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 20th 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!
Martin Simpson 