Month: March 2021

There are many warning signs when a culture is in serious decline. 

Deteriorating defensive preparation at the borders, even though the Germanic tribes across the Rhine seem restless.  A degrading central currency.  Decreasing birth rates.  The slide of popular art into the gutter. Electing a corpse as president. 

So far in 2021, we’re 5 for 5.

Our border is now a disaster so stark that even our MSM can’t completely ignore it.  The predictable flood of migrants is overwhelming, many of them have covid that isn’t being treated, and the kids are piling up in the cages (One of my favorite Trump lines was his debate comeback that would have killed Biden, if he weren’t already dead: “Who built the cages, Joe?  Who built the cages?”).

The only tiny sliver of a silver lining is watch Hacky Psaki imploding before our eyes, hemming and hawing and flop-sweating like Biden trying to remember which woman on stage is his wife and which is the vice-president.       

If you have a lot of self-respect, being a press secretary is usually a terrible job.  You start out wanting to explain the policies you believe in for the president you believe in, and you end up having to dance and fudge the truth, and eventually lie pretty regularly.  There’s an old description of a diplomat: “an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” 

But even that caveat gives Psaki too much credit.  She’s not honest, and her lies are told for the good of her corrupt party and president, and to the detriment of her country.

There are degrees of terribleness in a press secretary job.  The more competent and consistent a president is, and the more successful the administration, the easier the job is.  Trump was tough to work for, partly because of his lack of rhetorical discipline, and partly because the MSM are such dishonest creeps that they were constantly throwing mud that had to be cleaned up. But there was substance to answer the spurious attacks with: best economic performance and employment numbers in decades, trimming regulations, solid judicial nominations, successful peace initiatives, etc. 

What does Psaki have to work with?

When asked about kids in cages, she had to say that those aren’t cages, they’re comfortable snuggle-huts lined with downy quilts, offering three daily servings of the milk of human kindness.  When she was asked what Biden plans to do about stock market manipulation, she had to resort to the non sequitur of pointing out that the treasury secretary has ovaries.   When asked why Biden promised 100 federal vaccination sites by the end of his February, but there were only 7, she had to say, ‘Look, a squirrel!” and then drop to the floor and commando-crawl out of the room.  

The great C.S. Lewis memorably introduced a fictional character this way: “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

Well, today there’s a woman named Jennifer “Hacky” Psaki who has the job of press secretary for Joe Biden.

And she absolutely deserves it.

You didn’t watch the Grammys last week, because you’re smart and have a life to lead, and neither did I, for the same reasons. 

But I did watch a few excerpts after hearing about it on Ben Shapiro’s podcast.  And it turns out that it featured an “artist” – yes, those are definitely scare quotes – whom I’d written about briefly before: Cardi B, and her hit “song” that can only be referred to by the initials WAP.  (Don’t look it up, I beg you!)

First, it’s a bad sign when your song title is so offensive that it can only appear as an acronym.  When a young Jo-Bach — which, if modern pop culture has taught me anything is what Johann Sebastian Bach must have been called back in the day – was at the height of his powers, here’s a conversation that absolutely never happened on the mean streets of Vienna:

Bach Fan 1: Have you heard JJMD yet?  It’s better than the BC, man!

Bach Fan 2: Do you mean “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring?”

Bach Fan 1:  Yeah.

Bach Fan 2: Not yet.  But there’s no way it’s better than the Brandenburg Concertos!  No way!

Bach Fan 1: Way!

Second, I remember way back when women’s behinds were the size of women’s behinds.  But if the performance the other night is any indication, those days are gone, daddy-o.   

Cardi’s got more tattoos than a cell block full of MS-13 members, and a beam like a D-Day landing craft.  The other “artist” “singing” with her is called Megan thee Stallion, which makes sense, because I’ve seen smaller flanks on 2-year-old palominos going off at 5-3 in the third race at Pimlico.   

Third, it’s a really bad sign if you notice anything about tattoos or adipose tissue when you’ve watched a “musical” performance.

I know that there’s good music being written today, somewhere.  But it’s a troubling sign of a sickness in our society when this kind of junk is popular and wins awards.  I know I sound like the oldest man in Christendom, and that old folks are always putting down the music of the young kids today.

But this stuff is garbage.  The lyrics start out with “there’s some wh*res in this house,”and then it goes WAY downhill from there.  I’m not kidding.  If you can make it about 30 lines farther, you’ll be nostalgically looking back at “there’s some wh*res in this house” like it was, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  Thou art as lovely and as temperate.”

But you don’t need to compare this to Shakespeare or Bach to see how bad things have gotten.  Instead, compare it to any reasonably middling popular songs from a few decades ago.  Even when country musicians were writing only about drinking or fighting, or pop musicians were writing about surfing or cars, or everyone was writing about romantic troubles, they usually managed to do it without degrading themselves and their listeners.

One example that has been in my listening rotation lately is a not particularly famous song by not particularly famous song writers, from the mid-1950s.  Sinatra sang it first; it’s called “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.”  It’s only 8 lines long and less than 3 minutes, and if you haven’t heard it before, give it a listen.

Here are the lyrics: “In the wee small hours of the morning/When the whole wide world is fast asleep/You lie awake, and think about the girl/And never ever think of counting sheep./ When your lonely heart has learned its lesson/ You’d be hers, if only she would call/ In the wee small hours of the morning/That’s the time you miss her most of all.”

There are some cliches in there, and it’s not Bach or Mozart.  But it’s a sweet, melancholy tune, and evocative, and the line, “When your lonely heart has learned its lesson,” is lovely.

Listening to an ugly, vulgar, gynecologist’s nightmare of a “song” like WAP, and then to “In the Wee Small Hours,” will give you the bends! 

Again, I know that there is some good music being written and played in our country, right now.  But WAP, and an army of auto-tuned aural assaults just like it, is topping the charts and winning awards, and that is a very bad indicator of the cultural health of our society!     

Speaking of bad health, how about that Joe Biden? (RIP) I’m sure you all saw him dance right up those airplane stairs with cat-like grace. 

I mean, if the cat in question was deep into the last of its nine lives, and only hours earlier had been shot with several tranquilizer darts as it made its escape from an Old Cat’s Home on tapioca pudding night when the attendants weren’t looking.

I’m as much a fan of Weekend at Bernie’s as the next guy, but this is getting ridiculous.  Biden can’t make an unscripted live appearance, they can’t let him answer media questions, he can’t play with his dog without breaking a bone.  And now he can’t go up or down stairs. 

I guess Hacky Psaki won the game of “rock, paper, scissors,” because WH Communications Director Kate Bedingfield got stuck with the job of explaining Biden dropping on those stairs like the guy who got sniped by the German in the church tower in Saving Private Ryan.

Kate did the best she could, chirping, “I’m happy to report that he is just fine, and did not even require any attention from the medical team who travels with him.”  Of course he didn’t require any attention – what’s he going to get, MORE dead?

By the way, I looked into that “medical team” who travels with Biden: a mortician, an embalmer, a taxidermist, and a specialist who consulted on all of the autopsies on CSI: Miami. 

True story.

When even the shamelessly sycophantic WH press corps wasn’t buying that, Psaki and Bedingfield stood behind the blue curtain at the WH briefing room and shoved Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre out in front of the microphones.

For a moment, Jean-Pierre spoke in French, apparently trying to pretend that she didn’t speak or understand English.  Then she said that Biden fell because – and I Schumer you not, I am NOT making this quote up – “…it’s pretty windy outside.  It’s very windy.  I almost fell coming up the steps myself.” 

If only there had been a real reporter in the room, the exchange would have gone like this:

Reporter: But you didn’t fall, did you?

Karine: Um, no.

Reporter: And none of the secret service guys, and none of the reporters, and none of the other staffers fell?

Karine: No.

Reporter: And Diego, the guy who puts the baggage into the back of the plane, he didn’t fall?

Karine (through gritted teeth): No.

Reporter: And the National Weather Service says that winds at the time were in a range they describe as a “fresh breeze.”

Karine: What’s your point?

Reporter: It wasn’t very windy, and the only person who fell is the guy in his late hundreds who doesn’t know where he is, but still has the nuclear button clenched in his liver-spotted, desiccated hands.

Karine (after a long pause):  No habla Ingles.

Reporter: That’s Spanish.

Karine: Je ne parle pas anglaise.

And, scene.

Avenatti/Cardi B 2024!

Well, it’s the Ides of Mart™, and this coming week marks two important anniversaries.  The first is the 32^nd anniversary of my having tricked a Norwegian-American smoke-show of a girlfriend to hitch her marital wagon to my star, despite the fact that I was an English major with severely limited earning potential and pedestrian looks at best.

But my heart is pure (relatively), and I could make her laugh, and other males apparently suck way more than me, so I was able to beguile her.  And this week, as we celebrate nearly a third of a century, I will tell the lame joke that makes her groan every year: “This week we’ll be celebrating 25 happy years… and we’ve only been married for 32, so that’s a pretty solid ratio.”

The patience of women is an eternal mystery, and one for which I am extremely grateful.

The second important anniversary this week – of course – is the one-year anniversary of “15 days to slow the spread.”  I’m grateful that in my state of Florida – and as the saying goes, I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could – that 15 days lasted only about 4 months of semi-complete lockdown.

For the poor, benighted souls trapped in blue states with power-hungry Dem governors, that 15 days has now lasted 12 months.  If Joe Biden were still with us and had his way, that 15 days would last at least 15 months, and likely 24, and possibly longer, if any extra dishonest political gains could be squeezed out of their cruel and un-scientific lockdowns.

I got my vaccination last week.  So you know what that means: in addition to being immune from criticism, scorn, and lame personal attacks from humorless leftists, I am also not going to be taken out by covid.  Now if we can just get those scientists cracking on turning mockery, and a diet of red meat, ice cream and scotch into longevity, there’ll be no stopping me!

I’d like to thank President Trump, for shepherding through a vaccine in 8 months, after 142,000 MSM partisans, Dem politicians and mentally-challenged rage-a-holics (but I repeat myself) spent those 8 months assuring me that that could NEVER be done… when they weren’t insisting that they were full-blooded Indians, and ordering the Fang-Fang Bang-Bang off the carry-out menu down at the Chinese Communist Party Golden Dragon restaurant.

Maybe those last two were just Grandma Squanto (#wemustSTILLneverstopmockingher) and Eric Swallwell.  But all the rest of them were just “Following the Science™.”   

Because I’m not a scientist and don’t know any better, I guess I now have to accept that Bruce Jenner was the most amazing female athlete of all time, we can definitely predict the temperature at 4:27 p.m. one-hundred-and-five years from next Wednesday, and the first covid vaccines are going to be here in the late fall of 2022.

I’d also like to thank the super-villains down at Big Pharma who managed to set a land-speed record coming up with a vaccine, even though they had to do so without the sage advice of Dr. Fauci.  Who was too busy standing on a stack of phonebooks to pose for magazine cover photos, and appearing on CNN, where he praised the incredible job that Andrew “We’ve taken Grandpa to a Farm Upstate Where he Can Play all Day with Other Covid-Positive Octogenarians” Cuomo was doing.

Speaking of being thankful, I would also like to share with you two incidents I came across this week that put a smile on my face.

The first story comes to us out of India, the colorful land of unpronounceable and unspellable names, friendly tech support folks who implausible claim to be named either “Andrew” or “Emily,” and hilarious cartoon characters who can no longer be voiced by white actors.  Because racism.

But if I asked you what country you associate with cock fighting – and if anybody even thinks about making a joke about any Dem politician, fundraiser, or supporter who definitely did not kill himself in prison, I will turn this car RIGHT around, mister! – most of you would say “Mexico.”

And then you’d be cancelled. 

Because, as I may have mentioned before, racism.

Anyway, it turns out that Indians also fancy the occasional cockfight.  But sadly, there is now one less Indian fan of what, for all I know, they call “the sport of kings” in India.  Because last month, 45-year-old Thangulla “Hello, I’m Andrew, what can I help you with today?” Satish was killed by a fighting cock. 

Not because they were in the ring – or the cage, or the pen, or the rink, or whatever they call a cockfighting enclosure in India – as opponents in a bout sanctioned by the ICFA (the Indian Cockfighting Association, duh). 

It turns out that Thangulla (and if you just thought “Matata,” you are not alone) owned the bird in question, and was preparing him for the fight by strapping a 3-inch long, razor-sharp blade to the rooster’s leg.

I know: what could possibly go wrong? 

Well it turns out that the rooster fatally slashed his owner.  And before I can ask the rhetorical question, “Where would you LEAST like to be slashed by the knife on your fighting rooster’s le—” every male reading this column just shouted out, “GROIN!”

Allow me to introduce a quote from the story by turning toward the big board and doing my Richard Dawson impression: “Survey says…”

“A man who tied a knife to the leg of his rooster for an illegal cockfight was killed after the bird panicked and stabbed him in the groin…”  

Yada yada yada, Thangulla bled out.

This quote should elicit several immediate thoughts:

1.HA!  HAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!

2. If at your funeral, one of your neighbors asks your family how you died, and they mumble, “He suffered a fatal groin injury in a cockfight,” those neighbors are going to wonder if you had badly misunderstood how a cockfight is supposed to work.

3. The bird “panicked” and then stabbed him?  Really? 

If you were a rooster and your owner took you for a drive down to the local rooster rink, and you found yourself staring at a ‘roided up rooster who looked like a cross between John Cena and Mick Jagger, and you turned to your owner and said, “Andrew, what’s going on here?”  And your owner said, “I’ll explain in a minute.  But first I’m going to attach these razor-sharp blades to your legs.”

Do you really think your traitorous owner would die because you “panicked?” 

Because I’m thinking that the rooster would give his owner the same narrowed-eyed, baleful stare that the giant rooster who regularly fights Peter Griffin on Family Guy gives him right before things kick off. 

In other words, I think that it was cold-blooded murder!

Cue the “Etymology Minute” theme song:  “And THAT’s the origin of the phrase, to “cold cock” someone.  (Boom!  Dad joke catches you like a crisp jab when your arms were down to protect your ribs.)

Anyway, I hate cruelty to animals, so that story makes me laugh.  

I have one last animal story for you this week.  I was watching a Real-Life police show, and one segment showed a high-speed chase of a Biden voter who’d robbed a store at gunpoint, shot at a cop, and then fled in a stolen car. 

When he eventually fled on foot, the cops released a K-9 (my favorite part!), who promptly fulfilled the purpose for which a wise God created him.  He raced across a yard, leapt at the perp and took him down, then started treating his arm like a leftist treats the constitution.

The cops surrounded him and started to pull the dog free, and the thief was screaming, “OW! OW! OW!” like he’d just gone three rounds with the Marvin Hagler (RIP) of Indian fighting roosters.   

As the cop who had been shot at came within earshot of the whiny little thief, his body cam caught what might be the best cop quote I’ve ever heard, delivered in a perfect, sarcastic deadpan: “Oh, listen to his less-than-lethal ‘ow’ bullsh#t!”

That is a great line.  And I’m going to think of it every time I hear some hysterical leftist cry-bully  weeping over mis-gendered potato-related toys, or genocidally-evil Dr. Suess books, or someone alone in a bass boat 2 miles off the coast who isn’t wearing a mask.

“That’s some top-shelf less-than-lethal ‘ow” bullsh*t, right there!”

Avenatti/Thangulla “Matata” Satish, 2024!

I have a few thoughts on Joe Biden’s recent address to celebrate International Women’s Day – and if I can digress for a moment, I’m just sick at how commercialism has supplanted the true meaning of this holiday — which I think constitutes the longest time that he’s appeared in public since he’s become our posthumous president.

Biden spoke for 11 minutes.  Those are 11 minutes I will never get back, but I can console myself with the knowledge that Joe Biden was at least spared the agony that the rest of us went through, on account of him not having lived to see this sad spectacle. 

He stumbled over words – and not big words, like “inoperative medulla oblongata.”  Small words, like articles, and prepositions, and people’s names who were standing in the same room with him.

As a public service, I am providing the following “Biden-to-English” translation of part of his talk:

BS (Biden speak): “…two emily qualified warriors…”   

English: “two eminently qualified warriors…”

BS: “General Jacquelin Van O- O – Olust”       

English: “Jacquelin Van Ovost”

BS: “General Van Ovust”

English:  still “Van Ovost”

 BS: “loo-genant Teneral Richardson”

English: “Lieutenant General Richardson”

Bs: “Lieutenant General Richson”

English:  still “Richardson”

BS:  [in the old timey, sexist days] “women weren’t…were banned from flying combat missions…”  

English: um, “were”

If individual words were tough, you can imagine his troubles with entire phrases.  For example, “Some of it is going to take… an…uhh…you know…it’s… it’s… an intensity of purpose and mission…”   And “…making sure more diverse candidates are considering…. Are being considered for…” 

Okay, that was the first 7 minutes, and I didn’t have the heart to go on.  So I just skipped to the end.

And came across this gem:  “I want to thank you both, and I want to thank the secre… the… uh… the former general.  I keep calling him general.  My… my…my uh… the guy who runs that outfit over there…”

One more time:

BS:  “uh… the former general.  I keep calling him general.  My… my uh… the guy…”

English: My Secretary of Defense, ol’ What’s His Name. 

BS: “…that outfit over there”

English: the Pentagon. 

BS: “you know… you know the thing.   The building.  With a bunch of sides.”

English: still the Pentagon.

The only one of those Biden sentences I made up was the last one.

On a personal level, it’s a sad thing to watch someone who is just fading before our eyes.  But the more depressing part of his address was not the way he bumbled through it, but what he actually had to slur.

Sorry: “say.”  What he had to say.

The main focus of his address – at least as it was written out in gigantic letters for him on the teleprompter – was to celebrate women in the military.   I think most Americans are grateful and heartened by the willingness of women to serve, and especially as someone who never served myself, I greatly appreciate that!

But as in so many areas of life, the leftist worldview ends up turning what should be a good thing into an identity politics axe to grind, and then grinds it.  Over the course of the address, Biden’s speechwriter starts by celebrating women’s contributions to our military and praising the two specific women who are being promoted, but by the end, he’s making a not-too-subtle call for creating a kinder, gentler military.

He talks about finding ways “to make it easier and safer for more women, not just to join the military, but to stay in the military.”   On the one hand, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea, because who wants any American job to be harder or more dangerous?

On the other hand… we’re talking about the MILITARY!  Do we want the kind of recruits who say, “I’m looking for a job that is easy and safe.  Let’s see… cosmetologist, government worker, life coach?   Ooh, I know: how about the armed forces?!”

When it comes to defending our country, we want bad asses; we want lean, mean, fighting machines. We don’t want crisis counselors, or social workers, or diplomats.  We want people who will kick in doors, break things, and kill bad guys.  

We want George Patton, not Bradley Manning.  The type of person who hears gunfire and runs TOWARDS it.  

The type of person who, after the first day of Shiloh, when Sherman says, “We’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” answers, “Yes.  Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”  (I love me some US Grant!)

Whoever wrote that speech had some good points.  It talked about rooting out sexual assault in the military, which every decent person supports, and for fair treatment of women on all levels, which, ditto.

But the speech went beyond that, in ways that imply that the military should be a quasi-social program, with quotas to achieve gender equity.   Biden celebrates the idea that women, “aren’t told no when they want to apply to Ranger school….” 

And I guess if he meant that women should be allowed to apply – but get no special treatment, or lower standards to meet – that idea would be okay.  But that’s not what he means.  You can tell from the whole tenor of the speech. 

For example, he touts the fact that the two women being promoted, “…will become the second and third women in the history of the United States armed force to lead combatant commands…”   Do you think those two women want that to be the first thing anyone thinks about when seeing them? 

I understand that it’s worth mentioning when someone achieves a “first ever” accomplishment: Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, Sandra Day 0’Connor becoming the first woman on the Supreme Court, Condoleeza Rice becoming the first female national security advisor.

But do we need to hammer that point for the second and the third person to rise through a glass ceiling that was already broken?  Do you remember Democrats fawning over Amy Coney Barrett for being the fifth female on the high court?  (Spoiler alert: you do not.)  When I am on my death bed at age 116, will I be bombarded by the news that someone has just been made our 116^th female general?  

Many other moments in the speech revealed insultingly frivolous gender pandering.  Biden mumbled about the many ways his military is becoming more welcoming to women, going so far as to tout the way they are “updating requirements for their hairstyles.”

I’m not making that up.  And I can’t think of an idea that is more condescending to women than, “I’m sure these ladies would be lining up to serve, if only we didn’t insist they have unflattering haircuts!”

Can you picture a bunch of Marines lined up to get into landing craft before hitting the beach at Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal, and hearing this:

Square-jawed NCO:  “All right men, you’re about to face the enemy.  Remember Pearl Harbor, and Bull Halsey’s words, ‘When this war is over, the only place the Japanese language will be spoken WILL BE IN HELL!!”

Marines: “YEAAAAHHHH!”

Lone voice: “Hey Sarge, can we do something about these haircuts?”

NCO:  “What? What the hell are you talking about?!”

LV:  “I just think that with my skull shape, the high-and-tight look is not flattering.”

NCA: “What is your major malfunction, you numb—”

Second voice:  “Yeah, and I’d like to have a mullet, even though they won’t be invented for 40 years.”

Third voice:  “And a man bun!  Why can’t I have a man bun?”

Aaannnnnddd….  Japan wins World War II. 

Biden also seemed excited that we’ve got our top military strategists hard at work, “creating maternity flight suits…”

Let that sink in, people.

Maternity. Flight. Suits.

Because I remember that during my wife’s first pregnancy, we were reading all the experts recommending that the pregnant woman get plenty of rest, eat a diet rich in vitamins, and if possible, play classical music for the fetus.

Oh, and also, expose the fetus to as many extreme G forces as possible!!

Ugh.

When I think about these people being in control of our government, I have no words. 

But Shakespeare did: “Thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee!”

Avenatti/Chelsea Manning with Farrah Fawcett’s hair, 2024!

Today I’m not going to write about what a truly terrible start the new administration has gotten off to.  I’m not going to discuss the disastrous and dishonestly named Covid Relief bill, the flood of illegals being illegally waved in to the country, or the egregious HR1 that threatens to remove all reasonable fair election standards in our nation. 

Many of you have already been discussing those, and more intelligently than I can, considering that thinking about any of them for more than 2 consecutive minutes envelopes me in a toxic mix of sorrow and incoherent rage.  And then I rhetorically stomp around dropping f-bombs in a Beowulfian fury, trying to invent new curses that are bad enough to fit this parade of leftist horribles and their evil deeds.

Arschaffen, the whole lot of them!  They ought to be ashamed of themselves.  If their parents are alive, they should curse the day they felt the first spark of attraction that led to the birth of these hateful idiots.  Their children should be mortified, and tell their schoolmates that they were raised in an orphanage.

I’m just glad that Joe Biden didn’t live to see what a gigantic cluster his administration is turning out to be. 

But, as I said, I’m not going to dwell on any of that.  Instead, I’m going to focus on doing good in the world, by mocking some mock-worthy imbeciles, and celebrating a few small karmic rib kicks received by a few oh-so-deserving leftist hacks.

First, you’ve probably heard that it’s not over until the plus-size singer of indeterminate gender begins to croon.  (Yes, I’m up on my new, woke translations of offensive sayings, thanks for asking.) Well, it looks like that’s about to happen for Andrew “the Covid Kid” Cuomo.

At this point, it’s probably easier to gather all of the leftist female political staffers in the state of New York, and ask anyone who has NOT been propositioned or groped by the Grandma Killer to raise her hand. 

I know, it would have been nice for lefties in NY to throw Cuomo under the A-train just because he was tossing sick oldsters-turned-wrinkly-biological-weapons into nursing homes like a special forces team tossing flash-bangs into a Taliban safe house — and then lying about it.  But the important people in that party have so cauterized their consciences that they’ve lost the ability to be offended by any bad actions by one of their own in an election year.

So now they are pretending to be offended that he treated women the way Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Harvey Weinstein and 1000 other progressive big shots have treated women.  Good.  I hope he keeps fighting until the bitter end!

He’s already attacked Kaiser Wilhelm von Ribbentrop DiBlasio, who has responded in kind, and a bunch of Cuomo’s erstwhile enablers are calling for his ouster.   Lock all of those soul-less progressive pols into the octagon, and let the creep-on-creep violence begin!

Second, speaking of slimy swamp creatures reaping what they’ve sown, the nomination of Neera Tanden for budget director has gone down in flames.  Neera’s self-immolation is especially satisfying for two reasons: First, it happened because she was not able to cover up the mountains of nasty tweets she’s been firing off in recent years. 

Sidebar: I love the old saying “hoist on your own petard,” but almost nobody knows what a petard is.  In the interest of staying current, I’m going to suggest an updated version: “Nasty Neera was hilariously toppled by her own tweets.” 

But just as entertainingly, Tanden’s downfall provided yet another opportunity for the MSM to besmirch their own reputation even further

Exhibit A is a story I found in USA Today.  It goes on for what feels like 8000 words – and some of you folks think I’m long-winded in MY columns! – using much of that verbiage to argue about how great Tanden is.  (“Brilliant policy mind… child of a single mother…would have been the first south Asian” blah blah blah.)  But the article only tangentially refers to the toxic tweets that she regularly aimed at nearly everyone, mentioning only in passing that she deleted “more than 1000 tweets” before her nomination.  

Andrew Klavan has pointed out that for the MSM, any story about a GOP scandal focuses on the GOP scandal, but if it’s about a Democrat scandal, the story is about the way the GOP “pounces.”  The Tanden story is a great example. 

Consider this excerpt: “Tanden, who burnished her reputation as a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton and later played a key role in the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, faced a bruising confirmation process in which she was forced to repeatedly apologize after Republicans skewered her over previous statements about their colleagues.”

The quote starts with what the writer thinks is a compliment.  (Hint: For regular folks, longtime connections to Hillary and Obama’s HHS are NOT something you should brag about, and the verb we’d use is not “burnished,” but “tarnished.”) Then it turns to the real problem: Republicans.  Mean, bullying, icky Republicans.

Those troglydytes “bruise” her, and “force her to repeatedly apologize” and “skewer her.”  And what has caused all that bruising and skewering?  Why, her “previous statements about her colleagues.”

You will not be surprised that the writer somehow never got around to quoting any of those “previous statements.”  Which, if you’re a cynically minded type, you might attribute to those comments not being “statements,” but the small-minded, bilious insults of a juvenile creep trapped in a grown woman’s body.

My favorite part of the story is when the author locates Carl Tobias, a “nominations expert.”   Shockingly, that “expert” turns out to be a biased, leftist academic.  Even more shockingly, Tobias excretes a biased, leftist take on the issue: “After four years of disparaging Trump tweets, it is difficult to see why GOP senators were so offended by Tanden’s tweets,” he said. “It’s unfortunate but it does not seem to be a major setback.”

Gee, I guess maybe it’s not a major setback.  But it’s at least a Neera miss.  (Boom!  Dad-joke upper-cut when you least expected it!)

That is rich!  I’m not going to defend all of Trump’s tweets, or deny that many of them were juvenile and/or offensive. (And, admit it, often high-larious). 

But Campaign Carl doesn’t seem to realize that his charge of implied hypocrisy goes both ways.  If it was wrong for conservatives to overlook Trump’s disparaging tweets but raise hell over Tanden’s, isn’t it just as wrong for Dems to spend 4 years on a fainting couch over Trump’s tweets, and then excuse Tanden’s?

Yet oddly, Tobias seems to see the hypocrisy as one-way, implicating conservatives only.

Carl, here’s a little corrected re-write of your self-owning quote that would be just as accurate as yours:  “After four years of howling that Trump should be convicted of treason and executed for his disparaging tweets, it’s difficult to see how any self-respecting Democrat could look ze-self in the mirror after shamelessly excusing Tanden’s equally egregious tweets.”

You’re welcome.   

Finally, we turn from a lummox to a Lorax.  Yes, I’m talking about the latest ridiculous outbreak of leftist symbolic book burning, this time involving the works of Dr. Suess.

As frequent readers of this site know, I am loathe to toot my own horn, sing my own praises, or even mention my fantastic reputation among those who appreciate top-shelf hilarious genius-ness.

But I feel compelled to point out that this is not the first time that censorious twits on the left went after Dr. Suess, and that I was ahead of the curve in mocking them.

Let me share this excerpt from my column archives, from September of 2017, when I was already on the case:    

“Speaking of fine literature, Melania Trump was asked to help celebrate National Reading Day by choosing some children’s books to donate to one school in each state.  She picked some Dr. Seuss books that she has enjoyed reading with her son.

When the books arrived at a school in Massachusetts, the leftist librarian there said, ‘We appreciate the generous gifts for our students.  Even though we have our differences with the White House, we’d really have to be petty, small-minded a-holes to politicize this totally inoffensive gesture.  Thank you, Mrs. Trump.  PS, love the stilettoes. I wish I could pull those off, but I’m frumpy and unattractive.  And yet, it hasn’t made me bitter, and I’m not at all tempted to transfer my rage at my own disappointments into confrontational, nasty political fight-picking.’

HA!  I tricked you!  That’s not what she said at all.

What she said was that Dr. Seuss books are full of racism, and that the American education system is broken, and most kids are poor, and it’s all Trump’s fault.  Now please shove these books up your infuriatingly attractive rear end, Melania.  (Those are not direct quotes, but they capture the stunning, ill-mannered gracelessness of her response.  Read it, and tell me I’m wrong – I dare you.)

Like you, my first instinct was to laugh at the absurdity of claiming that Dr. Seuss books are racist.  But, because I take my awesome responsibility of reporting to CO nation seriously, I decided to do my due diligence.  It’s been a long time since I read Dr. Seuss, and I have to admit that I had forgotten a lot of it. So I went to my local library.

I was shocked to find that she was right!  Consider these Dr. Seuss titles that I had not remembered:

The Cat in the Pointy White Hood

Green Eggs and Miscegenation

The Grinch Who Stole Kwanzaa

One fish, Two fish, Red fish, White Supremacist

Horton Hears a Racist Dog Whistle

So good job, leftist librarian!  You keep fighting the good fight against reality, self-awareness and good manners.”

Cut to three years later, and the leftist censors are only getting worse.

I’m shocked that they haven’t gone after “Horton Hears a Who.”

The most famous line of that story is, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

I can’t believe that Biden’s masters at Planned Parenthood are going to let that subversive thought stand. 

So buy that book while you still can!

Avenatti/ “Senior-Slaughterer” Cuomo, 2024!

Today is the first day of March – unless you’ve joined me in calling it the month of “Mart,” which I argued for in a previous column.  (I was musing that I liked the Roman practice of naming months after emperors, e.g. July for Julius Caesar and August for Caesar Augustus.)  Before you laugh me out of the room – I know, too late – consider that an African-American felon and lunatic made up Kwanzaa over 50 years ago, and it’s still hanging around.  Sort of.

So with any luck, in 50 years your kids and grandkids will be celebrating Mart Madness, or noting that this year, Mart came in like a lion but went out like a lamb. 

But I digress. 

Now that February has ended, we can look back at the first full month of the late Joe Biden’s administration.  And since this site is called “Cautious Optimism” rather than “Cautious Excuse-me-while-I-put-this-loaded-gun-in-my-Mouth,” let’s look at the bright side of the first full month of leftist rule.

Um….  Well, there’s…  

Okay.  The moon hasn’t turned to blood, the locusts haven’t arrived, and we don’t have a plague of boils.  Yet. 

Other than that, it’s about what we expected.

There’s been the usual leftist suspects beclowning themselves in the usual ways. 

For example, when Donald Trump signed 7 executive orders in his first 12 days in office, he was an autocratic dictator.  So when Joe Biden signed 25 executive orders in his first 12 days, the MSM screamed bloody murder.

HA!  I kid.  They actually cheered him. 

Biden also had a Town Closet meeting in mid-February during which he claimed that “we didn’t have a vaccine when we came into office.”  Which likely came as quite a surprise to the millions of Americans who had already been vaccinated by the time Biden slurred his way through the oath on 1/20.

In fact, it probably came as a surprise to Biden too, when an aide told him that he’d been vaccinated twice by January 11^th.

Correction: that wasn’t a “Town Closet” meeting, but a “Town Hall” meeting.  Sure, when Biden arrived at the venue he wandered into a closet and couldn’t find his way out.  But after a frantic search, the secret service found him there, and guided him by the elbow to a podium in a town hall.

From his “no vaccine exists” statement, Biden pivoted to saying that he was setting the lofty goal of overseeing 100 million vaccinations in 100 days.  Which, if my public-school math serves me well, means an average of 1 million vaccinations per day. 

Fun fact: in the four days before Biden staggered into office, the Trump administration averaged over 1 million vaccinations per day.

So the Scranton Sophocles said that there is no vaccine, and also that he will push his administration to try to achieve the goal of ramping up to giving almost the number of daily vaccinations that were already happening before he took office. 

Nothing surprising there.  Biden routinely says demented things.  But in his defense, he has a good excuse: he’s got dementia.

But the rest of the leftists and MSM don’t have that excuse.  Four quick examples:

1.Musically talented colossal hypocrite Bruce Springsteen is now doing a podcast with Barack Obama. Thus answering the question, “Does a podcast exist that would make me prefer to rub sand into my open eyes and perforate my eardrums with knitting needles rather than watching and listening to it?”

And – hold onto your gag reflex – it’s going to be called, “Renegades: Born in the USA.”  (Though I think “Retrogrades: Born in the USA, plus Kenya” would have demonstrated a little self-deprecating humor that I’d admire.)

2.  Our recent insanity about gender has now spread to children’s toys, with Hasbro announcing that they are rebranding “Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head” to just “Potato Head.”  Because, I guess, there has been an epidemic of kids accidentally seeing “Mr.” and “Mrs.” on their toy box, and becoming so discombobulated that they immediately started whacking away at their own genitalia with a set of sharpened gardening shears? Which were left on the floor of the nursery, beside the toy box, for some reason?

I am not making this story up.  An actual toy company is symbolically de-sexing their tuber-based toys.  Way to go, heroes – you’ve cured sexism!

Ugh. 

I say we steer into the skid with these idiotic companies, and goad them into even more woke insanity.

For example, what’s with the “bro” on the end of “Hasbro?”  That’s pretty phallo-centric, if you ask me! Why couldn’t you name your company “Has-sis,” hmm?  Maybe it’s because you’re secretly pushing… a PEPRG?!  And don’t pretend you don’t know that that means “Patriarchy-Empowering Potato-Related Game,” you FMCOs! (Filthy Misogynist Corporate Offenders.  Duh!)

So yeah.  Starting now, a generation of malleable offspring will start putting plastic hair bows, exaggerated plump red lips and thick mustaches on their unisex potato-simulating toys. 

Hey, good luck when they get to the dating years, parents of current toddlers!

3. Seattle, fresh from months of encouraging subliterate, mouth-breathing Biden voters to destroy their city, have come up with a use for all of the taxpayer money they are saving by not employing cops.  Their DESC – which, though you might assume it stands for “Depraved Execrable Sinister Cretins“ actually stands for “Downtown Emergency Services Center” – has produced two handy flyers targeting a core element of the Democrat voting base: incorrigible drug addicts.

The first flyer advocates smoking heroin, rather than injecting it.  Because – and I cannot stress enough how I am NOT making this up – “smoking is a lower-risk alternative to injection.  Give it a try!”

Yes, by all means, give it a try! 

Your city is a burned-out husk, and you’ve lost any chance at employment now that every sane business owner has fled the feral leftist hordes vandalizing what used to be their businesses.  So while you’re sitting around in piles of human excrement and dirty syringes, playing with a discarded plastic toy with full breasts, male genitalia and a bowler hat attached to it, it’s not like you have anything better to do than smoking some heroin.

But wait!  The second taxpayer-funded flyer proposes an even better way to get your heroin fix than shooting or smoking it: sticking it up your arse.

Again, on my honor as a hilarious genius and a gentleman: I am not making this up.

This actually-existing flyer introduces the charming phrase “booty bumping.”

If you’re anything like me – and what a sweet world that would be! — when you first heard “booty bumping” you probably thought that it was a euphemistic reference to the way in which Comma-La started her political career in CA.  Or, possibly, what the nascent Biden administration has already started doing to the gullible American citizens who voted for Joey Gaffes because they believed he was a “moderate.” 

But no.  The flyer educates Seattle-ites that the rectum is “very efficient at absorption.”  So cue the NBC “The More you Know” musical theme on that one.

It goes on to say that introducing heroin into yourself rectally “is a good choice if your veins are hard to hit,” and that, “it doesn’t leave tracks.” 

Skid marks, probably.  But no tracks.  So you’ll have that going for you.   

That’s it in a nutshell, folks.  Socrates suggested that the unexamined life is not worth living.  Christ advocates treating others as you would be treated.  The Founding Fathers urged us toward the highest use of our Creator-endowed liberties and faculties.

But the Democrats who run Seattle have their own words to live by: “Sticking heroin up your butt: Give it a try!”

4. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell – and here I miss Rush even more, as I can hear his nasally, mocking pronunciation of “Annn-drea Mitchell” – thought she’d school Ted Cruz.  When he compared the Dems’ unhinged impeachment trial to “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and attributed that reference to Shakespeare, Mitchell jumped in with a snooty correction: “No, that’s Faulkner.”

And yes, it is fair to call that “a tweet told by an idiot.” (THAT’S how you deploy a subtle Shakespeare reference, Andrea!)  Because, of course, the original quote is from Macbeth, and Faulkner took it as the title for his novel The Sound and the Fury.  (By the way, remember when that mediocre prof whose name you already forgot from last week’s column assured us that “Shakespeare isn’t timeless?”)

I’m sure that a quick look through Mitchell’s previous tweets would find more “corrections.”  For example, she has probably assured others that Shakespeare also had nothing to do with “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” “What Dreams May Come,” and “The Dogs of War,” which came from Ray Bradbury, Cole Porter, Richard Matheson and Frederick Forsyth, respectively.

Also, “All the World’s a Stooge” is a reference to the 1941 classic film starring Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and Grandma Squanto, rather than some obscure Shakespeare play.

Sorry.  My research staff tells me that “All the World’s a Stooge” actually starred Moe, Larry and Curly. 

Honest mistake.

Anyway, I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on Andrea, because Penn poli-sci or journalism majors can’t be expected to know—

What’s that?  Her degree was in English Literature?  And she currently holds a position as “Chair of the Board of Overseers of the School of Arts and Sciences?”  But she doesn’t recognize one of the most widely known quotes from one of the most famous plays written by THE most famous playwright in the known universe?

Perfect. 

So let me close with a quick game that I just made up to help Andrea brush up on her Shakespeare, lest she embarrass herself further. 

It’s called, “Match these Shakespearian insults to the current Democrat they most clearly fit.”  I’ve included the answers in the parentheses after each quote.

“Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after voyage.” (If that’s not Joey Gaffes, I’ll eat my hat.)

“Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile.” (Any Nile reference could only be to Imhotep Pelosi.)

“Thou lump of foul deformity” (Jerry Nadler.  Or Bill Clinton.  Or a Cuomo to be named later.)

“I must tell you friendly in your ear, sell when you can, you are not for all markets.” (That genius economist AOC.)

“I scorn you, scurvy companion.“  (Fang Fang’s boyfriend, Eric Swalwell.) (If by “scurvy” you mean “syphilitic.”)

“More of your conversation would infect my brain.” (Adam Schiff, but the judges would also accept Ilhan Omar.)

“The tartness of [her] face sours ripe grapes.”  (Tie: Maxine Waters and CAW CAW.)

“Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.”  (The entire Democrat House and Senate membership.)

I’m going to print out these words and tape them to the bottom of my tv, and then watch the Dems debate the $1.9 trillion corrupt-o-crat bailout bill of 2021: “Thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee!”

Nancy “out-venoming tongue” Pelosi/ Sandy “not for all markets” Ocasio-Cortez, 2024!

The Cautious Optimism Roving Correspondent for Affairs (and Stuff) – CORCA – has a potent combination of gratitude and mockery to start your week.

The danger of writing almost non-stop sarcasm and mockery is that when you want to be serious and non-ironic, people don’t know how to take it.  But I start today by running that risk, because I want to thank you all.  After my last column on Friday, some members of CO nation followed CO’s lead, and hit my tip jar, and said some very complimentary things about my writing.  I was very touched by that.

Not in a creepy way, like if I were a young woman at a Biden presser, locked in a Greco-Roman clinch while he massaged my shoulders and sniffed my hair.

HA!  I am incorrigible, and cannot resist a low-hanging joke. 

Which, if my Mandarin is not too rusty, is what I believe was Fang Fang’s nickname for Eric Swallwell.  I don’t want to know why.

Anyway, though I’ve now botched this moment of sincerity, I really do appreciate the kind words from so many of you over the last 4 years.  Reading and writing for this site has been great fun, and it is immensely gratifying to receive responses, likes and shares from so many of you.  And to get actual contributions in the tip jar is – honest to God – humbling.

So John, Jamie, Ed, Daniel, Roger, Amarayah, Gail and many others who have been so generous: thanks! Really.  And only because several people have asked, I do have a Venmo account (@MartinSimpson), and I know the Paypal (Msimpson528) Tip Jar is hard to see on my site.  But since my tech support department is off kicking academic butt in her freshman year of college… my tech savvy is on par with AOC’s understanding of basic economics.

Having said that, please don’t ever feel any compunction to hit the tip jar, because your reading and responding and being part of the community on this website is reward enough for me.  You’ve helped me turn a sharp tongue and snarky attitude from an eccentric social deficit into a rewarding way to blow off steam, and I can’t thank you enough for that!

Okay, now I’m starting to feel like some infomercial weirdo, so let’s get to a few news stories.

Shakespeare is hated by morons.  Unfortunately, many of those morons are alleged educators. 

Sidebar: I find it a troublesome red flag when teachers insist on being called “educators.” That’s almost as much of a poker tell that people are too full of themselves as when they get a ludicrous Ed D degree and insist on being called “doctor.” 

(By the way, if you read my column on Friday, you won’t be surprised to know what appears beside Reza Aslan’s pic on his Twitter posts.  That’s right: “Dr. Reza Aslan.”   Ugh.)

On a totally unrelated note, I would rather take a class from – or undergo thoracic surgery at the hands of – Dr. Suess, Dr. Octopus, or Dr. Evil, rather than from “Dr.” Jill Biden.  (She didn’t spend several grueling months in fake doctor school and write a term paper, in crayon, on the JUCO’s crucial role in the American economy to be called, “Ms. Biden!”)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.

Morons hate Shakespeare, and they hate him for moronic reasons.  Like because he was an icky white male, so his politics must have been wrong.  According to one article, “For the new breed of teachers [Martacus’ editor’s note: I’m going to guess that breed is either Angus or Hereford] Shakespeare is seen… as a tool of imperial oppression, an author who should be dissected in class or banished from the curriculum entirely.”

A group who founded “#DisruptTexts” say that the Bard is all about “white supremacy and colonization.”

I wish I could have been in the board room where this brain trust came up with their fancy hashtag name.  I’m guessing early contenders were, “#DisruptLogic,” “#DownwithThought,” and #BooGreatThings!Boo!”

The story goes on: “The anti-Shakespeare teachers say fans of the plays ignore the author’s problematic worldview. They say readers of Shakespeare should be required to address the “whiteness” of their thinking.”

First, “anti-Shakespeare teachers?!”   You might as well say “anti-empiricism scientists,” or “anti-cheesecake Pritzkers” or “anti-violence Antifa.”

Second, “Shakespeare’s world view was ‘problematic?!’”  This from a crowd who believes that thinking has a color, logic is oppressive, math is racist, and Joe Biden has just the kind of youthful energy and fresh thinking that our country needs.

Even when they are compelled to teach Shakespeare, these numbskulls have to dilute his genius by paired it with leftist claptrap.  One Minnesota teacher “gives her students Marxist theory when reading ‘Coriolanus’.”  NJ high school teacher Sarah Mulhern Gross [I’m pretty sure that there’s an understood “is” in that name] bragged about adding “toxic masculinity analysis” to lessons on “Romeo and Juliet.”

That’s what you want to do: add something terrible to something great, because how could that ever go wrong? “You’ve got to try my filet mignon! I sprinkle it with toxic mold, and serve it with caramelized dog droppings on a bed of fresh poison ivy.  And you can wash it down with an exquisite glass of Château Lafite Rothschild.  I urinate in every bottle!”

Someone named Lorena German, who came up with “#DisruptingShakespeare” claims that, “He is not ‘universal’ in a way that other authors are not. He is not more ‘timeless’ than anyone else.”  Says Lorena German, who you’ve never heard of before the previous sentence, and never will again, after you read the following paragraph.

Would it be cruel to note that four centuries after his death, Shakespeare’s works are being read, discussed and performed all over the world, while Lorena German won’t be remembered 17 hours after she dies alone in her rent-controlled apartment, even by her put-upon students or her between four and nine cats?

But hey, in case you think that England’s greatest problem is the seismic tremors they are experiencing due to all of their great writers spinning violently in their graves, check out this Breitbart story headline: “’We Have Been Treated Like Criminals’ Complain Migrants Who Entered Britain Illegally.” 

You don’t say. 

What’s next?

“’Everyone Keeps Ogling Us,’ say Gorgeous Women Wearing Almost Nothing.” Or

“New Yorkers keep looking at me like I killed their grandparents,’ says Andrew Cuomo.” Or 

“’Everyone keeps laughing at my witty columns” says #Hilarious Genius.”

The Breitbart article is worth reading for all Americans, if only because they’ll find the stunning ingratitude and whining by entitled d-bags to be sadly familiar.  We’ve seen people sneaking into the US, only to immediately begin screaming about how the home country they fled is so much better, and Somalians we rescued from their dangerous, unstable country, only to get elected to Congress and offer taxpayer-funded speeches about the horrors of the US.

In the UK, the ingrates are outraged that they’ve been put up in military barracks.  Because how could they be expected to suffer the kind of low standard of living that British soldiers deal with every day? 

They’re also not happy that the barracks don’t always accommodate enough social distancing to guarantee they won’t get covid. 

They really said that.  After they broke into England by cramming onto boats, where they sailed cheek-to-jowl for hours or days. 

I’m here to reassure you that you’re not crazy.  The world has turned upside down, and we’ve just got to hang on to our sanity.

On the bright side, after having made it through three and a half tortuous years of the Biden administration, at least our suffering is almost o—

What’s that?  It’s only been a month?!

Oy.

Avenatti/Lorena what’s-her-name, 2024!