January 2024 – Martin Simpson

Two Groups of Stories on the Theme of “Leftist Chickens Coming Home to Roost” (posted 1/26/24)

First, electric vehicles are blowing up, both literally and financially.

Now I have no problem with electric vehicles on their own. I admire Elon Musk a lot, the Tesla I rode in was an impressive bit of technology, and I like the idea of burning less gasoline.

But I’m also a big fan of dealing with reality on reality’s own terms, and the reality is that right now, EV technology is not competitive with gasoline cars.

The facts have been obvious for a while, and I’m sure you’ve all heard them: the batteries are made of all of the most toxic and expensive materials on earth, controlled by Chicoms and brought to our shores after having devastated a vast swath of the earth through various mining processes; they are financially non-viable; they require a huge infrastructure of charging stations that doesn’t exist, and won’t for a long time.

Plus the electricity that powers them mostly comes from coal and nukes, which makes Liz Warren stand beside a littered highway with a tear running down her translucent cheek, just like another fake Indian named “Iron Eyes” Cody.

(Look him up.) (Also: #wemustneverstopmockingher)

Ooh, and EVs sometimes catch fire, and when they do, they burn like the eternally smoldering tire fire on the Simpsons.

Also, as we learned this month, when it gets really cold out, EVs can get you a half-mile out of town before dying. Like you then will, by freezing. And then you’ll be found two days later by a guy named Gus, or possibly Hank or Butch, driving a snowplow.

And that snowplow will be powered by gasoline, as God intended.

But other than all that, EVs are great!

“But Martin,” you are not asking yourself, because you’ve got the kind of top-shelf mind that has led you to join the CO nation, “if EVs are so obviously not ready for prime time, how come they are such a gigantic thing in our society?”

The answer is simple: Bidenomics!

Which is to say, intervention in the economy by a bunch of arrogant boneheads who throw billions of our dollars at their favorite hobbyhorses and green boondoggles, believing they can cram an entire new industry down everybody’s throats.

Fortunately, there’s a little something called the semi-free market. And that market has been speaking on the subject of EVs lately.

Here are just a selection of recent headlines:

“EV Sales in Europe Slaughtered, US May be Next.” This article reports that the sales of EVs in Europe dropped from 193K in December of ’22 to 160K in ’23. The numbers look even worse in Germany (the largest EV market in the EU by far), which saw a sales drop of 50%. And both the EU and US have recently cut tax credits which they previously used as a form of welfare to rich folks to goose EV sales.

Many articles report on American cities who threw millions of taxpayer dollars into buying electric bus fleets, only to discover that they’ve bought a Nadler in a poke, so to speak.

Asheville, NC is just one example. After spending $5 mil on 5 buses in 2018, and another $600K on chargers, electricity, battery leasing, and overages in maintenance costs, they’ve now got 3 of the 5 buses out of service and waiting for repairs.

Also, when it got cold last month, the range of the two working buses dropped to 78 miles between 3-hour charges.

Zero Hedge reports that Ford has cut production of their electric F-150 Lightning trucks in half, due to low customer demand. As a result, Ford is laying off 1400 autoworkers at a plant in Dearborn, MI.

You may remember the story of that vehicle from when Joe Biden took a test drive of it in May of 2021, in a poorly conceived publicity stunt.

After fake-jogging for a few steps across the factory floor, he tripped over a sandbag, and when two secret service guys had helped him to his feet, he had somehow got his head stuck in the right armhole of his jacket.

After Jill and a nice lady from Visiting Angels (sing it with me: “America’s Choice in Home Care!”) managed to get his head unstuck, he straightened his tie, shook hands with the ghost of Henry Ford, and climbed into the F-150.

He promptly bonked his empty head against a door post, accidentally turned on the windshield wipers, and then the wiper fluid sprayer.

Then he rolled his window down, and before he had even moved, said, “Sssiss thuckerin’ thucotash,” which the sycophantic White House press corps reported as, “This sucker’s fast.”

Then he rolled the window up on his necktie – fortunately, the resulting cessation of oxygen going to his brain produced absolutely no detectable effect in his cognitive function – and put the truck into what he thought was “drive.”

Annnnnndddd… it silently rolled backwards, crushing a mid-level Ford executive’s legs.

Who deserved what he got, for voluntarily standing within 100 yards of a vehicle driven by Ol’ ”Dead-From-the-Neck-Up” Joe.

In other green energy news, City Journal recently reported the cancellation of several huge wind projects off the shores of New Jersey and MA, because even with gigantic taxpayer subsidies, their boondogglery ™ had become so obvious and painful that even those blue state goofballs had to slink away in shame.

Second, the mainstream media has started imploding faster than the market for EVs.

You can see it in television, starting with the increasingly speedy descent of network ratings. A story from earlier this month started with a teaser question: Of the top 100 most-viewed programs on the networks in 2023, how many would you guess were football broadcasts?

I’m a big football fan, but even I wouldn’t have guessed that it was 97! Three college games made that list, plus the Super Bowl’s pre-game show, and then 93 NFL games! The remaining three programs were the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Academy Awards, and one show identified only as “political programming.”

That’s a huge indictment of how badly the once-dominant (now dormant) primetime lineup has gotten.

You can also see the failure in the political channels, and most enjoyably at the execrable CNN.

The NY Post reported that during prime time last week, CNN was beaten by the History Channel (which is lately made up of 40% programming about Hitler and WWII, 50% about aliens and mythical lost civilizations, and 10% history), and “an obscure cable network” that shows old Western tv shows and films.

Which makes sense, because who amongst us wouldn’t rather watch long-dead tv cowboys on Gunsmoke and Bonanza than watch the recently-dead lying dog-faced pony soldier in the White House?

(Plus those programs show a lot of Indians being shot off horses by toxic white male gun nuts who identify as males, which makes Grandma Squanto cry. #youknowthething)

But you can see media implosion even more clearly in print, where blue-on-blue violence has cropped up in newsrooms all over the country, as papers are forced to lay off workers after years of leftist reporters working hard to drive away most of their readers.

The most recent wave of layoffs has hit the LA Times, where the “journalists” have been dividing their time between hating conservatives, and propagandizing on behalf of Ken Doll Newsom and the Dem machine that has sent hundreds of thousands of former Californians fleeing in search of lower crime and a better quality of life.

Like that which can be found in the Gaza Strip, for example.

The Times laid off 13% of its staff last year, and still managed to lose $1 million dollars per WEEK. So when they announced another round of “massive layoffs” this month, the propagandists who work there naturally thought, “Hey, these capitalist bosses are already making negative $50 million per year from our labor. It’s time for us to go on a one-day strike.”

That’s actually a thing that just happened.

But before you settle on that little stroke of genius as the funniest media story you’ve heard lately, don’t sleep on the geniuses over at Sports Illustrated.

Because I was one of those weird young men who liked sports and girls, I used to regularly read SI. I kept up on the NFL news, dipped into some basketball coverage during the glory years of Jordan and the Bulls, and even followed a little baseball news.

And every year, when the Swimsuit edition came out, I… let’s say “closely examined”… that issue.

In my defense, this was back in olden times, when we hadn’t yet explained to our young males that the female body is not really a good thing to look at, or even notice. And that “trans-women” were women, and they should be able to kick the crap out of actual women in women’s sports.

And that if I were to throw up in my mouth at the thought to doing to a “trans-woman” what I fantasized about doing to – oh, let me just pick a few names out of the dim recesses of my memory and say Christie Brinkley or Cheryl Tiegs or Kathy Ireland – that revulsion would make me a “transphobe.”

Well, in recent years SI has gone away from the content that millions of us used to read in our formative years. They’ve run articles written by AI. (I’m old, so I don’t really understand what that means, except that it can’t be good.)

They’ve replaced sports coverage that actually focused on sports with leftist social commentary on how racist and sexist and evil America is, and how we should all admire a whitey-hating, mediocre quarterback like Colin Kapernick.

Who, I feel compelled to remind all football fans, was beaten out for his starting job by the immortal Blaine Gabbert. (Yes, THAT Blaine Gabbert. Who you will never see in Canton, Ohio, unless he’s selling programs in the parking lot outside the football hall of fame there.)

And if that wasn’t bad enough, SI also desecrated the swimsuit issue in recent years by featuring “trans” guys and what’s euphemistically called “plus-size models” on the cover!

I’m not making that up. They replaced Cheryl Tiegs with some poor delusional dude with all the sex appeal of Charles Nelson Reilly in a one-piece, and they replaced Christie Brinkley and Kathy Ireland with some gals the size of a Brinks truck and the nation of Ireland!

Aannnnnndddddd… a week ago the owner of SI announced that they are firing the entire staff of the magazine, which is likely going to go out of business shortly.

Unexpectedly!

Okay, I’ve already gone on too long, so here’s a teaser for Monday’s column: I’ve got a couple of stupid criminal stories, a feel-good story about how Florida is providing a blueprint to other states in fighting voting fraud, and the weirdest story you’ve ever seen involving horrific MI governor Whitmer and a talking potato.

I’m going to conclude this column with the inspiring recent quote from golfer John Daly. If you don’t follow golf, Daly is a lovable, overweight eccentric who could hit the ball a mile without much control, and who would smoke and drink beer during a tournament.

Seriously, the man is a legend. “Hold my beer and this lit cigarette while I drive this golf ball 375 yards, either driving the green on a par 4 or killing a senior citizen two fairways over with a head shot.”

Daly was recently asked about a “trans-female” golfer — i.e. a male golfer in lady’s clothes — who just won a women’s tournament, and is now seeking admission to the LPGA tour.

Daly responded that, “If I’d put on a dress and called myself a tranny, I would have won 100 tournaments on the LPGA tour. That guy’s about as feminine as a Ford F-150.”

Yes, if you’re talking about the EV version.

Hamas delenda est!

I Wish DeSantis Well, and Hope Trump Beats Biden like a Rented Mule (posted 1/21/24)

I’ve got mixed feelings about DeSantis quitting the race, as you might imagine. But after the Iowa caucus results confirmed the polling over the previous months, Trump’s nomination was a fait accompli, and DeSantis made the only logical choice. I was glad to see him endorse Trump as the winning nominee, as he’d pledged to do at the beginning of the campaign.

I was also encouraged to read the responses to CO’s Sunday night thread on RDS’ dropping out, in terms of how little vitriol people expressed toward him. Many wished him well, and said they’d consider voting for him in a future race, which is what I’m hoping for.

The most frustrating part of the race for me has been seeing so many self-described conservatives doing the opposite: attacking him in the most dishonest ways, and taking such glee in the most petty smears. Unfortunately, they were following the lead of the far left, and of Trump, who praised him to the skies (“one of the best governors,” “doing a great job in Florida,” “he did a terrific job with covid”) before flip-flopping completely (terrible on covid, worse than Cuomo, etc.) when he became a competitor.

I understand that politics is a rough business, and I generally have a low enough opinion of politicians that I don’t mind seeing them knocked around some. But I think RDS is an unusually good man for a politician: scandal-free in his personal life; apparently good husband and father to his wife and kids; does what he says he’ll do, relentless in pushing conservative policies, and the most consistent and successful governor in the country.

When he got a history degree from Yale and a JD from Harvard (back when both of those degrees still meant something), he could have walked into a high-paying job and written his own ticket. But instead he joined the Navy while still in school, and spent time as a JAG officer in Gitmo and Iraq, sacrificing a ton of income to serve his country, before starting his political career.

I don’t want to over-do it on the praise, because he’s still a politician, and a human. He definitely has his flaws (lack of charisma, stiffness of style) as a campaigner. And he wants to be president, which always makes me at least a little suspicious. (A reliable Book counsels me to, “put not your faith in princes.” And I’m Martin Simpson, and I endorse that message!)

I just hope that the smears against him haven’t precluded him from a future presidential run. Not least because I don’t see a ton of Republican alternatives out there with strong records of consistent conservatism. (For every Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, Ted Cruz and DeSantis, there are a hundred Romneys (Ronna and Mitt) and other RINOs.)

If the Schiff-storm of slander against RDS has made him toxic for 2028, I think some of his “conservative” bashers are going to come to a hard realization when they are complaining next time, “Why are we surrounded by RINOs? Why aren’t there any trustworthy conservative Republicans for us to support?”

Because you had a great one as an option, and instead of just saying that you preferred Trump and acting like gentlemen, you took up a bunch of leftist lies (“He’s death-Santis!”) to try to destroy him.

This is why we can’t have nice things, or decent politicians.

Okay, I had to get that off of my chest! But having said that, I’m pulling for Trump now, and I don’t think the amount of pessimism about his chances expressed in Sunday’s thread is justified. Especially if Joe Biden continues to lie in state as his opponent.

I know it sounds like I’m really down on Trump’s candidacy, but that’s only because I’ve come to mostly dislike him as a person.

I know that sounds weird, but let me explain: I am much more concerned with the policies and results of a pol’s governing than I am with his/her personality. To me, one of the most irritating tropes in politics is the idiotic cliché, “People vote for the guy they’d most like to have a beer with.”

Ugh. I have beers with guys I’d like to have a beer with, usually because they have a good sense of humor, are politically rational, and demonstrate good judgment when talking about books, movies, football and music.

To me, politicians are a lot like lawyers: they have their purposes, but a life well-lived is usually one in which you spend the absolute least amount of time dealing with either of them as possible.

I think that’s generally true of most conservatives: our philosophy is, “that government is best which governs least.” We want law and order, strong borders, a military that will deter attacks, and defense of our constitution. Beyond that, leave us alone, because we are free people, and we’ve got this.

That’s not the case with lefties. Politics is their religion, and government is their jealous god, and they tend to try to make heroes of their leaders, even if that means futilely trying to hammer a dead peg into a round hole.

Sorry, that’s “square.” A square peg.

The left deifies their leaders. Lenin’s corpse in Red Square, the cults of Stalin and Mao. JFK is King Arthur in Camelot, instead of the philanderer who botched the Bay of Pigs. Bill Clinton is a feminist hero, instead of the groper in chief and Juanita Broaddrick’s rapist. Obama is a historic Light-Bringer rather than a spendthrift racial grifter who lied that we could keep our doctors and health plans.

Brandon is presenting a special challenge for them, but the Dems are still praising him (“We can’t keep up with him! Bidenomics is tickety boo!”), and are doing their best to beat a dead president across the finish line in November.

Sorry, that’s “horse.” They are trying to beat a dead horse across the finish line. I don’t know why I keep making that mistake.

Anyway, my point is that I’m not looking for a drinking buddy when I vote for a president. In fact, sometimes the very qualities that I wouldn’t want in a friend are the ones I appreciate in a president, if they produce good political results.

For example, many said that Trump was impulsive and volatile, and he might fly off the handle and bomb another country if that country’s leaders p*ssed him off. Not a great quality in a best friend, in a bar.

But we all know how that worked during Trump’s presidency: Putin didn’t make a peep. The weird beards in Iran and Gaza and Lebanon didn’t instigate a mass murder of Jews. The Chicoms didn’t move on Taiwan, like they’re about to. A bunch of rag-tag Houthi pirates minded both their “Ps” and their “Qs,” rather than rampaging through the Red Sea.

That’s good presidential foreign policy. I’d like more of that. Also affordable gas and interest rates, millions fewer illegals pouring across the border, and more strict constructionist judges.

Don’t get me wrong: all things being equal, I’d still prefer good personal qualities in a president. (Sobriety, honesty, self-control, no intern-banging, etc.) But the main thing I want is disciplined, successful, conservative governance.

If I can get that – whether from a man or a woman, or a straight person or a gay person, or a black person or a white person or an orange person, or an old guy or a young gal, or an extrovert or an introvert, or a boring guy, or a nerd, or a braggart, or a skirt-chaser, or a guy in a Stephen Hawking wheelchair who speaks with an electronic, robot voice – I don’t care!

So yes, while I recognize and admire some of Trump’s good qualities, I don’t like him much as a person, and that’s a shame. At my age, I’m still looking forward to voting for a president whom I think can do the job AND whom I can look up to as a person. (I got to do that in the last several governor’s races, and it felt GREAT!)

But as I understand it, conservatism and MAGA have a lot in common. In fact, if you drew up a Venn diagram of conservatism and MAGA (the sound you just heard is Que Mala perking up her ears), you’d have around 90% of overlap.

The only MAGA stuff outside the conservative circle seems like personal loyalty to Trump, and a requirement to side with him when he’s doing something anti-conservative.

And while I’m going to give that one a big ol’, Dr. Evil-style, “How about no!” I’m happy with the other 90%. In fact, that’s more than I’ve had with any president over the last 4 decades.

Now I hope we can all do as much as possible to support Trump for the next 10 months, and call attention to the myriad of reasons why Biden and the Dems need to be swept from power, so we can start undoing the damage of the last 3 years.

Hamas delenda est!

Mostly Good News Stories, Despite the Iowa Caucus(posted 1/19/24)

Today I’ve got a couple of lighter stories, and a few post-caucus thoughts on the state of the election.

First up, the great conservative humor site Babylon Bee continues to impress. They ran into a little controversy this week with a joke they posted about Vivek after he dropped out of the race. It was a silly and harmless joke, but apparently a lot of conservatives got upset enough to give the Bee some grief about it.

Which is really annoying, because we’re supposed to be the folks with a sense of humor. It’s the humorless leftists who are always getting triggered, pulling their non-binary onesies over their heads and running for safe spaces when a somebody tells a joke involving ethnicity, gender, or pretty much anything.

(I remind you of this oldie: Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb. A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!)

In his response to the critics, the Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon confirmed my positive impression of him: “Some of our readers have expressed concern about this report, suggesting it did not meet the high journalistic standards they’ve come to expect from us. We want you to know that we’ve listened to you. We’ve heard your voices. And they are stupid.”

Perfect!

Of all the things that should not be taken too seriously, jokes are right up there near the top.

For example, here’s a humor test: a Breitbart story yesterday reported a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the headline, “Factory activity in New York suffered an unexpected collapse in January.”

The story goes on to fill in the gory details: the index of business conditions plunged 29.2 points in January to a negative 43.7, and a drop of 58.2 points over two months. (Numbers below zero indicate worsening conditions.) Those stats are the worst since April of 2020, when the economy was decimated by the sudden pandemic lockdowns.

Don’t see the humor in that? It’s in a subtle word choice from the headline: “unexpected.”

Okay, so I’m no Norm MacDonald. But I find the absurd to be funny, and nothing is more absurd than a bunch of leftists foisting economy-crippling policies on a state, and then calling the resulting cripple-ation (cripple-osity? cripple-tude?) “unexpected.”

It would be like saying, “Dems Prevent Cops from Arresting Criminals; Crime Unexpectedly Skyrockets.” Or, “Newsom Tries to Fiscally Rape Productive Taxpayers; Productive Taxpayers Unexpectedly Flee California.”

Or, “The DNA Test Results for Blonde, Blue-eyed Liz Warren are in: She’s Unexpectedly Categorized as Super-Duper-Blindingly White.” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In another feel-good story, Bilal Nofal has been eradicated.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, “Bilal Nofal” is not a super contagious virus that we’ve discovered a cure for. Although come to think of it, you should have probably always maintained at least 6 feet of distance from Bilal Nofal.

Because Nofal was a top Hamas spy chief, “in charge of investigating suspects of espionage.” That means he sadistically tortured people he suspected of helping the Jews.

I use the past tense because on Tuesday the IDF was flying a plane over Nofal and then – yada yada yada – he experienced a SBAMD.

If you’re not up on your military acronyms, that’s a Sudden Ballistically-Assisted Molecular Disassembly.

Also, since it’s never “too soon” to mock a dead terrorist scumbag, here’s a fun fact: Bilal Nofal’s name can be disassembled and reconfigured (just like his body was on Tuesday) (HA!) into the anagrams “albino fall” and “anal fob ill.”

(Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)

Ooh, I’ve got one more. If only CO would make me the honorary headline writer for Cautious Optimism, I would title the above story as follows:

“Anal Fob Ill F**ks Around with the Jews; Unexpectedly Finds Out.”

And here’s one more feel-good story, this time from Missouri, where a burglar named Darren Venneman was plying his trade of breaking into houses on Strawberry Lane in Qulin last Saturday night.

Unfortunately for him, the homeowner was a Second Amendment enthusiast, who responded by shooting him five times. In other words, Venneman got ventilated on the mean streets of Qulin, Missouri.

If by “mean streets” you mean… Strawberry Lane, I guess? Yeesh.

Venneman was airlifted to a hospital, but died of his wounds. The local sheriff says that the homeowner won’t face charges, since he acted in self-defense.

Because: Red State!

But even in common sense red states, people still have to endure the scourge of the media. And local media seemed to sympathize with the burglar, calling his death “tragic” and “untimely” and an “unforeseen tragedy.”

Though it sounds to me like his death was extremely timely, in that he broke in and was immediately – you might even say “punctually” – shot.

Also, “unforeseen” is close enough to “unexpected,” and thus worth a Simpsonian “HA-HA!” (As in, “Moron Breaks into Gun Owner’s House, is Unexpectedly Shot.”)

Nonetheless, the media story ends by expressing condolences to Venneman’s friends and family, saying, “May they find strength and support during this difficult time.”

But judging from local commenters’ reactions to the local news story posted on Facebook, the community is coping with their grief just fine.

Sample comments include, “Excellent! Good for that homeowner!” and, “Try that in a small town!!” and, “This is how we thin the herd.” and, “Bet he won’t do that again.”

Indeed. God bless Missouri!

Finally, I congratulate the always-Trump contingent of CO nation after the first caucus; the polls were accurate, and Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa was impressive.

I’m still a DeSantis supporter, and while I’m not surprised at the depth of support for Trump among the base, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see RDS give Biden the old SBAMD in November. (Not least because I think Biden would have been forced to debate RDS at least once, and that would have been a blood bath for Brandon! I know that Trump would destroy Biden too, but by refusing to debate in the primary, he’s given Biden’s handlers the excuse to refuse a debate in the general, which he will absolutely do.)

DeSantis is a fighter, but absent a meteor strike in the next month or so he’ll have to withdraw, and Haley is farther to Trump’s left than Trump is to DeSantis’ left, and thus she’s not an option for me.

So the base has made its choice, and the die has been cast, and we must win in November, so when RDS suspends his campaign, I’ll be getting back on the Trump train with both feet.

I’m really hoping that the optimism of the super-MAGA segment of CO nation (and the entire nation) is justified. I’m more worried than that, for reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I also see some positive signs, too. The bogus lawfare cases against Trump seem to be crumbling on several fronts, and polls indicate that a lot of people (though not as many as should!) see those cases as illegitimate.

Trump still has his strengths, and if we can keep Biden from dropping out, Trump’s biggest weakness (his historically bad, underwater disapprove/approve numbers of -15 points) should be trumped by the fact that Biden is the only other pol in recent history with the same, -15 number.

And Biden’s all-around terribleness should ensure that number doesn’t get any better, and will likely get even worse!

And Trump’s numbers in Iowa remind us that you’ve got to give it to him: the man is a human tornado!

I want to see him drop out of the sky and destroy a bunch of MSM empty heads, then skip a few miles before descending and turning the DNC headquarters into kindling, then skip up again and come down on Biden’s White House and level the place.

Would I like it if he could also discipline himself, and maybe avoid dropping down and taking out some grade schools and orphanages, and some conservative subdivisions full of people who don’t love him but will support him, too?

Absolutely. And if he could say at least two or three smart and funny and true things for every counter-productive one, that would be another bonus.

His speech on Monday and his interview on Wednesday were steps in the right direction: “We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not gonna have time for retribution. And remember this, our ultimate retribution is success.”

Yes! More of that, please! Hamas delenda est!

I’m Still Capable of Being Surprised, Up to a Point (posted 1/15/24)

You know the kind of cliches that indicate that something will never happen? Like saying, “The gals on the View will have an intelligent conversation… when pigs fly.” Or, “Joe Biden (RIP) will achieve a foreign policy success… when hell freezes over.”

Well I think I’ve discovered a new cliché of that type. And I can use it in a sentence.

Like this one: “The MSM will cover a conservative fairly … when a big blue city’s Democrat mayor says something true about economics.”

Okay, so it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But on January 10th, when a reporter tried to get New York City (RIP) mayor Eric Adams to criticize Gov. Hochul’s decision to not raise taxes, he said this accurate thing, which I swear I am not making up:

“Well, we are one of the highest-taxed states in the country outside of California, and you have to find the right balance. [I]n NYC in general, 2% of New Yorkers pay 51% of our taxes.”

And then – flap your wings to warm them up, piggies – he said, “We’re seeing a hemorrhaging of, not only working class people, but we’re concerned about losing that high tax base…”

Before he finished with – strap your skates on, Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein and Fidel Castro – “…because that tax base pays for our police officers, our teachers, our firefighters, keeps our streets clean.”

I know. You could have knocked me over with a feather plucked from the wing of an aerodynamically successful swine.

A leftist mayor said something true about the dangerous results of leftist fiscal policy. I think this might be a new day dawning. We might be on the verge of a return to sanity, opening the possibility of a functional bipartisan—

Oh no, wait. This just in, from one day later:

When asked in an interview about the unfolding illegal immigrant disaster in his city, Adams said that NYC “has done a great job” handling the surge, and that, “This has nothing to do with sanctuary cities. Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the [country]. They’re here legally.”

Annnddddd… we’re back. Pigs can’t fly. Hell is still hot. And big city Dem mayors are still allergic to reality and accountability.

Case in point, the Round Mound of Unsound Policy, Illinois Governor Pritzker, has sent a letter to Texas Governor Abbott, asking him to stop sending illegals to Chicago. “I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves. Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives… do not send more people to our state.”

In recent months, Pritzker has called Abbott’s policy “a cheap political stunt,” and in his new letter he complained that, “Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.”

Got that? It’s not Biden’s fault for inviting millions of illegals to flood across the border, and it’s not Illinois Democrats fault for declaring Chicago a sanctuary city for all of the future illegal Democrat voters in south and central America (mi casa es tu casa!). It’s the Republicans’ fault.

Your party has opened the border, J.B. I know how surprised you are that even with all of this global warming that is about to boil us to death, the forecast for Chicago right now is for a freezing cold winter.

If only there were some places where the Mexicans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans and Venezuelans could live where they weren’t in danger of becoming Latinx-cicles.

Oh wait. There are such places. And they’re called Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela.

So get off your high horse, put down that comically oversized turkey leg, and give your party’s leader a call. (Fair warning, though: you may need a Oujia board.)

One final piece of advice, and this is a paraphrase of Claudine Gay’s immortal words from Animal House (“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”):

Delusional, two-faced and double-chinned is no way to go through life, Governor.

Meanwhile, in Texas, rational people are continuing to do things right.

One such rational person is Terry Willis, a resident of a Houston suburb. This week his surveillance cameras alerted him to a small group of Biden voters (I’m guessing about that part… but I’d bet Hunter’s life on it) going through his neighborhood, trying the door handles on parked cars.

When four of them came up his driveway and let themselves into his ATV, which was on a trailer behind his truck, he walked out into his yard to speak with them.

He said, “I apologize that our evil society has given you such a bad deal in life. Please help yourself to my sanctuary ATV. Because: Massachusetts!”

Oh no, wait. This story happened in Houston.

So when he walked into his yard, he was carrying his AR-15 rifle.

Because: Texas!

He racked in a shell and said, “I don’t think you want to do this.” And the criminals ran away, leaving a trail of cowardice and human waste in their wake.

When interviewed, Willis said, “For approximately 20 years, I’ve had a concealed weapons permit. I’ve also been through hunter safety courses. I’ve built guns.”

Did you get that? While leftists have been building DEI programs, abortuaries and memorials to recidivists like Michael Brown and George Floyd, Terry Willis has been building guns!

Did I get a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, watching that news story? Maybe.

I can’t think of a better way to end this column than with Terry’s closing words to a local reporter:

“I’ve worked for 40 years of my life. Everything that I’ve got… never stole anything, and I’m just not taking it anymore. This ain’t the place to come, because we’re tired of it.”

Yes. Yes we are.

But if those misunderstood youngsters are looking for a place where citizens ARE willing to take it some more, and are NOT tired of it, I’d suggest Chicago.

But get yourself a clean pair of pants and a nice warm coat first!

Hamas delenda est!

I’ve Noticed That There Might Be Something Wrong with San Francisco (posted 1/12/24)

Today, I’m starting off with a hypothetical question: What would be your top governmental priority if you woke up and found that through some horrific series of unfathomable events, you had become a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors?

I know. It sounds like the premise of one of the darker episodes of the Twilight Zone. Or that Franz Kafka story, “The Metamorphosis,” in which the protagonist finds that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant bug.

I remember the first time I read that weird opening scene, when Gregor Samsa wakes up to discover his shell-like back and his segmented belly and his numerous, creepy, insectile legs. And he fought off despair only by telling himself, “It could be worse: I could be a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.”

That’s how I remember it, anyway.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. You wake up to find that you’re responsible for the management of San Francisco. And after you struggle manfully with your gag reflex and the instinctive impulse to leap from the nearest window, you stagger over to a huge table and sit down amidst the collection of oddballs, weirdos and nutjobs who are responsible for managing what was once one of the finest cities in America.

What would be your first order of business?

Maybe tackling the piles of human excrement encroaching on every doorway and park bench in the city, like snow drifts in North Dakota in January?

Or maybe dealing with the zombified army of meth heads slumping in those doorways and on those park benches?

Or possibly starting an innovative pilot program in which cops are actually empowered to arrest criminals, instead of helping them steer their shopping carts full of stolen loot around the poop drifts between the soon-to-be-closed stores and “Syringe City.” Which is what they call the motley arrangement of tents and broken-down RVs in which they “live.”

Would it surprise you to know that the actual board of supervisors recently marched right past those options and chose Door #4: “Let’s pass a resolution to tell a successful foreign country how it should conduct a war of survival against a feral mob of genocidal, jihadi freaks.”?

I’m not making that up. In early December, a board member proposed a resolution urging Israel to agree to a ceasefire so that Hamas could try to recover from their well-deserved butt kicking, and live to rape and terrorize another day. (I’m paraphrasing here. But accurately so.)

And since then, countless imbeciles have spent countless hours debating countless amendments and revisions to this meaningless exercise in governmental Toobin-ing. Tears were shed in public comment sessions. Badly rhyming slogans were chanted. Idiotic pronouns for non-existent genders were thrown about with great abandon.

A giant photo of a bombed out hellscape that had once been a business district in Gaza was projected onto a wall of the meeting room. The audience booed, and lambasted the Israeli government that caused such destruction.

Until someone noticed that the giant photo of a devastated Gaza was actually a giant window, through which the audience was looking at the bombed out hellscape that had once been a business district in San Francisco.

So somebody closed the curtains, and the Jew-bashing went on.

And finally, this week, the epic debate moved into its final phase, before culminating in a vote on the resolution. One Supervisor who had been born in Iran talked about the Islamic fanatics who had tormented her family. She testified movingly that, “I was born in a place where I heard gunfire outside my window.”

Or at least I think that’s what she said. In the video of the event, I couldn’t hear her clearly over the sound of gunfire outside the window of the building she was in. In San Francisco.

Another loon, Hillary Ronen (and what is it with women named “Hillary” in this once-great nation?), spoke through tears of how the backing of the evil USA is enabling “the far-right” (sic) Israeli government to “continue its ethnic cleansing campaign” (sic) against the “Palestinian” (sic) “people.”

When the gaggle of morons in the room cheered her ridiculous statement, Ronen said, “This is one of those days where it feels like we are still San Francisco.”

She got that right, at least.

Finally, on Tuesday, the board voted 8-3 in favor of the resolution.

And throughout Israel, when the Jews heard about the vote, they immediately saw the error of their ways, and they beat their swords into ploughshares, and offered the peace-loving “Palestinians” a two-state solution.

And the “Palestinians” crawled out of the rubble, and shook the concrete dust off of themselves… and immediately started raping and torturing Jews, and beating them to death with their own ploughshares.

Or they would have, if the Jews had been foolish enough to pay any attention at all to the delusional denizens of San Fran-feces. Thankfully, since the IDF was busy hunting and killing terrorists, they just mumbled about the fakakta California Democrats and went about their business.

But the resolution was still a success, because it achieved its primary goal: making a bunch of impotent losers and pseudo-revolutionaries feel good about themselves. They cheered, preened, and congratulated themselves for their great victory.

One spokesman, Wassim Hage, summed it up this way: “The hope is that this resolution will put the Biden administration on notice. San Francisco leads Democratic politics in a lot of ways in the United States.”

He’s not wrong about that. I hope that people will recognize that when they go to the polls in November.

The Babylon Bee summed up the entire farce well: “War Ended For All Time After San Francisco Board of Supervisors Votes for World Peace.”

But as is often the case, the eloquent former Harvard president Claudine Gay said it best: “War (huh) What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’! (Say it again.) Blessed are the peacemakers. All you need is love. I am the walrus, goo-goo, g’joob.”

Hamas delenda est!

I’m Looking on the Sunny Side, So Far this Year (posted 1/5/24)

I’ve got the uneasy feeling that there’s going to be a lot of unsettling news as 2024 goes on, but for now the year is fresh and new, and I see a lot to be optimistic about.

FSU got deservedly humiliated in their bowl game, anti-Semitic identity hire Claudine Gay got tossed out of her Harvard presidency, and the Native American president of Penn got tossed overboard even more quickly than Gay did.

Okay, I’m not sure the Penn lady is an Indian, but since she’s as white as Liz Warren and has nice cheekbones, I’m just assuming. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In the ongoing battle of Hebrews vs. Terrorists, the good guys are putting wins on the board by taking hateful creeps off the board. On January 2^nd, a bunch of Bond villains from Hamas, Fatah and other “Palestinian” and Lebanese terror groups were meeting in Beirut. (I picture a bunch of guys with eye patches and facial scars sitting in high-backed chairs around an enormous conference table over a glass floor covering a giant aquarium filled with sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.)

Then the Mossad and IDF came calling, as reflected in my super-accurate re-enactment here:

Sound at the door: Knock, knock.

Hamas money and weapons guy Salah al-Arouri: Who’s there?

Door: Kosher drone.

Salah (confused): Did anyone order a kosher drone?

Collection of thugs: We ordered death to Israel, with a side of death to America, but no kosher drones.

Salah: Wait a minute… kosher?

Drone: KA-BLAM!!!

The following day, an assistant commander in Islamic Jihad’s northern Gaza division with the ridiculous name Mamdouh Lulu was recorded live as he walked on a Gaza street, talking to a companion. As the Israeli eye in the sky watched, the two split up and Lulu went on his merry way, probably with visions of having non-consensual sex with a goat dancing in his head.

Annnnddddd… he was vaporized in an Israeli airstrike. Which sounds about right, since lately the leading cause of death for terrorists in Gaza is “spontaneous vaporization.”

I’d like to think that the pilot said, “Screw you, Lulu,” when he fired the missile.

But one thing is clear: Lulu didn’t even have time to say boo hoo before he went bye bye.

That very same day, a huge crowd of terror enthusiasts gathered for an upbeat tribute to the late Iranian super-villain Qasem Soleimani (or, as he became known after Trump found out his whereabouts, “goo in a Jeep”) in a cemetery (appropriately enough) in the Iranian town of Kernan.

Annnndddd… several bombs went off in the crowd, killing over 100 people and wounding at least 140 more. And before you can say, “Yeah, but how many innocent people may have been hurt or killed in those explosions?” remember that the crowd was there to venerate the memory of a Jew-hating mass murderer.

So, zero. Zero innocent people.

As satisfying as it would be to chalk this karmic strike up as yet another successful Israeli chess move, reports suggest that a Sunni Muslim group was behind the bombing. I’m not a Muslim-ologist, but I understand that many Sunnis are not particularly fond of the Shia running Iran.

So let me first applaud those Sunnis. And to the Shia, I just have one question: Are you going to let those guys get away with that?

But it’s not just vaporizing terrorists who are getting this year off to a good start. It’s also some imploding DEI spending initiatives.

One hopeful story on Breitbart reported that after a huge increase in DEI programs and hiring several years ago, “tech giants including Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google have slashed their funding of DEI programs in 2023 by up to 90 percent.” And as AOC could tell you, that’s nearly half!

Even as PR flaks and spokes-castrati at the tech companies continue to mouth platitudes about the value of DEI, their shareholders and bosses have realized that that value is commensurate with the number of innocent people attending Soleimani-Fest ’24, and they’re trying to avoid having the market give them the Lulu treatment.

Meanwhile in Florida, Ron DeSantis has caused yet another big leftist interest group to weep and gnash their teeth. (Man, I wish we could have a conservative door-kicker like that guy as our president!) This time it was a huge teachers’ union – the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) in Miami-Dade county – who is looking at de-certification because of a RDS-backed right-to-work law requiring that a union meets a dues-paying membership threshold of 60% to stay in power.

Despite a panicked push to boost their membership – including sleazy tricks like smearing the law’s backers and kicking substitute teachers out of their bargaining unit to lower the number of teachers required to meet the 60% threshold – the UTD came up short.

And now Florida parents may be about to gain even more control over their kids’ education. And an influential public union that is way less concerned with educating students than with laundering union dues for Democrat candidates and the DNC.

Finally, I’ve got a few thoughts about the very encouraging signs coming out of the Claudine Gay implosion at Harvard. I don’t think that forcing her out means that Harvard and other universities have learned their lesson and will now reform themselves. If they had, they wouldn’t let her return to a faculty position and get paid $900K a year. (That’s more than I make in several years, and I never plagiarized in my dissertation, or anywhere else!) (If by “several years” I mean “ten years!”)

But I do think that the damage to the reputation of Harvard and Penn and universities in general is serious. The public has seen behind the curtain, and now recognizes the corruption and inexcusable and offensive racial politics there. The empress was obviously wearing no clothes.

And very stupid and ugly glasses!

The premise behind affirmative action was always that it would only involve a very light touch on the scale, and only to tilt an outcome when two job applicants or students were very evenly matched in every other way. If that was ever true, it hasn’t been true for many, many decades.

The recent SCOTUS debate and ruling on affirmative action in college admissions revealed the ugly truth that preferred minorities with bottom-quintile test scores and qualifications were being admitted at higher rates than whites and Asians in the top several percent.

And Claudine Gay’s exposure just hammers that home. A non-identity hire trying to become president at a top school like Harvard would need to have published a number of books, at least several of which would have to be ground-breaking, influential works in their field, amongst a large number of articles and decades of high-profile service.

Gay wrote a total of zero books, and only 11 peer-reviewed articles. And she didn’t even write most of those, as her prolific record as a high-volume plagiarizer proves!

Not to mention that every one of those articles was about race – one of the least rigorous fields in academia, to put it nicely – and all of them were predictably banal and unoriginal, as they only re-packaged the fashionable prejudices of the left: whites are evil and racist, the West is terrible and America is worse, “people of color” are eternally oppressed victims.

Gay is a hack and a mediocrity, and she went out as she came in: playing the race card, and playing the victim, and lying her butt off.

It’s right and salutary that the American public got to see that.

More please!

Hamas delenda est!

Ready for a New Year (posted 1/1/24)

I hope that your year has started off as well as mine. Since we had covid on Christmas, we had our Christmas celebration on New Year’s Day, with Karen’s brothers and their families coming to the house to feast and exchange gifts.

So I started 2024 off with a Merry Christ-year! (Which I generally prefer to a Merry New-mas, though your holiday mileage may vary.)

As always, on the cusp of a new year, one’s mind naturally turns to marking the passage of time, and looking backwards and forwards simultaneously.

When I look back on 2023, I’m extremely grateful for many things happening in my personal life – disproportionately so, given the perilous condition our nation appears to be in: a relationship with my Creator who loves and forgives me; the patient, smokeshow wife; the healthy and thriving kids; the envy of canine-dom in the form of Cassie the Wonder Dog; the chance to live in a state with the best governor in the country, etc.

And though I’ve said it before, I’ve probably not said it enough: the chance to sound off on the Cautious Optimism site has been a source of great comfort and joy in my life. I mean that sincerely: comfort and joy! (Yes, I’m still in a Christmas mood, since we just celebrated today, and the 12 Days of Christmas extend through January 5^th.)

In December of 2016, the Great and Powerful CO invited me to contribute my occasional musings to this site, and since then I’ve had seven years of getting stuff off my chest, and lowering my blood pressure, and meeting so many great people. I can’t thank all of you enough!

If I can risk tainting the new year with a shameless plug…As regular readers know, when I post a new column here, I post the most recent column to my WordPress site, Martinsimpsonwriting.com. There you will find all of my columns going back to 12/16, as well as some pictures, a few short stories, and a few videos. If you like what you see there, you can click “subscribe,” and you’ll get an email notification each time a new column appears.

Looking forward, I’m going to be posting a handful of short stories I wrote during another life as a fiction writer, and a lot of pics of my (finally!) restored Victorian house, Rosewood. I’m also going to try to record and post at least one video a month on various topics of interest. (If anything is on your mind that you’d like to see discussed, please let me know.)

When I look forward to the next year in the life of our country, though, things are a lot more cloudy. In an election year when the stakes are so high and our national life so troubled and deteriorating, my fascination with politics – properly understood and undertaken – alternates with an increasing disgust with the grubby reality of politics as they are actually pursued.

When I’m in the latter mood, Wordsworth’s words sum up my instinctive distaste for public life: “The world is too much with us; late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

Since I’ve retired, I’m not as focused on getting or (hopefully!) spending. My big-picture concerns now require more focus on how I spend time than on how I spend money. And spending time thinking about politics and politicians can often seem a foolish expenditure indeed!

But as soon as I say that, I recognize that politics are shaping the world that my kids and future grandkids will live in, and so attention must be paid. Plus, it is therapeutic to mock dishonest pols and bad ideas. Besides, both Thomas Moore and C.S. Lewis said that the devil cannot stand to be mocked, and those guys knew a few things.

And if that applies to Satan, I’m sure it applies to his minions (i.e. most politicians) too.

But there will be a lot of time for mockery later. For now, I’d just like to point out at least one silver lining during our current national malaise.

Although some of our problems are definitely hard to solve – social security is going broke, our national debt is staggering, our universities need ground-up renovation – many of them really are not.

It’s amazing how many “crises” should be simple to solve, because they arise from logical errors that would be ended with the application of the most basic common sense. For example:

It’s not good to sterilize young people, or cut healthy body parts off because they are going through a phase of discomfort with their bodies and/or mental illness. (The defining characteristic of being young is going through phases, so don’t make permanent and irreversible physical changes!)

You get less of what you punish, and more of what you reward. So if you reward criminals – make excuses for their crimes, minimize their punishments (ridiculous plea deals, short or no sentences, no penalties) – you get more crime.

Giving a drunk a drink doesn’t help him, and most of our welfare system is the institutionalized form of buying alcohol for alcoholics. Stop that.

A country without a border cannot remain a country, and cutting illegal immigration by 95% is a very simple task. It’s very hard to stop the last 5% or so, but if you build physical barriers and man them with adequately armed officers, and then take into custody and either immediately jail and deport everyone you catch, the draw for future illegals will be stopped.

Law and order MUST be maintained throughout our society, and our current hands-off strategy seems literally insane to me. Allowing mobs of protestors to attack public and private buildings, and to close off major highways and bridges, and to terrify students and cops and paralyze major universities (just as allowing millions of illegals to break into our country and disperse throughout it) – all of these are voluntary choices.

Mind-bogglingly, inexplicably, and weapons-grade stupid choices!

Especially because, again, the solution is so simple and obvious, in every case:

When a-hole narcissists block a highway or bridge to paralyze a major city, give them a few quick warning honks, and then drive right through them. (If any of them suffer injuries but then have to wait a long time for an ambulance to reach them because of the congestion they’ve caused, they can use that writhing-in-agony time to reconsider their life choices.)

When pro-terrorist students riot and assault other students and university officials, expel them permanently and jail them immediately.

“But Martin,” I can hear you saying, “despite the brilliance of your words, the logic of your argument, your personal charisma, and (let’s not deny it) your knee-weakening physical attractiveness, we don’t have the resources or manpower to drive-over and pepper spray and jail and deport millions and millions of Biden-voting wastes of space!”

Yes, but we wouldn’t have to. We’d only have to demonstrate our determination to the first few troublemakers, “pour encourager les autres,” as the Frenchies say.

Picture this:

The first antifa thug in a crowd to throw a bottle at the cops gets a faceful of pepper spray and/or birdshot and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first BLM whitey-hater who storms a courthouse gets a bean-bag round to the groin and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first two arrogant morons who try to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge are partially squashed in a game of human Frogger, and if they survive that, are cuffed and arrested in the hospital…

How do you think their co-would-be-revolutionaries would react after seeing that?

Or how about this: What if the two gender-confused, identified-as-male-at-birth “leaders” of a clot of cosplaying grievance-studies majors who attack a pregnancy-support center or Supreme Court justice’s house were arrested and taken to jail. And once there, they were photographed and printed and tossed into a holding cell – with their frosted pink hair and facial piercings, wearing a “Queers for Palestine” t-shirt over a gender non-binary skort — with a dozen recidivist criminals.

And the next day, after their rich yet feckless parents have bailed them out, what if they limped back to the collective and told their tearful tales of prolapsed this and bruised that, and how they discovered a whole new meaning of “misgendering” in jail…

What do you think would happen to the attendance at the next hate-filled leftist assault on a public institution or building?

Okay, that last example might be going a little too far. On the other hand, if we have to err on the side of either letting the rioters destroy our society, or letting criminals open a can of macro-aggressions on their temporarily incarcerated carcasses, let’s go with Door #2.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, predictable and swift consequences will concentrate the mind of even the most mouth-breathing, AOC-IQ-level miscreants among us. So why haven’t we tried that lately?

Let’s learn the lessons of 2023, and make 2024 the year of re-instituting cause and effect, and reaping what you sow.

Hamas delenda est!

Saying Goodbye to 2023 (posted 12/29/23)

I’m happy to report that the Simpson family is on the mend. We got back home on the 22nd from a great visit with the eldest daughter and our new son-in-law in Denver, and then got covid on Christmas eve. But after a couple of days of feeling lousy, I’ve gotten back to about 75% of my usual capability.

And while I’m loath to brag on myself, even at 75%, I’m much more capable than the current presidents of Harvard or the United States at their 100%. (I know: that’s not much to boast about.)

Since this will be my last column of the year, my instinct is to try to look back on the major events of 2023. But the big picture is a little too disheartening to me for that right now. So instead, I’m going to ramble through a few stories that caught my attention recently, and that I’d taken a few notes on before I got sick.

First up, I saw a clip of CNN Chief Legal Analyst Laura Coates on a recent edition of Bill Maher’s show. And before you say anything, no, I’ve never heard of Laura Coates either. And good lord no, nobody with the title of “CNN Chief Legal Analyst” should generally be taken seriously on any topic, for any reason, at any time.

However, her response to one question perfectly represented the consistent self-regard of our leftist “betters” in the media, especially when it comes to demanding that we deny obvious realities when they contradict lefty narratives.

When Maher brought up the economy and Biden’s recent record low polling, Coates said, “I feel like people talk about the ‘feel-onomics,’ right? How I feel about something more than what the actual data is…”

Got that? Leftists like Maher and Coates think that normal (deplorable) people rely on their “feelings” about the economy, rather than on “data.” Which is more than a little ironic, coming from the ideologues for whom “feelings over data” might as well be their motto, credo, and one single commandment.

Feel like a 14-year-old girl named Genevieve? Then ignore the 50-year-old bearded face you see in the mirror, because that’s just an irrelevant data point.

Feel like Hamas is opposed by the peace-loving people of Gaza? Then ignore the cheering throngs in the streets when raped and dead Israeli women are paraded around and spit on, as well as the polls showing that 75% of Gazans support this very thing. Just more data points.

Feel like Biden is healthy and competent, and that Grandma Squanto is an Indian maiden (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and that Ilhan Omar isn’t a brother-marrying jihadi-sympathizer, and that Hunter isn’t a brother’s-widow-jumping, degenerate, addicted bagman for his dad?

Then ignore all the information that your eyes and brain present to you, because those are just irrelevant data points.

Where was I? Oh yeah, people ignore data about the economy in favor of their feelings.

I’ve got news for you, CNN lady. Every time we go to a grocery store, or buy gas, or apply for a mortgage we are being pelted by many, many painful data points. And similarly to when any blunt object strikes you in the groin – ice cream has doubled since Brandon arrived? I NEED my ice cream! – you “feel” pain.

And that pain doesn’t contradict data points. It is the natural consequence of contact with those data points. You idiots!

Speaking of dishonest media propagandists, a recent obituary of the inventor of Glock pistols reads like a parody of ignorant, bad-faith character assassination.

The man’s name was Gaston Glock, and he died this week at the age of 94, and the column starts with some basic information, followed by his company’s statement about his contributions to the industry.

And then it turns into a game of what Adam Carolla has called, “Stupid or Liar?” Because the writer has to be either one or the other.

He says, “It is unknown how many people have died as a result of Glock handguns.”

What?

Then he notes that the Glock was an improvement over other guns of its time, but follows with, “But many gun control advocates criticized Mr. Glock for popularizing powerful guns that they said were easy to conceal and could hold more ammunition than other guns.”

Okay. So gun grabbers “criticized” his product for being superior to its competitors? Got it.

The rest of the article is a long listing of mass shootings which evil criminals carried out with Glocks! I kept reading, certain that I’d eventually get to the part where the writer estimates how many millions of crimes have been prevented with Glocks, how many murders, assaults and rapes were stopped with Glocks, etc.

HA! I kid.

Because I knew what to expect when I read the headline that this shmuck gave his article: “Man who made billions out of death and killing dies at the age of 94.”

I’m not making that up. And sadly, this article typifies the level of sophisticated thinking on display in most anti-second amendment arguments.

Speaking of defective thinking, California leftists continue to reap what they’ve been sowing.

From 1902 until 2019, California gained population every single year. And now, for the third year in a row, they’ve lost population.

Headlines throughout 2023 tell the story: “CA’s population is on the decline, and high-income earners have joined the exodus” (March 23^rd). “CA ranks #1 state wealthy Americans are moving away from” (July 25^th). “CA is leaking vital high-income taxpayers” (August 21^st).

My favorite LA Times headline – because of how clearly it reveals the writers’ low opinion of their lefty readers’ intelligence – comes from December 19^th: “Rich People are Leaving California. That’s bad for the economy.”

DUH!

As the headlines suggest, the state is not getting a good trade in terms of who is leaving and who is moving in. Even before we look at the numbers, we can all guess what each group looks like.

People fleeing: Those who want to work hard, earn money, and keep more than 48% of it. Those who want to start a business and employ people. Those who don’t enjoy physical combat with either micro-managing petty bureaucrats or violent, mentally ill drug addicts.

People arriving: Meth enthusiasts who prefer living outdoors over gainful employment, and like warm winters. Grievance study majors with a tackle-box worth of facial piercings and a blog espousing “quiet quitting.” Those who enjoy the freedom of waking up around noon, rolling out of their sleeping bag, and pooping on the sidewalk.

And no offense to CNN lady, but the economic data back up those “feel-onomic” factors: Recent IRS data shows that the average income of leavers was $137K, while the average of arrivers was only $75K.

Losing almost twice as much on every such “trade” would hurt the income of any state. But CA is a leftist state where the evil rich have been paying their “fair share!” If by “fair share” you mean that the most productive 1% should pay 40-45% of all state income taxes.

The good news is that after the last three disastrous years, CA’s political leaders finally seem to have learned their lesson, and are reversing course in 2024, cutting taxes in an attempt to lure back successful citizens.

HA! I kid again.

Ken-Doll Newsom, fresh from his debate beatdown by DeSantis, signed legislation to increase the top state income tax rate from the already highest in the nation 13%, to an eye-watering 14.4%!

Annnndddddd…

one year after Ken-Doll bragged about having a surplus of $97.5 billion, the state has experienced “an almost unbelievable 25% decrease” in income tax collected, and now expects a $68 billion DEFICIT next year.

You know what I call that, don’t you?

That’s right: Bidenomics!

Finally, I’d like to end 2023 on another positive note, with a feel-good Christmas eve story from relatively near Bethlehem.

This time of year, I usually like to watch festive videos such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” But this season, my favorite video was produced by the IDF. It tells the heart-warming tale of Hassan Atrash, the terrorist most responsible for arming Hamas, as well as smuggling weapons into the West Bank.

Since Israel has had the good sense to ignore Biden and Blinken (and Lloyd Austen and Blitzen!), they’ve been knocking off most of the worst terrorists in Gaza. And a few days before Christmas they discovered a car that Atrash was riding in.

They had a jet in the air, and followed Atrash’s car on video, as it wove through the crowded streets of Rafah. Then, when it moved down a less crowded street, the Israeli pilot got the command and launched a missile.

And to paraphrase an old seasonal poem:

“It sprang off its rail, with a hiss and a whistle,

And it dropped through Hassan’s roof like the down on a thistle.

And the pilot exclaimed, as he flew out of sight,

Shalom, mother-friender, the dust you can bite!”

I love a happy ending!

By the way, THIS is a story that deserves a headline like, “Man who devoted his life to death and killing dies at the age of 68.”

But I will settle for brevity: “IDF takes out Atrash.”

I’ll see you in the new year, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!