Month: May 2020

 

I realized after writing a column last week about how terrible Andrew Cuomo has been at his job, that I had missed one of his lowlights.  I already knew that he didn’t start sanitizing NYC subway trains until early May, but I didn’t realize that he hadn’t reversed his earlier order that nursing homes must take in elderly patients with the virus (“I wonder how that turned out?” you are not asking yourselves, because even Dunce Cap Ocasio-Cortez could figure that one out) until almost Mother’s Day!

The Cuomos remind me of a very old joke, which I will tweak to fit the situation now:

Chris Cuomo dies.  It’s not important how.  (Though the smart money is on either “he wandered into traffic” or “he drank aquarium cleaner.”)  The day before his funeral a new priest arrives at his parish, and so has to give his eulogy.

During the service, the priest says, “As most of you know, since I just got here yesterday, I didn’t know the deceased personally.  In cases like these, I like to ask those who knew him best if they would like to share some of the positive things about him, and what he meant to them.”

Silence.  The priest starts to get a little nervous.  “I know that many of you may be shy about public speaking.  But please, tell us your thoughts: what did you like most about Chris Cuomo?”

More silence. Nobody can meet the priest’s eyes.   They’re all looking at their shoes, and fidgeting uncomfortably.

The priest is starting to sweat now: this is a terrible start for him in his new parish.  “Ladies and gentlemen, please.  I know that you all knew the departed well.  Someone, anyone… tell me the nicest thing about Chris Cuomo.”

After a few more mortifying moments of silence, one miserable guy in the back row gets jabbed in the ribs by a family member, and he reluctantly stands up.   The priest feels a wave of relief, and gestures for the man to speak.

He clears his throat, then quickly says, “His brother was worse,” and sits down.

That’s the best thing I can say about Chris Cuomo.  He may be a phony, fake-quarantining, partisan hack with the intellect of a petrified block of wood.

But his brother is worse.

 

Speaking of worse, I have a riddle for you: How do you take a press conference during which a dishonest reporter asked a disingenuous pseudo-question, and then played the race card when Trump pushed back, and make that situation worse?

Answer: get Brian Stelter involved.

You probably already know what I’m referring to.  On May 11th, Trump was being all Trumpy, and touting the fact that the US has rapidly ramped up our virus testing.  I’m not sure why he would do such a thing… unless it was because the MSM has just spent the last two months shrieking about how the US is not doing enough testing.

“Why are we doing less testing than South Korea or Italy?” they mope.  Fauci interrupts to say, “Actually, in real numbers we are doing more testing than—”

“But we’re a big country,” interrupts another fatuous J-school grad, “what about per capita?”

Dr. Scarf starts to say, “Per capita too, we’re doing more testing than any of our European counterpart—”

“What about Wakanda, and Brigadoon, and Xanadu and the Emerald City,” shout a chorus of doofi with press credentials, “and other made-up places that we know would be handling this pandemic much better, if they weren’t as fictional as Corn Pop and Liz Warren’s proud Commanche ancestors?” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

So, yeah.  Trump was pointing out that we’re doing a hell of a lot of virus testing.

Enter Asian reporter and leftist spinmeister (but I repeat myself) Weijia Jiang (BA in Grievance Studies from Noam Chomsky University, with a double major in Passive Aggressive non-question questioning).   When Trump called on her, she said, “”Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives?”  This is obviously not a legit question; it’s a slimy shot at Trump, insinuating that he’s been treating this virus as a game, and that he’s to blame for Americans dying from the WuFlu.

By the way, how do you know that our efforts are stacking up pretty well in comparison to those of other nations?  Because if some of the left’s beloved s-hole countries (and the “s” doesn’t stand for “socialist.”) (Though, wait a minute – yes it does.  Also, for a synonym for “socialist.”) were doing better, Jiang would be sneering, “How come we’re losing the global competition to Venezuela and Cuba?”

Anyway, Trump counter-punched on the insulting implication that the virus is his fault – which he’s only had to deal with about 10,000 times since the bat-savoring Communist slave masters in Beijing loosed this pandemic on the world – by telling her to “ask China.”

Jiang shot back, “Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically? That I should ask China?”   To his credit, Trump didn’t say the obvious: I’m saying that to you specifically, because you are the specific idiot who just implied that the virus is my fault.   Have you noticed that I never say, “Thanks for that question, random hateful reporter.  I’d like to address my answer to the secret service guy over there, or maybe to the guy selling hotdogs at the cart across the street?”

Ugh.  Just when you thought this tired race-baiting BS had become as offensive as it could possibly be, into the fray wades the hack who looks like a giant, dishonest human thumb: Brian Stelter.  And surprise, surprise – he detects racism, as he makes clear in this comment, which I wish I were making up, “It is racist to look at an Asian-American White House correspondent and say, ‘Ask China.’ This isn’t happening in a vacuum. This is part of a pattern of behavior from the president that goes back many years.”

Read that again, and wonder at the awesome thick-headedness of CNN’s Thumble-stiltskin.  In the first sentence, he says that it is racist to tell Jiang to, “Ask China,” the idea being that he only said that because she’s Asian.   In the very next sentence – that’s not a figure of speech: I mean the very. next. sentence. — he says that “this is part of a pattern … that goes back many years.”

Brian Stelter, you ignorant slut!  If you argue in one sentence that it’s uniquely racist for Trump to blame China to a Chinese-American reporter, you cannot argue (in the NEXT SENTENCE!) that he does this all the time, to many reporters, very few of whom are Asian.

It’s hard to comprehend the depth of the MSM talking heads’ delusions.  Anybody who has watched Trump for 5 minutes know that he’s a wild counter-puncher.  Anyone who attacks him – no matter their race, gender, nationality or phylum — is going to get strafed with insults right back.  Hell, he claimed that Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK, and he insulted Jeb Bush’s energy level and Marco Rubio’s manhood!  And those guys are in his own party!

Trump doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and Americans know that.  But he doesn’t trade insults with Asian fools, or white fools, or black fools, or Hispanic fools because they’re Asian, white, black, or Hispanic.  It’s because he thinks they’re fools.

And he’s not usually wrong  about that.

 

Finally, as I’ve been heartened by watching the citizens of red and blue states alike starting to resist and protest the heavy-handed bullying of their (mostly leftist) mayors and governors, I’ve come up with an idea that I wish somebody in the GOP national leadership would propose: every politician should agree to forego their salary for the duration of this crisis.

The average net worth of congressmen and senators is into the millions, and I’m sure that the same goes for most governors and big city mayors.  Because that’s true, and because they and their staffs aren’t missing any paychecks, they are out of touch with the real pain that this is causing the tens of millions of Americans who have lost jobs, and the more than 100 million who have lost income and savings, on top of the losses to their 401ks and other retirement savings, if they have any.

For them, this lockdown is like water torture, an infliction of pain as every day passes with no work or business.  That wears on a person’s mind and emotions in a way that nobody who has millions in the bank and a steady paycheck can viscerally understand.  My wife and I have both continued to get paid, so I know that even though we feel for our fellow citizens in an intellectual and empathetic way, we have not been directly suffering as they have.

And if that’s true for us, it’s true 1000 times over for the pampered, entitled narcissists who are enforcing this lockdown on us.  Add to that the palpable political gains for national leftists – an ever-more dependent populace, a commensurate increase in their own political power, and the prospect of damaging Trump’s chances at re-election – and you can understand why leftist governors like Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker and Andrew Cuomo and leftist house leaders like Captain Pencil Neck and the Botox Kid are doing their best to extend the lock down until after November, if possible.

If our GOP leaders were smart and principled – I know, I said “if” – they’d bring up a bill immediately to suspend their own salaries, retroactive to April 1^st.  Doing so would show us that we all really are in this together, and that Bill Clinton’s infamous come-on line – “I feel your pain” (not to mention your buttocks) – might finally be true.

And call me cynical, but if they did that, I think they’d be ending the lockdown by about Wednesday afternoon.

Because if there is one thing upon which nearly all Americans agree, it is that at the very top of any reasonable list of non-essential jobs would have to be “politician.”

 

Avenatti/Thumbkin Stelter 2020!

As this pandemic wears on, I find myself making up games to pass the time.  Today’s game is to choose the “Worst Performance by a Leftist in the Last Fortnight.”

I have chosen three nominees:

#1.  Andrew Cuomo.  Cuomo is a terrible leftist governor.  He’s probably no more terrible than IL leftist governor J.B. “already overweight interior lineman who retired and really let himself go” Pritzker, or than CA leftist governor Gavin “Christian Bale in American Psycho” Newsom.

But what’s extra galling about Cuomo is how the press contorts itself to cover him as if he’s done a great job throughout the pandemic.  When he says exactly the same things that Trump says, they call Trump a dolt and Cuomo a genius.  And they haven’t noticed that Cuomo forced old people with the virus to be sent back to their nursing homes.  Then when a disproportionate number of deaths came from the nursing homes… nothing.

When he finally ordered that subway cars be taken out of service for a few hours to be sanitized – in May!  Seven weeks after the country has gone into lockdown! – nothing again.

Think about that.  Imagine that you took your average 7-year-old – someone who is only two grades ahead of AOC, mentally speaking – and gave her a 10-minute Sesame Street-level explanation of the virus.  Just the high points: it spreads through the air, can survive for a while on hard surfaces in an enclosed environment, and kills mostly old people who are in close proximity to each other.  If you then asked that 7-year-old what you should do to protect people from the virus, she would say – in an adorable lisp, because a bunch of her baby teeth have recently been coming out – “Shut down the subways and close off the nursing homes.”

How did Governor Cuomo or Mayor DiBlasio answer that same question?  “Impeach Donald Trump, and send us a plane filled with pallets of cash in unmarked, non-sequential bills.”

I had thought that Cuomo had been as terrible as he could possibly be at his job.  But on Tuesday, May 5^th, 2020 – a day that should live in infamy – he gave a press conference in which he summed up leftism more perfectly than anything that has ever been said (except maybe Stalin’s dictum that, “Death is the solution to all problems.  No man – no problem.”)

Because NY is a deep blue state, its greedy government treats citizens the way a pimp treats his hookers: every question from the downtrodden citizen is answered by a balled-up fist and a scream of, “GIVE ME MY F-IN’ MONEY!!”  Coincidentally, NY has a law that says that anyone who works for more than 14 days in the state has to pay NY’s exorbitant state income tax.

I know that you can see where this is going, even if you have to look at it through the fingers of the hand you are holding in front of your face, like it was a horror movie.  Which it basically is.

Cuomo appeared on tv for weeks moaning that the pandemic was decimating his state, and begging medical personnel from around the country to please, please, PLEASE come and help the desperate New Yorkers.   Cuomo got what he asked for.  Trump sent $7.5 billion, a hospital ship and half of the ventilators in the Western hemisphere, and good-hearted nurses and doctors and other Ameri-CANs from around the country — who, because their governors were smart enough NOT to force infected, feverish octogenarians back into nursing homes like so many wrinkly biological weapons, while maintaining a 24-7 rolling infect-atorium train system, were able to leave their home states – heeded Cuomo’s call, and went to New York to help.

Then, on May 5^th, someone asked whether those big-hearted heroes from around the country would have to pay the extortionate leftist tax rate during the time they were there, literally saving the lives of New Yorkers.

Upon hearing that question, Cuomo turned to an assistant, who produced a floor-length purple velvet robe with a white mink collar, and draped it over the governor’s shoulders.  Then she lowered an enormous canary-yellow fedora with an iridescent ostrich feather in its band onto his head, and handed him an onyx cane with a gigantic cut-glass knob on its end.  And Cuomo raised the cane over his head as though to strike the cowering reporter and screamed, “”WHERE’S MY MONEY?!  GIVE ME MY F-IN’ MONEY, BEE-YOTCH!”

Okay, that’s a paraphrase.

What he actually said, and I swear I am not making this up, was, “We’re not in a position to provide any more subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit.  So, there’s a lot of good things I would like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say, ‘I’m going to spend more money when I can’t even pay the essential services.'”

Sit and marinate in that for a moment.  He’s presided over a state that confiscates a mountain of taxes and still runs up huge structural deficits, while providing mediocre schools, crumbling infrastructure, filthy subways and increasing crime.  When a pandemic hits he suddenly feels the sobering pinch of fiscal responsibility – which he believes should be provided via a bailout from the federal government (i.e. us) – and doesn’t even have the basic decency to be grateful to those who came to his rescue.

And did you notice how he described the taxes he was being asked NOT to gouge out of the rescuers?  He didn’t say, “I can’t afford NOT to financially rape these selfless people;” he said that he couldn’t afford to “provide [them] subsidies!”  And at the end, he said that allowing them to not pay his extra tax would be the same as “spend[ing] more money.”  He has the bone-deep leftist conceit that what you earn is not yours (you didn’t build that!) – it’s the government’s, and you should be grateful for anything that they let you keep. So a tax cut isn’t letting you keep more of what is already yours – it is “spending” what rightly belongs to your greedy government, and to the collective for which it stands.

He’s an unholy combination of angry pimp, entitled welfare cheat, and surly, ungrateful teenager.  Andrew Cuomo, ladies and gentlemen.

 

Nominee #2 – The late Joe Biden, who during his interview with Mika was asked about the Tara Reade allegations.  (By the way, I am able to spell Mika’s last name.  But I refuse to, by invoking Simpson’s 3rd Law of Spelling: People with two non-consecutive ‘Z’s in their last name are not entitled to anyone spelling it, ever.  Phil Rizzuto, yes.  Mika, no.)   To my amazement, Mika asked Biden a legitimate question: you joined the #metoo movement in insisting that if any woman ever makes an accusation of sexual misconduct, we must “believe the woman.”  So shouldn’t we believe Tara Reade?

The posthumous VP came back with an answer that turned the hypocrisy up to 11: “I’m not suggesting she had no right to come forward.  Any woman, they should come forward, they should be heard. And then it should be investigated.”

Whoa there, Plugsy McRovingFingers!  What’s this about investigation?  There’s no investigation in “believe all women!”  They speak, we believe, end of story.  Even Mika noticed that glaring inconsistency.  So she came back with the question again.  And Joey Gaffes fumbled it again.

“Look, women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt.” Stop right there!  If you are believed, there is NO doubt.  Belief and doubt are opposites.  It’s like saying, “Women are to be trusted – comma — called filthy liars.”

But Joe staggered onwards.  “If they come forward and say something that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption that they’re telling the truth.”  This is why I never made it through law school; on an exam, I answered that the ACCUSED has the presumption of innocence.  Turns out it was the ACCUSER, according to Judge Joe.   I was so close.

But Joe goes on: “Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts.”  No, no, no, NO!  They speak – we believe!  That’s it.  No investigation, no doubt, no looking at circumstances.

I never thought I’d say this, but that Joe Biden answer is worse than his answer when the portly Iowa voter asked about his degenerate, kleptomaniacal, brother’s-widow-jumping son, way back in 20-clickety-clack:  “Look, fat–.  Get your facts straight, jack!”

 

Nominee #3 — Texas Judge Eric Moye.

By now you’ve all heard the story: salon owner Shelley Luther decided that after 7 weeks of being locked down, she was going to open her salon a week before politicians deigned to give their permission.  She ended up in front of Judge Moye.

I would generally sympathize with a judge in his situation.  Luther had publicly defied the executive order, tearing up the notice she had received in front of media and supporters.  Because I am a conservative and thus have a general default setting of respect for the law, I could see why the judge might have to rule against her.  Many of the executive orders during this pandemic are constitutionally murky, and are being challenged everywhere; I hope that when all the legal dust is settled, many (if not most of them) are slapped down.  But as long as they are the law of the land, there is least an argument that she required some form of legal reprimand.

But that wasn’t enough for this judge.  (“I wonder what party he is a lifelong member of?” you are not asking yourself, because you already know.)  He climbed onto the bench, and then climbed further up onto his high horse, and then yet further up onto a pulpit – which was precariously balanced on the back of his high horse, somehow — and gave Luther a lecture, all the while shaking his orb and his scepter at her, and referring to himself with the royal “we.”

He told her that deciding to open her business was “selfish,” but he offered her the chance to avoid jail time.  All she had to do was apologize in a way pleasing to his highness.

Her apology must include her admission that, and I quote His Pompousness, “you now see the error of your ways, and understand that the society cannot function where one’s own belief in a concept of ‘liberty’ permits you to flaunt your disdain for the rulings of duly elected officials.”

He’s right, of course.  Why, if you allowed behavior like that, you might be starting down a slippery slope until you end up in the dystopian future of — oh, let’s say 7 years ago — when city and state governments all over the country will [did] defy the nation’s crucially important immigration laws.  They might even declare themselves to be “sanctuary” cities or states, and resist federal authorities’ attempts to enforce those laws.  If this rogue hairdresser is allowed to flaunt her flagrant haircutting – with its attendant unconstitutional mask wearing, social distancing and sanitizing – who knows what kinds of volleys of rubber bullets and educational tasering this judge would never require us to use against those disruptive creeps?

There are your nominees, folks.  I know it’s a tough choice: all three of these arrogant lefties are displaying brain cells that have been practicing social distancing.  But there can be only one winner, so please vote early and often.

Avenatti/Bishop Don Magic Juan (Google him) 2020!

When I last left you, I was exploring the idea that times of crisis often reveal people’s character, and I had mentioned that this virus quarantine has revealed some flawed tendencies among conservatives, but more disturbing ones (IMHO) about leftists.

I mentioned virtue-signaling hypocrisy as the first of those character flaws.

The second is an affinity for totalitarian, micromanaging bullying.  For examples, look at the way that red state governors have moved much more quickly to phase out the lock-down, while blue state governors are hanging on to their newly-minted powers like grim death.   (And that’s not a gratuitous Nancy Pelosi reference.) (Although… sure.  If the sarcophagus lid fits, wear it.)

Conservative governors have generally put more trust in their citizens’ ability to make their own decisions.  While still calling for people to take precautions – wear masks, keep their distance, sanitize equipment, etc. – their general default has been to let people start to get back to work, as quickly as possible.  Because they know that politicians are supposed to be our employees, not our bosses.

Blue staters, on the other hand – despite differences of conditions in their states, including population density and climate, among others – are extending lock-down waiting periods, and issuing more directives and dictates than the Politburo at the height of the Cold War.  Gavin Newsom says that Californians can’t go to the beach.  J.B. Pritzker says that Illinoisans can’t leave their houses (even as he blew a goodbye kiss to his horse-whisperer wife as she left her mansion to go to Florida).  Chicago Mayor Lori “I feel pretty, oh so pretty” Lightfoot says that Chicagoans can’t get haircuts (right before she gets her “female George Jefferson” hairdo refreshed at an underground Supercuts Speakeasy, in the finest Chicago tradition of past Democrat greats like Al Capone).

Bill “Heinrich Wilhelm von Richthofen” DiBlasio tells New Yorkers that they can’t go to the gym… while he’s on the treadmill at a gym.

My favorite example is Governor Evita Whitmer in Michigan.  This little princess extended the lockdown in her state until the end of May, and issued a helpful list of behaviors she would allow, and those she wouldn’t.  On the naughty list, among other things, was paying someone to mow your lawn.  You could buy a propane tank, but you couldn’t buy a propane grill.  You could go to Lowes or Home Depot, but when there, you couldn’t buy paint or plants.  In fact, you could go to Lowes, or Wal-Mart, or an abortuary… but you couldn’t go to church.   Because nothing spreads the Kung Pao Sicken like reading aloud from the New Testament.

On her nice list?  Pot bought at a weed shop (some plants are more equal than others, I guess), liquor bought at liquor stores, or lotto tickets bought anywhere.  (I’m guessing it’s totally coincidental that three of the most profitable items for the state government of Michigan are pot, booze and lotto tickets?)

Whitmer’s rulings showcased the kind of byzantine micromanaging you might expect from quarrelsome rabbis disputing what constitutes “work” on the sabbath, rather than a directive from an elected representative of a free people.  Consider this quote, which I am not making up:  “The DNR states that “Non-motorized boating, such as canoeing, kayaking and sailing, falls within the outdoor activities permitted under the ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ Executive Order. However, the use of a motorboat, jet ski or similar watercraft is not permitted for the duration of the Executive Order.”

My first thought was that it was very appropriate for this twerp to be issuing a “do not resuscitate” order for her state’s economy, on which she was doing her best to pull the plug.  But then I found out that the “DNR” in question refers to an order issued through the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Still, did you get that?  You can go out onto a lake in a canoe, but not in a motorboat.  Because the Chicom virus is apparently allergic to varnished wood, but it finds outboard motors absolutely irresistible!

 

The third lefty character flaw that has been revealed during this pandemic is a tendency to condescend to and demonize their opponents.

I know that this one is not exactly news.  Even before the virus, you may have noticed that every objection to Obama’s bumbling was due to conservatives’ racism, and every objection to Hillary’s general terribleness was due to their sexism, and every objection to Grandma Squanto’s rantings was due to their fear of (to paraphrase Donna Brazile) “a Powerful Red Woman.” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  And you may have noticed that elite Dems were occasionally a tad bit condescending… you deplorable, transphobic, in-bred, trailer trash bitter clingers.

But the pandemic has highlighted the malevolence.  If any of us want to get back to work before our society implodes, it’s not because we’ve grown fond of feeding our children or putting a roof over our head.  And it’s not because we are trying to make rational calculations about the lives that will be lost to the virus (whether we stop the lockdown now or in June or in September) versus the hundreds of millions of lives that will be greatly damaged plus the tens of thousands of other lives lost (to depression, suicide, substance abuse, heart attacks, lack of access to medical help for other conditions, etc.) if we stay trapped in our homes by power-mad politicians for a year or more.

According to the Schumers and Cuomos of the world, it’s because we are greedy for all of those corporate profits.  Also, we want to kill people.

 

Beneath all three of these flaws is a common thread of narcissism.

I’m not the kind of political partisan who sees intrinsic human flaws as unique to one side of the political divide.  We are all latent narcissists at the very least; we are all the main characters in the story of our lives, and we view the world at least partially through the lense of “how will this affect me?”

And politicians are necessarily a narcissistic bunch.  When you or I get up and look in the mirror in the morning, we think things like, “You know who is going to double-check that he’s wearing socks that match today? Me!” or “You know who’s about to make some toast without burning it? Me!”

But every presidential candidate in my lifetime has gotten up and looked at him or herself in the mirror – even if s/he had terrible breath, or “bed head,” or the cheap lipstick of a medium-priced hooker smeared on his big, fat, lying face (I’m looking at you, Bill Clinton) – and said, “You know who’d make a fantastic leader of the entire free world?  Me!”

And that goes for all politicians, even the ones on our side.  No one can reasonably argue that our current president is a shrinking violet in the ego department.  (Quick: how many times have you been tempted to put your name – in giant, gold letters – on every building you bought, or built, or passed by?)

But conservatism – if actually adhered to – is a natural check on narcissism.  Conservatives come in many flavors – religious conservatives, economic/fiscal conservatives, libertarian-leaning, etc. – but a general principle they share is the idea that “that government is best which governs least.”  Government should do only a handful of things that we can’t do for ourselves, and most of our lives should be left up to us, with only enough laws and regulations to keep us from hurting others or violating their rights.

Leftism, on the other hand, magnifies and weaponizes the natural narcissism of politicians, and fans the flames of their innate hunger for power.  It tells them that they are the elites, and know better than the unenlightened proles how those mopes should live.  It encourages them in the pursuit of top-down, centralized planning of the economic system.  And the criminal justice system.  And the education system.  And the metric system.  And the solar system.

What could be more arrogant than making a list of which jobs are essential and which ones aren’t?  How could anyone with an ounce of self-awareness sit down around a big table with a bunch of other people – who also probably never started a business, or raised a crop, or hung drywall, or cut hair, or bussed tables, or went to a trade school, or paid their own way through college – and confidently start deciding which jobs are important, which families should be allowed to financially survive, and which should be forced into bankruptcy and foreclosure and poverty?

Even if you had enough hubris to start doing that – because you were educated to believe that you know better than other people what a “living wage” is, and what a “fair share” is, and how much profit is “obscene” – wouldn’t you quickly get bogged down in details, and realize that you are on a fool’s errand, and in way over your head?

One silver lining is that we might have the chance to learn to appreciate federalism again.  The Founders wanted the states to be “little laboratories,” and they’re becoming just that.  Illinois is going to stay locked down, while Iowa and Indiana open back up.  New York and Michigan are going to stay locked down, while Florida and Georgia open up.  Let’s see who does better.

In the meantime, I’m encouraged by the protests that are starting up all around the country.  I like to see California surf kids and Texas salon owners and Midwestern blue collar workers going all “don’t tread on me.”   I hope to see some arrogant Democrat leaders find out that Americans won’t be pushed around for too long, before they start pushing back.

I only wish Joe Biden were alive to see it!

 

Avenatti/ the late Joe Biden 2020!

There’s an old aphorism to the effect that stressful times reveal character the same way that shaking a glass reveals its contents: whatever splashes out is what was inside all along.

That reminds me: I forgot to pour my purely medicinal “writing Scotch.”  Let me just take care of that…

And, I’m back.  Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Stressful times and shaken glasses.

One virtue of this pandemic is that the reactions to it have revealed a lot about the character of people, in ways large and small.  Scammy creeps have exposed their scammy creepiness, by trying to buy up a truckload of masks or ventilators and sell them at huge mark-ups to desperate over-reactors.   Desperate over-reactors have desperately over-reacted, dressing themselves in space suits and retreating to their panic rooms to tweet out their last wills and testaments because they woke up with a little throat tickle.

On the bright side, people of strong character have exhibited that, too.

Delivery drivers and restauranteurs and pastors and health care workers have done their jobs, and kept our country running.  Closer to home, over the last month my wife has helped to test around 3500 senior citizens for the Wuflu, plant a bunch of flowers in our front yard, and set up a Zoom virtual graduation party for both of our girls that allowed around 40 people from around the country to share in the celebration and give my daughters a great memory, all while managing NOT to pretend to be a Native American (#wemustneverstopmockingher), try to kill me with aquarium cleaner, or launch a profanity-laced tirade blaming Trump because a bunch of godless Chinese communists with bat breath and a ton of frequent flier miles caused a world wide pandemic.

More tellingly, the reaction to the pandemic has also revealed the mindsets of adherents of the two major political positions in this country.

Conservatives almost universally went along with the lockdown initially, because we are way more rational than you’d suspect if you watched several hours a day of MSM conserva-phobia.  But we started chafing more quickly, and have been getting ever more froggy about ending the lockdown, because we are stubborn, and skeptical about government, and want to get back to work.

Those qualities are not completely positive.  Stubbornness can help you invent WD-40 (after WDs 1-39 didn’t work), but it can also turn you into a leftist activist, trying to make socialism work yet one more time, after a century-plus of gulags and oppression and environmental devastation and 100 million dead.  Skepticism about government can make you resist seat belt laws and building codes.  Wanting to get back to work can make you jump the gun, and aggravate an old injury, or cause a new one, or potentially infect some vulnerable people.

So we’re not perfect, and what comes out when our glasses are shaken isn’t always pretty.

But over the last 6 weeks, I’ve seen the leftist sippy-cups get jostled, and out has come a virtual Chernobyl chowder of toxic character flaws.  Off the top of my head, here are the top 3:

 

1.Self-aggrandizing virtue signaling joined at the hip with shameless hypocrisy.

One example is petrified block of wood Fredo Cuomo, who broadcast from his basement for weeks, reluctantly calling himself a hero for quarantining himself to protect his family and community.   Then he staged a hokey re-emergence, when he was filmed walking up the stairs to once again re-emerge into the world.  (The rumor that he saw his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of idiocy, are as yet unconfirmed.)  Then it turned out that he had been out in the world repeatedly during his supposed hibernation, including one incident in which he tried to bully a citizen who confronted him about being outside and not socially distancing, like his governor brother was forcing other New Yorkers to do.

Another example would be Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker — billionaire and “before” picture model for a weight loss product ad campaign — who extended his state’s lockdown until the end of May, insisting that Illinoisans must stay at home for all but “essential” travel or we’re all going to die.  When a reporter asked why Pritzker’s wife thereafter left the governor’s mansion in Illinois to go to their palatial $12 million equestrian home in Florida, Pritzker responded  that that travel was essential, because their super-expensive horses get very lonely all the way down there in Florida.  To prove his point he showed a photo of the horses, all of whom had long faces.

HA!  I kill me.  And yes, I made that last part up.  But his real answer was just as bad.  He said, and this time I am not making it up, “My official duties have nothing to do with my family. So, I’m just not going to answer that question. It’s inappropriate, and I find it reprehensible…”

Yes.  SO reprehensible.  How dare someone question him, just because he left a press conference forbidding American citizens from leaving their homes and went straight to his own house, where his wife was carried out in a diamond-encrusted sedan chair by four burly Democrat union members (Spoiled Wench Bearers, Local 202) from the mansion to his limo, which drove her to a private jet, which flew her out of state.

One more example:  Democrat mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot, who won her office last year because despite not holding office before, she could boast three formidable qualifications: she is black, female and gay.  (Lightfoot defeated Toni Preckwinkle.  I bring that up only because, as I mentioned in an earlier column, the best possible name for a 1970’s cop show would be “Preckwinkle and Lightfoot.”  You plop that baby down with Starsky & Hutch as a lead-in and you will own the Tuesday night ratings!) (Also, fun fact: beloved ethnic stereotype “Huggy Bear” from Starsky and Hutch was actually the inspiration for Joe Biden’s totally fictional ethnic nemesis Corn Pop.)

Anyway, if there’s one thing that Lori Lightfoot knows – other than that out there on the streets, you can’t play the game “by the book,” like her stick-in-the-mud partner Preckwinkle – it’s the existential danger posed by allowing Illinoisans to get their hair cut during this Plague Year.  In fact, the second leading cause of death in 2020 – just slightly behind “traveling non-essentially”—is unsanctioned hair cutting.  So obviously, she vigorously supported Gov. Pritzker’s order closing salons and barbershops.

3…2…1   Annnnnnd, a photo came out showing her getting a haircut during the pandemic.

When someone – probably the same troublemaker who reprehensibly asked Governor Big-and-Tall about his globe-trotting wife – asked Lightfoot about the haircut, she said – and I’m not making this up, “I’m the public face of this city.  I’m on national media, and I’m out in the public eye.”   You can Google her pictures, and you will find – how can I put this delicately, especially given my own “face made for radio” looks? – that she was not elected to be just a pretty face.  I hope.

Also, her hairstyle is not exactly a challenge to maintain.  She’s not 1976 Farrah Fawcett, who needed a team of stylists with hairspray and blow dryers to keep those layered waves of gorgeousness just so (Giggity!) (Full transparency: a 13-year old me had a poster of Farrah – you know the one — on my bedroom door.  I stared at it for approximately three hours per day for several months before I realized that she did, in fact, have hair.) (Still… giggity giggity!)

But Lori Lightfoot is no Farrah Fawcett.  In oh, so many ways.

Lightfoot has a short, tight, perm!  Get an electric trimmer. Set the depth on “3.”  Go nuts.

But, apparently not content to leave terrible enough alone, she added, “The woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on so we are, I am practicing what I’m preaching.”

NO!  No you’re not. You’re preaching, “NO HAIR CUTS FOR YOU!”  And you’re practicing, “HAIRCUT FOR ME!”  That’s the OPPOSITE of practicing what you preach.  That’s pooping on what you preach!

Now give me your badge and your gun, and get out of my office, Lightfoot!  You’re on suspension!

Ugh.  I got a little carried away there.  I started a Top 3 list and only got to 1.  So I’ll complete the list in another column in a day or two.   Spoiler alert: totalitarian, micro-managing bullying is on the list!

Avenatti/Huggy Bear 2020!

Bill Weir has a newborn son, born during the quarantine.  That’s a cause for celebration, maybe even more than usual, against the backdrop of this time of disruption and social isolation.  After spending part of the lockdown watching hours of Youtube videos of surprise pregnancy and twins and even triplets announcements – with all of the accompanying shouts and cheers and tears and joyful shock – I’m even more attuned than usual to appreciation of new life.

But there are some red flags for the newborn Weir boy.

First, his dad named him “River.”  And no, it’s not a “Boy Named Sue” situation, in which you stick a kid with a name guaranteed to toughen him up because of all of the expected abuse he’ll suffer because of it.  He’s just the kind of dad who names his kid “River.”  Strike one.

Second, Bill Weir works as the Chief Climate Correspondent for CNN.  Strike two.

Third, he wrote a ridiculous letter to his son, and published it for all the world to see.  And it is long, and tiresome, and packs more wrong-headed leftist tropes into one column than I would have thought possible.  (And I’m known for packing lots of tiresome and wrong-headed political tropes into over-long columns myself!) (By people who are wrong about everything, I mean.)  Strike three.

I won’t put you through the whole thing, but I think it’s worth sharing a few lowlights.

The letter starts,  “My dearest River,  Against all odds you were conceived in a lighthouse, born during a pandemic and will taste just enough of Life as We Knew It to resent us when it’s gone.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry we broke your sea and your sky and shortened the wings of the nightingale.  I’m sorry that the Great Barrier Reef is no longer great, that we value Amazon™ more than the Amazon and that the waterfront neighborhood where you burble in my arms could be condemned by rising seas before you’re old enough for a mortgage.”

Yikes!  There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t know where to start.

No, wait a minute: I do know where to start.

Don’t tell your kids where and how they were conceived!  The letter starts and ends with references to a vacation that he and his wife took to Croatia, and the Dubrovnik lighthouse they stayed in.  Where – he wants River and the world to know – they “did it.”

Ugh.  First, I can’t think of anything more gross for this young kid to read as he gets older than the details of his parent’s love life.  Second, what an erotic narcissist: “You plebes probably conceived your normally-named kids in a bland 3 bedroom tract house, in the missionary position.  Yuck.  Meanwhile, my lover and I (and you know this is the kind of gag-inducing male who calls his wife his “lover,” just to stick you with  a mental image that you do NOT want) hiked up a wind-swept cliff-face in a romantic foreign land during a thunderstorm to break into a century-old lighthouse, where we alarmed the livestock with our creative lovemaking and exotic outfits.”

As you regular readers know, one of the best life strategies you can follow is to ask WWMD (What Would Martacus Do?), and then act accordingly.  So what have I told my children about their conception, I know you are wondering.

Did I tell them, for instance, that their mother and I – having grown bored after romping our way through a series of sexual escapades that made the Kama Sutra look like a spring 1956 edition of the Saturday Evening Post – decided to try something different, when the Ringling Brother’s Circus came to town?  So we broke into the big tent at 2 in the morning, and after spending a half hour getting the hang of the trapeze, managed an aerial encounter involving several flips, hanging onto a bar upside down with just my knees, and finishing in a fall into a giant net, and 9 months later our oldest was born?

Or that four years later, we came up with the idea for an assignation on the back of a 2-year old Palomino that incorporated the kind of horsemanship worthy of a young Crazy Horse at the height of his powers, in a little trick I like to call the ol’ “canter-canter-trot-TROT-GALLOP!”  And that 9 months later, our youngest was born?

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

The point is that of course I haven’t told them that!  All they know is that when a man and woman love each other very much, the man carries the woman through a bedroom doorway that is in black and white for some reason, and then the door shuts and the credits roll (“Gregory Peck as Martacus,” “Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Simpson.” “Nancy Pelosi as the Mummy,” “Elizabeth Warren as the Cigar Store Indian.”).  And nine months later, one of them is born.

And nobody is named “River.”

Weir moves from erotic narcissism to climate narcissism: “I’m so sorry that we broke your sea and your sky?”  I’m pretty sure that the sea is still there, and I was just looking at the sky this afternoon. Doesn’t seem broken.

And because he’s apparently learned all his science from Al Gore and Captain Planet, he thinks that his house is going to be underwater in 20 years or so.  And just like with my old lefty buddies who were sure that the oceans would be dead by now, and acid rain would have wiped out half of our population, and a new global ice age would have wiped out the other half, I’d like to call Weir and remind him of his hysteria and laugh at him, as he sits in his un-condemned and totally dry house.

 

Weir goes on:  “See, for decades, scientists told us that if we weren’t careful, humans would unleash an invisible enemy out of the jungle and into our lungs. But that was a story few wanted to believe.  So we kept cutting down jungles — and prairies and mangroves and the last few the places where the wild things are — to pave and plow, develop and devour everything inside.”

Does this guy think that the Flu Manchu came from humans cutting down jungles?  Has nobody told him about the Chinese boneheads eating the bats, or the Chicom boneheads and their fifth-rate lab safety procedures, or the progressive slave-state bureaucrats in Beijing who lied about everything (as commies are wont to do) until it was too late to stop a pandemic?  Apparently not.

“As you get older, this will be hard to understand. But we were under the spell of Genesis 1:28: to take dominion over every living thing.”

Good lord!  I love when non-Christians who wouldn’t know Saint Paul from Minneapolis-St.Paul expound on how the evil Bible teaches that we should destroy the environment.  “And God said, go forth and cut down the jungles, and pile up the wood and make a great fire, upon which thou must roasteth the bat, notwithstanding that it is the least delicious of all the fowl that flieth through the air. Then shalt thou cough on thy neighbors, who must thenceforth flee to the airports and disperse throughout the globe, spreading the pestilence while your vile and indolent government lieth about it all, and keepeth on with the intellectual property theft and the exporting of lead-based toys and contaminated drywall.”

I’m no theologian, but you don’t have to be Aquinas to understand that the Biblical mandate is for humanity to be stewards of the environment, not destroyers of it.

Weir isn’t done:  “We had the strange urge to carve straight lines out of nature’s curves and were under the spell of a uniquely human force called “profit motive.”

You mean like the profit motive that has allowed you to get a six-figure job writing terrible “journalism,” and allowed you to afford a house to take River home to?

The article goes on and on, but it’s too painful to spend any more time on.  I just find myself feeling sorry for his son, because he’s less than a month old and his dad is already filling his mind with alarmist doom and gloom.  “We’ve killed the planet, we’re all cursed, you’ll never know how things used to be so great, but now they’re terrible, and getting worse every day.  Sorry about that.  By the way, did I ever tell you the story about the time I absolutely wrecked your mother doing downward-facing dog on a faux bearskin rug on the flagstone floors of a Dubrovnik lighthouse?”

Not since the Cuyahoga was so filled with chemicals that it caught fire has any River been so badly treated.

 

To get the bad taste of this article out of my mouth, I’ve written a letter to my daughter, to cosmically balance Weir’s toxic letter:

Dear Katie,

First, aren’t you glad to have a great name like “Katherine,” which is classic, timeless and versatile, and not something ridiculous like “Conifer” or “Aquifer” or “Saguaro Cactus Simpson?”  You’re welcome.

Second, never mind how your mom and I made you.  You’re here now, and you’ve been nurtured and educated and equipped to make your own way in the best nation ever.  You’re welcome again.

Third, we used to be much worse stewards of the environment that God has given us responsibility for, but because we have free markets, we have gotten wealthier, and our wealth has allowed us to innovate and improve our treatment of nature.  We’ve found ways to grow more food on less land, and our modes of building and transportation are becoming cleaner and less destructive with each passing year.  If we can just not watch CNN, elect less leftists, and get the Chicoms to stop eating the freaking bats, your future is going to be brighter than for any other generation in history.

Now get out there and be an Ameri-CAN!”

Avenatti/River Weir 2020!