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!
Martin Simpson 