As Christmas comes nearer, I always get happier.
We’ve got the house decorated inside and out, and I’m savoring the carols and the first couple of advent services our church has held. Next week I’ll do my annual listening to the late, great Frank Muller’s reading of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, which always rewards re-reading. Plus, this is my first Christmas in decades when I won’t be collecting a big batch of papers to grade today.
I mean, you start with “unto us a Son is given,” and you throw in a healthy family and no more papers to grade, and you’ve got the makings of an excellent yuletide at stately Simpson manor.
Of course, politics has not brought a lot of joy lately, though I’m thankful for the good news that has come our way amidst the disappointments of 11/8. For example, we’ve been able to say a fond farewell to Beta O’Rourke, Stacey Abrams, Crybaby Kinzinger and Liz Cheney – who until her stomping in the primary was neck-and-neck with the Condescending Cherokee from MA in the “Most Contemptible Liz” competition (#wemustneverstopmockingher).
And January will be brightened when the GOP takes the House gavel from Imhotep Pelosi. It would be nice if we could savor the angry look on her face at that moment, but unfortunately the injections have done their work, and she’s no longer capable of communicating emotions through facial expressions.
But we know the well-deserved remorse that will wrack her bitter little heart on that day, whichever canopic jar it happens to be sitting in at the time.
Add to that a welcome display of GOP testicular fortitude in the Senate last week. (I know: I was as shocked as you are.) This delicious moment of a schadenfreude slap-down came via Senator Tom Cotton, during a Senate Judiciary hearing on the proposed merger of the Albertsons and Kroger grocery chains.
Like many giant companies, Kroger has been regularly caving to woke whining and bullying, and sucking up to the quasi-socialist Dems who should be their natural enemies.
Two quick examples, from a Daily Caller article: In 2019, Kroger required their employees to wear aprons with rainbow/Pride Flag logos, and when two Christian employees refused, they fired them. (The happy ending came when the fired employees sued and won $180K.) And just this summer, a whiny poke-nose with a few thousand Twitter followers sent a “let me talk to your manager” tweet complaining about some patriotic, pro-American can koozies that Kroger stores in NC were selling.
She was offended because too many people are shot in Dem-controlled cities by criminals with illegally obtained handguns, and too many mentally ill people whom the Dems have kept on the streets commit mass shootings each year. And obviously the can koozies – along with our horrible Founders and their hideous freedom fetish – are responsible.
(I’ve paraphrased her tweet. But accurately.)
So she demanded that Kroger stop selling the koozies, because Americans who disagree with her shouldn’t be able to hold their drinks in something that offends her.
And Kroger immediately caved.
So fast forward to last week. The Dems are trying to stop the proposed $25 billion Kroger and Albertsons merger, which requires regulatory approval. Because why should two private businesses and their stockholders be able to take any action without having to beg permission from a bunch of low-IQ bureaucrats who couldn’t operate a lemonade stand?
Who do these grocery stores they think they are: free people, operating in a free market, in a free country?
Kroger appeals to GOP senators to help protect them from the power-hungry Dems. And Tom Cotton, bless him, wins a place in my humble conservative’s heart.
He points out that many large companies traditionally seek help from Republicans to uphold their rights in the face of Dem predations. “I’ve cautioned them for years, that if they silence conservatives and center-right voters … if they discriminate against them in their company, they probably shouldn’t come and ask Republican senators to carry the water for them whenever our Democratic friends want to regulate them or block their mergers.”
And he closes with these immortal words: “So I’ll say this. I’m sorry this is happening to you. Best of luck.” And then he slapped his microphone off.
YES!
That was the political equivalent of an old West gunfighter fanning the hammer on a Colt and drilling the bad guy in the heart, then twirling the gun on his finger and slipping it back into its holster.
More of this, please.
Finally, I’ve got 3 California stories that I think illustrate “reap what you sow” message, in different ways.
The first seems like some kind of fable, a “red flag” or omen story, even though it actually happened.
CA famously has terribly-managed traffic, and on December 2nd, two separate accidents happened within a few hours in Santa Clarita. The second one happened in the morning, when a SUV and a big rig crashed, spilling a bunch of fuel and shutting down one freeway in a spot near where a different, elevated freeway passes by it.
An hour later, during the cleanup of the second accident, a box truck crashed on the elevated highway, and then fell over on top of the wrecked semi from the second accident.
That sounds like it should be a proverb: “When your wrecked vehicles are falling off one highway and landing on your other wrecked vehicles, it’s time to flee the state.”
One day later, another Aesop’s fable happened in the Woodland Hills area of LA, where a father was unloading a minivan when a coyote loped up and grabbed his daughter. He was able to scare the animal off after it had done only minor damage to the toddler, but she had to get rabies shots, and the coyote hasn’t been caught.
I’m not saying that the coyote is still out there because of no cash bail policies, or because the authorities looked the other way because it was a brown c.o.c. (coyote of color), and thus a victim of our species-ist justice system.
But I’m not NOT saying that, either.
In fact, I’ll bet that the first thought of every sane California resident – the literally dozens of them – was, “Thank God it wasn’t a Balenciaga ad scout, or a Democrat puppy fetishist state senator, or a human ‘coyote’ who is smuggling illegals into our state! Thank you, relatively benign and well-intentioned predatory coyote!”
The last story, and the one that best sums up what’s wrong with California, is the tale of a construction project.
It seems that the public servants of San Francisco, having noticed that their streets are thigh-deep in human waste, recently announced that they were building a new public toilet.
So naturally, with the best minds in CA at work on the problem, it was quickly and efficiently tackled, and was completed early and under budget. The end.
HA! I kid because I love.
Actually the only correct part of that last sentence was that the best minds in CA were deployed on the project.
(Rumors that the roster included two junkies, a blocky grievance study prof with a Moe haircut and a perpetual scowl, a nonbinary emu with PTSD after having recently escaped from a San Francisco “petting” zoo – and please don’t ask what goes on in a SF petting zoo — three children’s teddy bears dressed in bondage gear, and Gavin Newsom, have not been confirmed.)
Planning began a year ago, and when they recently unveiled the proposal – and here I’d like you to imagine a rousing playing of “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” as if you were getting up for the appearance of Cocky the Gamecock before a SEC football game – it turned out that the toilet is going to cost $1.7 million.
I wish I were making that up.
And while the cost might sound unreasonable, there’s more to the story: The Versailles Palace of toilets is going to be ready for use in… wait for it….
No, literally.
Wait for it.
Because it is scheduled to open in 2025!
(Fortunately for San Franciscans, every public street there is a toilet, so nobody is going to have to cross their legs and hold it for the next 3 years.)
There are two-thousand-year-old Roman aqueducts and roads that cost less and were finished sooner than that toilet. And they are all in better shape now than that SF toilet will be two weeks after it opens.
Meanwhile in the free state of Florida, two bridges connecting two islands to the mainland were destroyed by the recent CAT-4 hurricane. They were rebuilt in 2 weeks.
In the words of Tom Cotton, “Best of luck, California!”
Fetterman/ Wile E. Coyote, 2024!
Martin Simpson 