Author: martinsimpsonwriting

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

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

Where was I?

Oh yeah. ADHD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: ALL of the USAID bureaucrats.

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

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

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

A: That’s right, the President. 

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

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

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

A: He is not.

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

A: Insurrectionist.

Keep flailing, Dems.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

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

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

AOC called Elon Musk “unintelligent” !!!

That’s not even a joke. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ouch! 

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

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

Every Dem Senator vs. Kash Patel

Every Dem Senator vs. Pam Bondi

Every Dem Senator vs. RFK Jr.

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

All the gals on the View vs. Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the other is about Epstein’s island.

Hogg/Warren 2028!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then: one… hour… lay-tair…

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

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

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

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

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

Hogg/Warren 2028!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bernie Sanders (professional useless centenarian) at 5%

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

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

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

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

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

Good lord!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it did remind me of an old joke. 

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

A: Society.

Hogg/Warren, 2028!

The DNC Chooses Its New Leaders, and… Yikes! (posted 2/3/25)

About every 15 minutes lately, I’m reminded of the sage advice that you should never interrupt an opponent when he’s making a mistake.  And if that adage is true, we may need to refrain from interrupting the Democrats for many years in the future.

We shouldn’t interrupt their senators when they are stepping on rakes with their idiotic rants in lieu of questions during cabinet confirmation hearings.  We shouldn’t interrupt them when they are protesting the deportation of face-tattooed sociopaths whom every sane citizen wants out.  And we shouldn’t interrupt the DNC, now that they’ve chosen two total idiots as their chair and vice chair. 

But while we’re not interrupting them, we should certainly be mocking them.  And between mocking them and celebrating the good news happening on our side, I foresee a lot of three-column weeks in my immediate future.  (This week might be a four-column one!)

So let’s start this time with the DNC meetings that took place over the weekend, about which I could write a dozen columns, had I but world enough and time. 

This kind of meeting is crucial for a newly out-of-power party.  The decisions made there

demonstrate how they are processing their loss.  If they can correctly diagnose what went wrong, they’ve then got a shot at having the kind of internal struggles that will shape the course of their hoped-for comeback.  

So how did it go for the Dem brain-trust this weekend? 

Suffice to say that it was the political equivalent of a flaming Hindenburg dropping onto a train which had just wrecked into a dumpster-manufacturing plant, starting a thousand-dumpster fire that burned out of control for two months while the gay SecTrans was out on maternity leave to deal with the physical toll of not having been pregnant or delivering a baby.

After November, the Dems really need to get out of their left-wing bubble and reconnect with the heartland and the battleground, purple states.  So they held their confab in DC.  Because of course they did.

And it was run by far-left MSNBC host and dim bulb (but I repeat myself) Jonathan Capehart.  Because of course it was.

And their candidate line-up consisted of kooky crystal lady Marianne Williamson, generic white guy from the 1973 Sears catalog Martin O’Malley, current DNC Vice Chair and lead Tim AWOLz adviser Ken Martin (because that turned out so well), the Dem party state chair from Wisconsin (which Trump just won), a former Bernie Sanders campaign manager (d’oh), a guy formerly in Homeland Security (at a time when our homeland is super insecure), a little-known machine pol from Massachusetts, and David freakin’ Hogg.

They kicked the whole thing off with one of their idiotic land acknowledgements, which are always insufferable.  (Until one of those virtue-signaling, self-stroking performances is followed immediately by the group giving the title of their building, general fund and personal houses to some nearby casino owners, I’m not interested.)

Ooh, I take that back.  I did find Lizzie Warren’s land acknowledgement at a recent graduation speech to be pretty interesting. 

She said, “I want to start by acknowledging that all of you despicable white trash in this beautiful hall and on this esteemed dais are standing on ground that once belonged to my noble, native ancestors.  In fact, my great-great-great grandma Scowls-with-Tomahawk – winner of Miss Tribal Cheekbones of 1839 – was probably spat upon by one of your deplorable great-great-grand-colonizers.  So I demand reparations, and the return of this campus.  I accept PayPal, Venmo, cash and bitcoin.” 

“But no beads!  We’re not falling for that again!”

#wemustneverstopmockingher

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  After the land acknowledgment, the proceedings somehow managed to go even more downhill.  Clueless Capehart asked how many candidates believed that Que Mala lost the election because of racism and sexism, and every numbskull in that Murderers’ Row of Stupid raised their hands to agree.  After which smarmy Capehart said, “Good!  You all passed.”

Ugh.  These people are ineducable!  The old saying goes that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. 

But reality didn’t just mug these people on November 5th.  It snuck up on them and sucker punched them to the ground, and then did unspeakable things to them from behind, while pulling their hair and saying mean things to them.  And STILL they’ve learned nothing! 

Even some lefty spokesmen who were dishonestly touting Kamala before the election – Snake-head Carville, Charlamagne the Dope and the occasionally sane Bill Maher come to mind – have admitted that she was a horrifically bad candidate.  Bill Clinton, Obama and Biden have leaked the same truth to friends.

And every sentient biped who watched more than a minute of her speaking over the last four years knows that she was metaphysically awful.  But these bubble-dwellers won’t let go of their delusional insistence that she’s just fine, and they’re just fine, and the problem is the evil racists and sexists out there.  Who now make up a majority of everyone in the swing states, and most of the people in the nation, apparently.

I’ll spare you the stomach-turning twists and turns that led to the ultimate vote, and just cut to the chase.  The Dems followed their traditional strategy of allowing bad candidates to fail upwards, by promoting last year’s Vice Chair Ken Martin (fresh from going 0-7 in the battleground states) to the top spot, and picking little Davy Hogg as the new Vice Chair. 

You’ve probably never heard of Ken Martin before, because you have lives, and he’s a nobody.  So I know that you’re asking, “Martin, what kind of a SFPI™ rating does he have?”   

Regular readers will know that I spent several million dollars on R&D to produce my proprietary Simpson Face Punchability Index™ ratings, which I often sell to CEOs, headhunters, analysts and other powerbrokers who need to vet prospective hires, candidates, etc.  But because I love CO nation, I often share SFPI ratings in this column.  (You’re welcome.)

It momentarily surprised me that Ken Martin has such a low SFPI – 1.8 – until I did a little more research.  It turns out that people with the name “Martin” – first, middle or last name – generally have low SFPI scores, because that moniker is usually borne by the best among us.  So that keeps Ken’s SFPI artificially low.

But by far the main factor knocking down Ken’s SFPI is that he’s such a non-entity.  This guy has “beta male” written all over him.  (And he’s lucky that the military-alphabet naming system for males only has two options, alpha and beta.  Because if it featured the entire alphabet, he’d be looking at a status of “x-ray-,” “yankee-,” or “zulu male” for sure.)  He’s so effeminate that it would feel wrong to punch him. 

Besides, if he ever got into your face or tried to start a fight, you could just put the palm of one hand on the top of his sad little head and let him swing away until he tuckered himself out, like a much smaller younger brother.  Or you could pull his sweater up over his head – trapping his arms up in the air and making it difficult for him to breathe, especially since he’s already wearing a stupid mask, even though it’s 2025! – and give him the pinkest pink belly you’ve ever seen.

This guy couldn’t lay a glove on you if you were buying a set of fine Italian leather gloves and he was the assistant glove maker in charge of your fitting, is what I’m saying.

Lest you disbelieve me, please watch the Tiktok video he made 4 years ago, in support of Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.”  (Spoiler alert: America just voted to rescue America from Biden’s terrible plan.)  In it, he gives off a disquieting Doug Emhoff vibe, wearing a sweater (unexpectedly!) and an uncomfortable smile as he does a little dance celebrating all of the good results that were supposed to come from Biden’s stupid plan.

The good news is that the video is only 8 seconds long.  The bad news is that that will be the longest 8 seconds of your life, and you’ll never get it back.  Also, if you’re a straight lady, watching this video may make it very difficult to maintain your heterosexuality.  So don’t say I didn’t warn you…

So…yeah.  That’s the Dems’ new top guy.   

David Hogg, on the other hand, is a different story.  He has the highest recorded SFPI of all time, an astounding 9.97!  Which means that if David Hogg were walking down a sidewalk and came upon Gandhi, Buddha and a pacifist Quaker, they would instinctively descend upon him and beat him to death. 

If Jesus was walking with those three, even He would find his knuckles getting itchy. 

Smarter Dems are worried that they need to improve their showing with male voters. So naturally, they field a raft of beta males in high-profile positions.  (Unexpectedly!)    Kamala picks Tampon Tim as her running mate, and touts lady-punching wuss Doug Emhoff, who famously calls himself a “wife dad!”  (In most male enclaves in America, those would be fighting words… but he referred to HIMSELF that way!  On purpose!)

And now comes the non-binary Hogg to slaughter.   David Hogg makes Justin Trudeau look like  Chuck Norris at the height of his powers.

How bad is he as a candidate?  He somehow turned himself into a white male DEI hire!  He launched his career as a slightly more masculine Greta Thunberg type – a child prop used by cynical pols to highlight an issue he is nowhere near informed enough to speak about.

In Thunberg’s case it was our imminent destruction by the sun monster.  In Hogg’s case, it was gun control.  He initially capitalized on the death of his classmates in the Parkland shooting; an astroturfed anti-gun group sponsored his emotional appeals, after which the Dems arranged PR appearances for him on various MSM outlets.

He was then accepted to Harvard, despite his low SAT score of 1270.  (Three-quarters of Harvard students score over a 1470, and the bottom 25% average just over 1400!)  After Harvard, he started a pillow company that raised a lot of money, but somehow never delivered a single pillow to customers.

To summarize, he’s an exploitative, arrogant, not very bright child who has no life experience, has earned nothing, and has never had a real job.  And he has a face that even a mother would punch.

So naturally, the Democrats said, “That guy has leadership potential!” 

I’m feeling pret-ty good about our chances in 2028.  Pret-ty, pret-ty good.

Okay this column has gone long.  So tomorrow I’ll be back with my take on the latest brilliant PETA stunt.

Until then… 

Hamas delenda est! 

And also…

Hogg/Warren, 2028!

Watching Democrat Senators Beclown Themselves at the Confirmation Hearings (posted 1/31/25)

After only two weeks of watching the Democrat senators’ questioning of Trump’s cabinet nominees, I’m beginning to suspect that many Dem senators are undercover “plants.”  How else can you explain the self-discrediting buffoonery of Sheldon Whitehouse, Grandma Squanto, Ron Wyden, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Dick “nobody calls him Richard” Durbin and Richard “everyone secretly calls him Dick” Blumenthal et al?  

Seriously.  Just like Hezbollah terrorists were tricked into blowing themselves up by giving them pagers, these knuckleheads were tricked into blowing their credibility up by giving them microphones. 

Dick Blumenthal is the most famous “stolen valor” perpetrator in DC, having lied about serving in Vietnam.  So sure, have him question the military qualifications of decorated combat veteran Pete Hegseth.

Ron Wyden has a waxy, unhealthy appearance that is truly tough to look at.  So sure, have him tout his expertise about health to attack RFK Jr. 

Sheldon Whitehouse is named “Sheldon,” and he deserves it.  He’s the Ted Baxter of the Senate: nice, full head of white hair, on top of an empty, bloviating head. 

I loved his tone-deaf arrogance when he confronted Kash Patel with a mangled quote of his, demanding to know, “Is that what you said?”  When Patel said, “That’s completely incorrect, and I appreciate the opportunity to address that—” Sheldon interrupted with, “I’ll give you opportunity, in writing, but this is my time now!”

Good lord! You’re supposed to be asking nominees questions in order to elicit their answers!  If you were just going to spit out some slander so that he can write you back later, what are you even doing here?

I wish Patel would have just pulled out his phone and started checking out websites.  Then when Sheldy objected, he could say, “Since I’m not allowed to respond, I’m going to let you have your time, while I check out the latest beating you’re taking in the comments section on “Sheldonisadouchebag.com”    

It got so bad that the dimwit senators were repeatedly being laughed at.  Who had, “An octogenarian socialist senator will angrily grill a grown cabinet nominee to renounce the message on an infant’s onesie!” on their confirmation bingo card?

The male senators made male viewers cringe, and the females did no favors for their pet cause of identity politics.  Amy Klobuchar waxed hysterical and grilled a guy without listening to him, and Grandma Squanto gave RFK her most grating “school marm on the warpath” impression. #wemustneverstopmockingher

By the way, a CNN headline on Thursday read, “Trump’s Cabinet nominees face sharpest grilling to date.”  “Sharpest?”  Really?  Nobody has ever associated “sharp” with anybody in this lineup.

In the end, of course, this kind of performative, narcissistic grandstanding is not going to persuade anybody.  The Dems could have used their opportunity to ask probing questions that might prompt substantive answers that could potentially catch nominees in inconsistencies or flaws in their thinking. 

Instead, they demonstrated that they’ve learned nothing from the electoral whipping they took in November.  They doubled down on amateurishly misleading accusations in lieu of questions, and childish cries of, “January 6th!” and “Orange Hitler!”  All of which can only remind most Americans of why they gave the GOP congress and the White House.

But it wasn’t only the Dems in the confirmation hearings who were playing the fool.  Because outside of DC, Tom “Yippee-ki-Yay MFer” Homan was doing God’s work – rounding up foreign criminals to make our streets safer.  But as usual, some leftist dullards opposed him.

This time the fight was in Illinois, where two US Secret Service agents went to a Chicago elementary school to investigate a threat that had been made on Tiktok.  There they introduced themselves to staff as Secret Service agents, and showed ID, but were not allowed entry to the school.

Soon afterwards, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez (who is doing a bang-up job, considering the near zero per cent of Chicago public school students who can read, write or do math at grade level) went on MSNBC to falsely claim that ICE agents went to the school to detain illegal immigrant children.

Because of course he did.

Upon hearing that, Governor Pritzker (#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg) waddled into action, typing out the following tweet with his creepy, sausage fingers: “After a week of Republicans sowing fear and chaos, the first reports of raids in Chicago are at an elementary school.  Targeting children and separating families is cruel and un-American.”

So is allowing hordes of foreign criminals to prey on your citizens, and lying about it.  And also, scarfing down an amount of food in one day that could have been used to provide lunches for all the children in a large Chicago school for a month.

When Homan heard about Pritzker’s error, he went on Fox News to point out that Pritzker was the one who terrified the community by repeating a lie which he could easily have checked out first. 

He also mentioned that Pedro “Sherlock” Martinez could have used all of his powers of deduction to solve “The Case of the Phantom Ice Agents.”  Step one would have been to talk to the school officials, who would have told him that Secret Service agents who identified themselves as Secret Service agents – and who left their cards which identified them as… wait for it… Secret Service agents! – had come to the school.

Then, after filling several white boards with detailed notes and calculations, he could have arrived at the conclusion that these were NOT Ice Agents at all!

But nope.  Brainiac Martinez apparently graduated from a Chicago public school, so he reads at an AOC level.  And when he was trying to sound out “secret service,” he recognized the last three letters as “I – C – E.”  And off he ran to MSNBC.

Homan said that Pritzker needs to give ICE an apology, but he probably shouldn’t get his hopes up. Because even if Pritzker had the decency to apologize, there’s no way you’re going to understand a guy talking with his mouth that full.

Have a good weekend, and brace yourself for even more winning!     

The Winning Continues, Jim Acosta is Gone, & Trump is Re-Naming Everything! (posted 1/29/25)

Okay, I’m not saying that all of this winning has to stop. But it’s got to slow down a little bit.  Because I am getting nothing done!

It’s been 8 days since the inauguration.  Regular readers know that I’m a working dog, not a show dog, so typically, I get more done in 8 days than 10 men of normal powers do in a month. 

For example, in that time, I would usually be saying my prayers; playing with Cassie the Wonder Dog; mansplaining a bunch of stuff to my wife (which she always appreciates); nodding along and pretending to understand some astrophysics thing that my smarty pants daughter is trying to explain to me; maintaining my rental properties; doing good deeds; setting a good example; reading some good books; helping old ladies across the street; rescuing cats from trees and toddlers from house fires; explaining to young women who are getting a little handsy that I’m both married and way too old for them; laughing at my own jokes in my columns as I’m writing them…   

(For example, that “handsy young women” thing just cracked me up.  Because as they say, “It’s funny because it’s true.”)

…and just generally being a ray of sunshine in the lives of everyone I meet.

But not these last 8 days.  Because since the 20th I have been on the computer from dawn to dusk, just getting hammered by one wave of good news after another.  Ooh, Trump has signed a boatload of executive orders: illegals out of America, dudes out of women’s sports, and women’s jails, and women’s bathrooms. 

Wait, he just yanked security clearances for the 51 Russian laptop hoaxers!

Hey, he just fired a bunch of dead-weight bureaucrats from the “resistance” movement.

Ooh, he just canceled the bald-eagle-slaughtering, heavily subsidized windmills – including the whale-killing ones off the coast.  And he re-instated all of the soldiers who’d been bullied out of the service because they wouldn’t take an experimental shot to prevent a virus – which never would have killed them – from killing them.

Wait, let me get my head above wa—

Uh oh, more executive orders: no more racist DEI crap throughout our government; the life sentences for taking selfies in the capitol on January 6th are reversed; no more funding for the United Nations’ pro-Hamas “Jewish toddler-killing munitions” program.

And the personnel upgrades!  Won’t somebody think of the personnel upgrades!

Lyin’ “Lex Luthor” Mayorkas is gone, replaced by Tom “Yippee-Ki-Yay, Mfers!” Homan, who was just on tv, frog-marching another long chain gang of illegal, face-tattooed gang members out of my country.  We just traded corrupt and oily Merrick Garland for honest, disciplined Pam Bondi (giggity). 

Look there, in the White House briefing room!  It’s hyper-competent, smart and perky new press secretary Karoline Leavitt, replacing the ginger Circle-Back Lady, and the sapphic Kewpie Doll who could only answer questions by reading verbatim from her Lying for Dummies Briefing Book™

We just upgraded from Mayor Pete – whose only qualifications for Sec Transportation (I almost said, “SecTrans,” but that’s not a thing any more!) was being gay and liking choo-choo trains as a kid, to Sean Duffy, who just got confirmed with 77 votes.

I’ll be honest: I have no idea who Sean Duffy is.  But since he didn’t bring up his sexual preference in his confirmation hearings, and he’s never overseen a disastrous, toxic train derailment, and he’s never taken weeks of maternity leave time off to recover from giving birth to an adopted baby that he obviously didn’t give birth to, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he’s going to do a better job than Mayor Pete did.   

Pete Hegseth will be a better SecDef than Lloyd “AWOL” Austin.  Mario Rubio will be a better SecState than a potted plant, which would have been a better SecState than Tony Blinken.  

And corrupt MSM leftist-bubble-dwellers are dropping like Bill Clinton’s pants in a sorority house!

Even TDS-suffering narcissist Jim Acosta is leaving!  (As Ben Shapiro used to say, “Ladies, find yourself a man who loves you as much as Jim Acosta loves him some Jim Acosta.”)  Acosta apparently lost half his audience in a car wreck shortly before Trump’s inauguration.  (All four of them were in a Prius that got stuck on train tracks when a train was coming.) 

So CNN offered him a show at midnight, opposite reruns of “Welcome Back, Kotter,” hour-long ads for My Pillow, and Korean-language broadcasts of Korean triple-A soccer games.  (Go, Busan Bandits!)

Acosta responded by telling CNN management that if they tried to shove him to midnight, they would just have to do without the services of one Abilio James Acosta!  

Annnnnddddd… he’s gone.

By the way, that’s his real name.  Since I’m a working dog – as I may have mentioned earlier – I did my research, and discovered that his parents named him “Abilio.”  Which, strangely enough, is Spanish for “a-hole.”  True story. 

I can even use it in a sentence: “Let’s put that abilio on at midnight, and dare him to quit!” 

I can hear many of you asking, as I write this, “Martin, did your extensive research turn up any more fun A-hole Acosta facts?”  And the answer is yes.  Yes, it did. 

For example, he is reportedly of mixed ancestry, a combination of English, Irish, Czech and Cuban.  But for the record, the embassies of England, Ireland and the Czech Republic have all  released official statements saying that they’re pretty sure he’s just Cuban. 

A phone call to the Cuban embassy was answered by a guy who wouldn’t give his name.  When asked about Jim Acosta allegedly being Cuban, he would only say, “Never heard of that abilio,” before hanging up.  

Trump offered Acosta a much-deserved verbal beat-down on his way out the door, in a tweet that (I swear I’m not making this up) featured the words, “one of the worst and most dishonest reporters…major sleazebag…BAD RATINGS… [and] no talent.” 

And that was the NICE part, which came before the hard sac-tap of an ending: “Jim is a major loser who will fail no matter where he ends up.  Good luck Jim!”  

Which, if my high-school Spanish hasn’t failed me, could be translated as, “No dejes que la puerta te golpee en el culo al salir.”  (But since it’s past January 20th and we don’t have to “Press 1 for English” anymore, I’ll re-translate: “Don’t let the door hit you in the abilio on your way out.”)

Even Trump’s sillier-seeming moves actually have substance behind them.  Changing the name of a mountain from Denali back to McKinley, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America are good examples.

I think it’s natural to laugh the first time you hear “Gulf of America.”  It feels cartoonishly patriotic.  I first thought of the short-lived fad of replacing “French” with “freedom” back when France was reverting to their “cheese-eating surrender monkey” form. 

It was funny to say, “For breakfast I’m having freedom toast, and for lunch my sides will be freedom fries and freedom onion soup.  And tonight, I’ll be plying my wife with freedom wine, after which I hope to be freedom kissing her as she slips off her freedom lingerie.”

But once you get past the initial reaction, you can see a more serious philosophical point beneath it.  Because naming things is a powerful expression of what a culture values.  Many American settlers named their cities and states after their original homes, which they still loved (New Amsterdam/New York, New Jersey, New England; Athens, GA; Paris, TX), or people they honored (the Carolinas, the Virginias, Williamsburg, Pittsburg, Cincinnati).

They named some towns after religious virtues (Hope, Temperance, Providence), or after religious figures (St. Paul, St. Augustine, Saints Francis and Monica – San Francisco and Santa Monica) or even “body of Christ” (Corpus Christi).  They named their colleges Holy Cross or Our Lady (Notre Dame). 

And later, when we’d produced our own civic heroes, we named towns and schools after them.  There are towns named Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln scattered across the land.  (I went to McKinley school for a few grades, and Lincoln grade school for a few more.)  We named a mountain after McKinley.

We also named many places after the Indian tribes or leaders whom – contrary to racist leftists’ slanders – we admired, and wanted to pay tribute to.  So there are counties or towns named Black Hawk, Sauk and Cherokee, and states named Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota, not to mention one primary Dakota, and another auxiliary Dakota.

But this trend is not just something conservatives do, as some angry lefties now suggest, as they rail against renaming mountains or gulfs.  You may have noticed that the Left has been on a name-changing spree in recent years, too. 

The small park in DC where the dozen protestors put up a guillotine on inauguration day is officially known as Meridian Hill Park, but the commie protestors renamed it “Malcolm X Park.”  As they renamed an intersection in Minnesota “George Floyd Square,” after one of their recidivist criminal heroes.  They’ve renamed many schools and parks, tossing presidents’ or generals’ names in favor of Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, MLK and many more.

Most people approve of many of these changes, which again, reflect social changes.  While most people would balk at naming places after communists, or black criminals like Angela Davis or George Floyd, pretty much everyone is okay with various MLK sites.  And, with some caveats, most Americans are probably not too upset over removing Confederate names from various things.  (You won’t see a ton of Go-Fund-Mes with the theme, “Let’s keep the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School!”)

The point is that everyone changes names to reflect their own values. And if I had to pick a side, it’s an easy call to choose the one changing names to Gulf of America, Reagan National Airport or Mount McKinley, over those changing to George Floyd Square, Saul Alinsky Street, or Joy Reid Avenue. 

In this one rare instance, I agree with Tony Soprano’s instincts.  In one episode his son AJ came home from school spouting a bunch of leftist nonsense after reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” and touting his teacher’s preference for “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” because of Columbus’ supposed villainy.

Tony was flabbergasted.  “Your teacher said that?”

AJ said, “It’s not just my teacher, it’s the truth.  It’s in my history book!” 

After wryly observing, “So you finally read a book, and it’s bullsh*t,” Tony laid down the law.  “He [Columbus] was a brave Italian explorer.  And in this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero!  End of story.”

Well in my house, we watch the Redskins play football and the Cleveland Indians play baseball.   We hope to one day climb Mount McKinley, and in the summer we like to read some Thomas Sowell at the beach, with our feet in the warm waters of the Gulf of America. 

End of story!

Opie, Pritzker, and the Leaders of Colombia & Planned Parenthood Get Whacked When Trump Settles All Family Business (posted 1/27/25)

Well, it feels like a year’s worth of action has been packed into the last seven days.  This might have to be another three-column week for me, since I can barely stay on my feet against the pressure of the firehose of good news coming out of the White House!  

But I’m going to try, so let’s start in Hollywood.

In another example of lefty artists making it hard to appreciate their art once they’ve opened their mouths to share their deep political thoughts, Ron Howard has “pulled a DeNiro.”  (I love DeNiro’s acting, Bruce Springsteen’s music, and many of Stephen King’s books, but they’ve all revealed themselves to be malevolent morons when it comes to politics, thus making it tougher to watch, listen to or read them.)

Howard was an adorable child actor, and directed a lot of good movies as an adult.  But this weekend he tweeted out a suggestion that if Trump wants to improve the Fed’s disaster responses, he should pick Chef Jose Andres to head up those efforts. 

I didn’t know much about Andres – a Venn diagram of hungry hillbilly Simpsons and a chef who serves dinners-for-two in the $1000 range would be two separate circles, a mile away from each other – but Howard notes that the chef is “not a supporter” of Trump’s.

A quick search shows that Andres was much angrier when some Palestinians were accidentally killed by Israel strikes than he was at the genocidal Hamas terrorists who intentionally murdered  Israelis.  Also, he is a hero among Democrats.  (Unexpectedly!) And he took a smiling picture with the whack job who tried to assassinate Trump at the golf course. 

To be fair to Andres, I’m assuming he took that pic before the whack job tried to murder Trump.  On the other hand, one should be able to spot that loon from a mile away, because he’s got “whack job” written all over him.

Anyway, Howard’s suggestion has all the earmarks of low-IQ Hollywood celebrity ideas: after four years of extreme-left Trump haters screwing up everything they touch, Trump really should consider appointing an extreme-left Trump hater to continue that tradition.

To quote Dr. Evil, “How about NO!”  And Ron, how about you focus on skipping rocks on a pond in Mayberry, and on making a good movie?  Because as soon as you turn to politics, you inevitably go from Opie to Dopey. 

Also, I find the first sentence of Howard’s tweet to be ironic: “Here’s a thought.”

Nope.  Here is most definitely NOT a thought.

Speaking of people for whom clear thinking is not a strong suit, how about Illinois governor J.B. “you can’t spell ‘Jumbo’ without ‘J.B.’” Pritzker, D-irigible?

His mouth is proportionately large enough for the rest of him (too bad about the brain, though), and he’s been regularly shooting it off on the subject of how he’s not going to cooperate with Trump’s enforcement of our immigration laws.  However, even he has started to tone it down a bit, now that Trump is in office.

He announced on Sunday that he has no problem with Trump deporting violent criminals, going so far as to say, “We hope they do get deported.” Which is rich, coming from him.  He’s done nothing to protect Illinois citizens from those scumbags for four years, and he’s not pledging to take action himself.  But now he’s “hoping” that the Deportation Fairy will come during the night and flit away with the predators, I guess.

But he’s not on board with deporting regular ol’ salt-of-the-earth illegal immigrants.  And this is where the Left’s mastery of dishonest language does some heavy lifting.

Because he tells sour Dana Bash that he finds it “quite disturbing” that Trump is also “going after people who are law-abiding, who are holding down jobs….”  A reasonable person might be aware that legitimate jobs require that the employee either has citizenship or legal working status (a green card or working visa).  

If the left can convince people to think of illegals as “undocumented,” their lying becomes easier to get away with.

But if we insist on using accurate language, Pritzker (#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg) is actually saying that we should not interfere with “law-abiding people who are here illegally and working illegally.”

Even someone with a weak and misfiring, Grandma-Squanto-level brain (#wemustneverstopmockingher) can tell that that sounds a little off. 

My favorite story of the weekend is probably yours too: the hilarious tale of the Colombia two-step. 

Since the election, I’ve been having a friendly disagreement with an extended family member about Trump’s use of tariffs.  He is afraid they will be rigid impositions that will severely damage our economy, while I am one of those nutty conservatives who thinks they are negotiating tools that Trump will use to get various foreign miscalculators’ minds right.

After Sunday, I hate to say, “I told you so.”  But how can I not?  When Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro forgot that Biden is not in office anymore, he talked tough about not taking his criminals back.  So Trump responded with immediate retaliatory tariffs, travel restrictions, and the like.

Of course, many lefties jumped on the story in a bunch of posts that aged like milk, immediately beclowning themselves in the most ridiculous ways. 

Ana Navarro panicked, “We won’t have any flowers for Valentines Day!” (To paraphrase Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, “I’ve never seen so many people worried that they won’t be able to receive roses on a romantic holiday for purely hypothetical purposes.”) 

AOC got her juicy booty (her words, not mine) spanked for shrieking that, “Trump is about to make every American pay even more for coffee,” and that, “WE pay the tariffs, not Colombia.”

These were variations on the usual Dem argument against deporting otherwise “law-abiding” illegals, because without them, we’ll have to clean our own buildings and toilets, and do our own landscaping, and pay more for strawberries. 

Because, “I don’t care if my country gets invaded, and crime increases, and our schools and emergency rooms and jails are filled with foreign criminals, and I get hit by unlicensed and uninsured foreign drivers, and my daughters get raped and killed like Laken Riley or Jocelyn Nungaray, as long as I get indentured servants to mow my lawn and feed me cheaper strawberries.”

SAID. NOBODY. EVER!

But as the Sponge Bob transition goes,

One… hour… lay-tair…

Petro said, “Oh, you were talking about THOSE criminals?  Sure, I’ll take them back.”  And then Trump silently gave him the “mug shot look” for an uncomfortably long minute.  And Petro began sweating, and said, “Um… and… I- I- I’ll pick them up… i- i- in my own presidential plane!”

And Trump gave him a small smile, and held out his hand to allow Petro to kiss his ring and swear fealty.   

I didn’t think that Trump would win so quickly, but I knew that he would win eventually.  Because common sense tells me that a small country needs trade with America a lot more than America needs that trade. 

I don’t think that means we should therefore bully small countries, just because we can.  But when they are trying to bully US?  Get out of here with that.

Even though I thought that the tariffs on Colombia would take much longer to work, I was still a fan, because of the message it would send to other nations, i.e. “pour encourager les autres” (for the encouragement of others). 

The phrase is Voltaire’s, and French, but it has a Sicilian feel to me.  And I’m here for it!      

Finally, on a more somber note, I never thought of God as a kind of Michael Corleone figure, working on a, “Today we settle all family business” kind of agenda.   And yet, it wasn’t tough to see some of those overtones on inauguration day.  (For starters, “God” is right there in “Godfather,” so how didn’t I see that coming?) 

Trump stood in the secular/civil version of a sacred space (the Capitol Rotunda) taking his vows, just like Michael took his in a church at a christening.  And while the vows were being recited, treacherous DEI bureaucrats and deep state saboteurs were getting whacked all over the countryside.  Executive orders were dropping like shotgun pellets blasting into elevators, and bullets into Moe Green’s glasses.

And on that very day, Cecile Richards – the ghoul who proudly oversaw 4 million lives cut short through her network of Planned Parenthood abortuaries – died. 

Normally, death is an event worth mourning, and one week is way too soon to discuss any silver lining in somebody’s passing.  But I think we owe it to Richards to take her worldview seriously, and assess her death in terms that someone in her line of work would wholeheartedly endorse. And none of her co-religionists who are enthusiastically carrying on her bloody work should be offended if we use their language to commemorate the event.  Therefore… 

“On January 20th, 2025, during their 271st trimester, the clump of cells known as Cecile Richards received a final act of women’s reproductive healthcare, which converted them into medical waste.  Anyone saddened by this news is probably a theocratic fascist, and certainly a misogynist, and should mind their own business.” 

Now if you’ll excuse him, Trump has to talk to Merrick Garland, whom he calls “Carlo,” for some reason. 

“You have to answer for Daniel Penny, Carlo….  Milley is out. So is Jack Smith.  Liz Cheney.  Kinzinger.  Today I settle all DOJ business.”  Garland’s lip starts quivering.  Trump puts his hand on his shoulder. 

“Don’t be afraid. (gestures over Garland’s shoulder) J.D., get him a drink.”  J.D. does, and Garland drinks it down.  Trump says, “Come on, I’m not going to make the wife of an ex-AG a widow.  No, your punishment is you never get to be on the Supreme Court.   But don’t tell me you’re innocent!”

Meanwhile, a car sits and idles outside the White House, with Tom Homan sitting in the back, behind the empty, passenger-side front seat.

And, scene.   

Trump Sprints Out of the Blocks, & the Philly Mayor Can’t Spell “Eagles”(posted 1/24/25)

It’s the first weekend of the new Trump era, and I’m in the mood to start out in Schadenfreude corner.

Tom Homan has been in charge of ICE for 4 days, and has already arrested 1400 illegals.  The vast majority of those had committed other crimes or else had had asylum requests rejected, and the remainder of them were “collateral arrests,” i.e. just plain illegals who were hanging around with the worst of the illegals when the hammer dropped.

Lefties call unintentionally catching those folks collateral damage, but normal people call it collateral benefits. 

You’ve probably seen the video of the handcuffed Haitian gang member with 17 prior convictions screaming out of a cop car, “F— Trump!  Biden forever, bro!  Thank Obama for everything he’s done for me!” 

He seems nice.

Man, if Trump was still running, he could slap an, “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message,” on the end of that and he’d have another world-class campaign ad. 

When asked about that criminal yelling, “I’m not going back to Haiti,” Homan said, “Well, he’s wrong.  He’s going back to Haiti.”  He also said that now that Trump’s in office, ICE agents have had the handcuffs taken off of them, and put onto the bad guys.

In an unrelated story, I spent the last hour looking at satellite photos of Mt. Rushmore, and I think I’ve found a good spot to begin blasting, to make room for adding Tom Homan’s big ol’ head up there. 

By the way, remember when Imhotep Pelosi – right after she tossed Biden’s desiccated corpse under the bus – said that she thought Joey Gaffes belonged on Mt. Rushmore?  HA!

Meanwhile, Scott Jennings continues to go through leftist CNN talking heads like Sherman through Georgia, leaving a scorched moonscape of ridiculous talking points and grievously wounded low IQ narcissists in his wake.

I know CNN brought him on in a desperate attempt to have at least one conservative voice on their failing network.  But I think the bubble they are in prevented them from appreciating what a bloodbath would ensue.  They probably thought, “Hey, he’ll be in a 5-against-1 situation on every segment, so how bad could it be?”

To which I would reply, “Do you know why nobody ever entered Mike Tyson at the height of his powers into a boxing tournament against an entire class of kindergartners?  Because it wouldn’t matter if there were 20 of them!  That would just increase the number of knocked-out baby teeth rattling across the floor like chiclets, you idiots!” 

Sorry for the graphic image.  But seriously.  Watch Scott Jennings taking on a panel of beta-males and sapphic scowlers, and try to keep the smile off of your face.  It can’t be done.

Speaking of CNN, you may remember their pollster, Harry Enten, who throughout the fall used lots of polls – and circled many numbers on many screens – to argue that Que Mala was likely to win in November.  He also polled Californians in the wake of the LA fires, and seemed shocked to find that the amount of computer searches for “wildfires” had soared something like 2400%, while searches for “climate change” had barely budged.

He really did that.  While Los Angelenos were surrounded by empty reservoirs, century-old power lines that were actively casting off sparks, and armies of homeless people making campfires in the midst of environmentally protected Dry Brush Sanctuaries (thanks, Gavin!), Enten couldn’t figure out why everybody wasn’t jumping on the “climate change caused the fires” bandwagon. 

Because you can’t spell “Einstein” without “Enten.” 

Well now, Harry is breathlessly reporting the shocking finding that there has been a “massive shift” among Americans in support for deporting illegals.  The bottom line is that 4 big polls found that between 55% and 64% of Americans want illegals forcibly vamoosed. 

While Harry is struggling to understand exactly why so many Americans believe that illegals contributed to climate change, I’ve got to say that those numbers seem too low.  I’ve seen a lot of polls in the last several years suggesting that over 70% of Americans want less LEGAL immigration.  If that’s true (and it seems logical), then these poll numbers today suggest that there’s less resistance to illegal immigration than there is to legal immigration!

Regardless, it’s a little surprising that even the mouth-breathers at CNN would be shocked and confused by these polls.  Regular people don’t approve of millions of people breaking our laws. DUH!

In other news, the lefties running The Daily Show might be feeling the consequences of their TDS-induced failures of late.  But instead of hiring Scott Jennings to serially pants their unfunny correspondents, they recently sent Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to mock the poor dead-enders attending the “People’s March” in Washington on Inauguration Day. 

If you haven’t seen it, you should, because it was very funny.  Highlights were when Triumph suggested that the left needs more conspiracy theories, and suggested a good one: “Jimmy Carter was doing just fine until Trump was re-elected.  Coincidence?”  Then he handed out hand-drawn “No Carter Killers!” signs.   He even came up with a chant: “GOP, stop the lies!  How did Jimmy Carter die?”

Most of the insults were silly, but a few of the shots hit closer to home.  As when he noted that nobody in this crowd was going to be breaking any windows at the capital, because “that would require upper body strength.”  And, “Looking around here, I’ve never seen so many people worried about losing the right to contraceptives for purely hypothetical reasons.”

I found the bit strangely heartening, because many of the leftists played along and laughed at the jokes at their expense.  And if the first step toward recovery is acknowledging that you have a problem, the second step has to be regaining your sense of humor.  It looks like some of them might be achieving step 2.

Now if they can just get working on that first step…

Finally, one more sobering note. 

Many people get furious when we suggest that making DEI hiring or election choices is foolish.  To counter their anger, serious conservatives can advance the hypothesis that the issue is often a simple math problem.

For example, when a terribly incompetent president – hypothetically – says that his vice presidential pick and his Supreme Court pick are both going to be black women, he has made a mistake.  Because black people are 13% of the population, and half of that number are women.  So he’s starting with an arbitrarily restricted applicant pool of only 6.5% of the population from whom he could otherwise choose.

Or, we could make a more succinct yet equally convincing argument, by showing a video of African-American female Philadelphia mayor Cherelle Parker leading excited residents in a cheer for the city’s football team, which has advanced to the NFC championship game.

Shouteth the mayor, “E-L-G-S-E-S!  Let’s go birds!” 

Oof!  “Eagles” is only two syllables.  It’s got six letters, and the mayor missed two of them.  Some wise guy immediately started making t-shirts with a Philly team motto printed on it: “Fly, ELGSES, Fly!”    

It’s not like the Philly mascot has an especially obscure or complicated name.  They’re not the Philadelphia Phainopepla, or the Philadelphia Common Paraque.  (Look ‘em up!)  I’m beginning to be grateful that she didn’t try to spell out “Philadelphia,” because you know she would have started with an “F.”    

And if any of you out there think that my extensive research doesn’t pay off, you’re wrong.  Because when I was looking up tough-to-spell bird names to make my hilarious point about the bonehead Philly mayor, I came across the Plain Chachalaca (rhymes with “Boom Shakalaka!”).  Which I’m sure Parker couldn’t spell, but could definitely chant. 

And no one in their right mind would prefer, “Eagles! Eagles! Let’s go birds!” to “Philly, Philly!  Plain Chachalaca!!”

By the way, the last Republican mayor of Philadelphia left office 73 years ago. Democrat voters outnumber Republicans 7-to-1, and they elected brainiac Cherelle Parker to lead them. 

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Inauguration Reactions (posted 1/22/25)

I know that many of you, like me, are likely in your refractory period after what had to be the best MLK Day/Inauguration Day ever! 

I don’t know if this is truly the beginning of a new golden age.  But I do feel like I can see what can be, unBidened by what has been!  (Hat tip to some anonymous memester.)  And that is pretty sweet!

Of course, Biden left the stage while littering DC with a flurry of blatantly corrupt, last-minute pardons for many of his co-conspirators.  Which is a perfect way for him to exit, because it leaves a bad taste in everybody’s mouth, and really hamstrings the Democrats who had been getting ready to mount their high horses and proclaim how evil blanket pardons are, as Trump prepared to pardon the J6ers.

The fact that all of the pardons not given to hard-core murderers already in prison are “pre-emptive” pardons is unprecedented, too.  I think it was unlikely that Trump would have prosecuted many of the pardoned people, if any.  Just as he made a big deal out of threatening to jail Hillary in the ’16 campaign and didn’t do it after he won, he might have decided to spend his time and political capital on getting his agenda done, rather than fighting those old battles. 

But as the Bible says, “The wicked flee when none pursueth.”  (Some translations have it “the guilty flee” or “the evil flee.”  All would apply to Biden’s sleazy henchmen, IMHO.)  

That’s not to say that at least investigating the Biden family, the J6 star chamber, and Fauci, Milley et al wouldn’t have been fully justified.  It might have brought justice to some bad actors, and also served as a deterrent to others tempted to follow their corrupt path. And after everything that the left establishment has done to misuse the law to go after their political enemies, it would be delicious indeed to see them get some of their own medicine, especially since they richly deserve it.

Either way, though, our spokespeople – official and unofficial – need to keep Biden’s pardons holstered and ready, and make sure that the public is fully aware of the way the corrupt Dems acted.  We should hang these pardons around the necks of Schumer and Schiff and the whole rotten lot of them. 

One odd pardon I didn’t hear about until later: Leonard Peltier, whom the MSM calls “a longtime jailed Native American activist” who was America’s “longest serving political prisoner.”  Other people – without a set of political blinders on so thick and large that they could fit on Hillary “Clydesdale Ankles” Clinton with a simple cinching device – call him the Indian double-murderer of two FBI agents.  (And this was back when FBI agents weren’t the kind of corrupt pervs who rummage through Melania’s underwear drawer and raid little old Catholic ladies who pray outside of abortion clinics.)

I’ll bet Lizzie Warren insisted on Peltier’s pardon, just out of good ol’ fashioned Indian solidarity.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher) 

In addition to all of the good things that happened, I also enjoyed the “driving our enemies before us and listening to the lamentations of their people who use she/her pronouns” part, too.

It was satisfying to watch Biden have to sit there and listen to Trump roast him.  And after all of Biden’s scandalous actions, record low poll numbers, and the triumph of his most hated rival, I’m sure that the entire Biden family is grateful that they got most of their wish, that Joe didn’t live to see this.     

I loved Carrie Underwood’s acapella rendition of “America the Beautiful.”  Especially with the comedic enhancement of watching Biden “singing” in the background, his eyes blank and his mouth barely moving.  You just know he was singing, “The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round,” or “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” or something like that.

It was also great to see Kamala there, a pained expression on her face and cheap box wine on her breath.   

But it was also nice to hear about those who skipped the festivities.  AOC wouldn’t attend because “I don’t celebrate rapists.”  (Except for Biden with Tara Reade, or Slick Willy with Juanita Brodderick, etc., not to mention woman harassers and beaters like Doug Emhoff, and even woman killers, like Ted Kennedy and a bunch of the convicts whose sentences Biden just commuted).

Nancy Pelosi didn’t attend because she was busy in the subterranean crypt beneath her pyramid –surrounded by her organs arrayed about her in their individual canopic jars – working on rehabbing her recently broken hip.  

Michelle Obama didn’t attend because she didn’t want to miss linebacker practice for the AFC championship game. 

Even though the leftist foot-soldier protestors weren’t out in the kind of force they achieved in the female-genitalia-hat rally in 2017, although they made up for their small numbers with impotent, imbecilic rage.  Or at least they tried.

An Al Jazeera story told the sad tale: “Dozens of people gathered at a park near central Washington, DC to protest a wide range of issues, from the environment to Pro-Palestinian rights, as Donald Trump was sworn into offices.”  (Dozens!)

Yes, it was a bingo card of delusions, fringe causes, lost causes, bad causes, and bad faith.  If you had “don’t deport illegal criminals,” “more partial-birth abortions,” “fight the sun monster!” “kill all the Jews,” “workers of the world unite,” “regular sex is icky,” and “Boo, Orange Hitler” … that’s a bingo! 

Some of the peace-loving weirdos even set up their own fake guillotine. 

You may remember that when Trump supporters put up a fake gallows, that was an insurrection and an attack on democracy meriting many years in jail.  But when Holocaust enthusiasts and communists put up a fake guillotine, that’s just righteous civil disobedience.

Remember when Sarte said, “Hell is other people?” 

These are the people he was talking about.  

But so many good things were happening, too.  The executive orders were great: reversing all of Biden’s EOs; marshalling forces to close the border and start deportations; offering reinstatement and back pay for soldiers expelled over the vax mandate; yanking security clearance from the 51 liars who pretended that Hunter’s laptop was Putin’s; killing DEI, just to name a few.

And after using dozens of pens to sign those beautiful bits of legislative goodness, a commentator noted that Trump started tossing pens to the crowd like rock stars tossing guitar picks. 

(Speaking of which, my wife happens to have two picks from Rick Nielsen after a great Cheap Trick concert in the early 80s.  I suspect that she might not have been available for me to sweep off her feet in 1986 if Robin Zander would have had the good sense to make a play for her back then.  His loss was my gain.)

It was also good to see Melania (giggity giggity), who looked amazing.  (Unexpectedly!)  That hat shouldn’t work, but it did.  If you had asked me on January 19th, “Martin, would you like your first lady to look like a femme fatale spy/gangster whose eyes you could never see?”  I would not have been enthusiastic.

But now I am extremely enthusiastic. 

Also, watching the Prez doing his goofy YMCA dance with that sword?  Say what you will about Trump, but that guy is confident in his masculinity.

Because anyone who can pick the gayest song of all time – “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” doesn’t count, because c’mon – and appear on stage while the Village People gyrate to that anthem, and then later dance to that song while wielding an actual sword?   (And you don’t have to be Bob Freud – grandson of Sigmund – to appreciate the work that that sword is doing there.)

THAT’s a man who is comfortable in his own heterosexual skin.  (I was going to say “a man comfortable in his own foreskin,” but I’m too highbrow for that kind of juvenile humor.) 

On a personal note, a funny thing happened here at stately Simpson manor on inauguration day.  Our house is within half a mile of the Swamp – the good one, where the Gators play – and when we’re not at the games, we can hear the game being called, and Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” being played at the end of the third quarter.

(By the way, if I can be forgiven a little hometown pride, Gators are well-represented in Trump circles.  New AG Pam Bondi, new SecState Marco Rubio, and new Florida Senator (taking Rubio’s place) Ashley Moody are all UF grads.  You’re welcome, nation.)

But we’re also on a tree-lined, dead-end three block street, with the houses on our block all owned by regular adults and families, rather than rented by college students. So our neighborhood is generally pretty quiet.  But there are rentals one block behind us, and all day Monday there was a huge party going on in the backyard of a house two doors down.  Judging from the loud music and the soft roar of conversation, around several hundred college kids were there.

I was almost getting annoyed – or as annoyed as I could get on that day of days – until I heard the song that turned it around for me.  You guessed it: YMCA. 

The kids are all right, CO nation.  Or at least some of them.   (I can’t speak for FSU students, many of whom probably would have behaved similarly, except that they can’t spell “YMCA.”) (Also, I’m pretty sure Liz Warren claims to be a Seminole.)

#neverstop