February 2025 – Martin Simpson

I Won’t Miss the AP, or Joy Reid (posted 2/27/25)

Well, we’re back from Tennessee, and as usual the firehose of ridiculous political news has not let up. So I’ve got a column today, with another one to follow tomorrow.

First though, I read all the comments on my Monday column, but didn’t have time to respond to them. But I appreciate all of the kind words, and am glad that my Yosemite bathroom scenario landed. However, I did not mean to impugn the fine people in the Master Locksmiths community!

On the contrary, I intended to poke a little gentle fun at the hysterical leftists who are suggesting that firing one man with one bathroom key at Yosemite has caused our entire national park system to collapse.

One other bit of business: I have to give a shout out to Robert Desmond and Frederick Beal, two of the finest Americans in this or any other generation.

Am I saying that just because they hit my Tip Jar hard last week? (Which can be found at my webpage, Martinsimpsonwriting.com.)

Maybe. But I also like the cut of their respective jibs, and believe that they’ve demonstrated the kind of class and taste that should be a model for us all. Not to mention their fantastic discernment when it comes to how to spend their political-humor-column dollar. I thank and salute you, Desmond and Beal! (And though I’m no career counselor, that would make a hell of a law or accounting firm name. Or possibly a regionally popular folk music duo.)

Okay, on to the cavalcade of imbeciles on the left over the last several days…

I’ve enjoyed watching the AP getting their gender nonbinary onesies over their heads and throwing a tantrum because Trump is keeping them out of the White House press conferences and off of Air Force One until they call the former Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

And because this is 2025 in America, when lefties throw a tantrum, it means crying in court. The AP took their complaint to a District Court judge, who ordered an expedited consideration of their lawsuit, while refusing to give them an immediate TRO.

My first instinct on hearing Trump’s name change for the Gulf was that it was a funny trolling of the left – what’s good for Comrade Goose is good for Commissar Gander, after all – but that it was also kind of silly. But now that I’ve seen the left’s reaction to it, the idea has grown on me.

AP has insisted that they won’t bend the knee to Trump on this. Or, I guess, bend the tongue? (For anyone who just made up their own Kamala-interviews-with-Willie-Brown joke, grow up!)

(Also: HA!)

Many people may feel like Trump is bullying AP by trying to coerce their use of his preferred language. But I’ve had long experience with the AP, and that experience leads me to a different conclusion.

Regular readers may remember that I was an English professor for 30 years, before I retired to go into full-time hilarious genius-ing for CO Nation. During much of that time, I used an influential citation and reference work called The AP Style Guide, which set standard usage rules for writers in many fields and majors. As a young prof, many of my department-dictated syllabi required that students buy the AP guide.

But as I gained seniority, wisdom and perspicacity – and the ability to throw around words like “perspicacity” – I also got more control over my syllabi and reading lists. And I stopped requiring students to buy the AP guide. Because it became more and more politically tendentious and hectoring.

(I know: pretty perspicacious use of both “tendentious” and “hectoring,” right? You’re not going to hear those in one of AOC’s or Aunty Maxine Waters’ low-IQ rants.)

Anyway, my point is that AP loves shaming and coercing undergrads into repeating their preferred terminology, using the threat of a lower GPA to force them into a twisted game of “Stalin Says.” (It’s like “Simon Says,” but with more totalitarian humorlessness.)

The AP guide says that when writing about races of people, you must capitalize the first letter of “Black,” but keep the lower case for “white.” It also decrees that illegal aliens should be called “undocumented,” that mothers be called “birthing persons,” and that gender denying mutilations be called “gender affirming care.”

Also according to the AP, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, and war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

Oddly enough, AP has happily gone along with various past examples of political name changes, including agreeing to call Mt. McKinley “Denali,” the nation of Turkey “Turkiye,” and Kiev “Kyiv.”

But I guess it’s (D)ifferent when Trump is the one making the name change.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this childish resistance ends. Will the AP stubbornly consign themselves to forever sitting and pouting at the media kiddies’ table, rather than submit to the mean orange man the way they force cowed undergrads to submit to them?

Or will they finally surrender? If so, I hope that Trump really rubs it in. I picture him standing in front of a map of the northern hemisphere with a pointer in his hand, tapping one re-named feature after another.

Trump (pointing to the former Greenland): What’s this called?

AP (mumbling): Trumpland.

Trump (tapping Canada): And this?

AP: the 51^st state, America’s Evil Top Hat

Trump (tapping the former Denali): And this?

AP: Mt. McKinley

Trump (tapping a spot in South Dakota): And this?

AP: Mount Trumpmore

Trump (tapping the Gulf): And this?

AP (staring at their shoes and muttering): The Gulf of America.

Trump (cupping a hand behind his ear): I can’t hear you.

AP (louder): The Gulf of America!

Trump: That’s better. Now bend over, and I’m going to give you one stroke on the seat of your pants with this pointer for every day you got that wrong.

And, scene.

I’ve got time for one more brief note, and it’s the feel-good story of the week: the firing of whitey-hating bile spewer, Joy Reid by MSNBC.

You may remember Reid as the mean-spirited racial arsonist who gleefully sneered about “the white tears” of unfairly prosecuted people like Kyle Rittenhouse, non-violent J-6ers, and Catholic abortion protestors.

My smokeshow wife (of Norwegian descent) remembers Reid mostly as a culturally appropriating scammer who adopted an unconvincing version of the blonde hair proudly worn by her Viking ancestors. (“My culture is not your costume!” she may have shouted at our tv.)

Reid’s show, like much of the pap on MSNBC and CNN, has taken a huge drop since the election, losing more than half of its already pathetic audience. On one hand that makes sense, since getting so thoroughly stomped in an election would naturally depress her viewers.

On the other hand, I think the kind of dead-enders who would still be watching Reid’s program before 11/5 would be motivated mostly by race-hatred, bitterness and incipient mental illness anyway, all of which she has catered to after the election as much as she did before.

Most leftist talking heads – as well as Reid herself – blamed… wait for it… racism and sexism for her firing.

Unexpectedly!

But you’d think that her latest horrifically low ratings would give even those blockheads pause. Because in a nation of around 330 million people, Reid has recently had 59,000 viewers in the key demo of 18-49 year olds.

59,000! On what passes for a major tv network! By comparison, on the slowest of nights, the RDN (Ring Doorbell Network) captures 100K viewers, and a recent two-part special entitled, “Latex vs Oil-Based?” on the WPDN (Watching Paint Dry Network) was seen by 70K viewers.

Reid’s final show was the only must-see tv she ever participated in, and then only because she actually cried in the final moments before well-deserved obscurity descended upon her like J.B. Pritzker descending on a giant ice-cream cake. (#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg)

I’m too much of a gentleman to mock Reid’s “black tears.” In fact, she might have actually been comforted to see the white tears I cried as MSNBC tossed her under the garbage truck that Trump drove to one of his campaign events.

Until she realized that those were white tears…of laughter.

Hamas delenda est!

Various Schemes Backfire on Dems, Including Mourning the Key-Holder of Yosemite (posted 2/24/25)

For many, many years, ever since I was just a hilarious zygote with a dream, I have loved watching the best laid plans of bad actors blowing up in their faces.

I remember watching Wile E. Coyote painting a black tunnel entrance on a rock wall, then – after watching the Road Runner somehow race through the tunnel – smashing himself against it.

I enjoyed hundreds of cartoons featuring bad guys setting traps involving dropping anvils on heads, disguising quicksand pits, or giving their nemeses exploding cigars, only to be crushed by those anvils, sunk into that quicksand, or having their beaks blown around to the side of their heads by those exploding cigars.

Which brings me to the Democrats’ entertaining travails over the last 9 years.

When Trump considered running in 2015, many Democrats loved it. They mocked him and dared to run, and they gave him hours of free publicity on their tv programs. Many of them crossed over to vote for him in primaries, and some contributed money to his campaign. And then they got what they asked for, good and hard.

It still warms my heart to remember them in the Javits Center on election night, after Cankles McPantsuit had thundered out of the gate, only to snap a fetlock on the first turn. They stood around with shell-shocked expressions, soot all over their faces and the stub of a detonated cigar clamped between their teeth.

But soon they had wiped off their faces and got back to their wicked ways, using every under-handed tool at their disposal to try to hamstring Trump’s first term, and ensure that he lost in 2020. They launched the Russia hoax and the resulting Muller investigation to tie him up for most of his first term.

By the time the 2020 election rolled around, they weaponized covid as an excuse to hide Biden from the public during his campaign, and conspired with 51 dishonest deep state hacks who pretended that they didn’t know that Hunter’s laptop was Hunter’s laptop.

Ironically, their success against Trump in 2020 laid the foundation for what looks to be a much more successful Trump second term now. Between Biden’s awful performance for four years, and Trump’s time in the wilderness – which provided him the space to learn from the tactics the left used to undermine him during his first term – Trump approached his second term a much wiser politician than he had been in 2017.

But first he had to win again. And the left once again used tactics that backfired on them in the most hilarious and schadenfreude-tastic ways possible. They launched a four-pronged lawfare attack – five-pronged, if you count looney E. Jean Carroll’s patently absurd accusation that cost him time and money (until it is inevitably overturned on appeal).

But just like most of their other efforts against Trump, this one backfired again. The more bogus charges they pressed against Trump, the more popular he got. His own base rallied around him, and open-minded independents did the same, and before the Dems knew what hit them, Trump had dispatched the Cadaver and steamrolled the Cackler.

Now that Trump has been in office for a month, the hits just keep coming. One of his most potent weapons is DOGE. It would have been logistically tricky for Trump to try to create that agency, but luckily for him, Barry O had created the US Digital Service ten years earlier, providing Trump with a ready-made cudgel to re-name, and then begin bashing the deep state with.

Also luckily for him, many deep state creeps had also outed themselves, secure in the belief that Trump would never be president again. They left a treasure trove of social media posts and MSM appearances that basically screamed, “I’m a hateful, anti-American jerk, please fire me immediately!”

In fact, most of the Democratic elite seem to be following a knee-jerk strategy of doubling-down on everything that hasn’t been working for them. They are grabbing the “20” position on every 80/20 issue, and then hanging on to it like a ballplayer hugging a base after trying to stretch for a double and being called out.

My favorite recent example involves the National Parks. Trump wants to cut 1000 park service workers nationwide. While that amounts to just two positions from each national park, it represents an opportunity for the left to score a few points, because the park service is one of a handful of government agencies that the public enthusiastically supports.

Unlike cutting the leftist slush funds flowing from USAID, and firing rapacious IRS agents and corrupt educrats like Randi Weingarten, cutting park rangers could give many citizens pause.

But the Dems seem to be addicted to stupid. Instead of making a disciplined, reasonable defense of park service priorities and workers, the most visible push back took the form of in-your-face protests and angry leftist cliches.

One group hung an upside-down American flag on El Capitan, and released a hyperbolic statement that “national lands are under attack,” and urging citizens to consider “your public lands on strike.”

Some lefties also protested the cuts carrying signs saying, “Silence is violence!” – a tired cliché that is transparently false – and, “All cops are bastards.” Sure, the police have nothing to do with the funding of national parks, but hey, most Americans hate cop-bashing, so why not turn them against you, too?

The most ridiculous rake-stomping leftist self-own on this issue came from the Washington Post.

Unexpectedly!

Some earnest young WAPO staffer thought he could really stick it to Trump by touting an example of a model employee doing essential work at a national park whom Trump has unfairly fired. So he came up with… wait for it… a locksmith at Yosemite!

I know what you’re thinking: Are there a ton of intricate, Get-Smart-style series of high-tech doors scattered about our national parks? Is there some kind of retinal-scan/finger-print-accessed barrier that encloses Old Faithful, or a bank vault that must be defeated before you can gaze upon El Capitan?

Nope.

The WAPO describes the locksmith in question, in a quote that I swear I am not making up, as, “The sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.”

Institutional knowledge?! We’re not talking about what would happen if Oppenheimer or Edward Teller quit the Manhattan Project, are we? I mean, this is Gus the janitor, holding a fistful of keys in front of a locked bathroom door! Even the kind of brainiac SCOTUS judge who can’t define “woman” can intuit that you put the male key into the female lock and then turn it, can’t she?

As a landlord with 29 years of experience, allow me to share some institutional knowledge with the National Park Service: You can take the one key that unlocks all the bathrooms in Yosemite to Lowes or Home Depot, and you can make a dozen copies of it for a little over $2 each. Then you can hang one of those keys on a hook in 12 different Ranger Stations, and voila! National crisis averted!

Hey, wait a minute. I just noticed something else in that WAPO jeremiad. It described the Nobel-worthy locksmith to the stars as someone who could “rescue visitors from locked restrooms.”

Does that mean that some dimwit visitors have locked themselves INSIDE a bathroom, and need to be rescued?

Good lord! Would any of us, if we were walking by a park bathroom and heard someone frantically shouting that they were locked inside, not stop and say, “Hey buddy, you should see either a latch or a raised ridge on a button on the lock. Turn that a quarter turn to the right, and then open the door, you moron.”

But here is the scenario that the hysterical WAPO leftist wants you to believe:

Gus the Yosemite janitor is passing by when a panicked bystander grabs his sleeves and yanks him toward a park bathroom.

Gus: What’s going on here?

Bystander: There’s a woman in there, and without your help, she’s going to die!

Voice from the Bathroom (VFB): Help! Is there anyone out there?!

Gus: I’m a park employee. What’s the problem?

VFB: I’m trapped, and I’m running out of oxygen!

Gus: You can’t run out of oxygen in a public bathroom. There’s an air gap under the door, and several windows at the top of the wall.

VFB: Don’t contradict my lived experience! I’m telling you my truth!

Gus (skeptically): Are you a Democrat congressman?

VFB: Congress-person!

Gus (nodding): Okay, AOC. Just open the door and come out.

VFB: How am I supposed to do that?

Gus (sighing): Do you see a metal latch right above the doorknob?

VFB: Yes! What should I do with it? Should I lick it?!

Gus: What? No! Why would you lick it?! It’s a deadbolt lock, and you use it to open a door!

VFB: Don’t man-splain to me!

Gus (rubbing the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb): Stupid juicy booty–

VFB: What did you say?

Gus: Never mind. (under his breath: Your words, not mine.) Just grab that metal latch, and turn it– (He gasps, grabs his chest, and his face turns red. He staggers, loses consciousness, and falls to the ground.)

Bystander: Oh no! Now we’ve lost this man’s institutional knowledge!

VFB: What’s happening out there? What should I do?

Bystander: Make your peace with God, because you’re going to starve to death in there!

VFB (raising her fist and howling to the ceiling): F-ing Trump! This is all your fault!!

And, scene.

Hamas delenda est!

Loving the First Month of Trumpkrieg™, Despite a Few Stumbles (posted 2/21/25)

I’m up in Tennessee now — with the wife, one daughter and the Wonder Dog — visiting my mom, while my sister and her hubby are taking a well-deserved trip. We drove up on Tuesday, and got to see two brief snowfalls since we got here, which partially made up for it being too cold to take mom out for walks in and around town.

Regular readers may remember that my mom has Alzheimer’s, and she’s experiencing the gradual sliding involved in that disease. We have to remind her many times each day that this is her home, and we won’t be leaving until after my sister gets back home, and she’ll never be alone.

But she’s still got her sweet disposition, and she loves to laugh, and the stories that I tell her about her and my dad and our lives together never fail to delight her. Some of them she remembers, and enjoys the remembering. Some of them she doesn’t, but even with those, there’s a special grace in the way she experiences them for the first time, each time.

While we’ve been enjoying our time with her, the world has continued to turn, and the Trumpkrieg™ continues apace. But Trump has finally taken a few wrong steps, IMHO. His pick for Sec Labor seems to be a hostile lefty; while I think her nomination is a mistake, it’s a minor one, because if she behaves in office the way she has before, I think Trump will fire her pretty quickly.

More seriously, I’m surprised by the way he’s handling the Ukraine situation. I know that Zelensky has been acting a little too entitled lately, and Ukraine has had corruption problems that pre-date this war. But I admire Zelensky’s guts – when Biden’s first instinct was to offer him a flight out of the country after Putin invaded, he said he wanted to stay and fight, and I’ve generally got a soft spot for Davids taking on Goliaths.

So while I think that Trump rightly wants to pressure both sides to take an off ramp that will end the war, it sucks that Putin is going to gain some land when the dust settles, necessary though that may be. Whatever Zelinsky’s flaws, they pale in comparison to Putin’s evil invasion, and Trump’s claims that Ukraine started the war are idiotic. By coming down so unfairly hard on Ukraine, he’s also strengthening Putin’s negotiating hand, a misstep that sharply contrasts with Trump’s usually skillful application of pressure.

Still, having said all of that, Trump’s first month has been amazingly successful. With Kash Patel’s confirmation, he’s rounded out a cabinet of downhill runners that promises more victories to come, and more Democrat malfeasance to be revealed.

And holy cats, are the Dems ever continuing to play right into his hands, and hitching their wagons to one unpopular cause after another! They’re trying to elicit sympathy for illegal gang-bangers getting deported, and IRS agents getting laid off. They valorize corrupt, soft-insurrectionist bureaucrats who publicize their own resignations in a vain attempt to cast insubordination as righteous self-martyrdom. (This isn’t an airport, drama queens – you don’t have to announce your departure. Just cram your participation trophies into cardboard boxes and go!)

Trump’s filling his roster with alpha dogs and apex predators, and the Dems are fielding pencil necks, white squaws (#wemustneverstopmockingher) and wet-behind-the-ears non-binary they/thems like Lil’ Davy Hogg!

And the self-beclowning self-owns! The glorious, hilarious, oblivious self-owns!

Al Sharpton – the walking embodiment of “unfit for any office” – actually sounded outraged when he asked the dozens of MSNBC viewers to imagine what Madison or Jefferson would think of Trump’s attempt to “overthrow the government!”

Nevermind the difference between “fixing” and “overthrowing.” Sharpton wants his listeners to recoil in horror at the thought of our Founders’ disgust at someone trying to revolt against a government. Why, that kind of terrible behavior could even lead to a war!

Some might call such a hypothetical war… and I’m just spit-balling here… a “revolutionary” war!

Who wants to tell the desiccated, un-revered un-reverend?

And that wasn’t even the stupidest attack attempt of the week! That dishonor goes to poor Margaret Brennan, who by now has been publicly depantsed more often than AOC at a Miss Juicy Booty contest. (Her words, not mine.)

When Brennan wanted to grab the “20” end of an 80-20 issue by taking the “anti-” position on free speech, she chose the stupidest historical example that anyone could possibly pick.

While interviewing Marco Rubio, she seemed bothered that JD Vance had called Europeans out on their hostility towards free speech, especially since he did so while he was in Germany. She noted that Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” and closed her question with the insulting assertion that Vance’s delivery of the speech in Germany “changed the tone [of his message]. And you know that.”

Ugh. Ignorant and condescending is no way to go through life, Marge.

Margaret thinks the Nazis weaponized free speech. Now I don’t know if you’re a history buff, but…do you have to be a history buff for that to sound a little strange to you?

Like most middle-aged straight guys, I’ve read a lot about WWII. And I don’t remember the part when Hitler was constantly vexed by the vibrant German-Jewish press, with their kvetching about his pogroms, and their strongly worded op-eds pushing for him to build fewer death camps. Right up until the end of the war, the Berlin Kosher Press was a thorn in Hitler’s side.

Or that’s the way it happened in Margaret’s imagination. But in the real world, the Nazis were actually pretty skilled at weaponizing one thing.

[Begin Sam Kinison filter] WEAPONS!! OH! OHHHHHHHH!! [end Kinison filter]

Stuka dive bombers early on, the first jet fighter plane at the end of the war, and the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Innovative U-boat wolf pack tactics, and tank designs like the Panther, Tiger and King Tiger. The Nazis were whiz kids when it came to weaponizing weapons. But a free, candid and open exchange of ideas?

Not so much.

In fact, I saw several stories that noted the reality, i.e. that the Weimar government (preceding Hitler’s rise) had very restrictive speech codes that they used against the nascent Nazi party, including preventing Hitler and Goebbels from speaking publicly for several years.

Ironically, those speech restrictions helped Hitler to rise. Many Germans wondered what these Nazis were saying that so antagonized the government, and being censored gave them a frisson of forbidden attraction. A famous Nazi propaganda poster showed Hitler with tape over his mouth, capitalizing on the idea that he was being kept down by the censors.

And of course, as soon as they gained power, the Nazis doubled down on the speech restrictions, killing or driving out any publishers or journalists who criticized Nazism.

The truth is that the Nazis weaponized speech restrictions to help them gain power, and then weaponized speech repression to help them hold onto power. Just like the Biden administration. (And no, I’m not saying that the Dems are as bad as the Nazis.) (And not just because the Nazis were competent.)

So pull up your pants and take a seat, Margaret!

On second thought, you keep doing you, Ms. Brennan.

But make sure that you’re always wearing clean undies, because the American people are going to be seeing a LOT of them over the next four years.

#mooningMargaret

Hamas delenda est!

Turn the EOs into Laws, Settle the Filibuster, + David Hogg Bellies up to the Trough (posted 2/17/25)

Regular readers know that I am enjoying the Trumpkrieg™ as much as anybody. But I’m concerned that I haven’t heard much about following up the quick and easy victories of Executive Orders by pushing bills that will codify them into law. (I know, EOs are neither as quick nor easy as they should be, since the left has an army of biased judges who can temporarily delay their implementation. But I’m confident that they will still be enacted relatively quickly.)

I love the bracing effect of a volley of EOs unleashed on Biden’s legacy, like the first fusillade sent down range against the enemy after a besieged Marine unit receives fresh ammo in the middle of a battle.

But EOs alone produce a “sugar high” that quickly dissipates. In 2017 Trump wiped away a bunch of Obama’s EOs. (And there was joy and rejoicing amongst right-thinking people!) Then Biden wiped away Trump’s EOs in 2021. (And darkness descended.) And now Trump is returning the favor.

Since anything done by EOs can be undone by them, we need to move quickly to pass laws, especially in areas where we’ve got the “80” position on an 80/20 issue. Use the same EO language to pass laws banning men from women’s sports, locker rooms and prisons, for example.

Then, when the Dems take back the White House (shudder), rather than just signing an EO that lets men start beating women in sports and raping them in prisons again, the Dem president (shudder) will have to go to the American people and say, “Let’s let the dudes back into women stuff.”

Good luck with that, hypothetical future Democrat president! (hypothetical shudder)

In some cases, we might not need this. For example, the EO on birthright citizenship is heading to SCOTUS, and they could rule correctly, giving the ban the force of law going forward.

But I’m still a belt-and-suspenders guy: even if SCOTUS might do the right thing eventually, it would be nice to try to pass a law explicitly ending birthright citizenship. Even if it didn’t pass the first time, getting a bunch of Dems on record opposing it would help us whip a bunch of them in a future election, and then maybe a second attempt would be successful.

The same should happen for all of our 80/20 issues. Put them on the floor, and force the Dems to vote against them.

I saw one intriguing way to possibly bolster this effort. (I’d give credit to the writer if I remembered where I saw it. Maybe on the Daily Wire?) The idea is that the GOP congress should immediately propose and start pushing a law codifying the filibuster for regular legislation, with a one-year deadline to pass it.

But the GOP should warn the Dems that if by the end of next January they have successfully opposed it and it hasn’t passed, the GOP will immediately kill the filibuster themselves, and jam through every bit of legislation that Trump wants. In that context, smart Dems would have a big incentive to vote for legislation to keep the filibuster, knowing that if they don’t, the GOP is going to run rough-shod for the next year, and possibly 3 years.

So far, the filibuster has only been a customary practice, which we saw when Harry Reid threw it out for lower court judge confirmations, thus allowing us to put judges on SCOTUS with 51 votes. (HA!) And before the election, many Dems were saying they would get rid of the filibuster for all legislation, arguing that the evil GOP was “thwarting the will of the people” by adhering to it.

As an O.G. conservative, I like the filibuster, because it prevents faddish passions from driving whiplashing policies. But a prerequisite for a functional filibuster is the existence of two sides operating in good faith, so that some party members are willing to cross party lines to support reasonable ideas proposed by the opposition.

Does ANYBODY think that’s the world we’re living in? If Trump gets to nominate someone for SCOTUS, and there are 47 Dem senators, and there is no way that any Trump nominee will get more than one Dem vote. (Zero, if a second coconut falls on Fetterman’s head and he reverts to his leftist priors.)

So why would I want to keep the filibuster? Because as much of an obstacle as it is to us now, if it were codified into law it would be much harder to overturn, and will thus be a similar obstacle when the Dems get a small majority later.

However, if the Dems don’t take the deal by next January, we can’t continue to live by rules that we know the Dems will trash as soon as they regain power. Toward the end of Biden’s term, they seriously talked about killing the filibuster, stacking the SCOTUS and adding Puerto Rico and DC as new states. And they likely would have done AT LEAST the former if they’d won in November.

So let’s force the issue. If they want to play by the rules, that’s our thing. But if they expect to change the rules to gain an unfair advantage, we’ve got to beat them at their own game, by beating them to the punch.

Because like the big guy in the new Army ad said: Stronger parties are harder to kill.

Switching gears, I’ve got some fun examples of recent leftist self-owns, but this column is getting long, so I’ll save them for Wednesday.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report that the choice of Lil’ Davy Hogg as the DNC vice chair is already paying dividends.

For us.

Remember when Cankles McPantsuit and the rest of the left were making fun of Elon’s DOGE tech wizard wunderkinder because they were so young? (This was about two weeks ago.) But then the DNC picked their own 24-year-old blunderkind. And he immediately showed that he’d learned from his leftist elders by starting a money-making grift for himself.

He used the party’s “sucker list” to solicit donations for his own private PAC, which pays him over $100K per year.

Sorry, that was supposed to be “donor list.”

Or was it?

Anyway, the smarter Democrats – I know: they can fit in a phone booth at this point – are probably realizing that they screwed the pooch by electing Hogg.

Ooh, which reminds of this older tweet of Hogg’s that I just came across: “I’m never planning on having kids. I would much rather own a Porsche and have a Portuguese water dog and golden doodle. Long term it’s cheaper, better for the environment and will never tell you that it hates you or ask you to pay for college.”

So many thoughts. Starting with, on the list of things to worry about happening in the future, Davy Hogg fathering kids is not one of them. Because: biology.

Second, if he does manage to impregnate somebody, and if future college admissions are offered based on merit (Because: Trump!), I don’t think Davy will have to worry about paying for college for any dullards he manages to sire.

My favorite part of this story is the name of Hogg’s political action committee: “Leaders We Deserve PAC.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

I’m Back, and So is America! (posted 2/14/25)

Well, after some help from muscle relaxers, I’m a little sore, but recovered from my battle with 27 bags of concrete. I even felt up to lifting weights today. (My secret is that I don’t lift very heavy weights and not for very long! I recommend that for everyone.)

And by the way, since I was out of the loop for a bit, I didn’t have the chance to read your responses to my Monday column. But I’ve seen them now, and you people are getting funnier and more insightful with each passing day. Possibly because America is back, baby!

How back are we?

Consider this: about 18 months ago our SecDef was going AWOL without telling anyone, and when he did show up, he walked around in a pointless covid mask like an idiot. He looked like someone heading up a military that you could fight to a draw with a few platoons of menopausal lesbian Gender Studies majors armed with 100 old rifles and one Maxine Waters, whose hideous, Medusa-esque face could turn many of our soldiers to stone if they were unlucky enough to gaze upon it.

Most of our military recruitment ads featured nonbinary oddballs talking about their pronouns, and petite female soldiers explaining that watching their two moms get married taught them patriotism, or something.

Strangely enough, none of the military branches were reaching their recruitment goals.

Unexpectedly!

But even before the Trumpkrieg™ officially started, December’s recruitment numbers reached a 12-year high, and then January’s numbers hit a 15-year high. And our new SecDef thinks that the military is for breaking things and killing bad guys, rather than going on a journey of gender-conscious self-fulfillment.

Plus he’s got cool Christian tattoos with Latin phrases that scare neurotic, pretendian Massachusetts senators. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

And I just saw one of the new military recruitment ads, this one a 9-second spot for the Army.

“But Martin,” you may be asking, “how can a 9-second ad tell the inspiring biographical tale of a community-organizing social justice warrior’s personal journey to become a multiply-facial-pierced, blue-haired Army man/woman?”

Exactly. It can’t.

Here’s what it has instead:

A Jack Reacher-looking dude (the new one, not Tom Cruise) stacking plates on to each end of a barbell; then a close-up on his forearm, which has the word “TERROR” tattooed on it in big black letters; then a few seconds of him lifting weights that look like the equivalent of 27 sixty-pound bags of concrete.

Then a shot of him with his muscular arms folded across his chest, as he says a line more Eastwoodian than Eastwood: “Stronger people are harder to kill.”

Nine seconds. One big, strong, bad-ass soldier who looks like he might have chunks of jihadi fighters in his stool. And a line that somehow sounds like it should be coming out of Arnold in his Conan the Barbarian phase.

THAT’S how back we are!

In other news, as I was enjoying relaxed muscles and sifting through some of the stream of good news on the internet yesterday, I discovered that some marketer’s algorithm is off, because I got a pop-up ad with a page of pro-leftist products that were clearly made before the election.

They were great fun to look through, because they have not aged well.

For example, three months after Trump got re-elected, somebody is still trying to sell hats, mugs and hoodies with the message, “No, Really. HE LOST & you’re in a cult” on them. Good news for any lefties out there though: they’re marked WAY down!

Unexpectedly!

On the same page there’s a t-shirt with three lines and images: At the top it says LOSERS, with the words “in 1865” and a confederate flag beside it. In the middle it says LOSERS, with the words “in 1945” and a swastika flag beside it, and on the bottom is says LOSERS, with the words “in 2020” and a MAGA cap beside it.

It’s fun to imagine a depressed leftist looking at his shirt that used to be so fun to wear, and crying in his kale smoothie. Because anytime he tries to wear it in public now, people keep pointing out the slave-holding confederates were Democrats, and the Nazis were socialists, and the MAGA hat wearers are back in the driver’s seat.

The site also listed a shirt for sale that said, “Unless your ancestors look like this” over a pic of four Indians on horseback, and “You’re probably an immigrant” underneath.

Guess what, Howard Zinn: those injuns came across the Bering strait way back when Imhotep Pelosi was barely 300 years old. You might even say that they “immigrated” here…because they did.

So stop your whining, Dances with Entitlement, because you forgot the third law of military strategy (right after “Never start a land war in Asia,” and “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”): “FA with Manifest Destiny and FO.”

However, if someone wants to remake that shirt with four photoshopped images of Grandma Squanto on those horses, I’ll buy a gross of them.

And yes, you can insert your own, “Liz Warren puts the ‘gross’ in 144 t-shirts” joke here.

#neverstop

Finally, the Grammys were held two Sundays ago, and I didn’t comment on them, because I don’t watch the Grammys. But I saw a montage of moments from them that brought out the “Get off my lawn!” old man in me.

Or should I say the, “Music these days is terrible!” old man in me.

Here’s my review:

Alicia Keys won something, and made a stupid little speech that included, “DEI is not a threat, it’s a gift!” Okay. Return to sender.

Lady Gaga (dressed as Wednesday Adams) said, “Trans people are not invisible.”

No kidding. In fact, they’re super visible. “Hey,” you might say, from four blocks away, “is that 1974 Dick Butkus in a tutu and tiara lumbering our way? Because I haven’t seen anybody that visible since J.B. Pritzker passed by and accidentally blotted out the sun.”

#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg

Beyonce won “Best Country Album of the Year.” That super loud humming sound you heard was Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Dwight Yoakam spinning in their graves. And Dwight is still alive!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to listen to a few Lucinda Williams songs, starting with “Jackson.” And by the time I’m two lines into the first verse (“Once I get to Lafayette, I’m not gonna mind one bit”) I’ll have heard more actual country than Beyonce is going to sing in her entire life.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

I Pour Concrete, and Trump Takes the 80 in Many 80/20 Issues (posted 2/12/25)

I poured a concrete slab behind our house today. After nearly 40 years in Florida, we lost power for longer than a day twice this year, so I’m breaking down and getting a generator. Hence the need for a slab for the generator to sit on.

I rented an electric concrete mixer and bought twenty-seven 60-pound bags of concrete, and after spending some time over a couple of days digging out a ton of roots, putting in some rebar and putting together wooden forms, I was ready to pour.

Before you can ask how many people I had helping me, I’ll refer you to my wife’s oft-repeated observation that I am a stubborn Appalachian-American, and that I still think I’m 27 years old. Partly because that’s how time works, and partly because if you saw me with my shirt off, you’d say, “That guy looks like an Olympic athlete. What is he, 27 or 28?”

Anyways (dammit – AOC has gotten into my head with that!), while the job would have gone pretty easily with two or three guys, I figured, “Hey, I’ve got the strength of ten men – because my heart is pure – and I’m an Ameri-can, not an Ameri-can’t. So I can knock this out solo.”

My first clue should have been that as I loaded the bags of concrete into my 22-year-old pick-up, the rear end sank noticeably low, and the back tires bulged out in an alarming way. Like Jerry Nadler without a suit jacket on.

It turns out that I hadn’t really done the math on how much twenty-seven 60-pound bags of concrete weigh.

Yeah, I know NOW. 1620 pounds. That’s like 3.3 cast members of the View!

Before you can ask, yes, I now have myself a fine new cement slab. And yes, Cassie the Wonder Dog’s paw print is preserved in the southwest corner of that slab.

However… now I’m on muscle relaxers. Which have made me drowsy and a little dopey, and I’m not looking forward to getting up tomorrow morning.

I’ll still do it (see the aforementioned “Ameri-can” reference above), with the assistance of some Vitamin M. (Motrin.) But before I took the magic pills, I’d already drafted part of a mid-week column.

So let’s all play a game of, “Can I tell which parts Martin wrote on muscle relaxers?”

First off, in Trumpkrieg™ news, weeping and gnashing of teeth could already be heard in Dem circles as the name was being taken off the USAID HQ building a few days ago. But the wailing got even louder when a Trump spokesman announced the new tenant who would be moving in.

The old USAID building will soon be the new home of… wait for it…US Customs and Border Protection!

Cut to me, re-enacting the Meg Ryan diner scene in “When Harry Met Sally.”

Even though we may be reaching the “too much winning” threshold, I still need stories like this to be turned into powder form, then put into a spoon with a drop of liquid, then heated up and drawn into a syringe. And then

Injected. Straight. Into. My. Veins!

Scott Jennings recently pointed out – to a bunch of pouting dopes on CNN – that Trump has been capturing the “80” position on many political issues in which public opinion breaks down to 80/20.

Closing the border, deporting illegals, re-criminalizing crime, keeping males out of female sports and locker-rooms – all have disproportionate popular support. Even on small issues like paper straws (nobody likes them!) and getting rid of daylight savings time, Trump has the winning side.

His job is made a lot easier by the fact that the late-stage-TDS-suffering Dems have been eager to jump on the “20” position with both feet.

It’s hard to remember this, but after Trump’s debate with Biden – the one that went so badly for the Cadaver in Chief that it knocked him out of the race entirely – 20% of viewers said that they thought that BIDEN won it!

Those are the geniuses who are sitting around sucking on disintegrating paper straws, while smiling at videos of male boxers punching females into next week, and sympathizing with face-tattooed gang-bangers as they block traffic on interstates while protesting with giant Mexican flags.

Normally, one would expect that a politician would have a harder time cutting government spending, because while many people see that as 80/20 in the abstract, they change their mind when specific cuts are identified. That’s always been frustrating for conservatives, and it’s a big reason why government has always gotten bigger.

But Trump may be able to turn this issue in his favor too, because four factors have changed recently:

1. Our national debt has been metastasizing for years, but now we are frighteningly broke. When Obama took office, all of the debt accumulated from George Washington to George W was $10 trillion. In 8 years, Obama doubled that to $20 trillion. (Si, se puede!) Trump added to that (especially during his last year/Covid), and Biden super-charged it, and now we owe $36 trillion. That can’t continue, and more people might be willing to face our debt denial.

2. The Dems have lied so much, so shamelessly, and so badly, that nobody trusts anything they say about the benefits of USAID-style, deep-state spending, or what it is supposedly going for.

3. The scope of the USAID revelations have surprised many people. We now know more about the narrowness of the special interests who have been getting the money: non-binary whittling dwarves in Micronesia; a slam poetry contest for Mongolian throat-singers in Tajikistan; “Anti-White Hate Fest ’24!” put on by racial grifter Ibram X. Kendi (real name “Henry Rogers”), and a Go-Fund-Me to get Sunny Hostin electroshock therapy to try to get that misfiring noggin of hers back in working order.

4. The total tax burden made up of all of these fiscal straws is finally to the point that we’re getting as sway-backed as Cankles Clinton, just trying to hold up under the weight.

So most of us are now ready to toss off the Micronesian dwarves and the Mongolian throat-singers, and we’ll try giving Sunny a free kick in the head to see if that helps with her neural sputtering.

And with all due respect, Henry Rogers/Kendi, you can kiss our non-racist white arses.

Hogg/Warren, 2028!

Biden Loses His Security Clearance, Dems are Stopped by Hero Outside Building, and Don’t Understand That Unelected Bureaucrats Ran USAID (posted 2/10/25)

Regular readers know me as someone who is rarely surprised by political events. I’ve usually got my ear to the ground, my nose to the grindstone, and my finger on the nation’s pulse. Which explains my four consecutive national Twister championships in the 1990s.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. ADHD.

Anyways (to quote a certain Latina with a Juicy Booty – her words, not mine), I’m not often surprised by political events. But I was definitely caught off-guard when I heard that Trump took away Joe Biden’s security clearance on Friday.

Mostly because… why on earth would Joe Biden still have a security clearance?!

He couldn’t stay awake for his briefings when he was president. And now he’s a civilian, and has signed with famous talent agency CAA – I’m not making that up… because I couldn’t – and is working hard on memorizing his lines for the starring role in “Weekend at Bernies 3: This Time it’s Presidential!” So how could he possibly find time to receive intelligence briefings? And for what purpose?

When I looked into this, I was surprised to find that we generally allow former presidents to keep their security clearances and receive intelligence updates, even though they no longer have any ability to act on them, or any reason to know what’s in them. So we should cut that out immediately, for all past presidents.

But good lord, for Joe Biden? That guy couldn’t be trusted with secret information when he was a hack senator, or a hack VP, or a hack president. And that was before he lost his marbles!

In addition to these other reasons, Trump was justified in yanking Biden’s clearance as an act of karmic justice, since Biden had yanked Trump’s clearance as soon as Biden became president.

Or, as Trump so Trumpily put it in his announcement, “[Biden] set this precedent in 2021, when he… [stopped] the 45^th President (ME!) from” receiving intel details. He also threw in another crisp jab (as is his wont), saying, “The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information.”

Ouch! By the way, has there ever been a more justified used of scare quotes than referring to Joe Biden’s “prime?” And you’ve got to love that all-caps “ME!”

Still, it’s got to be humiliating to have your security clearance publicly and justifiably taken away. (Just ask the corrupt 51 Hunter-laptop-denying “national security officials,” who can no longer sell themselves as knowledgeable insiders, even to the dozens of gullible, tin-foil-hat-wearing shut-ins who make up the audience of CNN.) So maybe it’s a mercy that at least Joe Biden didn’t live to see this happen to him.

In other news, you’ve probably heard the cliché that “all heroes don’t wear capes.” Well this past Friday we learned the truth of that saying, when we met one of my new idols: the anonymous security guard outside the Education Department HQ’s front door in Washington.

Instead of a cape or a uniform, the guard wore earth-tones, a pair of glasses perched on his head, and an expression half-way between a poker face and the iconic picture of Ben Affleck with his eyes closed in tortured world-weariness.

That lone paragon of virtue stood his ground when confronted by a motley mob of far-left malcontents from the bowels of the Crazy Caucus in the House of Representatives, bent on forcing their way into the building and staging an idiotic yet telegenic (they hoped) show of resistance to Trump.

The unassuming hero had neither a badge, nor a gun, nor pepper spray. Nor even narcissist spray, which would have been super useful against the empty-headed camera hogs bearing down on him.

But he had a few things that his foes were unprepared for: the patience of Job, a resting heart rate that never went above 50 beats per minute, and an expression of barely contained contempt, along with implacable boredom. That’s a guy you’d want next to you in a foxhole!

Put yourself in his place. He’s used to standing guard while an endless line of dead-eyed, low-T mediocrities trudge into and out of the unnecessary building, to engage in a variety of foolish tasks, all of them utterly useless.

The highlight of his year is probably when some sad parade of protestors marches by, featuring signs with ridiculous slogans like, “Pay me not to Work!” “Fiscal Prudence is Racist!” or a perverted version of the Gadsden flag reading, “Don’t Misgender Me!”

But on that fateful Friday, he looks down the street and sees a shambling clot of pitchfork-carrying mouth-breathers slouching toward the building he’s sworn to protect from the likes of them. Then he sees, in the middle of the pack, some pitiable, damned soul who was apparently in some sort of a terrible fire. The skin of her face appears to be sloughing off the front of her skull, her mouth just a garish red smear of—

Oh no, wait. That’s just Maxine Waters.

(Which is plenty bad enough, even though it’s not a horrific creature out of a Stephen King novel like he initially feared.)

As she got closer, he could tell that she hadn’t been in a fire. Because if she had, that unconvincing wig she’s got on would have gone up like a Roman candle, producing a plume of coal-black smoke like a tire fire on the edge of town.

Still, the sight of Melting-Face Maxine up close would be enough to send lesser men screaming into the night, or falling to their knees and trying to gouge their eyes out. If we could have found a way to deploy her to Kandahar when a Marine patrol was under heavy attack from the Taliban, she could have leapt up from ambush and stared at the enemy, croaking in her gravelly voice.

What followed would look like a Fourth of July fireworks show, as hardened jihadi fighters up and down the line triggered their suicide vests, just to escape from that hellish vision.

Anyway, it was spectacular, and I’ve added that video to my short list of things to watch whenever I need a little pick-me-up. I had two favorite moments in particular.

1. Arrogant Maxine tried to bully the guard, insisting that he show her his ID. It’s a tribute to his fortitude that he didn’t growl in her face, “I thought IDs are racist, you hideous crone. Begone!”

2. One congresswoman in the back of the pack – in an obnoxious variation on, “Do you know who I am?” – called out, “There are no thieves or thugs here. We are MEMBERS OF CONGRESS!”

Quick, somebody call Kamala, because this lady needs a Venn Diagram to explain the flaw in her thinking.

As with so many events over the last three weeks, the internet had a field day with the guard, coming up with names and titles for him. Among my favorites are, “Captain DOGE,” “Gandalf the Chill” (“You shall not PASS!”), or the new “Secretary of Zero F’s to Give.”

This incident is just one more proof that the Dems are still in such disarray in the face of Trump’s whirlwind of EOs, surprise announcements, and verbal groin kicks. The poor dopes don’t know whether to scratch their watches or wind their butts, as the old saying goes.

They’ve made numerous pathetic attempts to stop the Trumpkrieg™ (copyright by me, right now). They raised pointless filibusters to several of Trump’s nominees, which only resulted in those nominees being confirmed a day or two later than originally planned.

They’ve also gone out to microphones in front of several government buildings, where one pol after another got up and railed, grunted and gibbered about Orange Hitler this, and dictator that, and the “he can’t do this” other thing.

One scary-looking congress-troll howled that he was filing impeachment papers against Trump, while he swung around a cane that looked like something a Democrat would beat Frederick Douglass with in 1861, right before the GOP armies marched south and whipped the Demfederacy and freed their slaves.

Chuck Schumer also showed up – cameras were there, so duh! – and he was creepier than usual. He leaned down into the camera with his hands half-curled near his face, which gave him a look I can only describe as Nosferatu-esque.

He then started the saddest chant I’ve ever seen, saying, “We will win. We will win.” After a minute, Melting-face Maxine jumped into the frame (forcing me to recoil and say, “GAH!!” scaring Cassie the Wonder Dog and my wife), and he grabbed her hand and raised it, as the pathetic chant was dying out.

Then Maxine croaked out a common refrain that many Dems have latched onto lately, and which I can’t figure out. “Elon, nobody elected your ass!”

Does the Democrat base not understand that most of the people who actually make our government run – for good or ill – are not elected? Chiefs of staff, spokespeople, 99% of every department and agency – all are unelected. Even cabinet members, though confirmed, are not elected.

Let me put this in the form of a Q&A so simple that even AOC can understand:

Q: Can Elon Musk cut the budget of USAID, or close it down, or fire the ne’er-do-wells who work there?

A: No, because he is unelected. But he can recommend to his boss (who is super-elected) to do those things, and that guy can do them, or not.

Q: Guess who else is unelected in the big DOGE vs. USAID battle?

A: ALL of the USAID bureaucrats.

Q: Guess which branch of government USAID is part of?

A: The executive branch. (Even though USAID bureaucrats don’t seem to believe that.)

Q: Guess who leads the executive branch? (Hint: He is often called the “Chief Executive.”)

A: That’s right, the President.

Q: What is the old-fashioned phrase that describes the USAID bureaucrats’ employment status with the President?

A: They “serve at the pleasure of the President.”

Q: Do you think that the President is pleased by corrupt, obstructionist a-holes who are trying to sneakily undermine all of the policies he was elected to execute?

A: He is not.

Q: Finally, what is the word that describes someone who does what some of the USAID bureaucrats have been doing, i.e. refusing a legitimate President’s legal orders and secretly colluding to prevent him from doing what he was democratically elected to do? (Hint: You’ve heard this word a lot in recent years.)

A: Insurrectionist.

Keep flailing, Dems.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

Many Dems Battle Many Republicans, and Don’t Do Well (posted 2/7/25)

Look people, I don’t have time for a witty introduction. So yada yada yada…

AOC called Elon Musk “unintelligent” !!!

That’s not even a joke.

I mean, it is a joke, obviously. But I didn’t make it up. AOC was warning about the dangers of letting Musk look for waste in the federal government, and she said the following real quote, in this word order, in front of a camera, in real life:

“This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met, or seen, or witnessed. Which, you know, you can probably even glean that from watching these people on TV. Anyways, all of that is to say, is that they don’t do their homework. Clearly, like, they’re putting 19-year-olds in with the Treasury. This dude is not smart.”

When I first saw that, I started to analyze it, and quickly found many of the tell-tale signs of weapons-grade stupidity:

She’s not good with nouns – In the first sentence she refers to a singular person (“this dude”), but in the next three sentences she uses plural pronouns thrice, before returning to “this dude” again. Which suggests that she doesn’t know the difference between singular and plural.

She’s 35 years old, and she uses the words “you know,” “Anyways,” and “like,” as if she were a none-too-bright tween.

And she follows the “anyways” with “all of that is to say, is that….” In a six-word string she uses “that” twice and “it” twice, neither on purpose nor for rhetorical effect.

Plus, of course, she’s a former waitress who allegedly couldn’t get the simplest of drink orders right to save her life, but she’s critiquing the intelligence of a world-renowned genius. It’s almost as if she can’t be trusted at all, about anything.

At this point, I’m even wondering if her booty is as juicy as we’ve been led to believe (her words, not ours)!

But the best part of this lopsided battle of wits is that it’s not an isolated incident. In the 17 days since Trump was inaugurated, dozens of lefties have taken on dozens of Trump nominees and conservatives of various stripes.

And the results have not only been great because the Dems have lost almost all of them, but also because the contests have been such beat-downs. It’s like Mike Tyson vs. a middle school bully, or like Ali vs. Frasier. (If by “Frasier,” you mean the effete white psychologist played by Kelsey Grammer on Cheers.)

In addition to AOC vs. Elon, we’ve had Liz Cheney vs. Elon (bragging about taking USAID money isn’t the winning tactic she thought it was) and NJ Governor Phil Murphy vs Hulk Homan™.

My favorite so far is probably when old warhorse Hillary thought she could do a canter-by attack on Sean Duffy right after an air disaster. And we all found out that the old gray mare just ain’t what she used to be.

When Duffy had tweeted that the DOGE team was going to “help upgrade our aviation system,” Cankles McPantsuit thought she saw an opening.

She tweeted, “They have no relevant experience. Most of them aren’t old enough to rent a car. [This from an old crone who was once asked about wiping a computer server, and said, “You mean like with a cloth?” And no one knew whether she was serious, or just lying.] And you’re going to let them mess with airline safety that’s already deteriorated on your watch?”

Yes. Mayor Pete turned over a pristine airline system to Sean Duffy, and it then “deteriorated”… in the next seven days.

Duffy responded, opening with one of my favorite rhetorical devices: the introductory “with all due respect.” Whenever you hear that, you know that what follows is going to be disrespectful as hell. (For example, from the great Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos: “All due respect T, the guy’s half a fanook. We oughta whack him.”)

Duffy’s response: “Madam Secretary, with all due respect, ‘experienced’ Washington bureaucrats are the reason our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. You need to sit this one out.”

Despite taking that shot across the fetlock, Hillary thought she’d go back for more: “US airlines had gone 16 years without fatal crashes. Then MAGA fired the FAA chief, gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and threatened air traffic controllers with layoffs. Now there have been two fatal crashes. Hope your unvetted 22-year-olds fix things fast.”

Apparently cause and effect are not Hillary’s strong suit. Neither are optics, since this kind of sniping before funerals have even been arranged is far from a good look. But then again, Hillary has always been a mudder.

So Duffy put the whip to her like he was a jockey heading into the final turn. I recommend reading his whole three-paragraph response, but the opening and closing sentences will give you the flavor:

“I know you’re lashing out because DOGE is uncovering your family’s obscene grifting via USAID, but I won’t let you lie and distort facts…. Your team had its chance and failed. We’re moving on without you… and yes, we’re bringing the 22-year-olds with us.”

Ouch!

And nothing else was heard, except for the sound of a set of sad, staggering hoofbeats retreating into the distance.

Even when the lefties have ganged up on their opponents, they’ve still gotten trounced. Consider the following blowouts:

Every Dem Senator vs. Kash Patel

Every Dem Senator vs. Pam Bondi

Every Dem Senator vs. RFK Jr.

A roomful of jaded MSM veterans vs 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt. (They saw what looked like a fresh-faced sorority girl, expected a dimwit like KJP, and walked into a whirlwind of head butts, hard elbows and rib kicks that left them lying on the press room floor wondering what happened.)

All the gals on the View vs. Reality

And of course Trump has been stomping various lefties – Dems, reporters, foreign leaders – like Godzilla tromping through downtown Tokyo. He’s dispatched some with tariffs, some with his EO-signing pen, and some with his sharp tongue.

When he needed a minute to wipe the remains of Colombia’s president off of the bottom of his golf shoes, he tagged in JD, a blue-eyed killer who dispatched smarmy questioners without breaking a sweat. My favorite was when he launched 1000 memes and left Margaret Brennen on the ropes with his, “I don’t really care, Margaret.”

Which is not quite, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” But it’s pretty close.

So far, the Dems have only notched two wins: a Stiff Wind vs. Cocaine Mitch McConnell (by the knock down rule), and IL Governor Pritzker (#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg) vs. Anorexia (by knockout, 8 seconds into the first round).

Finally, amidst all the glorious sturm und drang of these first 17 days, I did not see the story coming that might end up as one of the most important: the USAID scandal. I don’t know if I’d even heard of USAID before, but now it appears that being linked to USAID may soon be more damaging to reputations than being linked to Epstein’s Pedo Island.

One scandal story is a witch’s brew of skeevy behavior, sleazy scumbags, and screwing everybody in sight.

And the other is about Epstein’s island.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

Dems Jump on Colombian Tariffs and NJ Gov. Murphy Antagonizes Hulk Homan, and Both Quickly Regret It (posted 2/5/25)

One challenge about writing about politics right now is that the lightning pace of developments is continually making whatever you write almost immediately outdated. For example, think of the poor Dems who jumped on the “Trump tariffs Colombia” story.

Trump was on the golf course, learned that Colombia’s president said he wouldn’t accept planeloads of Colombian criminals back, and fired off a “here come the tariffs” threat. Then he laced a drive down the middle of the fairway on a par 5.

AOC immediately got off her juicy booty [her words, not mine] and wrote a tweet about the apocalyptic coffee shortage that would engulf America in 1000 years of darkness. Ana Navarro started wailing about how she wouldn’t receive any Colombian flowers for Valentine’s Day. (Yes, sweetheart. THAT’S why you won’t be getting flowers!)

And Grandma Squanto strung her bow and started putting on her warpaint over the imminent Colombian catastrophe. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But the lefty outrage tweet storm had barely gotten off the launching pad when the Colombian president submitted like Que Mala in a job interview with Willie Brown. Before Trump could putt out on that par 5, he’d won, and the lefty hysterics had to quietly lower their dresses from over their heads, and slink away in humiliated silence.

Well I’m having a similar problem, except in the opposite direction. Before I can finish lacerating some idiotic lefty plan of attack, the attack blows up in the lefties’ faces, confirming my correctness while also rendering my response obsolete.

The latest example is provided by dimwit NJ governor (from guess which party) Phil Murphy. (Rumors that Punxsutawney Phil is smarter than Phil Murphy have not been confirmed. But don’t need to be. Because, duh!)

In a televised interview this weekend, Murphy bragged that he has been harboring an illegal above his garage, and dared the Feds to come and get her. This was a classic case of a beta male cosplaying as a tough guy. (See: Davy Hogg growing the kind of pathetic beard that a gender dysmorphic gal grows after she’s been injecting testosterone for a few months.)

It was also classic Murphy. (Rumors that “Murphy’s Law” was coined about this doofus have not been confirmed. But c’mon.)

So I read about this last night, and started writing a sarcastic little bit of deathless prose about it, to the effect of, “Murphy is going to regret confessing to a crime on video after Tom “Yippie-ky-yay MFer!” Homan hears about it. Because that lean, mean deporting machine is going to make poor Phil not just THINK he’s seen his shadow – he’s going to be afraid of his own shadow!”

I’d started with a few trenchant “Phil Murphy is dumber than Punxsutawney Phil” and “Murphy’s Law was named after this dope” jokes, and was just involving the ghost of Sam Kinison in the fun (“Hey Phil, you know one thing that might not be a smart move for a sitting governor to do? [begin Kinison filter] CONFESSING TO A FELONY ON CAMERA, YOU DIPSH*T! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!” [end Kinison filter]), when the news broke:

Phil Murphy furiously backpedals, claiming that his statement that he was harboring an illegal had been “misinterpreted.”

D’oh! Can you morons at least give me enough time to take some batting practice on your moronic actions and words before you unravel like a cheap suit?

Regardless, I love Murphy’s lame response. First, because it was delivered by a “representative” of his, undoubtedly a poor schmuck who has to be questioning all of the life choices that led him to becoming a rep for Phil freaking Murphy.

Second because it is SO dumb. Murphy’s comments have been “misinterpreted?!” He literally said, “We said, let’s have [the illegal] live at our house above our garage. And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her.”

That’s not some obscure paragraph from Finnegan’s Wake or the Book of Revelation that requires a lengthy, tortured exegesis to interpret. The guy said that he’s been harboring an illegal in his garage, and dared Hulk Homan to come and get her.

(And don’t try to steal “Hulk Homan,” because I am hereby copywriting it. But I am open to a joint venture with any t-shirt printers in CO Nation to produce a line of clothing with images of Homan’s head on top of a giant, green, muscular body.)

Then: one… hour… lay-tair…

Murphy’s miserable, flop-sweating rep is fidgeting in front of cameras like a slightly more masculine Karine Jeanne-Pierre. “No, no, no. When the governor said, ‘I’ve got an illegal living in my garage,’ what he meant was, ‘I definitely DON’T have an illegal living in my garage.’ See? It’s just all a big misunderstanding. And a misinterpretation. You remember when Tampon Tim Walz said, ‘I’m just a knucklehead?’ It’s like that.”

By the way, during the Dems’ covid hysteria, Phil Murphy had New Jersey residents arrested for going to the gym. Because “no one is above the law.”

Also, according to Title 8 of U.S.C. 1324, penalties for harboring an illegal immigrant include fines up to $250K and imprisonment for up to 5 years.

But after he’s done three years inside, we’ll let Phil walk out into the prison yard.

If he sees his shadow, he’s got two more years in the can.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

A Lineup of Dem Candidates, plus PETA vs. a Groundhog (posted 2/4/25)

If you thought that the incomprehensible DNC Failure-palooza this weekend was the best evidence that the Dems will continue to wallow in ignorance and defeat, you might be judging too hastily.

Allow me to present a January 30^th poll from Echelon Insights listing Democrats’ preferences for their party’s nominee in 2028.

First the caveat: I have no idea who “Echelon Insights” is. Other than that they sound like the name of a nefarious corporation in a thriller starring Tom Cruise or Matt Damon racing against time to uncover a plot to corner the unobtainium market and then blackmail the president, or something.

Anyway, their poll lists the top 12 contenders for the Dems in 2028. The four wisest choices are: “Generic Democrat” at 21%; “Unsure” at 17%; “Other” at 7%, and “Trump/other Republican” (HA!) at 3%.

Which means that nearly half of Democrats (48%) effectively want either nobody they know, or Orange Hitler (who is constitutionally unable to run again) or one of his minions! HA! HAHA!

Before you laugh your way into an aneurysm at that hilarious news… wait. There’s more.

Because here are the choices, in descending order, of the slightly more than half of Democrats who know who they want:

Que Mala Harris at 32%! (She’s currently sitting in Obscurity, California, two wine boxes into her lunch, which she is drinking while lying on her tummy, because her butt is still so bruised from the kicking it received on 11/5!)

Gavin Newsom at 6% (the current front-runner for his 2028 campaign slogan is, “Poop maps, hellfire and used syringes – Newsom, ’28!)

Bernie Sanders (professional useless centenarian) at 5%

Followed by the worst 3-way tie since the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, minus 1:

Mayor Pete (“He made the trains run on time! If by “run” you mean “de-rail and explode”),

Hillary Clinton (her Clydesdale cankles are still trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored), and

AOC (“Empty head, juicy booty” [her words, not mine]), all at 2%

Followed by the late Joe Biden (I’m not kidding) and Michelle Obama (insert Chewbacca howling sound here), tied at 1%.

Good lord!

I will never underestimate the GOP’s ability to screw something up, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But still. If this is how the Dems are thinking, we’re going to have to try pretty hard to lose another election anytime soon.

But if you thought that nobody could make dumber choices than the hard-core Democrat electorate…

Well, you’re probably right. I mean, look who they just picked to lead the DNC, and who they want for their standard bearer in 2028!

But if anyone can give them a run for their money in the Imbecile 500, it’s the delusional loons of PETA.

I’ll preface this by stating for the record that I love animals, and I’m all for stopping cruelty to them. (I’d rather spend time with Cassie the Wonder Dog than with many, many people, for example.) And I know that many animals are treated worse than they should be.

But you can leave it to PETA, when it’s early February and they need a beast to get hysterical about, to choose the one animal on earth, who – in the long and often sad story of animal-human interactions – has the LEAST reason for complaint. Yes, I’m talking about the weather-prognosticating groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.

Seriously. If you had to be one specific animal (other than the aforementioned Cassie the Wonder Dog), who would you rather be than P-squared the groundhog?

Groundhogs are not slaughtered and eaten, or milked against their will, or made to perform in circuses. I’ve never heard of anyone showing off their groundhog-skin boots or pants or belts. I know a lot of hunters, and have seen plenty of animal heads on walls, but never a groundhog head, teeth bared in the terrifying expression he had just before he charged and was bravely shot.

I’ve also heard of cockfighting and dogfighting (those people should be executed, IMHO), but never of any high-stakes, gladiator-style groundhog duels to the death.

Also, I’m imagining that Punxsutawney Phil is probably pretty spoiled. He’s got to have the best groundhog gig ever: he works one hour per year, and I’m guessing that the rest of his life is one long cycle of gourmet groundhog food and a series of cute, plump little Punxsutawney Pamelas, brought to his hutch (or den, or wherever groundhogs live) like he was some kind of rodentian Hugh Hefner.

But that’s not good enough for the totally well-balanced people at PETA. They’re like, “Oh, the poor groundhog is overweight because he’s being overfed, and if that doesn’t kill him, a rodent STD or a heart attack in a middle of a decadent groundhog orgy probably will! Oh, won’t someone think of the rodents?!”

Meanwhile, Phil is in his pen or den or whatever, going, “Don’t screw this up for me, you freaking weirdos! Shouldn’t you be driving under the speed limit with two masks on in your Prius, crying your eyes out to a sad Sarah McLachlan song about hungry puppies? Mind your business!”

But the PETAns are not to be deterred. They can’t sleep at night as long as a celebrity rodent is having his round-the-clock routine of top-quality dining and sweet lady-groundhog tail interrupted for 10 minutes in front of the cameras, once a year.

So they’ve come up with an alternative to his winter-predicting schtick. And it’s even goofier than you imagined.

They want to bake a vegan cake, and have the people in Punxsutawney cut that cake on ground hog’s day. If the inside of the cake is one color, it indicates that winter is nearly over, but if it’s another, we’ll have the traditional 6 more weeks of winter.

I swear I’m not making this up. I mean, the horn-dog groundhogs thing is just speculation on my part. (I was three credits short of a minor in “Sexual Behavior in Rodents,” because I was focusing on my double-major in English and Sarcasm.) But the PETA part is an absolutely real thing.

And yes, it seems like a very stupid idea. But what did you expect from a bunch of nutjobs who are tortured by the thought of a groundhog living a life of epicurean and sensual delights?

Also consider this: since a vegan cake sounds absolutely awful, the best use of said cake would have to be cutting it in half, predicting a short or long winter, and then throwing it away. Forcefully.

Of course this got quickly mocked by the entire internet. My favorite jab was taken by an amateur meteorologist who posted, “That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows that cakes cannot predict the weather.”

But it did remind me of an old joke.

Q: If a vegan, a vegetarian and a PETAn jump off a cliff in a competition to see who hits the ground first, who wins?

A: Society.

Hogg/Warren, 2028!