Month: December 2024

Feeling the Christmas Spirit (posted 12/23/24)

We’ve got a lot to be thankful for this Christmas season, not the least of which is the good news that has been coming out of Israel lately.  And sure, starting with Jewish stories might not seem to be the most Christmasy way to begin a column.  But God started that way too, and we Christians got one of the top two Testaments ever, plus our Savior out of that deal.  So I’m just sticking with what works.

Israel had a great year, if measured by their righteous smiting of their enemies, and compared to their horrific 2023.   Their highlights included the exploding pagers, then the exploding radios and walkie talkies, and also the killings of Hassan Nasrallah and Yahoo Sinwar, along with most of the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah. 

In fact, the only disappointment from the Israelis came in October, when they carried out air raids and targeted strikes against Iran in the wake of the massive missile barrage Iran had thrown at them.   I had hoped they’d take out all Iranian nuclear sites, since the one existential threat to Israel — and the largest threat to the Middle East and beyond – would be the mullahs of Iran with nuclear weapons.

But in the two months since those strikes, I’ve realized how well that strategy worked.  Israel took out literally all of Iran’s air defenses and most of their ballistic missile program.  While I was hoping for more widespread destruction of Iran’s military and leadership, smarter analysts than me have pointed out that taking Iran’s missiles and air force off the map was a master stroke.

Iran is now deterred more than ever, because they know that the next time they start trouble, Israeli jets can strike Iranian targets with impunity.  And with greatly diminished missile inventories – and Israel’s demonstration in October that they can intercept the vast majority of missiles fired at them – Iran can hope for only a token show of force before they suffer devastating retaliation.

That still leaves the Iranian nuclear development threat. But even on that front, the Israeli strikes achieved more than they had appeared to at first glance.  Because a month after the strikes, Netanyahu officially confirmed that Israel had destroyed a key nuke research facility at Parchin.

The extra-sweet twist to that story: because Iran had been lying to the low-T anti-Semites running the UN that Parchin was a non-threatening, basically dormant facility, they are now unable to run to them whining that the Israelis took out the nukes that they had been insisting did not exist!

Oh, the savory delectability of a heaping bowl of Christmas hummus, glazed with a generous dollop of schadenfreude and served with a side of Nelson Muntz-ian HA-HA!   

A summarizing story from late November featured some perfect observations: “The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), earlier this year warned that Iran’s nuclear program has largely run unchecked for the last six years, and it is believed to have increased its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium metals…. But IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned that Iran’s nuclear facilities should not become a target as Israel ramps up direct operations against Tehran.”

And now, if you’ll allow me a moment to crack my knuckles, stretch my arms, and rotate my head back and forth to get the kinks out of my neck like a bouncer preparing to pummel an opponent, I’ll attempt the rare, four-“unexpectedly” paragraph:

After Iran has been lying about their nuclear program for years (UNEXPECTEDLY!), and the lefty squishes at the UN and the Biden administration had adopted a subservient posture to appease them (UNEXPECTEDLY!), Israel went Old Testament on the mullahs, which worked out well (UNEXPECTEDLY!).  (“Down goes Goliath!  Down goes Goliath!”) And then, with the prospect of Orange Hitler returning to power, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas “tail between his legs” Araghchi “said he was ready to engage in international talks.” UNEXPECTEDLY!

Meanwhile at home, MSM dissemblers are either getting fired or taking pay cuts to keep their jobs.   MSNBC’s already-low ratings have plummeted since the election, dropping by over 60%.  To put that in terms AOC could understand, they’ve lost more than half of their viewers.  That’s literally dozens and dozens of people!

Get ready for the most deserved scare quotes ever:  Their on-air “talent” has either been getting fired, or required to take less pay.  Stephanie Ruhle was offered a pay cut from her current $2 million, and rabid, racist, blonde-hair appropriator Joy Reid – “My culture is not your costume!” says my Norwegian-American smokeshow wife to the Joy-less one – will drop from $3 million.

Which raises the obvious question: How on earth were those two imbeciles earning over a million dollars in their lifetimes, let alone in a single year?!

But it gets worse: Boyish expert in getting everything wrong Rachel Maddow graciously agreed to a pay cut – remember: she does a single one-hour show per week! – from $30 million allllll the way down to $25 million.

While I might be a hilarious genius, I’m no math genius.  But even I can figure out a ratio of viewers to salary, when looking at Rachel Maddow.  (Who, by the way, recently received the most laughably back-handed compliment in history, from a NY Post story.  They called her “MSNBC’s most bankable star.”)

(Not since Jeffrey Toobin’s colleagues told him, “We’ve seen smaller,” has a compliment been so backhanded.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, Maddow’s viewers-to-salary ratio. I would love to be on the network side of all of these salary negotiations, because they certainly have the whip-hand.  The toughest negotiations are the ones in which the employee has rare and marketable skills, and many suitors wishing to hire them.  Think of a top-notch pitcher who can throw in the 90+ mph range with a lot of control.  If his team doesn’t want to pay him, other teams certainly will.

Now look at Stephanie Ruhle.  Is anyone else on earth elbowing aside competitors to pay her $2 mil?  Or Joy Reid, at $3 million?  I remember my dad saying, when we came across a super-annoying person, “She looks like a long day.”  Well, who needs a low-IQ, racist, long day of a person that badly?

I mean sure, the warped and dessicated Ivy League system will line up for an anti-patriotic whitey-hater to hire and give tenure to.  But not at $3 million a year!   

On an unrelated note, after the new year starts, I’ll be negotiating with CO for an equally reasonable salary of $30 million.  But I’m willing to negotiate down to Maddow-level numbers, even though that pittance would be a devastating insult to me.  

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For the next week I’ll be enjoying my favorite rituals of the season.  I’ll be listening to some Christmas carols in brass, along with A Christmas Carol read by Frank Muller.  (No matter how many times I read him, Dickens endures, and gets better somehow.)  I’ll watch at least one or two versions of A Christmas Carol on tv, along with at least parts of It’s A Wonderful Life.   (If you like Dickens and haven’t seen it yet, I’d recommend a recent movie called “The Man Who Invented Christmas” which tells the story of his writing the Carol.)

We’ll go to a Christmas eve service, followed by supper with Karen’s two brothers and their wives.  After a peaceful Christmas day at home, we’ll go up to Tennessee to see my mom, sister and her husband.

Because I’ve been traveling so much, I haven’t had the chance to respond to the comments on my last several columns, but I was touched to hear how many of you have lost loved ones around past holidays.  I knew that my experience of losing my dad at Christmastime wasn’t unique, but I still got choked up hearing that for a handful of COers, this will be your first Christmas without a spouse or loved one.  You’ll be in the thoughts and prayers of many of us here, as you go through the first holiday (always the toughest one) with an empty chair at your table. 

I hope you all have a great Christmas, one in which you savor all you have, and take nothing for granted.

I couldn’t do better than to end with a pitch-perfect Dickensian toast that Dickens gives at the end of the movie I mentioned earlier.  “I wish you all many, many happy Christmases, and friendships, and great accumulation of cheerful recollections, and heaven at last for all of us.  In the season of hope, we will shut out nothing from our firesides.  And everyone will be welcome.”

A Great Graduation, & Positive Signs as the End of the Year Approaches (posted 12/19/24)

I had a great early Christmas with the family, watching my daughter’s graduation and catching up with everybody last weekend.  The best part may have been the most unSimpson-like experience of having VIP seating!

Every year the university gives one Freshman a specific scholarship that pays all expenses (tuition, dorm, food) for all 4 years, plus a six-week study-abroad course in Oxford.  Regular readers may remember that my little sarcastic astro-physicist daughter won that scholarship four years ago. 

She had an amazing time in Oxford, right up until she got a concussion from getting hit in the head by a metal pole while punting past C.S. Lewis’ Magdalen College rooms on the Thames.  (If she had been eating a crumpet while humming “God Save the Queen” during the experience, that would have been the most British thing any American has ever done.)

When my wife picked up our tickets for the graduation, we found out that the scholarship winner’s family gets VIP seating, in the second row center, right behind the spouses of the school’s big shots in the front row, and in front of the faculty. 

My wife got teary eyed when they lead us to the seats, which was sweet to see.  But I just felt like Jed Clampett driving his jalopy up the circular driveway in Beverly Hills.  (How did we get here, and when will someone realize their mistake and ask us to leave?)    

The ceremony was very nice, and we had some good family time for several days afterwards.  We got home yesterday, and I’m going to be heading back down to the Gulf coast to visit a cousin of mine for a few more days, before returning this weekend to get ready for Christmas.  I’ll have one more pre-Christmas column on Monday.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d touch on the continuing stream of green flags I’m seeing in the wake of Trump’s re-election.  (As opposed to red flags – warning signs that something is going wrong – I’m trying to make “green flags” – indicating the opposite – a thing.)

I’m enjoying watching the members of the legacy media still staggering around, their beaks knocked around to the side of their dazed faces like Daffy Duck after he held a bomb that went off.  They’d done everything they could to knock Trump off the political stage, and after his amazing win, they still haven’t figured out if they’re afoot or horseback.

The dullest of them – the competition is stiff – can’t seem to understand that they might be held accountable for their most egregious breaches of journalistic ethics.  Hostile Sunny Hosten has inadvertently started a popular regular feature on The View: the daily reading of the legal notes.

This happens whenever she sprints through the infield of stupidity, into the outfield of cluelessness, across the warning track of dipsh*ttery, and leaps the fence of legal liability, landing on her empty head.  In the booth, network lawyers shriek like the clipboard guy when Ron Burgundy confidently read the teleprompter telling the residents of San Diego to go friend themselves.  (“Oh! Great Odin’s raven!”)

When they come back from commercial, Sunny has to read corrections of her slanderous blatherings, forced on her by ABC so they don’t get sued into oblivion.  (“Matt Gaetz didn’t sexually assault an entire tour group on the House floor.”  “RFK Jr. hasn’t promised to give polio to every toddler in America.”  “Pete Hegseth didn’t shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”)

It’s great fun to watch her force the words out; she tries to read them robotically, but she can’t help grimacing.  The miserable look on her face communicates the corresponding and unending immiseration way deep, deep down in the tiny, compressed cinder of malice where her soul used to be. 

Not to be outdone by Sunny, ex-Clinton hack and pretend journalist George Snuffleupagus climbed up onto a stack of dictionaries so he could look Nancy Mace in the eye during an interview last spring, and then repeatedly tried to shame her for supporting Trump, whom he repeatedly and creepily said had been found liable by a jury for rape.  (This despite the fact that the jury had replied “No” to the first question on the jury form in that sham trial, which was, “Do you find Trump liable for rape.”)

This week his network gave Trump $16 million and a formal apology to settle his defamation suit against them.  George reportedly threw himself on the floor and kicked his tiny feet when he heard that news. 

Luckily for him, ABC must have some real dullards in charge, because they just signed Snuffy to a new, multi-year contract.  Which is good news for the future Trump presidential library, to which the $16 mil of ABC’s settlement has been earmarked.  That thing is going to have more funding than CO’s HQ compound by the time Trump finishes his second term!

It’s stunning that even as the MSM is suffering one mortifying and hilarious defeat after another, many of them seem incapable of learning their lesson.  A great example of that is the clump of biased lefties running Politifact, which fancies itself a “fact-checking” outfit.

Every December they choose a “Lie of the Year.”  I appreciate the magnitude of their challenge this year, since it’s been filled with a cloud of gigantic lies from January 1st to 30 seconds ago.  One would think that contenders for the title would be chosen based on the prominence of the person telling the lie, the overall importance of the lie, and maybe the frequency with which it was told.

By those standards, even in a year as saturated with dishonesty as this one, two big lies would have to top the list.  In second place, I’d put Joe Biden’s repeated promises that he would never, never EVER pardon Hunter, which easily meets all 3 criteria.  It was said by the leader of the free world, it was repeated a dozen or more times in high visibility settings, and since it was used as the basis of hundreds of Dem attacks on Trump (“The moral gulf between Biden righteously accepting the rule of law and not pardoning his son and Trump’s lawlessness is huge!”), it had a huge impact on the election.

But for me, the winner would have to be the omnipresent lie – from every MSM outlet, Democrat official and Dem political analyst/talking head/propagandist – that Joe Biden was in fabulous shape, and totally mentally fit.  Every prominent leftist told it, thousands of times, and it was so patently false that it beggars description. 

And when it was dramatically revealed in the disastrous debate, it imploded an incumbent president’s campaign and forced him out of the race, thereby becoming a contender for the biggest, most consequential lie of this century so far.

So which of those did Politifact choose?  Neither. 

They chose Trump’s claim that the Haitians in Springfield, OH were “eating the pets!”

Okay, Trump was a presidential nominee, and he repeated it a handful of times, mostly when MSM reporters asked him about it, so it could potentially be a contender.  But it may have been a murky combination of exaggeration and lie, because some ducks in city parks were eaten by Haitians, and there were multiple – unconfirmed – accounts of the illegals eating more than just ducks. 

Compare that to the “I won’t pardon Hunter” and “Joe Biden is compose mentis” lies.  Even the most fanatical Democrat can’t dispute that Joe pardoned Hunter, or that Joe is physically and mentally compromised.

But let’s assume that it’s false, and while the Haitians ate the ducks, they didn’t eat the dogs.  In typical Trumpy fashion, the prez used a clumsily (even stupidly) phrased attempt to get at a larger truth: unvetted millions of Third World illegals flooding into small communities create a variety of problems.

I don’t even think you can say that that lie had any important impact.  To the extent that it highlighted the negative impact arising from illegal immigration, at most it added to a perception already held by the vast majority of Americans.  For Politico to choose that lie as more significant than Biden’s top 5 or 10 lies is ridiculous.   

The MSM really has backed themselves into a corner.  If they stick to their propagandistic, leftist ways, their audience will continue to be tiny, and made up of emotionally dysregulated weirdos working on manifestos drawn directly from the DSM-5. 

But if they try to veer back to the political middle, even those weirdos will abandon them.  When Mika and Joe went crawling to Mar-A-Lago to beg the Mango Mussolini to talk to them, almost half of their audience abandoned them.  And that’s 11 people they cannot afford to lose!

CNN has hired intelligent conservative Scott Jennings to try to bring a little viewpoint diversity to their network, which is a risky move.  Just by being not-insane, he has been routinely reducing their far-left panelists to howling rage, and making them look even more ridiculous than they already did. 

That makes for intermittently good television, but how can it possibly work, given the bone-deep bias in the DNA of all of those shows?  Either the new “conservative” hires will quickly acclimate and move to the far left, making their hiring pointless (e.g. Jennifer Rubin and other formerly “conservative” hires at the WAPO or NYT, or the only attractive one on the View), or else they will remain conservative… and mow through the leftist pap on those shows like Sherman through Georgia!

More green flags for January arise from the super satisfying reversals of fate for so many of Trump’s cabinet and governmental nominees.  Medical experts like Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary who had been slandered by the Fauci pro-maskers and “vaxes 100% stop the spread” types will now head up medical oversight agencies. 

Border hawks like Tom Homan who were sidelined and frustrated by open-border jerks will now oversee the border. Tulsi and RFK Jr. were dissed and banished from the Democrat party and will now be in positions of authority. 

Of course, the biggest reversal is Trump’s himself, since he went from targeted (literally) “felon” and pariah back to the top of the government.  I can’t help but think of Uncle Jesus’ musings on “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” 

Am I saying He was thinking of this election cycle? 

In the words of an obscure and failed politician whose name I can’t recall, I’m saying that we should have that conversation.

Hamas delenda est!

Christmas, Losses, & Remembering My Dad (posted 12/13/24)

This column will be an unusual one. 

Today my wife and I are heading down for my daughter Emily’s graduation from college on Saturday.  We’ve got a four-bedroom Airbnb through Tuesday, and we’ll be joined by Katie and her husband, Karen’s two brothers, and one of my cousins.  After the graduation, we’ll be having an early Christmas with Katie and Ryan, since they’ll be back in Denver and working on Christmas Day. 

In other words, we’ll be making rather merry for the next four days, and I won’t be posting my usual column on Monday.  But I’ve got some things on my mind that I thought I’d share before leaving town.

December is my favorite month of the year, and after the relief of Trump’s win last month, this has been an easier year than usual to get into the Christmas spirit. 

We’ve got the tree and lights up, and last weekend we saw the town tree-lighting – with carolers, horse-drawn wagon rides and luminaries lining the streets – in an old hotel where Robert Frost spent his last winters, in one of our town’s oldest neighborhoods.  The advent services at church have been great, and the weather has cooperated by giving us enough cold nights to justify having a few fires in the fireplace.

But I’m also reminded of the bittersweetness of the Christmas season for many, especially older people.  The sweetness is obvious, especially for Christians, for whom the holiday marks the pivot-point of human history.

But the bitterness is there too, because for most of us Christmas is the most nostalgic of holidays, and nostalgia always combines happy remembrance with the ache of loss.  If you had a reasonably happy childhood, some of your best memories invariably involve Christmastime and the traditions and people you loved, magnified through the rosy lens of your own innocence.   

The older we get, the greater the chances that the holiday also carries bad memories of tragedies that happened around the holidays, the pain made sharper by the jarring confluence of a happy event – a birthday, an anniversary – with a devastating loss.  After you’ve lived a while, you’ll inevitably have some poignantly empty chairs around your Christmas table.   

I’m thinking about this now because tomorrow is both Emily’s graduation day, and the tenth anniversary of my dad’s death.

Ten years seems like a perfect amount of time to illustrate how strangely time works on us.  By the time you’re middle aged, events from a decade ago alternately feel like they happened eight months ago, or in a different lifetime.

(It’s disorienting.  I mean, I’d guess that Kurt Cobain died around 10 years ago, around the time when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.  But no.  Cobain died thirty years ago, and Biden was still in the race 6 months ago!) 

I think it was C.S. Lewis who cited this kind of alienating strangeness in the way we perceive time as, if not dispositive proof of the soul’s immortality, at least a persuasive indicator of it.  He used the analogy that fish are not constantly surprised by the water they live in, but we are constantly surprised – fooled, and vexed, and startled – by our experience of time.   We are created for immortality, and this current life hints at that fact constantly.

So on the one hand, I wish dad could be there to watch my astrophysicist daughter walk across that stage tomorrow.  And on the other, I know that he will be.  And that the only reason he’s not as proud of her as I am, is that it’s not possible for anyone else to be as proud of her as I am!

Okay, I said that this would be an unusual column, and I think I’ve delivered on that.  So I’ll finish the same way.   

I wrote a remembrance of my dad for Father’s Day in 2017, which now seems like 6 months ago.  (See what I mean?)  I’ve re-posted it on a couple of Father’s Days since then, and I’m happy to say that thinking of him these days brings back nothing but good feelings. 

I’m reposting it here for one last time before retiring it for good.  Whether you’re a newcomer to the CO site and haven’t seen it before, or you’re seeing it one more time, I hope that even though it’s not the least bit Christmas-y, it will help you to appreciate the time you’re able to spend with your family this Christmas.

From June, 2017:

“As this Father’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad.  He died not long before Christmas in 2014, and time has been doing its work, to the point that thoughts of him have shifted over to a mix of many happy memories of him, to go along with the pain of his loss.  I’m a father to two daughters, and have known hundreds of other fathers as friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances, and off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone who carried out that role any better than my dad.

He was born into a family of four boys and four girls to working class parents in Illinois in the late 1930s.   He married my mom not long after high school, and had me and my younger sister, and raised us while working at the Northern Illinois Gas Company, until he was forced into an early retirement at the age of 57 by injuries.   He operated a variety of heavy equipment, and he took great pride in his work.

When I was little, I can remember him pointing out subdivisions or houses that he’d run services to, and whenever we’d pass a parking lot with heavy machinery, he’d brag that he could operate anything on that lot.  My mom had to explain to an excited young me (at maybe age 5 or 6?) that no, she was not going to let dad scratch my back with his backhoe.  (He’d assured me that he could do so, no problem.)

He was not perfect, as none of us are.  He could be short-tempered and impatient, for example.  But even then, he was the most unusual of people: he was a short-tempered man whom I never heard swear.  Not once in my life.  Not when he bounced a hammer off his thumb.  Not when the Bears or the Cubs went O-for-a-month.  Not when a Democrat got elected.

He used ridiculous euphemisms to avoid cursing – “son of a buck,” “dirty rip,” and the like – but as a grown man who rarely makes it across town in heavy traffic without dropping at least one trenchant Anglo-Saxonism at one of my many brain-dead fellow citizens who cannot seem to master a turn signal or figure out which lane is for passing, that’s almost more than I can comprehend.

People are freaking idiots all the time — I am too — and my dad was surrounded by them his entire life, but he never swore in front of his son!

In the summer of 2014 dad had cancer surgery that we initially thought had been successful.  But a month or so later we found out that it had metastasized, and a month after that we learned that it would be fatal.  I spent much of the fall of that year with my mom and dad in Tennessee, and I’ll always be grateful for that time.  I recorded dad sharing a lot of memories from his life, and I saw the evidence of how many lives he had touched in the form of a steady stream of visitors who came to see him, and to see what they could do for him and for my mom.

He kept his sense of humor throughout his final illness.  One of my cousins was visiting not too long before dad died.  That cousin is known for sarcasm and smart-assery – even by Simpson standards – and he has some Scottish background on one side.  Dad was sitting in a recliner and drifting in and out of the conversation, and the cousin was joking that he was going to try to learn the bagpipes.  He promised (tongue-in-cheek) to play them at dad’s funeral.

Dad delivered his line with a perfectly dry tone: “That’s it.  I’ve changed my mind.  I’m not dying.”

Dad died on a Sunday evening, and he told me his last joke two days earlier.   He and I had both been Chicago Bears fans for life, and the Bears really stunk in 2014.  In the last couple of months in that season, they were on tv unusually often for a team that bad.  On the final Thursday of dad’s life they were on Thursday Night Football, and dad and I watched from our dueling recliners.  He was pretty heavily medicated and drowsed on and off; each time he woke up a bit, he’d ask me the score, and I’d report that the Bears were down by another touchdown or so, and he’d roll his eyes and make some comment before sliding back to sleep.

The next day, he asked me for a favor.  He had been unable to make it to church for a while by then, but his church made each week’s services available on DVD for members who had been unable to make it on Sunday.  Dad had several of those stored up to watch, and on that Friday, he asked if I could put a DVD in for him.  He seemed a little drowsy, but I put in the DVD and handed him the remote, asking if he thought he could stay awake for the sermon.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “But I don’t want the last tv I ever watch to be that stinking Bears’ game last night.”

To end his good life, he died a good death.   He had hospice care in his home, and my mom, my sister and brother-in-law and I spent some time with him every day in his final months.   He had the chance to tell everyone he knew how much he loved them, and that he was ready to go, and he was solicitous of others at a time when most of us can focus only on ourselves.  Because of great hospice workers and morphine (which by itself is proof to me that God exists, and that He loves us), he was able to die at home.

He slept for most of his final day.  In the evening, mom and I arranged a schedule; I would stay up with him, and give him morphine twice, and then she would get up early and administer the morphine while I was sleeping in.  She spoke to him the last time, kissing him and telling him that he had been a great father and husband, and that he could go.  Then she went to bed, and I’m convinced that he passed before she fell asleep.  I had some papers to grade, so I went down the hallway to get my computer, and brought it back to set up in the chair next to his.   By the time I got the computer plugged in and checked on him, he was gone.

Ronald Lee Simpson was born on January 22, 1938, and died on December 14th, 2014.  In between he lived a loving and generous life.  I think it is hard for some people to come to faith in a loving heavenly Father if they have an abusive, or neglectful, or absent earthly father.  I am a Christian because of both of my parents, but my path to God was made much easier by the example of a father’s love that I witnessed all my life.

I can’t wait to see him again.

I wish for you all that you have had a father like mine, or that you marry a father like mine, or that you are a father like mine.  Happy Father’s Day!” 

…and Merry (early) Christmas, everybody!

Stupid Criminals, Foolish Victims, & Leftist Govs Produce Predictable Failures (posted 12/11/24)

Earlier this year I wrote about some new categories that would become regular features in my columns, including headings like “Unexpectedly!,” “We Don’t Hate the Media Enough,” “Schadenfreude Corner,” and “Stupid Criminals.”  Since I haven’t returned to them in a while, I’ll do so now:

Stupid Criminals

Nowhere do political theories show up more clearly than in crime stories.  Most everyone makes room in their thoughts for both punishment and rehabilitation, but conservatives believe that you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish.  So their laws tend more toward punishment.

For example, in red states like Texas and Florida, our stance on the death penalty can be summarized by the saying, “If you kill someone around here, we’ll kill you back.” 

Meanwhile in blue states, there’s a lot more focus on rehabilitation, and assigning responsibility to anyone or anything rather than the criminal.  E.g. criminals aren’t moral agents with free will, but the helpless pawns of the system, institutional racism, or capitalism. 

Therefore, in NYC, the judicial system doesn’t look at Jordan Neely and see a habitual drug abuser and violent recidivist terrorizing the citizenry, but a charming Michael Jackson impersonator unjustly attacked by a so-called “Good Samaritan.”  Because: racism. 

But those two examples are extremes, and many stories fall in between them, at least in part because denizens of some blue cities are starting to realize that their earlier views might have been AOC-level stupid.

Take the case of two armed robbers in New Orleans named Cecil Batiz and Teony Juarez, two teenaged Mensa members who decided to terrorize a clerk and rob a convenience store on December 3rd.  After pointing pistols at the clerk and grabbing a bunch of cash, they both demonstrated that they’d forgotten one of the prime rules of robbing people: keep your head on a swivel.

Because while the morons were paying attention to their take, the clerk pulled his own pistol and demonstrated that he knew the prime rule of both suppertime and shooting criminals: everybody gets a first serving before anybody gets seconds.  So he shot Cecil in the abdomen, and then Teony in the arm, as he was returning fire before bravely running out the door. 

Then the clerk gave Cecil seconds, as he lay on the floor trying to get his gun up.  Cecil took the room-temperature challenge, while Teony was only wounded, and later arrested.  And the good citizens of New Orleans, upon watching the video of the clerk getting the drop on the criminals, cheered like the Saints had just hit a game-winning field goal.

New Orleans’ DA is a George Soros-funded jerk named Jason Williams, so you’d think that the store clerk is in trouble.  But it turns out that in October of last year, Williams and his mom were carjacked, after which Williams said that he had changed his thinking about crime and punishment. 

When asked about the robbery gone wrong, Williams noted that “it’s painfully obvious to anyone who saw that video what those two people were doing in the store” and that “once somebody puts a gun in your face, the rules change.”  

Yes!  Even a once-blind lefty can sometimes see the light!

But not so fast, cautious optimists!  Consider the opposite case of Darcie Bell, over in…

Schadenfreude Corner:

Darcie is a leftist right out of central casting:  lives in San Francisco; wears Rachel Maddow glasses and a face mask (because of course she does) in her social media pic; has posted many times calling for the police to be defunded.

But now she’s decided to move out of San Fran, as she shares in a X post: “I’m like moving out of my house because I can’t afford to live here anymore.”  Even though she’s got graying hair, note that she still includes the superfluous “like” as if she were an annoying teenager. 

But with even less excuse, since teens do that as an unconscious verbal tic when they speak, and Darcie actually wrote the word out in a tweet!

Anyway, the poor dear has been priced out of her feces-caked liberal paradise.  But that’s not her only complaint: “My kid just broke his femur at one of your many, underfunded SFUSD schools, and there was no nurse present to help him.”  Not one our OUR schools, Darcie, one of YOUR schools.

And did you ever wonder why, when you are paying such high prices and taxes, your schools are still underfunded and sub-par?  Which party has been running those schools for the last century or more, sweetheart?

She concludes thusly: “Lmao.  WTF is this city?”   

Answer: This is exactly TF what you voted for this city to be!

But the funniest part of Darcie’s story is yet to come.  Because when she loaded all of her belongings into a U-Haul truck to make her move… wait for it… and put down your drink …some low-life scumbags stole the U-Haul! 

Cue Nelson Muntz, pointing at Darcie Bell: “HA! HA!”       

She turned to social media and asked for people to look for the stolen truck.  But apparently there are a few wise guy conservatives still left in San Francisco – Christopher Silber, I’m looking at you! – because many people pointed out that she could call the police.  Except, oops, she hates the police, and wants them defunded.

Ms. Bell didn’t appreciate that viewpoint, because her next post sounded a little more like angry Joy Reid or sulky Sunny Hostin: “I haven’t found my sh*t!  The cops didn’t do sh*t!  U-Haul made me file a f-ing police report!  There’s cameras all over this city.  They haven’t done sh*t!  I just want my stuff back!”

Cue the sad trombone, followed by Nelson Muntz saying, “HA HA!”, followed by Sean Connery saying, “Suck it, Trebek!”

And lest you think that Darcie may finally have learned something…

Cue Doctor Evil: “How about NO!”

Because her last post before “muting” her X thread said, “I don’t care about the people who stole it, people steal sh*t, I just hope they take the stuff they need and I can recover the personal stuff.” 

Darcie, Darcie, Darcie.  Thieves don’t steal a U-Haul because they need it!   They steal it because they are thieves, and because they have the work ethic of Hunter Biden, and because boneheads like you allow and excuse theft. 

But here’s a thought that should comfort you.  In your leftist theology, private property is theft.  So you really didn’t have any right to your “personal stuff,” and those thieves were really just redistributionists, following Obama’s commandment to “spread the wealth around.” 

I mean, you don’t want to be an evil capitalist, greedily clutching your precious “private” property, do you?

Finally, we have a couple of blue states clocking in with entries in the “Unexpectedly!” column:

First up is California, where Ken-Doll Newsom signed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage in September of last year.  Ten months later, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that CA had lost 6,166 fast-food jobs. 

But those losses were worse than meets the eye, because they followed the same period a year earlier, when CA had added 17,528 such jobs, for a net comparative loss of nearly 25,000 jobs. 

So a leftist politician substituted his arrogant judgment for that of the millions of free citizens participating in a voluntary free market…and thousands of people lost their jobs. 

UNEXPECTEDLY!  

Meanwhile, my late, great, home state of Illinois has been suffering under the governance of a succession of far-left goofballs for many decades.  The latest party boss is Governor “Goodyear” Pritzker (D-irigible) – #putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg – who has managed to add to a pension shortfall that has now reached $172 billion!

That’s right.  Illinois Democrats have managed to over-tax their citizens and over-promise pension windfalls to their government workers to produce “the worst public pension debt bomb in the country.”

Illinois’ debt is almost twice as much as that of the six surrounding states combined, and it’s more than the shortfalls of the 33 best-performing states, COMBINED.

So a state presided over by a far-left governor, dominated by a giant city presided over by a string of far-left mayors, has produced an economic disaster. 

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Hamas delenda est!

A Great Tort Reform Idea, + the Origin of my Liz Warren Mockery (posted 12/9/24)

I am dividing today’s column between a serious proposal to address one aspect of our nation’s crime problem, and a hilarious peek into the origin story of my mockery of Elizabeth “Grandma Squanto” Warren.

I’ve been saving up some crime stories (which I’ll have to get to later this week), but one particular story is on my mind today: the outrageous prosecution of Daniel Penny in NYC.  This tale perfectly encapsulates the delusional dysfunction of leftist theology re: crime, and crime prevention.

Jordan Neely should have been imprisoned or confined to a mental institution long ago, which would have prevented the serious damage he’s done to society and himself for several decades.  And a Good Samaritan like Daniel Penny, who was willing to risk injury or death to subdue Neely and protect the citizens on that subway car, should be praised for his efforts, rather than blamed and prosecuted.

These are familiar points, and there’s no need to rehash them here.  Most sensible people already understand them, and far-left partisans refuse to do so, until (sometimes) they or someone they love is victimized by someone like Neely. 

But one wrinkle in this story is doubly irritating to me: Jordan Neely’s father Andre has filed suit for a ton of money against Daniel Penny.  

I don’t know the family history of either Neely, but the typical pattern in these cases is that absent, neglectful or even abusive family members come out of the woodwork after their troubled relative has been killed or injured.  They wail about the loss, and try to profit from a suit against anyone involved with the killing, usually a city or business that has the deepest pockets.

And sadly, this is indeed typical.  For example, after Kyle Rittenhouse legally shot three previously convicted violent felons who were trying to murder him, he (and the city of Kenosha) was sued by the two dead felons’ families, and by the one surviving felon.

Regular readers know that I am nothing if not a font of mostly brilliant ideas, and a problem-solving machine, and I think I’ve come up with a solution to this plague upon our society.  It involves a team of lawyers forming a nationwide group to automatically sue anyone who launches one of these lawsuits. 

Here’s how it would work.  Daniel Penny goes on trial for Jordan Neely’s death, and Neely’s dad lines up to take millions of dollars from either taxpayers or Penny and his family.  But invariably, recidivist criminals like Neely – or George Floyd, Michael Brown, or the three thugs whom Kyle Rittenhouse shot in self-defense – have left a long line of victims behind them.

My team of intrepid lawyers — call them the “Simpsonian Avenger League (SAL)” if you must (I’m already working on a logo and copyright) – would leap into action, and find the past victims of the dead or injured criminal.  Women he’s beaten or raped, people he’s assaulted or robbed, the family members of people he’s murdered – all would be signed up to a lawsuit against the criminal or his survivors.

Then, in the event you get a low-IQ, blue-state, social-justice-warrior jury, and they award millions to the criminal or his family, the SAL would move forward with their lawsuit.  The money initially awarded to the criminal would be impounded in an escrow account, and as soon as the criminals’ victims won their suits, that money would go to them.

I’d like something similar to be done on behalf of the citizenry at large.  If a recidivist had racked up unpaid restitution judgments, for example, all of that money would be scarfed up and returned to taxpayers. 

I’d also push for one step further: everything that society spent on that criminal – the costs of catching, trying and convicting him, plus the lifetime costs of jailing him – should also be forfeited back to the taxpayers. 

If there were still anything left owing from the judgment to him, I’d deduct all of the taxpayer-provided welfare that person had received: food stamps, housing, taxpayer-paid medical care, etc. 

The SAL would probably become something like DOGE: its members would receive the thanks of a grateful nation after it did its work for a year or two, and then it could go out of business, except for a handful of lawyers needed to continue its work.     

Because the ambulance-chasing lawyers for criminals are motivated solely by money.  And they would soon realize that even if they won ridiculous judgments against people like Daniel Penny, Derek Chauvin or Kyle Rittenhouse, those judgments would immediately be redirected to the victims of their creepy clients.

They wouldn’t get paid, and the baseless suits would stop. 

Okay, shifting gears now, regular readers will also know that I’ve been including running jokes about Liz Warren in my columns for many years.  After each of those jokes, I’ve included “#wemustneverstopmockingher.”

This weekend, as I was going back through some of my past columns (which you can find at Martinsimpsonwriting.com) in search of inflammatory references to “ranny-tays” that might draw the ire of FB censors, I came across the origin story of all of my Grandma Squanto jokes.  And I thought that since many of you may have found this site fairly recently, you might enjoy seeing it.    

It’s from a column dated 12/1/17, which looked back on my favorite events of the previous month.  In one of those events, Trump was giving an award to surviving members of the Navajo “Code Talkers” who served in WWII, and he wedged in an insulting “Pocahantas” reference. 

So please consider this finely-aged excerpt an early Christmas present from me to you:   

12/1/17: 

“But that’s not my favorite story of November.  That honor goes to Trump vs. Pocahontas Warren, Round Two.  Was it classy for Trump to put a rib kick in on Warren when he was supposed to be honoring the Code Talkers at the White House?  Was it juvenile, and a little embarrassing?  Did it still make me laugh?  No, yes, and I’m not too big to admit it.

Warren’s response was perfect, as she stepped right into the trolling trap, calling the name a “racial slur,” and vowing that she will not allow Trump to “shut [her] up.”  Guess what, Liz?  That’s the last thing he would want you to do.   He wants you to keep talking all things Indian – What do you think of the phrase “indian-giver,” Elizabeth?  Any thoughts on the name of the Washington Redskins?  Would you consider yourself a big Columbus fan? — and as you do so, he’s rhetorically putting a huge, feathered headdress on top of your dopey head, turning you into the Native American version of Dukakis in that tank commander’s helmet.

Especially since Warren is supposed to be a leading future Dem presidential contender, we cannot stress enough the sleazy details of her egregious faux-Indian scam.  In case you haven’t followed that story, here are my favorite details.   The blue-eyed, blonde, pasty-white future Senator began claiming to be Cherokee in her 30s, got herself listed as a minority in a directory of lawyers, and ended up with a job at Harvard, where the school touted her as a prominent minority hire.  She later denied that she got any advantage from her claimed minority status – a laughable claim to anyone even the least bit familiar with the political climate of academia.

What “facts” did Warren base her claims on? “Family lore” and the fact that her grandpa had “high cheekbones.”  I’m not making that up.

Hey, you know who else has some high cheekbones?   Melania Trump.  And we all know how feared the Slovenian Sioux were, all throughout the Badlands.

You know who else has high cheekbones?  My Norwegian-descent wife.   And yes, the Slovenian Sioux were only outstripped in their fighting reputation by the Oslo Apaches.  When the war canoes took to the fjords, pioneers knew that they were in for heap-big trouble!

My favorite Warren anecdote is that she once had the gall to submit five supposed family recipes as entries in a book of Native American dishes called – and again, I’m not making this up – “Pow Wow Chow.”

But it gets funnier – and I know what you are asking:  How?  (Get it?)

It turned out that two of her five recipes were plagiarized directly from another source: a man named Pierre Franey.  I know, you don’t often hear of Indians named “Pierre.”  (Although Pierre Horse, after merciless teasing during middle school, changed his first name to “Crazy,” and went on to become a ferocious warrior.  Also, Sitting Bull’s real first name?  “Jacques.”  True story.)

“Don’t be so dismissive, Simpson,” you might be saying.  “Maybe this Pierre Franey was somehow connected to the French and Indian War.  I remember reading about that in school.”

Nope.  It turns out Pierre was connected to… Le Pavilion, a snooty French restaurant in Manhattan.

“But Manhattan was once sold by its Indian inhabitants for a bunch of beads,” you might say.

And I’ll just nod my head sadly, and point out that Pierre wrote and published these two recipes… IN 1979!!

But wait.  There’s more.  The two recipes that she stole – recipes that she claimed came from her Oklahoma-dwelling Cherokee ancestors – were for “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat” and “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing.”

Because when you think of lobster, you think of Maine.  When you think of corn, you think of Iowa.  When you think of potatoes, you think of Idaho.

And when you think of crab, you think of… Oklahoma?!

The lonesome, moonlit nights on the prairie.  The wind rustling through the grasses and wheat fields, the howling of a far-off coyote.  The campfire crackling under a starry sky.  And the clacking of millions of crustacean claws, as the great crab herds make their way across the endless plains in their awe-inspiring migration.

We should never stop mocking Elizabeth Warren.”

A few columns later, I first used the hashtag #wemustneverstopmockingher, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Happy Monday, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!

A Few Thoughts on Pardons and Polling (posted 12/6/24)

The Hunter Biden pardon, while aggravating, has not bothered me as much as it otherwise would have, for several reasons that many have commented on.  First, it wasn’t exactly surprising to any of us who aren’t gullible partisan Democrats.

If all of CO Nation had been in a bar on Sunday night – and what a glorious event that would be! – and I got up on a table and said, “Hey, does everybody remember how Joe Biden has insisted for months that he has given his word as a Biden that he would never ever pardon Hunter no matter what, cross his heart and hope to die?  Well he just issued a pardon for Hunter.”

The instantaneous roar from everyone in the crowd of, “UNEXPECTEDLY!” would have produced a sonic wave strong enough to knock me off my feet. 

Second, a bright side of the Hunter pardon is that it represents one more devastating shot at the Democrats’ crumbling credibility.  It not only makes Joey Gaffes look even worse on his way out the door (which I wouldn’t have thought possible, at this point), but it also re-humiliates all the elite Dems and talking heads who lied on his behalf, from “he’s sharp as a tack” to “his refusal to pardon his son shows how much Democrats revere the rule of law, unlike lawless Orange Hitler.”    

More importantly, it gives Trump carte blanche to start tossing out pardons like Que Mala serving up steaming bowls of word goulash. Because any Dem stupid enough to start objecting vociferously is going to get Hunter thrown back in his face.  (And nobody wants that.  Ask any of the hookers to whom that has happened.)

And Trump needn’t come across as just getting even; he could draw substantive and useful distinctions between the way Biden and the Dems weaponized the legal system, and what he’s going to do. 

The law was used against him to turn non-crimes into misdemeanors, and then turn those misdemeanors into felonies, and then those felonies into crimes against humanity.  Democrats tried to jail him for keeping White House documents after he left office, but fought any attempts to even charge Hillary and Joe Biden for more severe instances of the same behavior.

Democrat Attorneys-General Eric Holder and Merrick Garland, and IRS official Lois Lerner were all found in contempt of Congress, and none of them suffered any consequences, while the Democrats jailed Peter Navarro and Steven Bannon for the same infraction.  Etc. and etc.

I hope that on Day 1 Trump pardons every non-violent January 6th protestor (i.e. the vast majority of them), as well as any non-violent abortion protestors.  More controversially, I’d like to see him pardon Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.

That one might be too big of a distraction as he’s trying to get started, because it would inflame millions of low-information voters who have been lied to by the grifters in charge for the last 4 years.  But that case has always been outrageous.  It was a textbook example of a trial that required a change of venue, and in which evidence was tainted by corruption.  (Starting with the Medical Examiner’s initial finding that Floyd’s death was caused by a combination of lethal levels of drugs in his system and the serious damage that had been done to his heart by his life-long drug use.  Political pressure led him to later change his findings to mostly blame Chauvin.)

As I am writing this, the Daniel Penny verdict has not come down yet, but if the NY jury finds him guilty in the death of Jordan Neely, Trump should immediately pardon him, too.  That one wouldn’t be as controversial as Chauvin, because even the majority of New Yorkers know what a travesty that trial has been.

In fact, pardoning Penny would be win-win for Trump, giving him both the chance to right an obvious wrong, and also achieve a political win by sending citizens AND criminals the message that law and order is back. 

I can see him giving a press conference in NYC with Mayor Eric Adams (who is now talking tough on both crime and immigration) standing behind him.  “I love NYC and New Yorkers too much to watch them suffer what’s coming their way if their insane, far-left politicians continue to inflict this kind of helplessness on them.  In fact, anyone who intervenes as a Good Samaritan is going to get a pardon from me if convicted, so start fighting back, because my White House has got your back!”

Trump could hurt himself by obsessing over relitigating the 2020 election and his legal cases, as justified as that would be.  But he could avoid that, and help his administration’s strong start by clearly looking forward, starting with clearing the decks of past victims of the Biden era corruption. 

The second topic on my mind today is the state of political polling. 

You may remember that back in September, I commented on the way Kamala’s team started having her do a lot of interviews after she had ducked them for many weeks.  I said that I could only imagine one reason why: her campaign must have had internal polling showing that she was in much worse shape – and almost certainly losing – than all of the mountains of public polls that showed the election as tied, or with her having a slight lead.  

Otherwise, an obviously vulnerable candidate who was almost certain to implode in even the softest of interviews would have kept hiding and tried to run out the clock.

But now her Senior Advisor David Plouffe (and others, off the record) has admitted that their internal polling never showed her in the lead, particularly in the battleground states. Sure, that proves me right, and justifies the many who have been calling me Nostra-marticus. 

Okay, maybe not “many.”  Because I just made that up.  But I’m hoping it catches on, just the way that I hope “Nostra-dumb-ass” catches on to describe smug doofus Allan Lichtman and his “13 keys.”

But that’s not my main point.

How did her campaign have accurate polling info, when almost the entirety of the rest of the polling world did not?  The public polls weren’t wildly off – the majority did show Trump with a slight, up to 2-point lead, and he ended up winning the popular vote nationwide by around 1.7, even though he swept the battleground states, mostly narrowly.  But I’m wondering about the nature of her internal polls, and also whether the Trump campaign had the same info.

I completely understand “push polling,” i.e. inauthentic polls that play with word choice or demographic sampling in order to produce a favored result: our candidate is ahead, her positions are popular, and she’s got momentum and is winning, so get on the bandwagon.

But there are legitimate pollsters too, and their survival in the marketplace is tied to their ability to get it right as accurately and often as they can.  

That’s why the infamous Ann Selzer Iowa poll – showing Kamala winning the state by 3 points, rather than losing by 13, as she eventually did – was such an odd outlier.  She had previously earned a reputation as the “gold standard” among Iowa polls, and I was really confused by her final, wildly wrong poll.

Until it was revealed after the election that months earlier she had told the Des Moines Register that she was planning to retire after this election.  Which leads to a plausible explanation of why a respected pollster would destroy her own future business prospects by putting out a wildly inaccurate poll that would logically help the Dems and hurt the GOP: she wasn’t planning to be in business in the future.

One thing this election points out: relying on a Real Clear Politics-style aggregation of all polls is a dicey proposition.  Not because RCP isn’t a solid site which offers a great amount of detail for political junkies, but because the people running the site apparently don’t have an accurate way of gauging the honesty, competence or reliability of various polling outfits. 

The rationale for a RealClearPolitics aggregation approach is the appeal to the “wisdom of crowds” idea: when you average data from all across the spectrum, you will get the best approximation of truth.  But the “wisdom of crowds” assumes that the people in the crowd are doing their best to get the right answer, while many in the polling organizations are biased partisans, often looking – consciously or not – to confirm their own priors. 

You can see that in the aggregation.  Rasmussen, AtlasIntel and a handful of others showed Trump with a narrow but stubborn lead, and ended up very close to the final results. But the following polls all showed Harris winning, with similarly narrow but stubborn leads: Ipsos (Harris +2), NPR/PBS/Marist (+4), Forbes (+2), Yahoo (+1) and Morning Consult (+2).

Adding those consistently biased polls to your data pool necessarily means that the aggregation will be skewed.

Ironically – or not – the wisdom of crowds idea was completely vindicated by the betting markets – which consistently showed Trump winning by between a little and a lot.  And that makes sense, because betting markets – while supposedly not scientific, or based on meticulously gathered and analyzed polling data – do recreate the ideal crowd envisioned by the “wisdom of crowds” idea.

They all have their own money on the line, and are thus incentivized purely by the desire to get it right, absent all other considerations of political bias or any rooting interests. 

My conclusion is that we need polls to gauge the state of a race, but the polls that have been wrong in the past should pay a steep price. 

If a car-maker’s vehicles kept blowing up, and a restaurant’s food kept making customers sick, and one of Hunter’s hookers kept giving him the clap – assuming he didn’t already have it. Which… c’mon – we would stop patronizing all of them.

And that about sums up the lefty pollsters’ recent performance: they keep blowing up, making us sick, and giving us STDs.

This year marks the third election in a row where most of the national polls significantly under-estimated Trump’s support across the board.  In a fair world, those polls would be disregarded in the future until they’ve been right for as many cycles as they have now been wrong. 

Which means that we should take NPR, Ipsos, Morning Consult and the rest seriously ONLY in 2040 at the earliest, and then only if they get ’28, ‘32 and ’36 correct!

Hamas delenda est!

Facebook Censors Finally Catch Up With Me (posted 12/4/24)

Well, it’s finally happened.  After a blissful 8 years of writing one snarky column after another with no interference from the powers that be, I have received two notices within the last week that two of my columns have been removed from this site (i.e. the Cautious Optimism FB site) because they violated “hate speech” rules. 

This was a little perplexing to me, because I am almost universally thought of as quite lovable.  In fact, it is often said that to know me is to love me.  

And though I regularly poke fun at the most fun-poke-able of our political opponents – I’m looking at you Grandma Squanto (#wemustneverstopmockingher), Imhotep Pelosi (“Aiiieee!  The mummy walks among us!”) and Que Mala – mocking is not hating. 

Odder still, the two columns of mine that were flagged were from 11/7 of this year and 5/5 of last year, so I’m not sure what would cause such a delayed reaction to both. 

The November column was written the day after the election, and as you may remember, I was giddy with a potent mix of relief and actual joy (not that faux stuff that Que Mala tried to build a campaign on).  Thus I was bouncing around from topic to topic, and I wasn’t sure what part was the potentially offensive bit.

So I went back to last May’s column, and the issue became a little clearer. In that one, I discussed an angry politician in Montana who is – how can I put this? – someone who believes himself to not be in line with what he was “assigned” at birth.  I also discussed a Navy recruiter who presented as a person of the opposite sex.

So I am pretty sure what topic has triggered the FB watchers. 

Side note: It was interesting to go back and read last year’s column, because enough time has gone by that I had forgotten what I wrote.  So I read it like anybody else would, and got caught by surprise by a few lines here and there. 

And as immodest as this sounds, I came to the same conclusion that many of you have: I am one funny weirdo! 

For example, I hadn’t remembered referring to Churchill’s famous critique of the traditions of the Royal Navy as “Rum, sodomy and the lash,” and then saying that the US Navy now has its new recruiting slogan: “Hold the rum.” 

I kill me!

Anyway, these warnings sounded ominous, and I didn’t want to risk getting this site shut down because of my hilarious yet allegedly hateful musings. So I went right to the top, and emailed  the Great and Powerful CO to ask his opinion. He called me back on Monday, and I thought I’d give you a little peek behind the curtain to the discussion we had.

When I got the call, I was a little flummoxed.  You’d expect it would be something like a call from Reagan or Trump: “This is the White House.  Hold for the president.”

But no, it wasn’t even a minion on the line.  It was just CO himself, calling from – I’m assuming – a SCIF at the CO Compound in Boca.

Naturally, I went directly to my home office and activated the translucent, soundproof and climate-controlled Cone of Silence, which I had installed after we bought this house.  Because I watched just the right amount of Get Smart as a child. 

My Cone of Silence descends from the ceiling to surround me – obviously – and it’s big enough to contain me and Cassie the Wonder Dog.  Because while she understands English (duh!) – and ein bisschen deutsche, which she picked up during a youthful fling with a German shepherd –  she doesn’t speak it, and thus couldn’t reveal anything she hears there.

Not that she would anyway, because she’s as trustworthy as the day is long.  Unlike certain terrible presidents I could name, who swear up and down for months that they would never pardon their felonious junkie son, and then… wait for it… pardon their felonious junkie son.

So once we were both in our secure locations, CO put me on hold while he engaged voice-scrambling software as a security precaution. 

By the way, CO’s hold music?  All Beatles tunes.  True story.

Anyway, once measures had been taken and our due diligence done, we had a high-level discussion.  I can’t reveal the details here, of course.  But the gist of it was that CO believes that mine is a once-in-an-epoch, national treasure of a mind that must be free, and he couldn’t live with himself if my thoughts were suppressed.  (I’m paraphrasing loosely.) 

He also said that even if it meant that the Cautious Optimism site were shut down, his only regret would be that he had but one site to lose for his country.  (I know.  I broke out in spontaneous applause, too.)

He also said that after January 20th, he’d be reaching out to Tom Homan, Kash Patel and POTUS Maximus himself to see if they could call on Zuck to explain a few things.  (I’m guessing that Luca Brasi would be played by Tom Homan at that meeting.)   

So I’m going to continue writing here – my next column will be Friday – even though I may occasionally have to do a little of the ol’ “ixnay on the ranny-tay” talk. 

In the meantime, let me ask all of you to read both of my offending columns, because I’d like to hear your opinions on their relative offensiveness.   

Since you can no longer find them here on Facebook, please go to my WordPress page on your computer – Martinsimpsonwriting.com.  On the right side of the screen you’ll find the monthly lists of my columns in reverse chronological order.  The two columns in question are dated 11/7 of this year, and 5/5/23.   

While you’re there, consider clicking on “Subscribe.”  It’s free (although hitting the PayPal Tip Jar wouldn’t offend me), and once you’ve subscribed, you’ll get an email to alert you every time I post a new column, just in case any more of them get removed from the CO site.

In the meantime, as always…

Hamas delenda est!

These Aren’t Red Flags – They’re Green Flags (posted 12/2/24)

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!  Ours was guaranteed to be good, since we didn’t have to travel.  Karen’s brothers and their spouses came over, and Emily was home from college.  And even though Katie and her husband are in Denver and my sister and mom are in Tennessee, we’ll be seeing all of them shortly. 

Katie is flying in for Emily’s graduation and an early Christmas celebration in a couple of weeks, and we’ll be going up to spend some time with mom and sis for an early Christmas in Tennessee after that, before returning home for Christmas.  So we’ll have three Christmas celebrations this year!

As my favorite month begins, I’m still basking in the continuous waves of good news that are washing over our country since the election.  In fact, as an homage to our instinctive optimism here in the CO nation, I’d like to coin a new term to reflect our sunny outlook: “green flag.”

Everybody knows the term “red flag” – an ominous sign indicating that things are going wrong.  For example, when San Francisco deteriorated to the point that some tech-savvy resident made a “poop map” app so that people could try to avoid the most heavily fecal areas of the once-great city, that was a red flag.

Or as Adam Carolla has said, when LA started to encase some of their highway signs in barbed wire to discourage vandalism, that was a red flag.  Or when hulking dudes in makeup and dresses reading to toddlers became part of public-school curricula, that was a red flag.  I could go on and on.

In fact, if Gavin Newsom actually does run for president in 2028, I’ve already got his campaign slogan: “Drag Queens, Barbed Wire, and Mounds of Human Waste – Newsom ’28!”

But I’d like to point out the opposite of red flags, which I am drawing from the traffic light system – hence, green flags.  (But not in the environmentalist sense.  Because the Green New Deal was a huge red flag, ironically enough.)  By “green flags” I mean positive and encouraging signs that things are heading in the right direction.

Over the last three weeks, I’ve seen a ton of green flags.  And as CO often says, everything is better when turned into a list:

1. I absolutely love the idea that’s been floated of changing the seating arrangement of the press corps in the White House briefing room.  The existing arrangement has always given the best seats up front to the corrupt dinosaurs of the legacy media: the New York Times and WAPO, and the main tv networks.  But that arrangement is anachronistic now.  The big newspapers have been bleeding subscribers for decades, and the network news talking heads are preaching to an ever-diminishing choir.

But in addition to their declining influence, they’ve also shown themselves to be little more than dishonest leftist propagandists, so it makes no sense to continue rewarding them with prime locations and the first chance to launch their sleazy attacks thinly disguised as legitimate questions.

Independent and conservative podcasters have much larger audiences and are driving more of the mainstream cultural conversation lately, and influential conservative outlets such as The Daily Wire, The Blaze and Breitbart have done more honest – though transparently partisan – reporting and commentary than the MSM has done.

So let the far lefties sit in the back near the bathrooms – like the few conservatives in the room have been doing for decades – and learn from their time in the media wilderness to which they’ve been deservedly banished. 

2.  I also love the way the Trumpsters are maneuvering various bad actors into some form of self-deportation.  Of course, the best example is those who have illegally come into the country.  Lefty critics are always saying, “What are you going to do, deport 10 million people?”

But we won’t have to do that.  We can get a lot of easy wins at first, by focusing on those who have already received deportation orders after their asylum claims were denied, and those who have committed other crimes in addition to their illegal entry. 

Catching and deporting several hundred thousand of those will send a clear message, and between doing that and shutting down all of the incentives to try to stay (free housing, food, travel and phones, plus easy access to jobs) we’ll help many illegals see that returning home is their best option.

In fact, Breitbart reported last week that many Haitians who had gone to Springfield, Ohio are already “self-deporting… fleeing to sanctuary jurisdictions such as Chicago and NYC.”  That’s a good first step. 

And after Trump shuts off some federal funding and otherwise pressures sanctuary cities, and they spend a few months with reduced income to deal with illegals – and more and growing unrest from citizens, because these cities are almost all economic basket cases already – those cities will be increasingly undesirable options for illegals.   

I’ll bet that after six months or a year of mass deportations, if we start offering free flights back to their home countries, many people will voluntarily go, especially when the alternative is to go to detention centers from which they are likely to be deported after a relatively short time anyway.   

3. But pressures to self-deport in a different way are also building.  Many of the corrupt bureaucrats in DC – especially in the FBI, intelligence agencies and DOJ – are already scrubbing websites, shredding records and preparing resumes or resignation papers, and good riddance to them.

Additionally, tons of federal employees are still using the pandemic as an excuse to work from home, and requiring them to come back to the office full-time will undoubtedly result in many more resignations. 

Trump is also talking about relocating many DC-centric federal agencies out into fly-over country, which I think is brilliant.  Many employees will voluntarily quit rather than move, some doing so for family or other legitimate personal reasons.  But some will quit because they are snobby coastal elites who look down on the garbage voters who just kicked their arses in November, and we’ll all be well rid of them.

Those who move will generally be those more dedicated to doing their jobs, which will improve the average quality of federal employees.  And for those who are open-minded enough to learn from experience, they’ll discover that the quality of many people and communities in flyover country compares quite well to those they’d been surrounded by in DC. 

Okay, I’ll have more encouraging “green flags” in my column on Wednesday. But I wanted to comment on one other enjoyable mistake the Dems are making as they sift through the ashes of November 5th and try to figure out what went wrong.  

Many Dem and MSM elites have settled on the idea that Kamala was severely handicapped by the fact that Biden got out so late, leaving her so little time to get her campaign up and running.  “Considering that she only had 107 days, I think she did incredibly well,” they say.

Which I find to be comically wrong, for two reasons.  (Besides the obvious: if THAT was “incredibly well done,” what would “terribly done” look like?!)  

First, it blames only Biden for his staying in way too long.  Obviously that was a problem…but it was a problem entirely within the control of the Dem elites, who didn’t just allow it, but aided and abetted it. 

I’m reminded of the dilemma in many families when grandpa is obviously diminished to the point that he’s not safe driving anymore.  Although it makes for an ugly scene, even marginally functional families go through the uncomfortable confrontation of explaining to gramps that they’re taking the keys, because he’s a danger to himself and others on the road.

Only the most severely dysfunctional, social train-wrecks of families LET GRANDPA KEEP DRIVING!  OH!! OHHHH!!!  (There’s your little dose of Sam Kinison for a Monday morning.)

 “Sure, he’s run over a dozen curbs, two pets and a fire hydrant.  And he did rear-end that daycare van full of toddlers yesterday.  But hey, that’s just lovable, avuncular gramps.  In fact, he’s the best gramps he’s ever been.  Sharp as a tack!  How dare you suggest that within the next fortnight he’s going to plow through the front window of a café, killing a dozen customers, because he doesn’t remember the difference between the gas and the brake?!”

Well, that’s what the Dems did.  It was obvious to everybody with functioning eyes that Biden should have been checked into Shady Acres Retirement Village and put on an all-broth diet several years ago.  But they lied to themselves and us, right up until he crumbled on the debate stage.

But the second reason is even more self-flattering Democrat nonsense, because it proposes that Kamala just needed more time on the big stage, when the truth was exactly the opposite. 

We knew from the Dem primaries in 2019 that scrutiny was Que Mala’s kryptonite.  Because when Tulsi lobbed a couple of fair questions at her, she melted into the floor and became the first contender to drop out.

Which was why she was at her “best” for the first 45 days or so of her campaign this time, when she hid out and gave zero interviews.  Far from being hurt by only running for 107 days, she would have had a much better chance if she’d had only about two weeks to campaign! 

The leftist MSM and Dem machine could have filled the air with clouds of BS about joy and a totally phony biography: she’s a tough law-and-order prosecutor who was raised in the middle class, and she’ll be the first half Indian-American and half African-American – but somehow still mostly black – president. 

Not to mention that she’ll be the first woman president!  That’s right, she’ll be the epoch-defining vagician who would break the previously unbreakable glass ceiling, and usher in a glorious new age of female empowerment! 

I’m encouraged by watching the Dem post-mortem election analysis, because almost all of it seems to be shot-through with delusion and denial of their real problems. 

Trump isn’t the demon they think he is.

They’re not the righteous social justice warriors they think they are.

And the American public aren’t the deplorable garbage they think they are. 

So if they can keep this up, continuing to learn the wrong lessons and doubling down on what cost them this election, they should be wandering in the political wilderness for a long time to come.

And we are all here for it.  Come on, January!

Hamas delenda est!

Lots to Be Thankful For, + My Trump Inauguration Speech (posted 11/27/24)

So I was reading the online site Space.com today – as one normally does most Tuesdays – and I came across an intriguing article titled, “A super-Earth beyond Mars would have made Earth nearly uninhabitable.”  The article discussed the implications of recently published research by my daughter, whom the article referred to as a “planetary scientist.”

She’s not technically a “planetary scientist” yet – she graduates in a few weeks with two degrees, in Planetary Science, and Astronomy and Astrophysics, and is applying to start a PhD program in the fall – but she’s the first author on a journal article already.

Also, my older daughter Katie is fully recovered from her surgery last month, and back at work saving lives as a pediatric nurse.  (Thanks again for all your prayers and good wishes.)  And Cassie the Wonder Dog is lying on the floor beside my desk as I write this, radiating canine faithfulness.

Thus ends the “Bragging Dad” section of the column.

As we all prepare for another Thanksgiving, this one seems especially sweet to me.  Everywhere I look, I see evidence that God exists, and He loves us.

And I’m not just talking about my smoke-show wife, smarty-pants daughters and the Gators upsetting LSU and Ole Miss in recent weeks.

I’m talking about bourbon, and ice cream, and scotch, and literature, and music, and beer, and modern anesthetics.  (I’ve getting a root canal next week, and thanks to numbing shots and sweet, sweet oxycodone, I’m not worried about it at all.)  I’m talking about football, both college and pro. (Did I mention that the Gators are bowl eligible, despite having the toughest schedule in the country this year?) (Did I mention the Chicago Bears?  Okay, I did not. But wait ‘til next year!)

I’m talking about living in the greatest country in the world, based on a Judeo-Christian moral foundation that safeguards our rights.  I can worship freely, and speak my mind, and defend myself and my family against violent d-bags – using my constitutionally protected handguns and shotguns.

I’m talking about a nation which has allowed human flourishing in so many areas, including amazing technological advances.   From air conditioning (I don’t know how people settled Florida without it… or why!) to airplanes to cars to computers, we now have access to the greatest products of human creativity.

I’m talking about video and audio recordings of amazing music – not just classical, bluegrass, country, pop and rock, but eccentric, riveting styles from around the world, including Gregorian chants, Mongolian throat singing (check out the Hu Band’s bizarrely hypnotic “Wolf Totem”), and a Georgian Orthodox priest and a young girl singing The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, which I can’t watch without choking up.

We can read great writing – from Dante, Milton and Shakespeare to Hemingway, Chandler, Frost and C.S. Lewis – all at our fingertips.  We can access great drama and comedy, and documentaries and movies on any subject, whenever we want.  I can watch Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Adam Carolla whenever I’m in the mood.

And the computer allows us to “meet” people and form communities in ways never before possible.  Communities like our very own CO nation, which has been for me a source of information, entertainment and even joy, as I hope it has been for you.  We’ve celebrated cultural and political good news together – and commiserated through bad news – over the last eight years.           

And as this year moves toward its end, we’ve got so much more to celebrate.  This election has renewed and fed our badly dented optimism about the country’s near future, and filled us with gratitude for the opportunities in front of us, and relief over the bullets we dodged on November 6th. 

It’s also given us more than a little bit of invigorating schadenfreude at the much-deserved dose of karmic whoop-ass and whirlwind-reaping received by some people who needed their ears boxed and their course corrected.  As do we all, from time to time.   

This Thanksgiving and Christmas will be extra happy, because we know that in January our nation will begin to undo the damage done over the last decade and more, and reorient ourselves to what has made our country great.  I am looking forward to this inauguration more than any other in my lifetime.

On Monday I wrote about how I’d love to see Trump troll the left by being sworn in on a copy of Project 2025.  And because I am basically a child trapped in a man’s body, that started me fantasizing about the inaugural address I’d like to see Trump deliver.     

Am I saying that my version ranks up there with Lincoln’s second inaugural, and should therefore be carved on the walls of the future Trump Memorial in DC? 

To quote a failed presidential candidate whose name escapes me, “I’m saying we should have that conversation.”

So as my Thanksgiving gift to you, here’s the speech that I’d load into Trump’s teleprompter on January 20th:

“First let me thank the citizens in the battleground states, which I swept in an unprecedented way.  Never been done before!  Nobody has ever seen anything like it.  Certainly not the pollsters, who are very stupid people, let’s admit it.

The “Blue Wall,” they called it!  They were right about it being a wall, but they got the color wrong.  They got it wrong!  Because we built a fantastic Red Wall.  We won the popular vote, we built a red wall, and soon we’ll build a big, beautiful border wall!  You’re all going to love it, believe me.

I’d also like to thank my beautiful wife Melania.  She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?  She came here the right way – LEGALLY! – and she gave me my gigantic, genetically superior son, Barron. 

And my other children too, from my other wives, each one younger and more beautiful than the last.  People are always asking me, “Sir, how did all of your children turn out so great?  They’re all so successful, not a loser in the bunch.  None of them took bags of illegal cash from corrupt countries, or recorded themselves snorting meth with hookers, like some other presidential offspring we could mention.”

But I say, “No!  You shouldn’t talk about other people that way, even if they did leave cocaine lying all over the White House.”  Especially not today, which is a fantastic day.  Maybe the best day ever, since it marks our turning away from the horrible failures of my low-IQ predecessors, and toward the amazing dawn of making America great again!  

I’d like to begin my second term with a gesture of bipartisanship, by agreeing to two of the Democrats’ main proposals over the last several years.  Therefore, I am going to grant their frequently and passionately repeated requests to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, starting now.  I will begin immediately pushing all of my policies through, on all fronts, with at least 50 votes in the Senate, using JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote whenever needed.” 

“Secondly, I hereby agree to an 18-year maximum tenure on the Supreme Court.  Sadly, that means that Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts will be forced to retire this year.  I will immediately nominate strict constructionist/originalists to replace each of them, and ram them through the Senate confirmation process.  It also means that Justices Sotomayor and Kagan will be forcibly retired during 2027 and 2028 respectively, and I will appoint their replacements as well.  Doing so will ensure that when I leave office, we will have a solid court with an 8-1 conservative majority, and for most of the next 15 years, 7 of those will be my appointees.

During his second term, JD Vance will appoint replacements for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett.  Then Ivanka – the first female president – will appoint Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s replacement in 2040.  Then, of course, Barron will succeed Ivanka after his election when he turns 35 years old, in 2041.

Now if you will all join me in the White House, we’ll be enjoying a state dinner catered by McDonalds.  My Democrat friends can pile into the back of the line of Trump garbage trucks parked on Pennsylvania Avenue for the drive to dinner.

God bless you, and God bless America!”

Have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving, CO Nation!