Author: martinsimpsonwriting

4 Patterns Suggesting that the Dems are Lying (posted 11/17/25)

As usual, lately I’ve been paying close attention to how our political opponents have been acting.  I’ve had my ear to the ground, my nose to the grindstone, and my head on a swivel.  Maybe that’s why I feel like I slept weird last night.

Anyway, I’ve noticed a pattern in recent Democrat behavior, and wonder if you’ve noticed it too.

Example 1: I’ve mentioned this one before, but do you remember when our lefties were gnashing their teeth and rending their garments for several years because of the ongoing “genocide” against “Palestinians?”   Never mind what actually happened.  But to hear them tell it, this was the worst injustice ever, and it involved the IDF doing everything they could to kill Gazan children, while doing their best to avoid accidentally shooting any of the filthy terrorists who were hiding behind those children.

And yet when Trump engineered the end of that terrible carnage, they pouted, and sulked, and stamped their little feet.    

Of course, they didn’t give Trump or Netanyahu any credit for bringing that happy resolution about.  (Unexpectedly!)  But you’d think they’d at least celebrate the end of “genocide,” wouldn’t you?  Hell, even the “Palestinians” were celebrating in the streets as their vicious terrorist brethren who had been rightly held in Israeli jails were returned to them. 

But no.  For our MSM, elected Dems and campus left, Trump was the Grinch who Stole the Genocide, and they were very displeased.

Example 2: As soon as the peace began and the IDF pulled back from Gaza, the Hamas cowards crept back out of their holes and immediately started slaughtering their fellow “Palestinians” who happened to be from rival clans.  Those Gazans might have been expected to assume positions of leadership if the peace continued as scheduled, and Hamas were disarmed and removed from power.  And Hamas couldn’t have that. 

You may have seen the footage of some of the many reprisal killings, which often featured the rival Gazans bound, hooded and helpless, while the peace-loving Hamas terrorists bravely shot them in the backs of their heads.    

You may also remember, like me, how every Gazan killed between 10/7/23 and the beginning of the Trump truce on 10/13/25 was a totally innocent victim and a saint, a veritable Mohammad Luther King Jr.  And the world media covered all of those dead Gazans exhaustively.

Right up until the truce started and Hamas started slaughtering their co-religionists. 

And then each of THOSE killings was…a mystery.  The formerly voracious media closed their notebooks, and turned off their cameras.  Al Jazeera and other jihad-friendly Middle Eastern reporters closed out the word processing programs on their laptops, and returned to the goat porn sites that make up the remainder of their internet usage. 

The MSM has gone radio silent, despite what has to have been at least hundreds of Hamas-on-Gazan murders.  Because I am nothing if not a tireless researcher – you’re welcome, CO nation – I searched for a death toll since 10/13/25.  But I was unable to find anything. 

My first search yielded dozens of articles about all the Gazans killed since Israel responded to the Hamas attack on innocent Jews, but stopped counting in late summer or early fall of this year.  But the death count before that was high, believe them!

Many MSM sources reported between 40,000 – 60,000 “Palestinians” killed by the IDF.   Something called Middle East Monitor came out with a shock headline in late June pegging the deaths at 84,000. 

I’m sure CAIR and the pro-jihadi factions on American campuses – Students for Justice in “Palestine,” the groups claiming to be Jewish but who are fronted by trans, heavily-pierced and heavyset scary gals (I call them the “Jewish as a Ham Sandwich Consortium”), and the faculties of Columbia, Harvard and Yale – have set the number at eleventy-billion.

So I narrowed my search, and made it consecutively more specific.  I went from, “How many Gazans were killed by Hamas since the truce started?” to “How many Gazans were killed by Hamas since 10/13/25?” to “For the love of God, how many Gazans were killed by Hamas in the last 34 days?”

But the response was always the same: pages and pages of articles detailing the quintillion Gazans murdered after Hamas attacked Israel – all of them pediatric nurses and special needs infants and elderly amputees with spina bifida, and brave journalists – but beginning on 10/13/25…nothing.

It’s a Ramadan miracle.  The “Palestinians” have all come down with a simultaneous case of immortality: no one is dying in Gaza anymore, since the evil Jews stopped killing them for no reason at all.

Example 3:  And now I jump ahead to last week, when the second worst crisis of this century – ranked just beneath the “genocide” in Gaza and just above  9/11 – i.e. the Great SNAP Holomodor of the government shutdown ended.  Mysteriously.

Because even though the Dems had absolutely nothing to do with the shutdown starting – it was the Trump shutdown, don’t you know – they somehow figured out a way that they could end it.  By…voting for the deal that had been on the table since the pre-Holomodor/shutdown started. 

And which they’d voted against, 15 times.

Once that vote had passed, was their response, “Thank God that the tragedy has ended, and we can begin the grim work of beginning to bury the bodies of the millions of SNAP recipients who starved to death, and who were totally not mostly morbidly obese, despite what your untrustworthy, functioning eyes might have been telling you.” ?

It was not.  Instead, they ran to every camera and microphone and podcast studio and began venting their rage, and caterwauling that their fellow Dems had wrongly allowed the horrific shutdown – which they’d been screaming for 42 days must end – to end.

My final example takes us to Berkeley, where self-congratulatory leftists will tell you that they bravely started the Free Speech Movement 61 years ago.  And ever since, they’ve been stalwart defenders of the rights of everyone to express unpopular views, free from obstruction, interference or violence. 

Except for, I wanna say, the last 60ish years or so.  Because every conservative who tries to give a speech on campus is harassed and shouted down at best, or violently attacked at worst.  (Rest in Peace, Charlie.) 

Which takes us to last Monday, when the last speech in a series put on by Turning Point USA was scheduled to be given at that cradle of the vaunted free speech movement, Berzerkely.   Annnnndddd… out came the freaks.  

They formed a mob and employed all the old fascist tactics so beloved by the self-proclaimed “anti-fascists.”  They screamed, blew whistles and used bullhorns.  They chanted obscenities and super-peaceful messages like, “F**k your dead homie!”  They scuffled with police and engaged in a lot of vandalism (overturning barriers, throwing objects, spray painting, etc.) 

The most viral video from that night revealed two people fist fighting, one in a “Freedom” shirt, and the other one who stole his cross necklace and assaulted him. (Guess which one was on which side?) 

Despite the freedom shirt guy being all bloody, the cops initially detained him.  Because: Berkeley.  Fortunately, a ton of video was available that showed who started the fight, so the good guy was released and the bad guy charged with robber and battery resulting in injury.

The perfect detail that completed the story?  The leftist aggressor’s name was… wait for it… and I swear I’m not making this up… Jihad Dphrepaulezz.  (I’m guessing that that last name is pronounced just like it’s spelled?) 

Jihad! 

How does that Latin phrase go?  “Nomen est omen.”  (The name is a sign.)  

And I can’t think of a worse omen for how your kid is going to end up than you naming him “Jihad.”  

Though I guess if his full name was “Jihad Child-Killer McScimitar,” he might be a little more screwed than a more typical “Jihad Jones,” or whatever. 

But still.  Don’t name your kid “Jihad.” 

(Cue the NBC musical sting, “The more you know!”)

Just to reinforce that point, regular readers might remember the cheerful tale from a month ago in England (you can find it in my column from October 4th at Martinsimpsonwriting.com) involving a Religion of Peace™ follower named Jihad al-Shamie.  After he stabbed a few unarmed civilians, cops arrived, and it turned out that he’d brought his knife skills to a gun fight.

And as usual in a rousing round of rock-paper-gun-knife, the gun really cleaned up against the competition.  

Anyway, to recap:

When the terrible genocide in Gaza the leftists had been wailing about ended, instead of celebrating, they slunk away and pouted.

And when Hamas started murdering Gazans in large numbers – the same Gazans that right up to 10/13 had been the salt of the earth, and each of their deaths a crime against humanity – the lefties just turned away, sucking on a kale smoothie so they wouldn’t have to make a statement.

And when the Democrats finally ended the government shutdown – which the lefties had said was entirely Trump’s doing, and was a horror that must end – the lefties were furious, and immediately began mourning that the shutdown is over.

And when some conservatives came to the birthplace of the free speech movement to communicate their thoughts, the leftists did everything they could to keep them from speaking freely.

My conclusion?

If I didn’t know any better, it’s almost like they are totally full of Schiff, and wouldn’t know the truth if it was packed into a pager and blown up, right before their eyes.

Or into their eyes.  And into their hands.  And into their non-binary groins.  

Am I saying that’s what should happen to them?  Of course not. 

To quote a vacuous, cackling ex-VP, I’m just saying we should have that conversation.   

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

The Future of NYC — Lessons from 2 Classic British Authors (posted 11/14/25)

If you’ve never read anything by G.K. Chesterton or Rudyard Kipling, you are missing out.  Both British writers were at the height of their powers toward the end of the Victorian period, and both are out of fashion in academia today.  Which is one in a long list of indictments of academia today, if you ask me.  

And you should always ask me.

Chesterton (1874-1936) was an essayist and fiction writer; he wrote the Father Brown detective stories, as well as essays on various topics, and Christian apologetics (he was Catholic).  His writing is consistently witty and profound, but also easily approachable – a rare combination.

Kipling (1865-1936) is more famous, having been widely read and anthologized, and having turned down an offered knighthood and position as Poet Laureate.  Among his most famous poems are “If,” “Gunga Din,” and “The Power of the Dog.”  The latter poem is one that I sadly know I’ll be referencing in a future column, as Cassie the Wonder Dog seems to be becoming more deaf and unsteady by the week.  (The last line of every stanza of that poem is a variation on “giving your heart to a dog to tear.”) 

So what do these great writers have to do with the fate of NYC? 

They both communicated the traditional – one might even say conservative – wisdom that New York voters rejected last Tuesday.   

A common principle among conservatives is giving respect and deference to tradition and ideas that have stood the test of time.  That doesn’t mean resisting all change – the geniuses who wrote our constitution built into it the means of amending it over time, for example – but it does mean having the humility to learn from the wisdom of our forebears.  And it cautions us about the arrogance of assuming that we know more than anyone ever, and can thus overturn existing systems and build a perfect new world, or political system, with no unintended consequences. 

Chesterton summarized these two mindsets in a parable that has come to be called “Chesterton’s fence.”  It describes a foolish person walking through the woods and coming across a fence at the edge of a meadow.  He doesn’t know why it’s there, and since it impedes his progress, he wants to tear it down. 

Chesterton suggests that if you don’t understand why the fence is there, you shouldn’t tear it down until you do understand.  The implication is that once the fence is down, you’ll find out why it was there, to your regret.  For example, the horses or the bull that the fence had enclosed might show up, and either trample or gore you, and then escape.

In 2025, this concept can be paraphrased as “FAFO.”  And I think New Yorkers just voted to tear down Chesterton’s fence – the FA phase – and they’re soon going to find out.

“Why are rents so high?” they say. 

“Because of one-party Democrat rule!” we shout. But they can’t hear us.  (Maybe because the Muslim call to prayer is drowning us out?)   So in comes Mamdani, and if he does freeze the rent…the housing stock will deteriorate and rent will become even more unaffordable.  (Unexpectedly!)

“Why should we have to pay to ride the bus?” they say.  Annndddd…the buses are soon rolling flophouses for the deranged and the addicted and the shiftless, shooting up and treating the bus like a bear treats the woods.

“Let’s jack up the taxes on the evil 1% who already pay literally half the taxes in the city!” they say.

Annnndddd… they’re gone.  And the city revenues collapse, and the quality-of-life spiral tips more steeply downward, into a death spiral. 

Kipling saw all this coming in his poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” written one hundred and six years ago last month.   

In the 19th century, copybooks were used in education, as models for students to practice their penmanship.  On the top of each page would be written a sentence or two which the students would repeatedly copy below.  And because teachers back then weren’t insane or depraved, and didn’t focus primarily on new ways to get drag queens and porn into the curricula, most of the sentences to be copied contained a bit of wisdom or moral teaching.

Common sources for copybook headings were maxims from wisdom literature, the Bible, and great thinkers.  The idea was that students would get a win-win: better handwriting, with some moral instruction too.

Kipling’s poem contrasts The Gods of the Copybook Headings (i.e. traditional, conservative, common-sense/wisdom) with The Gods of the Marketplace (i.e. trendy, faddish, foolishness).  I like to call the latter “the Democratic National Platform, circa 1980 – present.” 

Which is why I’m no poet.

The poem has 10 stanzas, but I’ll share just four of them with you. 

Stanza 5 sums up the wisdom of peace through strength, and the second amendment:

“When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.’

Stanza 6 describes the results of leftist “free love” and gender feminism:

“On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘The Wages of Sin is Death.’”

Stanza 7 handles socialist economics:

“In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’”

The final stanza predicts the fate of Mamdani’s New York City, and our country, if the socialists take over:

“And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”

I’m sometimes called a hilarious genius – and who am I to fly in the face of public opinion? – but I’ve clearly got nothing on Chesterton and Kipling!  In fact, I tried to write a new stanza for Kipling’s poem, but this was the best I could do:

“If the Democrats manage to beat us, we’ll all be neck-deep in a fight,

And forget what was once common knowledge, along with the good and the right.

Like there is no such thing as a free lunch, and a mad dog like Crockett will bite,

And Schiff’s got a neck like a pencil, and Liz Warren’s incredibly white.”

#wemustneverstopmockingher

I know: I’m no Rudyard! (But can you believe that he never used a single hashtag in all of his writings?  I’ve got him there, at least.)

A few critical souls – okay, many critical souls – have pointed out that I can be a little wordy, and I can’t deny that.  Which is even more reason to tip my hat to Kipling, because the man summed up the fatal flaw at the heart of the welfare state AND the leftist soft-on-crime legal philosophy in ONE line: “When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.”  

And Kipling rightly foresees the inevitable result, only two lines later: Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, NYC, and every other big blue city.

Or as he puts it, “terror and slaughter return!”

We should all pray for New Yorkers, because they’re about to receive what they voted for, good and hard.  And I hope we can all use what’s going to happen there as a lesson and a cautionary tale for the rest of the country. 

In the meantime, read yourself some Chesterton and Kipling.  You’ll thank me later.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

History Corner: Why We aren’t Nazis, and Trump isn’t Hitler (posted 11/12/25)

I hope you all had a meaningful and contemplative Veteran’s Day, and that you’re getting into a Thanksgiving mood.  Here in north Florida it has dropped below 40 degrees, so many locals have broken out the parkas, and are still shivering anyway. 

I’ve been paying at least minimal attention to the current kerfuffles in Washington, and am glad that this pointless shutdown is finally ending.  And it’s fun to watch the blue-on-blue sniping over that, with the most extreme lefties raging at the Senate Dems who voted to break the filibuster and end the shutdown, while those lefties try in vain to reason with Those Who Can’t Be Reasoned With. 

Note to self: Pick up another bag of popcorn at Publix tomorrow, because you’re out.

Amidst all that, I saw a few new stories of more violent attacks on ICE agents doing their jobs, and yet another rash of Dems comparing them to the Gestapo.  And this on the heels of a lefty friend of mine asking what I think of “the Right’s Nazi problem.” 

If it was anybody but him, I would have let my sarcastic freak flag fly – I keep it in my temperature-controlled flag wardrobe, along with my Stars and Stripes, my Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, and my Gator flag (the latter will remain in storage until we can find a coach who can distinguish between his fundament and a hole in the ground). 

But because I love that guy, I didn’t say, “Do you mean the problem we have with the left calling us Nazis all the time for no rational reason?”

Instead, I wrote a thoughtful reply pointing out that with the exception of a handful of whackos who have no mainstream support in conservative circles, American conservatives have no connection to Nazis whatsoever.  Because we hate Nazis as much as we hate communists.

But that got me thinking that perhaps some of you would like a quick primer to summarize why the Nazi-GOP and Hitler-Trump comparisons are ridiculous, which you can share with any lefty relatives or acquaintances who raise the subject.  (Because if you just punch them in the face, then YOU’LL be the bad guy.)

So, before you can say, “We don’t deserve you, Martin!” here it is: 

First, for most leftists, “Nazi” has become an almost meaningless term of utter derision, to be applied to nearly every conservative they disagree with.  In that way, Nazi is just like “fascist” – it basically means very, very bad, and has been divorced from all historical meaning and context.

It is taken as axiomatic in academia and the mainstream left that Naziism and fascism are both right-wing ideologies.  But as with so much that is axiomatic in academia, that is at best a distortion, and at worst just false.  Because there is plenty of evidence that Naziism and fascism are more leftist than rightist ideologies.

A great book on the subject is Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” (2008).  Even though Jonah has sadly contracted a severe case of TDS, he’s a very good writer, and he lays out the ideological and historical connections in great detail.    

Mussolini was a committed socialist for years, and started the fascist party only when the mainstream socialists rejected Italian nationalism.  But he didn’t reject socialism/leftism, as much as combine it with nationalism. He named his party after the “fasces” – a Latin word for a bundle of bound wooden rods/sticks that the Romans had used as a symbol of authority. 

That branding combined his love of Italy and the Roman Empire, authoritarianism, and his leftist devotion to collectivism.  (The explicit symbolism was that the weak individual sticks become unbreakable when combined into a collective.) 

A common definition of fascism starts by calling it “far right” (because of course it does), but then says that it is characterized by, “a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

Look at that the description, and tell me what parts do NOT also apply to communism or the various “socialist republics” (USSR, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, every nation behind the Iron Curtain, etc.).

“Ultranationalist” doesn’t apply, because good commies are internationalists (workers of THE WORLD unite, and all that), and possibly “natural social hierarchy” (though that is the defacto situation in communist countries, where party members are always an elite class above the peasants).

But all the rest of that definition applies 100% to communist governments.  1. Dictatorial leader (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ceausescu et al)  2. Centralized autocracy (check) 3. Militarism (yep) 4. Forcible suppression of opposition (yep)  5. Subordination of individual interests for the nation/collective (yep).  6. Strong regimentation of society and the economy (hell yeah!)

Hitler and the Nazis, on the other hand, were such eccentric weirdos that their political DNA is tough to fit as neatly into a left/right spectrum. The Jew hatred was apolitical, and made them almost unique, in that they were fanatically devoted to winning the war…but simultaneously crippled their own war effort by devoting tons of badly needed resources – men and materiel – to killing Jews.  And Hitler’s personal pathologies and enthusiasms made his government’s policies volatile and erratic. 

Just like Mussolini, Hitler was a nationalist, and didn’t reject socialism – just international socialism.  That’s why he named his party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. (If the Nazis truly were wholly right-wing, they would be the first and only rightist party in the history of the world with “socialist” and “workers” in its name!)  But since nationalism is (correctly) usually associated with the right, and because Hitler’s most hated enemy (after the Jews) was the communists, it became easy to see the Germany/Russia conflict as right vs. left, rather than the fratricidal battle among socialists (national vs. international) that it was. 

That’s not to say that Naziism was purely a leftist ideology.   Only that it was a weird goulash of multiple, sometimes contradictory influences: right-wing nationalism; virulent anti-Semitism; Master Race/perverted Darwinist racism; and authoritarian leftism. 

What has always aggravated me is that our country (and the West writ large) has rightly come to terms with and utterly rejected Naziism, but we’ve never done the same with socialism/communism.  (I join those because Marx and most of his orthodox descendants see them as inexorably joined: socialism is the interim step in which the workers take control of the means of production, and communism is the second step in which the State withers away.  Step 2 has never happened, of course, because the theory is fatally flawed and disregards human nature.)       

It’s socially acceptable (and even chic) for college kids to wear Che Guevara t-shirts and commie iconography (hammer and sickle jewelry or pins, etc.) in a way it would never be for them to wear a Himmler or Hitler t-shirt or swastika pins. In colleges, whole fields can call themselves “Marxist” without any stigma, and I’ll bet that only a tiny minority of college kids know that Stalin almost certainly killed more people than Hitler, and Mao slaughtered more than the two of them combined, or that communism/socialism killed well over 100 million people in only a little more than a century.

I think that that’s what makes communism/socialism so dangerous: it has never been held to account and rejected, the way Naziism (rightly!) has been.  Too many people still attribute good motivations to the commies/socialists – they supposedly wanted a more egalitarian and economically fair society (some surely did, but many clearly didn’t!) – and completely gloss over the fact that that system inevitably descended into dictatorship, oppression, poverty, environmental degradation and mass murder. 

This terrible, dishonest distortion – Hitler’s crimes and 15-20 million killed are the epitome of human evil, but the gulags and 100+ million communist murders are just well-intentioned tragedies along the path paved by collectivized farming, 5-year plans and the Great Leap Forward, etc.  You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, as Lenin said – is in large part the result of the dishonest and inaccurate way history is taught in America.

Finally we come to the idiotic Trump = Hitler comparison.

Hitler took power at the end of January, 1933.  Within his first SIX MONTHS, he banned other political parties and labor unions, pushed through the Enabling Act which allowed him to make laws without even consulting the Reichstag (congress), and in 18 months he’d executed over 150 leaders of a rival element in the Nazi party in the Night of the Long Knives, and taken total control of the judiciary.  Within his first 5 years, he’d invaded and subsumed another country, forced all young boys to join the Hitler Youth, murdered an estimated 70K-100,000 disabled or gay Germans, and started throwing dissidents into proto-concentration camps.

By comparison, Trump has been in office for a little less than 5 years over his two terms, and unlike Hitler in his first 5 years, he has not tried to ban the Democrat party or unions. (In fact, a near or actual majority of private sector union members likely voted for him last year).  He has not tried to abolish congress, and they’ve hampered him at every turn, tying him up in hoax investigations that took years before he was vindicated.  The oppositional judiciary has buried him in a blizzard of bogus TROs, which he’s appealed but abided by.   

He hasn’t murdered a single Republican (not even the RINOs!), Democrat, gay guy or anybody else.  He’s got Jewish grandchildren and has appointed many Jews to his administration, and he’s a national hero in Israel, after having spearheaded a peace treaty and the release of Jewish hostages. 

You know, just like Hitler did, with the Jews putting an honorary kippah on his head and carrying him out of the Reichstag on their shoulders, chanting, “Hit-ler! Hit-ler!” and “We love you, Adolf!”  

So remember: If some leftist asks you why conservatives love Nazis so much, don’t punch him.  Instead, print out this column and give him a copy.  Then say, “Good day, sir,” and turn on your heel.

If he tries to speak again, say, “I said GOOD DAY!” 

If he insists on continuing to bother you after that… commence to punching.   

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

0-0-0

If you enjoyed this column, please share it.  To see more of Martin’s past columns, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com, and click Subscribe (on the bottom of your phone screen, or the right side of your computer screen) to receive a notice when new columns post.

Causes for Celebration and Regret (posted 11/10/25)

Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day, and since I won’t have a column tomorrow, I’ll say thank you to all veterans a day early.  Of course we should all be thanking veterans every day, but we’re humans and fallen, and we often take veterans, like many good things – good health, forgiveness, living in a great country in a good time – for granted.   

But as someone who never served, I’ve always been a little in awe of those who have.  So thanks, all of you.

I also want to give a quick shout-out to Frederick Beal Jr., who is an exemplary American.  And not just because he has been hitting my Tip Jar regularly and hard.  Thanks!

It’s especially good to remind ourselves of some of the best among us, when much of the political news tends toward the depressing, even among those of us who are wired for optimism, whether cautious or otherwise.   

Trump’s re-election and first 9 months back in office have been invigorating.  But how can you not be given pause by Tuesday’s results, with people like bloodthirsty Jay Jones, flat-affect Spanberger, and Comrade Mamdani winning with ease?

In fact, I also may have spoken too soon about Jacob “Low-T” Frey being the lesser of two evils after he won the Minneapolis mayor race over Somali Omar Fateh.  Because when Frey gave his acceptance speech, he opened by speaking Somali for almost a minute.

On the one hand, it’s impressive to learn a foreign language.  On the other hand, for those of us who like the traditional “e pluribus unum” American ideal, pandering to every immigrant group in ways that ultimately encourage fragmented tribal identities over assimilation to an American identity is troubling.

If by “troubling” I mean “a terrible step in the wrong direction.”  Which I do.

Exhibit A in that trend would be to represent a city that is 80-90% native-born American and English-speaking, and to engage in a significant political address in a foreign tongue that none of those citizens understands.    

The same debilitating trend can be seen in many blue cities – where the push for mass migration, illegal and legal – is clearly intended to import a voting base that will keep leftists in power forever.  Bo-Zo(hran) Mamdani got around 32% of the votes from those born in New York, but over 60% of those born outside of America, and Democrat politicians in NYC brag that their public schools teach students in over 100 different languages.

That’s not something to brag about!  Because it’s not xenophobic to say that the language of the United States is English.  You can speak another language as a second language – my wife and I are working on Norwegian and German right now, respectively – but a country can’t function if its citizens can’t speak with and understand each other.

And a city’s politics can’t be healthy when its elected officials engage in clan-based appeals that most of its citizens literally cannot understand! 

Add that to the “List of Things I Never Thought Anyone Would Ever Have to Say Out Loud,” right below, “Men and Women are Different,” and just above, “You Shouldn’t Cheer When Someone You Agree With Murders Someone For Disagreeing With Him.”   

Turning to more positive news, Nancy Pelosi announced that she’s retiring from Congress (finally!) next year, even though she’s only 2149 years young. 

The only questions now are: 1. How many mummy and/or mummy-adjacent jokes can I cram into this column before she trails her burial wrappings out the door?  and 2. Now who will represent the Nile River Valley in 2026?

One good bet: Just like Nancy, the winning candidate next time will probably put out half of his/her campaign ads in hieroglyphs.  (I don’t have a “hieroglyph” button in my software, so I’ll have to translate the winning message: “Bird. Sun. Two guys with coyote heads.  Cat. Tut head. Baboon. Two women with gold headdresses facing each other.  2026!”)

In other good news – I guess – it looks like as I write this that the government shutdown might be over.  And while I wouldn’t bet on it, I hope that this 40-day detour to Pointless-ville will get some Republicans to focus on three issues the shutdown brought to the fore:

1. Why on earth are over 40 million people in America on SNAP?  There has been no multi-year drought or natural disaster, and clouds of locusts have not ravaged all of our crops. However, a plague has struck our land that is worse than either of those: big government leftists have descended upon us with an idea to help the poorest among us, which then ballooned out of control.

FDR started food stamps in 1939 but it ended four years later, when WWII had done what FDR couldn’t do: ended the Great Depression.  And immediately, bodies of the starved dead piled up like cordwood all over the continent.

HA! I kid.  Actually, Americans sailed along for 20 years without food stamps OR mass starvation.  Unexpectedly!

Until another leftist genius, LBJ, got into office and said, “Our food supply isn’t broken. Let me spend a few trillion dollars to fix it, thereby creating armies of morbidly obese dependents who will have to vote for us, because they will literally die if we’re not there to pour Count Chocula down their gullets 24/7.” 

Or words to that effect.

And 60 years later, we have managed to NOT learn the lesson that everyone who lives in heavily wooded bear country already knows: if you continually feed the bears, they’ll lose the ability to feed themselves.  And then they’ll tear hell out of your community.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Martin, I can’t believe you got screwed out of People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive award AGAIN!  You were robbed!  Also, don’t you think it’s very demeaning to compare human beings to big dumb animals like bears?”

First, I was as shocked as you are, and I don’t want to talk about People Magazine ever again. 

Second, before you say that it’s not fair to compare people to bears, did you see any of the MSM propaganda “news” stories highlighting vulnerable SNAP recipients?

They featured one sad character after another, complaining that they won’t have anything to eat starting on November first, and how will they survive without SNAP?  You know that the media were trying to depict a life-threatening crisis by putting on the most sympathetic, tear-jerking “victims” of SNAPlessness they could find.

And yet.  I hesitate to criticize people’s appearance, so how can I put this? 

Those stories were full of people from light heavyweight to cruiserweight to heavyweight… and then grizzly, and Kodiak.  These folks could burn their foodstamps for heat and then go into a cave and hibernate, and when they came out in April, they would be in the best shape of their lives.

And we’d have saved $50 billion.   

But seriously, the “S” in “SNAP” stands for “supplemental.”  And the program began as an attempt to provide a few essentials – bread, beans, rice, milk, butter, potatoes, meat – to a few people who really needed it.  And like every other federal program, it metastasized into a corrupt, harmful cluster-chuck (schumer).

The GOP should carry out a common-sense campaign to reign in SNAP spending: limit it to essential food only (no more junk food or expensive stuff); root out the fraud and abuse (prosecute re-sellers of SNAP benefits/vouchers); stop it from going to any illegals (feed them all, right until they’re put on a plane, boat or bus back to their home countries).

2. All of the Dem screaming about necessary health insurance subsidies only prove that Obamacare is a total disaster.  The GOP needs to broadcast that message everywhere and constantly: the Dems promised you a solution in their ironically and cruelly named “Affordable Health Care  Act.”  Conservatives told you that it would only make healthcare more expensive, and it absolutely has. 

Now the GOP needs to highlight its worst failings – many of the subsidies are going to people making between 100% to 400% of the federal poverty level, and there are readily available charts and graphs that show the steep increase in healthcare costs following the passage of Obamacare.  Get those out there!

It’s going to be tough to fix that broken program with everything else on our plate – thanks, Democrats! – but we need to highlight the nature of the problem, and propose an alternative that undoes what Obamacare screwed up. 

3. One common theme in both the SNAP and Obamacare debacles also helps shore up the necessity for continued deportation of illegals: even if many of them are otherwise not criminals or bad people, millions of them are using resources (SNAP and “free” health care among them) that are intended for American citizens. 

We should be using the left’s inflammatory, angry rhetoric against them.  Every time they hold a press conference or release a TikTok or stage a virtue-signaling protest about how poor and working-class Americans are suffering, we need to fire right back:

Yes! Because you’re giving the resources that should be going to them – billions in food, housing, education and health care — to illegal immigrants!  

We need to shout that into every microphone, camera and social media post we can.

And for God’s sake, don’t shout it in Somali!

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

I Want to Shake the Dust of this Election off my Feet! (posted 11/7/25)

After a few days to digest Tuesday’s bad election results, I’ve got no dramatic new insights to offer, other than that the turn back toward normalcy and common sense represented by the 2024 elections apparently did not involve the blue states.  Because those folks have just covered the field in front of them with thousands of rakes, and now they can’t wait to get stompin’!

You know an election was bad when it involved a frozen zombie like Spanberger, and Jay Jones – now the top law enforcer in Virginia, despite his openly expressed opinion that the children of his political opponent are “little fascists” and his dreaming of literally murdering them and their dad – and neither of them was the worst winning candidate.

That “honor” has to go to commie Mamdani, whose closing pitch was even worse than the rest of his execrable campaign.  If you didn’t see it, he invented an Aunt out of whole cloth (I was going to say “out of Kente cloth,” but I don’t know if that comes from Uganda, and didn’t think that reference was worth the time to look it up), and then pretended to fight off tears as he told a story about his pretend Aunt. 

It turns out that Aunt Zabunga (or whatever – if he can make up her existence, I can make up her name) was one of the real victims of 9/11, because after peaceful adherents of the Religion of Peace™ peacefully attacked our country and destroyed the WTC – peacefully – good ol’ Auntie Quango could no longer take the subway out of concern that some New Yorkers might see her hijab and give her the stink eye. 

Let that sink in.  You might have thought that more sympathy should be given to another 3000 New Yorkers who had to stop taking the subway – not because they were self-conscious about their foreign outfits, but because they’d been gruesomely murdered by hateful jihadi freaks.

But according to failed rapper and soon to be failed mayor Mamdani, you’d have been wrong.  Because what about made-up Auntie Dukele, who came here all the way from Wakanda, just to be given the side-eye by bigoted New Yorkers whose loved ones were freshly dead downtown? 

(By the way, Tucker Carlson just defended Zohran from criticism that he is antisemitic, calling it “propaganda.”  Ugh!  First Tucker rhetorically fellated Putin in an obsequious Moscow interview, during which he pretended to accept a Potemkin subway station and grocery story as real.  Then he nodded along as a “historian” explained that Churchill was really the villain in WWII, and that the Nazis have gotten a bad rap.  Then he gave a softball interview to slimy bigot Nick Fuentes.  And now he claims that despite refusing to call for Hamas to lay down their weapons, or to condemn his old favorite phrase of “globalize the intifada,” Zohran is actually a huge fan of the Hebrews.

That’s it.  Tucker is officially dead to me.  I won’t say that you have to agree with me… but if you don’t, I may have to give you the kind of look that I’d give Auntie Bombiki if she wore her hijab to a 9/11 remembrance service.)

Anyway, it looks like NYC may be lost.  And since Trump has gotten a handle on the southern border – I read today that this was the 6th straight month with zero illegals released into the country! – I say we get to building a wall around New York City.

Just before it’s done, we’ll take a convoy of heavily armored SUVs on a quick rescue run through the city, laying down covering fire as we pick up Jamie Galioto and any other COers who are trapped in the Bid (Red) Apple, before racing back out and dropping the portcullis behind us. 

Then we come back in two years, bury all the dead, and start over. 

The closest thing I could find to good news in this election was that at least the horrible leftist who won the mayor’s race in Minneapolis wasn’t quite as horrible as the horrible leftist he defeated. 

The contenders were the incumbent Jacob Frey, and his challenger Omar Fateh (D) – Somalia.  You may remember Frey – or as I call him, Wussy McPussington – as the leftist beta boy who groveled and surrendered when the mostly peaceful mob sacked his city after George Floyd – Patron Saint of Recidivism and Junkies – died as a result of crime-us interruptus.

In the other corner was Omar, the guy who held Tom Hanks hostage in Captain Phillips, and who promised to bring to the Twin Cities the sound, efficient government and cultural thriving that we all associate with… Somalia.  It may have been a red flag that many of his campaign ads were in – I’m not making this up – Somali. 

Because nothing says “successful assimilation” like a Minnesota campaign ad composed of a series of clicks and whistles, ending in “November 4th!”       

If I were his campaign manager, I’d make all of his ads with him just staring at the camera, pointing at his eyes, and saying, “Look at me, Minneapolis.  I’m the captain now.”  Just to see how many Minnesotans would get the Captain Phillips reference.

If I were Pussington’s campaign manager, I’d first treat him like the Godfather treated Johnny Fontane. (I’d slap him and shake him, and say, “You can act like a man!  What’s the matter with you, crying like a woman?”) Then I’d put out two ads. 

The first would feature Frey saying, “Sure, I’ve got less testosterone than a pillow fight between Sydney Sweeney and Margot Robbie, and I hid behind a couch crying as BLM thugs trashed our city.  But at least I’m not the creepy guy from the country where the main occupation is “pirate,” and I won’t make you listen to that caterwauling call to prayer 5 times a day. For now.” 

The second one would feature a black screen with white lettering saying “Just say ‘Feh’ to Feteh” while the Minnesota Vikings’ lame fight song played in the background.

Then I’d grab my bag of Frey’s cash, take off my wig and fake beard, and hop the first freight train out of town.  Because I’d be ashamed to be associated with any of the leftist governance in Minnesota.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the best you can say is that at least the town will remain Minneapolis-St. Paul for a few more years, before it inevitably becomes Mogadishu-St. Paul. 

Good luck with all of that, Democrats.    

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

I’ve Returned, With a Few Election Thoughts (posted 11/5/25)

I’m back from Maine, just in time for a horrible election showing.

I’m speaking, of course, of my incomprehensible loss – again! – in yet another People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive competition.  This time I was runner-up to some British actor nobody’s ever heard of, in another instance of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride.” 

Or in my case, “always the People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive Runner-Up, never People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.”  And I’m getting pretty darn sick of it.

Sure, it’s some consolation that my smokeshow wife tells me that even as an elderly gentleman, I still have the kind of smoldering good looks that, when I’m out in public and make momentary eye contact with a member of the fairer sex, swooning and an arousal-based loss of consciousness regularly ensues.

Okay, she’s never said that in so many words. 

Or in any words even approaching those. 

But after many decades of marriage, I can read her thoughts flawlessly at all times.  (Because you know husbands are GREAT at that.) And I’m pretty sure that that’s what she thinks.

Anyway, by now the main point here is clear: the sexiest man jury at People magazine is composed solely of members of the LGBTQ+ community and those with late-stage macular degeneration.  So don’t bother nominating me again next year, because I’m out!

Okay, enough tomfoolery.  This election really sucked.

Not because blue candidates won in blue states.  Like the Good Book says, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a blue-state voter returns to his folly.”  So despite our hopes that it would be otherwise, this isn’t a surprise.

But the depressing part is who won, and by how much. 

Spanberger is a cowardly, robotic husk who couldn’t even look Winsome Earle-Sears in the eye when called to give a defense for her terrible policies.  Jay Jones fantasized about murdering his political opponent, and about watching that man’s children die in their mother’s arms.  And Mamdani is a nepo baby neophyte who combines the most deadly ideologies of the last century, communism and jihad.  Mikie Sherrill lied about her bad behavior in the service, and is lying about it still.

Plus she’s a woman called “Mikie,” for which there is no excuse. 

And yet they all won, going away.  Jones, at least, was supposed to be in some trouble, as you might expect for a bloodthirsty scumbag running in an election less than 2 months after his similarly violence-loving political co-religionist murdered Charlie Kirk.  But it looks like Jones still won by 4 or 5 points. 

To make things worse, three Dem judges in purple PA were up for retention votes, and the voters kept all three, even though that same electorate voted for Trump last year.  And in California – see the dogs and their vomit reference above – went through with Ken-Doll Newsom’s  crooked gerrymandering scheme.

Unexpectedly!

I haven’t had time to think through much of this, having just been traveling, but my initial thoughts are:

1. I hope Democrat voters get what they are asking for – good, hard, and sans lubrication.

2. I wish the damage they’re about to do – especially in NYC – could be contained to themselves.  But as always, there will be a lot of collateral damage, including the fact that Florida is about to get more crowded.

3. We need to make Mamdani the face of the Democrat party.  Because thanks to a benevolent God, the rest of America isn’t New York City, politically speaking.  And we should hang that smirking, incompetent, anti-Semitic commie around the DNC’s neck, as the city descends into an ever-more dysfunctional, Dinkins-ian morass of filth, crime and red ink.

4. We need to gerrymander every red state in the country, ASAP.  The Dems have mastered that strategy, and we need to fight fire with fire, or surrender the midterms before they’ve even begun. 

I’ll be back with a regular column in the next day or two.  In the meantime, and as always…

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

I’ve Detected an Imbalance of Stupid and Smart Ideas in Our Politics (posted 10/29/25)

As you read this I’ll be on another trip, this time to Maine to see an old friend.  So I won’t have a column on Friday or possibly Monday, but after that I plan to hit the ground running, and power through to Thanksgiving with the wealth of mock-worthy material I trust that the Dems will be giving all of us.

Today my thoughts have turned to the amount of stupid points that lefties routinely argue for, vs the number of smart points that conservatives routinely argue for. 

By saying this I do NOT mean that GOPers or conservatives are necessarily smart.  (I could point to literally thousands of examples of the opposite, each one of them a tiny, irritating thorn in my side, politically speaking.)  Nor that leftists are necessarily stupid.  (I could point to literally a dozen examples of the opposite.  Or at least a handful, since Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan are dead, and Dave Rubin is now a conservative.  But I know a few guys personally, and Fetterman’s healing brain has moved him some distance from the Home Plate of Stupid that the rest of nationally elected Dems are clinging to like grim death.) 

By “stupid points” I just mean nonsensical claims that an orthodox leftist has had to argue for and defend during this century.  A few examples will suffice: 

Men can become women, and vice versa.  (I’m not sure exactly how that’s supposed to work.  But I think turning slowly in a circle while clicking your heels together three times and repeating, “I’m a real boy, Geppetto!” is involved.) 

Taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will decrease crime.

Putting career criminals back on the street with a stern talking-to will convert them to quasi-Amish, non-violent gentlemen.

Discriminating on the basis of race today and in the future on is the fairest way to respond to racial discrimination that happened before you were born.

Electing a socialist, jihad-enthusiast mayor of NYC will make NYC a heaven on earth.

Confiscating money from people who work hard and giving it to people who don’t work will make hard workers work harder, and non-workers become self-supporting hard workers.  (And no productive person will ever move out of your greedy blue state.  The end.) 

Whenever I find myself being frustrated by problems in my life, I remind myself that as a conservative, I can walk out of my house every morning knowing that my path is made easier because I have the bracing wind of reality at my back, rather than blowing in my face and impeding my progress.

My leftist friends, on the other hand, have to face each day knowing that as soon as they step out of their house, they will be greeted with a brisk groin-kick from reality.  Then – as they are writhing on the ground, wishing that they could instantly change their gender to female because that would relieve the aching in their battered cojones – the real world will begin administering a volley of rib kicks and face slaps, followed by a rear naked choke.

(Which as I understand it has nothing to do with sexual innuendo, but rather is a forceful wrestling hold.  But either way, it doesn’t sound pleasant.)

Okay.  This bizarre column opening brought to you by Knob Creek 9 Bourbon.  Because this nation didn’t run on Kentucky coal mined by stone-cold sober people.  Knob Creek 9.  (Drink responsibly.) 

(Yes, I’m trolling to try to get a sponsor for this column.  Because my daughter’s tuition at Exeter isn’t going to pay itself, people.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Stupid points and smart points.

Consider the dilemma of leftists who have tried to argue that people on their side are the good guys, and conservatives are Satan’s minions. 

They’ve got to argue that violent right wingers shot Joe Biden in the ear, and tried to shoot him again on a golf course (which means that he’d have to be capable of walking upright around a golf course).  And that a violent right winger shot up a congressional Democrats’ softball practice, and that a violent right winger murdered the leftist equivalent of Charlie Kirk. 

They also have to argue that Antifa doesn’t exist.

Seriously.  That’s a real thing that has happened.  Just do a quick search, and you can find many prominent leftists repeating the robotic talking point: “Antifa doesn’t even exist.  It’s just an idea.  Or maybe not even that.  Antifa is just a figment of your imagination. Like a smart Jasmine Crockett, or a Native American Lizzie Warren (#neverstopmocking), or an Adam Schiff with a normal-sized, human neck.”

They have to argue ridiculous premises such as that the great “Libs of TikTok” is a dishonest, right wing propaganda site…when its content is just showing videos voluntarily posted to the web by lefties.  No AI; no distorted, out of context, second-hand quotes.  Just pure, 180-proof, leftist c-r-a-z-y.

(And that stuff is nothing like the smooth taste of Knob Creek 9 Kentucky bourbon.  Available in small or large batch.   Warning: Don’t drink Knob Creek 9 when watching Libs of TikTok, lest you involuntarily waste some of that sweet brown liquor in a reflexive spit-take when some multiply-pierced gender-indistinct person in a furry suit tells you that his/her/its pronouns are zippity/zoo/zam… and also that JD Vance is weird.)

My two recent favorite, self-induced stupid points were earned by Governor Goodyear Pritzker’s performance in his interview with Bret Baier last week, and Abigail Spanberger in her debate performance against Winsome Earle-Sears a few days earlier. 

Pritzker brazenly claimed that Chicago is a super-safe, crime-free city, despite bodies hitting the ground there faster than picked-clean comically-oversized turkey legs at a catered poker game featuring Pritzker, Jerry Nadler, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell.

Saith the (D)irigible, “We are not in the top 30 [cities] in terms of our murder rate…Our murder rate has been cut in half over the last four years, and every year it’s gone down by double digits.” 

Then Baier put up a map with a graphic showing the top 10 cities for per-capita murder rate, proving that Chicago is the deadliest.  Unexpectedly!  (Also: D’oh!)

Spanberger did even worse, putting in the strangest debate performance I’ve ever seen.  Her opponent is Winsome Earle-Sears, who confronted her about Spanberger’s support for allowing gender-addled males in females’ bathrooms and locker rooms. Which is a position with a huge stupid quotient: no sane people are for it, but the far-left Dem base demands it. 

So Spanberger didn’t know whether to pull a fire alarm and escape in the confusion, or dramatically throw down a smoke bomb and disappear before the air cleared.

Instead, she just stood there expressionless – staring straight ahead with a frozen, tight-lipped half grin – while Sears repeatedly asked her whether she’d allow a disordered male into her own daughters’ bathrooms.  “Would you do that, Abigail?  Abigail?  Helloooo?”

It was bizarre!  Spanberger looked like a catatonic mental patient, or maybe a psychopathic villain in a Super Max prison, ignoring the outside world while she plotted an elaborate escape plan that would culminate in setting off a string of dirty bombs in every large city in the Western hemisphere.

Or possibly getting Commie Mamdani elected mayor of New York. 

You wouldn’t have thought it could get any worse for her…but then a holder of a Black Belt in Stupid tried to ride to her rescue. 

On Morning Joe, Mika Zherbivore-izhinszki (I’m not wasting 10 seconds to look up the spelling of her ridiculous name) jumped all over the mention of the Dems having lost with two women candidates in recent presidential elections.

Because Mika knows sexism when she sees it.  “Other countries have no problem electing women!” The clear implication being that backward Americans won’t tolerate no gyno-American politicians, no-how!      

Except that – and here I have a huge advantage over Ketanji Jackson, since I know what a woman is – Winsome Sears is female!  So Mika’s point is that whoever votes for a conservative woman against a liberal woman is a sexist. 

Not only that, but Sears is a black woman, while Spanberger is pigment-challenged enough that she could be a sibling of the subject of the late 1960’s Procol Harum hit, “Whiter Shade of Pale,” i.e. Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  

And if leftist racial identity politics has taught us anything, it’s that blackness is just as powerful a qualification for high office as femaleness.

Except if you’re a conservative, apparently.  In which case your conservatism cancels out both your gender and your race.

Because: Science!

Have a good Halloween, everybody, and don’t forget…    

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

Architecture Corner, Featuring the Obama Library & the Trump WH Ballroom (posted 10/27/25)

I read a story in the Babylon Bee that the ominous Obama Library in Chicago will soon be completed – they phrased it as “it’s almost fully operational” – and I realized what any sane Chicago Democrats should have said several years ago, when the Bamster was commandeering acres of land and promising not to use too many public funds for this monstrosity: “It’s a trap!”  

Am I suggesting that Chicago Democrats look like squid-creatures and sound like a phlegmy Bernie Sanders?  

Well, I am not NOT saying that.  But I was being hyperbolic, because I said “any sane Chicago Democrats.”

And that’s only Larry, who lives on Cermak Road in Berwyn.  And he just looks very tired and beaten down.

Anyway, here’s a cautionary note to Larry, and every other resident of Chicagoland: you’ll know that Obama’s flak-tower of an architectural middle finger is almost completed.  Because that’s when the eye of Sauron will flame into malevolent life atop the structure…and by then it will probably be too late to flee.

Speaking of architecture, I’ve noticed the Dems’ totally rational and appropriate reaction to Trump adding a ballroom to the east wing of the White House… and Great Googly Moogly, are these people desperate for something to lose their minds over!   

They’re all howling about the unthinkable sacrilege of Trump altering a single stone or timber of the East Wing, which was hand-built by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and ten other signers of our Declaration of Independence!   And I guess they have a poi—

Hold on.  My crack research staff has just handed me a laminated sheet of information about the East Wing.  Which, it turns out, was first erected (insert your own Bill Clinton joke here) in 1902. 

Wait a minute.  I was born in a year starting with “19,” and I went to public school before leftist goofballs infested our schools, so I know that none of the Founding Fathers were still around then.  So let me read a little further…

Okay, hold on to your top hats. Because the East Wing was originally used “as an entrance for guests during large social gatherings,” and its “primary feature was the long cloak room with spots for coats and hats.” 

Oh, the sacred coats and hats of people born in the same century as me!  Won’t SOMEBODY think of the coats and hats of people born in the same century as me?!!

Reading further… the East Wing was expanded into a two-story building in 1942. 

What the–? My dad was alive then!  Sure, he wasn’t to live in a house with indoor plumbing for another 4 years, but still, that just means that the Simpsons were poor, not that it was old timey days, from whence existing, august buildings must be preserved at all costs.

Okay.  Upon further reading, it turns out that the East Wing has basically been an office building for many decades.  And that it has never had the historical resonance and importance of the central White House, or even of the West Wing.  (There’s a reason that when some Hollywood libs wanted to make a series about the important goings on in the WH, they named it “The West Wing,” rather than the East Wing.)

“Yeah, but still,” say some shameless partisan lefties. “Nobody should be able to just make big alterations to the White House, willy nilly!” 

I guess they mean, except when FDR added a theatre to the East Wing in 1942.  Or when the West Wing was added, or when Truman oversaw a massive, near-gut renovation of much of the WH.  Or when Jackie O added a Rose Garden, or when Nixon added a bowling alley, or when Obama added a basketball court.

Try to bring any of that up to your average MSNBC talking head, and they’ll likely jam their fingers in their ears and say, “What gives Trump the right to replace a structure that was built when Martin Simpson’s dad was still doing his business in a hole in the backyard of his family’s shanty in Marseilles, Illinois?  Is nothing sacred to that barbarian?” 

First, that seems a little unnecessarily and personally insulting.  Because we Simpsons were just as God made us. Sure, we were working dogs and not show dogs.  And yes, we put the “lump” in “lumpen proletariat.” But that’s no reason to look down on us, you fancy, elitist lefties, with your electric garage door openers and your flush toilets!

Second, I’d go a little easy on the “White House is sacred” theme, if I were a Democrat.  Because too much of that talk might make normal folks think of some answers, once you’ve asked, “Why can’t Trump treat the WH with the kind of reverence that past Democrat presidents have treated it?”

You mean like when JFK used the WH swimming pool (and Jackie O’s bedroom) to gain carnal knowledge of teenage aides (not to mention pimping them off to his cronies)?  Or when Bill and Hill installed a cash-operated turnstile in the Lincoln bedroom, selling a night there for donations from rich leftists?

And that’s not to mention the oral-service cubby that Bill installed under the Resolute Desk, nor the firehouse pole that he installed for half-naked interns to slide down and disappear just before Hillary stomped into the Oval Office.

Hey, wait a minute.  Something just occurs to me.  You don’t think that the Dems think that Trump wants to do with the ballroom what their past presidents have done with the White House? 

Has no one told them that the “ball” in “ballroom” doesn’t mean what it meant for JFK and Slick Willie? 

Yikes!  They would have to be pretty dumb to believe that, right?  On the other hand, in the last three elections, these people voted for Cankles McPantsuit, Joey Gaffes and the Cackler.  So…

It’s all starting to make sense.  Leftists see the old walls coming down – and by “old” they mean “from 1942” – and if their TDS has already advanced to a similarly devastating point that Al Capone’s syphilis reached late in his life (look it up), they assume that Trump is running around in a bulldozer, wearing a hardhat emblazoned with “Make America Great Again,” destroying American tradition just for the joy of it. 

Which is a ridiculous fear.  Because we all know that that’s YOUR thing, lefties. When you’re not burning American flags or trying to remove big chunks of the Constitution, you’re tearing down statues of Founding Fathers, and Grant and Lincoln.  (When we tear something down, it’s not historic, and we’re going to replace it with something better.)  

Anyway, have no fear, because the Translucent Tecumseh – Elizabeth Warren herself – is on the case!  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

One might think that Liz would be mad about the new ballroom because until now, large gatherings at the WH have been held outdoors, in tents.  (Insert your own “Liz Warren loves teepees” joke here).

Or possibly that she’s angry that taxpayer dollars will be spent on a facility that Trump will enjoy himself.  Except that he has arranged for the renovations to be funded by private donors, at no expense to the public.  And except for the fact that the ballroom will be used by subsequent presidents – leaders like Presidents Vance, DeSantis and Rubio, God willing – and will no doubt come to be an accepted, useful and even admired facility in the future.

But never mind all that. Because Liz has her deerskin dress over her head about this, and is not to be deterred.  (#neverstopmocking)  She has vowed to “launch an investigation into the contracting and approval process” for this unconscionable improvement to the White House. 

And never mind that she is in the minority party, and as such has as much chance of launching a canoe as an investigation. (#neverstop)

And never mind that the last time she conducted an investigation, she only succeeded in proving that she was 99.99% Caucasian, and therefore whiter than my smokeshow Norwegian/English wife, who is known throughout north Florida for both her alabaster skin and her complete ignorance of how to use a tomahawk or a bow-and-arrow.  Just like Wampanoag Warren.  (#neverever)   

So good luck with your investigation, Lizzie!

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

Road Trip, One of Charlie Kirk’s Antagonists Gets Some Karma, and the Wilks Family Deserves Praise (posted 10/24/25)

It’s good to be back home, and back in the friendly environs of CO Nation.

My trip north went well.  Since I wanted to stop and see my mom and sister in Tennessee, and to go up and hang out with the cousins in Illinois, I drove for the nearly 2500-mile round trip. 

That gave me time to catch up on some podcasts and listen to a few books on cd along the way.  I’m listening to CS Lewis’ That Hideous Strength for the first time in a long time, and it’s as gripping and weird as I remembered. 

And I was able to make the entire trip without being killed by an intoxicated illegal behind the wheel of a semi who bought his CDL for 5,000 rupees from Ken-Doll Newsom in California.  So I’ve got that going for me. 

Regular readers will remember that my mom has Alzheimer’s, and in August my sister and I finally had to move her into a memory care place in TN, near Rhonda’s home.  After a rough transition and a lot of struggles all around, we checked out a couple of more places, and have arranged to move her into a place that we think will be a better fit for her shortly.  Those of you who have gone through this know how fraught the process can be, and we have learned some hard lessons.

When I got to Illinois, the cousins and I drove up into Wisconsin, and enjoyed some cool weather and beautiful fall foliage.  On my way back south I stopped by Ottawa, Illinois to spend a contemplative hour at my maternal grandparents’ grave, which is beneath a maple in a pretty cemetery beside the Illinois river.  

Since we don’t have much of a fall here in Florida, I really appreciate October up north, which always evokes nostalgia and childhood memories of Halloween, diving into piles of leaves, and hayrack rides, followed by hot apple cider and maybe some roasted marshmallows.

Of course I didn’t have the chance for all that on this trip.  But I felt lucky to be able to spend some time on a cool, sunny autumn afternoon talking to my grandparents.  (I don’t know whether they can hear me, but I know where they are, and I suspect that they do.)

As usual during travel, I only caught bits and pieces of the news, but it seemed to be a continuation of the foolishness and absurdity that we’ve gotten used to. 

I saw that the usual suspects got together for the second annual “No Kings” extravaganza, and that they’re now 2-for-2.  Last year and this year they loudly and self-strokingly demanded that we not have a king.  And for the second year in a row, we don’t have a king.  So…mission accomplished!

(Please don’t anybody tell them that the reigns of Emperor Haile Selassi Obama and Sir Auto Pen are the closest we’ve come to having a king in nearly 250 years. They are so satisfied with themselves, and they can’t maintain that if outside reality intrudes into their bubble.)

I also saw that the big blue cities are still hell-bent on self-destruction.  Commie Mamdani appears to be on a glide path into the mayoralty of NYC, with his campaign slogan of, “Flee Now, Productive Citizens, Inshallah!” 

And another lefty with more than a dusting of Somali “Allahu akbar” is set to edge out Jacob “Wussy McPussington” Frey as mayor of Minneapolis.  Poor Minnesota!  Jazz Hands is their Governor, brother-marrying jihadi Ilhan Omar is one of their House reps, and Amy Klobuchar is one of their senators.

And now Mogadishu-St.Paul is going to be stumbling toward sharia law.  Well done, Gopher Staters!

But elsewhere, there’s a lot of good news happening.  Red states continue to do pretty well, and Trump continues to troll the eminently troll-able.  Especially entertaining were AI presentations of Trump and Melania in royal robes and crowns on “No Kings” day, as well as Trump in a Top Gun situation, dropping a few metric tons of fecal matter on the kind of protestors who have been spewing the same at us for many years now. 

I also have two other heartening stories.  The first comes from Oxford, England, where regular readers may remember that a Nigerian-Brit creep named George Abaraonye (whose name is not worth spelling correctly again) was elected the president of the Oxford Union back in June.  Because: DEI.

He had been one of the students Charlie Kirk debated there in the spring.  Charlie had been polite and respectful, and mopped the floor with Georgie, intellectually speaking.  Alabastard, on the other hand, acted like a total douche.  His conduct and arguments were as unsightly as his appearance.  (He wore slippers, sweatpants and a black t-shirt to an Oxford debate!) 

So when Charlie got murdered by a leftist spouting mainstream leftist talking points, Abalone checked all the boxes to establish himself as the quintessential leftist a-hole. 

First he posted a tweet celebrating the assassination.  (Check.)

Then, when he began to get blowback over his egregious behavior, he lied like a coward, claiming that he had posted one terrible tweet “in a moment of shock.”  (Check). 

It then turned out that he had posted other similarly awful tweets a bit later.  Because of course he did. (Check.)

In subsequent weeks, more and more influential figures began to protest Abhorrent’s hateful behavior.  Prominent speakers who had been scheduled to debate at the Oxford Union began cancelling.  Members of Parliament began criticizing Oxford, and the university finally published a condemnation of George, with the weak-sauce “his views don’t represent us” ploy.

So G. Abominable played the victim, claiming that his hateful remarks were “shaped by the context of Mr. Kirk’s own rhetoric” and whining that he had now become the target of “racist comments and threats.”   (Check.)

Finally, on October 18th, the Oxford Union took a no-confidence vote on Acrimonious.  They needed a two-thirds vote to oust him as president, and they got 5% more than that.

After checking another leftist box – Abysmal smeared his opponents, claiming that a vote against his hateful arse was “a victory for hate” – he completed the leftist Bingo card by…wait for it…becoming an election denier.

Check and mate!

His supporters pitched a fit, accusing the voters of “procedural sabotage and intimidation,” after which Appalling then did what we in the States call “pulling a Stacy Abrams.”  He defiantly declared that he was “still president-elect.” 

Okay, Georgie. 

Thank God Biden’s ghost is not still president, or George would come here illegally, the Dems would declare him a citizen, and he’d be their next nominee for President. 

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to an unlikely group: the family members of a black criminal shot dead by a white cop. 

On October 9th, Elijah Wilks, 26, was shot by a plainclothes cop who had been on his way to work.  The police told the Wilks family that Elijah had driven recklessly, cut off the cop and caused a minor collision, then stopped his car, got out and pistol-whipped the cop once with a handgun, after which he pointed the gun at the cop. The cop shot him, killing him.

The Wilks family initially said they didn’t believe the cops’ narrative, and demanded to see the dash-cam footage from the cop’s car.  The police showed them the video, which corroborated the police account.

Now this is a story we see every day in America, and it always seems to unfold the same way.  The family cries racism, proclaims their family member a saint who was brutally killed for no reason, and engages a racial arsonist like Al Sharpton. 

Sometimes they do this because they’ve imbibed the racial hatred of leftist propaganda.  Sometimes they see a big payday that can be gained from spineless authorities who are terrified of racism charges, bogus or not.  And sometimes, I’m sure, they do it because they honestly think their family member was innocent.

But in this case, the Wilks family rose above all that.  After they watched the dash cam video, they gave a press conference.  They had hired an attorney named “B’Ivory LaMarr,” who violated the Simpson Rule of Odd Apostrophes, to wit, “Never Trust a Man with an Odd Apostrophe in his First Name.”

But B’Ivory is B’atting .1000, because he announced, “I don’t think I’ve ever given a press conference and said this, but we will acknowledge that we do believe that this officer-involved shooting is justified.”

Elijah’s aunt said that her nephew “made a decision that he should not have made, and that’s just something we have to live with.”

And LaMarr concluded with, “Our hearts and our prayers go out to the off-duty officer.  I’m sure that he’s going through a healing process.”

Seriously, I nearly teared up when I read those words.  I can only imagine how painful it is to lose a family member like that.  And I’d guess that your grief is made even worse when mixed with anger at him, when you discover that his death is entirely his own fault, and the result of his own stupidly reckless behavior. 

At a terrible moment like that, and despite all of the toxic anti-whitey and anti-cop hatred you’ve been immersed in, I admire your ability to tell the hard truth, and to extend your sympathy to the man who was forced to kill your loved one. 

B’eautiful job, B’Ivory, and good on you, Wilks family!  You’ve earned some peace, after Elijah’s death.

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

Some Thoughts on Exploding Drug Boats, and Political Violence in America (posted 10/17/25)

Today I’ve got a little light-hearted mockery, followed by more serious thoughts about political violence in America.

I’ll start with the kind of violence I can really get behind: that targeted at cartel drug-runners.  I love the language of a RedState story on the fate of a Venezuelan drug smugglers’ boat on Tuesday.  The headline said, “Trump Reports Another Intercepted Drug Boat.” 

Yes! If by “intercepted” you mean “blown into small chunks of speed boat, cocaine, and filet of drug trafficker.” The War Department (love that name!) called it a “lethal kinetic strike.”  The word “lethal” is doing a lot of work there, because “kinetic” is something I heard a lot in physical therapy after I’d partially torn my meniscus. 

And that therapy involved neither cocaine nor rapid-onset biological disassembly of my body.

Pete Hegseth’s announcement of the latest kinetic ka-boom channeled Clint Eastwood quite nicely: “The message is clear: if you traffic drugs toward our shores, we will stop you cold.”

Which raised two questions for me:

1. Is Pete trolling the drug cartels with this?  Because from what I saw of those gang members’ transnautical experience – in which something that had been assigned “boat” at its launch instantly changed its orientation, and identified as “ball of fire” – seemed anything but cold.  In fact, I’m guessing the last words of those thugs were something like, “AIIEEEE!  Estoy en fuego!”

2. In the history of Petes, have there ever been two Petes more opposite than Fightin’ Pete Hegseth and Maternity-leave-Takin’ Pete Buttigieg?  (Not since pacifist rabbi Adolf Hersch and another Adolf H….)

Okay, now to more serious business.

In the five weeks since Charlie Kirk was killed, we’ve all spent more time than we ever wanted to spend thinking about political violence.  I’m sure my thoughts on the topic are no deeper than the next guy’s, but I feel like enough time has passed that I might be able to share some ideas without just dropping F bombs like a maniac.  So here goes.

I don’t think the main problem with political violence is the lone-wolf d-bags.  Those exist on both sides of politics, and in all religious, ethnic and social groups.  As infuriating and damaging as they can be, they are found in every human society, and they are not the core issue.

The real problem is violence that is sanctioned by the mainstream of any social or political group, because such sanction reveals a widespread social sickness that threatens the entire nation.  And that kind of violence – socially-sanctioned, approved by the mainstream – exists almost entirely on the left in the United States in recent years.

I would point to 3 leftist groups who have sanctioned violence:

1. Culturally elite non-politicians: These include actors such as Robert DeNiro — who has repeatedly fantasized about physically assaulting Trump, as well as screaming (literally: screaming) about what a dictator, Nazi, punk, coward, etc. he is – and Johnny Depp, who delivered the dead-pan, not-joking rhetorical question, “When was the last time a president was killed by an actor?”

(Ironically, the answer is, “That time when racist Democrat John Wilkes Booth murdered Republican President Lincoln.”  So, great company you’re putting yourself in, dumb-arse!)

And singers like Madonna, who openly confessed that she was thinking about bombing the White House, along with many third-rate no-talent rappers and pop wailers. 

And some of the biggest influencers and talking heads, including podcasters and streamers, as well as MSNBC and traditional media hosts.  Probably the closest thing the left has to Charlie Kirk – at least in terms of views and followers – are Hasan Piker and Stephen “Destiny” Bonnell, and both of them have openly and explicitly called for the death of conservatives.  (See my 9/29 column at Martinsimpsonwriting.com for examples.) 

2. Culturally elite politicians:  It’s hard to think of any Democrats in the House, Senate or previous White House as “elite.”  But their positions – congressman, senator, president, even SCOTUS justice – are elite, and their rhetoric has explicitly opened the door for violence, if not explicitly called for it.

(This example is the closest of the three to being bi-partisan, because our side engages in some of this too.  I’ve got to call balls and strikes, and Trump’s many references to the “enemy within” or its equivalents are not helpful.  Still, though I’m biased, I do think the Dems have been so much worse, and have acted as enemies, at least to the government (when run by GOP) and law enforcement.) 

And though the Dems point to generic calls to “fight” or “target” vulnerable Dem House seats, those figures of speech are ubiquitous on both sides of the aisle.  But has any GOP pol ever gone to the steps of SCOTUS the way Schumer did, bellowing an explicit warning to sitting justices that, “You’ll reap the whirlwind!” and “You won’t know what hit you” if you interpret the law in a way that disagrees with them?

Has any GOP congressman ever matched the level of incitement reached by Maxine Waters – with that raccoon perched on her head above that terrifying mudslide of a face — yelling that any Dems who see GOP pols in public places should, “Get in their faces, and push back on them, and tell them they’re not welcome there!” ?

3. Huge, organized groups in person, and thousands of “respectable” everyday citizens online:  We’ve all grown accustomed to mob violence carried out by Antifa, BLM, and anti-ICE/ pro-illegal groups.  But what was so shocking after Charlie Kirk’s murder was the huge number of people who appeared to be sane, functioning citizens, but who then revealed themselves to be sickening, hate-ridden monsters.

When you think of people videoing themselves being vulgar, giddy and gleeful over a bloody assassination, you think of seriously disturbed drifters and dregs of society, videoing themselves in their parents’ basements, or their squalid homeless camps, or a dilapidated single-wide.  And there were some of those.

But there were many more apparent normies.  They came from all walks of life, with the professions of teachers (K-12), college professors, and those in medicine (doctors and nurses), being well represented, as well as therapists and businesspeople, and even a few in intelligence and the military! 

And all of the anecdotal videos are backed up by multiple, widely-reported polls that reinforce what we’ve all come to know in a way many people didn’t want to believe: leftists are MUCH more likely to support political violence. 

So it’s no coincidence that this stuff happens routinely on the left, and is vanishingly rare on the right!

Did ANY mainstream GOP pols, cultural elites or media talking heads express approval of Tim McVeigh’s bombing?  Even though the attacks on Democrats in recent years – Gabby Gifford, the MN politicians, Paul Pelosi, the arson attack on Josh Shapiro’s house – were NOT carried out by right-wingers espousing right-wing ideology, have ANY mainstream GOP or conservative figures celebrated or excused any of those attacks?

All of which brings me back to where I started: even with the lone-wolf killers, the leftists among them are not scary because they are crazy.  They’re scary because they sound like “normal” mainstream lefties.

Charlie’s killer did not say that his dog or the fillings in his teeth told him to kill.  The murderers of Christian children in Nashville and Minnesota did not say voices in their heads gave them their orders.  The guy who shot Steve Scalise at the GOP baseball practice didn’t say that he was Napoleon, taking vengeance on the Bilderbergers.  

Nope.  Scalise’s shooter was a Bernie bro and campaign volunteer whose social media was full of typical anti-conservative hatred. Both “transgender” child-killers  left manifestos lambasting “transphobic” conservatives.  Charlie’s killer called him a “fascist,” just like 95% of the mainstream Dem pols and media talking heads have been doing for years. 

As disturbing as the normalized violent impulses from the left are to me, I am heartened by how rare and non-influential such violence on the right really is. 

Remember, the last time a “right wing” group came together and killed a person, it was a decade ago, and the group was the white nationalists in Charlottesville.  In that case, the most high-profile white supremacists in the country got together – and “high profile” is an oxymoron in that sentence! (The only one I could name is Richard Spencer, and I’d bet you couldn’t find 1 in 100 Americans or conservatives who have even  heard of him.) 

Those racist “leaders” put out nationwide calls for 4 months to publicize the Charlottesville rally, using all of their social networks and means of reaching their faithful band of followers.  And after all of that, they produced a group of how many tens of thousands of idiots? 

Not tens of thousands at all.  Not even thousands.  The best estimates I can find – and those were from “mainstream” (i.e. center-left or farther left) sites – were that “around 100 people” showed up.  THAT’S the high point of supposedly right-wing hate groups who have been spotted in America for the last 40 years or so, since the last vestiges of the Klan – a group with a Democrat lineage, inconveniently enough – were dismantled by federal law enforcement, using RICO, in the 1990s). 

And THAT’S what Biden and the Dems have been calling “the greatest existential threat to America” today. 

It was a ridiculous lie, and in their heart of hearts, even the Dems don’t believe it.  But DEI is collapsing, the transgender fever has broken, the hostages have been freed in Israel, and the leftist agenda is disintegrating like a Venezuelan drug boat in our Navy’s gunsights, so it’s just about all they have left.

Bless their hearts.   

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!