Month: September 2024

First, over the last 24 hours, a lot of polls, viewer feedback and focus group data about Tuesday’s debate has come out, and it all indicates that what we were hoping would happen after the debate is actually happening. 

Most persuadable viewers, especially independents, thought that while Kamala “won” the debate, she actually lost some of their support.  (For you non-history buffs, look up “Pyrrhic Victory.”)

One poll showed that though Trump was seen as losing the debate, he actually gained 1% in the poll. (What’s the opposite of a Pyrrhic Victory?  A “successful defeat” maybe?) Among several focus groups watching the debate live with those goofy “reaction meter” things in their hands, the independents agreed far more with the arguments Trump was making on the economy, immigration and crime than they tracked with Kamala.

A surprising amount of commentary, including on the left, criticized moderators’ comically obvious bias, as well as Kamala’s content-less answers. Even Jake Tapper said that, “she dodged questions” and “generally reverted to talking points.” And Dems who have been touting Kamala’s performance and the debate result have gotten some pushback in various venues.

My favorite example was when the far-left Seattle Times published a “fact-check” of Trump on X, saying that, “[He] falsely claimed during the [debate] that protestors took over a big portion of Seattle during the Capitol Hill Organized Protest in 2020.” 

Because Musk now owns X – God bless him! – readers can use “community notes” to fact check the pseudo-fact checkers.  And boy did they!  Tons of people immediately posted links to two major stories that appeared in a big local paper about the violent CHOP/CHAZ takeover, along with many, many tweets and mini-stories that appeared on that same paper’s website at the time.

The kicker?  All of those reports that contradicted the Seattle Times’ “fact checks” came from… wait for it… the SEATTLE TIMES!  OH!  OHHHHHH!  (He’s Sam Kinison, and he approves this message.)

How sweet is that?  The lying fact checkers debunked their own lying fact check!  More of this, please!

Second, I bring you the heart-warming story of an admirably toxic male, an Army veteran and father of a daughter in college, who doesn’t realize that in this Democrat/media era, a daughter needs her dad like a fish needs a bicycle, to paraphrase an old feminist mantra.      

Former Army Colonel Bill Steinkirchner and his wife Melanie live in southern CA, and their daughter goes to college 1000 miles away in Seattle. Last Sunday morning they got a call from their daughter, saying that when she was on her way to breakfast, a strange male had run up to her screaming, threatening and swinging at her.  She fell to the ground, but managed to get up and run, and get away. 

So Steinkirchner did the most dad thing ever.  He booked a flight, got on a plane, landed at 2:30, got to the campus area by 3:30, and by 4:00 he’d found the creep who’d menaced his daughter.  (The mom had found out on social media that the guy had done this repeatedly in that area.) When he yelled at the guy, the creep ran. 

The dad started chasing him, and called the Seattle cops as he was running.  When he told them what he was doing, the cops told him to “stop following” the scumbag, and repeated that “you can’t chase him.” 

Because: Seattle.

Colonel Steinkirchner told the cops, “No!  I’m not gonna stop following him.  This is my daughter.  I’ve got to get this guy.” 

Because: Colonel Dad. 

Right after dad cornered the perp, the cops arrived and handcuffed the bad guy.  I’m guessing their leftist bosses told them to get there before the criminal was treated harshly.  Because in Seattle you can tolerate BLM and antifa thugs terrorizing the town and turning downtown into CHOP/CHAZ, but you can’t tolerate a violent criminal showing up in a local ER with an army boot lodged in his rectum.    

In the story and pics, you can’t really see the criminal’s face.  But I’m still certain that he has a SFPI (Simpson Face Punchability Index) in the mid to high 90s, at least. 

I would like to have seen his punchable face when he was cornered, and the dad closed in on him, saying, “I’m Colonel Steinkirchner, and when you assaulted my daughter this morning, I was a thousand miles away.  But I used all my frequent flyer miles to get here in time to whip your arse.”

Picture that beta male’s thoughts at that moment.  He lives in Seattle, so he’s probably used to calling cops pigs and fascists. But now there’s a pissed-off veteran with a Clint Eastwood stare and a Panzer commander’s last name closing in on him in an alley, and he’s praying that those fascist cops get there immediately!   

I think the Colonel’s wife said it best in a Facebook post after the arrest.  “Way to go, honey!  Thank you for not ending up in jail yourself.”

You couldn’t have scripted that story any better. 

Except that maybe if he hadn’t been able to get a good cell signal during the chase, so that he had to catch the guy first, and then had to subdue him by going all “Sonny Corleone with a garbage can lid” on him.  Then the cell phone would start working again, so he could call the cops.

But that’s a tiny quibble.  Well done, Colonel Steinkirchner!

Finally, remember that time when Kamala Harris told the Israelis that they need to stop fighting with Hamas, and that they better not go into Rafah, because she’d “studied the maps,” and knew that would be a mistake. 

Well several days ago the Israeli defense minister produced a letter written earlier this summer by a Hamas commander named Rafa’a Salameh to the Sinwar brothers, who run Hamas.  In it, he reports that his forces have lost between 60-95% of their weaponry and around 75% of their goat-romancing fighters.   He complained that, “The last 25% of our [fighters] have reached a situation where the people do not tolerate them anymore, broken on a mental or physical level.” 

The Sinwar brothers would probably like an updated report from Salameh, but they’re not going to get one.  Because he assumed rubble temperature in July, when the IDF nailed him with a good ol’ dreidel drone.

But the bad news kept coming for Que Mala, when the Israelis decreed victory in the battle of Rafah yesterday.  She and Biden had done their best to prevent that.  Netanyahu had delayed going after the final four Rafah battalions from February through May, due to opposition from the White House. 

But he’d finally had enough of Joe and the Cackler, and the IDF went in on May 6^th. Since then they’ve destroyed 8 miles of underground terror tunnels – American and UN tax dollars well spent constructing those, Joe! – and killed over 2000 terrorists.    

And now the Rafah brigade has been destroyed, leaving Hamas in the area “no longer functioning as a coherent military,” but as a few isolated guerrilla fighters.

Robert Gates once said that Joe Biden had been wrong on every foreign policy issue for the last 40 years. 

And now it looks like Que Mala is carrying on one more Biden-Harris tradition!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Hamas delenda est!

As a conservative, I’m a big fan of the federalist system, under which each of the various states serves as a “little laboratory” for testing various ways of living and self-governing.  In a country as large and a people as varied as ours, “one size fits all” usually doesn’t fit very many.

For example, some states have high tax rates, many regulations, strong public unions and near-mandatory public schools.  Most of the people who vote for and run those states believe that people need protection from businesses and each other, and that higher living standards are primarily caused by wise central planning, and that an elite group of experts can make better choices for common people than they can be trusted to make for themselves.

Other states choose the opposite course: lower taxes, less regulation, “right to work” rules that allow unionizing but not coercion by unions, and more flexible educational options (charter or magnet schools, private and/or religious schools, homeschooling) for parents.  People in those states believe that they can make most of their own decisions, and that elites are generally sufferers of CRIS (cranial-rectal inversion syndrome), and should mind their own business.

You can recognize, with admittedly a little over-simplification, the former states as blue states and the latter as red states.  Over the last 50 years – and accelerating markedly over the last 10-15 years – the results of each groups’ laboratory experiments have become clear.  The three biggest red states (FL, TX and TN) are improving on most economic and educational fronts, and the three biggest blue states (CA, NY, IL) are deteriorating.

The easiest way to judge the success of the two competing systems is to watch population movement.  People have voted with their feet, moving from blue to red states; CA, IL and NY each lost a congressional seat – and FL, TX and TN each gained one – after the last census.  

And there were wallets attached to all of those feet.  Which is why the biggest blue states have lost millions of financially productive citizens to the red states, with FL, TX and TN gaining tens of billions in taxable income in the last couple of years, and CA, NY and IL losing similar amounts.

In other words the “little laboratories” in the red states are clean spaces filled with people coming up with technical advances and innovative new products, services and ideas.

The laboratories in blue states are alternatively exploding, collapsing, or on fire, and the people staggering out of them have dazed expressions, soot-blackened faces and singed clothes and hair.

Nowhere has the divergence of these two governing visions been more stark than in the area of crime and punishment.  Generally speaking, leftists have seen crime as the result of large, impersonal social forces – capitalism, racism, toxic masculinity, Donald Trump – more than the individual, moral choices of people.  Conversely, conservatives acknowledge that humanity (and thus human systems) are deeply flawed, but insist that criminals are responsible for choosing to commit crimes.

The two philosophies produce wildly different punishment strategies.  Progressives generally go easier on criminals, offering them cashless bail, a plethora of diversion/counseling/probation options, shorter sentences and no death penalty.  Conservatives are the opposite.

Conservatives favor “three strikes and you’re out” sentences.  (And a foul ball counts as a strike.)  Liberals favor “forty-seven strikes and we think you may have a problem” sentences. 

If you kill someone in many blue states, the judges and justice systems agonize over how society has failed you.  If you kill someone in Texas or Florida, we kill you back. 

I’ve written a lot of “stupid criminal” stories in previous columns, and those usually have satisfying endings.  A thug breaks into a house and takes the living-room temperature challenge when the homeowner exercises her second amendment rights.  A would-be car jacker takes the asphalt temperature challenge when he tries to car-jack the wrong person.  A brainiac trying to steal a catalytic converter from under a car fails the “can you set up a jack that won’t fall?” challenge.  (The first paramedic to arrive thinks, “We would have started chest compressions, but his chest was plenty compressed already.”) 

Most of these stories take place in red states, where there is social encouragement for those who fight back against crime and criminals.  Those that happen in blue states or cities often end badly for the non-criminal.

When Austin Simon attacked an elderly bodega worker in NYC, the old man stabbed him in self-defense.  When Simon died – turns out he had a long criminal record and was out on parole after assaulting a cop (UNEXPECTEDLY!) – leftist jackass DA Alvin Bragg charged the old guy with murder.  (Only a huge public outcry forced him to drop the charges.)   

Similarly, heroic Marine Daniel Penny choked out a violent recidivist criminal who was threatening citizens on the NYC subway, and when the perp died, Penny was charged with murder and had his life ruined.  In Tim A-WOLz’s Minnesota, career criminal and woman-beating junkie George Floyd became a secular saint when a cop was accused of being too rough with him while he was in the midst of fatally overdosing.  

And you can’t even trust that criminals who are appropriately convicted and sentenced in blue states will stay in prison, where they belong. Consider the case of California pedophile Charles Mix, whose mugshot should be entitled, “Satan Needs a Haircut.” 

This waste of oxygen was 47 and living with a family in 2003 when he stole a car, kidnapped their five-year-old girl and spent 12 hours molesting and taking pictures of her before he was caught.  Even in CA, he was convicted and sentenced to 350 years to life in prison.  Which means that – by my rough, English-professor math – he could possibly be released when he’s 397 years old. 

Of course to conservatives like me, that’s not punishment enough.  We hear this and ask questions such as “Have we forgotten how to hang people by the neck until they’re dead?” or “Are all of our firing squad rifles broken?”  Or “Can anybody run down to the library and grab a book on the Middle Ages, so we can brush up on that ‘drawing-and-quartering’ process?”

But he did his child raping in a blue state, so he gets the benefit of progressive jurisprudence.  “Well, at least he’s going to die in prison,” you are saying to yourself.

But you haven’t been paying attention.  Because now he’s up for parole.

I would engage my Sam Kinison filter, but that many F-bombs in all caps are not fit for a classy, family-friendly column like this one.     

It seems that in 2014 CA began a warm-hearted policy called the “Elderly Parole Program,” wherein prisoners over 60 – no wait, they dropped that age to 50 in 2021! – can be paroled after serving 20 years, no matter how long their original sentence was. 

I’m not making that up.  The leftists who run CA think we should be compassionate to pedophiles and murderers if they are elderly 50-somethings!  

Let that sink in.  I’m a fine figure of a man (“and handsome too” – obscure Elvis Costello reference, check) and I like to think I’m not THAT far past the height of my powers.  And that evil creep is only 6 years older than me!  It’s a horrific defect in leftist thinking – and outrageously mis-placed compassion – that could allow someone like that to walk free.

The same thing is happening on a societal level all over the world.  The progressive sympathy for  illegal immigrants over law abiding citizens explains the sanctuary city madness, and the accompanying crime waves.   This week police sources in NYC reported that 75% of those arrested in Manhattan are illegals.

Meanwhile in Germany, the number of gang rapes has exploded, and the German government – in good, progressive fashion – is trying to suppress inconvenient truths about the perpetrators.  When two parliamentarians – described as “right-wing populists,” naturally – got some government data, it turned out that out of 155 identified suspected rapists, 84 were “auslanders” (foreigners), while 71 were German citizens. 

It’s bad enough that over half of your nation’s rapists were imported, but the entire truth is even worse.  Because when the “right wingers” checked records of the 71 “citizens’” first names, they found a whole lot of “Muhammeds,” “Bilals,” and “Ibrahims.”

When those names were factored in, a German newspaper concluded that “78% of all suspects [likely] had a migration background.” 

The left’s ideas about crime – what causes it, and what to do about it – have borne a bitter fruit.  The women of Germany (and throughout Europe), the residents of American sanctuary cities, and our country in general has paid a high price for those failed ideas.

Having said all that, I’ve got a lot of friends and colleagues who are lefties and/or vote Democrat, and most of them are good people, with good intentions.  But that is cold comfort, since their intentions don’t change the results of their policies. 

I’m reminded of a quote from the great Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered by the Nazis just a month before WWII ended.  It’s a little long, but I think it’s worth quoting in its entirety, because it sums up our dilemma in this election, IMHO:

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed…  For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than a malicious one.”

Hamas delenda est!

I hope everybody had a great Labor Day weekend.  Other than the Gator game (about which, let us never speak again), we had a good time.  In honor of the holiday, I did no labor, and thus produced no Monday column.

But now the holiday is over, and we’ve got just a little over two months until a crucial election, so it’s time to get back to work.  As disgusted as I am that Que Mala and A-WOLz, despite having zero qualifications, are in a very tight race, I am heartened that there are small signs that the tide is turning against them.

We all knew that Biden’s “Big Boy Interview” was rough.  But last week’s “Little Girl and her Emotional Support Weasel” performance was almost as bad, and confirmed why this un-Dynamic Duo have been running from interviews like Grandma Squanto Warren fleeing from the US Cavalry.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Dana Bash did a terrible job, in that she asked the minimal amount of pointed questions that she had to, with minimal follow-ups.  For example, she tossed a slow one over the middle of plate with the perennial candidate question, “What would you do on Day 1 in office?”

And Que Mala did the rhetorical equivalent of swinging so early that she spun herself completely around, losing her balance and pitching forward in time to catch the pitch right in her 10-cent head, which made her stagger in a circle and let go of the bat.  As she landed on the plate, the bat landed on her head, and a crown of stars and chirping birds circled her head until she fell backwards, unconscious.

Am I exaggerating?  How dare you! 

Here is the first paragraph of her answer, verbatim: “Well, there are a number of things. I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class. When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward in a way that generations of Americans have been fueled by — by hope and by optimism.”

This was the FIRST QUESTION, and she was already running out the clock! 

Obviously there is no content here, partly because she is unusually dimwitted, but also because she got an “elite” education that rewards blather and obfuscation.  She has a law degree.  I spent 30 years teaching writing workshops for every discipline, and I know that this pattern is worst in law students. 

Because lawyers are trained to close every loophole, and often seem to be paid by the word, legal language is full of repetition and synonym pairings.  We find this contract null AND void; we require the defendant to cease AND desist; we write a last will AND testament; we require you to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Etc. 

But that kind of bloat creeps into all kinds of “official” speak.  Bureaucrats say “at the current time” instead of “now,” and “due to the fact that” instead of “because,” and “I was operating at that juncture with inaccurate facts,” instead of “I lied.”

Kamala’s got a terminal case of content-less linguistic bloat.  In her first paragraph she has three pairs of unnecessary synonyms (“first and foremost,” “support and strengthen,” and “hope and optimism”) and one three-banger (“the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions”), and in her last half-sentence she repeats “way” twice and “by” three times. 

Then she piles on another paragraph, which I’m not going to subject you to, because I love you. 

To Dana Bash’s credit, she followed that verbal miasma with, “So what would you do on day one?”

Kamala then excreted another two paragraphs of empty calories – including three “what we’re gonna do to” phrases (spoiler alert: they were all followed by promises as vague as a Bill Clinton wedding vow) – and one, lonely detail (a $6K child tax credit).

And everyone has already widely mocked her big support for “holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”  Which are the only kinds of deadlines that exist, unless you count deadlines around actual death.  As in, “If this moron gets elected, I’m going to hold myself to a deadline around giving myself a huge injection of pure, sweet heroin, and embracing sweet oblivion.”

Walz was just as bad, ducking every question, and lying shamelessly.  At one point he actually said, “I certainly own my mistakes when I make ‘em.” 

This was AFTER he blamed his years-long lying about his rank at retirement and “carrying a weapon in war” on his INCORRECT GRAMMAR!  You know, like when you use a singular verb with a plural subject, or when you put ‘I’ before ‘e’ including when following ‘c.’

Or when you claim to be an Admiral of the Seven Seas, and that you wiped out an entire battalion of Taliban killers with nothing but a coach’s whistle and a spork, from a gondola in Venice.   

Ugh.  Enough about these idiots.  Labor Day is over, we’re in the final stretch, and we need Trump to be disciplined and on the top of his game.  No more bad-mouthing Brian Kemp, or wandering into pro-choice talking points, or coming up with goofy, insulting nicknames.  (That’s CO Nation’s job!)

“Martin,” you’re probably saying about now, “if you’re so smart, why don’t you jump in to save the day with a bunch of brilliant advice for the Trump campaign?

I’m glad you asked.  And no, I’m not just wearing this cape because I’ve been told that I look quite dashing in it. Or because the Norwegian Goddess and I occasionally play a little cat-and-mouse game we call “Zorro and the Serving Wench.”

Perhaps I’ve said too much.  Also, where was I?

Oh yes.  This is my “saving the day” cape, and here’s my $.02 on what Trump should do:

I’d like to see him focus on a Gingrich-esque Contract with America, a short list of specific actions that he’s going to carry out as soon as he gets back in.  This would contrast nicely with Que Mala’s word salad when asked the “Day 1” question, and take the focus off of him (for the many independents who can’t stand him) and move it to his policies, which are popular. 

I know: Trump has already done some of this, though intermixed with many other topics, long discussions, and distractions.  But I’d love to see him boil things down to maybe half a dozen actions, and hammer them relentlessly. 

Here’s my first pass at a list, though your mileage may differ:     

1. Immigration:  I’ll immediately re-instate the “remain in Mexico” policy, and throw every available resource – beefed up border patrol, ICE and National Guard – to policing the border as we start building as much wall as we can as fast as we can.  I’ll also shut off the magnet for illegals: no more freebies (phones, housing, welfare cash, driver’s licenses), no legal jobs, no more catch and release. 

2. Deportation: We’re a compassionate people, but everyone who came here illegally has broken our laws, and cut in line in front of legal immigrants who came the right way, and they must go back to their home countries.  We’ll give everyone a grace period of around 2 months to clean up their affairs and self-deport. While that’s happening, we’ll focus on immediately arresting, jailing and deporting any illegal who has committed crimes in addition to illegal entry.  After the 2 months, we’ll be arresting every illegal we can find, taking biometric info from them, and deporting them with no chance for them to attempt to legally immigrate for at least 10 years.  We’ll prioritize recidivist criminals, but everyone’s got to go back home eventually, and then we’ll let the voters decide how many of the productive, cream of the crop that we’ll allow to legally immigrate.

3. Economy: We’re going to do more of what we did the first time, which created the best economy in 40 years: drill baby drill, frack baby frack, and continue to wisely cut regulations and bureaucracy.  (The federal Education Department is going, and so are the extra IRS agents Biden hired.)   We’re going to encourage the building of as many nuclear power plants as possible, and stop subsidizing solar and wind; if those industries can’t attract private funds b/c they look viable, we won’t continue to throw taxpayer money at them.  Also, my tax cuts that are set to expire next year are now in place for as long as a congressional bill can put them in place. 

4. Crime: We’re going to stop favoring criminals and start protecting citizens.  We’ll defend law-abiding peoples’ 2A rights, and enforce all existing gun laws against criminals who use guns in their crimes.  (If we need more prisons, we’ll build them.)  We’ll cut federal aid to any self-proclaimed sanctuary city: if you screw Americans and support criminals, you’ll do it on your own dime, and reap what you sow.  Also, no more double-standards on rioting and violent protests: everybody (left, right or center) who destroys property or attacks law enforcement is getting every punishment the law allows. (By the way, I’m going to have our lawyers take a fast-track look at the cases of every non-violent J6er with no previous criminal record, and if merited I’m going to have them pardoned and released immediately.  And if an unbiased coroner confirms that George Floyd died of an overdose as the original one did before being coerced, I’m pardoning Chauvin.  If you want to riot over that, we’re preparing jail cells for you.) 

5. Secure Voting: we’ll make it easy for every eligible American to vote and very hard to cheat, including ramping up investigation, prosecution and harsh sentences for everyone who cheats.  I’m putting Elon Musk in charge of assembling a team of tech geniuses to come up with the most fool-proof possible methods to ensure legally legitimate elections.  Whether that includes low-tech (paper ballots with verified signatures that are protected and kept for years) or high-tech strategies like biomedical voter identification (through retinal scans, fingerprints, etc.), we’ll vet and implement it all.  We’re also going to push for legislation – with an executive order in the meantime while we fast-track it to SCOTUS – mandating strict voter ID for all federal elections.  (We respect federalism and state rights, and we won’t try to force election for state officials to follow rational ID and clean voting procedures.  But the congress, Senate and presidency are all national offices that affect every American, and we will not allow corrupt state political machines to send people elected through fraud to national office that allow them power over citizens from the rest of the country.)     

6. Foreign Policy:  We’re going to reward our allies and punish our enemies. So we’re encouraging Israel to go Roman against Hamas, and we’re giving Taiwan as much as we can to arm up against China.  We’re going to sanction and impoverish the government of Iran, and use our exports of natural gas and oil to Europe to put Putin back in his corner, and China back in theirs.  We’re going to make an example of a few offenders – if one more Houthi missile or pirate bass boat comes anywhere near gulf shipping or Israel, we’re going to light the pirate coast up with napalm like in Apocalypse Now.  And if the American hostages in Gaza aren’t all released by the time I finish taking the oath of office, keffiyeh are going to roll. 

I can think of a few more – forced reform of universities (automatic expulsions of violent protestors/rioters, roll out the Florida method of killing DEI programs, etc.); stopping the transing of kids, bathrooms, and sports – but we want to keep it short and focused.

Trump could handle the branding.  Maybe call it “The Elite 8,” or a “New 10 Commandments.” 

I can hear him now.  “The old 10 Commandments were fine.  Moses, Jehovah, good guys, terrific guys.  And the burning bush, and the tablets?  We’re still talking about them, they got tremendous ratings.  Even in Egypt, where the fake Pharoah did everything he could to counter-program, but he couldn’t do it.  He couldn’t do it!

But these new commandments – I call them the Trump Commandments – they’re going to be fantastic.  Some say the best ever.  I mean, nobody is coveting their neighbor’s oxen any more, but you know what they’re doing?  They’re transing the kids!  So much transing, so terrible.  But not any more.  Not after the Trump Commandments.”    

Let me know what I missed, and how we can tighten this up and get it to someone who can get it to Trump.

Time to “cape up,” CO Nation!

Hamas delenda est!