Month: November 2021

Thanksgiving is upon us, and I am feeling very thankful, despite the rough times our country is going through right now.  The lasting, truly important things are a source of consolation: covid is pretty much in the rear view mirror in Florida, my Wonder Dog is at my feet, scotch is in my glass, America is still the greatest country in the world, and Christmas is coming.

Also, my daughter saved a life this month.  In case I haven’t mentioned that before.  😊

On the flip side, the fleeting things – like our current political convulsions – have recently begun to look like they will be even more fleeting than we thought. 

Many people have correctly identified August as the month when the wheels completely came off of the Biden administration, with the unthinkably stupid and botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

But I think that when we look back at November, we’ll see that this has been the month when the cascading bad results reached critical mass, and established what I hope will be an irreversible downward momentum — through the mid-terms and beyond — for the Dems.

I’m very sorry that our country has to go through this, but a lot of pain was pretty much baked into the fecal cake (Duncan Hines’ worst-reviewed product line ever) when Sleepy Joe took office.  The silver lining is that even the most apathetic and a-political among us now seem to recognize the cosmic terribleness of this administration.  

The month began with an unprecedentedly bad off-year election for the Dems around the country.  Then Mayor Pete took off for 2 months in the middle of a supply chain crisis, and no one noticed he was gone.  Or was glad when he came back.  

Biden went to Europe and literally could not keep his sh*t together, Obama was just as bad in Scotland, and the Dems’ poll numbers have sunk like the rocks that Hunter is fond of smoking.  When Kyle Rittenhouse was rightly found innocent, the left beclowned themselves in ways guaranteed to alienate moderates and sane Dems next year.

Dem infighting has broken out into the open, and the only thing keeping Joey Gaffes from a coup is that Que Mala is even worse!

Most tellingly, the elite leftists refuse to learn, and are doubling down on their worst decisions.  They’re explaining why inflation is good, low gas prices are bad, teaching your kids to be racist is anti-racist, and using guns to defend yourself against their violent foot-soldiers is also racist. 

So naturally, gun sales are through the roof, parents are bringing pitchforks to school board meetings, and half of the entries in the Top 40 are songs on the theme of “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

But it’s not just the last several months; this entire year has been a much-deserved disaster for Joey Gaffes. So as we prepare to feast and be grateful, let me look back at Biden’s year so far:

The only bright spots for him have been the passage of two horrendous spending bills, neither of which has helped his polls. Even in a moment of “victory,” he manages to hurt his own cause.  When he was trying to make some light-hearted remarks on his big bill-signing day last Monday, he talked about how he used to work with all American governors back when he was Obama’s VP. 

But because he’s always been a petty little man – even before he became a petty little shadow of a man – he took a shot at Sarah Palin, apropos of nothing.   He said that he’d worked with all governors, “Save one.  She can see Alaska from her porch.”

D’oh!  It’s bad enough that he’s interrupting what passes for a “big moment” in his presidency to insult a former, non-influential politician in the other party. It’s worse that the insulting line was never even said by Palin; it came from Tina Fey, who played Palin saying, “I can see Russia from my house!” 

But Biden can’t tell Tina Fey from Sarah Palin.  At this point he probably can’t tell Tina Fey from Charlie Tuna. 

In fact, he couldn’t even get a famous, one-line SNL joke right.  What sense would it make for Palin – who lives in freaking Alaska! – to say that she could see Alaska from her house, you dimwit?

I guess we can be glad that Biden didn’t try to dip into the rest of his favorite SNL lines, lest we would have been forced to groan through his rendition of, “We’re just two mild and lazy guys!” 

Or, “I’ve got a fever, and the only subscription is more cow-catchers!”

Or, “Live, from… you know… you know the place … it’s Arbor Day Night!”

Biden has had the worst first 10 months of a presidency ever, with the possible exception of William Henry Harrison, who fell ill after giving a marathon inaugural speech in freezing weather, and died within a month of taking office in 1841. 

In Harrison’s favor, at least he managed to die with dignity, and didn’t besmirch his reputation and torment the nation the way Joey Gaffes is doing right now. 

In 10 short months, Biden has helmed so many disasters that it’s getting difficult to keep them all straight, even though we’re still in the same calendar year when this parade of calamities befell us!

He engineered the most disastrous military withdrawal since Hannibal got drunk and passed out on the back of one of his war elephants, which then carried him back over the alps, resulting in him abandoning  his troops.  Only Joe wasn’t drunk – just stupid.

(Actually, I just made that up about Hannibal.  Because there is no actual historical precedent for any commander ever doing anything nearly as stupid as Biden’s plan to pull out the military first, and THEN try to evacuate vulnerable civilians.)

He promised to end covid, but has seen more deaths in his term than happened in Trump’s.  He promised that vaccinated people couldn’t get covid, after which the covid virus achieved self-awareness, said, “Let’s go, Brandon,” and immediately started infecting vaccinated people.

He took the most efficient supply chain the world has ever known and turned it into the Long Island Expressway at rush hour after a 12-car pileup.  He tripled the inflation rate, then strangled all domestic gas and oil production and refining that he could, turning an energy-independent nation with low fuel prices into Venezuela North.  Then he went on bended knee to the world’s worst thugocracies and begged them to sell us more gas. 

He turned a border problem into a border crisis, and then into a border conflagration.  Next up: border-mageddon!

He’s spent more of other people’s money faster than Britney Spears’ dad and Hunter Biden, combined!

Let me sum it up this way:

In his first year in office, the President of the United States went to Rome, and pooped on the Pope…

(let me engage my Sam Kinison filter)

…and that DIDN’T EVEN MAKE THE TOP 10 LIST OF THE WORST THINGS HE’S DONE THIS YEAR!   OH!! OHHHHHH!!!

It’s been a long 40 years, and it’s only been 40 weeks.

Avenatti/Britney Spear’s Estranged Father, 2024!

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.  I load up 3 columns in a row, and before I can even post the second one, another explosive story breaks out in Wisconsin.  

This story is so fresh, and so painful, that I don’t have the heart to write too much about it yet.  I know that soon the details will come out, and we’ll hear about the sweet grandparents and the heartbreakingly young band members who died or were injured, and we’re all going to get so furious that we can’t see straight. 

While it’s too soon to digest this yet, and our focus now should be on praying for and setting up funds to help the survivors in any way we can, I hope that in the fullness of time we’ll all do our part to ram this story down the malevolent, lying left’s throat! We already know that the murderer is a racist BLM member with a long criminal record, and I’m sure that we’re going to find all kinds of leftist pols and policies that worked together to make sure that his creep was free to work his evil last night.

Let’s shine the light on this disaster, and hold the guilty people responsible.  

In the meantime, I’m trying to steer my rage into mockery.  While it’s probably too soon for that – and I won’t hold it against any of you who want to skip the next paragraph – here are my first thoughts when I heard about the story and saw the killer’s ugly mug this morning:

1. Wow, this guy must be the new black face of white supremacy!

2. Some of the kids that this monster drove through were band members, so I’m assuming that the MSM is already hard at work, investigating how many of them brought their instruments across state lines.

3. Many of his other victims were apparently part of a “dancing grannies” group.  Due to their age, I’m sure many of them read Huckleberry Finn when they were in school.  So they undoubtedly read the “n” word, and therefore deserved what they got, right?

4. How many more people have to be lost to the scourge of car violence before we pass some common-sense SUV-control legislation?!

In conclusion, friend you, Ruffalo and CNN and MSNBC, and the sleazy IL Dem who posted that this mass murder was karma for the Rittenhouse.  Friend you, MSM, and your unholy army of BLM apologists.  Friend you, and the horse you rode in on.

And let’s go Brandon!

Now we return to our regularly scheduled column…

1. The Rittenhouse trial was not different in kind from other racially inflammatory trials, but it was different in degree.  The leftist fringe and the MSM – but I repeat myself – revealed their bone-deep dishonesty in a way that they never have before.  (And they’ve been revealing it in various and sundry ways for the last 40 years at least!)

Not because their lies about Rittenhouse’s case were any more egregious than their lies about the Jacob Blake case, or the Michael Brown case, or the Trayvon Martin case, or the George Floyd case, etc.

Criminal cases are so fascinating in part because of their dramatically ambiguous nature: the stakes are often life-and-death, the characters often represent a wide variety of human behavior from the best to the worst, and the truth can be devilishly elusive.  Eyewitnesses and experts testify for both sides, and make opposing claims about facts, and provide opposing interpretations of those facts.  

Crucial points often come down to “he said vs. she said,” and establishing the varying levels of credibility of flawed human beings is not an exact science.   There is often a Rashomon effect with testimony, so that half a dozen people report the facts in half a dozen different ways.

Therefore, when both sides throw accusations and fight about the verdict after it comes in, there is usually at least SOME evidence to bolster each side’s position, and at least partially justify their anger.

But in this case there is none of that, because the actions being debated were ALL captured on video, and anyone could watch them, and many did.  Despite that, the far left still could not stop themselves from lying about it!

One prominent leftist after another — talking head after celebrity after Youtuber after activist – took to the web to scream that events happened that everyone can see did NOT happen.  They said that Rittenhouse chased Rosenbaum, but the video shows the opposite.

They said that Huber was unarmed and Rittenhouse went after him, but the video shows Rittenhouse running away, getting knocked down, and then Huber slamming him in the head with a skateboard.

They said that Gaige “Big Douche” Grosskreutz was unarmed and no threat to Rittenhouse, but the video shows him pointing his very real gun at Rittenhouse right before Rittenhouse ruined Grossdouche’s dreams of becoming the arm-wrestling champion of the greater Kenosha metro area.  (HA!)

And it’s not like the video is some grainy, distant shots of Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster.  It’s not even like the Zapruder footage! 

You can watch the whole thing unfold in hi-def, from multiple camera angles; there’s even overhead drone footage!  The visuals on these murderous attacks have more production values than a Spielberg movie!

And STILL the elite left insists that you didn’t see what you just saw.

They’ve managed to recreate the old, farcical joke:  A wife comes home to catch her husband in flagrante with another woman.  To make this relatable, picture the players as a flatulent CA Dem congressman playing that “Wang Dang Sweet Fang Fang” with a commie spy, or maybe a certain jihadi-enthusiast MN Dem congresswoman catching her brother/husband in bed with one of their other sisters.

The aggrieved party is outraged, but the cheating spouse says, “This isn’t what it looks like.  Who are you going to believe – me, or your lyin’ eyes?”

Well this case was EXACTLY what it looked like, and now the institutional left is telling us that our eyes are liars. 

2. The good news in the aftermath is also the most heart-breaking news: there were no serious riots, looting, arson or property damage in Kenosha on Friday night.

That’s great, right?  But it’s also heart-breaking, because it proves that all of the horrific violence, arson, looting and destruction that happened in blue cities throughout our nation in 2020 did not have to happen.  The billions of dollars in damages, the lives lost and the lives ruined – all of it was unnecessary.

Because it’s really not that hard to stop rioters in their tracks.  On Friday, the police in Kenosha made a show of force, and the National Guard was nearby, and even though the manic, racial-arsonist MSM were panting for days about how WI was “bracing for unrest,” the brave wusses of Antifa and BLM weren’t feeling particularly froggy, and they did not jump.

Because like bullies everywhere, they are big-talking cowards who only attack in groups, and against smaller and weaker victims. 

I’m in the process of reading Andy Ngo’s great book about antifa, and the part I didn’t know was how long it took for the thug armies of antifa and BLM to work themselves up to destroying whole city blocks, and bring major cities to their knees.  I thought that the process had been incendiary and quick, catching those cities by surprise.

But even though events sometimes went from bad to worse pretty quickly, Ngo documents how it took consistent, repeated acts of cowardice and encouragement from the spineless, America-hating Marxists governing Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Kenosha, et. al. to turn a few violent creeps into rampaging mobs.

The pattern was similar everywhere: small acts of property destruction and isolated protests would crop up, and the police would do nothing.  The media and the Dem pols would bloviate about how the protestors’ cause was righteous and justified.  The violence would ratchet up, the destruction would escalate, the riots would spread.

The riot-sympathizers in local government would make some token arrests, but then immediately release the thugs on reduced or even no bail immediately.  (Que Mala herself – with popularity ratings hovering in the neighborhood of “IRS lawyers” and “testicular cancer” – helped raise bail money for the scumbags in MN.) The same small group of nihilistic mouth-breathers would be arrested and released again and again, and they began to travel from city to city, racking up strings of toothless arrests, which in their low-IQ community count as badges of honor. 

That’s right – they crossed state lines to riot!  Funny how Don Lemon and Fredo never got their panties in a bunch about that.

In a cycle that should have surprised nobody except those who went to public schools in Dem-run cities, the old cliche about human behavior was proven true again and again: you get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. 

The far-left politicians running the big blue cities kept rewarding violence, aggression and theft, so they kept getting more of it. 

Which brings me back to Kenosha on Friday night.  After last year’s experience, even the decent, blue-collar Democrats of Wisconsin were not willing to tolerate another wave of violence carried out by another wretched hive of pedophiles and other felons against their city.

And the conservatives who never fell for the antifa and BLM propaganda in the first place gladly accepted their fellow citizens into the fight.

And wouldn’t you know it?  There didn’t need to be a fight.  Because a bunch of good guys with guns – a lot of them in the uniforms of police or National Guardsmen, but more than a few willing to exercise their own 2nd amendment rights – stood up to the creeps.  And the creeps slunk off with their tails between legs.

I hope we can all remember this, the next time some antifa or BLM criminals try to start trouble again.

Coming up next: a recap of the lowlights of Biden’s first 10 months…

Avenatti/Darrell Brooks (Two Dem Role Models for Our Time!) 2024!

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I like to think that I’m in the “one-part commentary, two-parts mockery” business.  And brother, business is booming!  On Friday, I was trying to recap some of Biden’s latest escapades when the Rittenhouse verdict came in.

After listening to some Ray Charles singing “O Happy Day!” and bounding around the house with Cassie the Wonder Dog like a couple of loons, I sat down to write up some final thoughts on that case.  And soon I had enough material for multiple columns.

Since the main complaint about my disquisitions is that they can be too long (How dare you!), I thought I’d break my snarky thoughts into three separate columns, and post them over the next three days.  Consider this my Thanksgiving gift to the CO nation!

So remember last week, when I said that at least Thomas Binger hadn’t pooped on himself in the courtroom?  Well I spoke too soon.  

Because during closing arguments he treated that courtroom the way Joe Biden treated the Pope’s private quarters – the fecal matter was flying like it had been piped through a pressurized sprinkler system!  

That had to be the worst legal self-immolation since the ink was fresh on the Magna Carta.  (With the possible exception of that time when Mike Nifong ended up getting disbarred and going to jail because of how badly he botched the Duke lacrosse case.)  

Where to begin? 

As part of his rambling, delusional, dishonest closing statement, he praised the rioters in Kenosha, calling them “a crowd full of heroes.”

This is WAY worse than what the dishonest MSM claimed that Trump said when he referred to “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville.  (He was talking about the two sides in the debate over removing confederate statues.  Go to the video tape, because two sentences later he said, “And I’m not talking about the white nationalists, who should be condemned totally.”)

Because Binger wasn’t even saying that there are good people on both sides; he’s saying that ALL of the “heroes” were on the side of the looting, rioting arsonists, apparently including the frighteningly high proportion of felons and sex offenders among them.   

He also came up with a very weird take on what self-defense means, starting with a non-sequitur: “You cannot claim self-defense against a danger you create…. If you’re the one who’s threatening others, you lose the right to claim self-defense.”

That might be true, except that it is manifestly NOT what happened in this case.  Rittenhouse didn’t make the three felons dangerous – they were raping kids, beating up women and racking up felonies before Rittenhouse could even walk – and he wasn’t threatening anybody.

Then Binger invented a novel restriction on self-defense, stating that,“You lose the right to self-defense when you’re the one who brought the gun.”

Now I may not be some fancy law-talking guy (hat tip to Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons), but even I know that that doesn’t make sense.  A gun is often the best means of self-defense; you might even say that it’s often a pre-requisite for self-defense.  So carrying it can obviously not invalidate your right to defend yourself with it! 

Like, you know, if three felons attack you.  On video.

Then, because he hadn’t stomped on enough rakes, Binger tried to rehabilitate Rapey Rosenbaum, and cast him as a victim.   He adopted an obnoxious, sarcastic, sing-songy dismissal of the import of Rosenbaum’s actions that night: “He set a small fire.  He swung a chain.  He pushed a dumpster out into the street to create a roadblock.” 

Those are all crimes, you idiot!  They might not be mass murder or war crimes, but they are the kinds of things that a mob of a-holes did as they were destroying your jurors’ hometown last year! 

Then he said, “And he also said the n word,” and literally made a “tsk tsk” sound, and wagged his finger.  As if he were talking about something so trivial that it’s ridiculous to even mention.

Has he not lived in this country for the last couple of decades?  Saying “the n word” gets people thrown out of society; it gets you disinvited to a college you’ve already been accepted into, and gets you fired from your job.  It ruins your life.

The entire leftist commentariat and MSM want uttering it to be almost a capital offense!  They want Rittenhouse’s life – and the life of every cop, celebrity, sportscaster and streetsweeper who has ever said that word – destroyed.  The worst thing they can call you – worse than pedophile, or jihadist, or serial killer – is a white supremacist. 

And an old tweet with that word in it, even if it comes from when you were 13 years old and quoting rap lyrics, brands you as a white supremacist.

In fact, I won’t even allow myself to type or say the word, nor will anyone else.  We speak in hushed tones, and say “the n word,” like we’re orthodox Jews typing G_d, or Christians refusing to take His name in vain.

Meanwhile, Sophocles Binger is joking about what a trivial thing it is, and at the same time reminding the jury that the deceased child rapist said that word a lot!  And not back when he was in junior high, but within an hour or so before he attacked Kyle Rittenhouse on the night he was justifiably shot.

Oh, and Binger also pointed a rifle at the jury, with his finger on the trigger, like a lunatic.

When Binger sat down, shiny with flop sweat, and Rittenhouse’s attorney whispered to the other prosecutor – I don’t want to body shame, but he’s the one shaped like Chris Farley without the talent – “I’ll bet you cannot possibly do a worse job than the Bingster just did!”

And Tommy Boy said, “Hold this enormous turkey leg and giant Big Gulp, and watch this.”

And he stood up and gave yet another metaphysically horrendous closing.  At one point he suggested that even if Rittenhouse’s three attackers might have intended to assault him, “Everybody takes a beating sometimes, right? Sometimes you get in a scuffle, and maybe you do get hurt a little bit.  That doesn’t mean that you can just start plugging people…”

And I can only infer that the normal cheeseheads on that jury thought, “The hell it doesn’t!”

We’re Americans!  We don’t shrink from a necessary fight, and we are not in the “taking avoidable beatings” business.  Which is why the geniuses who founded our country wrote the 2^nd amendment.  Has Mr. Lives-in-a-van-down-by-the-River never read any American history?

When General Cornwallis told us rustics that we were just going to have to take a Redcoat-administered beating, we introduced him to a little device called the Kentucky long rifle.  

When the Democrat slave holders told us we’d have to accept the early beatings that Robert E Lee gave us, the first GOP president responded with Grant and Sherman and a lot of union guns.  

When the imperial Japanese told us that most of our fleet had been sunk and Pearl Harbor was on fire, so we’d need to accept our beating, we responded with Bull Halsey, Navy dive bombers, the US Marines and a one-two nuclear punch called Binger’s Buddy (HA!) and Little Boy.     

So no, Kyle Rittenhouse did not need to take a beating from the three criminals who attacked him that night, and trust that they’d stop short of killing him.  (Or maybe raping him, given Rosenbaum’s favorite pastime.)  

Rittenhouse is an American citizen, and he was carrying a legally owned firearm that night, unlike Gaige Big-Douche, whose criminal record meant that he wasn’t allowed to carry the pistol that he tried to kill Rittenhouse with.

And just like a Kentucky long rifle beats Redcoats, and union armories beat less equipped southern Democrats, and nukes beat kamikazes, an AR-15 beats chains, skateboards and a pistol wielded by a cowardly domestic abuser with slow reflexes.

Almost more fun than watching the prosecutors crash and burn was watching the lefty celebrities and pundits going bat-guano crazy in public.  

Many celebs sent around a copy-and-paste tweet that they mistook for profundity: “I want to live in a country where Colin Kaepernick is seen as a hero and Kyle Rittenhouse is seen as a terrorist.” 

My first sarcastic response was along the lines of, “I’d like to live in a world where Kaepernick could hit a receiver on a short crossing pattern, and was good enough not to be benched in favor of the immortal Blaine Gabbert…”

But of course the only correct response is:  You want to live in a country where Kaepernick is a good guy and Rittenhouse is a bad guy?  We want you to live there, too. 

Please go there now, you delusional a**hats!

Up next: a few lessons to be learned from the Rittenhouse case…

Avenatti/ Gaige “noodle-arm” Grosskreutz, 2024!

First, let me thank everyone who commented on my two columns last week.  I’ve been busy with annoying real-world time-sucks, but I read all the comments, and appreciate the shared thoughts (and the compliments, of course!), and am really grateful for every reader of the CO site.

Second, Christopher Silber is an economic genius, and CO did a great thing by getting him to write here.  He explains financial and economic issues understandably and clearly, and if any of you have missed some of his pieces, you can find his compilation at http://www.cautiouseconomics.com/p/articles-by-subject.html?fbclid=IwAR0sS4yxwa–WIOjEpPzMYMsZBWxDUEV40lSZ4IlMme7_v5Fy4NNvZF6VRc

I met Christopher several summers ago, when CO and the COSE got a group of the CO site readers and contributors together in Denver, and we all had a great time.  I’m hoping that we can do that again sometime soon!

Third, I wanted to dive right in on the Rittenhouse trial, but Obama gave a speech in Europe that reminded me what an obnoxious creep he is, and how glad I am that he’s gone.  That guy has gotten more mileage out of a preferred racial background, a fawning media, superficial glibness and a grotesquely high self-estimation of his own intelligence than anyone in the last century, at least.

So I thought I’d throw a few verbal rib kicks in on him.

He was giving a speech in Scotland, and he glibly said that since he was in the Emerald Isle, he wanted to quote the Bard, William Shakespeare. 

Except that the Emerald Isle is Ireland.  And Shakespeare is English.  And the Scots have their own bard, and his name is Robert Burns.  Other than that, he nailed it!  (I’m guessing that all white folks look alike to Barry O, so he can’t be expected to keep them straight.)

Not content with having demonstrated his ignorance of where he was and whom he was addressing, Obama went on to demonstrate his ignorance of the subject he was discussing, by whining about how Trump “unilaterally left the Paris Accord,” an action that will obviously destroy our planet by carbon-icide.

Never mind that Obama flew to give his lecture on a carbon-spewing private jet. (He probably thought he landed at Heathrow, which as far as he knows is in Scotland.) 

And overlook the fact that the Paris Accord is as phony as Lizzie Warren’s Cherokee backstory (#wemustneverstopmockingher).  It’s an agreement with arbitrarily decided carbon output goals, signed onto by a bunch of countries that have all failed to meet those goals, with no enforcement mechanism, and no authentic buy-in from the nations that put out the most carbon per capita.

It’s a pledge with the reliability of Bill Clinton’s wedding vows.

And hey, Barry?  You know why Trump was able to “unilaterally” pull us out of the Paris accord?  Because you “unilaterally” forced us into it. 

Rather than following our constitutional system and getting the legislative branch to put forward and vote on a legislation for us to join Paris – after first consulting and persuading the American people on that, the way our representatives are supposed to do – you took an arrogant short cut.  You knew that the American people wouldn’t support signing on to a meaningless, virtue-signaling international gesture like this, and therefore congress wouldn’t pass it.

So you said, “screw them.  I know best!”  And you acted on your own.

In other words, you unilaterally stuck us with a meaningless accord, and Trump unilaterally got us out of it. 

Okay, the Rittenhouse trial:

Rarely do you ever get such a black-and-white example of good versus evil in a public trial, and with total video coverage to boot.  If you haven’t been living in a cave, you already know the general outline.

But I don’t think enough attention has been paid to one obvious fact: none of this wouldn’t have happened if the police had been allowed to do their job, and put down the riots and jail the rioters the moment they started rioting!   If they had, the reaction of many – “People shouldn’t be out there with guns; they should let the police handle it.” – might actually carry some weight.

Instead, the terrible leftist local and state government abandoned Kenosha to peacefully violent leftist rioters, looters and arsonists. They prevented the cops from distributing well-deserved servings of rubber bullets, tear gas and mass arrests and prosecutions to the thugs. 

Sidebar: In a hypothetical Edenic world in which I were King of Kenosha, I would have had the cops fire  volleys of grapeshot into the rioters, followed immediately by a cavalry charge of mounted border patrol – who might as well be in WI, since they are being prevented from doing their job along the border – using their reins as whips. 

And also using their whips as whips. 

Then, I would have the cops deploy a fleet of paddy wagons, into which the hateful miscreants could be tossed, and taken straight to prison.

And no, I wouldn’t call them, “Irish-American wagons.”  Because the kind of weirdos who are driven to substance abuse by hearing “paddy wagon” would be banned from my realm.  

Anyway, one startling revelation to come out of this trial is that you can apparently get a law degree out of a box of Cracker Jacks in this country.  Otherwise, what could possibly explain the abysmal performance of prosecutor Thomas Binger?  

To be fair to him, he had a tough job: he was prosecuting a case that never should have been brought, and he’s got no convincing evidence on his side.  But that’s where the positives have to stop.

This guy is the Joe Biden of prosecutors.  He bumbles.  He stumbles.  He’s the slowest wit in the room.  So far he’s managed not to poop in the courtroom, but the trial isn’t over yet.

It’s hard to pick his dumbest moment, but I have a few contenders.

1.With eyewitness Richie McGinniss, Binger adopted the kind of disingenuous and sarcastic line of questioning that gives lawyers everywhere a bad name.  He snidely insisted that McGinniss and Rittenhouse could not possibly have guessed what was in the mind of Joseph Rosenbaum right before he got shot.  “You have no idea what Mr. Rosenbaum was ever thinking… You have never been inside his head, you never met him before… so your interpretation is completely guesswork.”

And then, in a surpassingly beautiful moment, the witness delivered a deadpan equivalent of a marital aid wrapped in barbed wire and manually inserted in the prosecutor’s Schumer.  Then turned sideways.

Quoth the Eastwoodian witness:  “Well he said f*ck you and grabbed for the gun.”  

Ouch!

2.  With another witness, Binger waded into yet another rhetorical roundhouse punch flat-footed.  The witness testified that earlier in the evening, Rosenbaum told several people that, “If I catch you alone tonight, I’ll kill you.”

Binger said, “He said that to you?”  When the witness said, “Yes,” Binger said, “But did he say it to the defendant?” 

At this point every sentient bi-ped in Christendom had to believe that the answer was going to be, “no,” because if Rosenbaum had directly threatened Rittenhouse, self-defense is pretty much a lock.  And no minimally competent lawyer would ask a question he didn’t know the answer to, let alone one that he knew the answer would torpedo his case!

But the witness said, “Well, [Rittenhouse] was right there. So, yes.”

D’oh!  If Binger takes too many more rakes to the forehead, he’s going to end up with a AOC-ian level of cognitive impairment.

3.Binger might have sounded even dumber – if that’s possible – when he questioned Rittenhouse.  The kid testified that earlier in the evening, he ran toward a fire to put it out, and there’s video of him carrying a fire extinguisher at one point.

Binger:   You decided you needed to run because of the fire?

Rittenhouse:   Yes.

Binger:   Why? What was so urgent?

Rittenhouse:   Uh, it was a fire?

Binger: There’s fires all over the place. So?

That’s an actual exchange, from an actual trial. The best argument the prosecutor can make about his leftist-run city relies on the fact that it is so horribly governed that there’s no reason to even try to fix things: “Lawless mobs are destroying the city, and there are fires everywhere.  So?”

Great job, WI Democrats!

Things didn’t get better for Binger.  On Friday, he cross-examined journalist Drew Hernandez (don’t let his Hispanic-ness fool you – he’s a white supremacist!) who recorded much of the riot in Kenosha, including many scenes involving Rittenhouse. 

Sidebar: I know that in most trials, a lawyer will try to call witness testimony into doubt.  “When you say you saw the defendant clearly on the day in question, isn’t it true that the man you saw was 30 yards away from you, and it was foggy, and you wear thick glasses and think Maxine Waters is attractive?”

But you know what is not available in most trials?

(Cueing Sam Kinison for the defense):  “VIDEO EVIDENCE OF THE ENTIRE EVENT!!  OH!  OHHHHHH!”

What is the point of trying to suggest that something might have happened in some other way, when multiple video angles show that it happened THIS way?

And yet Binger kept stepping in it.   He took an justifiably grating, condescending tone while asking Hernandez this question, which I swear I am not making up:

“Your videos that you have captured of these incidents that you call riots.  They’re very slanted against… the people who are rioting – you characterize them as Antifa, Black Lives Matter rioters, correct?”

Hernandez: “Because they are rioting in the footage. Yes, absolutely.”

Good lord.  The answer was obvious, but Binger walked into it anyway.  And his question might make sense if there were no video record: “These events that you call riots?!” 

As if many people might call them Gandhi-esque peaceful protests.  Or square dancing, or origami class, or Bible study.

That might work if you didn’t have video.  But you do!  And they clearly show rioting!  Hours and hours of rioting!!

And “your video is slanted against the rioters??”  The video captured what actually happened.  There were no special effects.  It wasn’t edited.  It depicts reality.  How on earth could unedited video be slanted, you buffoon?

So Binger obviously doesn’t understand people, or questioning, or logic.  But it turns out he doesn’t understand the law, either, because he actually tried to make Rittenhouse’s silence after the crime seem sinister, and indicative of his guilt.  The judge jumped in and reamed him on this very basic element of American and constitutional law.

This isn’t just something a first-semester law student should know.  This is something that anyone who has watched 2 or more cop shows in her life should know! 

When the cop confronts the suspect and starts putting on the cuffs, he reads the most famous warning in the West.  It starts out with, “You have the right to…”

If you guessed that what comes next is, “… be considered guilty until proven innocent,” You are probably Thomas Binger.

If you guessed, “…to poop on the Pope,” you’re probably Joe Biden.

If you are literally anyone else, you correctly said, “…to remain silent.”

And yet Binger tried to smear Rittenhouse because he waited to have a lawyer present before he answered questions.

The last thing that strikes me is the stark contrast between Rittenhouse and the creeps who got shot.

Rittenhouse has no criminal record.  He’s been a lifeguard, he’s taken some EMT training, and he was caught on camera cleaning graffiti off a building and giving some basic medical help to someone earlier that night.  It might not have been wise to go to that lawless city, but he went there to help protect property, and the only people he shot that night were people who were attacking him.   

Compare him to his assailants.

The best thing about the three guys who got shot is that two of them are dead, and so can’t be questioned in court, and make Rittenhouse’s case for him, the way that the survivor did.

But all three had criminal records. Rosenbaum had convictions for 5 cases of child rape among his other crimes, and while Rittenhouse was putting out fires, Rosenbaum was starting them.  Anthony Huber had multiple violent and weapons felony convictions; you can find a lineup of 10 mug shots of him over the years, and he looks like someone who might likely get shot in all of them.

By the way, he’s the one who chased Rittenhouse, and bashed him with a skateboard when he was down. 

Yes: he brought a skateboard to a rifle fight.  And as everyone knows who has played rock, paper, skateboard, rifle… rifle always beats skateboard.

That leaves Gaige Grosskreutz.  My German is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure that “gross” means big.   I’m going to guess, based on nothing but my usually peerless instincts, that “Kreutz” is German for “douche.” 

It turns out Big Douche also has a long criminal record, including everything from theft to assaults against his grandma and a girlfriend, and driving drunk with an illegally possessed gun.  He was not legally entitled to carry the gun he threatened Rittenhouse with, and Rittenhouse didn’t shoot him until el Grande Douche-o pointed the gun at him.

All of which Grosskreutz testified to.  Not for the defense – he was Binger’s star prosecution witness!

The case is supposed to go to the jury this week.  The dullard politicians in Kenosha have positioned 500 National Guard troops nearby, proving that they might be capable of learning. 

If justice is done and Rittenhouse is exonerated, and leftist thugs begin to riot, the WI National Guard can reach me via the CO website for some sage advice about how to proceed.

Spoiler alert: aim small, miss small.  And fix bayonets.

Avenatti/Grosskreutz, 2024!

I hope everyone had a contemplative Veteran’s Day.  I binge-watched Band of Brothers for what must be the 12^th time at least, and was once again struck by the huge gulf between the amazing valor of so many people who have fought and died for this country, and the vast army of undeserving whiners who will never acknowledge how indebted they are to our military and their sacrifices.

Speaking of whiners, at this point it almost seems unfair to be rhetorically kicking the Biden administration and our leftist elites.  They provide such a target-rich environment, and they are so pathetic and incompetent, and their future is so bleak that one almost feels sorry for them. 

Almost.

But I’m trying to find some comedy in this farce, partly to lower my own blood pressure, and partly to entertain the fine people in CO nation who seem to enjoy watching our oppressors get the verbal rib kicks that they so richly deserve.

I’ve been taking a few notes over just a few days, and I’ve already got several columns’ worth of material.  I’ll hold off on the Rittenhouse stuff – which is a rich vein all by itself! – until Monday, and take a quick romp through a few other stories that caught my attention, and triggered my gag reflex.

First, Joe Biden has a serious problem with his sphincter. 

And that’s not a subtle set-up for a Comma-La/Que Mala joke.  I don’t mean the metaphorical, political sphincter that he picked for a running mate.  I mean the actual orifice.

Multiple reports from the foreign press claim that Joey Gaffes had a bathroom accident during his meeting with the pope, necessitating the killing of a live video feed, followed by frantic cries of whatever is Italian for, “Clean-up on aisle 7!”

A day or two later, during a meeting with Camilla Bowles, Boris Johnson and some other British big shots, Biden is reported to have crop dusted the crowned heads with a particularly impressive (dare I say “long-winded”?) bout of flatulence. 

Or, as it is colloquially known in my house, he “pulled a Swalwell.”

Even bringing this up feels a bit like responding to Biden’s low blow with one of my own.  (HA!)  Because all of us who are lucky enough to live very long lives will likely end up watching infomercials for walk-in tubs and Life Alert bracelets, and using coupons for bulk purchases of Depends.

But you know what we won’t be doing in that phase of our lives?  Abandoning Americans in Afghanistan, destroying the economy, paying illegals for breaking our laws, and abusing as much authoritarian power over free citizens as we can get our hands on.

Remember when leftists called Reagan “an amiable dunce?”  Never mind that that was a lie told by small people. 

But after seeing the last 128 months of Joe Biden – a malevolent dunce; an incontinent dunce; a dunce that graduated at the bottom of his class in Dunce School – wouldn’t it be a refreshing change if the dunce in the white house were at least amiable?  Is that too much to ask?

Speaking of clueless dopes who are full of it, did you see the video of the Microsoft wokesters’ training video?

It was hilariously stupid for two main reasons.  First, all of the speakers introduced themselves by name, followed by giving a description of themselves and the clothes they were wearing, and the (ugh!) pronouns they go by.

The company says that they are giving the physical descriptions for the benefit of the “blind-as-a-bat” community.

Sorry, that’s “differently sighted.”  Or maybe “ocularly challenged.”

But why?  What difference should your appearance make in this context?  Is your blathering on about synergy or horizontal integration or the onboarding timeline going to be any more or less insufferable because of the color of your dress? 

For that matter, what if some of your ophthalmically non-conforming audience have been blind from birth, and have no idea what a red dress looks like?  And spoiler alert, if you’re a male who lists female pronouns but sounds like James Earl Jones, you’re fooling no one.  

Even the blind can see through that!

Interestingly, the male co-leader says, “I’m Nic Fillingham, and I’m a caucasian man with a beard, I go by he/him, and I’m a security evangelist here at Microsoft.”

Let’s skip right past the obvious: if “security evangelist” is your job description, you have made a terrible career mistake.

But if you’ve watched this, I’ll bet something else struck you, too.  The guy chooses as his follicular description, “I’ve got a beard.”

Millions of men have beards, but this guy is really burying the lede, because he also has… A MOHAWK!

You heard me.  The guy’s got a hairstyle that is worn by no one but some long-dead Mohawk Indians (of course), Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, a handful of special forces bad-asses, and Elizabeth Warren.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But he’s going with the beard as his main descriptor.

Speaking of questionable Indians, a following segment starts with a lady who says this, which I swear I am not making up, even though I am guessing at many spellings, since I have a life to live, and it’s not worth my time to look these things up: 

“First, we want to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Summamish, the Duomish, the Snoquami, the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish, the Tulayla and other coast Saylish peoples since time immemorial. A people that are still here, who continue to honor, and bring to light, their ancient heritage.”

Yes, they’ve been bringing tons of light to their ancient heritage.  Which is why you’ve never heard of any of these tribes before. 

You have heard of tribes like the Apache, Comanche and Sioux.  And that’s because they were impressive warriors, and when they sent scouts out into the plains, they reported back that the land was occupied by the Summamish and the Duomish, and some squaw named Tulayla, everyone snickered. 

And the chief said, “Okay, bring me my third best horse and my rustiest old tomahawk.  It ought to take us about 10 minutes to send these goofy tribes packing.”

And that is how those tribes were driven to the west coast, where they ended up surrounded by hipster doofi with ironic facial hair and insufferable personalities.

If I had to guess, I’d say that half of those tribe names are made up.  I’m pretty sure that Snoquami and Snohomie are a couple of rappers who have had some run-ins with the law.  And I know that Muckleshoot was a character in a Dr. Suess book!

I think he really gave the Sneetches a hard time for a while there.

Or were the Sneetches one of the tribes that Microsoft displaced?

The whole thing is so stupid.  If Microsoft really gave a Sneetch’s arse about Snoquami and ‘Lil Wayne, they’d give them the high-tech campus and their land back. 

Instead, they just give a meaningless shout out to Snohomie and keep right on pursuing their evil, evil profits!   

Ugh!  Isn’t there at least one person at Microsoft with enough self-respect and common sense to realize that he’s wasting his time, and willing to go out dramatically, by standing up to this woke foolishness?

I’m almost tempted to try to get a job at Microsoft myself, just so I could maneuver myself into position to sabotage their next idiotic video.

“My name is Martin, I’m a ruggedly handsome white man with dreamy green eyes and abs for days.  If you can see me, I don’t need to say what I’m wearing, and if you can’t, it doesn’t make any difference.  But because I know what you are all wondering: boxers.  Also, my eyes are up here, ladies.  My pronouns are “thee/thou,” and my noun is “Your Excellency.”  Now let’s get on with this moronic exercise in corporate virtue signaling and time wasting.”

Finally, you may have missed Mayor Pete’s most recent press conference.  Yes, he’s back from paternity leave to take over our transportation system again.  And just in time!

You probably think that he’d be focused like a laser on the gigantic supply chain debacle that has mortally wounded our economy.  But you’d be wrong.  Because he’s got REAL issues to deal with!

Issues such as: How did our roads get to be so racist, and what can we do about it?

I’m not kidding.  A dullard with a journalist’s credential actually asked post-pregnancy Pete (he’s already lost a lot of the baby weight!) what he was going to do to “deconstruct the racism that was built into the roadways.”

Instead of doing what a minimally sane person would, and saying, “That may be the dumbest thing I’ve heard since AOC’s last tweet,” Pete humored that lunatic, and babbled for several minutes about how the thought of racist roads keeps him up at night.

Before you dismiss him as a complete loon, consider these actual facts that I turned up in my extensive research on this topic.  Did you know that Interstate 65 once owned slaves?  That’s right.  In fact, that one road sired 14 illegitimate lanes and boulevards with its slaves.  I bet you never heard about that in your so-called “history” books, did you?

Also, it’s even worse than that, because many of the offspring of those racist roads were stigmatized because of their mixed heritage.  In fact, they were often called hurtful names such as – brace yourself — “blacktop.”  And do you think it’s a coincidence that even to this day, we spray those beautiful, strong black surfaces with WHITE LINES?! 

Thank God that today we know better, and are doing everything we can to ease the pain of those African-American-top roads.

And that’s to say nothing of the injustice that drove many of our roads to drug use – where do you think the name,“highways” came from? – and to suffer discrimination because of their sexual orientation?  That’s right: won’t anyone think of the poor “bi-ways?”

I just hope that Mayor Pete is up to this big job.  Because as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions!

Along with lots and lots of racism.

Avenatti/Muckleshoot 2024!

First off, I’d like to thank everybody for the kind comments on my daughter’s lifesaving exploits from my last column.  Many of you were generous enough to suggest that my parenting skills may have contributed to her all-around awesomeness.

Modesty urges me to fend off that compliment.  But then I think back on my various parenting strategies, and have to at least consider that you may be on to something.

Long-time readers of this column may remember that when she was about 2 and a half, I taught Katie one of Aristotle’s logical fallacies: “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.” (After this, therefore because of this.)  And then when we had company over, I’d say, “What’s your favorite one of Aristotle’s fallacies, sweetie?”

And she’d look at me angelically and say, “Ad populum.” 

HA!  I kid,  She never got into the whole “ad populum/ad hominem” choices until way after she turned 3.   

You may also remember that I taught her another important life lesson early on.  Whenever I’d be watching something aggravating on tv – a ref making a terrible call, or a political disaster unfolding – and she was toddling through the room, I’d say, “Who do we blame this on?”

And without hesitating she’d call out, “The Democrats!”

I get all choked up just thinking of how proud I was of her.  And also that she saved someone’s life last week.

But enough about me and my fantastic parenting skills.   I’ve got a few quick, feel-good stories from the last week.

First up is a good news story from Illinois!  (Not a collection of words you normally see put together in one sentence lately.)

It seems that on Saturday, a no-doubt Biden voting happy-go-lucky young man stole a car, and while driving it around, came across a 77-year-old man who was sitting in his garage.  The no-doubt oppressed thug hopped out and demanded that the old man give him his money, pointing a no-doubt illegally obtained gun at him.

Because old people are weak, and easily victimized.

Or so thought the would-be robber.

Yes, I said, “would-be.”  Because while he aspired to robber status, what he achieved was the ART (“Assuming Room Temperature”) award.

While your average police-defunding Chicago Dem politician recommends responding in such situations by cowering and handing over your wallet, while saying, “Please don’t hurt me.  I don’t want any trouble,” this feisty senior citizen took a different tack. 

He pulled out his legally owned firearm and celebrated the wisdom of our Founders — when they wrote a little thing called the Second Amendment —  by, and I quote, “shooting at the robber.”

You may be shocked to hear that the no-doubt college-trained “journalist” got a little detail wrong in his account.  The armed oldster didn’t so much shoot AT the robber, as he SHOT the robber.

Once in the chest, and once in the head.  Thus, the tragic death of the ARTist.

The story ends with, “detectives are investigating the incident.” I hope that means that they are investigating what combination of medal and cash prize to award to the marksman.

But don’t worry, lefties.  Just because the no-doubt misunderstood would-be robber has ceased all cardiac and respiratory function, he’s no worse off than our current Cadaver in Chief.  And he’ll no doubt continue voting Democrat in many elections to come!

Speaking of law and order, Angry leftists in Minneapolis – having seen their “defund the police” proposal get slapped down on Tuesday (Oh Happy Day!) – are doubling down on calls for violence:

One benighted idiot (Twitter-verified, naturally) named Ian Coldwater posted, “Do you want more burned precincts?  Because this is how you get more burned precincts.” 

In a morally healthy community, the only rational response would be to dare that jerk to try burning down another police station, and see what happens.  “Do you want to be handcuffed to a hospital bed having shotgun pellets pulled out of your arse?  Because this is how you end up handcuffed to a hospital bed having shotgun pellets pulled out of your arse.”

A second violent numbskull is a local Antifa organizer aptly named Natalina Slaughter.  (The fact that her name has not been used for a Bond villain is an insult to the memory of Ian Fleming!)  After having her call for more chaos in the streets rejected by voters, Natasha Bad-anov  says, “It’s almost like voting is bullsh*t.  Someone wake me back up when we [choose] violence.”   

Or — and I’m just spit-balling here — how about someone wakes her up by slipping a plastic bag over her head and pulling it tight around her neck for a moment, then asking her if she’s still such a big violence enthusiast?

To round out our socialist Three Stooges, we have a little charmer named Julie Tilsen posting calls for more violence:  “We burned a precinct and all we got was the most lying corrupt mayor the city’s ever seen…” 

In case you think she may have just accidentally confessed to taking part in arson you’re not wrong. 

“Maybe it was a heat-of-passion, emotionally extreme statement that she doesn’t really mean,” you could be thinking, but definitely are not.

And you’re right again.  In June, she posted a tweet asking, “Which precinct are we burning today, comrades?”

How stupid do you have to be to be seriously calling people “comrades” in 2021? 

As stupid as a professor, it turns out.  Yes, Julie is actually “Dr. Julie.”  She’s got a PhD.

“Let me guess what field?” you’re not asking.  “Chemistry?  Nuclear Engineering?  Astrophysics?  Or something equally impressive?” you are definitely not guessing.

Nope.  You’ll be shocked to hear that Dr. Julie’s PhD is as legitimate as “Doctor” Jill Biden’s degree.   Because it’s in “Social Construction.” 

“That sounds pretty useless,” you are probably thinking, “but I’m not sure that it’s as bad as “Dr.” Biden’s degree in—”

You didn’t let me finish.  It’s a PhD in “Social Construction” … with an emphasis in “Queer Studies.” 

Holy Terminal Unemployability, Batman!

Titles of her no-doubt-unread publications include “Queering Your Therapy Practice,” and another one touting “Transcending Homonormativity.”

Now it might just be me, but when I try to parse that last phrase, it sounds like it could be academese for “being straight.” 

In which case, I think I should at least be on the medal stand in that event, having closed a piping hot Norwegian-American wife while looking no better than I do, and producing two world-class children.   (One of whom saved a human life last week, in case I haven’t mentioned that recently.)

Sure, up to this point I’ve been a triple threat, having achieved the titles of Hilarious Genius, Martacus, and Man of Ice Cream, Man of Principle.”  But now I’ve rounded out the resume by transcending THE HELL out of homonormativity! 

On the other hand, now that I think about it, could it be that “transcending homonormativity” is what that creepy boy in a skirt was doing when he attacked the girl in the school bathroom in Loudon, VA a little while ago?  Because if so… nope!

Where was I? 

Oh yeah. 

Leftist idiots in Minneapolis continue to miss the point, and persist in their leftist idiocy.   To which we all say, “Keep it up, boneheads!  We’ll lick ‘em in 2022!”

Um… not in a homonormative way, though.  That was clear, right? 

Finally, the VA election is the gift that just keeps on giving.  Not only have Imhotep Pelosi and the Congressional Dems doubled down on their obviously off-putting arrogance and toxic policy-making by passing the bloated infrastructure bill (which is no more than 30% infrastructure at most). 

But 13 feckless congressional Republicans have managed to helpfully identify themselves by voting for that monstrosity, thus erecting a huge, neon sign outside of their offices that says, “Throw me out of office in 2022!”  

Noted.

In another VA story, a Dem Virginia state delegate – maybe the perfect archetype of a lefty pol, as it turns out — was pulled over by a cop on election eve. 

The cop had watched this weasel, Chris Hurst, parking his car near a city rec center, where a woman with him got out and tampered with some campaign signs.  She turned some of them over and others upside down.  When the cop pulled him over and asked him what he was doing, Hurst went classic 15-year-old.

First he pretended like he didn’t know what the cop was talking about.  When the cop said what he saw Hurst and the woman doing, Hurst said that he didn’t have anything to say about it. 

When the cop ran his plates, he found out that his license was suspended.  Upon further investigation, he learned that Hurst didn’t have current insurance.  The article I read makes it sound like he didn’t even give Hurst a ticket, which is disappointing.

I fondly recall the old days, when Dem Chicago Mayor Daley responded to leftist Dems getting unruly by having his cops wade into them with billy clubs, taking swings like so many Ernie Bankses, poking doubles out past the short stop’s head. 

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to deal with the situation.  But it wasn’t the worst, either. 

So Hurst started getting lippy, and the cop scolded him, and Hurst said that vandalizing signs is something “everybody on the other side of the mountain does and people all over this district do.” 

I’m not sure if he’s talking about Mount Two-Face, the VA Dems’ ancestral home, or whether he’s blaming the GOP for doing what he was caught in the act of doing.

When the cop (disgustedly) says, “So you’re going to resort to that?  And represent us?”

Hurst’s response is sui generis for political hypocrites: “I need you to just do your job here tonight and I’ll do mine.  I have nothing more to say to you, officer.  And I’m sorry for actions that I may have done or my partner may have done.  But, ummm, I think you’re maybe getting a little emotional here.”

There, in 4 sentences, is the essence of entitled pol in a nutshell:  Insult a cop, imply that being a petty vandal is your important work, give a non-apology apology in the passive voice, and then accuse the cop who caught you for being the problem.  Ugh.

You’ll not be surprised to know that before he became a politician, Hurst was a journalist, or that he received a $15,000 donation for his campaign from the Punk McAuliffe.

And oh yeah… Hurst is one of the swarm of Democrats who lost his seat in Tuesday’s election.

Sing it, Ray Charles:  “Oh Happy Day!”

Avenatti/Chris “the Worst” Hurst, 2024!

Believe it or not, the elections on Tuesday were not the highlight of my week.  Because on Monday, my daughter saved someone’s life.

Forgive a preening dad’s quick diversion: my oldest daughter has been a pediatric nurse for a little over a year now, and on Monday she was taking meds to some of her patients, when she heard a beeping in a room she was passing.  Inside, she found a 12-year-old girl who had been doing fine, but who had suddenly stopped breathing.  My daughter jumped up on her bed, starting doing CPR and chest compressions, and had the girl’s dad (who didn’t know what was going on) call for the docs. 

Long story short, the girl had to be intubated, because each time my daughter stopped CPR, she stopped breathing.  But she’s alive today because my daughter was there, and noticed that someone else’s patient was in distress.

All of which puts things in their proper perspective.  I mean sure, my daughter may have SAVED A HUMAN LIFE (!) this week.  But I also contributed to our society, by inventing some caustic nicknames for malevolent leftists in a snarky column about the political scene.

We all do our part, is my point.  😊

Speaking of which, I am about as far removed from the “damp, drizzly November in my soul,” with which I started my last column as I can possibly be.  Between my almost painfully puffed out chest (because my offspring is a life-saving heroine) and my equally disruptive priapism (because the Dems got beaten like a rented mule on Tuesday), I don’t know which way to turn.

And whichever way I turn, I’m knocking things over!

But perhaps I’ve said too much.

Let’s turn to the highlights of that beautiful election, and I’ll count down some of my favorite elements of the day:

1.McAuliffe loses, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. 

As Tuesday night turned to Wednesday morning, I was thinking about how much I miss Rush.  Back in the bad old Clinton days, he called Terry McAuliffe “the punk.”  And boy, did McAuliffe live down to that nickname in this election! 

Oblivious and tone-deaf to the last, he doubled down on his toxic, elitist racism at the end of the campaign.  He took the commonplace Dem line on critical race theory: it doesn’t exist, we’re not teaching it, and it’s great!  He also promised to decrease the percentage of white teachers in VA!

Because racial discrimination is bad, don’t you see?

2. The down-ticket GOP winners were worth rooting for.  The fact that Youngkin’s Lt. Gov candidate is a black, female ex-Marine, and that his Attorney General running mate is Hispanic made the irony even sweeter. 

I will always savor the picture of the Punk on stage, lecturing voters on what evil racists his opponents are.  Never mind the black lady and the brown guy on either side of Youngkin – they’re the black and brown faces of white supremacy, I tells ya!

Meanwhile McAuliffe is as white as Grandma Squanto Warren — #wemustneverstopmockingher!   

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t like racial identity bean counting, or racial essentialism.  However, if the touted candidates are good ones, AND they allow the good guys to beat the bad guys with their own racial hypocrisy?  Pretty sweet!

And the cherry on top of that schadenfreude sundae was watching Terrible Terry spew his racist bile while standing next to the current Dem governor, who is most famous for taking a yearbook pic wearing either blackface, or a klan hood! 

3. McAuliffe lost, even after bringing in all the big-name Democrats he could.  Obama offered his usual classless stew of mean-spirited race-baiting, dishonesty and condescension, and it availed him not.

Que Mala?  No bueno.

Joey Gaffes?  He was as lively and inspiring as any other speaker you’d find at the city morgue with a tag affixed to his wrinkly, blue toe.

4. I’ve got a new favorite politician’s name.  Sure, leftist hack Charles Blow is perfectly named, as was Anthony Weiner.  But the new VA Lt. Governor is: Winsome Sears! 

That’s so beautiful I almost can’t believe it.  “Winsome” is like some kind of archaic Puritan name – Amity or Charity or Prudence.  The word itself is old-fashioned – so of course I love it! – and means “attractive or appealing in appearance or character.” 

Especially when you consider the snarling, angry Dems aligned against Sears and her running mates, “winsome” is a delightful, refreshing contrast. 

Perfect!  

5.  You won’t read this sentence very often from me… but I spent some very enjoyable time watching CNN in the last couple of days.

And boy, was that crowd enmeshed in an all-pro, Olympic-quality exercise in expert-level point-missing! 

They couldn’t accurately work their way through a two-part cause-and-effect chain if the first part was stepping on the tines of a rake and the second part was taking a rake-handle to the cranium.

They all insisted that CRT doesn’t exist, and wasn’t taught in VA schools, and that girl didn’t get raped in a bathroom by a boy in a skirt, and if she did, that had nothing to do with the transgender bathroom policy in that school.

They said that if voters are unhappy with Dems, it’s only because they didn’t pass those two gigantic, wastefully expensive bills that they’ve been fighting over.  Never mind that nobody outside of the far left wants those bills to pass!

They said the disaster was Joe Manchin’s fault.  I guess because West Virginia is very close to Virginia, and “Manchin” almost rhymes with “Youngkin?”

They also started to throw the Punk under the bus, arguing that his campaign was mostly incompetence and under-handed attacks… which also describes most major Dem races in recent years, and they never objected to those. 

They are seriously trying to posit a “Youngkin just ran a better campaign” diagnosis. Which might be more convincing… if just about every Dem candidate and policy across the whole country hadn’t been shellacked!

The voters in Minneapolis resisted up-talking, brother-marrying jihadi-sympathizer Ilhan Omar’s call for defunding the police.  In Denver, a slate of anti-CRT school board candidates whipped the usual anti-whitey leftists.  In NY, GOP candidates on Long Island trounced some high-profile Dems who had voted to get rid of cash bail, so that career criminal Biden voters wouldn’t have to spend any time in jail just because they’d gotten caught practicing their profession.

In deep-blue NJ, there are literally a million more registered Dems than Republicans, and it looks like creepy Gov. Phil Murphy is going to just barely win, with a few thousand vote margin.  A bunch of GOP state house candidates defeated Dem incumbents, and in my favorite underdog story of this election, a truck driver who has never held public office named Edward Durr ran against a machine pol named Stephen Sweeney.

Sweeney is the state Senate president, and won re-election in 2017 in a race in which both sides spent more than $24 million.  This time around, Durr claims to have spent $153 on his campaign.

Not $15.3 million.  Not $153,000.  Not even $1530. 

$153!

The vote count as of Wednesday afternoon?  Durr is leading Sweeney, 52-48%.

I’m sure the Dems will keep counting, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they “discover” enough votes to edge Durr out.  But if he manages to hang on?  

I look forward to his bringing a bill to the state house proposing that all future candidates are limited in their campaign spending to a max of $153.

6. The most wrong-headed and offensive crack-pot explanation the bitter Dems have given for why Mr. Sweater-Vest and his multi-racial ticket defeated Gov. Black-face and the pasty Punk is that they used “racist dog whistles” to motivate the mouth-breathing rednecks to vote for… Winsome (who, to be fair to them, does actually have a black face) and the Frito Bandito? 

Nice try, you racial arsonist dopes!  

Not since Christ used the analogy of ignoring the log in your eye to criticize the speck in another’s has someone more perfectly punctured a hypocrite’s pretensions.   The metaphor of a dog whistle suggests that most people are not aware of the super-subtle, subterranean racist message being communicated.

But I would counter with a better analogy: the “racist megaphone,” which malicious, race-obsessed leftists have been using to broadcast their anti-white and anti-Asian racism from every rooftop.

Whiteness is a cancer.  White people are evil.  Only white people can be racists, and all of them are.  White supremacy underlies every founding principle of this nation, and taints every achievement it has produced.

The dog whistle is in your fevered imagination, lefties, but your racist megaphone has been heard far and wide.  You’ve stood in the road with a boom box over your head and the dial turned to 11, broadcasting your message like a demented John Cusack at the end of Say Anything. 

And Edward Durr just filled up his 18-wheeler with $153 worth of gas and drove right over you! 

That’s it, CO nation.  We’re facing a lot of challenges, but there’s still a lot of good in this country, and even the bluest of states have shown that they’re capable of giving some truly egregious characters a much-deserved political whipping.

Plus, my daughter is a life-saving mensch, and I’ve got the community of CO nation to rejoice with, and savor the small victories like the ones on Tuesday.  To paraphrase my favorite under-appreciated Republican president — US Grant:

“We’ve given them the devil’s own day.  And we’re gonna lick ‘em in 2022!”

So for the first time in several brutal election cycles, cue the happiness montage.  (For those new to this column, that’s a musical pastiche made up of Ray Charles and the Voices of Jubilation doing “O Happy Day” (find it online), Ode to Joy, and Jimmy Stewart running joyfully through the streets of Bedford Falls at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.”) 

And watch Ray Charles as the cool bald brother in the tux helps him walk off stage toward the end of the song.  That’s what I looked like in the wee hours of Wednesday, with Cassie the Wonder Dog standing in for the escort guy, wondering what was wrong with me.

For today at least: not a single thing!

Avenatti/Punk McAuliffe, 2024!

In honor of the new month, and the state of mind that recent events threaten to put me in, I’m going to open this column with a quote from great American novelist Herman Melville’s great book, Moby Dick:

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

I can’t say that that’s exactly how I feel as this November dawns.  I live in north Florida, where November isn’t typically damp and drizzly, but dry and (finally!) pleasantly cool. 

But if I watch too much coverage of the terrible administration that currently besets my country with a thousand griefs and irritations, I can understand what Melville was talking about.  Except that I fantasize about doing more violence to arrogant pols than knocking their hats off. 

And rather than taking to sea, the mood drives me to take to my computer and vent my spleen, lower my blood pressure, and join with CO nation in mocking the cavalcade of imbeciles who are doing more damage to America than the worst 19^th century nor’easter could ever do.

Let’s start with a golden oldie from two months ago: Biden’s shambolic implosion in Afghanistan.

Our MSM is doing their best to see that that debacle goes down the memory hole.  But to be fair them, Biden has screwed up so many things since the end of August that it’s hard to remember a disaster so colossal that it would permanently stain any other president’s legacy.

But for Joey Gaffes, that just a regular ol’ Tuesday.

However, I think we shouldn’t forget that even his outrageous lies, in retrospect, proved to be worse than we first realized.  When he botched our retreat from the ‘stan – after promising that he’d leave no Americans behind – his spokes-creeps admitted that there were “around 100” Americans still left.

Then, within a week or two, that number crept up to around 200.  Then to a little under 300. 

And then, this past Tuesday, a GOP senator questioned a Pentagon official with a suspiciously long title, and found out that the number today is “nearly 450.” 

The way this is going, by Christmas we’ll turn out to have more Americans trapped in Afghanistan than there are members of Lizzie Warren’s extended family trapped on reservations across the entire continental US. 

#youknowwhat’scoming….

#waitforit…

#wemustneverstopmockingher!

Also, just to show my work, that Pentagon official’s title was “Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.” 

I don’t like the sound of “under secretary” – I imagine that Bill Clinton had a lot of those over the years.  Though in his case, many of them likely had a title of “Under-Desk Secretary.” (Boom!) 

And that “for policy” is a teensy bit vague, isn’t it?

Nitpickers might say that some of my titles are equally long.  “Man of Ice Cream, Man of Principle,” for example.

Not to mention, “Cautious Optimism Roving Correspondent for Affairs (and Stuff)”

Okay, the “and stuff” is a little on the vague side, too.  But like many renaissance men, I’m something of a roving correspondent without portfolio, going wherever my sharp tongue and razor wit are most needed.  And the ceremony when the great CO himself gave me that title – it involved a scepter and a sword – imbued me with even greater powers of perception.

As opposed to the under secretary of whatever, who sounds like a dim-witted stepson of some politically connected armchair general whose main contribution has been in apple polishing and white-rage-studying.

But I digress.

In popular culture news, it’s schadenfreude-tastic that four versions of “Let’s Go Brandon” songs are near the top of the music charts right now. 

In another couple of months, it’s going to look like the mid-60s again, when it seemed like more than half of the top 40 were Beatles’ songs.  Only now it’s going to be more than half will be variations on the theme that Joey Gaffes sucks.

On the one hand, I can’t really applaud this.  Because as the resident old “get off my lawn” guy of CO nation, my feelings about rap are well known: 99% of it is terrible, and barely music at all.  And all of the current crop of Brandon songs consist of about 90% repeated sampling of that vacuous reporter saying, “Let’s Go Brandon.”

On the other hand… HA! HA!HA! HAHAHA!   

If the charts are going to be topped by a bunch of hideous “music” by people who can’t sing, or play instruments, or read music – and spoiler alert: they are – better some shots at the worst president of my lifetime than one more gigantic-hind-quarters-having harpy screeching out sub-literate racial hatred and sexual obscenities. 

The most recent Dem circular-firing-squad moment is the ongoing chaos involved with the hideously bloated and unnecessary multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure and “build-back-better” bills.  Even including Obamacare, it’s hard to imagine pieces of legislation with more lies built into them.

Just off the top of my head: There’s precious little “infrastructure” in the infrastructure bill, unless you count “human infrastructure.”  Which you shouldn’t.  Because there’s no such thing, and these liars just pulled that made-up term out of their Schumers to serve their nefarious political purposes.

(Like when they described George Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic.”  Or when they called violent orgies of assault and arson “mostly peaceful protests.”  Or when they lauded Bruce Jenner as “the greatest female athlete of the year.”)

Also, the nominally $3.5 trillion bill, “is not going to cost a penny,” says the creepily whispering Crypt Keeper.

Incredibly, the greatest threat to this gargantuan, destructive, far-left wish list comes from the truly lunatic left, for whom it doesn’t go far enough!  Moonbats like Jayapal, Tlaib and the squad have thwarted Biden and Pelosi’s attempts to pass the idiotic $1.9 trillion bill, unless they can pair it with a vote on the more idiotic $3.5 trillion bill.

To which a grateful America can only say, “You go, ladies!  Stick to your principles, and don’t allow a vote.  Let’s go, moonbats (clap clap clapclapclap)!”    

Calling that group the “progressive” wing of the party has to be one of the most laughable euphemisms ever.  They are all trying to “progress” back to the good old days of 1917, when the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were in a bloody civil war to see which group of communists would take the forefront in the battle to impoverish, persecute and control millions around the globe.

On second thought, that sounds about right for this bunch.

And in the middle of this melee, Biden is looking even weaker than before, which I would have not thought possible.  He begged for a passed bill before he went to Europe, so he could step off the plane and have his Chamberlain moment, waving a worthless piece of paper in triumph… because he doesn’t remember who Chamberlain was.  Or what happened next.

And he didn’t even get that.

The Saturday photo op from the summit meeting with world leaders tells the story.  In the past, American presidents were always near the center of the picture, reflecting the centrality of the US in world affairs.

In this picture, Biden is the farthest from the center, on your far left (appropriately) as you look at the pic. He was practically out in the parking lot with the valets!  Where, coincidentally, he would have done less damage to US prestige.  

(Rumors that he was actually out there, doddering around in front of the gas-guzzling limos that climate change virtue-signalers always drive — looking for the hand crank to start them — are unconfirmed.)

Back at home, Biden’s toxic unpopularity has threatened the VA governor’s campaign of Terry McAuliffe, an odious old Clinton hack who should be a shoo-in, given VA’s blue demographics and his opponent’s political inexperience.

But Terrible Terry admitted that Biden’s unpopularity is causing him problems.  Late in his flailing campaign, McAuliffe called in Obama to campaign for him, and Obama gave the kind of partisan, arrogant, mean-spirited screed that should remind us of the kind of man he is. 

He dismissed GOP arguments about condescending, unresponsive government, and derided the protests about a girl who was raped in school – and then had her story denied and covered up by leftist school officials.  He scolded voters who got angry about corrupt school officials silencing parents and denying sexual assaults as people who want to “waste time” on “these phony, trumped up culture wars” and “fake outrage.”

Ugh.  Obama has always been a small, small man, and it’s infuriating to see him portrayed as this classy, above-the-fray character.  His glib veneer is as thin as his skin, and he’s as rough-elbowed a partisan as anybody in Washington. He isn’t even a very smart politician. 

I mean sure, he’s smarter than Biden.  Small woodland creatures and single-celled organisms are smarter than Joe Biden. 

But an intelligent pol would never have given that speech.  He’s coming to a Dem state, where the well-known Dem candidate is being killed by a story about the obnoxious arrogance of Dem school officials.  A smart pol would have entered to a rousing playing of “Hail to the Chief” and some upbeat music, and used his residual popularity to talk up McAuliffe and rally the base.    

Instead, Barry stomps in and berates the voters, mocks the outrage of those who object to rape as “fake,” and throws gas on the school story fire.  He seems oblivious that he embodies the offensive elitism that has been hurting McAuliffe’s chances.

I would have loved to see Ken Doll Newsom lose his CA recall race, but the voters of CA proved that they haven’t suffered enough yet.  I am hoping and praying that the Virginia voters are smarter than that!

I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday. 

Avenatti/Captain Ahab, 2024!

The Cautious Optimism Roving Correspondent for Affairs (and Stuff) – CORCA – is back with a new column.  Because he’s not like the useless Secretary of Transportation, who can just drop everything  and disappear for two months at a time with no consequences!

Three quick stories to talk about today — one involving thieves, one involving Alec Baldwin’s tragic accident, and one involving a much greater tragedy – our Cadaver in Chief’s townhall performance last week.

Last year, when peaceful rioters in many American cities transformed into peaceful looters, it was disgusting, but I could almost understand it.  The mass shoplifting and looting was happening amidst a gigantic crimewave, when emotions were high, in blue cities where the locals had elected morally vacuous idiots who accepted the criminality, and prevented cops from stopping it.

But the latest crimewave happening in blue cities – the best recent examples are in CA – is beyond comprehension.  I’m talking about the brazen shoplifters who walk into stores in broad daylight, in front of store security guards, employees and customers, and fill bags with items and walk out with them.

This is an ominous cultural red flag, the kind you usually find only in seriously dysfunctional societies.

For example, when the East German commies started building a wall to keep their own citizens IN…

When a major hurricane hits a socialist People’s Republic’s major city, and the damage is less than $800…  

When a bunch of whiny white people get outraged on behalf of American Indians, and get a football team to change its name, and over A FULL YEAR later, the best name that team can come up with is the “Washington Football Team…”

Those are all moments when a society needs to look in the mirror and confront the question of what has gone so horrifically wrong. 

This latest crimewave is one of those moments, because it exposes a moral degeneracy so perverse that it shocks the conscience. 

“Thou Shalt Not Steal” is one of those axiomatic, inarguable statements.

Like, “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” or “Measure twice, cut once.”

Or, “Let’s go, Brandon!”

There’s something about the brazenness of the theft that is so alarming.  These aren’t crimes committed in the heat of passion, or in the middle of chaotic and traumatic events, or by people who are desperate, stealing food to feed their families.

Yes, these criminals are lazy, and they aren’t very intelligent, and they are morally stunted.  But mouth-breathing Biden supporters though they may be, they are reacting rationally to a malevolent political ideology that has incentivized them to do these things.

Leftist elites have taught them to hate businesses, and people who are more financially successful than they are.  Those elites have also hamstrung the cops, promising that no one who steals less than $950 worth of goods will be arrested or charged.    

The worst part is the self-imposed impotence of the society that stands by and watches, and lets this happen.  That response is sociopathically suicidal!

Can you think of any other society, anywhere in the world, at any time in human history that would behave this way? 

Stealing is one of the most fundamental human offenses, and while various societies have reacted with varying degrees of severity – some executed thieves, some exiled them, Muslims chop their hands off, virtually every society imprisons them for at least a while – no culture I’ve ever heard of refuses to try to stop — or even deter! – theft.

I’ve got a personal reason to especially hate a thief. Many years ago, when I realized what a financial mistake I’d made in getting a liberal arts PhD, I decided that I’d start a second job buying and fixing up old houses.

I could only afford places that were dilapidated enough that they scared off more sane rehabbers.  When I finally was able to buy my first rental, I spent my life savings on the house and some tools to fix it with — not to mention borrowing up to my eyeballs!

One month into the process, some lowlife creep broke into my pathetic little fixer-upper and stole the tools that at that time probably constituted half of my net worth.  I can still remember how mad I was when I discovered the theft. 

If you’ve ever seen the great first Denzel Washington Equalizer movie, when he went through the home improvement store killing bad guys with various hardware and gardening implements, you’ll have some idea of my state of mind.  Back then I couldn’t afford a fancy nail gun, but if I’d been able to catch that thief, I’d have made out just fine with only the old-school framing hammer that I’d bought!

Anyway, great job, California!  You had a chance to dump your egregious governor, the gender non-binary Ken Doll with the hair of a Mexican soap opera leading man, but you’ve doubled down on stupid.     Now your stores are closing left and right, your ports are paralyzed, and successful businesses and people are fleeing. 

Your loss will the red states’ gain, as it should be.

I’m not going to pile on Alec Baldwin in the wake of his accidental shooting of two people on a movie set, though he makes a tempting target.  He is apparently a very messed up person in many ways, but my religion teaches me that so are we all, and my own flaws keep me plenty busy.  Baldwin is going to have a lot of tough days ahead of him, not the least of which will involve dealing with the guilt that comes from a tragedy like this.  For that reason, we should pray for him.

I think it’s worth mentioning, though, that Hollywood writ large is drowning in hypocrisy when it comes to guns.  The worst aspect of that is the way they preen and lecture regular people about how bad guns are, when virtually all of them pay armed security to afford them the kind of protection that common folk can only come close to by keeping a gun for self-defense.   

But not far behind that is the cynical way they exploit guns in movies.  Almost every alluring image we have of guns and their use comes from tv and movies, many of which romanticize and fetishize guns constantly.

From war movies to thrillers to westerns to cop shows, Hollywood’s products are awash in gun porn, and with every new release it’s more of the same: Something John Wick This Way Comes.  (And there’s your required monthly Shakespeare allusion.) 

I’m not complaining.  I know that entertainment isn’t the same as real life, and that every movie isn’t for everyone.  I’m perfectly happy with the deal I’ve made with my wife: she can watch all of the costume dramas and rom coms she likes, and I’ll stick with the gritty crime shows and war movies and Denzel dropping a bad guy with a limb saw through the trachea.

Like most people raised in flyover country, I was taught that guns were a tool.  They’ve got their dangers, and they’ve got their uses – just like every other tool in the garage and shop. 

But Hollywood has profited enormously from making guns enticing.  They’ve lit them like a young Margot Robbie, choreographed their graceful use, and enhanced their impact through sound effects – not just the gunshots themselves, but the satisfying, machined clicks and clacks involved in slamming home magazines and freeing slides and cocking triggers, not to mention the sonorous rattling of spent casings raining on concrete floors during an adrenaline-dumping gunfight. 

The moral midgets in show business make movies shot-through with gunplay, and then Glock-shame regular Americans who want to exercise their 2^nd Amendment rights to protect themselves in the real world.  (I was going to say “Glock-block,” but I am too highbrow for that kind of thing.) (Which is why they call me Martin Simpson: Man of Ice Cream, Man of Principle.)  If they had put their money where their mouths are, they wouldn’t have greenlit another violent western, and Alec Baldwin wouldn’t be going through the dark night of the soul that he now faces.

Finally, what can I say about Biden’s ultra-disturbing town hall?  I hate to speak ill of the dead, but… Yikes!

I know by now that nobody can stop Biden – or any elite Dems – from lying constantly. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, Slick Willy’s gotta grope, elite Dems gotta lie.  (No, the trillions of extra spending are not “free.”  No, runaway inflation is not a good thing.  No, the supply chain disaster is not an act of God.  No, Trump didn’t cause 9/11, the great depression, or the common cold.)

But is there no Democrat handler, flunky or corner man who can stop him from that creepy whispering? They must have told him the effect it has on people: adults cringe, children cry, dogs whimper and try to get behind their owners’ legs.   But there he went again, whispering that the rich “don’t pay a cent.”

The GOP released a video compilation of his recent whisperings, and they couldn’t be any more unnerving if the last one of them was, “the call is coming from INSIDE the house!”

And what was with that seemingly 10-minute stretch where he squinted through a long question from Anderson Cooper while holding both arms out in front of him, bent at the elbow, and holding both hands clenched into fists? 

It reminded me a little of the eerie reflex function you see once in a while on the football field, when a player lies on the turf with both arms extended unnaturally, after a particularly hard hit. (Except that in this context, the only thing taking hard hits are our constitution, domestic policy, foreign policy, economy, and national dignity.)

Joe Biden literally looks crazy when he’s just standing there listening! 

Then he starts talking, and only makes things worse.  Before Anderson could jump in and bail him out when he couldn’t remember that one of the ports he has crippled is in Long Beach, Biden lost steam after remembering “LA,” and then looked at his feet and said, “Oh, what am I doing here?”

What indeed, Mr. President? What ARE you doing here?

Please go.

Or should I say, “Please go, Brandon!”

It’s been a long 13 years, and it’s only been 36 weeks.