Month: February 2023

This week has given us another mixture of good news and bad news.  Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first, and then end with the good stuff.

All three bad stories today involve people stricken with idiocy.  (You’ll remember from earlier columns that we’re supposed to say, “mummified persons” instead of “mummies,” and “people with anorexia” instead of “anorexics,” and “people of fake ethnicity” instead of “Elizabeth Warren.”)  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Unfortunately, the subject of the first story is our president, who has been stricken with late-stage, metastasized, weapons-grade idiocy.

A year ago Biden signed the most unnecessary law since Porky Nork Kim in North Korea declared that nobody in that country could have the same hideous haircut as his.  I’m talking about the “Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act,” which Biden signed immediately after the titular atrocious hate crime.

If by “immediately” you mean “67 years later.”

Biden pretended that lynchings are still happening on most weekdays in America, and that Americans are passionately divided as to whether they are an admirable practice or not.  Joe bravely came down on the anti-lynching side. 

Which gives all of us hope that he’ll soon be able to ram a bill through congress to stop the constant witch trials that are currently plaguing our nation.

Not to mention creating traffic jams in many of our larger cities on “Witch Burning Wednesdays.”

Of course this charade was an empty gesture by an empty suit with an empty head.

So naturally he went back for an encore last Friday, when he hosted a screening of the movie “Till” at the White House, and used the opportunity to fan the flames of racial animus yet again. 

In a disgusting lecture, he said, “You know, folks, lynching is pure terror,” and then went on to recite the way black people were hung, burned, drowned and castrated, before aiming some racial venom at the true villains: white people.

After describing how white crowds celebrated lynchings, he said, “Hard to believe, but that’s what was done.  And some people still want to do that.”

I can’t think of any public statement by a US president in my lifetime that is as hateful and slanderous as that last sentence.  And the next time any lefties try to sell the idea of moderate ol’ Joe, the great unifier, we should all throw that quote back in their faces, and then give them two choice words.  (And I don’t mean, “happy birthday.”)

No reasonable person should accept the assignment of collective moral guilt to people based on their sharing a skin color with long-dead people who did terrible things in the past.  But if today’s national Democrats are going to try that demonizing smear, we should counter that such moral guilt would certainly better fit a sub-group of people who belonged to the political party that organized, carried out and celebrated those terrible events, i.e. the Democrat party.

Not all Democrats were secessionists, but virtually all of the secessionists were Democrats.  They started the Civil War to protect slavery, and when a GOP president waged war – carried out in large part by future GOP president Grant – and defeated the pro-slavery Dems, those Dems started the Klan, and then passed Jim Crow Laws and oppressed blacks – including lynching some – for another century or so.  

Obviously, Democrats today should not be blamed for the crimes committed by their party brethren in the past.  Unless, that is, they’re going to shamefully accuse whites in general (and conservatives specifically) of still wanting to do what their party collectively and actually did.

For our second bad story, we go across the pond, to find British leftists who are as wrong-headed and Western-civilization-hating as their American co-religionists. 

The Orwellian “Prevent” project was started in the UK after the Brits noticed that many adherents of a certain super-peaceful religion had demonstrated an unfortunate tendency to murder gay people, rape women who weren’t completely covered, and self-detonate in crowded places.  So the government leaped into action, creating the counter-terrorism project and tossing it £50 million per year to “identify warning signs of potential extremism.” 

So did they zero in on podcasts like “50 Ways to Kill an Infidel,” or books like, “Jihad For Dummies,” or websites advertising, “Wembley Stadium Behead-Fest ’23?”  

They did not.  Instead they focused on the real threats: books by “far-right extremists” like Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tennyson, Milton, Orwell, Burke, and John Le Carre, and movies and tv shows like House of Cards and Great British Railway Journeys.

I’m not making that up.  Because nobody could make that up. 

It’s difficult to decide which is more far-fetched: American conservatives just dying to lynch black people, or wild-eyed terrorists getting psyched up by reading The Canterbury Tales, then chanting the “Alas Poor Yorick” speech from Hamlet as they drive a panel van loaded with plastic explosives into a crowd at the nearest synagogue.

These people are well-funded idiots! 

Sorry.  I meant to say “well-funded people stricken with idiocy.”

I read about one final bad story in a Daily Wire article with a title that sums up the depths to which a once-great state has fallen: “California Democrats Move to Ban Uses of Police K9s, Citing Racism.”

Why not?  If non-racist conservatives today can be tarred with the brush of crimes carried out by racist Democrats 150 years ago, why can’t police dogs be racist too?

And before you can object that police dogs are overwhelmingly not white – though there might a rare white Husky or Samoyed K9 – I’m way ahead of you. 

Yes, the vast majority of police dogs are black and brown.   But that doesn’t mean they’re not white supremacists, just like the black Memphis cops who shot Tyre Nichols are black white supremacists. 

And if GOP governor candidate Larry Elder can be called “the black face of white supremacy” by moron journalists in CA, you know what the police dogs will be called:

The black-and-brown muzzles of white supremacy.  

Ironically, if this unutterably stupid proposal passes, the end result will be more minority suspects getting shot.  Because as it stands right now, letting some better-trained Cassie the Wonder Dogs play a spirited game of “Bite the Criminal Like a Pork Chop” convinces a lot of previously resistant Biden-voting recidivists to give up.

But without Man’s Best Friend in a squad car, a lot of thugs are going to discover that Man’s Second-Best Friend is a service pistol. 

And they’ll be able to thank their Democrat benefactors, as they bleed out with a thorax full of bullets, that at least they didn’t have to put up with a bigoted Belgian Malinois latched on to their arm or buttocks. 

You’re welcome!

But enough doom and gloom – let’s run through a few happier stories, all of which involve watching dullards reap what they sow.

For example, NPR has announced that they are following the example of other leftist media entities (the Washington Post, CNN, NBC news, etc.), and laying off 10% of their work force.

I normally wouldn’t celebrate people losing their jobs.  But these people have been figuratively defecating on our country and everything we believe in for years.  So don’t let the door hit you on your gender-fluid behinds, wokesters!

The delicious cherry on top of this schadenfreude sundae is that the boneheads have learned nothing from the gut punch that the market is giving them.  The CEO says that despite the cuts, NPR will continue to “support our [diversity, equity and inclusion] priorities and not disproportionately impact people of color or any other historically marginalized group.”

Perfect!  Keep it up, you geniuses!   Ignore competence and usefulness, in favor of counting melanin and genitalia, and see how that works out. 

Allow me to give the disproportionately white mopes who are struggling to carry their cardboard boxes to the elevators the same advice they condescendingly gave to displaced blue-collar workers in recent years: 

Learn to code, kids! 

In other grim employment news, it turns out that Mayor Pete still has his job.  And on Thursday, he finally made it to East Palestine, Ohio. 

(Rashida and Tlaib and Ilhan Omar would have beat him to it by several weeks, because when they heard there was trouble in Palestine, they both headed for the airport.  But then they found out that it wasn’t THAT Palestine, and there was no way that they could blame the Jews for a train derailment.  So they both faded back into their offices, like Homer Simpson disappearing into a hedge.)

Pete got peppered with questions, and his responses almost reached a Que-Mala-esque level of vapidity.  But that wasn’t the worst part. 

Because he put on a hard hat for a photo op. 

He was probably going for the construction worker from The Village People look, but what he achieved was the “Dukakis in a tank” look.

As some wag on Twitter noted, Buttigieg was proven right on Thursday, because there was at least one too many white guys on the construction crew in Ohio that day!

Finally, from the “Thank God Criminals are So Stupid” files comes the story of 31-year-old Canadian crook Michael Stamatakos.  Because lefties in America’s Hat are as gullible and delusional as American lefties, they released Stamatakos early from a jail sentence for arson, with parole conditions.

Shockingly, he violated those conditions and is now on the run, with a handful of new charges, including flight, driving offenses, criminal threats and drug possession.  The hosers have put out a nationwide warrant for his arrest.

He’s just a little punk at 5’5” and 110 pounds, so you’d think he might be able to disappear into the crowds in a big city.  But since he’s a criminal, and stupid, that might be tough to do. 

Because when he wasn’t committing crimes and voting for blackface Trudeau (I’m guessing), he was spending money on really horrific facial tattoos. 

He’s got a giant, black, zipper-like set of vertical lines running from above and below both lips all the way to under both ears; solid black flame-looking things above and below both eyes and in the middle of his forehead; and the word “HA” repeated 6 times on his forehead, along with various other designs.    

In other words, he’s wearing permanent, facial anti-camouflage: heavy black markings on a little white guy in a snow-white country.  The imbecile is going to be visible from space!

I just hope that the Mounties don’t have any racist police dogs, because they’re going to take one look at his mostly black face and tear into him before he can even say, “What’s this all aboot, ay?”

“Dr.” Jill Biden/racist K9 Bull(dog) Connor, 2024!

Today I’ve got three topics: Mayor Pete, two Dems’ reactions to crime, and a note on changing the end of my columns.  So let’s get to it.

Mayor Pete looks terrible yet again.  I know it’s been said a million times – or possibly just this once — but Secretaries of Transportation are just like offensive linemen in the NFL: the less you hear about them, the better. 

(Quick, can any of you name any Transportation Secretaries before this guy?   Have you forgotten Frederick Amtrak, or Johnny Boeing, or Carlyle Chrysler?  See!  Those are all made-up names, and none of you knew that.  And there’s no reason you should have.)

The only time in a game when you hear the lineman’s name is after a 56-yard touchdown run is called back because of a holding call on the hapless, should-be-anonymous lineman.

Similarly, when have we heard Mayor Pete’s name?  When he ran for president, it turned out that he had not done a good job of filling potholes in Indiana.  (I know that may sound like some kind of gay slang, but it’s a real thing.)  Then he was defeated in the primaries by Joe Biden. 

If that wasn’t shame enough, he became Sec Trans (again, not an odd sexual reference, but the accepted abbreviation for his job title), his only qualification being his sexual preference, since he had no job experience involving transportation since playing with choo-choos when he was a kid.  (And the pothole thing, which I guess is transportation-adjacent.  And a negative.)

Then he takes office, and we have the biggest supply chain cluster-schtup in our history.  And where was Pete?  AWOL from work for months, so that he could take his time to not breast feed the baby he didn’t carry or deliver, and to fight off the post-partum depression he didn’t experience, since he was never involved pre-partum or even mid-partum with a baby. 

The kicker was that nobody even knew he’d been away from the job for months, or missed him in any way!

By comparison, I retired from my professor job 9 months ago, and the university is still flying the flag at half-mast over it.  Faculty have stopped publishing, students have become listless and directionless, and the football team had a lackluster season.  (Half-time pep talks were met with players muttering things like, “How are we supposed to go out there and give 110% when Dr. Simpson is gone?” And, “Yeah! Plus he made Shakespeare interesting, while at the same time being a hilarious genius!”) 

I can’t even go to a local supermarket without wearing a ball cap and a big fake Ron Swanson moustache as a disguise, and if anybody recognizes me it spreads like wildfire, and the next thing you know it turns into a big, “O captain, my captain,” scene from Dead Poets Society. 

But Mayor Pete takes 4 months off, and it doesn’t leave a ripple.  Then he gets back and starts emoting about how roads are racist, and construction crews have way too many white folks on them.  (Has he ever seen a construction crew?  And the Village People don’t count, because only one of them was a construction worker.)

And now a huge environmental disaster of a train derailment happens, and he leaps into action and writes a tepid press release about it… 11 days later.

Before you criticize that, though, remember that he may have been stuck at home for 10 days, struggling to produce nourishing milk out of his not-at-all-female chest.  Which sounds really, really hard.

This guy has been, literally, a train wreck. 

And even though the hapless Biden administration has not produced anything close to the political equivalent of a 56-yard touchdown run, Joe did recently manage to shoot down a defenseless, slowly drifting spy balloon.  And then he went full Leroy Jenkins (Google it), blasting everything in the sky for a week.  (Score so far: Illinois balloon club 0, Crazy Eddie’s Buy-here/Pay-here car lot balloon 0, one very confused high-flying American eagle 0 – USAF half-million-dollar missiles, 3!)   

That was the equivalent of the Biden administration finally getting a first down, but only on a penalty.  And then the giant Jumbo-tron at one end of the stadium flashes up a big picture of Pete’s gay-guy-cosplaying-as-Mad-Magazine’s-Alfred-E.-Neuman face.

And the entire left side of the stadium groans.  

From incompetence, we move on to incarceration.  As in, “Why don’t many Democrats want to put criminals in jail?”

Two stories illustrate the bad and the good.  First, in Oakland a 48-year-old woman named Jennifer Angel started a bakery in 2008, and has worked hard to keep it going, especially during the harsh lockdowns of the last few years.  (Guess which party runs Oakland?) 

Earlier this month a couple of thieves stole her purse as she was getting into her car.   She chased them to try to get the purse back, but she got caught in the door of their fleeing vehicle and dragged for 50 feet, dying of her injuries the next day.

It was definitely a tragedy, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.  But what made the story unusual is that after her death, her friends and loved ones released a statement touting Angel’s longtime activism, which involved being both an anarchist and social justice warrior.

The mourners’ statement contradicted itself.  Early on it said, “We know Jen would not want to continue the cycle of harm by bringing state-sanctioned violence to those involved in her death [because she] did not believe in carceral punishment.”  But it closed by saying, “We wish for Jen’s legacy to be one of deep commitment to safety and dignity for everyone.”

It doesn’t make sense to say that you are committed to people’s safety, while saying that you don’t want the criminals who prey on them to be stopped and put in jail.  Just as it doesn’t make sense to be an anarchist business owner, since anarchists don’t believe in private property or state action to prevent theft, beliefs which would preclude her from objecting to anyone looting her business or stealing her purse.

While the criminals who victimized her are primarily responsible, Jennifer Angel’s ideology also contributed to her own death.  If they have long criminal records (as is almost always the case in soft-on-crime, Dem-run cities), her activism played a role in keeping them on the streets, where they could steal her property and murder her.

And while it might sound almost admirable (in other contexts) to be willing to die for your political beliefs, there is nothing noble about subjecting future victims – who probably have not signed on to your naïve and foolish ideological death wish – to your same fate.

Judging from her friends’ statement, no lessons have been learned so far.  I don’t know how many people signed that statement, but I wonder how many more of them will have to be victimized before the survivors begin to question their destructive ideology?

But lest you think that all lefties have lost their minds on this issue, let me remind you that it’s always the 90% of total morons who give the other 10% a bad name. 

Take, for instance, Dem congresswoman Angie Craig, from Minnesota.  She was recently attacked in DC  (ruled by guess which party?) by a thug who followed her into an elevator, punched her, and started choking her.  She threw her cup of hot coffee on him and got away, and he was caught and arrested.

(If she lived in a state that recognized the second amendment, she could have started putting bullets in him, starting with the groin and moving up.  That way, he wouldn’t be back on the streets in a nanosecond, and she wouldn’t have spilled her coffee.)

It turns out that the 26-year-old creep had a long criminal resume (Surprise!) that included indecent exposure, assaulting a cop, theft, and B&E.  He committed 12 known assaults before attacking Craig.

Craig, God bless her, told CBS news that she’d like to see people like him put in jail.  “I was assault number 13 on his record, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that there’s not a 14, a 15, and a 20.”

Miraculously, the CBS reporter didn’t immediately call her a racist and spit in her face. 

However, the Dems running DC did the next best thing, because this is how the story ends: “Despite the city’s crime crisis, the District of Columbia City Council voted in January to force through revisions of the district’s criminal code in an effort to soften penalties on violent crimes and reduce penalties, even for those accused of violent crimes like murder or sexual assault.”

They say a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. 

It’s too late for Jennifer Angel, but Ms. Craig, please allow me to offer you some literature from Adam Smith, Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson, along with a recommendation to check out the good people here at Cautious Optimism!

One final note: Regular readers will know that I love a good running joke.  (For example: #wemustneverstopmockingthecaucasiancherokee.)

For a while now, I’ve closed my columns with a consistent joke, ending each one with a tongue-in-cheek evocation of the next Dem presidential ticket.  During the Trump years, I listed, Avenatti in the prez spot, and a name taken for each column in the VP slot.  (That was to mock all the MSM pundits who slobbered all over the sleazy porn lawyer, touting him as a worthy presidential candidate purely because he hated Trump as much as they did.)

Since Avenatti is now in the joint for a while, I switched to the next most empty Democrat suit, ending my recent columns with “Fetterman/[Different name here], 2024!

But since Fetterman was recently hospitalized, and has now checked in to Walter Reed with obviously serious physical and mental problems, it doesn’t feel right to continue taking shots at him in each column.

Don’t get me wrong.  He is still an awful politician who had no business running for Senate – in a horrifically bad campaign – and his election is an indictment of the voters of Pennsylvania, the soul-less cynics running the Democrat party, and his awful wife who helped put her husband in this position.  (Not to mention the PA GOP and GOP voters, who couldn’t blow out such a clearly unqualified oaf.) 

But he’s a human being, and he’s going through something terrible now.  To be going through it surrounded by despicable party hacks and a self-serving spouse without the compassion you’d show for a sick animal is heartbreaking. 

So I’ll pray for him, and wish a pox on his heartless political masters, and move on to a new column closing, which involves picking a different creepy leftist. 

Therefore, I give you…

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Alfred E. Buttigieg, 2024!

+The ridiculous stories just keep coming, so I’m going to jump right in.

So now we’re apparently shooting down random flying things like they’re Heinkel bombers at the height of the Battle of Britain.  I don’t have anything substantive to add to all of the Balloongate 23! craziness, other than a language note that caught my eye.

In an effort to reassure us that the many objects now apparently darkening our skies are not aliens or Chicom aggressors, several pols and commentators have called them “sky trash.”  Which sounds just great.

It’s also a blast from the past, because back when Bill Clinton was flying on Air Force One or Marine One, his secret service code name was “Sky Trash.” 

And before you can ask:  Hillary was “Sea Biscuit.”  Monica was “Humidor.”  And Chelsea was “Poor Thing.”

True story.

Today’s Red Flag story comes to us from the National Archives and the Smithsonian in DC, and involves events that happened during the week of the National March for Life, on January 20^th.

Taxpayer-funded employees at those two places were offended by many visitors’ clothing which featured pro-life slogans or statements, and systematically insisted that they either remove them or leave the premises.  Visitors from at least three states were told that slogans such as, “I am the Post-Roe Generation,” “Law Students for Life,” and “Life is a HUMAN RIGHT,” constituted, “disturbing the peace,” because they would, “incite others” and “cause a disturbance.” 

Staff members at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum demanded that Catholic students wearing pro-life hats “either take them off or leave!”  One open-minded progressive yelled at one student, “We are a museum that promotes equality, and your hats do not promote equality!”

Were people wearing gear with slogans like, “My Body, My Choice,” and “Pro-Choice!” similarly confronted, you don’t have to ask, because you already absolutely know the answer?

And these weren’t just the random actions of one or two people.  Many different security guards and museum employees did this at several times throughout the day to many different visitors at two different locations.

When the conservative law group American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) sued, the responsible organizations both retreated, giving the least believable story since Liz Warren explained that Geronimo and Crazy Horse were both her great-grandfathers. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

They said that policing visitors’ clothing “is not in keeping with our policy,” and that they “welcome all visitors without regard to their beliefs.”  They also said that their employees were given immediate re-training.

I can only hope that the re-training involved Three-Stooges-style face-slapping.  And perhaps some light caning.

By the way, the ACLU didn’t say a word about this, because they pay as much attention to the civil rights of non-left-wingers as Karine Jean-Pierre does to male suitors.

What makes this red flag more of a scarlet flag is that many of those whose speech-bearing clothing was censored had traveled to the National Archives specifically to see… wait for it… the Bill of Rights!  Which begins with a little scribbling about our God-given right to free speech.           

Because the Left does not understand irony.

You may remember that in my last column I commented on the racial divisiveness inherent in playing the “black national anthem” at the Super Bowl.  I made the point that if one group gets a separate national anthem, everyone’s going to want one, and we’ll look like insensitive racists if we don’t give in.

Pretty soon French-Americans will insist on taking their berets off to Cheap Trick’s “Surrender,” and Icelandic-Americans will demand some hideous Bjork song, and Mexican-Americans will be belting out “Ay, Macarena!” 

(Okay, so I don’t know many Mexican songs.  And yes, the guys who sang Macarena weren’t even Mexican.  But “La Cucaracha” seems even more disrespectful.  That leaves me “The Frito Bandito” song, which I still remember from grade school, and still find hilarious.  But as they say on the cartoon Archer… “inaprops.”) 

Well, an analogous incident has happened in CA that has proven me right.  And not just because the north star of stupid – Adam Schiff – has taken the opposite side.

Instead of additional national anthems, this story involved additional flags on government buildings. 

Two years ago, the Huntington Beach city council voted to allow a LGBTQ+ group to fly the Pride flag, in addition to the usual state and federal flags, on municipal buildings.  Since a more conservative council has been elected recently, the council just voted to disallow any specific sub-group flags.

Cue Schiff-for-brains, who tweeted that not flying the Pride flag is an “attempt to marginalize LGBTQ+ individuals.  But hate cannot be allowed to win.”

Thankfully, Schiff’s moronic take got blasted in the responses, with many people asking whether we should also have straight pride flags.  And I foresee the same kind of explosion of new flags as I predicted with the multiplying ethnic anthems. 

There are already many variations on the pride flag for various sexual sub-groups (bisexuals, pansexuals, etc.), so why not the same thing on the hetero side?  Traditionalists might favor the missionary position, so do they get a flag?  How about the doggy style enthusiasts?  I know some people who are very fond of the ol’ reverse cowgirl.

I mean, not me.  Just people I know.  Not personally, but just from… you know… research.

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Anyway, that road leads to madness, with half of next year’s city budget going to the purchase of flagpoles and flags.  And then you’ve got to cover your kids’ eyes when you’re trying to make your way past dozens of obscene flags just to get into the courthouse to pay a parking ticket. 

Enough!  One national anthem, one state flag, and the stars and stripes.  Other than that, leave us alone, you freaks!

In the “Americans stricken with Idiocy” column, reliable young lunkhead AOC had a rough fortnight.  

First she made a fool of herself, ranting when fellow squad member and jihadi-adjacent brother-marrier Ilhan Omar got tossed off the foreign affairs committee.  She bounced around and pounded the podium, and threw out all the tired cliches: this is about Omar’s race, and about her sex, and about her being a Muslim.

She didn’t mention the reasons that McCarthy had listed – Omar’s long and consistent pattern of anti-Semitic hatred – because she didn’t have a reasonable answer for those.  She also didn’t mention that the GOP is doing exactly what the Dems did to them last term, by setting a precedent of kicking the opposing party’s most abrasive members off of committees. 

Now that the GOP has the House majority, what’s good for the goose is good for the slanderers!

When I was doing some writing workshops for law students, a law professor told me a courtroom strategy that encapsulates AOC’s tantrum perfectly: “When the law is on your side, pound the law.  When the facts are on your side, pound the facts.  When the law and the facts are both against you, pound the table.”  

Then, while football fans were enjoying the Super Bowl and non-fans were critiquing the commercials, AOC donned her dunce cap again, and found the most ridiculous thing to get offended by during a 7-hour broadcast: the two short “Jesus Gets Us” ads.

If you didn’t see them, one is tagged, “Love your Enemies,” and depicts a bunch of pictures of people yelling at each other.  The closing tag line is, “Jesus loved the people we hate.  He gets us.  All of us.” 

The second one is tagged, “Be childlike,” and shows pictures of children being kind to each other, including several featuring cross-racial childhood friendships.  The closing tag line is, “Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults.” 

I know that religion is a touchy subject, to say the least.  And it would be easy to make a religious ad that would offend most Democrats. 

(For example, I could see one with Jesus saying, “I said suffer the children to come unto Me.  But good lord, I didn’t mean abort them! What’s wrong with you?!”   Or maybe one that just shows a montage of Biden fumbling around and looking like he’s ready to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda, and then fade the screen to black, and put up these words:  “’And as it is appointed unto men once to die; but after this the judgment.’  Joe Biden completed step 1 several years ago….”)

But these two ads were not that.  They were completely anodyne.  You’d have to be a pretty unhinged Christophobe to get upset over them.

Cut to AOC, plopping her juicy booty (her words, not mine) onto her computer chair and tweeting out some dumbness:  “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”

Fascism! 

Remember all those speeches in which Hitler and Mussolini went on and on about, “Love your enemies!  Treat them kindly!  Be nice to each other, like children!”

Me neither.

There is only one clear, rational conclusion to explain AOC’s tweet:

She thinks that Jesus wants to date her.   

On a final note, two years ago today we lost Rush Limbaugh, and that one still hurts.  But this weekend, two of the VIPs in the CO Nation who are still fighting the good fight – CO himself, and the Correspondent for Thinly Researched Conspiracy Theories, Manufactured Intrigue, and Ill-Advised Speculation – are celebrating their 60^th birthdays. 

I’m so bummed that I’m not able to make it to World Headquarters for the big event, but I will be there in spirit.  And all I ask is that somebody at the party makes a cruel joke about Liz Warren being whiter than Aspen in January.

Because whenever two or more COers are gathered, and they all chant, “#wemustneverstopmockingher” together, there I’ll be, in the midst of them.

Happy birthday, boys!

Fetterman/the musical genius who wrote “Macarena,” 2024!

Other than watching excerpts from the State of the Union speech, I tried to spend less time following politics over the last week, and that felt pretty good.   I read 2 novels, and then started Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life – loving semi-retirement so far! – and at long last I was able to watch the contractor put the new roof on my Victorian house that burned last year. 

Since I had a handful of stories from the past several weeks that I’d wanted to comment on but hadn’t had the chance, I thought that today I’d catch up on those.

But first I’ve got a new example in what I am right now declaring a recurring series: The Red Flag of the Week.

This week’s entry comes from the Super Bowl, where the unofficial Black National Anthem (Lift Every Voice and Sing) was sung before our actual national anthem.  I understand that this is the third year this has been done, but I don’t like it. 

I’m an “e pluribus unum” kind of guy – like a few founders of our country I could mention – rather than an “e pluribus divide-um” type.  (E pluribus tribalismo?) (I don’t know as much Latin as I should.)

The kind of racial identity politics that leads to separate dorms, graduations, award shows and anthems – even when it is well-intentioned (and it very often is decidedly not) — is not likely to end in greater solidarity and love for our country. 

More often, it leads to demands for more and more carve-outs for other ethnic groups.  There are now more Hispanics than African-Americans in the US; shouldn’t they have their own “national” anthem?  How about the Asians? 

And why should it stop there?  Wouldn’t Guatemalans or Brazilians be duking it out with the Mexicans for pride of place among the Hispanic anthem contenders?  And the Japanese, Koreans and Chinese aren’t traditionally the best of friends, so would they all be happy with one pan-Asian anthem?

And don’t get me started on the Fijians.

Also, if all of those groups start getting jiggy with their own anthems, what about me and my buds over here in Crackertown? I’m half Appalachian hillbilly and half German.  So do I get a stirring rendition of John Prine’s “Muhlenberg Country,” following by a rousing version of Germanic cutie Nena doing “99 Luftballoons?” 

That way lies madness… and not just because the Super Bowl pre-game show would have to last for 16 hours, instead of the modest 12 hours it now takes.  

Speaking of racial identity politics wreaking havoc in our society, does anybody still believe that choosing people for important jobs based largely on their race or ethnicity is a wise path to follow?  Because I remember when the late Joe Biden stated that he was going to pick a black female for vice president, no matter what. 

And now the second-in-command to our decomposing prez is the human distillation of cringe, whose greatest passions are Venn diagrams, yellow school buses and meaning-free repetition of vacuous banalities.   I mean, aren’t we all just fascinated with,“the significance of the passage of time?”

One of the most pernicious unwanted side effects of affirmative action hiring decisions is that they call into question a nominee’s merit, even for those who are eminently qualified, regardless of whether they belong to a group for whom a thumb is placed on the hiring scales. 

In some painful cases, some applicants are given the chance to demonstrate their qualifications, and the results are not pretty.  And I’m not just referring to Que Mala.  Or Liz Warren, whose cheek-bone-based rise has prompted many tribal spokespeople to release statements to the effect that they’ve got nothing to do with that crazy Caucasian lady.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Well, a few weeks ago Louisiana Senator John Kennedy questioned some nominees for district court judgeships, and among them was Charnelle Bjelkengren.  She is African-American, and her past work includes participation in various associations with names like, “the Racial Justice Consortium,” “the Diversity Section,” and “the Systemic Racism Taskforce.” 

In support of her nomination, the Biden administration highlighted that she would be the first black woman on the District Court in the state of Washington if approved.

But when Senator Kennedy asked her a few questions that should have been softballs for an average first-year law student, she… did not do well.  (Welcome to Euphemism Corner, people!)

First Kennedy said, “Tell me what Article 5 of the Constitution does.”  The judge hesitated for a long moment, then said, “Article 5 is not coming to mind at the moment.” 

Kennedy said, “Okay.  How about Article 2?”  Her response: “Neither does Article 2.”

These are not tricky “gotcha” questions.  They don’t involve some minutiae from a civil court ruling on the penalties for stealing a pig in West Virginia in 1889.  There are only 7 articles in the constitution, and she went 0-for-2 on those!

In the interests of full disclosure, I probably wouldn’t be able to recall what those two articles involve if asked about them in that setting, either.

But in my defense, I’ve never gone to law school, and I’m not trying to become a District Court judge! 

It would be like asking a Christian who went to seminary and has been a pastor for 10 years to explain what the Golden Rule is, or to name 2 of the 10 commandments, or to recite John 3:16. 

I can’t imagine that many pastors would fail that test, yet this lady couldn’t come remember the articles of the constitution.

To quote a Bible verse I know, even though I’m not looking for pastoral work:  Jesus wept.

On the schadenfreude front, I enjoyed watching the leftist overlords of NYC being hoisted on their own petards a couple of weeks ago, when their obnoxious virtue signaling about illegal immigrants came back to bite them. 

After several years of moral preening about how they were “sanctuary cities,” a lot of Dem-run places – I’m looking at you, wokesters of Martha’s Vineyard — when given the chance to put their money where their Michael-Moore-size mouths are, have proved to be… less than consistent.  (Seriously, come on in to Euphemism Corner!)

 So when New York received a few hundred illegals a while ago, they temporarily housed them in an upscale Manhattan hotel.  But when it came time for them to move to a migrant shelter in Brooklyn, the illegals refused. They complained that the Brooklyn shelter was “inhumane,” and that instead of beds, they’d be forced to sleep in cots. 

One said, “I was promised a more stable place to stay, here at the Watson.  I feel like I was lied to.”  Many of them set up tents on the streets around the hotel, claiming that their rights had been violated.

In a country that they’d illegally broken into, and where they were being fed and housed for free.

On the one hand, that is infuriating to hear.  These people are supposed to be humble refugees, fleeing from terrible third-world conditions and political persecution, but they sound more like the arrogant, entitled offspring of Dem politicians.  

You know who sleeps on cots and doesn’t complain about it?  Members of the US military!  But that’s not good enough for these people.

Democrat NYC Mayor Eric Adams argued that it’s unfair for cities like his to “carry the weight of a national problem.”

Oh, it’s a national problem now, is it?  Because when it primarily affected small border towns in a lot of red or purple states, you dopes said that it wasn’t a problem at all. 

Until we can force the securing of our borders, I hope that every GOP governor will send every illegal immigrant who steps foot in their states straight up to the Dem-run sanctuary cities, and let them reap the consequences of their misbegotten policies.

When DeSantis sent a handful of illegals to Martha’s Vineyard last year, one of the white leftist ladies there claimed to just love all immigrants, but said, “We’re not a border town!”

You are now, so suck it up, buttercup! 

Finally, Cassie the Wonder Dog and I want to heap some praise on a Marine Corps war dog who recently received a medal after completing four deployments, 50 missions and over 350 explosive sweeps in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.  The Belgian Malinois is named Bass.

His skills include detecting explosive materials, and tracking a person or group of people, along with my personal favorite: “performing team protection through controlled aggression.”  I like the sound of that!

Among his missions, in May of 2019 he helped capture a Taliban bombmaker, while also detecting several bombs in the path of his squad when it was under fire.  He’s now enjoying a well-deserved retirement with his former handler in Texas, and is universally recognized as a Very Good Boy!

I just wish he could do one more brief deployment in Brooklyn, where his handler could explain to some snooty illegals that they had 5 minutes to get into their cots for the night, after which any malingerers would experience of a little old-fashioned “shelter protection through controlled aggression.”

Semper Fi, Bass!

Fetterman/ Eric “Get these migrants out of here!” Adams, 2024!

A giant orb filled with hot air, powered by solar panels and animated by the bad ideas of a socialist superpower has wandered across our country recently.  

But enough about Al Gore.  Let’s talk State of the Union and the Grammys.

I can’t honestly say that I watched the SOTU speech.  Because undergoing that kind of sacrifice would make me a hero for the ages.

Since I’m just a hero for OUR age, I only watched excerpts and clips from the SOTU. But that was enough.  Here’s what I learned:

Mitt Romney continues to be the absolute worst.  He went out of his way to confront GOP house member, loon, and pathological liar George Santos, telling him, “You don’t belong here!” and, “You’re an ass.” 

I will never defend Santos.  He’s such an obvious nut that it reflects badly on the voters in his district, and even the Dem machine who ran someone against him.  How little time did you people spend on opposition research?!

But Mitt Romney is a terrible politician, with absolutely horrific judgment.  As he walked up to give George Santos a dressing down because of his dishonesty, Romney walked past Ilhan “I never knew there was a slur about Jews and money” Omar. And Rashida “pretty on the outside as she is on the inside” Tlaib.  And Maxine “ditto” Waters.  And Cori Bush, and Adam Schiff, and AOC, and Joey Gaffes and Jerry Nadler and—

Whoo!  I got light-headed, trying to name just a few of the inveterate Democrat liars in that room without taking a breath.

But Romney has to elbow his way through that crowd of creepy, “if-their-lips-are-moving-they’re-lying” leftists to settle the hash of the one GOP reprobate who could finish in the first quintile in a Congressional lying competition. 

Well done, Willard.

Speaking of pathological liars, for a guy who’s lied as much as he has for as many years as he has, you’d think Joe Biden would be better at it.  But no, he keeps choosing lies that are either absurd on their face, or that can be easily checked. 

He should have taken a page out of the global warming alarmists’ playbook.  For a long time, they were making their catastrophic predictions – melted polar ice caps, boiling oceans, all fish dead, famines killing billions – about what would happen 10-15 years from now.  Then that time came and went, and nothing they predicted came true. 

They’re not any smarter now, or any less committed to their pet delusions.  But at least they’ve moved their predictions out to the century mark.  By the time the year 2100 rolls around, they’ll all be long-dead, and thus not subject to a mortifying video montage on Ben Shapiro’s podcast about how insanely wrong they were about every single thing.

But Joe Biden can’t get that simple lesson through his liver-spotted coconut.  He lies about things that are obviously disprovable. 

He said that he’s bringing down the deficit.  He said that Jill is a full-time teacher.  (Then how does she find the time to make all those speeches comparing Latinos to tacos, and to make out with Mr. Que Mala?)

He said that the GOP wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare, when they’ve done everything but tattoo, “No cuts to Social Security!” on their foreheads.  

The week before the SOTU, Biden was asked if he takes any blame for inflation.  He said no, explaining that, “It was already here when I got here, man!”  Anyone with a functioning memory, or a computer can quickly confirm that inflation was at 1.4% when Biden took office.   Then he blew it up to as high as 9.1%, and now that it’s dropped back to 6.5% (e.g. 4 times what it was when he “got here, man!), he brags that he’s lowered inflation.

Even that drop has been caused by the Fed – not Brandon – frantically raising interest rates.  You’re welcome, American citizens who might want to get a mortgage, or a car loan, or a HELOC to buy a dozen eggs!

The topics that Biden was most energized about show what a small field he’s now reduced to playing on.  He came out hard against “resort fees” added to many hotel bills, even though – brace yourselves – many of those hotels are not even resorts!  He also wants to stop airlines from charging baggage fees that he thinks are too high. 

Those aren’t national priorities, they’re pet peeves!  What’s next?  Finally bringing executive branch attention to the size of the Early Bird Special platters at Denny’s?

And as always, there was the unhinged yelling.  I think Biden is trying for some kind of forceful leadership vibe, as if he were screaming, “Give me liberty or give me death!”  But it comes across more as Grandpa Simpson, or maybe George Castanza emoting on, “These pretzels are making me THIRSTY!”  

He screamed, “Name me a foreign leader who change places with Xi Xinping!  Name me one!!

First, I think he meant a leader “who WOULD change places.”  Second… What?  What does that even mean?

Biden also hollered that, “More timber has been burned than I’ve observed from helicopters, than the entire state of Missouri!”

Oookkay…

The MSM lost their Schiff over the way many GOP pols booed and heckled when Biden was extra offensive, but that was my favorite part. 

Even though I’ve always kind of liked the British tradition of loudly jeering and yammering when the Prime Minister makes a speech at Parliament, it seemed rude and off-putting to do that here. But not any more.  

Many of our leaders have as much contempt for us as they do for the truth, so why do they deserve such deference?  When Biden was slandering the GOP pols right in front of them – as when he lied that they want to end social security — why should they have to just sit there and take it?  If it’s not rude for him to lie about and insult them, why is it rude to give him some right back? 

It’s not.  So good for them.  And if pols – on our side too – continue to lie and falsely denigrate the other side, I hope this becomes a tradition.

Speaking of tradition, I’ve written this before, but I’d be happy if we started doing SOTUs the same way George Washington did. 

He wrote an annual letter summarizing how the nation was doing, and that was read out to the Congress: “Things are pretty good.  The British navy hasn’t been harassing our shipping, scalpings by the Cherokee Warrens on the frontier are lower than last quarter (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and the corn crop was knee high by the Fourth of July.  God bless America, and stop transing the kids.  The end.”

I can’t honestly say that I watched the Grammys.  Because that would have risked cauterizing the part of my brain that appreciates good music and talented entertainers.  But I did watch some excerpts and clips.  (Again: a hero for our age, and you’re welcome.)  

Here are some things that I learned from the excerpts I saw:

1. Madonna is pretty far along in her process of transformation from a slutty but mildly talented young singer into the lovable JRR Tolkien character, Gollum.

Good lord!  Do stars – or in her case, ex-stars – have no one they can trust to give them an honest bounce when it comes to plastic surgery and how well it is working?  Madonna is not well into her third millenium, like Nancy Pelosi.  She’s only 64 years old!

That’s not that much older than I am.  And I’ve spent zero dollars on any kind of cosmetic enhancement, yet I’m still recognizably a human being, and – in the right light – only one standard deviation away from almost handsome.   

She’s not fooling anybody.  Sure, I guess some surgeries can be in the ballpark of believable.  I mean, she had two cheekbones before; they just weren’t in that location, and they weren’t that size.  And she had eyes before; they just weren’t that deeply sunk into her head, or that frightening.

But some parts aren’t even close.  She used to have eyebrows, for example.  Those things don’t just go away. 

And if they do… people will notice! 

2. Sam Smith is a gender-confused guy with a troublingly high body mass index and a morally deranged and musically negligible “song” that he performed as a duet with a “girl” who still has XY chromosomes, even though “she” had the full “Gavin Newsom” (e.g. surgery to remove all trace of male genitalia) when “she” was 16.    

Smith dressed up all in red, like a pudgy Satan with horns that stuck up through his top hat, and the other guy dressed up like a hooker, and they surrounded themselves with various writhing, gender-disturbed weirdos.  It was an assault on the eyes as much as on the ears, and it made me long for the comparatively soothing sounds of guttural Mongolian throat singing. 

Which is a real thing.  Google “Wolf Totem” by The Hu, and enjoy the extreme gender-binary clarity.

3. Nothing is more boring than a bunch of self-involved and self-styled “rebels” who just want to shock the squares with their “radical” transgressive behavior. 

Between poor old Madonna talking about how controversial and shocking she is, and Sam Smith greasing himself up to stuff himself into a latex suit that looked like a leftover from an old Benny Hill skit, it was just sad.  

You know they were just savoring the chance to traumatize the rubes in the flyover states with their edgy Beelzebub schtick. But the Stones did “Sympathy for the Devil” 55 years ago, and Gene Simmons was wearing demon make-up and vomiting blood in the 1970s.

And we’re supposed to be scandalized by a bunch of talentless he-shes dancing around in red tights? 

Nope.

Still, all things considered, I’d rather watch the Grammys again than the SOTU. 

And I’m not sure that I wouldn’t rather be governed by a horde of Mongolian throat singers than by the late Joe Biden and the Dems in congress.  

Fetterman/ The Material Gollum, 2024!

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Before I get started today, I just wanted to tell you about a short podcast that I was a guest on last week.  It’s run by a couple of the guys from the small town I grew up in, and one of my cousins is a regular.  The topic was, “Assessing the Cultural Divide in America.”  It’s audio-only for now, but fortunately, I’ve got a face made for audio.

I’m afraid I didn’t speak up a lot, when I realized that the host’s theory is that we’re not as divided as many think we are.  (I admire his optimism, but can agree only partially at best.)  He tries to steer away from politics on their show, so even when one of the guys took some shots at Matt Gaetz, I bit my tongue, and didn’t mention the litany of congressional Dems who make great counter-examples.

Anyway, the podcast is called “Mitch Wonders,” and it’s at https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2041434.rss  (If you do listen, those guys had an inside joke of trying to bring up the model Emily Ratajkowski’s name in some episodes, so they can put that hashtag in social media to get more listeners.  Hence my lame Ratajkowski reference right out of the box.  Just to be clear: I am married to a Norwegian goddess, and I did NOT recently break up with Emily Ratajkowski.)

And now, on to our regularly schedule column…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about red flags, the indicators that reveal the flaws in people or their plans, or that otherwise confirm that something is going to end badly.

Sometimes red flags can be statements.  Conservatives saw such red flags from two of their past presidential candidates.  When Bush 43 ran in 2000 he called himself a “compassionate conservative.”    I liked Bush – he compared pretty well to his GOP rivals, and was light years better than the Dems he ran against and who succeeded him – but my antennae went up at that “compassionate.” 

Conservatives believe that conservatism IS compassionate, so that modifier is unnecessary.  And suspicious!  (Is it more compassionate to poor people to give them welfare that traps them in multi-generational dependence?  More compassionate to crime victims to allow their predators back on the street as quickly as possible?  More compassionate to job seekers or business owners to bury the economy under mountains of regulations and taxes?)

We saw the same thing when Mitt Romney, being challenged on whether he was conservative enough, gave the game away when he replied that he was, “severely conservative.”  “Severely”?  No real conservative would say that.

We also see it – nearly constantly! – in our opponents. 

Has anyone ever summed up the leftist view of America better than Andrew “Gropey McGrandma-Killer” Cuomo did in a 2018 speech to a friendly Democrat audience in New York: “We’re not going to ‘make America great again.’  It was never that great.”

His audience made that occasion a red-flag two-fer, when instead of booing such a slanderous statement, they laughed and applauded.    

Sometimes red flags can be governmental decisions.  Adam Carolla pointed out a few years ago that he knew that LA was in serious trouble when he saw the city’s response to miscreants spraying graffiti over everything, including the signs over the highways.  Rather than policing the painting creeps, the city just started wrapping highway signs in barbed wire.

Which really sends a positive message to the millions of residents and tourists who see those signs each day: “Welcome to LA!  Come for the obscene taxes and bullying government, stay for the Super-Max Penitentiary vibe!”

Other red flags can just be revealing events.  One example is annually acted out on the world stage when the preening, self-appointed world elite fly to Davos to posture about how they are our moral betters.  Simultaneously, virtually all of the high-dollar hookers in Europe swarm to Davos to ply their trade for those 5 days.

And that tells you all you need to know about the moral high ground occupied by those arrogant, power-hungry degenerates.  (In other words, sometimes red lingerie can constitute a red flag.) (Did you hear that, Eric Swalwell?)

Sidebar: I don’t care how much those gals are charging; if they are required to engage in sexual congress with the likes of Al Gore, Lurch Kerry or Klaus Schwab, it’s NOT enough!   

Unfortunately for all of us, the Biden administration has been pretty much a constant stream of red flags. 

On his first day in office, he killed the wall and opened the southern border, and killed the Keystone pipeline and all oil exploration that he controlled.  Then he ratcheted up unnecessary and ineffective covid lockdowns and turbo-charged the worst inflation in 40 years, safe in the knowledge that even though we would all like to throw eggs at the White House, we can no longer afford the eggs.

Before we knew it, he was defying all military history by pulling the troops out of Afghanistan first, and leaving the civilians, women, children and baggage train behind, trusting the Taliban to oversee the exodus fairly.   Not to mention shaking hands with ghosts, sniffing pubescent girls’ hair, and losing battle after battle with teleprompters, English grammar and basic logic. 

He also handed the keys to the Corvette and the Top Secret Classified Documents Storage Facility – some might call it a “garage” – to his meth-head son and his hookers-de-jure.

(By the way, if Que Mala were to try to draw one of her beloved Venn diagrams of two groups – the top-shelf Davos hookers, and the down-market Hunter hookers – those two circles would NOT intersect.)

I know: more red flags than a May Day parade in Red Square. 

But last week’s red flag came in the shape of a big, white ChiCom balloon, which Slow Joe allowed to float all across our country, from Alaska down into the lower 48, and then across our continent to the Atlantic, where he finally had it shot down after it had completed its journey, a full week after it had entered our airspace!

This was the most basic test of the Biden administration’s competence, and they failed with flying colors. 

Consider the info they had with which to make a decision: This thing is illegally in our airspace, and it’s relatively slow moving and very easy to shoot down.  It came from a bloodthirsty dictatorship that is the #1 geo-strategic threat to our country and the free world. 

There are 2 possible explanations for its presence:  either it’s just a weather balloon and Beijing’s incompetence allowed it to drift off course and into our airspace, or it’s a means of spying on us and Beijing purposely sent it here, both to spy and to test our Cadaver-in-Chief.

Either way, the right decision was a no-brainer: shoot it down as soon as we detected it in our airspace over Alaska last Saturday.

But never say “no-brainer” when the man making the call has stage-4 dementia.  Because that’s a cruel, ableist slur, I guess. 

The only thing worse than the spy balloon’s presence itself was the Biden brain trust’s reactions.  First they hid the balloon’s presence for as long as they could.  Then, when the first of literally thousands of ground-bound civilians saw the damn thing, they fumbled the messaging.

Spokes-stooges said that the balloon posed no danger to anyone in America.  But they also kept shutting down airports in its path, and the military scrambled a jet to shoot it down if ordered, and the Pentagon was reportedly “alarmed” when the balloon went over one of three silo-based ICBM sites in Montana.

After several days of public pressure building, Biden said that he had ordered it to be shot down Wednesday.  Which raised the question of why the greatest military in the world couldn’t down a defenseless balloon in less than 3 days? 

My theory is that Joey Gaffes says so many goofy things all the time, nobody in the military realized what he meant, or that he was serious. 

Put yourself in their shoes.  Biden walks stiffly into the briefing room, Jill guiding him by the elbow, and his eyes have that glazed look in them.  He starts to sit down on a potted plant before Jill redirects him to a chair. 

He starts to straddle that, facing backwards, but Jill turns him around.   He sits down, and all of the generals sit too.  Then Joe tells them to be seated.  And they all look at each other with raised eyebrows.

And then Biden says something like, “Corn Pop loved the hair on my legs in the swimming pool.  Speaking of hair, how about when a girl scout troop comes over to the Rose Garden to get some kind of awards, and you’re standing close enough to them to smell the Prell in their hair.  Shoot down the balloon!   Or Head and Shoulders!  I love that one!  Not a joke, Jack.”

Then Jill puts her hand on his and leans over to whisper in his ear.  “The Chinese balloon is over Montana.  Have them shoot it down.”

And Joe says, “Who are you?”  And he gets the same panicked look in his eyes that he had when that Chinese dragon came dancing into the White House in that Lunar New Year celebration last week.  Until he recognizes Jill, and nods his head, and turns to his generals, and clears his throat.  

“Let’s get some Chinese food, Hannah Montana!  Luft balloons! Shoot the moon!  C’mon, man.”

Then he closes his eyes and his head drops onto the table as he starts to snore.  And all of the generals slowly get up and back out of the room. 

And two nights later, one of the generals wakes up in a cold sweat, and bolts upright in bed.  “Good lord!  Did he mean that we were supposed to shoot down the Chinese balloon over Montana?” 

Even with literally days to figure out a PR approach, the best excuse the Dems could come up with is that it wouldn’t have been safe to shoot down the balloon over land, because of the threat that it would have posed to civilians below.

[Cue Sam Kinison voice]:  It flew over ALASKA and MONTANA for 3 DAYS!  Have you ever been to Alaska or Montana?!  Once it cleared Nome and Anchorage, or Helena and Butte, THERE ARE NO PEOPLE!  OH! OHHHHH!! Shoot it DOWN!  SHOOT IT DOWN!! [end Kinison voice]

Seriously, we were tracking the balloon over Montana.  Most of its path there had to have huge areas where there was nothing more than a couple of farmhouses, or maybe a raiding party from Liz Warren’s old tribe, for miles.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’m afraid that this debacle was more than just a red flag.  It was – literally – a trial balloon.

And I shudder to think of what verdict the Chinese have reached after seeing the way the idiots who govern us reacted to this particular trial balloon.

Fetterman/ Emily Ratajkowski, 2024!

I’m serious now: this freakin’ firehose-flow of ridiculous stories has got to stop.  Or at least slow down, so a humble Roving Correspondent can catch his breath.

I swear I’ve wanted to crack wise on half a dozen stories from the last couple of weeks, but I can barely get my legs under me before another load of mock-worthy stories is dumped on our nation, sending me reeling again.

For example, John Kerry and Al Gore (D^irigible, TN) flew their private, carbon-spewing jets to Davos and made absolute fools of themselves, but that seems like months ago now.  As does the racist Michigan school board member of color who said that white people are more dangerous than animals. 

Not to mention the fascist Antifa goons who went to Atlanta to protest that the cops unfairly shot one of their fellow morons to death for no reason.  I mean, except for the fact that the goon shot a cop first.

Fortunately, the cop was wearing a bullet-proof vest, while the Antif-idiot was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt (I’m guessing).  And it turns out that a Che t-shirt is no more bullet proof than Che himself was. 

That reminds me: shout out to the Bolivian soldiers who shot Che down like the murdering commie dog that he was.  Hurra de cadera!  (My English-to-Spanish translator tells me that that is Spanish for “hip hip, hooray!”)

Anyway, you see what I mean?  I’ve barely had time to make fun of sadistic communists who assumed room temperature in 1967.  I’m literally 55 years behind in my mockery!

So let’s get to some new stories that I’ve come across in the last 7 minutes:

First, I just finishing praising the Finns last week, for the way they used their training in the biathlon to pick off a lot of invading Russians in the Winter War of 1939.  But sadly, I’ve now got to retract my praise, because I saw a two-minute clip of the European Figure Skating Championships in Espoo from last week.

Before I go on: “Espoo”? 

C’mon, Finns. That might be the stupidest name for a city in the history of cities, and I’m including Walla Walla and Bangkok.  (Both of which still make me laugh, because even at my advanced age, I’m still pretty childish.)

I’m not surprised that Finland has produced no decent country songs, with city names like that.  Can anyone imagine themselves trying to spin a girl in cowboy boots around the dance floor to “Streets of Espoo,” or “Espoo by Morning?”    

And before you can ask why a fella who is interested in girls in cowboy boots is watching figure skating in the first place, your point is well taken.  But I was only watching because I caught a report on the opening ceremonies, which featured – hold onto your Stetson (which you’ll never see any Espoo-ians wearing, I reckon) – a transgender skater.

Now if this were hockey, that might be almost worth watching, just for the chance to see some bruiser in a tutu body-check a petite Finnish woke-ette over the penalty box and up into the cheap seats. 

But no.  It’s figure skating.

And in this case, the “figure” part of “figure skating” is: blocky. 

You should drop everything right now and watch that video, if you haven’t already seen it.  But if you’ve got a weak stomach, or are pregnant, or otherwise object to exposing yourself to the visually disturbing, let me try to paint a word picture for you.

Imagine that Dick Butkus and Will Ferrell had a baby son somehow, and that son grew up to wear a pair of Swifty Lazar glasses and an Imelda Marcos hairdo.   And then imagine that that guy ate a training diet of nothing but glazed donuts, and the closest he ever got to figure skating was watching reruns of Blades of Glory each time it was on cable.

And then imagine that that guy turned 59, put on a dress, and jumped an Espoo-bound train, with dreams of figure skating glory in his likely enlarged and partially-blocked-artery-filled heart. 

And then you’ll have the spectacle that is Minna-Maaria Antikainen.  Formerly Markku-Pekka Antikainen.  Yes: of the Espoo Antikainens. 

Not to be confused with the new anti-covid drug Antikainen™, from Pfizer.

(Coincidentally, both Antikainens come with warnings that their side-effects may include hysterical blindness, partial paralysis, and spontaneous irritable bowel.)   

Anyway, Minna’s performance consisted of skating very stiffly and slowly in a straight line, then making a wobbly half turn, then falling down after literally 23 seconds on the ice.  (Yes, I timed it.)  He unsuccessfully tried for 13 seconds to get up, before an actual female skater helped him to his feet.

The first story that I saw about this had the subtitle, “Cow on Ice.”   And as much as I was primed to get snarky, I don’t care for that kind of gratuitous, mean-spirited insult. 

To cows. 

Because even though I have no experience as a cow-whisperer, I’d bet that if you gave me a month to practice with a heifer to whose hooves someone had managed to strap some skates, I could make a Minna-beater out of her. 

I can see it now.  I’d put together a filmed montage (accompanied by some 80s synth-heavy music) of me meeting the hopeful Holstein, and seeing in her big cow eyes that she didn’t yet believe in herself.  I’d be carrying a clipboard and wearing a whistle, for some reason, and after the first few times she fell down, I’d turn my battered ballcap around into the “rally” position, and give her a rousing, inspirational speech.

(I don’t have all the beats down yet, but I would definitely use the line, “People out there are doubting you.  They don’t think you have the four stomachs for this.  But I do!”)

Then, cut to the Big Night.  I’m in the locker room, giving my bovine girl a pep talk, while outside in the arena, the place would be rocking, with gyrating spotlights flashing and terrible third-rate Finnish heavy metal songs thumping, hyping the crowd for their hometown hero/heroine, the Mighty Minna. 

The entire world would be watching, and the ratings would rival the moon landing, the Super Bowl and a royal wedding, all rolled into one.

You’ve heard of the Thrilla in Manila?  This would be the Moo in Espoo!

Whoo!  I’m actually light-headed now.  Because the world has gone crazy, and I am struggling to keep up with it.

The saddest thing about this Finnish farce is not the poor, delusional guy who identifies as a woman and an ice skater, and is incapable of pulling off either.  (Though to be fair to him, he makes a more convincing female skater than Liz Warren does a Cherokee princess.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

The saddest thing is that Western countries who should know better are participating in this delusional madness.

The press release for the event contained the usual bromides about celebrating “equality and diversity,” and identified the theme for the opening ceremonies as, “Just be You!” 

But what if “You!” are a clumsy old dude and a shi**y skater?  Do we all have to sit there and applaud for that?

The press release also says — and I couldn’t make this up if I tried – “Often, only the top skaters in the country are seen in figure skating shows.  With this diverse group of performers, we want to show that the ice has space for everyone.”

I know.  You can’t believe what you just read.  

There’s a reason that only top skaters appear in figure skating shows, you idiots!  It’s the same reason that only great singers and musicians give sold-out concerts.  Because nobody is going to pay $375 for a nosebleed seat to watch a spasming meth-head bang his head against the neck of an acoustic guitar while wailing like Yoko Ono passing a kidney stone. 

And yes, ice does “[have] space for everyone.”  If you’re talking about the ice on a frozen pond, or a flooded parking lot, or a water-filled ditch along the interstate outside of Fargo in January. 

But not the rink in a modern arena, where paying customers come to see excellent figure skating!

Ugh.  As soon as I have written that, I realize that our cultural rot is far advanced.  Because arenas full of paying customers actually DO buy tickets to see the likes of Lizzo or a thousand other talentless hacks.  And while Western culture used to commission and laud sculptures like Michelangelo’s Pieta or David, we’ve now sunk to being coerced into praising the fecal-phallic MLK “tribute” sculpture unveiled in Boston a few weeks ago.

I fear that our culture may be doomed.

And I am doomed too.  Because I wanted to write about four or five stories, and I only got to one.  And I didn’t even finish that one!

That’s right, I’m out of bourbon and it’s way past my bedtime, so I’m leaving many top-shelf cow jokes on the cutting room floor.  Cud-related puns, alternate promo names for the Minna-Cow skating competition (Hooves on Ice; Cattle Battle ’23! Etc.), something about Minna obviously belonging on a dude ranch rather than the opposite.   

I can only hope that this is a slow news weekend, or I’ll be falling even further behind by Monday.

But for now, I’ll just admit defeat, and end this way…

Fetterman/ bovine-American skating great Kristi Yama-Guernsey, 2024!

I’m back from my weekend, and I’ve read your responses to my Friday column.  I would like to respond to them, but I’m still trying to catch up on all of the mockable people and events that our political classes are constantly tossing out there.  So I’ll just thank you for your kind comments, and plow ahead.

For me, the political highlight of last week was watching whitey-hating election denier Hakeem Jeffries re-nominating Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell for the intelligence committee, and then savoring their whining when McCarthy rightly rejected them both.

If the House Dems had any dignity, they’d take the “L” quietly, knowing that McCarthy was just making good on what the GOP warned them about when the Dems took the unprecedented step of tossing GOP members off of committees in the last congress.

But they don’t.  So they didn’t.

Schiff had the gall to accuse McCarthy of having a “committee on conspiracy theories,” after Schiff spent the last 6 years doing an amazing Joe McCarthy impression.  “I have here in my hands, absolute proof that Trump conspired with the Russians to destroy America!  You can’t see this proof, but believe you me, it’s just one bombshell after another!”

Swalwell was just as bad, whining that McCarthy was acting out of nothing more than political vengeance, since there is no justification for keeping him away from national security secrets.

[Cue Sam Kinison voice]  “No justification?!  You were SLEEPING with a CHICOM SPY! OH!  OHHH!”  [End Sam Kinison voice]

It is still hard for me to believe that any politician (even a Dem) could keep his career – and even think he deserves a spot on Intel! – after that kind of catastrophic error of judgment.   It’s not like he was having an affair with a secretary from his home district.

He was banging Fang Fang! 

Or was that fanging Bang Bang? 

(And yes, I could make a “Swalwell was fond of china-lingis” joke here, but I am way too classy and mature for that.) 

If this is how McCarthy responds to a handful of GOP conservatives making him fight for his speakership, I say good on him and them both!

Next up, I’ve got a new entry in the “Stupid Criminals” column, and what it lacks in details, it makes up for in schadenfreude. 

Last Thursday, cops in the Chicago suburb of Waukegan were called to a stolen vehicle investigation on Grand Avenue.  (If you look up the story and see the pictures, you’ll find that that avenue is not so grand, after all.)  When they arrived, they found a 32-year-old man who then tried to flee.

He started fighting with the cops and pulled out a pistol, but somehow managed to shoot himself with it, and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. 

The story lacks any details beyond those.  But I’m playing the averages and guessing that the suspect had a prior record and a good (by which I mean “bad”) reason to flee and fight with the cops, and that he wasn’t carrying his gun legally.  I’m going to follow the story, and check the accuracy of my predictions.

But especially when so many crime stories end badly, including the tragic story that unfolded in Memphis this month, it’s nice to see one where the crime solves itself, and the criminal takes care of himself. 

Speaking of people shooting themselves, it turns out that our own ethnically confused Land o’ Lakes Butter Maiden Liz Warren shot herself in the foot last week, too.  (No word yet on the type of arrowhead involved.)  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Here is her tweet, which I wish I were making up: “If Republicans hadn’t spent nearly $2 trillion on the Trump tax cuts, and if they hadn’t made it easier for rich people to cheat on their taxes, the US wouldn’t need a debt ceiling increase this year. Or next year.”

There are several logical responses to this, the first of which is to chant, “Liar, liar, buckskin dress on fire!”  (#neverstopneverstopping) Because follow my smoke signals here, Lizzie:

1. The Trump tax cuts didn’t “spend” $2 trillion; they allowed American taxpayers to keep $2 trillion of their own money.

2. Leaving that cash in the hands of its rightful owners had the same effect it usually does: federal tax revenues rose 22% between 2017-21; business investment grew by 9.4%, capital expenditures by 20%, and corporate tax revenue by $46 billion over what the CBO had forecast.

3. The GOP DID spend too much. But you didn’t mention that, since your Shawnee-socialist friends (#don’tstopthemocking) over-spent way more.   If the $2 trillion tax cut “spending” added to our debt, the $5 trillion that the Dems spent since Biden was first embalmed – and the many trillions more that will be needed to repair the damage done by the tide of fentanyl and illegals in the future – dwarf that “spending.”

Just a second.  My crack research staff is telling me that Biden was “inaugurated” rather than “embalmed.”  But that doesn’t sound correct to me, so I’m going to look into it. 

Speaking of our not-so-dearly-departed prez, he was in fine form last Thursday.  He managed to not shoot himself to death like the Biden voter in Waukegan, but by the time he finished his comments in VA, his listeners were probably wishing that he had.

In between telling many lies about the economy, he kept asking for somebody named “Doug.”  The first time came after saying that people might think he was stupid because he had told an earlier audience to sit down, when there were no chairs in the room.  Then he abruptly said, “Where’s Doug?” 

After 3 seconds of silence as he looked around him – I timed it, and that’s longer than it sounds – he helpfully added, “congressman.”  But no one in the room knew who he was talking about.  A few minutes later, as he was telling a different lie, he paused to say, “Doug knows this.”

About 20 minutes later he went for the trifecta, starting another ramble through the Slough of Dementia by saying, “Doug, I think you might have been with me when…”

Yikes.  The best guess is that he was trying to refer to VA Dem congressman Don Beyer, since “Don,” like “Doug,” also starts with a “d” and an “o.”

On the bright side, Don Beyer was actually alive and in the room, unlike GOP congresswoman Jackie Walorski, who had been dead for a month when Biden gave a speech in her home district last September and said, “Where’s Jackie?  She said she’d be here.”   

Later that same day, the Bidens hosted a Lunar New Year celebration in the White House, and if you read that as “Loony New Year,” I can’t blame you. 

If you haven’t seen that video, you’ve got to watch it.  While several people banged cymbals, a colorful Chinese dragon came dancing in, clearly catching Biden by surprise.  There were a couple of Chinese guys inside, but I don’t think Brandon knew that, because his facial expressions went from startled to terrified, before settling back into his usual default state: disoriented.  

That event/debacle ended later on as most of his public events do: with Biden looking around him in confusion. 

I swear, his support staff must absolutely hate him!  He never knows what he’s supposed to do or where he’s supposed to go after he finishes losing one more round with the teleprompter, and his minions NEVER help him out.

This time he creakily turned one way and then the other, before saying, “I guess I gotta step down here.” 

Truer words were never spoken!

And from his slurring lips to God’s ears.

Fetterman/ Fang Fang, 2024!