martinsimpsonwriting

Get Ready for Whiplash: It’s Hamas and Jake Tapper (posted 3/7/25)

Today I’ve got two topics: an update on Hamas, and Jake Tapper’s latest indignity.

Let’s save Jake for last, since we’ll need a light, buffoonish closer after discussing the child-murderers and mass rapists of Hamas.

Regular readers know that I often end my columns with “Hamas delenda est!” as a homage to the great Roman Cato the Elder’s ending to every speech he gave, “Carthago delenda est!” Cato was reminding his fellow citizens that their enemy in Carthage must be destroyed, and I am reminding CO Nation that Hamas is sorely in need of warheads on their foreheads, as the saying goes.

I haven’t written about Hamas as much lately, mostly because of the constant deluge of political stories stateside since Trump’s delenda-ing of both the Cadaver and the Cackler in November.

But Hamas is still around, and they still shouldn’t be, and I’m encouraged by Trump’s recent statements that they better release their hostages quick, fast and in a hurry, or else he’s going to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of Big Dreidel. (You may remember them from “Disemboweling Pager Party, 2024!”)

I know that Israel’s leader is up for it – he puts the “Yahoo!” in Netanyahu – and I’m hoping that with Trump’s support, he hammers Hamas very soon. Because they are among the worst people to ever walk the earth.

I thought they couldn’t be more bestial than they were on October 7^th, but their recent “release” of the bodies of young mother Shiri Bibas and her two toddlers, Ariel and Kfir was possibly worse.

They paraded the corpses through town in locked coffins with paperwork listing the date of their “arrest” as October 7^th. They set up a stage with huge photos of the dead and Netanyahu, circled by gouts of simulated blood. After a ghoulish photo-op, they turned the coffins over to the Red Cross.

When the Israelis finally received and tried to unlock the coffins, they discovered that the keys Hamas had given them didn’t fit the locks. When they broke the locks open, they found the coffins stuffed with Hamas propaganda surrounding the bodies. When they examined the children, they found that they had been beaten or strangled to death, rather than killed in an Israeli airstrike, as the lying jihadi scumbags had claimed. And when they examined the mom, they found that it wasn’t her body. It took another day or two for the evil pr*cks to return her remains.

Two other details: According to video and reports, it wasn’t Hamas “fighters” who captured the Bibas family on October 7^th, but “Palestinian” “civilians” who accompanied their cowardly co-religionists to torment the Jews and loot their property.

And many hundreds – possibly thousands – of those “civilians” danced and sang and celebrated while the black-hearted parade of their victims’ broken bodies was going on. In that context, what does it mean to call any of them either “innocent” or “civilians?” I know that their children are innocent, since they haven’t yet grown up into the psychopathic, anti-Semitic thugs their parents are raising them to be.

But in all wars, there is collateral damage. And after Israel has sacrificed so much and lost so many in their heroic efforts to limit collateral damage in Gaza, I think the day is coming when they’ll have to take a page from the empire that once oppressed them, and “Go Roman” on Hamas.

Am I saying that if this kind of devil’s parade makes its way through streets filled with celebrating homicidal freaks carrying murdered Israeli children again, an Israeli pilot flying a borrowed A-10 Warthog should make a low pass down that street with that awesome Gatling gun and cannon blazing?

If I can quote a recently defeated candidate who is at this very moment guzzling box wine and wondering what went wrong – and I think that I can – I’m saying that we should have that conversation.

Whoo. Glad I could get that off my chest.

And now, for the silly little man the great Dennis Miller used to call Tap-Tap the Chiseler…

Jake Tapper is coming out with a tell-all book in May about the shameful media cover-up of Joe Biden’s obvious physical and mental frailty.

Did I say “tell-all?” I meant, “tell-some.” Because in his diligent spelunking for the truth – the book’s publicity touts interviews with over 200 insiders – he failed to land one key character at the heart of his tale. The Deep Throat for this Watergate. The White Whale for this epic quest.

Okay, I’m getting carried away. We all know that Tapper is not some significant figure like Moby Dick. (Though Tapper could pull off one part of that name.) (And in case AOC is reading this, I don’t mean the “moby” part, Your Juiciness.)

#yourwordsnotmine

So the one Moriarity (I can’t help myself) at the center of the coverup that Tapper couldn’t interrogate was… wait for it… Jake Tapper!

Because of course Jake was an unindicted conspirator in the whole mess. For years he faithfully delivered the ridiculous leftist talking points – Biden is sharp as a tack! Videos of him looking feeble are deep fakes! Who hasn’t fallen, and fallen, and fallen up a mobile airplane staircase? – like a yapping lapdog with no moral compass.

My favorite of his idiotic self-own videos is when he condescendingly interviewed Lara Trump, accusing her of defaming Biden’s cognitive brilliance and barely letting her get a word in edgewise. And he raised the lamest defense of all – Biden’s phantom stutter – to attack her.

When I first heard the Dems bring that up, I thought that they must be joking. Because who’s ever heard of a childhood stutter that disappears for 60+ years, then comes back only when an old buzzard creakily shuffles toward death’s door?

But I said to myself, “Martin, you’re a witty and a ruggedly handsome elderly gentleman. But that’s not important right now. Because you’re also a fair man, and a working dog and not a show dog. So you should do some research on stuttering before you dismiss the leftists’ laughable excuse-making as the utter hogwash that it obviously is.”

So I did my homework, and I searched medical literature for everything I could find about NDSRO (Near-Death Stutter Re-Occurence).

I looked for all of the common symptoms that Biden had displayed: Compulsive Hair Sniffing; TOSS (Tripping over Sandbags Syndrome), SHWGS (Shaking Hands With Ghosts Syndrome), and even Emotional Dysregulation with Associated Intermittent CWS and SAHOS (Creepy Whisper Syndrome and Sudden Alarming Hollering Outburst Syndrome).

And it turns out that none of those exist. UNEXPECTEDLY!

But that didn’t deter Jake the Snake, who followed video of Lara discussing Biden’s inability to speak a coherent sentence with the challenge, “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they hear you make a comment like that?”

Ugh. Is that not the perfect distillation of dishonest leftism? A lie, a bad-faith accusation, and then “Won’t someone please think of the children?!”

When she stated the obvious – Biden doesn’t have a stutter, he’s in obvious cognitive decline – Jake wouldn’t have it, and started lambasting her because she has “no standing to diagnose his mental condition.”

No she doesn’t, Moby. But she does have something that she shares with the 300ish million in the American PWFE (People with Functioning Eyes) community: she can recognize a doddering old fool when she sees one!

Just like you could, Jake. But you took a huge paycheck to look the other way, stick your fingers in your ears and say, “Biden is perfect in every way,” for four long years.

And now, when everybody is free to admit the truth, you’re looking for another big paycheck for writing a book that ignores the complicit Donkey in the room, i.e. you!

Not since OJ Simpson (no relation, people! I can’t emphasize that enough) wrote “(If) I Did It” has a guilty man put out such a blatantly sleazy and hypocritical book. Tapper’s title is “Original Sin: Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

I would have respected him more if he had at least demonstrated as much integrity as OJ (!), and titled it, “(My) Original Sin…”

Hamas delenda est!

Reaction to Trump’s Quasi-SOTU Speech (posted 3/5/25)

I had a couple of topics to write about this morning, but they will have to wait until Friday, because I can’t not comment on last night’s State of the Union-adjacent speech.

I’ve written before about how I generally don’t like these things. All of the rote jumping up and down in applause by the party in power, and the concomitant studied silence by the other party, the using of people in the crowd as props to put a human face on various political issues, etc.

Because I’m a grumpy old man about this stuff, I prefer the way the early Founders handled SOTUs: they sent a letter that was read out in congress, and that was it.

I’d like to return to that. Just a handful of paragraphs hitting the highlights: “Our navy has whipped the Barbary Pirates, our cavalry has kept the raiding parties from the savage Warrens at bay on our western frontier (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and the sorghum crop this year is abundant. Thank ye, and God bless America.”

But having said that, if you’re going to do a modern SOTU, this was the way to do it. Though it was too long (they all are), there were a lot of strong lines. (My favorite was about the border: “[The Dems] said that they needed a new law to secure the border, but all we needed was a new president.”)

And Trump demonstrated his flair for the dramatic, with one feel-good announcement after another. A key terrorist from the Abbey Gate attack has been captured and is on his way to face American justice; the young black kid who had brain cancer getting made an honorary agent; the high school kid being told he’s been accepted at West Point; Jocelyn Nungaray’s mom being told that a wildlife sanctuary has been renamed for her daughter; reading the letter from Zelensky saying that the minerals deal is back on, etc.

But perhaps the best news for the country to come out of the speech was the Democrats’ stunning demonstration that they are incapable of reading either a nation, a moment, or a room. Because they are ineducable. Bone-deep, weapons-grade stupid.

I’ll admit that it’s always a tough gig to be the out-of-power party at a SOTU. You have to sit on your hands most of the night while the opposition is standing and applauding, and it’s not easy to do that without looking petulant.

But you know what’s an even worse look? Heckling like children, and applauding only ONE THING in the entire speech, and choosing the worst possible thing for that one moment of applause.

They started the night off on the wrong foot, heckling and yelling out immediately. You may remember when one GOP congressman, after listening to Obama lie for half an hour straight in one of his SOTUs, yelled, “You lie!” The entire MSM nearly melted down, and the hyperventilating lasted for days. “This is unprecedented! The most inappropriate violation we’ve ever seen! Would he ever have yelled like that at a white president? Racist!!”

But double standard, thy name is Democrat.

The first and the worst offender was Al Green. You might remember Al Green as a talented soul singer, but now his fine name has been besmirched by one of the worst Democrats in congress. And that’s really saying something, considering that Melting Face Maxine Waters, Ilhan “Allahu Akbar!” Omar, and Juicy Booty AOC (her words, not mine) are all in the congress.

The Democrat (bad) Al Green is tough to look at, and tougher to listen to. Luckily, in the first few minutes of the speech he started to scream incoherently, and the GOP was ready for him, sending the Sergeant at Arms to escort him out.

Which brings up several questions for me:

1. What’s the point of having the title “Sergeant at Arms” if you aren’t armed?

2. If you are armed, why didn’t you let bad Al Green ride the lightning? Are tasers broken?

3. Since when are disordered lunatics allowed to carry a cane with a big metal head on it into the presence of the President?

Obviously, the Sergeant at Arms missed a golden opportunity, because as soon as the bad Al Green started hollering and raised his cane, Sarge could have yelled, “CANE! Swarm! SWARM!” and initiated a violent pile-on.

And if, once the agents had picked Green’s body up and carried him out, it turned out that his cane had been accidentally shoved into a position that required a doctor to remove it, that’s the chance you take when you bring a cylindrical object into a SOTU and act like a fool.

I would also have accepted a third option for dealing with Green, which regular readers may remember from a few earlier columns of mine. I’m speaking, of course, of the Robot Flamethrower Dog!

Sure, some might object to deploying a RFD in the confined space of a SOTU. But since bad Al Green was sitting amidst the other Democrats, what’s the worst that could happen? Maybe a few facial burns – which in many cases would be a lateral move at worst, appearance-wise – and a few of those idiotic paddles being scorched.

You say, “collateral damage,” I say, “collateral hilarity.”

And speaking of those paddles, what grade are those people in?! Unless you’re going to a ping pong tournament, an auction, or a sick kink party at the Biden-era NSA, you should not be carrying a paddle around in public.

And the idiotic lines printed on the paddles reinforced the Dems’ terrible judgment in two ways: they were pre-printed, which meant that this bonehead stunt was premediated, and the printed phrases were such banal imbecilities.

“Musk Steals,” “False,” and “Save Medicaid.” I’ve seen smarter messages on a Magic 8 Ball when I was a kid.

“Are these Democrats really going through with this childish stunt?”

“Signs point to yes.”

“Is there a greater concentration of low-IQ numbskulls anywhere on earth right now?”

“My sources say no.”

And Trump cannily set them up for the bad optics, with his riff on, “There is nothing I could say to make them happy, or to make them smile or applaud, even if I cured a terrible disease.”

The Dems immediately proved him right. They wouldn’t applaud for a black kid with brain cancer, or for terrorists being brought to justice, or for a 95-year-old mom getting her son back from a Russian prison.

So what was the one thing they were willing to celebrate?

I’m not making this up. When Trump challenged them, asking, “Do you want to keep this war [in Ukraine] going for another 5 years?” the morons started clapping. Trump saw one of them, and took the personal shot, saying, “Pocahontas says yes.”

And when the camera panned to the Powhatan Pale-Face herself, she doubled down on dumb, and applauded more vigorously.

She really is that out of touch! This dowager with none of her (extremely white) skin in the game actually clapped for five more years of war. “Yay! Let’s fight to the last Ukrainian!”

And that is why… say it with me again, people…

#wemustneverstopmockingher!

Thinking About Governmental Job Losses (posted 3/3/25)

Before I get to my main topic, I have to note that on Saturday, CA Gov and featureless-plastic-crotch-having human-Ken-Doll Gavin Newsom (D)elinquent, declared a “state of emergency” for brush clearance due to wildfire danger.

Which came as a much-appreciated warning to the residents of Pacific Palisades…except that the brush around their houses has already been cleared.

By an enormous fire.

Which also consumed their houses.

Months ago.

Newsom would be a big hit in farm country, where I grew up. He could walk up to farmhouses and holler through the screen door. “Your horse escaped two days ago, and he’s just been seen three counties away. So close your barn door immediately! You’re welcome.”

And then he could try to make it off the property before the farmer or his wife could load the shotgun with rock salt.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been having some fun lately mocking many of the government workers who have been getting laid off or fired, and deservedly so, including the treacherous deep-state “resistance” types, and corrupt leadership in the FBI, the military and elsewhere.

In Friday’s column, I mocked the disordered pervs at the NSA who spent their work hours on message boards talking about their polycules (don’t ask), the joys of castration (please, don’t ask!) and how good it feels to have one’s an*s lasered (for the love of all that is holy, DON’T ASK!!)

But reader Jon Michael Watson – thanks for sharing the column, Jon – made a good point. He said that while it is “proper that these lost and fallen gov’t employees are no longer sucking up taxpayer dollars,” many government workers are good people doing good work, and are getting tarred with the same brush. (I paraphrased a bit, but I think I fairly summarized his meaning.)

Jon’s point is well taken, and worth remembering. We all know that our national debt is unsustainable, and deep spending cuts are going to have to be made to avert a future economic collapse. But those cuts are going to hurt some real people, and it’s a bad look to be gleeful about everybody losing their jobs.

“Martin,” you might be saying, “aren’t you being a hypocrite by saying that, especially after your world-class, hilarious send-up of the NSA kink ring last Friday, which should probably win a Nobel Prize for political humor, if only there were such a thing?”

First, who am I to fly in the face of public opinion on that second part?

But re: hypocrisy, I plead guilty to a lesser count. Is there such a thing as misdemeanor-level negligent hypocrisy?

At my sentencing, I would raise some extenuating circumstances to try to mitigate my sentence.

First, the corrupt legacy media has promoted a disgusting double standard about layoffs that enrages many of us normal folks. When Biden killed the Keystone pipeline and the border wall on his first day in office, over 50,000 blue-collar American workers lost their jobs, and the MSM wrote zero stories sympathizing with their plight.

When some workers vented about their lost jobs, the Dem talking heads and elitist j-school snobs told them to “learn to code.”

But now those same dishonest hacks are running one story after another about every fired government employee trudging into the parking lot carrying a cardboard box. And they’re casting every one of them as assiduous martyrs who were just about to find a cure for cancer, or else arranging for a parachute drop of food that would have saved starving orphan amputees in a Third World country that you couldn’t even find on a map, you ignorant capitalist pig!

Whereas I am at least trying to point out that there’s a difference between government employees doing legitimate work, and covens of polymorphously perverse loons who “work” from home.

If by “work” you mean “organize leagues to play rectal laser tag.”

By the way, that reminds me of Three Fundamental Life Rules that rank just below the 10 Commandments in their usefulness:

1. Never play pool for money with a guy who carries his own cue in a custom case.

2. Never try to scatter a loved one’s ashes into the sea if the wind is blowing toward you.

3. There are no winners in rectal laser tag.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

In all seriousness, I think the Trump team should be sympathetic to most people who lose their jobs because of the necessary cuts that are coming. They can still expose and troll all of the idiotic DEI boondoggles and corrupt waste, but if they look gleeful about normal workers getting fired, they’ll do unnecessary political damage to the cause.

I’ve seen a few early signs of this in my own life. About three weeks ago, my wife got an email saying that her job is being looked at as one that might be going away. She works with a regional team of health professionals focusing on treating and preventing the spread of TB; because her work is funded only partly by our state, and the rest by the CDC, some job losses may be in the offing.

In the big picture, this is almost certainly a good sign for our nation. Because while we hadn’t wiped out TB the way we had polio or smallpox, by around 50 years ago we’d contained it to a very small number of outbreaks and cases. The resurgence of TB in recent decades has been coincident with large numbers of illegals crossing our borders. If Trump is able to deport the lion’s share of illegals, the threat of TB will recede, and the feds will need to spend less on fighting it. Again: a good thing for the country.

But yes, it would be more convenient for us if my wife’s group continued to work to counter outbreaks until the deportation process succeeds, and her job is made (happily) unnecessary. She was already planning to retire in two years, by which time we would have paid off one of our rentals and the majority of another. If her job does end this year, she would lose the income of her two final, highest-earning years, which would be less than great.

But we both know we are very lucky. We have saved enough and are close enough to retirement that the loss of two years’ salary will cause a little pain, but nothing like the upheaval and stress that younger and less financially stable workers will experience.

Of course, we are happy Trump voters and love what he’s doing, but it’s also easier for us to support Trump and DOGE’s necessary efforts, because we see the big picture, and our sacrifices will be relatively minor ones. But we shouldn’t overlook the fact that the great, long-term benefits are going to produce some pain and disruption in the short term. And that it’s natural for even Trump supporters to sour when necessary job cuts hit them.

Because we in CO Nation are decent people – and also because we want to do well in the midterms and in 2028! – we should be careful not to let our joy over the downfall of DEI, deep-state bad actors, and biological males stomping girls in sports, bleed over into celebrating the collateral damage caused by our long-delayed need to cut our shamefully bloated federal government and national debt.

We should be as empathetic and kind to our fellow citizens who lose their government jobs as the leftists were callous and condescending to the pipeline and border wall workers who lost theirs.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to work on this Wednesday’s column lambasting Hamas and sticking it to Jake Tapper.

Hamas delenda est!

Why is the Left so Mixed-Up About Sex? (posted 2/28/25)

Even with all of the misbehavior being uncovered in various government agencies, I had not imagined a spot on my “Feds Engaging in Shenanigans” Bingo card for “Bizarre sex chat rooms within the National Security Agency.”

But here we are.

When I first started reading this story, I had to make sure it wasn’t a hoax, or a Babylon Bee parody. But as I read on, I realized that I might have to give up satire, because even my eccentric mind couldn’t make this up.

And just like having sex with your cousin on a moving elevator in a skyscraper, this story is wrong on so many levels!

First, these were government workers talking dirty to each other on our dime, and that’s wrong enough to get fired over, just by itself.

Second, these people aren’t attractive Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt types, steaming up a dimly lit employee lounge in some kind of 50 Shades of Grey fantasy situation.

No. These are – hold on to your gag reflex, all ye who enter here – cubicle-dwelling government employees. And you know what that means.

Vaguely spheroid, gelatinous bodies under unflattering, buzzing fluorescent lights, the sickly pallor of their skin like one of those deep-ocean-dwelling, eyeless fish who never see the sun, or else Lizzie “Grandma Squanto” Warren.

(#wemustneverstopmockingher)

And they’re all either way too big or way too small, and the contrast between the morbidly Jabba-esque beside the frail, spindly homunculi makes both extremes look even worse somehow.

And third, even if you could get past their disturbingly froggish appearance – and you absolutely cannot – there’s the nature of the sex talk. It’s not even the sexy kind of sex talk. There are no Viking warrior princesses with form-fitting metal breastplates, or French maids with the seamed stockings, or sorority girls getting ready for a pillow fight, or…

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The horrible, horrible sex talk.

It was all about nightmare fetishes and polyamory and genital mutilation. One guy who got de-junkified claimed to enjoy being on the other side of the stick, so to speak. Another was just thrilled because his newly Gavin Newsom-esque featureless crotch allowed him “to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.”

I’m not looking that up, but I’m assuming that he didn’t mean “gaffe.” Although…he certainly did.

Another sang the praises of “getting my b*tth*le zapped by a laser.” For a moment I wanted to believe that he meant that somebody had finally fired on Adam Schiff with one of those phasers from Star Trek. But alas, no.

There was a lot of talk about “polycules.” None of us knows what that means, but all of us somehow know that we do NOT want to know what that means.

As incomprehensibly gross as this all is, it’s not inconsistent with the odd fixation that so many on the left seem to have with eccentric (to put it mildly!) sex and gender weirdness. Just within the last week, two Dem Governors have creeped out the nation on this issue.

Maine’s Janet Mills is so dedicated to the proposition that males should be dominating girls in high school sports that she is risking her political future and $250 million in federal funds to pursue that obsession.

“Martin,” you might ask, “has Mills also danced in a drag show wearing an unconvincing Wonder Woman t-shirt?”

What an odd question. But yes. Yes she has. And no, Gal Gadot (giggity) is in no danger of losing her Wonder Woman role in any upcoming movies to the septuagenarian Maine governor.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, oddball Governor Tony Evers, (D)imwit, hopped onto the “let’s screw up the language” bandwagon by inserting ridiculous gender terms into the state budget proposal, for some reason.

My theory is that he watched the way the Biden administration got mocked for referring to expectant mothers as “pregnant people” and “birthing people,” and he turned to an aide and said, “Hold my cheese curds, and watch this.”

Then, instead of using the word “mother” in the Wisconsin proposed budget, he used… wait for it… “inseminated person.”

Good lord!

One of the things I love about the English language is its vast vocabulary, which allows for finely detailed shades of meaning to describe anything. If you want to describe people as “thin,” for example, you can choose from several pages of variants, from the very positive (slender, svelte) to the negative (skinny, bony) to the extremely negative (emaciated, gaunt).

In addition to being the biologically correct term for a woman who has given birth, the word “mother” is entwined in a constellation of comforting, evocative connotations. Safety, warmth, nurturing. Unconditional love.

Dying soldiers on battlefields all over the world often use their last breath to cry out for their mothers. If you want the most reliable shortcut to a righteous beatdown, insult a man’s mother.

When normally mild-mannered women throw themselves in front of their babies in moments of great danger, we call that “maternal instinct.”

What does “inseminated person” evoke?

A sterile biology textbook. Something a jaded sexual assault investigator scribbles in his notebook at a crime scene. A phrase in a transcript at a war crimes tribunal.

Is any sane person ever going attribute an act of sacrificial love to “inseminated person’s instinct?”

If Tony Evers has managed to get a woman to marry him and father children (unexpectedly!), and his wife dies first, is he going to put her names and dates on her headstone above the phrase, “Beloved Inseminated Person”?

Ugh. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, and I’m no (real) doctor, but I think they need some intensive psychotherapy, with at least a dusting of electroshock sessions. Because they’ve got some cranial crossed wires when it comes to sex that would send Sigmund Freud screaming into the night.

Am I saying that in a fair world, Tony Evers would be convicted of some kind of felonious governmental malfeasance and end up in a prison, where he would gain some karmic, first-hand understanding of being an “inseminated person?”

To quote a former terrible presidential candidate, I’m saying that we should have that conversation.

Hamas delenda est!

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!