Month: June 2021

I’m on the road visiting family in TN and IL, so I’ve mercifully missed most of the news for the last several days.  But on the downside, I’ve had time to think about the news of the past fortnight or so.  And I’m sure I’ve come to the same conclusion that most of you have:

Someone get a Ouija board, because we need to contact Joe Biden right away, and find out what he was thinking during that European trip and meeting with Putin. 

But how could it have gone any other way, when our government attempted to do its version of taking Bernie to the beach house to party with the college kids, despite the fact that he’s dead.  Only in this case, we took ol’ Posthumous Joe to the G-7, stuck the aviator glasses on his empty old head, and wheeled him around to meet all the cool kids.  And now they’re going to trash our beach house.

If by “beach house” you mean our foreign policy.  And our domestic policy.   And maybe parts of North America itself.

Good lord that trip was nothing but lowlights, unless you’re Putin!

In no particular order:

Several times, “Dr.” Jill had to lead him around by the hand, mostly away from anyone who might want to ask him a question, or when he was heading into a broom closet where he would have otherwise gotten himself trapped.

He snapped at the few reporters who asked him anything close to an actual question.

He delivered what might be one of the dumbest talking points since Chamberlain bragged about Hitler giving his word and ensuring “peace in our time.”  While trying to illustrate how tough he’d been with Putin, Biden said, “I talked about the proposition that certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to attack — period — by cyber or any other means.”  He went on to say that he specifically listed 16 bits of US infrastructure that Putin was forbidden to hit.

To which every nervous American over the age (and IQ) of 8 said, “So, does this mean everything else is fair game?” 

The stupidity of that is hard to exaggerate, although it does seem to parallel recent Dem policies on crime.  They’ve told criminals that they better not steal more than $900 worth of merchandise or they’ll be arrested.  So criminals are stocking up on stolen goods in the $850-899 range. 

They’ve told criminals that victimizing black and brown folks is unacceptable, but crimes against Asians and whites, not so much.

I imagine that Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, whom Putin allegedly poisoned (if by “allegedly” you mean “certainly”) probably wasn’t pleased with Biden’s approach to his case.  Joe told Vlad that using any poison on Navalny that affects his Adam’s apple, pancreas, or humerus bone will not be tolerated! 

Putin said, “So nerve agents that paralyze the lungs and cause a fatal bout of choking are okay?”

Biden said, “You heard me!  No pancreas, and lay off his Adam’s apple!”

Navalny just made choking noises.

I guess Biden’s performance could have been worse.  He could have challenged Putin to a push-up contest. 

In which case Putin would have snarled, “Dah,” and dropped and gave him 50.  Then Biden would have gotten into position, and lowered himself to the ground while his aides looking on in horror.

Then, after 10 minutes of no movement at all, someone would have called a doctor to put a mirror in front of his face.  And then declare that the time of death was sometime in early 2015.

And then a hasty ceremony would happen in DC, during which the mobile airport staircase that defeated Biden back in January would be inaugurated our 46^th president.

And most of the nation would breathe a huge sigh of relief.

But let’s not end on such a down note.  Not when Juneteenth has passed, giving our federal workforce one more holiday per year.   And as we all know, when our federal government is not working, less damage is done.

I’m not thrilled with the nonsense word, “Juneteenth,” though.  Not when there is a less confusing and more accurate name for it: “Thank Republicans for defeating Democrats and freeing their Slaves Day.” 

Avenatti/Mobile Airport Staircase 2024!

It seems like less than two months ago – because it was late April – that I was writing a column I called, “Racial Politics Make Everything Worse,” in which I contemplate the many ways in which… well, racial politics make everything worse. 

So, spoiler alert, I guess.

Which brings me to today, when I am writing on the subject of…the same thing.  

Quick contest: pick the best title for today’s column:

1. Racial Politics Make Everything Worse, Part 2: the Second One.  (Hat tip to that classic film sequel, “Sharknado 2.”)
2. Racial Politics 2: the Worsening.
3. Racial Politics 2: Is There ANYTHING that the National Democrat Leadership Can’t Make Worse?

If you have a better title, please suggest it in the comments.  (By the way, I loved the summer music suggestions that you all posted after the last column.  There were a lot that hit home for me, and a few that I’ve since checked out, and am adding to my rotation.)

Since my last column about this, the left has continued to wallow in racial hatred, in ways that have become sadly commonplace:

1.There was another in a long string of racial hoaxes cooked up by an attention-seeking person of color.  CO himself linked to this story from the College Fix, about a young woman at Wayne State who egged her own door, tore down her own LGBT Pride sticker, and stole a photo of her own dog. 

And then blamed the same two white, racist Nigerians who attacked Jussie Smollett, I guess?

Which raises several intriguing questions:  First, the woman is named Zoriana Martinez and looks Hispanic in her picture.  So has she considered that the non-existent racists who would have done those things to her – if she hadn’t done them to herself, I mean – might be anti-Hispanic, rather than assuming that she was one of those Zimbabwean Martinezes whom you’re always hearing about?

Second, they stole a picture of her dog?  Since when does whitey not like dogs?  (Cassie the Wonder Dog is looking at me with her head tilted in confusion, both because I’m not an imaginary racist in some leftist’s fever dreams, and because I love me some Cassie Dog.)

Anyway, this story fits a familiar pattern in which self-dramatizing youngsters fake racial attacks on themselves, because actual racial animus keeps frustratingly refusing to materialize.

2.   Several high-profile academics have proven themselves to be virulently racist haters, and the MSM and academia have mostly yawned. 

The first one you’ve heard of: a psychiatrist named Dr. Aruna Khilanani (she is a doctor the way Elvis was a blackbelt) gave a lecture that sounded like Charles Manson and Pol Pot had a baby, who grew up and went on the lecture circuit.   She fantasized about “unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way,” and noted that white people, “suck you dry.  There are no good apples out there.  White people make my blood boil.”  She went on to call whites – all whites – “demented, violent predator[s].”

I know what you’re thinking:  What do you expect when you go to a lecture at Louis Farrakhan Hall, in the Himmler Studies program at Hamas University? 

But no.  This raving lunatic has degrees from NYU and Cornell, and gave her lecture at the Yale School of Medicine!     

“But c’mon, Martin,” you’re saying, “these were probably off-the-cuff ad libs that were really out of context in a lecture that probably focused on treating agoraphobia, or something.”

Nope.  She wrote and edited and then read those vile comments in a lecture entitled, “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” 

But after she got some well-deserved blowback for her insane rantings, she saw the error of her ways, apologized, and resigned, and Yale apologized to the entire nation.

HA!  I kid.  She actually doubled down, insisting in an email to the NYT that her work is important, and she stands by it, and that her critics are… wait for it… racists!  Also, she said that, “we need to heal in this country.”

Because nothing says “healing” like fantasizing about murdering everyone with a specific skin color, because they – every single one of them — are demented, parasitic predators.

Sing it with me people, “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony, I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and exterminate all the crackers.” 

Speaking of genocidal racist freaks, another psychoanalyst named “Dr.” Donald Moss published a paper called, “On Having Whiteness,” in which he describes having white skin as a “malignant, parasitic-like condition… for which there is no cure.” 

Dr. Moss is as pasty white as Dr. Evil, and looks like him.  He’s also as much of a doctor as Dr. Evil.

Come to think of it, he’s also as evil as Dr. Evil. 

These two examples bring up an important point: the extent to which truly despicable anti-white racism and hatred have been normalized on the mainstream academic and media left. 

I am not so biased that I don’t think that there are nuts on both the right and left.  But a huge difference is that the fringe nuts on the right are… fringe nuts.  They have no constituency to speak of.  The left has had to bring up David Duke for 20 years, and that guy couldn’t get elected dog catcher.  They love Marjorie Taylor Green, because she gives them a chance to pretend that she is the GOP mainstream.  When Steve King and Roy Moore behaved offensively, Republican voters got rid of them. 

But the Dems are an entirely different story: the people who are objectively far-left moonbats are their mainstream.   The squad are anti-semitic loons, Al Sharpton was a serious presidential contender, and Obama wouldn’t even condemn Screwy Louie “Jews are Termites” Farrakhan.   

Their longest serving members are some of their worst offenders.  Melting-Face Maxine Waters was in congress calling the LA riots “an uprising” 30 years ago.  Chuck Schumer was slandering conservatives and diving in front of cameras back when Matthew Brady was trying to get some daguerreotypes of Civil War battlefields. 

And Imhotep Pelosi was steering sketchy pyramid construction contracts to her husband’s business when Moses was being pulled from the bullrushes. 

I see both good news and bad news in this trend.

The majority of the country is in better shape than you might think, when you consider that there are so few anti-minority racial incidents that the left has to keep faking them to keep the minds of their voters properly poisoned.  There are so few real aggressions that the left is on a continual scavenger hunt to invent and/or find micro aggressions. 

But the left is in bad shape and deservedly so.   They’re trying to make a living off of the demand for racial outrages, but the supply is nowhere close to keeping up.  You can tell by the quality of the “martyrs” the left is continually touting.  If there were hordes of unarmed honor students being gunned down by cops on their way to Bible study, the left would be making those people famous.

Who do they get instead?   A large black woman shot right before she can stab another black woman to death, a “gentle giant” who bashes a cop’s head while he fights to get his gun, and a seemingly unending series of career felons who were caught committing crimes and then chose to go out with pistols blazing like Butch and Sundance in the last act.

Speaking of which, Winston Boogie Smith is the latest cause celebre to join the pantheon in Minneapolis.  He had a long criminal history, including violent felonies, gun convictions and an open warrant.  When the US Marshall Service tried to take him into custody on June 3^rd, he opened fire — with a gun which he wouldn’t have had, if gun control laws worked – and was shot and killed.

Naturally, several days of violent protests ensued.

Black Americans deserve better than condescending whitey-hating academics and malevolent leftist politicians and talking heads lying to them about their fellow citizens, and their country.  Ultimately, they’re going to have to reconsider the one-party control they’ve chosen over the crumbling, crime-ridden cities they’re living in, and ask how that’s worked out for them. 

It’s been a long four years, and it’s only been 20 weeks.

Avenatti/Dr. Evil  2024!

It feels like summer now, a season that evokes a lot of visceral emotions and memories for a guy who grew up in the upper Midwest, where late spring and summer meant a physical and emotional release from purgatory.  No one appreciates a drink of cold water like the extremely thirsty, or a good meal like the extremely hungry, or an early summer weekend like northerners with cabin fever, shedding heavy clothes as they stumble out into the light, drawing deep breaths and blinking at an almost painfully blue sky.

The promise of summer was in large part escape from the grim late winter: snow turned to dirty slush; fields bare and dead and crusted with icy mud; low, slate-gray skies; coats still necessary and school gone on too long.   

But it was also driven by a manic burst of pent-up energy, and tantalizing anticipation of the full array of sensuous pleasures in the months to come.   Warmth and long days and soft breezes.  The smell of newly mown grass and grills with cooking meat, and flowers, and hot blacktop.  Pick-up games of baseball and tennis, motorcycles to be ridden and girls to be chased.  Cubs games on the radio, and sprinklers’ rhythmic pulsing, and lightning bugs floating in the air as darkness fell.    

And always music.  

Some music evokes summer because it was about summer, like Beach Boys songs, or – anachronistically, for someone under 80 – the old Gershwin song “Summertime,” which always evokes a long-ago girlfriend about whom I’ve got nothing bad to say.  (Though her daddy wasn’t rich, her momma was good lookin’, oddly enough.)

But most of what I think of as “summer music” is only music that I discovered during the summer, whether that summer was long ago – Cheap Trick Live at Budokan, the first two Cars albums,  a Thin Lizzy double-live album back in high school, Elvis Costello’s “My Aim is True” in college – or more recently – Kings of Leon’s “Only by the Night” and Vampire Weekend’s “Father of the Bride” within the last 7 summers or so. 

A song I’ve had in heavy rotation this month is from the Decemberists’ 2011 album “The King is Dead,”  which I only came across two summers ago.  It’s called “June Hymn.”  It’s got a lot of what I think of when I think of summer in it, and if you haven’t heard it, it’s worth a listen.

I’d be interested in hearing what music COers out there associate with summer, so please share that in the comments.

But enough about the eternal rhythms of the seasons.  It’s the summer of 2021 and the Democrats are in control, and that means that there are a lot of mock-worthy shenanigans going on.

Exhibit A.  A recent RAND survey of US teachers found that many of them are planning to leave the profession rather than return to in-class teaching in the fall, due to a phenomenon the article called “pandemic burnout.” 

I understand their frustration, because online teaching is generally much less effective, and now we know that staying out of school this past year was unnecessary and harmful.  (The American Association of Pediatricians – e.g. the actual doctors who know most about kids’ health risks – recommended that all K-12 students without any unusual co-morbidities return to in-person school LAST AUGUST!) (I know: the MSM somehow missed that story, didn’t they?)

I’m a teacher, and I’m not bashing teachers in general when I say that our teachers’ unions have badly mishandled covid.  They’ve fought to remain out of class – and negotiated for more compensation simultaneously — even as the science and evidence has mounted against them.   It’s been clear for a long while that when it comes to covid risk, a K-12 teacher is in amongst the safest of all professions, since kids are much less likely to get and pass covid than is the general population.     

And now teachers are suffering from “burn out?”  When I taught online last spring and fall, my commute was 90 seconds down the hallway to the home office.   I taught barefoot and in shorts, only needing a button-down shirt, my innate wit and wisdom, and a reasonable internet connection.   I was frustrated by the decreased effectiveness of online teaching, sure. 

But burned out?  To quote one of our formerly living presidents, “C’mon man!” 

How could these people be burned out when many of them were never on fire in the first place?  

Exhibit B.  If you told me that our MSM was getting burned out, that would make sense.  They’ve been working overtime this year, lying about virtually everything happening in DC.   And now Hunter Biden is making them work even harder at NOT reporting on his resume of crimes and misdemeanors. 

It was bad enough that he has been a drug- and hooker-addicted train wreck for years, and that he misplaced his laptop filled with evidence of corruption and bribe-taking from the Chicoms – implicating his late father, too.   It was even worse that he seduced his dead brother’s wife, and left his wife for her. 

But now it turns out he’s an F-bomb-dropping racist in addition to everything else?   How is the MSM going to deal with this disastrous develop—

HEY!  UFOs!!

Exhibit C.  Speaking of terrible people that Joey Gaffes (RIP) has surrounded himself with, how about that VP choice of his, and her blunder-riffic  visit to Central America? 

She took a page out of Joe’s book – and yes, the tome in question is The Tibetan Book of the Dead, thanks for asking – and wore a mask, even though she’s been vaccinated.   

At first I thought that the mask might have been necessary because of her long-standing nickname of “the Super Spreader.” 

But then I remembered that that little sobriquet dates back to her MO when she was getting her political career started under the tutelage of Willie Brown in CA.  (Boom!) (And no, it’s not too soon for that joke.)

But the unnecessary masking wasn’t even in the top tier of her mis-steps.  Her plane had to turn back and only got to her destination on the second try, she was met by hecklers and hostile press coverage, and the only thing she accomplished was to contradict the Dems’ official “border, schmorder” immigration policy by telling everybody south of Texas NOT to come here.

In fact, her trip was already hobbled before she left, because of a disastrous interview in which she made invertebrate lapdog Lester “Steadman” Holt look like Sherlock Holmes cross-examining a sweating criminal.    

When Holt had the audacity to ask her about why she hasn’t been to the border, this exchange happened, which I swear I am not making up:

Comma-La:  At some point, you know, we are going to the border.  We’ve been to the border.  So this whole thing about the border… We’ve been to the border.  We’ve been to the border.

Holt: YOU haven’t been to the border.

Comma-La:  And I haven’t been to Europe!  (Bizarre laughter.)  And I mean – I don’t understand the point you’re making.

Good lord!  You remember in my last column, when I pointed out that Fauci is a terrible liar? (“We didn’t do gain of function research.   And if we did, it was by the book.”)

Well step aside, Dr. Doom, because VP Harris just looked like Franco Harris as she blasted past you on her way to the Liars Hall of Fame!

Not since the Apostle Peter racked up his three famous denials has anyone had to eat their words so quickly.  IMMEDIATELY after she thrice insists that she’s been to the border, Holt contradicts her, and she gives it up.

You know that Bill Clinton had to be yelling at the tv (over the head of whoever the Waffle House waitress de jour is), “It depends on what the meaning of “been” is!  Idiot!”

And seriously: “And I’ve never been to Europe?!?”

That’s the comeback?  I’m sure that I had the same two thoughts that you did: 

1. Europe thanks you, and they really appreciate your absence. 

2. Oh good, so now we’re bragging about all the places we haven’t been?  (While you’re at it, you might as well add “Mensa meetings” to that list.) 

It’s never a good sign when the governments you visited immediately put out a defensive press release before you’re even out of their air space. 

Here is my loose paraphrase of that statement:

“Just to be clear, we are CENTRAL America.  

Not that there’s anything wrong with other Americas, or their hideously unqualified, charisma-deficient and inter-personally repellent elected officials.  We’re sure that North America has many fine characteristics.  Natural beauty, and some states that are not run by horrible governors suffering from advanced cranial-rectal inversion syndrome, and what not. 

We send them our best wishes, and prayers that they get well soon.   But we’re not them.  In fact, we can’t stress this point enough:  they’re an entirely different America. 

In conclusion, we are CENTRAL America.” 

The one statement that I truly believe from Comma-La’s interview?  She really did not understand the point Holt was making.

It’s been a long four years, and it’s only been 19 weeks.

Avenatti/Guatemalan guy with the “Go Home” sign  2024!

Spoiler alert: at the end of this column, you will find my ground-breaking plan to improve our nation’s criminal justice system.  And I only use the hyphenated adjective “ground-breaking” because “epoch-making” sounds a little too full of myself.

But basic honesty forces me to admit that this brilliant idea would single-handedly improve our justice system by 28%, while not costing us a single penny.  And no, it does not involve giving our police more funding and support, introducing flogging for all rioters, or stepping up executions for rape and murder.

Although all of those are also great ideas, and have my full support. 

But you will have to wait until the end of this column to read this idea.  In the meantime, I will comment on two other stories.

First, it probably doesn’t speak well of me that I get so much entertainment out of people doing dumb things, although that certainly has been mitigating the pain of the early years of the Biden administration.  In particular, I’ve been entertained by one of the most powerful blockheads in our government, and the second most obnoxious doctor in America, after “Dr.” Jill Biden.

It’s been obvious that Dr. Fauci – and if he hasn’t yet been called “Dr. Faux-ci” in print yet, I copyright that term, right now! — is a political hack for quite some time.   But because he’s a doctor, and has gravitas-suggesting white hair, and often wears a lab coat – even though he was last in a lab when Galen was publishing his breakthrough treatise on strategic leech application – we assumed that he’s at least smart. 

Sidebar: yes, that was a comedically appropriate ancient Roman physician reference.  Boom!

But now I think we need to see his med school diploma, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it was issued by the Southeastern Caribbean Medical School of Advanced Phrenology and the Barbering Arts.

Because he’s not just a liar, he’s a very dumb liar.

The first rule of lying – you may know it from grad school by its formal name as “the Clintonian Theorem” — is that you NEVER admit that you were lying. 

You duck, you dodge, you obfuscate.  If all else fails, you pull out a smoke bomb, dash it on the floor, and disappear before the smoke clears. 

But you never, EVER say, “Ahhh, you caught me!  I was lying, and you fell for it. Suckers!!”

And yet last year, less than a month after saying that people don’t need to wear masks because of covid, Faux-ci said the quiet part out loud; he admitted that since he wanted to be sure that there were enough masks for medical personnel, he’d told the little people that masks don’t help.    

But NOW, he said, “Sure I was lying then, but I’m telling you the truth now: wear a mask, lest thou shalt surely die!”   

Then, four months later: you might still die if you only wear one mask, so wear two masks.  

Days after that: obviously, three masks are better than two.  

Two days after that — during which even Fredo Cuomo, Joy Behar, and Mr. Galloway’s second-grade class at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Needles, CA said, “that’s ridiculous!” — Fauci backed off, saying, “JK!  But you’ve got to wear one mask though, for reals.”

Well he has recently topped himself.  Because when he was getting grilled last week by Rand Paul, Fauci didn’t just step on a rhetorical rake: he jumped on it with both feet, whacking his mendacious noggin with great force.

Paul pointed to the mountains of recently-exposed data showing that covid almost certainly came from a Chicom lab at Wuhan – which Fauci and our entire MSM have been denying was the case for over a year now – and focused specifically on “gain of function” research.

When Paul painted Fauci into a corner, Fauci tried to dodge, denying that the NIH directly funded gain-of-function work at Wuhan.  Paul dug in, stating that a US doc in NC – Dr. Ralph “Wreck-It Ralph” Barrett – worked together with a Chinese virologist from Wuhan on that very research. 

That’s when Fauci once again emphatically beclowned himself: “Dr. Barrett does NOT doing (sic) gain of function research.  And if it is, it’s according to the guidelines, and it’s being conducted in North Carolina!”

Leaving aside the false implications in that denial – info was shared between NC and Wuhan, which is why the modified virus was in the Wuhan lab before it escaped to plague the world — Fauci blurts out the damning admission that proves that he’s a liar: ”Barrett is NOT doing that… and if he is, it’s by the book…”

Ouch!  That’s Moronic Lying 101. 

Every mouth-breathing bully in juvie, after a fight in the cafeteria, says, “I didn’t beat up that kid.  And if I did, he started it…”

Every stoner at a police roadblock says, “There are no drugs in my car.  And if there are, they’re not mine…”

Every scandal-ridden horndog politician says, “I didn’t nail that intern.  But if I did, it was consensual…”

Ugh.  It’s past time for Fauci to go.  

A story I’d classify under the theme of “the skies are darkening with flocks of chickens coming home to roost” comes to us from the NY Daily Mail on 5/28.  It’s entitled, “Homeless Shelter to Open Smack-Bang in the middle of NYC’s Billionaire’s Row.”

To which the only properly empathetic response is, “HA! HAHA!  HAHAHA!!”

It seems that the evil one-percenters living around 158 W. 58^th Street – I’m happy to say that I have no idea where that is – have had a setback in their three-year lawsuit to prevent terrible leftist mayor duh Blasio from going ahead with his brilliant plan to open a homeless shelter there.

Normally I side with citizens who are getting screwed by the idiotic utopian schemes of power-mad leftist politicians.  But the irony here is too sweet.  Because I’m sure that none of the rich protestors have voted for anyone other than a leftist for many decades, and they’re likely the types who have been lecturing the rest of us on how we are so cruelly unsympathetic to those noble victims of our evil society, the virtuous un-housed community.

And now, when their elected virtue-signalers are doing to them what they’ve been doing to the rest of us for years, these arrogant hypocrites have suddenly decided that they don’t want to live cheek-to-jowl with a horde of malodorous, mentally-ill meth-enthusiasts?!

Well, it turns out that quality of life is a very real – if not precisely quantifiable – asset.

Time to start paying your fair share, comrades! 

Okay, I’ve teased it, and you’ve waited long enough.  Here is the revolutionary criminal justice reform that is going to kick-start a campaign to create a Nobel Prize for Criminal Justice Reform, and then to unanimously award it to me:

I’m sure that you’ve all heard of the death tax, whereby taxpayers who pay a boatload of taxes on everything they earn and own over decades, and then when they die, the government muscles in and grabs the wallet out of their burial suit to take one more cut before their grieving family settles their estate.

My idea is as tremendous as the death tax is terrible.  I call it, “The Career-Criminal Death Tax,” or CCDT.

You may have noticed that the families of many of the career criminals who have recently died in clashes with police as they pursued their profession of crime-committing have received multi-million-dollar settlements from taxpayers.  (To cite just one example, George Floyd’s family got $27 million.)  

As a legal scholar – I’ve read many John Grisham novels and watched many episodes of Court Cam and Judge Judy – I understand that such awards are often meant to punish police departments for alleged wrong-doing.  But I also know that in many states, when someone with back child support or IRS debts wins the lottery, those debts are often deducted from the lucky, innumerate debtor’s winnings.

Enter the CCDT.  I propose that anytime a career criminal’s survivors get a windfall settlement from the taxpayers, that money should temporarily be held in escrow, during which time it should be used to first pay back all of that’s criminal’s victims, plus the taxpayers’ costs incurred because of the dead guy’s criminal and/or irresponsible behavior.    

For example, imagine a totally hypothetical criminal, with an equally hypothetical $27 mil in his posthumous bank account.  

Now go back through that person’s criminal record, and tally up his victims, from the store clerks, gas station attendants and pedestrians he robbed or assaulted, to the pregnant woman he held hostage with a gun jammed against her belly while his buddies robbed her place, to the convenience store owner where he passed counterfeit bills. 

Hypothetically. 

The CCDT dictates that each of those victims gets a proportional chunk of that money, up to at least mid-six figures each.

Next, we tally up how many years that felon spent in prison.  We have accounting data to tell us how much per day it takes to keep a convict in a state or federal jail.  So add up those costs, and subtract that from the $27M, and refund it back to the taxpayers.

Next, if the dead criminal spent years getting various types of assistance – food stamps, housing allowance, free public defenders, etc. – total that up, and deduct it from the $27M.  Back to the taxpayers.  

And before you object, I know that there are legitimate reasons to have a social safety net, and that some welfare payments are legitimate, and are not legally subject to reimbursement if someone later becomes a productive citizen.  But if he’s a lifelong creep who only comes into any money after he dies during the commission of yet another crime? 

Back to the taxpayers.

Finally, if there’s anything left of the settlement after that, check one more thing: how many kids did that miscreant produce?  If he married the mom and responsibly took care of the kids – HA! – his estate is off the hook.

But for the other 99.99% of the deceased criminals, tally up the amount the taxpayers shelled out to feed, house, and (sadly, often) incarcerate their kids.   Since those kids were the criminal’s moral, legal and financial responsibility, if he happened to come into a windfall because he fought with cops, tased cops, shot at cops, or tried to run-down cops, that windfall should be taxed to extract enough to re-pay the costs for his kids that he didn’t pay in life.

Would I add accumulated interest to those payments, you’re probably asking, as you take notes and prepare to call your elected representatives to urge passage of the CCDT?

Only if there is any money left after all of the above deductions were taken, and only to the extent that every last penny the dead criminal’s family was going to get has been given to his victims and the taxpayers instead.  Then we call it even.

“But how will this make the dead creep’s posse feel?” you are not asking, because who gives a Schumer? 

The survivors who sired, birthed, slept with or otherwise shared the destructive trail that the deceased criminal trod might ask this question: “If the victims and the taxpayers get all of the money awarded to our dead jackass son/baby-daddy/dead-beat dad/co-conspirator, it’s almost like we won’t be able to profit from his easily anticipated and probably richly deserved demise at all!”

To which we will say:  Exactly!

So that’s it, people.  Call your elected pols and urge them to pass the CCDT. 

In the meantime, I’ll wait right here, anticipating the day when you all burst through my front door, heave me up onto your shoulders, and carry me off to the Nobel Prize ceremony, chanting, “Simpson, Simpson!” all the way. 

Avenatti/Dr. Faux-ci, 2024!

Well, it’s Memorial Day.  Or as our leftist elite calls it, “Toxic Masculinity & Colonial Oppression Commemoration Day.”

But screw those guys.  Columbus Day is Columbus Day, Presidents’ Day is for Washington and Lincoln, MLK Day is “judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin” day, and Memorial Day is when we remember those who died in our armed services.

Sidebar:  There are few more sexist and insulting phrases in our culture than “toxic masculinity.”  I did a few moments of research on who first came up with that term, and if you guessed a bitter misanthropist feminist, you’d be wrong.  But you’d be close.

It was first mentioned in a dissertation by an academic (surprise!) named – I kid you not – Shepherd Bliss. A quick skim through some suggestive details in his biography: “educated” at Harvard and taught at Berkeley, appearances on Phil Donahue and Oprah, cries easily, owns an organic Boysenberry farm in Sonoma county, plus a large collection of movies that “do not include violence” (ugh!).  Also – brace yourself – has not fathered any children.

Now I don’t have anything against men who aren’t big fans of masculinity.  It takes all kinds, and somebody needs to agonize over pronouns, and eat kale, and cry all through the fourth act of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  And it probably should be someone named “Shepherd” or “Bliss.”

But is it too much to ask that we also make an honored space in our society for folks who DO exude masculinity? 

Can’t we celebrate the kind of guys who run toward danger instead of away from it?  Can we refrain from smearing as “toxic” the guys who invented dynamite and the Gatling gun, the Cadillac Eldorado and the Shelby Cobra, the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Flying V, the “T” formation and the 46 defense, and most of the other things? 

Must we denigrate those who have memorized entire scenes from Godfather 1 & 2 and No Country for Old Men, and who have dvds of all the John Wick films?   Who can frame a wall, and weld, and blast some jihadis during a low-flying pass in an A-10 Warthog in the Korengal Valley? `             

I know I’m a dinosaur, and a throwback, and a “get off my lawn” kind of guy.  But I appreciate our military, mostly because they undertake the kind of basic, visceral, foundational actions upon which all of our society rests: protecting the weak, opposing aggressors, and killing bad guys. 

In the civilian world we depend on cops, who carry out the essential tasks that they are then condemned for doing.   But our entire civilian world depends on soldiers, who do the same.  People who hate strength and call masculinity “toxic,” hate cops and soldiers both.   They romanticize and side with criminals and our nation’s enemies.  Such people are not worthy of the risks our cops and soldiers take, nor the sacrifices they make.

That’s not to say that all soldiers are saints, anymore than cops are.  They’re human, and have all the flaws that flesh is heir to, just like us.   When they go bad, they can do more damage than most.  But they do the thankless and often dirty jobs that too many of us disdain, even as we depend on them.  And they deserve much better than they’ve been getting in recent years.

The kind of anti-American Marxists who 50 years ago called our soldiers returning from Vietnam “baby killers,” haven’t changed much.  Now they are antifa, and carry “ACAB” signs, and made up a dog’s breakfast of lies and slander called “The 1619 Project.”   They call us a nation of warmongers, even though any real historians among them would be hard-pressed to cite a nation whose wars have been more justified than ours.

In the 18^th century, some cocky Brits were a tad too easy with the taxation and not big fans of representation, and they needed a little lesson from some rustics with Kentucky long rifles.  In the 19^th century, some Democrat slaveholders needed the newly minted Republicans to give them a little bit of the ol’ Grant-and-Sherman one-two punch.  In the 20^th century, socialists in Germany, Russia and China needed some arsenal of democracy-style butt kickings.

And in the 21^st century – already – a lot of really bad guys have needed smiting, and have been well and truly smoted.  Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Mohammed Emwazi (aka “Jihadi John”), and Qassem Soleiman are all now as dead as Joe Biden, thanks to our military. 

It’s proper and fitting that we remember our fallen warriors, and their courage and toughness that were toxic only to the Redcoats, Nazis, communists and jihadis who mistook us for a nation of Bradley Mannings, Michael Moores and Shepherd Blisses.  Imagine their surprise – many didn’t live long enough to learn how wrong they were – to find themselves in combat with a nation of Washingtons, Pattons, Pat Tillmans and Chris Kyles.    

In their memory, I’d like to quote a few memorable expressions of the kind of martial spirit that our country has been blessed to see in members our own armed forces, even though these come from different times and places:

Before Thermopylae (480 BC), Herodotus gives us two famous quotes.  When the vastly outnumbered Spartans meet with a Persian ambassador who demands that they lay down their weapons, Leonidas says, “Molon labe” (“Come and take them.”)  

When the Persians threaten that their numbers are so great that their volleys of arrows will blot out the sun, Dienekes says, “Then we’ll fight in the shade.”

U.S. Grant, after the first bloody day at Shiloh (you’ve heard me mention this one before) talked with Sherman, who said, “We’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”  Grant said, “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”

In 1941, when Bull Halsey heard about the Pearl Harbor attack, he said, “Before we’re through with ‘em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!”

In the movie True Grit, when John Wayne is facing four killers and their leader calls him a “one-eyed fat man,” Wayne hollers, “Fill your hands, you son of a b**ch!”

Sadly, some of the quotes that feel most appropriate this year are ones that chastise an anti-military attitude. 

In Kipling’s poem honoring British soldiers, “Tommy,” he mentions those “making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.”

Orwell is said to have had that line in mind when he wrote his famous rebuke to a virtue-signaling subset of pacifists: “We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us.”

Finally, a little Shakespeare, with a small revision.  In Hamlet’s famous “to be, or not to be,” soliloquy, he contemplates how to respond to violent tragedy. Because he’s a tortured philosophical type, he tends more toward the “’tis nobler in the mind/ to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” side of things. 

But I like to think that if Shakespeare had lived in a time of American special forces troops, he would have been more partial to the “or to take arms against a sea of a-holes/ and by opposing, end them” position.

So let’s raise a glass to those who serve, and those who have fallen.  We appreciate the sound sleep, and the rough men (and a few women, too) who provide it for us.