I’ve missed writing this last week, since running into some health problems last Wednesday, but I’m on the mend, and hope to return to form in a couple of days.
I started having some bad pain in the left side of my neck and upper back, which then moved down my left shoulder and arm, creating alternating numbness and strangely migrating pain, and tingling in my fingers. Then came four urgent-care and ER visits, and yada yada yada, I’ve got a pinched nerve situation that a doc described as having “sciatia in the neck.” (It’s affecting the C6 neural pathway, for any medical nerds in the audience.)
Since nothing is more boring than hearing the details of someone else’s medical travails, I’ll just touch lightly on the high points:
I’d describe the pain as being forced to listen to Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib caterwauling their way through a SOTU for four days.
So yes, it likely would have killed a lesser man.
But I have the strength of 10 men, because my heart is pure. And between that and the support of my smokeshow wife and empathetic Wonder Dog — and anti-inflammatory and pain-killing drugs (sweet, sweet, pain-killing drugs!) — I hope to get past this pretty quickly.
In the meantime, I have a few random thoughts, which I’ll try to jot down before my fingertips go completely numb or the Percocet makes me goofier than AOC on her best day.
The SOTU clearly demonstrated the difference between the parties. Trump was at his Trumpiest, and gave his supporters many reasons to cheer, and his detractors many reasons to detract.
Highlights were the multiple traps Trump laid before the Dems, by taking the 90 side of various 90-10 issues, and having their most obnoxious Rashida Tlaib-types enthusiastically jump onto the “10” side. (And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only time you’ll ever see “Rashida Tlaib” and “10” mentioned in the same sentence.)
The Dems really showed why their approval ratings are in the toilet, even as they are still probably favored to flip the House in November. Half of them didn’t show up, and the half who did made everybody wish they hadn’t.
It was only a few presidential cycles ago when, in the middle of an Obama SOTU speech, a GOP House member pointed out that he was lying by calling out, “You lie!” That violation of protocol was the subject of breathless MSM Jeremiads about the end of democracy for weeks.
Flash forward to the last few years, and you’ve got Imhotep Pelosi dramatically tearing up Trump’s speech right behind him; MTG and Boebert yelling at Biden in ways that might really have affected his concentration, if he hadn’t already died in the late spring of 2019; and last year’s army of identically dressed Dems carrying ping pong paddles with moronic slogans printed on them.
This time Omar and Tlaib heckled and gibbered through half the speech, while Al Green got himself kicked out. Again! This time while carrying a sign making the confusing argument that black people aren’t apes.
I say confusing because nobody was arguing that point in the first place. Plus, it was disorienting to see someone making a reference to other animals, when he so clearly resembles a werewolf halfway through the transformation, and you can’t tell which direction. (I’m guessing that he’s heading from man to wolf, but the reverse could just as likely be true.)
The other big news of the week is obviously the strikes on Iran, which quickly made the SOTU seem like very old news. (Or that could just be me, feeling the effects of a couple of sleepless nights and cursing of the C6 neural pathway that separated the SOTU from the BOTWB.) (Blasting of the Weird Beards. Duh.)
So far I’m impressed by the intelligence and coordination that allowed us and the IDF to hit so many of the top Iranians at a breakfast meeting, repeating the success last year in simultaneous strikes on the top of military and political chains of command.
When I saw an article listing the guys taken out at the waffle station by the kosher kaboom on Saturday, I noticed that their resumes had one thing in common. Most of them had assumed their current position around six months ago, right after their predecessors suffered a highly contagious bout of SOMD. (“Sudden-Onset Molecular Disassembly” Duh.)
I also appreciate a good name for a military operation. “Operation Midnight Hammer” last year was pretty sweet, but it’s tough to top “Operation Epic Fury.”
(Especially when you try to imagine the names that Dems would come up with for their feckless military bungles, such as pointless strikes on empty desert, or botched abandonment of Afghanistan. “Operation Futile Gesture?” “Operation Dyspeptic Half-Measure?”)
In the immediate aftermath, the Dems — and Tucker…sigh… — managed to jump onto what I hope will continue to be the 10 side of yet another 90-10 issue. While jubilant Iranians celebrated in the streets in Iran and around the world, the Dems were outraged at the fall of another tyrant, and at the Orange Menace who keeps knocking them off.
I’m praying for our and our allies’ militaries, and for those people in Iran who were never willing parts of the mullahcracy that has caused so much damage all over the Middle East.
Finally, because some of you have been asking, I recently spoke with CO, and I am cautiously optimistic that we’ll be re-launching a new Facebook page in the near future. I appreciate your patience, and will update you about that as soon as I can.
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Martin Simpson 