After two columns this week on the fraught Trump v. DeSantis conflict, I’m back to discuss other stories that I came across earlier but didn’t have time to discuss until now.
First, though, a personal note. My wife and I are going up to TN for a week-long visit with my mom tomorrow. Regular readers may remember that mom is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and she lives with my sister and her husband. They are going on a vacation, so my better half and I get to spend some quality time with mom.
Karen is going to Zoom in to work from up there, and we’ll still have time to take mom on some day trips to a few of the small towns around Nashville. Cassie the Wonder Dog will also get to frolic with her dog cousins Eddy and Raven. (My sister is an Edgar Allan Poe fan, as you might have guessed.)
While up there I’m going to continue working on two of my retirement bucket list items: learning some conversational German, and how to play the guitar. I got an acoustic guitar as an early birthday present last week, but I’m making progress mostly on the “developing calloused fingers” front so far.
With any luck, in a year or two I’ll be able to back up the adorable Nena on an American tour, bringing my mediocre singing voice, sub-par German skills, and execrable guitar playing to the table. Then, after I’m fired at the end of the first song, I’ll still be able to check off another bucket-list item.
But I’ll not let any of these worthy activities make me miss writing my two weekly columns here at Cautious Optimism. Because: priorities.
Now, on to a few nuggets from the news over the last month or so that I noted but didn’t get around to commenting on:
Virginia’s solid Lt. Governor Winsome Sears appeared on Bill Maher’s show a few weeks ago, and she knocked it out of the park. She was witty and combative, pummeling Ken Doll Newsom, and deftly defending 2nd amendment rights.
She noted that women and law-abiding black people are two groups who are pursuing gun ownership most quickly, and she said, “If you’re breaking into my home, while I’m waiting for the police to come, I’m gonna shoot you…. I’m gonna pray for you, but I’m gonna shoot you.”
She got repeated applause from the audience – usually they are of the trained seal variety when it comes to leftist talking points – and got Maher to admit that calls for gun bans are foolish. Her performance on his show illustrated why most lefty programs won’t allow any conservatives on, unless it’s to ambush them with dirty tricks or shout them down.
(Maher is the smartest and fairest of the leftist talk show hosts. I know: that’s like saying “the tallest building in Campbellsville, Kentucky.” But still, credit where credit is due.)
Sears would make a great VP pick, if she wasn’t ineligible because she was born in Jamaica before her family legally immigrated when she was 6. She’s got an amazing first name, and she’s actually smart and competent.
It would be great fun to watch the Dems reveal their bone-deep sexism and racism (for the 1,000th time) if she ran. For them, no woman who bucks the gender feminist party line is an authentic woman, and no conservative black person who won’t go onto the Dems’ ideological plantation is really black.
I’d love to watch a clot of Dems and MSM talking heads arguing that Dylan Mulvaney, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, and Richard “Dick”/Rachel Levine are all women, but Winsome isn’t.
And that Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher) is Indian and Rachel Dolezal is black, but Winsome Sears (just like Clarence Thomas and Tim Scott) isn’t.
Man, we are about to see an Old Testament, reap-what-you-sow, Sodom and Gomorrah-style beat-down descending on the benighted city of Chicago. After the ruinous reign of weapons-grade-stupid Lori Lightfoot, only 38% of Chicago’s voters showed up in a run-off election. So they got mayor elect Brandon Johnson, who before he is even officially in office, is already picking up right where the fright-wigged one left off.
Over the weekend, hundreds of “youths” rampaged through the Loop in an orgy of violence, terror, and property destruction.
(By the way, if at least 3% of those in the mob had been white, the MSM would have screamed about the “white supremacist violence.” But because the MSM called them “youths,” you don’t need to get out your “leftist-speak decoder ring” to find out what uncomfortable truth is being unsuccessfully evaded.)
This is the kind of failure of government that, if left unchecked, will doom a city, so this was a time that required the new mayor-elect to step up to the plate and show that he wasn’t going to be Lightfoot redux.
Unfortunately for once-great Chicago (RIP), this Brandon proved to be as inept as our other Brandon. In a softball interview, a sympathetic news lady desperately tried to steer Johnson into saying the minimum necessary words: I condemn this violence.
But as the old saying goes, “you can lead a radical left apparatchik to water, but you can’t make him think.”
Three times the MSM lady said, “You don’t condone the violence, though…?” And three times, Brandon refused the lifeline, and spewed a bunch of “commie gobbledygook” (boy do I miss Norm MacDonald!) and misdirection.
Finally he was exasperated enough to let slip some of the reliable old class-warfare, to the effect of, “I don’t condone when big corporations come in and take tax dollars from citizens just to get a profit.”
Got that? Running a business that gets customers to exchange money for your goods or services voluntarily, thus funding your city government – and earning an evil profit! – is worse than going on a feral, destructive rampage.
By the time he put out a statement the next day, Brandon demonstrated the old adage that when it comes to public statements, “everything that comes before the ‘but’ is meaningless.”
As in, “I’m a pacifist, and never intended to hurt anybody… but I did massacre all of those nuns.” Or
“Dad tells me I’m the smartest person he’s ever met… but I did record all of that ‘Caligula in a den full of crack whores’ stuff on my laptop.”
Brandon opens with 2 brief sentences of rhetorical throat-clearing: “In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend. It is unacceptable and has no place in our city.”
But then: “However… it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities…” followed by 57 words of blaming everybody but the bad guys.
Watching the video of that mindless, anarchic violence, I was reminded of one of my favorite Shakespeare lines from The Tempest: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
By the way, if someone putting dark make-up on is doing “black-face,” and Dylan Mulvaney is doing “woman-face,” can’t we say that when he doubles down on Lightfoot’s racist, ideological idiocy, Brandon Johnson is now doing “carp-face?”
Asking for a friend. (Who got out of Chicago and down to Boca Raton just in the nick of time!)
Speaking of hell being empty, and all the devils being here…
(that’s what we in the professional writing biz call a top-shelf transition)
Hey, if you’re like me, you probably won’t make it to SatanCon 2023, which I swear I am not making up, and which will take place in Boston next weekend.
I’ve got the same reason for skipping it that you probably do: it’s just not the same as the SatanCons of my childhood, because it’s been ruined by all the commercialism!
But for those who are going, you can rest assured that the brilliant minds running SatanCon have got your best interests at heart. Because nobody is going to be allowed into the events – including the totally not made-up “Satanic Marketplace” (or as you may know it, the Democrat National Committee) – unless they are fully vaxxed and masked!
Naturally. Because one of the Satanists’ 10 commandments is a total devotion to capital “S” Science.
And nothing just screams “SCIENCE” like a fat guy with facial piercings and dark eye shadow struggling to get into a set of goat-skin chaps and explaining that as soon as he can get the outfit and his ram’s head mask on, he’s going to ritually defile you from behind, before cutting your throat and dismembering you on a stone altar dedicated to Lucifer.
But don’t worry: he’ll have an N-95 on under the ram’s head the entire time!
Speaking of defiling yourself from behind…
(Man, that is two world-class transitions in a row!)
Actress, health nut, and leftist goofball Gwyneth Paltrow was asked by an interviewer last month to describe what was the “weirdest wellness thing that you’ve done.”
And she went for it!
Quoth Gwyneth: “I mean, I have… used ozone therapy… rectally.”
Because I am AT LEAST as much of a Man of Science as the next guy in a set of ass-less goat skin chaps and fogged-up glasses wearing an N-95 under a ram’s head mask, I immediately started wondering how in the world administering ozone can be healthy or therapeutic. I also racked my brain to remember what role ozone plays in our troposphere.
And then, because I am basically a child trapped in a man’s body, I quickly brainstormed several hilarious jokes involving the ozone hole. (Which, if I remember correctly, was all the rage amongst the big brains on tv in the 80s and 90s, and had almost nothing to do with a young Gwyneth Paltrow.)
And then, because I am both a child trapped in a man’s body and an astute political commentator, I realized that Gwyneth Paltrow is attending to her health in the same way that Joe Biden and the Democrats are ruling our country:
Rectally.
I can’t think of a better way to “end” this column. (HA!)
Other than…
Biden delenda est!
“Dr.” Jill Biden/Paltrow’s Proctologist 2024!
Martin Simpson 