I have no central theme today, just a couple of noteworthy stories I’ve seen recently.
I’ll start with an unusual one for me, because it made me heartily say, “Two cheers for Rosie O’Donnell!”
I can’t give her three cheers. Because, as I mentioned just now, she’s Rosie O’Donnell.
But we live in a world seemingly full of blowhard lefty narcissists who always insist that if the next Republican presidential candidate wins, they’ll leave the country. And then they never do!
But to her credit, Rosie put her money where her extremely large mouth is, and she actually followed through. When Trump won, she moved to Ireland and applied for Irish citizenship. And seriously: good for her.
Obviously I think she’s off her rocker, politically speaking. But if she’s convinced – against all evidence after his first term – that Trump is worse than Hitler, and will bring a nightmarish reign of oppression down on America, she demonstrated the courage of her convictions by leaving. And as odd as this sounds, I think she’ll probably be happier for it.
Because there are millions of her political co-religionists in this country who believe that crap, and I don’t think it’s working very well for them. You’ve seen them. And you’ve heard them screaming, at their protests, and in courtrooms, and at various crime scenes. “Abortions for all! Death to Jews! Bring back foreign criminals! Death to America! Heterosexual sex is gross! Pay me not to work! Screw you, dad!”
Do they seem happy to you?
I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite books, John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It appears early on, in a scene that is best-known for Satan’s monologue after he’s been cast out of heaven. (His hubris is summed up: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”)
Shortly before that famous line, Milton captures an essential truth of human psychology in just two lines: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
I first read that as an undergrad, and though it stuck with me, it didn’t make a huge impact. Mostly because I was pre-occupied at the time with weightier philosophical questions. Questions like, “What’s the chances she’ll go out with me if I ask?” and, “Or her?” and, “Or maybe her?”
Also, “Why can’t the Bears draft a decent quarterback to save their lives?”
But the older I get, the smarter John Milton gets. (He’s like my dad in that way, God rest his soul.) And I’ve been around long enough to watch strong-willed people find the silver lining on every dark cloud, and make some hellish circumstances into a little slice of heaven.
And I’ve seen people like Rosie – and Joy Reid, and Keith Olberman, and Noam Chomsky, and a cast of thousands like them – do just the opposite. They’re living in the best country in the world, blessed with wealth and opportunities, and surrounded by signs and wonders. But they find fault wherever they look, and wallow in their own self-created misery.
They look at a shining city on a hill, and see only a Mordor-ian wasteland of sexism, racism and a plethora of politically incorrect phobias.
They look at a flawed, bloviating president who loves the country and is doing some good things, and they see Orange Hitler. They look at a rich genius who is sacrificing a lot to try to root out waste and fraud, and enable the government to more efficiently serve its citizens, and they see an evil oligarch.
They look at Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren and they see a racist, hideous crone and a phony white lady pretending to be Sacheen Littlefeather—
Okay, I’ve got to give them those two. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, as they say.
Also: #wemustneverstopmockingher
Where was I?
Oh yeah, Rosie. She made a hell out of America for herself, but Ireland seems like a cool place to me, so here’s hoping she can make a heaven for herself there.
Apparently two of her grandparents were Irish, but even so, she is reportedly worried because her application for Irish citizenship has not yet been approved. And I think I speak for all of us when I say…
Oh no you don’t, Ireland! No do-overs or give-backs! You gave us Guinness, Liam Neeson, Yeats, and C.S. Lewis, and we gave you Rosie O’Donnell.
Sure, you made a terrible, terrible trade. But what’s done is done. She’s your problem now.
But to soften the blow, I suggest we start a go-fund-me to get Ireland to keep Rosie, along with any other nation who’s willing to take any other leftist celebrity irritants we can persuade to honor their vows that they would leave America if Trump won.
If we can pay a great Salvadoran (you say, “Nayib,” I say, “BUKELE!) to take the worst of our criminal illegals, we should be willing to open our wallets to get other countries to take the wretched refuse of our teeming lefties.
Speaking of wretched, I’ve got to end with a great story from Schadenfreude Corner: the tale of Letitia James’ impending criminal charges!
No charge against Trump was more bogus than James’ lies about him wildly over-valuing Mar-a-Lago in order to get a more favorable loan rate from banks. She claimed at one point that Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million, by relying on the low-end of a tax assessment (which are always lower than true market value), even though that assessment was 10 years old, and every real estate expert around said it was laughably low.
Later, she stated that the property should be valued at closer to $75 million, but then in an X post she listed the value as $25 million. Trump was similarly inconsistent, valuing it in financial statements at between $426-612 million, but also bragging that the real value should be over a billion.
All of which is moot, because the giant international banks from whom Trump sought the loan always do their own appraisals, rather than relying on biased owners. Valuation of unique, high-end properties are especially difficult to nail down, but you don’t get to be Deutsche Bank by relying on sellers’ fraudulently high valuations.
All of which is even moot-er, because Trump paid back the loans with interest, and the banks said that they’d be happy to do business with him again. Many NY lawyers and real estate investors agreed that this kind of a victimless case of a loan taken out and then repaid in full had ever been pursued before.
And now it turns out that lyin’ Letitia is a real estate investor herself, and that she was actually committing the kind of fraud that she accused Trump of committing. For example, she bought several properties with her dad as co-signer, but falsely listed them as “husband and wife.”
(Rumors that she learned that trick from an Ilhan Omar “Buy Real Estate With Your Brother/Husband” seminar have not been confirmed.)
She claimed a property in Virginia as her principal residence, allowing her to get a lower mortgage rate. Which was problematic, since she could not legally be the Attorney General in New York if her primary residence wasn’t in the state. Also, the neighbors of the Virginia house reported that they’d never seen James there.
She also bought a 5-unit building that she fraudulently claimed had only four units, allowing her to… wait for it…get a lower mortgage rate.
So James was allegedly perjuring her hypocritical arse off, as she was using taxpayer dollars and her powerful position to wrongly go after Trump.
The cherry on top of this delicious schadenfreude sundae is that James’ half-billion-dollar, illegitimate verdict against Trump will eventually be over-turned, and she will almost certainly be convicted of a raft of felony charges.
My hope – sure, you can even call it a prayer – is that those two verdicts will come down around the same time.
Because if I know Trump, he’ll find a way to be outside the courthouse where James will be led out in handcuffs, holding a gigantic, novelty check for the hundreds of millions of dollars he’d had to put in escrow, being refunded to him after he was vindicated in court.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 