded “We Must Never Stop Mocking Her Syndrome,” and is virtually always fatal to one’s political career.) (HA!)

No.  MERS actually means, “Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.”  So let’s all get our hijabs over our heads and ululate in rage at the unfairness of it all.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  If we dropped the locational naming, what label could we choose instead?

Would they rather we pull a “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” and search out the first bat-eating dope who started this pandemic, and named it after him?  Then we could call it the “Ming Wong virus,” or whatever.  Which I suspect would not placate the perpetually aggrieved SJWs among us.

I think I can speak for most conservatives — who are well-meaning people who have no tolerance for racism, or even its dimwitted cousin, Identity Politics – when I say, “Stick it, MSM!  We’re not going to play your childish PC games.  In fact, we’re going to intentionally tweak your hypocritical pseudo offense-taking.”

So it’s the kung flu!

Or the Wu Flu.

Or the Asian Contagion.

Or the Flu Man Chu.

Or maybe most accurately of all, the CCCUS — Chi Com Cover-Up Syndrome.

 

As far as we’re concerned, MSM, you all have third-degree SCRID – Socialist Cranial-Rectal Inversion Disease.  The best hope for recovery is an aggressive course of reading Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell and Cautious Optimism for at least an hour per day, while symptoms persist.

Surgeon General’s Warning:  Side-effects of treatment may include initial discomfort, sheepishness, regret, dawning self-awareness, and vigorous forehead-slapping.  Then increased joie de vivre, and euphoria.

 

Ugh.  I can’t let this entire column be about this stinking virus.  So let’s turn to a more amenable target, shall we?

Have you been watching the “Panzers-Through-Belgium” juggernaut that is the Joe Biden for President campaign?

Because… wow!  The man is a mess.  And even with all of the uncertainty from a virus and an economic and social meltdown that throws everything into chaos, it’s hard for me to imagine him becoming president.

Let’s list the things that we already know are not his strong suit:

Math: He thinks 150 million Americans were shot to death by AR-14s in a decade.

People:  He got his wife and his sister mixed up, and he’s forgotten the name of the president he served under (he called him “Bama” and “my president”) and himself (“O’Biden”).   He told a guy in a wheel chair to stand up and be acknowledged, and parents to play the Victrola for their kids to improve their education, for some reason.

Dates:  He might not know that there’s a Wacky Wednesday, or what day the Fourth of July falls on this year, but he’s all over the importance of Super Thursday.

Geography:  He can’t tell the Midwest from the Middle East, or Iowa from the Isle of Wight, or Rhode Island from Rhodesia.

History:  He can’t remember the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.  Or the Gettysburg address.  Or his own address.  He thinks he played poker with Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu when they wrote a letter from Birmingham Jail.  Or maybe that he put a guy in a full nelson while wearing a tutu in Folsom Prison (“that ol’ Amtrak keeps a rollin’, and that’s what tortures me”).  Or something.

Basic psychology: Potential voters don’t like to be called “lying,” or “dog-faced,” or “pony soldiers.”  Or “fat” or “full of Schiff.”  They don’t like it when you challenge them to a push-up contest, or rub their shoulders, or sniff their children’s hair.

So what does that leave?  Colors?  The alphabet?  Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?

 

The guy is like a walking version of that great old Sam Cooke song:

“Don’t know much about history

Don’t know much biology

Don’t know much about a science book

Don’t know much about the French I took.”

 

“But I do know… um… a red kazoo,

And I know that if… cockatoo,

What a… um… what a…

You know!  The thing!  The thing that I sing at this part of the song…”

Congratulations, all other Democrat candidates.  You were beaten. By. THIS. GUY!

 

For the first time in my lifetime, the VP choice looks to be hugely important.  Back in the day, candidates would pick a VP in the hopes that he could bring his home state, or bring some geographical balance to a ticket.

Northeastern pretty boy JFK picked crude Texan LBJ.  Northeastern snoot John Kerry picked the poor man’s Bill Clinton, John Edwards, to give him a chance in the South.  (I know what you’re thinking: Bill Clinton IS a poor man’s Bill Clinton.  Edwards was a smarmy, cornpone clone of Slick Willie, except that unslick Johnny got caught.) (And yes, Cornpone Clones would be a fine name for a short-lived garage band.)

In recent years, the geographical argument has fallen by the wayside, and candidates usually pick a VP that brings a quality to the ticket that the top guy lacks.  So a supposedly callow W picked gruff old gravitas-master Cheney.  Decrepit male RINO John McCain picked young, female, seemingly conservative Palin.   Obama was black, and glib, and could complete an English sentence, so he picked… stammering, awkward white guy Biden.

But this year, Biden’s pick is crucial.  Because no one in Christendom thinks that there’s a great chance that Joey Gaffes lives through a four-year term, at least with his faculties (such as they are) intact.

Which means that we’ve got to be ready to tell the truth about Biden’s VP nominee from day one.   And I don’t have to get my famous wizard hat out of its climate-controlled, bullet-proof glass case to go out on a limb and predict that that nominee will be a terrible leftist hack.

Because Joe Biden is going to pick that person.

 

Let me end on a more hopeful note that you’ve been hearing from various conservative and level-headed quarters: this too shall pass.

The MSM has obviously been hyping the virus because it is likely their best chance to unseat Trump.  They have been claiming that the economy is in a freefall, and particularly that the stock market has imploded disastrously.  After the most traumatic fortnight in the history of the stock market since at least 1929, on Wednesday the Dow dropped to the level it had been on 11/6/16.

Which should provoke two realizations:

1. The MSM has somehow managed not to notice – or report – the market growth under Trump… until this month. A change of 10,000 points as the market was rising drew a big, fat, “No story here, move it along” reaction from the MSM.  The exact same change in the opposite direction?  Armageddon!  The End Times are here! Run for your lives!

 

2. Which means that Trump’s disastrous, unconscionable, incompetent, unforgiveable mismanagement has wrought such existential damage to our economy that it has reduced it to an apocalyptic Mordor-ishness that we haven’t seen since… Barack Obama was president.

Say it with me, people: Stick it, MSM!

Avenatti/ Cornpone Clones 2020!

Almost a week has passed since Super Tuesday (and just four days since Super Thursday, if that were actually a thing), and I’m still stunned by the amazingly fast political turnaround in the aftermath of South Carolina.  After Biden had done so poorly in the first three states, no one was even bothering to attack him in the last few debates – normally a sure sign that a candidate is out of the running.  Bernie had his army of passionate supporters, and Bloomberg his billions of delegate-buying dollars, and poor old Joe was reduced to wandering around the hallway, challenging a coat rack to a push-up contest.

But then the polls started suggesting that Bernie was going to wrap up the nomination, and thereby torpedo Democrat chances in November.   And the Dem leadership did something that the GOP can never quite manage: they moved with ruthless efficiency behind the scenes, strong-arming weaker candidates into dropping out, and put out marching orders that everyone but Bernie’s true believers followed.  And in the blink of an eye, bumbling, babbling also-ran Joey Gaffes was magically transformed into… bumbling, babbling NOMINEE Joey Gaffes.

It was a Super Thursday miracle!

On the one hand, I’d like to think that it’s heartening that even the Dems couldn’t go as far as supporting a self-confessed socialist like Bernie.

On the other hand, I’m instinctively cynical about leftists, and my gut tells me that they didn’t reject him because he’s so far left, for 2 reasons:

1. Their raison d’etre is to beat Trump, and all leading indicators suggested that he would not do that; perhaps more importantly, he’d devastate them down the ballot. In fact, many new House Dems from purple districts were already trying to distance themselves from Bernie. So it’s self-interest — not a case of temporary sanity – that’s motivating them.
2. Their true beliefs came into conflict with the Machiavellian need to hide those beliefs to get elected, and as the old saying goes, no one has ever gone broke betting against the dishonesty of politicians. On issue after issue, the entire Democrat field agree with Bernie – they were just savvy enough not to tell the truth about it.

Examples abound.  In an early debate, all the candidates said they supported giving illegals health care paid for by American taxpayers, and none of them supported any kind of border.  None of them would say a word against even partial birth (or post birth!) abortion; while past Democrats claimed to want abortions to be “safe, legal and rare,” this Dem field was all about shouting your abortion.  None of them will openly express any doubt about giving hormones to– or doing irreversible surgery on– kids who have been taught to consider every ephemeral sign of discomfort with their sexual identity as evidence of a faith-based definition of “transgender.”  All of them are gun-grabbers, and none of them see America as more like a shining city on a hill than a cesspool of sexism, racism, oppression and bigotry.

But they don’t call themselves “socialists,” so that’s supposed to make us all feel better.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that in killing Bernie’s chance at the nomination, the Dems made a very good move.

But how confident can one be in any series of decisions that concludes with, “And our nominee for president of the United States is… Joe freaking Biden?”

But give Biden his due: he’s the first pol in recent memory to make the “delayed firewall” strategy during the primaries work, getting drubbed in the first three states before South Carolinians saved him.   (By the way, thanks a lot, South Carolina Democrats!   First Fort Sumter, and now this!)

He also pulled off the even more rare feat: he blundered and stumbled early, then blundered and stumbled some more, and – without any improvement whatsoever, which would not seem possible – blundered and stumbled his way to victory.  He literally lost his way into winning!

It was like watching a football game in which one team fumbled twice, threw four interceptions, and finished the first half down by 14.  At halftime, half of the first string came down with dysentery, and the other half shared a big bucket of Wuhan Fried Bat (“It’s finger licking good”!) and were struck with corona virus.  When they finally got a first down by penalty in the third quarter, the left tackle high-fived the second-string quarterback, snapping his clavicle, and after the third-string quarterback knocked himself unconscious while trying to pull on his helmet, they played the rest of the game with an octogenarian linebackers coach at QB.

And as the clock ran out, they won by a field goal.

That’s what Super Tuesday was like.

Obviously, the outcome is not a tribute to Biden, because he has continued to be the absolutely terrible gaffe machine that he’s been over the last decade or three.

Everyone has already pointed out his latest screw-ups.  He couldn’t tell the difference between Chris Wallace and Chuck Todd.  (And there are at least two standard deviations of IQ separating those two – and not in favor of Chuck Todd!)  He couldn’t remember the opening of one of the most famous founding documents in the world.   He mistook Super Tuesday for Super Thursday.  And he couldn’t tell the difference between his sister and his wife!

Let’s savor those latest bloopers, in reverse order:

During his victory speech, he mistook his wife and his sister, which could happen to anyone.  I mean, sure, it makes for an awkward moment when the pastor says that you can now kiss the bride – not to mention an absolutely horrifying wedding night!  But to be fair to Joe, he said that they changed positions around him when he was speaking, and obviously, spatial awareness is not his strong suit.  (As the voters of New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina can tell you, when Joe told them that he was thrilled to be in Alaska, the Galapagos Islands, Brigadoon and Wakanda, respectively.)

He asked voters to come out on Super Thursday, but I think we can all agree that the days of the week are hard.  You party too hard on Samedi Gras, so then you sleep through Ash Friday, but then you get to church on Easter Monday to thank God it’s Tuesday!  We’ve all been there.

His screwing up the opening of the Declaration of Independence was even funnier.  I’m sure you’ve seen the video by now, but the transcript (which I’ve tried to re-create phonetically) is almost as good:  “We hold these truths to be s-lelf levident.  All men and women created by the… go… you know the… you know the thing.”

Yikes.  Even if you’re just an everyday American, you’re supposed to know the first sentence or two of the Declaration.   But if you’re a politician – especially if you’re running for president! — it should be a part of your job description that you can recite that by heart.

For example, imagine that a cop pulls you over, and finds your ex-girlfriend tied up in your trunk – again, we’ve all been there, haven’t we?  – and as he’s cuffing you he says “You have the right to remain… in this country?  Anything you say can be… recorded, I guess, and if you don’t have an attorney, you can… find one of those guys who advertises on buses.  You know the thing!  The arrest-y thing I’m supposed to say now…”

Or if your pastor invited you to bow your head for the Lord’s Prayer, and then said, “Our Father, who art… um… for art’s sake … um Halloween be the same.  Give us this day our… daily double, and uh, keep us from trespassing, and… keep off the grass.   You know, the thing!  The thing I pray now, and then we all say Amen at the end…”

It’s not a good sign when your candidate walks straight off stage from his victory speech and into the little tent where his handlers administer a concussion protocol, is what I’m saying.

My favorite of Biden’s recent gaffes came at the end of his interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, when Wallace thanked Biden for the interview, and Biden called him, “Chuck.”  Wallace graciously corrected him, and this is a transcript of Biden’s response, which I swear I am not making up:  “Oh Chris!  I just did Chris.  No, no, I, I, just did Chuck.  I’ll tell you what, man, these are back to back.  Anyway, I don’t know how you do it early in the morning, too.”

That’s some prime gaffe-tasticness, right there.  But it’s not even the best part.

Because just before that little bit of word salad happened, Wallace had mentioned that Trump has nicknamed Biden “Sleepy Joe,” and Biden replied that he can’t wait to debate Trump.  His closing line of the interview was – again: NOT making this up! – “We’ll see who’s sleepy!”

You read that correctly.  Twenty-one seconds after Biden mocked Trump’s assertion that he is “sleepy” – yes, I timed it, and you’re welcome — he blamed his latest mental error on the fact that it was early in the morning!  You cannot make this up.

I find myself almost starting to feel sorry for Biden.  But then I remember that he’s an oily, glad-handing empty suit, and that he once told a black audience that Mitt Romney would put them back in chains if he had his way!  And then I say to myself, let’s get him the help that he so desperately needs, in a supervised, assisted-living setting, a million miles from the White House.

On the other hand, if he does end up with the nomination, I have the perfect slogan for his campaign:  “Joe Biden — He puts the “Dem” in Dementia!”

In closing, the beauty of this train-wreck of a Democrat primary process is that after all the self-righteous chest-puffing about how diverse their party is, they end up with two straight men who are almost as white as Elizabeth Warren (#we’renotquitedonemockingheryet).

Not to mention how old these guys are, too!  The old hippie warning said not to trust anyone over 30.  These guys are almost 50 years over 30!

I’m old enough to remember when age was used as an issue against Ronald Reagan when he ran the first time (at age 69), and the second time (at age 73).  MSM pundits wrote long, chin-pulling editorials on the existential risks and dire consequences of electing someone in their late 60s or early 70s to the presidency.

Well, Ronald Reagan was 77 years old when he FINISHED his SECOND term.  If either Bernie or Biden were to get elected in November, they would both be older than that when they took the oath of office.

 

And what would that oath sound like, if Joe Biden were taking it, you may be asking?

I’ve got your back, CO Nation:  “I, Jerry Bauman, do Solomon swear, that I will fatuously evacuate the abacus of… oh, you know, the thing, the thing that we all believe in!  Amen.  Gentlemen, start your engines!  23 skidoo!”

Avenatti/Jerry Bauman 2020!

As you all might imagine, I’ve been in mourning today.  In fact, I’ve been mourning all afternoon and evening.  (Boom!  We’re off and rolling with the first dad joke of the column.)

In a very short time, we’ve lost four Democrat candidates, and I know what you all are thinking: good riddance to bad collectivists!  But put yourselves in my shoes.  I’m in the leftist-mocking business, and in the twinkle of an eye, I’ve lost four amazing targets.

Okay, so Amy Klobuchar wasn’t that much of a target.  She was just too bland.   She had all of the charisma of a young Nancy Pelosi, and all the sex appeal of an old Nancy Pelosi.  Her most exciting public moment was the sparring she did with Mayor Pete in a debate – and that’s not exactly Ali-Frasier in the sparring fireworks department.

Her most exciting non-public moments were those times when she lost her temper and threw binders at her underlings, which makes for a hilarious mental image.  Also, any goofballs who willingly became staffers for Amy freaking Klobuchar – I’m picturing a Prius-driving millennial with a co-exist bumper sticker on one side and a “I’m with Her” sticker on the other – deserve anything they get, up to and including metal-ring-shaped indentations in the temple and short term memory loss.

In keeping with my tradition, here is my farewell haiku for Amy Klobuchar.

You could have chucked a

Binder into Bernie’s skull

On stage! Missed chance, girl!

 

We also lost Mayor Pete, the judge-iest Christian in a party that hates Christianity.  On paper, he looked like a formidable candidate amongst this crop of Dems: his youth means that he is not likely to die of natural causes before the election, he has a little military experience, and his gayness almost cancels out his hideous white male-ness.  He has an Ivy League education, and is noticeably smarter than the front-runners – though yes, that’s a bar so low that even Bloomberg would have to duck his head to get under.

On the downside, at Harvard he apparently double- majored in Content-less Answers and Glittering Generalities, with a minor in Smarmy Entitlement, and there’s a reason that no president in history has gone straight from small-town mayor to the White House.

Here’s Pete’s haiku:

Is being gay a

Qualification for prez?

No? Oops. Nevermind.

 

Then came Munchkin Mike Bloomberg, and I’ll admit that I’ve got mixed feelings about this loss.  There was something delicious about the idea of watching leftist class warriors being forced to hold their noses and vote for an arrogant, white, male rich guy, if he would have gotten the nomination.  And he was so thin-skinned and clueless!  At a town hall a regular guy pointed out that Mike is surrounded by bodyguards armed with the very kinds of guns that he wants to deny to regular people, and the guy asked if Bloomberg’s life is worth more than ours?

I’ve never even run for class president, but even I know that the right answer at least starts with, “Of course not!”  But Google Mike’s answer, and prepare to be dazzled, because he basically says, “I get tons of death threats because I’m very powerful and super-rich, unlike nobodies like you, so don’t be ridiculous.  Next question?”

I assumed that Bloomberg’s vast pile of cash would at least buy him into a contending position, so it was pretty satisfying to watch him spend half a billion dollars and get 8 more delegates than I’ve got, after spending zero dollars.  And no offense American Samoa, but if you pull out your copy of Famous American Political Quotes, volumes 1 through 124, and look for,  “As American Samoa goes, so goes America,” you are not going to find it.

But I have one completely personal reason for celebrating Bloomberg’s departure from the race.  As I mentioned in my last column, I was running very short (HA!) on little person jokes, so a durable Bloomberg campaign would have been tough for me.  How tough?

So far, all I had was Bloomberg in the VP candidate slot standing next to Biden outside a convention center,  as they waited for Trump to arrive for a debate.  As Air Force One breaks through the clouds, Bloomberg raises one arm and excitedly points, saying, “Ze plane, boss!  Ze plane!”

That’s right.  The best I had was a timely Fantasy Island/Tattoo joke.  Yikes!  Thank God Mike is out!

Here’s Mike’s haiku:

Tone deaf billionaire?

For Dems?  Stand up, Mike.  Oh, you

Are standing?  Gulp.  Nope!

 

As you might guess, the hardest loss for me is the departure of the Pequod Prevaricator, Grandma Squanto.   After years – and many dozens of columns – worth of good clean fun, it might finally be time to replace #wemustneverstopmockingher with #wemightsoonhavetostopmockingher.    I know.  It feels strange to even think that we may no longer have Liz Warren to kick around any more.  Or to count coup on, as the case may be.

What are we going to do when we need an authentic Oklahoman crab dish recipe?  From whom are we going to learn how to grow maize, and thus survive the harsh winter of 2020/2021?

One of my favorite things about her campaign was watching all of her attacks backfire on her.  She attacked Trump on various grounds, but he trolled her into making a fool of herself with her DNA test.   She attacked Bernie as a sexist, but she got backlash over that.  She attacked Mike because of his business success, and because he’s as pro-abortion as every other Dem contender, and her poll numbers dropped.    She wanted to be a political killer, but all of her attacks seemed to wound only herself.

In other words, she dreamed of being a Homicidal Huron, but discovered that she was nothing but a Suicidal Sioux.   Cue the sad trombone/peace pipe duet.

Her farewell haiku is a series of instructions:

Wipe off that war paint.

Drink an unconvincing beer.

Pack up your teepee!

 

I’ll have a few thoughts on the titanic Battle of the Ancient White Guy Survivors on Monday, but in the meantime, consider this: Bernie Sanders is a ranting old commie loon, and Joe Biden doesn’t know where he is or what he’s saying.  Yet every fallen Dem candidate has to look into a mirror every day, and say these words:

“In a nation with millions of leftist voters, a large majority of those voters would rather vote for Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden than for me.”

Ouch!

Avenatti/None of the Above, 2020!

So February ended with one final, action-packed week, and that’s not counting the Dem South Carolina primary.   Trump got a huge reception in India on 2/24.  Over 100K brown folks packed a cricket stadium to cheer the guy whom the left tells us has been at war with black and brown people.  (If so, he’s the worst war-wager ever.  After three years of trying to destroy black and brown people, he’s helped them to the lowest unemployment and best economic growth in the past half-century.)

When Trump was greeted so enthusiastically, the MSM were finally forced to sheepishly admit that he is doing a good job as president.

HA!  I kid.  Instead, they quickly mentioned that a few folks applauded Trump in India, before they immediately moved on to the huge story of the moment: the fact that Trump “stumbled over the names of a few cricket greats.”

Touche, you MSM creeps.  You really nailed him on that one!  Because if there’s one thing that Americans will not tolerate, it’s leaders who can’t rattle off the names of famous Indian cricket players.   Especially when Indian names are always so easy to pronounce.  (I cite the case of the Simpsons’ friendly neighborhood convenience store owner, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon – pronounced just like it’s spelled, obviously.)

The idea that anyone would expect any American, let alone the president, to be familiar with Indian cricket greats is absurd on its face.

I consider myself something of a polymath and a trivia enthusiast, and I can only think of one cricket great, and I’m sure it’s the same one that you are thinking of: Jiminy.

 

But the MSM were not done with their hardcore journalism-ing.  Because the stock market lost around 4000 points this past week, due entirely to the unsettling proliferation of the coronavirus, which had been spreading throughout many countries.  There has been a lot of speculation about how the virus infected humans, but from what I can tell, one of the most credible theories connects it to some Chinese people who have been eating bats.

The first thing I thought of during Monday’s market crash was, “How are the MSM going to blame Donald Trump for some Chinese folks chowing down on bats?”

I mean, I KNOW that they will.  When you put big brains like Fredo Cuomo, post-menopausal block of petrified wood Larry O’Donnell, Don “insult to all citrus” Lemon, Jeff Zucker (who looks like a giant, dishonest human thumb with glasses) and Brian Stelter (who looks like a giant, dishonest human thumb without glasses) together into a big conference room that may or may not be filled with carbon monoxide, they ARE going to come up with a theory that blames Trump.

My second thought was, “Bats?  Really?!”

Have you ever seen a bat – maybe on a nature show, or in a vampire movie, or in a creepy haunted house that you are only spending the weekend in because you don’t want to look like a wuss in front of Daphne and Velma – and thought, “Wow, that guy looks… delicious?!”

Are there people in Wuhan who are the Chinese versions of Bubba in Forrest Gump, with his paean to the amazing versatility of shrimp dishes?

Chinese Bubba:  “We have bat soup, bat fritters, bat burgers–”

Me: “Really?  That many bat dishes?”

CB:  “Bat Caesar salad, bat pie, batcakes—”
Me: “Are those cakes like birthday cakes, made with flour?  Or are they like pancakes, made out of batter?”
CB: “Ooh, bat batter!  You funny man, but that good idea.  Anyway, we also have sandwiches: bat club, corned bat, Philly bat steak, bat dogs—”

Me: “Tell me those aren’t made of–
CB: “Oh yes.  Half bat, half dog.   We also have PBJs.”

Me:  “Wait, wait.  I got this one:  peanut, bat and jelly?”

CB: “What else?”

Me: “I thought you guys had amazing food of your own.  We love Chinese food in America, so why don’t you just eat that?”
CB: “We do eat that!  My wife’s favorite is bat chow mein, but my daughter loves moo goo gai bat.  But for me, nothing better than General Tso’s bat!”

Annnnnndddd, Cautious Optimism is now banned in China.

My bat.  (HA!  I could not resist.)

Anyway, by the time I finished a first draft of this column, I saw a piece by NYT op-ed columnist Gail Collins – which I swear to you I am not making up — entitled, “Let’s call it Trumpvirus.” Her tag line: “If you’re feeling awful, you know who to blame.”

We sure do, Gail.  You just keep being you, and spewing out that objective journalism until Trump finishes his second term.  By the way, if I can get your address, I’d like to send you a heaping plateful of homemade, chocolate-bat cookies.

 

But the week wasn’t all just bats and crickets.  There was also a Democrat debate, and it, too, was crawling with unappetizing rodentia.

Nobody covered themselves with glory, but front-runner Bernie was particularly terrible.

I’ve got very mixed emotions about him.  On the one hand, it’s terrifying that he’s the most likely nominee, because anybody in a two-person race has a fighting chance, and it’s depressing beyond words that so many Americans are either ignorant or apathetic or envious enough to vote for an honest-to-God (no offense, atheist commies) socialist!

On the other hand, common sense tells me that Trump will beat him like a rented mule on a collective farm in the middle of a 5-year-plan-induced famine.  Bernie’s got an oppo research file on him that’s as thick as Adam Schiff, and while the media and his Dem competitors have only minimally discussed any of it, Trump is going to dust it off and pound Bernie into the ground with it.

And it shouldn’t be that hard, because Bernie is serving himself up.  He can’t answer the simplest questions about how he’d pay for the pie-in-the-sky plans that he’s touting, and he won’t walk back any of his support for every leftist dictator he’s ever heard of.  His defending Castro stuff on Tuesday night was a case in point.  When pushed on whether Castro wasn’t a bit of a mass murdering dictator, Bernie gave a rhetorical throat-clearing gesture (“Of course I’m against any authoritarian government,”), before singing Fidel’s praises.  Specifically, he praised Castro’s amazing literacy program.

Others have since pointed out that Cuba had a literacy rate around 80% when Castro seized power, which compared favorably to other Latin American countries’ rates.  And those other countries made as much progress on that front in subsequent decades as Cuba did, and they did so without oppressing and murdering their citizens (for the most part).

Besides, even if Cuba went from 5% to 100% in literacy, is it not idiotic and offensive to suggest that those gains are morally commensurate with viciously oppressing the population?

I am usually far too modest to bring up my own fantastic parenting skills, but in this case I will make a grudging exception.

My wife and I have raised two daughters.  The oldest is graduating college and will begin a career as an RN this May, and the other is finishing high school and has been accepted to a competitive college program in astrophysics and planetary science on a full ride in the fall.  (She’s already becoming too smart for me to talk with, because I’m not fully sure what “astrophysics and planetary science” mean.  On the other hand, how many hilarious jibes has she come up with about Pelosi, Warren or Biden?  No more than a handful.  So I still have much to teach her.)

As you might guess, we taught both of our daughters to read.  And guess how many of them we had to jail and/or murder to achieve our family’s 100% literacy rate?  Neither of them!  What’s more, my blue-collar dad was one of 8 kids, and my mom one of 4, and their parents (none of whom made it past the 8th grade) managed to teach all 12 of those miscreants how to read.  Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single one of my aunts and uncles who did any time in a political prison or a gulag on their glorious trek to literacy.

So my grandparents, parents and my wife and I ALL managed to outperform Castro’s glorious revolution in the murder-to-Reading-Rainbow ratio.

In fact, I’ll bet that if I could survey all of the readers in CO nation, way less than 10% of you have tortured or murdered even a single child while you were teaching them their ABCs.  And that’s not to mention how few of your children snuck out of your house, carried an inner-tube from a tire off of a 1950s Chevy down to the beach, and floated out into shark infested waters in order to escape your enforced “I Will Not Eat Green Eggs and Ham” sessions.

 

But as bad as Bernie was, Liz Warren was arguably worse!

In a strange way, I feel like I should appreciate all of her public appearances.  Because she’s not going to be around much longer, and we need to savor every moment of her terrible, cringe-inducing performances.  And she was at the top of her form in this debate.

One moment stood out for me.  It began with her going after Bloomberg (he’s like a person, only smaller!) citing the false story of how she was fired for being pregnant when she was a young teacher.

First, it’s amazing to me that none of the Dems called her on that, because it is an absolute lie, and they all know it.  She’s on videotape 20 years ago in an interview, saying that when she was pregnant, she needed another teaching certification to continue in that job, and so she voluntarily went home to have and start raising her child.  We also have records from the school board at the time, documenting that they wanted her to continue in her job, and were sad to lose her when SHE DECIDED to quit to have the baby.

Even among that crowd of hucksters, she stands out for her brazen dishonesty and forked tongue. #wemustneverstopmockingher

But that’s not the worst part.  Because she pivoted from lying about being fired when she was pregnant to attacking Bloomberg, saying, “At least my boss didn’t tell me to KILL IT!  The way that Mayor Bloomberg was alleged to have said to one of his pregnant employees.”

Watch that video, and the righteous anger in her (very, very white) face as she delivers that line.  There is murder in her eyes when she spits out the words, “Kill it!”   And in other circumstances, I could appreciate that, because there is such a thing as moral, righteous anger.  And if any occasion would call for righteous anger, it would be someone telling you to kill your baby so that your career won’t be temporarily disrupted.

Of course she’s an enormous hypocrite, because her extreme wing of the Democrat party constantly supports women getting abortions in order to improve their career prospects.

But in this case, she’s much worse than that.  Because 24 hours before she attacked Bloomberg, Grandma Squanto voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which does not even address aborting a fetus: it specifically deals with a baby that has already been born, and takes the radical step of preventing a would-be abortionist from killing (or allowing to die) a living, outside-of-the-womb human baby.

Abortion is a tough issue, and a divisive one.  But the fact that Senate Dems couldn’t even agree to protect a baby who has already been born tells you who the extremists on this issue are.

On the bright side, this is one more reason to be grateful that Lizzie Borden–  I mean “Warren” – is NOT going to be the Dem nominee.

On the dark side, Bernie likely is.  But you’ve got to give Bernie his props: if he does get elected, at least such babies might be allowed to live long enough to be taught how to read before Bernie has them killed.

El jefe would be proud.

 

Avenatti/Castro’s Ghost 2020!

If political schadenfreude were a drug, after these last three weeks I’d be sitting with my back against a San Francisco storefront, my legs splayed out in front of me and a length of rubber tubing tied around my upper arm, with a big, goofy grin plastered across my face.

A typical Nancy Pelosi voter, in other words.

Man, has February been fun!  The Nevada debate was a recent highlight, of course, but some lefty bit players also provided some entertainment, too.

For example, Creepy Porn Lawyer (hat tip to Tucker) Michael Avenatti finally got convicted recently, and looks to be headed off to jail soon.  To add insult to injury, his impending imprisonment has knocked him down in the polls, putting him behind Rod Blagojevich and just one point ahead of Joey Gaffes.

For another example, I just came across a clip from Mensa member AOC from earlier in the month, wherein she dropped some of that patented AOC economic “wisdom.”  The details aren’t as interesting – spoiler alert: she took a wrong theory, garbled it to make it worse, and then delivered it incoherently – as the hilarious mistake she made while explaining them.

She referred to “famous economist Milton Keynes, from back in the day.”  I’ve got to assume that she was thinking of economist Milton Friedman (although with her, it could have been Milton Bradley) and John Maynard Keynes.  She pronounced “Keynes” as if it were “keens,” rather than “canes,” as John Maynard actually pronounced it.

Are those petty little shots at her unfair?  Maybe.  But she’s got an economics degree, and she’s on a congressional committee that oversees financial policy.  Whereas I have a liberal arts degree and a bowling trophy from high school, but I still know how to pronounce “Keynes.”

Her mistake is even more revealing because she managed to conflate two famous opposites: a free-market economist and an advocate of centralized government intervention in the economy.

It would be like accidentally referring to that famous moral teacher from back in the day, Jesus Machiavelli.  Or that famous 20^th century German, Adolph Einstein.

 

Speaking of totally unearned self-respect, Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams was back in the news this past week.  You may remember her as the woman who lost a race for Governor in Georgia, and then spent months afterwards pretending that she had won, and was actually the governor.

Because the Dem base is apparently impressed with candidates who are deeply delusional, they went along with her fantasy, at one point asking her if she’d accept the VP nomination on the next Dem presidential ticket.

Of course she said no.  Because obviously, the next step after becoming a pretend governor is becoming the pretend president, not the pretend vice president.  Duh!

But now she has changed her tune.  Despite the fact that nobody has asked her, she released a statement saying that she would in fact accept the VP spot in November.

In totally unrelated news, I’d like to announce that I will grudgingly accept the #1 spot in April’s NFL draft.  I will play either quarterback or wide receiver, depending on my mood, and I will tolerate a 5-year deal at $12 million per year.

 

On the other side of the Atlantic, it seems that some EU bureaucrats have not been able to fend off reality as successfully as non-governor Stacey Abrams has.   After the Brits wisely left the EU, Brussels is struggling to fill a 12 billion Euro hole in their budget.

Even though the Eurocrats knew that the UK might be leaving, they proposed huge spending increases for such worthy causes as developing an EU army, an aggressive green agenda, and plans to allow yet more migration into Europe.   Because that has all been working out so well so far!

One anonymous EU diplomat said that deciding how to fill the budget gap has member countries “fighting like ferrets in a sack,” which is a great turn of phrase.  Also, “Fighting Ferrets in a Sack” would be a pretty good band name.

I love the description of where the EU battle lines are being drawn:  “The richer countries — such as Denmark and the Netherlands, known as “the Frugals” — are said to be disconcerted by the prospect of having to pay more, while the 15 poorer “Feckless Sponges” which benefit from subsidies are upset by proposed spending cuts.

The only part of that quote that I made up is the “Feckless Sponges,” which is more accurate than their actual label, “the Friends of Cohesion.”  Whatever that means.

There’s a lot of common sense in the rest of that quote, though.  It turns out the frugal countries have become wealthy, and they are not thrilled about being strong-armed to pay more to support the Bernie countries, who are not thrilled that their welfare might be decreased.

You don’t say!  I don’t think you have to be Milton Keynes to see that one coming.

 

But watching a bunch of whiny Euroweasels throw a fit because the world is mean was not as much fun as watching the Dems debate in Nevada.

Not since Trump brought a bunch of Bill’s sexual harassment victims to one of his debates with Hillary has anyone been given such a frosty welcome as Mike Bloomberg got.  Grandma Squanto hit him right away, and let me just say that after a lifetime of waiting and wishing in vain, I finally got to hear the phrase “horse-faced lesbian” spoken in a presidential debate.

On an unrelated note, who do you think would win in an election between a horse-faced lesbian and a lying dog-faced pony soldier?  Asking for a friend.

Anyway, Bloomberg was shockingly unprepared for some obvious attacks, on everything from his taxes to his NDAs.  Apparently unaware that the far-left Dem base is not impressed by such things as “experience” and “success,” he rattled off his accomplishments: self-made businessman, three-term mayor of a major city, philanthropist.   Not to mention his representation of the lollipop guild.

Okay, so that was an almost century-old reference to the Wizard of Oz, and not exactly topical.  But I’ll be honest with you, this Bloomberg candidacy caught me by surprise, and I don’t have a lot of comedic dwarf references in my repertoire.  Two columns ago I took the sitter-at-the-net 7 dwarves shot, and last column I deployed the Dinklage connection.  (Worst name ever for a chain of big-and-tall men’s clothing stores, by the way.)

So if Bloomberg makes it past Super Tuesday, I’m going to be reduced to a desperate Billy Barty reference, and how do you think that is going to go over with the young kids reading this column?

Where was I? Oh yeah, the debate.

Mayor Pete and Klobuchar sniped at each other like a couple of mean girls at a slumber party, Lizzie Warren’s shrillness has increased as her poll numbers have decreased, and poor old Joe couldn’t even get attacked.

Which left Bernie and Munchkin Mike, who just about deserve each other.  I love how the Dem establishment – who has been pushing far-left fantasies for years, but now actually sees a candidate who might get the nomination running on them – freaking out as they face the prospect of reaping what they’ve sown.

And I love watching Bloomberg getting a karmic beat down because he’s spinelessly apologized for the policies that made him at least a quasi-successful mayor.  Stop and frisk took tons of illegal guns off the street, and reduced crime and improved the quality of life in black neighborhoods.  Mike knows that.

But because he’s trying to ingratiate himself with the racial arsonists who run the national Democrat party, he’s lied and groveled about stop and frisk.  Ironically, that choice left him as defenseless as Custer in the face of an attack by the Cherokee avenger.  #wemustneverstopmockingher

If he hadn’t denounced his own policy, he could have struck back at her accusations that stop and frisk was racist.  He could have said that she’s lied about being Indian, and sending her kids to public schools, and getting fired because she’s pregnant, and now she’s lying about this.  Black criminals prey mostly on black victims, and stop and frisk helped those victims.

But his cowardice and dishonesty has trapped him, so he had to stand there and be a pint-sized pinata at the debate.

And now it’s looking more and more like the Dems are either going to be stuck with Bernie as their nominee, or steal it from him at the convention, and evoke the wrath of the Bernie bros.

Unless…

They fast-track an appeal for a re-trial for Avenatti, then post his bail pending that trial, and he’s back on the campaign trail in time for the convention!

Avenatti/Milton Keynes 2020!