Author: martinsimpsonwriting

I Wish DeSantis Well, and Hope Trump Beats Biden like a Rented Mule (posted 1/21/24)

I’ve got mixed feelings about DeSantis quitting the race, as you might imagine.  But after the Iowa caucus results confirmed the polling over the previous months, Trump’s nomination was a fait accompli, and DeSantis made the only logical choice.  I was glad to see him endorse Trump as the winning nominee, as he’d pledged to do at the beginning of the campaign.

I was also encouraged to read the responses to CO’s Sunday night thread on RDS’ dropping out, in terms of how little vitriol people expressed toward him.  Many wished him well, and said they’d consider voting for him in a future race, which is what I’m hoping for. 

The most frustrating part of the race for me has been seeing so many self-described conservatives doing the opposite: attacking him in the most dishonest ways, and taking such glee in the most petty smears.  Unfortunately, they were following the lead of the far left, and of Trump, who praised him to the skies (“one of the best governors,” “doing a great job in Florida,” “he did a terrific job with covid”) before flip-flopping completely (terrible on covid, worse than Cuomo, etc.) when he became a competitor.  

I understand that politics is a rough business, and I generally have a low enough opinion of politicians that I don’t mind seeing them knocked around some.  But I think RDS is an unusually good man for a politician: scandal-free in his personal life; apparently good husband and father to his wife and kids; does what he says he’ll do, relentless in pushing conservative policies, and the most consistent and successful governor in the country.

When he got a history degree from Yale and a JD from Harvard (back when both of those degrees still meant something), he could have walked into a high-paying job and written his own ticket.  But instead he joined the Navy while still in school, and spent time as a JAG officer in Gitmo and Iraq, sacrificing a ton of income to serve his country, before starting his political career. 

I don’t want to over-do it on the praise, because he’s still a politician, and a human.  He definitely has his flaws (lack of charisma, stiffness of style) as a campaigner.   And he wants to be president, which always makes me at least a little suspicious.  (A reliable Book counsels me to, “put not your faith in princes.”  And I’m Martin Simpson, and I endorse that message!)

I just hope that the smears against him haven’t precluded him from a future presidential run.  Not least because I don’t see a ton of Republican alternatives out there with strong records of consistent conservatism.  (For every Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, Ted Cruz and DeSantis, there are a hundred Romneys (Ronna and Mitt) and other RINOs.) 

If the Schiff-storm of slander against RDS has made him toxic for 2028, I think some of his “conservative” bashers are going to come to a hard realization when they are complaining next time, “Why are we surrounded by RINOs?  Why aren’t there any trustworthy conservative Republicans for us to support?”   

Because you had a great one as an option, and instead of just saying that you preferred Trump and acting like gentlemen, you took up a bunch of leftist lies (“He’s death-Santis!”) to try to destroy him. 

This is why we can’t have nice things, or decent politicians.

Okay, I had to get that off of my chest!  But having said that, I’m pulling for Trump now, and I don’t think the amount of pessimism about his chances expressed in Sunday’s thread is justified. Especially if Joe Biden continues to lie in state as his opponent.          

I know it sounds like I’m really down on Trump’s candidacy, but that’s only because I’ve come to mostly dislike him as a person.

I know that sounds weird, but let me explain:  I am much more concerned with the policies and results of a pol’s governing than I am with his/her personality.  To me, one of the most irritating tropes in politics is the idiotic cliché, “People vote for the guy they’d most like to have a beer with.” 

Ugh.  I have beers with guys I’d like to have a beer with, usually because they have a good sense of humor, are politically rational, and demonstrate good judgment when talking about books, movies, football and music. 

To me, politicians are a lot like lawyers: they have their purposes, but a life well-lived is usually one in which you spend the absolute least amount of time dealing with either of them as possible. 

I think that’s generally true of most conservatives: our philosophy is, “that government is best which governs least.”  We want law and order, strong borders, a military that will deter attacks, and defense of our constitution.  Beyond that, leave us alone, because we are free people, and we’ve got this.

That’s not the case with lefties.  Politics is their religion, and government is their jealous god, and they tend to try to make heroes of their leaders, even if that means futilely trying to hammer a dead peg into a round hole.

Sorry, that’s “square.”  A square peg.  

The left deifies their leaders.  Lenin’s corpse in Red Square, the cults of Stalin and Mao.  JFK is King Arthur in Camelot, instead of the philanderer who botched the Bay of Pigs.  Bill Clinton is a feminist hero, instead of the groper in chief and Juanita Broaddrick’s rapist.  Obama is a historic Light-Bringer rather than a spendthrift racial grifter who lied that we could keep our doctors and health plans.  

Brandon is presenting a special challenge for them, but the Dems are still praising him (“We can’t keep up with him!  Bidenomics is tickety boo!”), and are doing their best to beat a dead president across the finish line in November.

Sorry, that’s “horse.”  They are trying to beat a dead horse across the finish line.  I don’t know why I keep making that mistake.    

Anyway, my point is that I’m not looking for a drinking buddy when I vote for a president.  In fact, sometimes the very qualities that I wouldn’t want in a friend are the ones I appreciate in a president, if they produce good political results. 

For example, many said that Trump was impulsive and volatile, and he might fly off the handle and bomb another country if that country’s leaders p*ssed him off.  Not a great quality in a best friend, in a bar. 

But we all know how that worked during Trump’s presidency: Putin didn’t make a peep.  The weird beards in Iran and Gaza and Lebanon didn’t instigate a mass murder of Jews.  The Chicoms didn’t move on Taiwan, like they’re about to.  A bunch of rag-tag Houthi pirates minded both their “Ps” and their “Qs,” rather than rampaging through the Red Sea.

That’s good presidential foreign policy.  I’d like more of that.  Also affordable gas and interest rates, millions fewer illegals pouring across the border, and more strict constructionist judges.    

Don’t get me wrong: all things being equal, I’d still prefer good personal qualities in a president.  (Sobriety, honesty, self-control, no intern-banging, etc.)  But the main thing I want is disciplined, successful, conservative governance. 

If I can get that – whether from a man or a woman, or a straight person or a gay person, or a black person or a white person or an orange person, or an old guy or a young gal, or an extrovert or an introvert, or a boring guy, or a nerd, or a braggart, or a skirt-chaser, or a guy in a Stephen Hawking wheelchair who speaks with an electronic, robot voice – I don’t care! 

So yes, while I recognize and admire some of Trump’s good qualities, I don’t like him much as a person, and that’s a shame.  At my age, I’m still looking forward to voting for a president whom I think can do the job AND whom I can look up to as a person.  (I got to do that in the last several governor’s races, and it felt GREAT!)

But as I understand it, conservatism and MAGA have a lot in common.  In fact, if you drew up a Venn diagram of conservatism and MAGA (the sound you just heard is Que Mala perking up her ears), you’d have around 90% of overlap. 

The only MAGA stuff outside the conservative circle seems like personal loyalty to Trump, and a requirement to side with him when he’s doing something anti-conservative. 

And while I’m going to give that one a big ol’, Dr. Evil-style, “How about no!” I’m happy with the other 90%.  In fact, that’s more than I’ve had with any president over the last 4 decades.

Now I hope we can all do as much as possible to support Trump for the next 10 months, and call attention to the myriad of reasons why Biden and the Dems need to be swept from power, so we can start undoing the damage of the last 3 years. 

Hamas delenda est!   

Mostly Good News Stories, Despite the Iowa Caucus(posted 1/19/24)

Today I’ve got a couple of lighter stories, and a few post-caucus thoughts on the state of the election.

First up, the great conservative humor site Babylon Bee continues to impress.  They ran into a little controversy this week with a joke they posted about Vivek after he dropped out of the race.  It was a silly and harmless joke, but apparently a lot of conservatives got upset enough to give the Bee some grief about it.

Which is really annoying, because we’re supposed to be the folks with a sense of humor.  It’s the humorless leftists who are always getting triggered, pulling their non-binary onesies over their heads and running for safe spaces when a somebody tells a joke involving ethnicity, gender, or pretty much anything.

(I remind you of this oldie:  Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb.  A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!) 

In his response to the critics, the Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon confirmed my positive impression of him: “Some of our readers have expressed concern about this report, suggesting it did not meet the high journalistic standards they’ve come to expect from us. We want you to know that we’ve listened to you. We’ve heard your voices. And they are stupid.”

Perfect! 

Of all the things that should not be taken too seriously, jokes are right up there near the top.

For example, here’s a humor test: a Breitbart story yesterday reported a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the headline, “Factory activity in New York suffered an unexpected collapse in January.”

The story goes on to fill in the gory details: the index of business conditions plunged 29.2 points in January to a negative 43.7, and a drop of 58.2 points over two months.  (Numbers below zero indicate worsening conditions.)  Those stats are the worst since April of 2020, when the economy was decimated by the sudden pandemic lockdowns.

Don’t see the humor in that?  It’s in a subtle word choice from the headline: “unexpected.” 

Okay, so I’m no Norm MacDonald.  But I find the absurd to be funny, and nothing is more absurd than a bunch of leftists foisting economy-crippling policies on a state, and then calling the resulting cripple-ation (cripple-osity?  cripple-tude?) “unexpected.”

It would be like saying, “Dems Prevent Cops from Arresting Criminals; Crime Unexpectedly Skyrockets.”  Or, “Newsom Tries to Fiscally Rape Productive Taxpayers; Productive Taxpayers Unexpectedly Flee California.” 

Or, “The DNA Test Results for Blonde, Blue-eyed Liz Warren are in: She’s Unexpectedly Categorized as Super-Duper-Blindingly White.”  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In another feel-good story, Bilal Nofal has been eradicated.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, “Bilal Nofal” is not a super contagious virus that we’ve discovered a cure for.  Although come to think of it, you should have probably always maintained at least 6 feet of distance from Bilal Nofal.

Because Nofal was a top Hamas spy chief, “in charge of investigating suspects of espionage.”  That means he sadistically tortured people he suspected of helping the Jews.

I use the past tense because on Tuesday the IDF was flying a plane over Nofal and then – yada yada yada – he experienced a SBAMD.  

If you’re not up on your military acronyms, that’s a Sudden Ballistically-Assisted Molecular Disassembly.

Also, since it’s never “too soon” to mock a dead terrorist scumbag, here’s a fun fact: Bilal Nofal’s name can be disassembled and reconfigured (just like his body was on Tuesday) (HA!) into the anagrams “albino fall” and “anal fob ill.” 

(Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)   

Ooh, I’ve got one more.  If only CO would make me the honorary headline writer for Cautious Optimism, I would title the above story as follows:

“Anal Fob Ill F**ks Around with the Jews; Unexpectedly Finds Out.”   

And here’s one more feel-good story, this time from Missouri, where a burglar named Darren Venneman was plying his trade of breaking into houses on Strawberry Lane in Qulin last Saturday night.

Unfortunately for him, the homeowner was a Second Amendment enthusiast, who responded by shooting him five times.  In other words, Venneman got ventilated on the mean streets of Qulin, Missouri. 

If by “mean streets” you mean… Strawberry Lane, I guess?  Yeesh.

Venneman was airlifted to a hospital, but died of his wounds.  The local sheriff says that the homeowner won’t face charges, since he acted in self-defense. 

Because: Red State!

But even in common sense red states, people still have to endure the scourge of the media.  And local media seemed to sympathize with the burglar, calling his death “tragic” and “untimely” and an “unforeseen tragedy.”

Though it sounds to me like his death was extremely timely, in that he broke in and was immediately – you might even say “punctually” – shot. 

Also, “unforeseen” is close enough to “unexpected,” and thus worth a Simpsonian “HA-HA!”  (As in, “Moron Breaks into Gun Owner’s House, is Unexpectedly Shot.”)

Nonetheless, the media story ends by expressing condolences to Venneman’s friends and family, saying, “May they find strength and support during this difficult time.” 

But judging from local commenters’ reactions to the local news story posted on Facebook, the community is coping with their grief just fine. 

Sample comments include, “Excellent! Good for that homeowner!” and, “Try that in a small town!!” and, “This is how we thin the herd.” and, “Bet he won’t do that again.”

Indeed.  God bless Missouri!

Finally, I congratulate the always-Trump contingent of CO nation after the first caucus; the polls were accurate, and Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa was impressive.

I’m still a DeSantis supporter, and while I’m not surprised at the depth of support for Trump among the base, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see RDS give Biden the old SBAMD in November.  (Not least because I think Biden would have been forced to debate RDS at least once, and that would have been a blood bath for Brandon!  I know that Trump would destroy Biden too, but by refusing to debate in the primary, he’s given Biden’s handlers the excuse to refuse a debate in the general, which he will absolutely do.)

DeSantis is a fighter, but absent a meteor strike in the next month or so he’ll have to withdraw, and Haley is farther to Trump’s left than Trump is to DeSantis’ left, and thus she’s not an option for me.   

So the base has made its choice, and the die has been cast, and we must win in November, so when RDS suspends his campaign, I’ll be getting back on the Trump train with both feet.  

I’m really hoping that the optimism of the super-MAGA segment of CO nation (and the entire nation) is justified.  I’m more worried than that, for reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I also see some positive signs, too.  The bogus lawfare cases against Trump seem to be crumbling on several fronts, and polls indicate that a lot of people (though not as many as should!) see those cases as illegitimate.

Trump still has his strengths, and if we can keep Biden from dropping out, Trump’s biggest weakness (his historically bad, underwater disapprove/approve numbers of -15 points) should be trumped by the fact that Biden is the only other pol in recent history with the same, -15 number. 

And Biden’s all-around terribleness should ensure that number doesn’t get any better, and will likely get even worse!

And Trump’s numbers in Iowa remind us that you’ve got to give it to him: the man is a human tornado!    

I want to see him drop out of the sky and destroy a bunch of MSM empty heads, then skip a few miles before descending and turning the DNC headquarters into kindling, then skip up again and come down on Biden’s White House and level the place. 

Would I like it if he could also discipline himself, and maybe avoid dropping down and taking out some grade schools and orphanages, and some conservative subdivisions full of people who don’t love him but will support him, too? 

Absolutely.   And if he could say at least two or three smart and funny and true things for every counter-productive one, that would be another bonus. 

His speech on Monday and his interview on Wednesday were steps in the right direction: “We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not gonna have time for retribution.  And remember this, our ultimate retribution is success.” 

Yes!  More of that, please! Hamas delenda est!

I’m Still Capable of Being Surprised, Up to a Point (posted 1/15/24)

You know the kind of cliches that indicate that something will never happen?  Like saying, “The gals on the View will have an intelligent conversation… when pigs fly.”  Or, “Joe Biden (RIP) will achieve a foreign policy success… when hell freezes over.”

Well I think I’ve discovered a new cliché of that type.  And I can use it in a sentence.

Like this one: “The MSM will cover a conservative fairly … when a big blue city’s Democrat mayor says something true about economics.” 

Okay, so it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  But on January 10th, when a reporter tried to get New York City (RIP) mayor Eric Adams to criticize Gov. Hochul’s decision to not raise taxes, he said this accurate thing, which I swear I am not making up:

“Well, we are one of the highest-taxed states in the country outside of California, and you have to find the right balance.  [I]n NYC in general, 2% of New Yorkers pay 51% of our taxes.” 

And then – flap your wings to warm them up, piggies – he said, “We’re seeing a hemorrhaging of, not only working class people, but we’re concerned about losing that high tax base…” 

Before he finished with – strap your skates on, Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein and Fidel Castro – “…because that tax base pays for our police officers, our teachers, our firefighters, keeps our streets clean.”

I know.  You could have knocked me over with a feather plucked from the wing of an aerodynamically successful swine. 

A leftist mayor said something true about the dangerous results of leftist fiscal policy.  I think this might be a new day dawning.  We might be on the verge of a return to sanity, opening the possibility of a functional bipartisan—

Oh no, wait.  This just in, from one day later:

When asked in an interview about the unfolding illegal immigrant disaster in his city, Adams said that NYC “has done a great job” handling the surge, and that, “This has nothing to do with sanctuary cities.  Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the [country].  They’re here legally.”

Annnddddd… we’re back.  Pigs can’t fly.  Hell is still hot.  And big city Dem mayors are still allergic to reality and accountability.

Case in point, the Round Mound of Unsound Policy, Illinois Governor Pritzker, has sent a letter to Texas Governor Abbott, asking him to stop sending illegals to Chicago.  “I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves.  Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives… do not send more people to our state.” 

In recent months, Pritzker has called Abbott’s policy “a cheap political stunt,” and in his new letter he complained that, “Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.” 

Got that?  It’s not Biden’s fault for inviting millions of illegals to flood across the border, and it’s not Illinois Democrats fault for declaring Chicago a sanctuary city for all of the future illegal Democrat voters in south and central America (mi casa es tu casa!).  It’s the Republicans’ fault.

Your party has opened the border, J.B.  I know how surprised you are that even with all of this global warming that is about to boil us to death, the forecast for Chicago right now is for a freezing cold winter.

If only there were some places where the Mexicans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans and Venezuelans could live where they weren’t in danger of becoming Latinx-cicles.

Oh wait.  There are such places.  And they’re called Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela. 

So get off your high horse, put down that comically oversized turkey leg, and give your party’s leader a call.  (Fair warning, though: you may need a Oujia board.)   

One final piece of advice, and this is a paraphrase of Claudine Gay’s immortal words from Animal House (“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”):  

Delusional, two-faced and double-chinned is no way to go through life, Governor.

Meanwhile, in Texas, rational people are continuing to do things right. 

One such rational person is Terry Willis, a resident of a Houston suburb.  This week his surveillance cameras alerted him to a small group of Biden voters (I’m guessing about that part… but I’d bet Hunter’s life on it) going through his neighborhood, trying the door handles on parked cars.

When four of them came up his driveway and let themselves into his ATV, which was on a trailer behind his truck, he walked out into his yard to speak with them. 

He said, “I apologize that our evil society has given you such a bad deal in life.  Please help yourself to my sanctuary ATV.  Because: Massachusetts!”

Oh no, wait. This story happened in Houston.

So when he walked into his yard, he was carrying his AR-15 rifle.

Because: Texas!

He racked in a shell and said, “I don’t think you want to do this.”  And the criminals ran away, leaving a trail of cowardice and human waste in their wake.

When interviewed, Willis said, “For approximately 20 years, I’ve had a concealed weapons permit.  I’ve also been through hunter safety courses.  I’ve built guns.”

Did you get that?  While leftists have been building DEI programs, abortuaries and memorials to recidivists like Michael Brown and George Floyd, Terry Willis has been building guns!

Did I get a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, watching that news story?  Maybe.

I can’t think of a better way to end this column than with Terry’s closing words to a local reporter:

“I’ve worked for 40 years of my life.  Everything that I’ve got… never stole anything, and I’m just not taking it anymore.  This ain’t the place to come, because we’re tired of it.”

Yes.  Yes we are.

But if those misunderstood youngsters are looking for a place where citizens ARE willing to take it some more, and are NOT tired of it, I’d suggest Chicago.

But get yourself a clean pair of pants and a nice warm coat first!

Hamas delenda est!   

I’ve Noticed That There Might Be Something Wrong with San Francisco (posted 1/12/24)

Today, I’m starting off with a hypothetical question: What would be your top governmental priority if you woke up and found that through some horrific series of unfathomable events, you had become a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors?

I know.  It sounds like the premise of one of the darker episodes of the Twilight Zone.  Or that Franz Kafka story, “The Metamorphosis,” in which the protagonist finds that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant bug.

I remember the first time I read that weird opening scene, when Gregor Samsa wakes up to discover his shell-like back and his segmented belly and his numerous, creepy, insectile legs.   And he fought off despair only by telling himself, “It could be worse: I could be a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.”

That’s how I remember it, anyway. 

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  You wake up to find that you’re responsible for the management of San Francisco.  And after you struggle manfully with your gag reflex and the instinctive impulse to leap from the nearest window, you stagger over to a huge table and sit down amidst the collection of oddballs, weirdos and nutjobs who are responsible for managing what was once one of the finest cities in America.

What would be your first order of business? 

Maybe tackling the piles of human excrement encroaching on every doorway and park bench in the city, like snow drifts in North Dakota in January? 

Or maybe dealing with the zombified army of meth heads slumping in those doorways and on those park benches? 

Or possibly starting an innovative pilot program in which cops are actually empowered to arrest criminals, instead of helping them steer their shopping carts full of stolen loot around the poop drifts between the soon-to-be-closed stores and “Syringe City.”  Which is what they call the motley arrangement of tents and broken-down RVs in which they “live.”

Would it surprise you to know that the actual board of supervisors recently marched right past those options and chose Door #4: “Let’s pass a resolution to tell a successful foreign country how it should conduct a war of survival against a feral mob of genocidal, jihadi freaks.”?

I’m not making that up.  In early December, a board member proposed a resolution urging Israel to agree to a ceasefire so that Hamas could try to recover from their well-deserved butt kicking, and live to rape and terrorize another day.  (I’m paraphrasing here.  But accurately so.)

And since then, countless imbeciles have spent countless hours debating countless amendments and revisions to this meaningless exercise in governmental Toobin-ing.  Tears were shed in public comment sessions.  Badly rhyming slogans were chanted.  Idiotic pronouns for non-existent genders were thrown about with great abandon. 

A giant photo of a bombed out hellscape that had once been a business district in Gaza was projected onto a wall of the meeting room.  The audience booed, and lambasted the Israeli government that caused such destruction.

Until someone noticed that the giant photo of a devastated Gaza was actually a giant window, through which the audience was looking at the bombed out hellscape that had once been a business district in San Francisco. 

So somebody closed the curtains, and the Jew-bashing went on. 

And finally, this week, the epic debate moved into its final phase, before culminating in a vote on the resolution.  One Supervisor who had been born in Iran talked about the Islamic fanatics who had tormented her family.  She testified movingly that, “I was born in a place where I heard gunfire outside my window.”

Or at least I think that’s what she said.  In the video of the event, I couldn’t hear her clearly over the sound of gunfire outside the window of the building she was in.  In San Francisco.

Another loon, Hillary Ronen (and what is it with women named “Hillary” in this once-great nation?), spoke through tears of how the backing of the evil USA is enabling “the far-right” (sic) Israeli government to “continue its ethnic cleansing campaign” (sic) against the “Palestinian” (sic) “people.” 

When the gaggle of morons in the room cheered her ridiculous statement, Ronen said, “This is one of those days where it feels like we are still San Francisco.” 

She got that right, at least.

Finally, on Tuesday, the board voted 8-3 in favor of the resolution. 

And throughout Israel, when the Jews heard about the vote, they immediately saw the error of their ways, and they beat their swords into ploughshares, and offered the peace-loving “Palestinians” a two-state solution.

And the “Palestinians” crawled out of the rubble, and shook the concrete dust off of themselves… and immediately started raping and torturing Jews, and beating them to death with their own ploughshares. 

Or they would have, if the Jews had been foolish enough to pay any attention at all to the delusional denizens of San Fran-feces.  Thankfully, since the IDF was busy hunting and killing terrorists, they just mumbled about the fakakta California Democrats and went about their business.

But the resolution was still a success, because it achieved its primary goal: making a bunch of impotent losers and pseudo-revolutionaries feel good about themselves.  They cheered, preened, and congratulated themselves for their great victory.

One spokesman, Wassim Hage, summed it up this way: “The hope is that this resolution will put the Biden administration on notice.  San Francisco leads Democratic politics in a lot of ways in the United States.” 

He’s not wrong about that.  I hope that people will recognize that when they go to the polls in November.

The Babylon Bee summed up the entire farce well: “War Ended For All Time After San Francisco Board of Supervisors Votes for World Peace.”   

But as is often the case, the eloquent former Harvard president Claudine Gay said it best: “War (huh) What is it good for?  Absolutely nothin’! (Say it again.) Blessed are the peacemakers.  All you need is love.  I am the walrus, goo-goo, g’joob.”  

Hamas delenda est!   

I’m Looking on the Sunny Side, So Far this Year (posted 1/5/24)

I’ve got the uneasy feeling that there’s going to be a lot of unsettling news as 2024 goes on, but for now the year is fresh and new, and I see a lot to be optimistic about. 

FSU got deservedly humiliated in their bowl game, anti-Semitic identity hire Claudine Gay got tossed out of her Harvard presidency, and the Native American president of Penn got tossed overboard even more quickly than Gay did. 

Okay, I’m not sure the Penn lady is an Indian, but since she’s as white as Liz Warren and has nice cheekbones, I’m just assuming.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In the ongoing battle of Hebrews vs. Terrorists, the good guys are putting wins on the board by taking hateful creeps off the board.  On January 2nd, a bunch of Bond villains from Hamas, Fatah and other “Palestinian” and Lebanese terror groups were meeting in Beirut.  (I picture a bunch of guys with eye patches and facial scars sitting in high-backed chairs around an enormous conference table over a glass floor covering a giant aquarium filled with sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.)

Then the Mossad and IDF came calling, as reflected in my super-accurate re-enactment here:

Sound at the door: Knock, knock.

Hamas money and weapons guy Salah al-Arouri: Who’s there?

Door:  Kosher drone.

Salah (confused): Did anyone order a kosher drone?

Collection of thugs: We ordered death to Israel, with a side of death to America, but no kosher drones.

Salah: Wait a minute… kosher?

Drone: KA-BLAM!!! 

The following day, an assistant commander in Islamic Jihad’s northern Gaza division with the ridiculous name Mamdouh Lulu was recorded live as he walked on a Gaza street, talking to a companion.  As the Israeli eye in the sky watched, the two split up and Lulu went on his merry way, probably with visions of having non-consensual sex with a goat dancing in his head.

Annnnddddd… he was vaporized in an Israeli airstrike.  Which sounds about right, since lately the leading cause of death for terrorists in Gaza is “spontaneous vaporization.”

I’d like to think that the pilot said, “Screw you, Lulu,” when he fired the missile.

But one thing is clear: Lulu didn’t even have time to say boo hoo before he went bye bye.    

That very same day, a huge crowd of terror enthusiasts gathered for an upbeat tribute to the late Iranian super-villain Qasem Soleimani (or, as he became known after Trump found out his whereabouts, “goo in a Jeep”) in a cemetery (appropriately enough) in the Iranian town of Kernan.

Annnndddd… several bombs went off in the crowd, killing over 100 people and wounding at least 140 more.  And before you can say, “Yeah, but how many innocent people may have been hurt or killed in those explosions?” remember that the crowd was there to venerate the memory of a Jew-hating mass murderer.

So, zero.  Zero innocent people.

As satisfying as it would be to chalk this karmic strike up as yet another successful Israeli chess move, reports suggest that a Sunni Muslim group was behind the bombing.  I’m not a Muslim-ologist, but I understand that many Sunnis are not particularly fond of the Shia running Iran.   

So let me first applaud those Sunnis. And to the Shia, I just have one question:  Are you going to let those guys get away with that?   

But it’s not just vaporizing terrorists who are getting this year off to a good start.  It’s also some imploding DEI spending initiatives.

One hopeful story on Breitbart reported that after a huge increase in DEI programs and hiring several years ago, “tech giants including Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google have slashed their funding of DEI programs in 2023 by up to 90 percent.”   And as AOC could tell you, that’s nearly half!

Even as PR flaks and spokes-castrati at the tech companies continue to mouth platitudes about the value of DEI, their shareholders and bosses have realized that that value is commensurate with the number of innocent people attending Soleimani-Fest ’24, and they’re trying to avoid having the market give them the Lulu treatment.

Meanwhile in Florida, Ron DeSantis has caused yet another big leftist interest group to weep and gnash their teeth.  (Man, I wish we could have a conservative door-kicker like that guy as our president!)  This time it was a huge teachers’ union – the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) in Miami-Dade county – who is looking at de-certification because of a RDS-backed right-to-work law requiring that a union meets a dues-paying membership threshold of 60% to stay in power.

Despite a panicked push to boost their membership – including sleazy tricks like smearing the law’s backers and kicking substitute teachers out of their bargaining unit to lower the number of teachers required to meet the 60% threshold – the UTD came up short. 

And now Florida parents may be about to gain even more control over their kids’ education.  And an influential public union that is way less concerned with educating students than with laundering union dues for Democrat candidates and the DNC. 

Finally, I’ve got a few thoughts about the very encouraging signs coming out of the Claudine Gay implosion at Harvard.  I don’t think that forcing her out means that Harvard and other universities have learned their lesson and will now reform themselves.  If they had, they wouldn’t let her return to a faculty position and get paid $900K a year.  (That’s more than I make in several years, and I never plagiarized in my dissertation, or anywhere else!) (If by “several years” I mean “ten years!”)

But I do think that the damage to the reputation of Harvard and Penn and universities in general is serious.  The public has seen behind the curtain, and now recognizes the corruption and inexcusable and offensive racial politics there.  The empress was obviously wearing no clothes.

And very stupid and ugly glasses!

The premise behind affirmative action was always that it would only involve a very light touch on the scale, and only to tilt an outcome when two job applicants or students were very evenly matched in every other way.  If that was ever true, it hasn’t been true for many, many decades. 

The recent SCOTUS debate and ruling on affirmative action in college admissions revealed the ugly truth that preferred minorities with bottom-quintile test scores and qualifications were being admitted at higher rates than whites and Asians in the top several percent. 

And Claudine Gay’s exposure just hammers that home.  A non-identity hire trying to become president at a top school like Harvard would need to have published a number of books, at least several of which would have to be ground-breaking, influential works in their field, amongst a large number of articles and decades of high-profile service.

Gay wrote a total of zero books, and only 11 peer-reviewed articles. And she didn’t even write most of those, as her prolific record as a high-volume plagiarizer proves! 

Not to mention that every one of those articles was about race – one of the least rigorous fields in academia, to put it nicely – and all of them were predictably banal and unoriginal, as they only re-packaged the fashionable prejudices of the left: whites are evil and racist, the West is terrible and America is worse, “people of color” are eternally oppressed victims.      

Gay is a hack and a mediocrity, and she went out as she came in: playing the race card, and playing the victim, and lying her butt off. 

It’s right and salutary that the American public got to see that.

More please!

Hamas delenda est!   

Ready for a New Year (posted 1/1/24)

I hope that your year has started off as well as mine.  Since we had covid on Christmas, we had our Christmas celebration on New Year’s Day, with Karen’s brothers and their families coming to the house to feast and exchange gifts. 

So I started 2024 off with a Merry Christ-year!  (Which I generally prefer to a Merry New-mas, though your holiday mileage may vary.)  

As always, on the cusp of a new year, one’s mind naturally turns to marking the passage of time, and looking backwards and forwards simultaneously. 

When I look back on 2023, I’m extremely grateful for many things happening in my personal life – disproportionately so, given the perilous condition our nation appears to be in: a relationship with my Creator who loves and forgives me; the patient, smokeshow wife; the healthy and thriving kids; the envy of canine-dom in the form of Cassie the Wonder Dog; the chance to live in a state with the best governor in the country, etc. 

And though I’ve said it before, I’ve probably not said it enough: the chance to sound off on the Cautious Optimism site has been a source of great comfort and joy in my life.  I mean that sincerely: comfort and joy!  (Yes, I’m still in a Christmas mood, since we just celebrated today, and the 12 Days of Christmas extend through January 5th.) 

In December of 2016, the Great and Powerful CO invited me to contribute my occasional musings to this site, and since then I’ve had seven years of getting stuff off my chest, and lowering my blood pressure, and meeting so many great people.  I can’t thank all of you enough! 

If I can risk tainting the new year with a shameless plug…As regular readers know, when I post a new column here, I post the most recent column to my WordPress site, Martinsimpsonwriting.com.  There you will find all of my columns going back to 12/16, as well as some pictures, a few short stories, and a few videos.  If you like what you see there, you can click “subscribe,” and you’ll get an email notification each time a new column appears.

Looking forward, I’m going to be posting a handful of short stories I wrote during another life as a fiction writer, and a lot of pics of my (finally!) restored Victorian house, Rosewood.   I’m also going to try to record and post at least one video a month on various topics of interest.  (If anything is on your mind that you’d like to see discussed, please let me know.)   

When I look forward to the next year in the life of our country, though, things are a lot more cloudy.  In an election year when the stakes are so high and our national life so troubled and deteriorating, my fascination with politics – properly understood and undertaken – alternates with an increasing disgust with the grubby reality of politics as they are actually pursued.

When I’m in the latter mood, Wordsworth’s words sum up my instinctive distaste for public life: “The world is too much with us; late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” 

Since I’ve retired, I’m not as focused on getting or (hopefully!) spending.  My big-picture concerns now require more focus on how I spend time than on how I spend money.  And spending time thinking about politics and politicians can often seem a foolish expenditure indeed!

But as soon as I say that, I recognize that politics are shaping the world that my kids and future grandkids will live in, and so attention must be paid.  Plus, it is therapeutic to mock dishonest pols and bad ideas.  Besides, both Thomas Moore and C.S. Lewis said that the devil cannot stand to be mocked, and those guys knew a few things.

And if that applies to Satan, I’m sure it applies to his minions (i.e. most politicians) too. 

But there will be a lot of time for mockery later.  For now, I’d just like to point out at least one silver lining during our current national malaise.

Although some of our problems are definitely hard to solve – social security is going broke, our national debt is staggering, our universities need ground-up renovation – many of them really are not. 

It’s amazing how many “crises” should be simple to solve, because they arise from logical errors that would be ended with the application of the most basic common sense.  For example: 

It’s not good to sterilize young people, or cut healthy body parts off because they are going through a phase of discomfort with their bodies and/or mental illness.  (The defining characteristic of being young is going through phases, so don’t make permanent and irreversible physical changes!)   

You get less of what you punish, and more of what you reward.  So if you reward criminals – make excuses for their crimes, minimize their punishments (ridiculous plea deals, short or no sentences, no penalties) – you get more crime. 

Giving a drunk a drink doesn’t help him, and most of our welfare system is the institutionalized form of buying alcohol for alcoholics.  Stop that.

A country without a border cannot remain a country, and cutting illegal immigration by 95% is a very simple task.  It’s very hard to stop the last 5% or so, but if you build physical barriers and man them with adequately armed officers, and then take into custody and either immediately jail and deport everyone you catch, the draw for future illegals will be stopped. 

Law and order MUST be maintained throughout our society, and our current hands-off strategy seems literally insane to me.  Allowing mobs of protestors to attack public and private buildings, and to close off major highways and bridges, and to terrify students and cops and paralyze major universities (just as allowing millions of illegals to break into our country and disperse throughout it) – all of these are voluntary choices.

Mind-bogglingly, inexplicably, and weapons-grade stupid choices!

Especially because, again, the solution is so simple and obvious, in every case:

When a-hole narcissists block a highway or bridge to paralyze a major city, give them a few quick warning honks, and then drive right through them.  (If any of them suffer injuries but then have to wait a long time for an ambulance to reach them because of the congestion they’ve caused, they can use that writhing-in-agony time to reconsider their life choices.)

When pro-terrorist students riot and assault other students and university officials, expel them permanently and jail them immediately.

“But Martin,” I can hear you saying, “despite the brilliance of your words, the logic of your argument, your personal charisma, and (let’s not deny it) your knee-weakening physical attractiveness, we don’t have the resources or manpower to drive-over and pepper spray and jail and deport millions and millions of Biden-voting wastes of space!”

Yes, but we wouldn’t have to.  We’d only have to demonstrate our determination to the first few troublemakers, “pour encourager les autres,” as the Frenchies say.   

Picture this:

The first antifa thug in a crowd to throw a bottle at the cops gets a faceful of pepper spray and/or birdshot and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first BLM whitey-hater who storms a courthouse gets a bean-bag round to the groin and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first two arrogant morons who try to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge are partially squashed in a game of human Frogger, and if they survive that, are cuffed and arrested in the hospital…

How do you think their co-would-be-revolutionaries would react after seeing that? 

Or how about this: What if the two gender-confused, identified-as-male-at-birth “leaders” of a clot of cosplaying grievance-studies majors who attack a pregnancy-support center or Supreme Court justice’s house were arrested and taken to jail.  And once there, they were photographed and printed and tossed into a holding cell – with their frosted pink hair and facial piercings, wearing a “Queers for Palestine” t-shirt over a gender non-binary skort — with a dozen recidivist criminals.

And the next day, after their rich yet feckless parents have bailed them out, what if they limped back to the collective and told their tearful tales of prolapsed this and bruised that, and how they discovered a whole new meaning of “misgendering” in jail…

What do you think would happen to the attendance at the next hate-filled leftist assault on a public institution or building?

Okay, that last example might be going a little too far.  On the other hand, if we have to err on the side of either letting the rioters destroy our society, or letting criminals open a can of macro-aggressions on their temporarily incarcerated carcasses, let’s go with Door #2. 

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, predictable and swift consequences will concentrate the mind of even the most mouth-breathing, AOC-IQ-level miscreants among us.  So why haven’t we tried that lately?

Let’s learn the lessons of 2023, and make 2024 the year of re-instituting cause and effect, and reaping what you sow.  

Hamas delenda est!   

Saying Goodbye to 2023 (posted 12/29/23)

I’m happy to report that the Simpson family is on the mend.  We got back home on the 22nd from a great visit with the eldest daughter and our new son-in-law in Denver, and then got covid on Christmas eve.  But after a couple of days of feeling lousy, I’ve gotten back to about 75% of my usual capability.

And while I’m loath to brag on myself, even at 75%, I’m much more capable than the current presidents of Harvard or the United States at their 100%.  (I know: that’s not much to boast about.)  

Since this will be my last column of the year, my instinct is to try to look back on the major events of 2023.  But the big picture is a little too disheartening to me for that right now.  So instead, I’m going to ramble through a few stories that caught my attention recently, and that I’d taken a few notes on before I got sick.   

First up, I saw a clip of CNN Chief Legal Analyst Laura Coates on a recent edition of Bill Maher’s show.  And before you say anything, no, I’ve never heard of Laura Coates either.  And good lord no, nobody with the title of “CNN Chief Legal Analyst” should generally be taken seriously on any topic, for any reason, at any time. 

However, her response to one question perfectly represented the consistent self-regard of our leftist “betters” in the media, especially when it comes to demanding that we deny obvious realities when they contradict lefty narratives.

When Maher brought up the economy and Biden’s recent record low polling, Coates said, “I feel like people talk about the ‘feel-onomics,’ right?  How I feel about something more than what the actual data is…”   

Got that?  Leftists like Maher and Coates think that normal (deplorable) people rely on their “feelings” about the economy, rather than on “data.”  Which is more than a little ironic, coming from the ideologues for whom “feelings over data” might as well be their motto, credo, and one single commandment.

Feel like a 14-year-old girl named Genevieve?  Then ignore the 50-year-old bearded face you see in the mirror, because that’s just an irrelevant data point. 

Feel like Hamas is opposed by the peace-loving people of Gaza?  Then ignore the cheering throngs in the streets when raped and dead Israeli women are paraded around and spit on, as well as the polls showing that 75% of Gazans support this very thing.  Just more data points. 

Feel like Biden is healthy and competent, and that Grandma Squanto is an Indian maiden (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and that Ilhan Omar isn’t a brother-marrying jihadi-sympathizer, and that Hunter isn’t a brother’s-widow-jumping, degenerate, addicted bagman for his dad? 

Then ignore all the information that your eyes and brain present to you, because those are just irrelevant data points.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, people ignore data about the economy in favor of their feelings. 

I’ve got news for you, CNN lady.  Every time we go to a grocery store, or buy gas, or apply for a mortgage we are being pelted by many, many painful data points.  And similarly to when any blunt object strikes you in the groin – ice cream has doubled since Brandon arrived?  I NEED my ice cream! – you “feel” pain.

And that pain doesn’t contradict data points.  It is the natural consequence of contact with those data points.  You idiots!

Speaking of dishonest media propagandists, a recent obituary of the inventor of Glock pistols reads like a parody of ignorant, bad-faith character assassination. 

The man’s name was Gaston Glock, and he died this week at the age of 94, and the column starts with some basic information, followed by his company’s statement about his contributions to the industry.

And then it turns into a game of what Adam Carolla has called, “Stupid or Liar?”  Because the writer has to be either one or the other.

He says, “It is unknown how many people have died as a result of Glock handguns.”

What?

Then he notes that the Glock was an improvement over other guns of its time, but follows with, “But many gun control advocates criticized Mr. Glock for popularizing powerful guns that they said were easy to conceal and could hold more ammunition than other guns.”

Okay.  So gun grabbers “criticized” his product for being superior to its competitors?  Got it.

The rest of the article is a long listing of mass shootings which evil criminals carried out with Glocks!  I kept reading, certain that I’d eventually get to the part where the writer estimates how many millions of crimes have been prevented with Glocks, how many murders, assaults and rapes were stopped with Glocks, etc.

HA! I kid. 

Because I knew what to expect when I read the headline that this shmuck gave his article: “Man who made billions out of death and killing dies at the age of 94.” 

I’m not making that up.  And sadly, this article typifies the level of sophisticated thinking on display in most anti-second amendment arguments. 

Speaking of defective thinking, California leftists continue to reap what they’ve been sowing. 

From 1902 until 2019, California gained population every single year.  And now, for the third year in a row, they’ve lost population. 

Headlines throughout 2023 tell the story: “CA’s population is on the decline, and high-income earners have joined the exodus” (March 23rd).  “CA ranks #1 state wealthy Americans are moving away from” (July 25th). “CA is leaking vital high-income taxpayers” (August 21st). 

My favorite LA Times headline – because of how clearly it reveals the writers’ low opinion of their lefty readers’ intelligence – comes from December 19th: “Rich People are Leaving California. That’s bad for the economy.”

DUH! 

As the headlines suggest, the state is not getting a good trade in terms of who is leaving and who is moving in.   Even before we look at the numbers, we can all guess what each group looks like. 

People fleeing:  Those who want to work hard, earn money, and keep more than 48% of it.  Those who want to start a business and employ people.  Those who don’t enjoy physical combat with either micro-managing petty bureaucrats or violent, mentally ill drug addicts.

People arriving:  Meth enthusiasts who prefer living outdoors over gainful employment, and like warm winters.  Grievance study majors with a tackle-box worth of facial piercings and a blog espousing “quiet quitting.” Those who enjoy the freedom of waking up around noon, rolling out of their sleeping bag, and pooping on the sidewalk.   

And no offense to CNN lady, but the economic data back up those “feel-onomic” factors:  Recent IRS data shows that the average income of leavers was $137K, while the average of arrivers was only $75K.

Losing almost twice as much on every such “trade” would hurt the income of any state.  But CA is a leftist state where the evil rich have been paying their “fair share!”  If by “fair share” you mean that the most productive 1% should pay 40-45% of all state income taxes. 

The good news is that after the last three disastrous years, CA’s political leaders finally seem to have learned their lesson, and are reversing course in 2024, cutting taxes in an attempt to lure back successful citizens. 

HA!  I kid again. 

Ken-Doll Newsom, fresh from his debate beatdown by DeSantis, signed legislation to increase the top state income tax rate from the already highest in the nation 13%, to an eye-watering 14.4%!

Annnndddddd…

one year after Ken-Doll bragged about having a surplus of $97.5 billion, the state has experienced “an almost unbelievable 25% decrease” in income tax collected, and now expects a $68 billion DEFICIT next year.   

You know what I call that, don’t you?

That’s right: Bidenomics!

Finally, I’d like to end 2023 on another positive note, with a feel-good Christmas eve story from relatively near Bethlehem.

This time of year, I usually like to watch festive videos such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  But this season, my favorite video was produced by the IDF.  It tells the heart-warming tale of Hassan Atrash, the terrorist most responsible for arming Hamas, as well as smuggling weapons into the West Bank.

Since Israel has had the good sense to ignore Biden and Blinken (and Lloyd Austen and Blitzen!), they’ve been knocking off most of the worst terrorists in Gaza.  And a few days before Christmas they discovered a car that Atrash was riding in. 

They had a jet in the air, and followed Atrash’s car on video, as it wove through the crowded streets of Rafah.  Then, when it moved down a less crowded street, the Israeli pilot got the command and launched a missile.

And to paraphrase an old seasonal poem:

“It sprang off its rail, with a hiss and a whistle,

And it dropped through Hassan’s roof like the down on a thistle.

And the pilot exclaimed, as he flew out of sight,

Shalom, mother-friender, the dust you can bite!”

I love a happy ending!

By the way, THIS is a story that deserves a headline like, “Man who devoted his life to death and killing dies at the age of 68.”

But I will settle for brevity: “IDF takes out Atrash.”

I’ll see you in the new year, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!   

I’m Sick, so Here’s a Throwback Column! (posted 12/27/23)

I hope you all had a great Christmas!  I had a great trip to Denver, but then my whole family got covid for Christmas!  The wife and daughter got it first, and it caught up to me on Christmas eve.  And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t in church on Christmas eve. 

So since I’m not yet back on my feet and capable of providing you the top-shelf snarkery to which you’ve become accustomed, I thought I’d declare this to be “Throw-Back Wednesday,” and re-post two stories I enjoyed writing about last January:  

From 1/27/23:  

In my recurring “Find A Mirror!” series, this week’s entry comes to us via a would-be Olympic athlete named Sha’Carri Richardson.  Her trouble is totally unrelated to the silly apostrophe in her name, even though it does violate one of the well-known rules found in wisdom literature the world over.

(Don’t get into a land war in Asia.  Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. Don’t invest with a leftist weirdo like Sam Bankman-Fried.  Never use an apostrophe in your first name.  Etc.)  

The last time we saw Sha’Carri, she was getting tossed off the US Olympic team for smoking weed shortly before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.  Rather than, you know, preparing for the Olympics WITHOUT smoking weed. Which sounds just crazy enough to work!

Full disclosure: I can’t say that I ever saw her in any Olympic stories or coverage, because football is not in the Olympics, while many goofy sports are.

(Although there is that one cool sport where people ski around with rifles on their backs, and then stop and shoot things, and then ski some more.  Ever since the Finns cleaned up in that event in the 1930s, and then punched above their weight against the Russians in the Winter War, I’ve got a soft spot for that event.)

(Okay, I just looked it up, and it’s called the “biathlon.”  Which is what I’ve been mistakenly calling Bruce Jenner for the last several years.  Boy, is my face red!) 

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

If you search Richardson’s name online you’ll find a lot of pictures of her during various races and workouts (between bouts of weed smoking, presumably), and you may notice that her hair was often either orange or yellow.

I only mention this because I am deeply offended by cultural appropriation, and unless there is a Skaarsgard or Hrothgarsdottir in her family tree, she should be ashamed of herself.  (Yes, I’ll say it: she’s the Lizzie Warren of pot-smoking, non-Scandinavian sprinters.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But Richardson’s latest problem has nothing to do with her vestigial apostrophe, or her racially offensive hair color.  It all stems from her advanced case of NUSS (Narcissistic Un-self-aware Snowflake Syndrome), which went from dormant to active on an American Airlines flight on Saturday.

I know what you’re thinking, and let me stop you right there:  Obviously, I normally wouldn’t be able to diagnose a stage-four NUSS case without spending some in-person clinical time with the patient.

But in this case, Richardson recorded herself throughout the incident, in the delusional belief that she was 100% correct, and that everyone who viewed her video would naturally side with her.  (That belief is actually one of the 7 recognized symptoms of NUSS that you’ll find in the DSM 5.  You can look it up.)

Anyway, our video opens with Richardson making a selfie video on the plane, as the recorded message saying,“turn off personal electronics” is playing.  (Classic NUSS-ster move!) A passing male flight attendant reminds her to turn off her phone in preparation for take-off, and she immediately NUSSes out on him:  “I’m recording me, but you jumped in my video, so I caught you because you jumped in my video. You’re harassing me at this point, so I think you should stop.”

Over the next ten minutes she escalates, getting louder and more profane as other passengers make it clear that they don’t agree that she’s the fixed point around which the entire solar system revolves.

She also gestures dramatically with her boxcutter-length fake fingernails (NUSS Symptom 4), and compulsively flutters her small-badger-sized false eyelashes (Symptom 5).  

When the captain finally gets involved and orders her off the flight, her first question is, “Is [the flight attendant] going to be removed off the plane as well?”  Then she asks if the captain can come to her seat so that she can make him “understand the situation.”  (Symptom 2) She also insists that the flight attendant is at fault because he “invaded [her] privacy” by intruding on her video. (Symptom 3)

Also, she informs one of her fellow passengers that, “I’m still a superstar, and you’re a regular person.” (Symptom 1: NUSS Symptom Bingo!)

As she finally leaves the plane, many passengers applaud.

Now generally, receiving applause creates one of life’s most enjoyable moments.

For example, during my career as a professor, I would often receive rounds of applause, and not just because my funny and thought-provoking lectures weren’t forcing anyone to miss a connecting flight to Dallas.  And even when my students would hoist me on their shoulders and carry me out of the classroom chanting, “Simp-son, Simp-son!” they weren’t applauding the fact that I was leaving the building.

Sure, maybe those tales are slightly exaggerated, or maybe in some cases – technically speaking – “imaginary.”

And maybe some of the polite applause I often received had something to do with the fact that I had total power over my students’ grades, so they were like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

(And that’s how you score in the category of “Puritan Sermon References” on Jeopardy, people.) 

Still, it is a major red flag when you meet several hundred people for the first time, and 11 minutes later they are cheering as you are forcibly driven from among them.

Therefore, Sha’Carri Richardson, you need to…

Find a Mirror!

From 1/23/23

The British Museum has tragically succumbed to advanced wokeness, having recently decided to stop using the word “mummy.” To spare the feelings of easily triggered 3000-year-old cadavers, I guess?

“So what do I call a mummy?” you’re not asking, because you’ve got a life to lead and you’re not an imbecile.

The proper term now is either “mummified person” or “mummified remains.”

Ugh.  Are we going to going to have to discuss mummy pronouns next?

Even the National Museum of Scotland has joined in the insanity.  One of their spokeswomen said that they either use a mummy’s individual name (if known), or else “mummified, man, woman, boy, girl or person.”

Which opens a whole ‘nother can of worms.  (Sorry: a whole ‘nother can of “soft-bodied invertebrates belonging to the phylum Annelida.”) (See? You learned something here today, didn’t you?) (Also, when you read “soft-bodied invertebrates,” how many of you instinctively thought of Jerry Nadler?)

Anyway, all phyla aside (Boom! Irregular Latin plurals for $1000!), why don’t the insensitive clods in Scottish and British museums consider that saying “mummified man or woman” could be mis-gendering them?

And you cannot say, “I judged based on the mummified phallus on that mummy.”  Because if academics have taught us anything lately – and the jury may still be out on that – it’s that women can have phalluses too.  (Yes, I could have also said “phalli.”  Don’t get pedantic with me when I’m on a roll.)

Now where was I?  Oh yeah.

When you read “mummified phallus,” how many of you instinctively thought of either Bill Clinton, Dick “nobody calls him ‘Richard’” Durbin, or Richard “everyone secretly calls him ‘Dick’” Blumenthal?

Okay, this first item has gone totally off the rails.

But only because extending the woke lunacy to the point of trying to protect the feelings of people who have been dead since before Bernie Sanders got out of middle school is so ridiculous.

Even if you accepted the premise, though, here is a short list of things that mummies would be more worried about – if they could worry about anything – than being called “mummies”:

a. Being associated in any way with Imhotep Pelosi.

b. Whether these burial wrappings make their butts look too big.

c. Having had their brains scrambled and removed with iron hooks, leaving them with the cognitive function of AOC.

In related news, I will be calling a press conference tomorrow announcing that we should no longer call dullard politicians, “idiots.” Instead, I decree the favored alternatives to be either, “Idiotic Person,” or “Person Stricken with Idiocy.”

Or, in the case of Joe Biden, “Idiotic Remains.”

Okay, I’ll be back on my feet and writing new stuff again shortly.  But in the meantime, don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!   

The Bitter and the Sweet at Christmas (posted 12/18/23)

As you read this, my wife and youngest daughter and I will be flying to visit Katie (my oldest daughter) and her husband in Denver.  We’ll be returning home on Friday, and I hope to still be able to post a column that morning. 

I’m feeling a little of the usual, mild disorientation I feel before traveling, made much stronger now by the insane twists and turns our political world has been making.  For one example, a conservative blogger turned me on to a 10-minute rant that Chris Cuomo made last week about Israel and Hamas… and I found myself agreeing with every word he said! 

I know: Chris Cuomo!  The dullest of the Cuomos!  And yet he made perfect sense, pointing out how evil Hamas is, and how leftists who are joining in with the anti-Semitic mobs chanting for genocide are making a huge moral and political mistake.

Then I see a clip of Frankenstein Fetterman, and he’s continuing to make sense too!  Now he’s said that even though he is pro-immigration, we still need to stop the unvetted flood of immigrants who are crossing our border daily.  He’s also been taking more and more heat – and standing up to it – for continuing to back Israel against Hamas. 

The usual fanatical suspects got their burkas over their head about him telling the truth about Hamas and calling them “terrorists.” Over the last month protestors have blocked streets outside his Philly office and heckled him at events.  And he responded by saying that he’s not a progressive.

So yeah, I’m a little dizzy.  Chris Cuomo is making sense; Fetterman is acting more like a Republican Senator than most Republican senators; the world is upside down, cats and dogs are living together, nothing makes sense anymore!

I’ve done a lot of the usual mockery lately, and the dominant tone of my recent columns has been mostly negative: it seems like the world and our nation are deteriorating before my eyes, and we have one national party that is going farther and farther to the radical and – I don’t know what other word to use – evil left.

And the other party seems like it’s bound and determined to do everything in its power to break my heart, personally. 

But it’s Christmas time, so I want to change the focus in this column. 

This has always been my favorite time of year, starting when I was a kid.  I loved the snow, I loved the carols, I loved the Christmas plays at church.  Oddly enough, though I’ve always been a wise guy, I was never a Wise Man. 

Speaking of which, I just remembered a dumb joke about kids portraying the Three Wise Men at church.  The three kids approach the manger, and one of them holds up a small box and says, “I have gold.” And he puts it down.  The second kid says, “I have myrrh,” and puts it down.  And the third kid steps up and holds out his box and says, “Frank sent this.”

Anyway, in my own experience, being young and blessed to be growing up in a loving and stable family, in the mostly functional and cohesive Midwest, Christmas was unadulterated bliss. 

But as I’ve reached my sixth decade, it’s pretty easy to understand why this holiday can be a depressing time for many people.  Mixed in with the good things, we can easily succumb to bittersweet nostalgia for lost loved ones, lost youth, and happier times that appear even more glowing because of their distance from the gritty present. 

And when tragedy happens near Christmas – as it inevitably does over a long enough time span, considering that the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season is about 1/8th of the year – the losses bite deeper when the season reminds us.

My dad died 9 years ago last Thursday, and Alzheimers has taken more of mom from herself and from us over the past year.  A loved one died in the prime of her life last Monday from an unexpected autoimmune disease and pneumonia, leaving three kids and a devastated extended family. 

Life continually reminds us that it isn’t fair, and that we’re not guaranteed anything on this earth.

Still, this site is about cautious optimism, and I don’t know if I’m getting wiser, or just older.  But my increasing sense of the brevity and fragility of life really is making me value and appreciate each day more and more.  (You may remember my column last month, in which I quoted the end of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73: “This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong/To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”)(That guy knew some stuff.)

And if that’s the case for every regular old day, for me it’s even more true of Christmas and the Christmas season.  So I thought I’d conclude this column by recommending a few of my favorite Christmas books and music, and ask you to share some of yours.

I’ve written before of how much I love Dicken’s great “A Christmas Carol.”  Even though we all get sick of songs, movies and people who get over-exposed – and no cultural production has been experienced more often than A Christmas Carol! – the tale has never gotten old for me. 

I still enjoy watching it on tv, and my favorite version has fluctuated between the 1938 version with Reginald Owen and the 1951 with Alistair Sim, but in recent years the 1999 version with Patrick Stuart has elbowed its way into a near, three-way tie.   

I re-read at least most of the book every year, but in recent times I’ve taken to listening to it as a book on cd (or streaming), as read by the late, great Frank Muller.  You can easily find that recording, and if you’re traveling for the holidays, listening to the combination of Muller’s voice and Dickens’ masterful writing should put you in the spirit of the season. 

This year conservative Hillsdale College – a great contrast and counterpoint to the kind of woke malice on display in the Ivy League and in way too many other universities –  has put out a six-episode course on the Carol. 

The videos are well done; their total run time is around 3 hours, and you watch them for free by registering on the Hillsdale site.  An English prof named Dwight Lindley walks you through the text, mostly celebrating but also explaining and interpreting, and it’s worth your time.

When it comes to Christmas music, it goes without saying that when the great and powerful CO performed his own version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” on guitar last Christmas at my request, I had reached the pinnacle of coolness.  (Perhaps he can re-post that before Christmas, for those who have found the CO site over the last year?)

I’ve always thought that you can’t go wrong with Christmas carols played by brass quartets.  I’ve also written in the past about the quirky but effective takes on many carols from Sufjan Stevens, which are worth checking out on line. 

The Christmas song that I listen to the most in recent years is “O Come, O come, Emmanuel,” probably because its combination of hope and mourning speaks to the bittersweetness that I discussed above.  

My favorite version lately is the OG country/bluegrass one by the Petersons, a family with three sisters with great voices. They do a 5-minute melding of “O Come, O Come” and “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” that is all kinds of right.  The instrumentation comes from a banjo, violin, mandolin, cello, guitar and dobro, and while I appreciate a symphony, my hillbilly heart loves those six instruments together. 

Finally – and this one might be a bridge too far for those of you who are not religiously inclined – I recently discovered Chosen, the video series on the life of Christ.  In general, I’m a little put-off by most video versions of the Bible or Bible stories, but this series is really well done, and captures what seems to me to be the essence of the Man and His story. 

If you’re inclined to give it a try, I’d suggest one particular scene to give you a taste of the series: the story of Christ meeting the woman at the well.  The scene is only around 7 minutes long, but it captures the essence for me.  And even if you’re not a believer, if that scene doesn’t choke you up at least a little, I don’t know what’s going on with you.  

Okay, CO nation.  I’m off for some family time in Denver.  If you’ve got particular Christmas traditions, music or anything else that makes the season for you, please share them. 

But as the holiday approaches, we must still not forget…

Hamas delenda est!

Fauci’s Vanity, Several Hamas Apologists Receive Karma, & Gaslighters Gotta Gaslight (posted 12/15/23)

Today’s column is going to be a grab bag of stories I either just saw, or haven’t had a chance to comment on.  Because even in a 3-column week, there are more rant-worthy stories than I’ve had time to rant about. 

For example, if you would have asked me one week ago, “Martin, do you think it’s metaphysically possible for you to be more disgusted with Anthony Fauci?”  I would have said absolutely not.

But then Fauci said, “Hold my orb and my scepter and my holy chalice, and watch this.”  And he gave an interview to the BBC in which he explained that while he “identifies as a Catholic,” his own personal ethics are so awesome that he doesn’t need to practice religion. 

First, his “identifying” as a Catholic is no more meaningful than Richard Levine “identifying” as a woman named Rachel Levine (not to mention his identifying as Admiral of the Seven Seas).  Or the Pale Puritan Senator from Massachusetts “identifying” as the “Miss Cherokee Cheekbones” winner from the Great Plains Pow Wow of 1980.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Second, who could have guessed that a guy who had no problem identifying himself as the embodiment of capital “S” Science would also give himself an A+ for moral and theological perfection? 

(I still think that continuing to prop up and defer to Fauci was one of only two significant failures of Trump’s term.  Due to our dysfunctional government employment bureaucracy, Trump might not have been able to fire Fauci, but he certainly could have banished him to some remote clinic doing STD testing, and ensured that he would never represent the White House on national tv again.)

To summarize, Fauci is The Science.  And also, apparently, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Science except through him!

As long as we’re here in theology corner for the moment, did you catch the story on Tuesday of the  Turkish member of parliament who gave a dramatic speech berating Israel?  His name is Hasan Bitmez, and he called out his fellow Turks for not being sufficiently pro-Hamas and pro-terrorism.

He ended his stemwinder by addressing Israel directly, saying “You will not escape the wrath of Allah!” 

Then he said to his fellow pols, “I salute you all.”

And then… DOWN GOES BITMEZ!  The guy went from hate speech to horizontal in two seconds!

And this wasn’t a Joe Biden-style collapse – which happens thrice a week, and can be caused by anything from sandbags to stairs to a stiff breeze.  This was a full-on heart attack.  He was rushed to the hospital, where he died yesterday.

If this was a theological column, I might cite Jehovah on the issue of Israel (to wit, that He will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her).  But this is not a theology column, and I’m not a theologian.

So I’ll just cite Nelson Muntz, from my namesake tv show: “HA! HA!”

As long as we’re on the subject of Israel and Hamas, I came across yet another dishonest and emotionally manipulative article on the current war, this time from CNN.  (Surprise!)

It is a tear-jerker tale of a Palestinian “writer and academic” named Refaat Alareer who stayed in a part of Gaza that the IDF had warned civilians to leave, and was killed in an airstrike on December 7th. 

The story paints him in glowing terms, stressing that he was a civilian, that he was “trapped” in Gaza, and that he had edited several collections of essays, pics and poems depicting the suffering of “Palestinians” under “blockade” and “siege” by Israelis.  He somehow never mentions why such a blockade or siege might be in place.  (Hint: Even after Israel pulled out of Gaza 17 years ago, Gazans kept murdering Jews in unprovoked rocket and terrorist attacks.) 

He was called “a towering figure in Gaza,” a “generous, gracious, gentle, patient” man and “a force for good.”  The article ends with the words of a former student of his: “We remember and carry on Refaat’s legacy.  Refaat the storyteller, father, husband, son, teacher, and friend.”

But in the middle of the story, as a kind of throat-clearing aside – quickly mentioned and then dropped –is this little nugget: “While Alareer’s death is being mourned by Palestinians (sic), some of his comments have caused offense.  In a BBC interview he described the October 7th attacks as ‘a pre-emptive attack by Palestinian resistance’ that was ‘legitimate and moral.’”

Huh. 

Again, I’m no journalist, but I think I can fix this story’s headline: “Dishonest, Anti-Semitic ‘Palestinian’ Terrorist Supporter Reaps What He Sows.”  You’re welcome.

And while we’re on the topic, I’m seeing an awful lot of video of “Palestinian” civilians weeping over their loved ones killed or injured in the war, and their grief is understandable.  However, I’d like to hear just one of the “reporters” covering those stories ask the mourners a simple question: “What do you think of the 10/7 attack on mostly unarmed Israeli civilians?”

If the “grieving” “civilians” respond by condemning Hamas and their evil actions that have caused these air strikes, God bless them, and they deserve sympathy.

But if they respond by spitting out some genocidal hatred for Jews and praise for Hamas, the reporters should thank them for their thoughts, then hop into a Jeep and drive a safe distance away.  And then call in another airstrike on that location. 

Because “friend you,” malicious sufferers of karmic justice!

Speaking of the dishonest MSM, when CNN scooped PBS with their lying about Gaza, PBS tried to keep up, by lying about what caused recent Irish riots in Dublin. 

On 11/24, a man the media worked diligently to NOT identify stabbed five people, including three children.  After many months of crime and social unrest prompted by many unvetted immigrants being allowed into Ireland against the will of most citizens (sound familiar?), many Irish were fed up, and started protests that definitely did not remain peaceful.

The Irish press and authorities made things worse, as is their wont, by imposing an information blackout that fed rumors.  The cops had no information to release on the stabber – except, oddly enough, that they were 100% certain that the motive was NOT terrorism!  They wouldn’t comment on rumors that the knifester was an illegal immigrant from a Muslim country. 

After several weeks went by, it turned out that he was in fact an Algerian immigrant who had come to Ireland legally 20 years ago, and had been living on the dole before he went all stabby.  But the MSM focused much more on how terrible the Irish protestors were, decrying the evil xenophobes who carried such inflammatory signs as ones proclaiming, “Irish Lives Matter.”

No good person excuses the subsequent riots and vandalism.  But the same kind of arrogant leftist governments who happily go down endless rabbit holes searching for the “root causes” and excusing every murderous rampage by preferred groups – jihadis in the Middle East and around the world, BLM and antifa in the states, etc. – directed their ire solely at the put-upon Irish citizenry.

When Bill Maher asked PBS “journalist” and first-class gaslighter Jane Ferguson about the potential reasons behind the riots, she gave a very wordy answer that never mentioned Ahmed al-knife-bladi.  Instead, she described the riots as a “fomented” act by a “very tiny minority” that’s “very loud and very violent.”  She further characterized the movement as “anti-immigration” and “basically the usual populist kind of conversation.”

Funnily enough, even when MSM critics had to admit that Ferguson’s response was BS, the best they could do was to point out that the riots “were triggered by a variety of factors, not solely anti-immigration sentiment,” and claim that social media was another culprit.  In other words, they did everything but admit that the Irish people might have some legitimate cause for concern.   

Guys, I’m no journalist – neither are most of you, apparently – but you’re burying the lede, and missing the point, and you can’t see the forest for the trees (along with whatever other phrases might indicate that your heads are up your arses).

Here’s what started the riots – which you would be calling “peaceful protests” if you were at all ideologically consistent: Against a backdrop of a wave of crime and social disruption caused by illegal immigrants from Muslim countries throughout Europe and in Ireland, an unemployed and non-contributing immigrant stabbed three Irish children.  And most Irish people tend not to like that.

There.  Was that so hard, PBS cranial-rectal inversion lady?

So what have we learned here today?   

That although I’m no theologian, I’m still a better theologian than Tony Fauci and Hasan Bitmez, and although I’m no journalist, I’m still a better journalist than anyone in the “mainstream” media.

Sure, those are low bars… but I am clearing them!   

Hamas delenda est!