Author: martinsimpsonwriting

Well, it’s been another eventful week, full of highs and lows.

On a high note, Tucker Carlson ran a graphic from one year ago this week that warmed my heart:  “The New York Times reports that Hillary has a 93% chance of winning the election in a couple of weeks, compared to Trump’s 7% chance.”

I’ll never get tired of that.

 

On another high note, my favorite story of the week involves the subject of a one-question quiz:

Question: Who or what is “Wunk Sheek?”

1. A famous Klingon warlord
2. The sound Hillary made last September when she collapsed against a waiting limo and then slid down its side until aides caught her.
3. The latest Malaysian model/actress to claim that Harvey Weinstein groped her.
4. An “indigenous student group” at the University of Wisconsin.

The answer, of course, is “D,” you ignorant, Eurocentric jerk.

It seems that the Wunk Sheekers were at their excited, Wunk Sheekiest during a recent protest of Columbus Day.   I mean, Indigenous Peoples Day.

And somehow, because history is apparently not their strong suit, they directed some of their ire at Abraham Lincoln.  Who I guess co-discovered the New World, spread small pox among the angelic natives, and took tobacco and syphilis back to his native Italy on his ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Mary Todd?

Anyway, a Wunk Sheek spokesperson, who identifies as “Misha” – and your guess re: pronouns for this one is as good as mine – said the following, which I am not making up:  “Everyone thinks of Lincoln as the great, you know, freer of slaves, but let’s be real: He owned slaves….”

Um, no.  If you want to be real, Misha, you’re going to have to pull your wunk out of your sheek, and open a history book, where you’ll find that Lincoln was a Republican who not only did not own slaves, but actually did free them.

There was a party, though, that did fight to keep slavery, and then created the Klan and Jim Crow and poll taxes and Robert Byrd.    Can you guess which party that was, Misha?   I’ll give you one hint: its founder was Andrew Jackson.

And before you Google him, let me pass along a trigger warning: he was not an enthusiastic supporter of Indigenous People’s Day.

 

 

 

On a low note, it turns out that Kid Rock is NOT going to be running for Senate.

I know what you’re thinking: “Martin, you’re a connoisseur of the fine arts, and a devotee of classical music, with impeccable taste when it comes all that is noble and edifying.  Also a handsome, and a powerful man.  We don’t see you as a typical Kid Rock fan.”

You would be right – and also an insightful judge of people.  But as much as I am not a fan of rap, I would be up for a Kid Rock vs. Frederica Wilson contest in Florida’s 24^th Congressional District.  Sure, his lyrics might not be deathless prose, but I’d stack them up against the unhinged mewlings of national embarrassment Wilson.

Move over Cole Porter, and stand back, Gershwins.  Make way for the aesthetic bliss of the opening lines of “Bawitdaba.”

To wit:  “Bawitdaba, da bang, da dang diggy diggy/ Diggy, said the boogie, said up jump the boogie.”

Okay, now that I typed that out, it’s not so impressive.  However, put it next to this gem from Wilson, which I quoted last week:  “The dog can bark at the moon all night long.  But it doesn’t become an issue until the moon barks back.”

That’s just as stupid, and it doesn’t even rhyme!  (And yes, I know that “boogie” doesn’t exactly rhyme with “diggy.”  But it’s fairly close, and not nearly as rhetorically unsatisfying as a moon that barks at a dog.)

Or consider this get-out-the-vote appeal to her political base, from Frederica’s last campaign speech:  “I need all of your votes, including The G’s with the 40’s and the chicks with beepers/The northern lights and the Southern Comfort/ And it don’t even matter if your veins are punctured/All the crackheads, the critics, the cynics/And all my heroes at the methadone clinics… not to mention all my homies in cell block 6.”

No, wait. Those are more lyrics from Bawitdaba.  Although they are also an eerily accurate description of Wilson’s core voters.

Anyway, the point is that I would gladly vote for Kid Rock over Wilson.

Or Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters over Maxine Waters.

Or Rush’s Geddy Lee (and he’s Canadian!) over Sheila Jackson Lee.

Or Bela Lugosi (and he’s dead) over Nancy Pelosi (full disclosure: she may be dead, too).

Or Cassie “the Wonder Dog” Simpson over any Democrat, and half the Republicans.

 

On another low note, how about that Harvey Weinstein?

Democratic bundler, friend of Bill and Hill, supporter of feminist causes, admired staple at Hollywood dinners, fundraisers and award shows.  Also, horrific sexual predator whom none of our moral superiors in Hollywood could bother themselves to criticize or expose for three decades.

One bright side of the Weinstein scandal is that I now have a new favorite oxymoron: “open secret.”

As in, “it’s been an open secret for years that Harvey bullies every man and assaults every woman who crosses his path.”  And yet Hillary was shocked – SHOCKED! – to find that Harvey was less than a perfect gentleman.

For a super-brainy woman who once had a 93% chance of being elected president (that never gets old!), she certainly seems to find herself getting shocked by the antics of sexual predators around her a lot.

What might be the most incomprehensible part of the whole sordid story is how bad Weinstein was at being a pervert.  He had some of the most beautiful women in the world under his control… and he made THEM watch HIM shower?!

I don’t even like to watch myself shower, and I’ve got the body of a Greek god, honed by years of marathons and javelin-throwing to near-perfection.    Whereas Harvey looks like a troll mated with a gnome and had a baby, who then adopted a horrible diet and let himself go.  But he’s insisting that the gorgeous starlets in his hotel suite keep their clothes on and watch while he shampoos his back hair.

Ugh.  Please, Jimmy Kimmel et al, tell us more about how we are all deplorables who need your wise counsel on how to live moral lives!

 

Speaking of deplorable, when I wrote about Frederica “Half-gallon brain in a 10-gallon hat” Wilson last week, I hadn’t yet noticed what may well have been her most revealing comment – her crowing that, “Niger is going to be Trump’s Benghazi.”

Obviously, the Rhinestone Cowgirl is not smart enough to realize the implication of what she was saying.  Because for the last few years, her party has been insisting that Benghazi was not “Benghazi,” i.e. it was not a scandal at all.

It was an unforeseeable tragedy, caused by a horribly offensive video, which enraged a bunch of otherwise peace-loving Muslim passers-by – who happened to be carrying small arms and rocket propelled grenades, as one does during one’s evening walks — to the extent that they spontaneously launched a spontaneous hours-long attack on a US embassy, culminating in four spontaneous murders.

When she was finally called before a congressional committee to explain, Hillary morphed into the mob guy in Goodfellas, explaining to DeNiro that Pesci got whacked instead of getting made:

Congressional Questioner:  “What happened to Ambassador Stevens? Did you get that straightened out?”
Hillary:  “Well, we had a problem.  And ah… we tried to do everything we could.”

Questioner:  “What do you mean?
Hillary:  “You know what I mean.  He’s gone. And we couldn’t do nothing about it.”

Questioner:  “But isn’t it true that Stevens sent repeated requests for more military support?”

Hillary: “Look, there was this video.  And there was nothing we could do.  He’s gone.  And that’s it.”

And now along comes Annie Oakley Wilson, saying that the non-scandalous tragedy in Niger is going to be Trump’s version of Hillary’s scandal in Benghazi, which Wilson’s party has insisted for years was not a scandal.

Once again – nice job, Democrat voters of Florida’s 24^th district.

 

This past week has been a mixed bag for me.

Personally, I’ve had the unutterably painful experience of watching two loved ones in their 70s receive diagnoses of late stage cancers that resulted in life expectancy of less than four months.  Both of them are responding with stoicism and grace, and my wife and I are going to have the privilege of bringing our relative home with us, where she’ll be surrounded by loved ones and supported by hospice during her final months.

I will respect their privacy and not discuss any other details here, except to say that hospice is great and deserves our support, and that smoking is every bit as bad as advertised.  Both of them began smoking in their teens, and that has played a key role in their respective diseases.

I know that at this late date, everyone knows what smoking does.  But if I can add my voice to the throng of nagging busybodies in your life, please try to quit again.  Use whatever gimmick or strategy you can – nicotine gum or patches, prayer, support groups, hypnotism, acupuncture, voodoo, loved ones willing to douse you with a bucket of water when you light up.

Whatever it takes.  If you’ll pay my airfare, I’ll personally fly to your house and read excerpts from one of Noam Chomsky’s terrible books when you light up, as a form of aversion therapy that probably violates the Geneva Convention.   But please quit!

Thus ends today’s sermon.

And now: things that don’t really matter all that much.  Like idiot politician, and the idiotic voters who elect them.

Before yesterday I’d never heard of Frederica Wilson, and my life was better for it.  She’s a Democrat African-American congressdope from Florida, and she’s been embroiled in the mini-scandal about what Trump said to the widow of a dead serviceman in a condolence phone call.  A call which Wilson listened in on, just in case you thought she might be a classy human with an ounce of decency.  Nope and nope.  (If you haven’t heard about it, Google it for the painful details.)

The story is a perfect Rorschach test, as many political stories are.  It’s a she said/he said tale, but to believe her take on it, you’d have to believe two things:  1. Wilson could tell the truth if her life depended on it.  And 2. Trump would call and intentionally insult the wife of a dead serviceman.

I don’t believe either, needless to say.  Trump says a lot of crude, insensitive and clumsy things.  But this smells like a political hack operating in bad faith to either manufacture or purposefully misinterpret a statement from Trump for her own grubby ends.

General John Kelly – and since Patton is dead, Kelly is neck-and-neck with Mad-Dog Mattis as my most admired general — gave a press conference excoriating Wilson, referring to her as following in the long tradition of “an empty barrel that makes the loudest noise.”

I hadn’t heard that one before, but now I’m going to try to use it every day.

As in, “By the way, did you notice that Hillary in a pantsuit bears an uncanny resemblance to an empty barrel, and she tends to make a lot of annoying noise?”

See?  Thank you, John Kelly.

Anyway, how would you guess that a brainiac like Frederica Wilson would respond to that shot across her empty bow?  As reported by CNN (I know, but still), “Wilson told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that Kelly’s “empty barrel” remark was racist, but didn’t explain why.”

Didn’t explain why, you say?  I guess I have to be the one to point out the obvious.  Barrels often contain oil.  And oil, as I’m sure Elijah Muhammad has explained at one time or another, is black.

So, res ipsa loquitur — Frederica Wilson would probably say, if she wasn’t a total dope and knew even one cool Latin phrase – racism.  Duh!

I’ve spent the last 15 minutes – which I will never get back – looking through the debris field of Wilson’s political record.  And from that I learned two things:  1. She is a far-left loon whose presence in Congress speaks very poorly of the constituents who elected her.  And 2. She apparently inherited an extensive hat collection from a wealthy cowboy pimp.

I’m guessing that her parents were really hoping for a boy who would one day drive cattle from Topeka to Dallas.  To assuage their disappointment when she was born, they nailed her with the name “Frederica,” stuck a ridiculous baby cowboy hat on her empty head, and foisted her upon the voters of Florida’s beleaguered 24^th District.

Seriously, look at her hat pictures.  In fact, pull up a split screen of a few lovely ladies in the reproductive organ headgear from January’s march, alongside one of Wilson’s garish hats.  If you could look up the phrase “opposite of a thinking cap” in the dictionary, those are the pictures you would see.

If there is no such cliché as “a two-pint brain in a 10-gallon hat,” I would like to invent that now, and apply it to Wilson.

But not satisfied with eavesdropping on a condolence call and then trying to score political points off of it, she steered into the stupid skid, releasing this tweet: “ I still stand by my account of the call b/t @realDonaldTrump and Myesha Johnson. That is her name, Mr. Trump. Not “the woman” or “the wife.”

Hilariously enough, the mother’s name is actually “Myeshia” Johnson.

I am not making that up.  In a snotty, three-sentence tweet meant to excoriate Trump for not using the grieving widow’s proper name, Hopalong Bonehead GOT THE GRIEVING WIDOW’S NAME WRONG.

Ugh.  To complete the empty barrel trifecta, Wilson gave an interview afterwards, an excerpt of which appeared on Bret Baier’s show.  Wilson said,  “Let me tell you what my mother told me when I was little.  She said, ‘The dog can bark at the moon all night long.  But it doesn’t become an issue until the moon barks back.’”

Cut back to Bret, wearing the same confused expression that my Aussie shepherd gets when I try to explain to her that Frederica Wilson is in congress.

By the way, I would bet my life that Cassie ‘the Wonder Dog’ Simpson would make a much better representative than Wilson.  She doesn’t have much foreign policy experience, but she is a strict constructionist on Supreme Court nominees, and she is very tough on crime, having protected our house from burglars for over three years now.

Plus she’s up to date on all of her shots – which, judging from that little barking moon story, I’m guessing that Frederica Wilson is not.

If it didn’t mean moving to the 24th district, I would create an exploratory committee tomorrow.   The first ad would feature my beautiful girl at attention – her one brown eye and one blue eye staring soulfully into the camera — behind a chewed-up, bedazzled cowboy hat, with the slogan, “Cassie Simpson – Who’s a good girl?  Not Frederica Wilson!”  Tagline: “My name is Cassie Simpson, and I approve this—WOOF!”

Before I dive into my second column in a month on the virtues of failure, I have to note the passing of Tom Petty.

Petty is on my Mount Rushmore of musicians.  I started following him in high school, and he’s the rare rock star who continued to put out quality music over many decades.  I chose my grad school in part because Petty had come from that town.  (I know – not the most mature way to choose a grad school.  But on the other hand, unknown to me, my future wife lived there, and God used Tom Petty to get me into close proximity to her.  From there, it was up to my charm and pig-headed persistence during the courtship process to wear her down.  Mission accomplished!  And to quote Petty, the waiting was the hardest part.)

Losing Petty is a doubly bitter blow because of the knowledge that singers with horrible music and worse politics like Cher (71) and Barbra Streisand (75) and Madonna (112) inexplicably live on.

In fact, in my darker moments, I have to keep from thinking about the unfairness of great creative people who are gone, versus horrible ones who seem impervious to death.  Off the top of my head, Vince Flynn, Robert B Parker, Elmore Leonard and Tom Clancy are all dead.  Flynn is an especially bitter loss, because he was so young.  But many of you might say that Parker, Leonard and Clancy were in their 70s or older, so their deaths aren’t a shock.

Okay.  But you know who else has lived into their 70s, and yet continue to torture us with terrible books?  Hillary Clinton (later this month) and Bill Ayers.  In fact, Bill Moyers is 83, Dan Rather is 85, and Noam Chomsky is 88!  And they’ve been living on nothing but bile and hatred of America for at least the last 30 years!  And that’s not to mention that Harry Reid and Maxine Waters are still alive in their late 100s, and Nancy Pelosi was a teenager in the Pleistocene Era, and is still fixing me with that glassy-eyed mummy stare through my television screen several times a week!

Ugh.  Got off on a tangent there, didn’t I?  Anyway, I’ll miss you, Tom Petty!

And now, on to failure.  (If I can steal Hillary’s original title for her book on 2016, before she wussed out and went with “Wha’ Happen?”)

Last month I wrote about how entertaining failure can be, whether it’s from a rapper who gets gunned down 10 minutes after crediting God with making him bullet proof, or environmental extremists who get trapped by ice on a sailing expedition to show how the oceans are boiling.  And I didn’t even mention Carlos Danger/Anthony Weiner, who would be the funniest failure of the last 10 years, if it weren’t for Clydesdale Ankles’ failure on November 9^th, and the fact that Weiner was perving on teenagers.

But today I’ve got a few examples of how failure can not only amuse us, but teach us.   And I’ll start – as one usually should – with a quote from Edmund Burke: “Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”

Burke knew a thing or two, and you won’t go far wrong in life if you find yourself repeating, “I’m going with Eddie Burke on this one” when you need to make a decision.

And he looks even wiser when you compare him to the intellectual heroes of the Left – Rousseau was a dope, Thoreau had a nice way with words but went home to stay with mom three nights a week when he was supposedly thinking deep thoughts in the isolation at Walden Pond, Marx is 0-47 in “I’m sure socialism will work THIS time” predictions since 1917, and Noam Chomsky has already lived about 87 years too long.

But I have to quibble with Burke just a bit; it’s not just examples, but examples of failure, that teach us.    Especially in a free or quasi-free market, failure sends crucial signals as to what works and what doesn’t.

Hollywood insults their audience, and the box office tanks.  Remember that spate of anti-US war movies when we were engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan?  I know, I didn’t either.

But I looked up a few titles: Lions for Lambs, Rendition, Stop-Loss, Body of Lies, Green Zone.  The cumulative box office returns for those was less than I received from a few exclusive showings of my family vacation films.   Sure, I had only back-end points, and took a bath.  But I didn’t have to pay Redford to direct, or sleep with Harvey Weinstein to get my masterpiece made, so I’ve got that going for me.

ESPN foists leftist tirades on their audience, and they’ve lost millions of subscribers, and are on a glide path toward implosion.   Leftist university administrations – the U of Missouri, Oberlin, etc. – cater to leftist crybullies and thugs in the student body and the faculty, and thereby lose students and financial support and the jobs of many employees who are no longer needed to teach students who aren’t there, and maintain buildings that aren’t necessary to house students who aren’t there.

The NYT puts out biased pap, and slowly bleeds readership and advertisers, and ends up shrinking print runs and laying off employees and renting out floors of their building in NYC (to late-night infomercial makers, if there’s any justice!).

Of course, failure in the political marketplace can also be instructive.

Blue states deploy leftist financial strategies: they levy confiscatory taxes on any citizens who are financially successful, and lavish benefits and promise generous pensions to government employees.  They throw up roadblocks to the formation of small businesses, and hire more government workers to inspect and harass and fine the hardy few who run that gauntlet.  Then they are shocked when businesses close or flee, and financially successful residents decide that they would rather live where they are not simultaneously resented and bled dry.

Baltimore and other large, Democrat-run cities treats their cops like crap, and lionize their thugs (Michael Brown was a gentle giant, etc.), and then they’re shocked when the “Ferguson effect” ensues.   Cops pull back from energetic, interventional policing, and the criminal element in those areas fills in the void, preying on the very poor people and minorities whom the Dems claim to represent.

People vote with their feet, and their eyes, and their time, and their dollars, and the results lays bare the failure of leftist policies.

Okay, so this column has been a little serious for my tastes.

So let me end with a best-of-both-worlds tale, in which failure is both entertaining and instructive.  Someone dies in this story, though, and that’s usually not funny.  But as we’ve seen with Yung “Bulletproof” Mazi and the guy who got killed (literally) losing a fight to an armless man, it can be.

 

In this story, we meet an idealistic young vegan named Dr. Maria Styrdom, 34, who along with her husband wanted to climb Mt. Everest.  But not “because it was there” – the idiotic reason that most mountain climbers usually give, and that I’ve never understood.  (You know one thing that Edmund Burke did NOT say?  “I’m sick of these gently rolling hills of England.  I think I’ll go give gravity and hypoxia a chance to kill me.”)

No.  Styrdom was sick of hearing questions about whether vegans “have iron or protein deficiencies,” so she decided to drag her husband up the mountain with her to prove something.  “It seems that people have this warped idea of being malnourished and weak,” she said. “By climbing the seven summits we want to prove that vegans can do anything and more.”

Not since Bob Titanic launched his ship with the boast, “She’s unsinkable, I tell’s ya!  Un-freaking-sinkable!” has someone come so quickly to regret their words.

You can guess the result.  She made it to the top of the mountain – because God is merciful, and He didn’t play the “iron deficiency” and “malnourishment” cards until she was on the way back down the mountain – and then she died.

This cautionary tale contains at least 4 great life lessons:

First, c’mon.  (Do I need to say this?)  Don’t be a vegan!  I mean, have you ever tried a steak?  Or a hamburger? Or a pork chop?  Not to mention a pork chop on top of a hamburger, served with a side of steak?

Second, if you must be a vegan, keep it to yourself.

Third, if you absolutely can’t keep it to yourself – and from my experience with vegans, they can never keep it to themselves – don’t announce that you are going to climb Mt. Everest to prove how a diet of soy milk-infused tofu served on a bed of hummus (I don’t know if that’s a thing, but from my experience with infuriatingly chatty vegans, it probably is) is fantastic fuel for a jaunt up a mountain.

Fourth, consider the case of me.  Although popular opinion — of the voices in my head, anyway — is that I’m aging quite well, my cholesterol is probably in the mid-300s, I can no longer cover a speedy wide receiver on crossing patterns over the middle, and I pretty much hang around at sea level, other than on an occasional trip to walk in the woods in the Appalachians.

But I’ll never bother you with details of my diet or talk down to you about yours, and my chances of dying with de-oxygenated blood under a tumbling Sherpa in the middle of an avalanche along the treacherous north face is pretty darn close to zero.

So take it from me – and sure, from Fast Eddie Burke, too:  have a burger and listen to some Tom Petty, and enjoy the instructive and entertaining cavalcade of failure that is the slow-motion implosion of the left.

We’re already 5 days into October, so it’s past time for a “Best of September” post.

Item 1.  Trump’s 9/17 speech to the UN.  The smart set MSM types all had their dresses over their heads about how outrageous his comments were, and how unpresidential, and how rude.  I found myself mostly agreeing with them, and yet coming to the exact opposite conclusion. Which is: he’s speaking to the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the UN – it’s metaphysically impossible to be rude enough to those people.

Here’s the part where I give my spiel on Trump: didn’t vote for him in the primary, half of what he says makes me slap my forehead, not a consistent ideological conservative, etc.

And yet.  We all know what a president is supposed to sound like at the UN.  Just like Obama sounded, according to the MSM.  And I’ll agree that he had a glib, superficially smooth delivery.  But what he said was either bland, multicultural boilerplate – the community of nations is just peachy, we must respect other country’s belief systems, only by working together can we be successful and just — or awful, leftist America-bashing: we’re deeply flawed, we have too often been arrogant, dismissive, even derisive, etc.

Compare that to Trump’s message: we’re paying way too much for the UN, we can’t allow the Iran nuke agreement to give cover for their jihadi leaders to get nuclear weapons, and we are celebrating the 230^th anniversary of our constitution, which is the best constitution ever, believe me.

Yes, yes, and hell yes.

And then he called Porky Nork “rocket man,” and warned him that we’ll destroy him if he gets froggy with his nukes.  (And by the way, thanks loads, Bill Clinton, for giving us the deal that ensured that the Norks wouldn’t get nukes… right until the minute that they got nukes.  Nice job, Handsy McGroperton!)

Admit it: you laughed when you first saw that “Rocket Man” line.  Rachel Maddow and Mika and the Mensa members on the View, on the other hand, were horrified!  How could he be so disrespectful to a foreign leader?!

Yeah.  The foreign leader who has his rivals executed in barbarous ways, and has starved and enslaved  millions of his countrymen, and has been firing missiles over and around his neighbors in recent months.  Plus his haircut is a crime against humanity, and he had Hans Blix killed by a shark in a giant aquarium.

I just love the image of dozens of translators sweating into their collars as they tried to decide how to translate “rocket man” into their various languages in a way that would make sense.

 

Item 2. On September 27^th, Michelle Obama addressed a conference in Boston, during which she helpfully lectured the millions of women who voted for Trump last November.  She said, “Any woman who voted against Hillary voted against their own voice.”

And that might be true, if you are a woman whose voice sounds like this:  “What difference, at this point, does it make?!!  CAW, CAW.  Why am I not 50 points ahead, you might ask!  CAW.  Hey, sweetheart, stop tricking my husband into exposing himself and sexually assaulting you!  CAW, CAW, CAW.”

I know that as you read those words, you heard her voice in your head, and for that I apologize.  Nobody deserves that.

But seriously, Michelle, please keep lecturing us about how we are too stupid to know what’s best for us, and how any gyno-American who voted against Hillary betrayed the sisterhood.  We get it.  You think we’re all Nazis, and sexists and deplorables and the rest.   I’m sure that that smug condescension is going to work just great for you in 2020.

In other great Michelle-related news, she said that she’s writing a book, which is about – and I’m not making this up — “being her authentic self.”

Ugh.  I’m going out on a limb here, and guess that it might also include some stirring passages about “speaking my truth,” or “building bridges instead of walls,” or having “the courage to speak truth to power?”

Let me suggest that if you were thinking about getting rid of your knitting needles — now that you’ve used them to gouge out your eyes after seeing those Antifa-member mugshots last week — hang on.  I’m sure Michelle’s book will be available in an audio version.

And those knitting needles can also be used to pierce your ear drums, too.  So, you’re welcome.

 

Item 3.  Speaking of fine literature, Melania Trump was asked to help celebrate National Reading Day by choosing some children’s books to donate to one school in each state.  She picked some Dr. Seuss books that she has enjoyed reading with her son.

When the books arrived at a school in Massachusetts, the leftist librarian said, “We really appreciate the generous gifts for our students.  Even though we have our differences with the White House, we’d really have to be petty, small-minded a-holes to politicize this totally inoffensive gesture.  Thank you, Mrs. Trump.  PS, love the stilettoes. I wish I could pull those off, but I’m frumpy and unattractive.  And yet, it hasn’t made me bitter, and I’m not at all tempted to transfer my rage at my own disappointments into confrontational, nasty political fight-picking.”

HA!  I tricked you!  That’s not what she said at all.

What she said was that Dr. Seuss books are full of racism, and that the American education system is broken, and most kids are poor, and it’s all Trump’s fault.  Now please shove these books up your infuriatingly attractive rear end, Melania.  (Those are not direct quotes, but they capture the stunning, ill-mannered gracelessness of her response.  Read it, and tell me I’m wrong – I dare you.)

Like you, my first instinct was to laugh at the absurdity of claiming that Dr. Seuss books are racist.  But, because I take my awesome responsibility of reporting to CO nation seriously, I decided to do my due diligence.  It’s been a long time since I read Dr. Seuss, and I have to admit that I had forgotten a lot of it. So I went to my local library.

I was shocked to find that she was right!  Consider these Dr. Seuss titles that I had not remembered:

The Cat in the Pointy White Hood

Green Eggs and Miscegenation

The Grinch Who Stole Kwanzaa

One fish, two fish, red fish, white supremacist

Horton Hears a Racist Dog Whistle

 

So good job, leftist librarian!  You keep fighting the good fight against reality, self-awareness and good manners.

 

Finally, Item 4. After a hurricane hit Puerto Rico, the creepy far-left mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin “Don’t Call me Ted” Cruz, took time out of her busy schedule of not improving the lives of her city’s citizens to criticize how Trump was to blame for the storm and the horrible response to it.

Having recently been threatened by a hurricane myself, I’m predisposed to sympathy for Puerto Ricans and the stress and hardship they are under.  But I also finding myself questioning why God couldn’t have found it in His heart to drop a palm tree (or maybe a live electrical wire) on this woman’s empty head.

First, she gave a speech to the press from a warehouse-like area, during which she thundered about how her people were dying, and she was mad as hell, and not enough was being done to help.

The best thing about that speech: she was standing in front of stack after stack of pallets of supplies that had been delivered by the United States government.  Press reports soon had to admit that the feds had flooded Puerto Rico with material and assistance, but the Puerto Rican infrastructure and human resources were initially unable to transport the supplies from the port to their citizens, creating a bottleneck.  Which was entirely Trump’s fault, because as the mayor of a major Puerto Rican city, it’s his job to—

Oh, wait.

That evening, the totally unbiased and fair Anderson Cooper interviewed the mayor.  She was wearing a shirt bearing the professionally printed words “Help Us We Are Dying.”  (By the way, that was the worst name for a Led Zeppelin tour ever.  The best ever?  Ted Nugent, “Intensities in Ten Cities.”  Take that, racist Dr. Seuss.)

Because the best use of your time and resources if you are trying to cope with a natural disaster is to mobilize your forces and have some politicized t-shirts printed up.  I mean, that’s Crisis Management 101.

Her interview was a smorgasbord of stupid.  Some highlights were when Anderson asked her if people really were dying, and she stuck to her guns.  Yes, people were going hungry and thirsty, and old people had to be evacuated from nursing homes, and they weren’t getting dialysis, and the power wasn’t back on yet.  I waited for Anderson to point out that she has been presiding over a quasi-3^rd world city where that has been happening every Wednesday and on alternative weekends before any storm hit.  But alas, I waited in vain.

She did mention that the US response to Haiti had been “so good, and we were all so proud,” and by comparison, the current response was much worse.  For some reason, Anderson didn’t point out that the Haitian hurricane in 2016 killed approximately 600 Haitians, while as the mayor was speaking, there had been 16 confirmed deaths in Puerto Rico.

In case you are not good at math, let me help.  A response that limits deaths to 600 when a Democrat is president is “so good,” and makes us “so proud.”  But a response that allows the Puerto Rican death count to balloon up to 16 when a Republican is president is disgraceful, and probably evidence of a Dr. Seussian amount of anti-Puerto Rican racism.

Got that?

 

Before getting to my topic today, I wanted to let everyone know that we got through the hurricane remarkably unscathed.  I spent several days putting plywood up, then several days taking plywood down and cutting up trees that fell everywhere but on our houses.  We missed about a week of work, and I’ve spent what feels like two weeks getting caught up on what I missed.

But we got very lucky, and my heart goes out to the folks in south Florida, and Puerto Rico, who didn’t.

And now, on to failure, which has two great virtues: it entertains us, and it educates us.

Admittedly, failure only entertains us when it is the failure of others.  None of us appreciate the entertainment value when the failure is our own, unless maybe we are looking back on it decades later.    But when others fail, it is sweet, sweet nectar.  I won’t beat a certain dead (and thick-ankled) horse about the hilarious hijinks of last November.  Instead, let me cite a few examples that I haven’t written about before:

Exhibit A.  An Atlanta rapper named Jibril Abdur-Rahman – who wisely took the stage name “Yung Mazi” – bragged that he had been shot 11 previous times.  After his most recent wounding in December of 2016, an interviewer asked him why he kept getting shot.  He cited such reasons as his skin tone, the amount of jewelry he wears, and the fact that he is a “real dude,” and “some people don’t like real dudes.”  (Before you dismiss that claim, consider how rare it is for imaginary dudes to get shot.  See, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.)

Anyway, Mazi proudly proclaimed that “God made me bulletproof.”

You know where this is going, right?  Yeah.  Yung Mazi is not going to get the chance to get to be Old Mazi.  Because in August of 2017 he was shot to death.

When reached for comment, God said, “Only the good die, Yung.”  Then He began snickering, and hung up.

 

Exhibit B.  Consider the case of a fight between Charles Keith Teer, 49, and William Russell Redfern, 44, who scuffled over a woman in 2007.  I’m not sure how the fight started, but I know how it did NOT start: with Redfern slapping Teer with a glove, to challenge him to a duel.  I also know that they did not settle their differences with an arm wrestling match.

How do I know that? Because Redfern had no arms.  He had been born with no right arm, and only a stump below his left shoulder.   So his fighting options were a little limited.  He tried a few kicks.  Which, more power to him – you fight with the limbs you have, not the limbs you wish you had.  (I think Mad Dog Mattis said that.)

But to no one’s surprise, that didn’t work.  So Redfern turned to his secret weapon: the head butt.

He head butted Teer in the chest.  And several hours later, Teer died.

A bunch of pointy-headed doctors said that Teer had had a history of heart disease and blockages, and that was what killed him.  But what do they know?

I’m pretty sure that he died of embarrassment.   I’d guess that as he was lying on the ground, what flashed through his mind was not his entire life, but the next several weeks, when he would have to face his family, and his buddies at work, and at the local bar, and explain how he’d lost a fight to a guy with no arms.

What could Teer say in his own defense?  That Redfern was 5 years younger than him?  That Redfern outweighed him?  That Teer had been a little drunk, or tired?  That Redfern had caught him by surprise, and “sucker butted” him.  (Thus inventing a new phrase.  But sadly, one that doesn’t carry the same weight of outrage as “sucker punched.”)

Teer knew what his friends would say to all of those points:  “Yeah. Okay.  But the guy HAD NO ARMS!”

I’m sure you’re all ahead of me re: the moral of the story:  “Don’t bring your fists to a skull fight.”

 

Exhibit C.   In July of 2016, a bunch of global warming alarmists – “adventurers, sailors, pilots and climate scientists” — went on what was supposed to be a two-month trip around the North Pole.  According to their website, their mission was to demonstrate, “that the Arctic sea ice coverage shrinks back so far now in the summer months that sea that was permanently locked up now can allow passage through.”

Cue the great South Park sketch:  “Aannnndddd, they’re stuck.”

An article in Real Climate Science summed up their situation in this quote, which I am not making up:  “They are currently stuck in Murmansk, Russia because there is too much ice blocking the North East passage the team said didn’t exist in summer months.”

I know what you’re thinking.   If only they had had something other than shaky computer climate models and bong-hit-induced deep thoughts to guide them!  If only there had been some historical precedent from which they could have learned!

Which brings me to…

 

Exhibit D.  Two and a half year earlier, a group of scientists, their assistants and “adventure tourists” were sailing in the Antarctic, also intending to document the ravages wrought by our horrendous global warming crisis.

By the way, what’s with these “adventurers” and their choice of adventures?!  I was never a particularly adventurous young man.  But when I imagined going on an adventure, I thought of scenarios like, “So I’m in a Turkish bath in Monte Carlo, with two gorgeous Bosnian co-eds, the American ambassador to Greece, and Sean Connery, and we’re all kicking around the idea of knocking over a casino.”

Do you know what I was NOT thinking of?  “So I’m stranded on an ice-encrusted trawler near Murmansk, with my extremities blackened by frost bite while a blocky Women’s Studies prof explains how global warming often manifests itself by freezing people to death.”
But back to our story.   This adventuresome crew was sailing on a Russian-operated ship called the Mika Brezhinski.  (Just kidding.  It was actually called the Akademik Shokalskiy.  But when I think of things that are thick and sluggish and ineffectual, I can’t help but think of Mrs. Morning Joe.)

Anyway, our intrepid crew on the Mika had set sail from Australia at the end of November (i.e. summer in Australia), bound for Antarctica, where they expected to lounge about in beachwear, demonstrating how our SUVS are boiling our precious environment, or something.

Guess what happened to their ship?

If you guessed that the ocean got too hot and they were all scalded to death, you are not paying attention.

In fact, it got stuck in the ice that they were shocked to find.

But wait!  There’s more hilarity.

While the global warming alarmists were spending Christmas day stuck in the ice, mourning the death of Gaia instead of celebrating the birth of Christ, they had high hopes.  Because the cavalry was on the way, in the form of a Chinese ice-breaking ship called the “Snow Dragon.”

Until the Snow Dragon got stuck.  In the ice.  The ice that it was designed to break.

But never fear, because a second Chinese ice breaker named the Aurora Australis was on its way.  (And by the way, if that’s not a good stripper name, I don’t know what is.  “Gentlemen, welcome to the main stage… Aurora Australis!  She’s from Down Under, and she just wants to break… your… ice.  Make it rain, make it snow, it’s all the same to Aurorrrrrrra.”)  This ship was bigger and more powerful than the Snow Dragon, so it would make short work of the–

Annnnnddddd, it’s stuck.

Actually it didn’t get stuck.  But the captain had to turn back from rescue attempts, because his ship was on the verge of getting icebound, too.

Oh, Chinese icebreaker boats.  You had one job…

Anyway, the global alarmist knuckleheads were eventually – tragically – rescued.

And two and a half years later, the next group sailed for sunny Murmansk, undeterred.

 

Finally, Exhibit E is as timely as today.  Because it was reported today, under the delightful headline:  “Four Arrested after Fight in Empathy Tent.”

Ah, Empathy Tent.  The most hilariously mis-named creation since the Chinese ice-breaking ship.

You can Google “empathy tent” to read the story, but do you need to?  I bet you can guess the salient details:

Who set up the empathy tent?  A. Rock-ribbed conservatives   B.  Navy Seals    C. Leftist “studies” majors

On which campus was the empathy tent located?  A. Hillsdale College   B. West Point   C. Berkeley

Guess who started the fight in the empathy tent?  A. Milton Friedman devotees  B. Ben Shapiro fans  C. Bernie Sanders acolytes

What do the virtuous leftist arrestees’ mug shots remind you of?   A.  Brad Pitt.    B. Margot Robbie   C. My eyes!  My eyes!  I can never un-see that!  Make it stop!  Where are my knitting needles?!

If you guessed anything other than “C” on any of those questions, please ask CO to ban you from this site immediately.

What is it with leftists and their inability to recognize or describe reality?  Fascist thugs are “anti-fascists.”  Bruce Jenner with a little makeup and a Mary Tyler Moore hairstyle is a woman.  Blue-eyed blonde Elizabeth Warren is an Apache.  Blue-eyed blonde Rachel Dolezal is black.

And now the Empathy Tent is a place where you can get the crap kicked out of you.

What’s next?  For the best wifi, try the Amish hut?  For the best hummus, go to the Mormon lean-to?   For sound financial planning help, check out the Occupy Wall Street dumpster?

Okay, so failure can be hilarious.  But it can be instructive too, which I’ll write about next time…

 

 

I’m not going to lie to you, CO nation: there’s a lot to be depressed about in the news.

Sure, there’s some fun stuff too.  Hillary Clinton’s book is out, and it is exactly the dog’s breakfast of schadenfreude and projection and delusion and leftist intramural fight-picking that we had all hoped it would be.  I mean, once we found out that she was writing a book, and then that a publisher was actually going to publish it.   And then after we checked that the source for those facts was not an Onion story, or a bit of snarky leg-pulling by CO or by me.

Anyway, that book is out, and it’s chock-full of laughs on every page.  But in a sane world, we would not turn our thoughts back to last year to beat this (thick-ankled) dead horse.

Unfortunately, we live in this world, where there’s enough depressing stuff going on that we might naturally want to reminisce about how Hillary was beaten by a conspiracy of young socialists following a very old socialist, Macedonian hackers, misogynists, the Bilderberg group, and I think Freemasons.  (Or was it Morgan Freeman?)

Depressing stuff like what, you ask?  I’ll mention three things.

1.Sports is supposed to be a pleasant escape from the mundane frustrations of everyday life, like insensitive bosses and oblivious drivers and financial worries and Ashley Judd.   Humans came up with sports eons ago, but for a long time, games involved nothing but rocks and sticks and the occasional enemy’s detached head.  Slowly, new sports were born.  Sports like “swim across the Red Sea before the Egyptians catch us and make us build more pyramids,” “footrace against the Mongol who is bearing down on you on horseback,” and “duck, duck, plague victim.”

Finally, when humanity was sufficiently advanced to appreciate the greatest of all sports, a loving God bestowed football upon us.  Now some of God’s earlier work was pretty impressive, too.  Creating a universe ex nihilo was a nice opening act.  Turning some guy’s wife into a pillar of salt can be appreciated by anyone who’s ever been married.  And the New Testament is the best sequel ever, and I’m including Godfather II and Breakin’ 2: Electric Bugaloo in there.

But have you ever seen film of Gayle Sayers running with the ball, or Dick Butkus or Gary Fencik disassembling offensive players into their constituent molecular parts , or Walter Payton dancing through several players before lowering his shoulder and plowing through several more?  Or any other, non-Bears players making other good plays, I guess?

Football is an amazing game, is my point.

So naturally a bunch of malcontent lefties are trying to ruin it by injecting their horrible politics into it.  Colin Kapernick probably has half a point, when he argues that his controversial views have made it harder for a team to employ him as a quarterback.  But considering that his views are boilerplate America-hatred and wildly exaggerating the racism in a country that millions of minorities from around the world are desperately trying to get into, you can’t blame team owners from shying away.

Consider the anti-Kapernick: Tim Tebow.  His views — fair play, the American way, and Christianity — were also said to be controversial, even though the vast majority of football fans don’t find them offensive.  But Tebow – when he wasn’t building orphanages, doing CPR to save kittens who had fallen out of trees, and healing the sick who touched the hem of his jersey – had a throwing motion that looked like he was being tasered just before it was time to release the ball.  So he didn’t get to play pro ball for very long.

Similarly, Colin Kapernick can’t read a defense or hit a receiver on a crossing pattern.  So even though he really hates America, he doesn’t get to play professional football.  But he was able to inspire a legion of other imbeciles all over the league, who are now calling attention to themselves by sitting through the national anthem and expounding on how my country sucks.

You people are ruining autumn!

2. Trump is morphing into the mushy center-leftist that many of us feared he was or would become, while the “professional” GOP – who are supposed to know better – apparently don’t know better. The low point came this week, when Trump inexplicably made an indefensible deal on the debt ceiling with – and here I am simultaneously choking on my own bile and throwing up in my mouth, which is every bit as pleasant as it sounds – Nancy Pelosi and Chuck-you Schumer.

The old cliché says, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  Of course, clichés become clichés because there is a lot of truth in them.  99 times out of 100, Joseph Stalin has got to be your enemy, if you are a decent, freedom loving country.   But when Stalin is fighting Hitler, Stalin is the enemy of your enemy, so… here’s a hearty handshake, Uncle Joe.

But if you should ever find yourself thinking that Pelosi and Schumer are your friends, you have to seriously re-assess your situation, and ask yourself how you could possible come to think that some other enemy – especially non-entities like Paul freaking Ryan or Chinless Cartoon Turtle McConnell – could be worse than those two!

Let me give you a hint, in the form of my own subtle revision of the aforementioned cliché:  “Pelosi and Schumer are your enemies, you imbecile!”

I’m still enormously grateful that Trump beat Hillary in November, and I appreciate some of the steps he’s taken (cutting regulations, Gorsuch, reforming taxes if he can get that done).  But the trajectory of his recent moves is not encouraging, to say the least!

3. In a true-life circumstance that puts the two complaints above in their proper, i.e. trivial perspective, hurricane Irma is barreling toward my family’s home.

We live in North Central Florida, but we’ve never experienced a hurricane before, since we’re far enough north that they usually become tropical storms before they reach us.  My only experience with 80 mph winds has been when I’ve ridden a motorcycle 80 miles an hour.  And that wind seemed like it might be unsettling, if you were feeling it when you were just standing in your yard, leaning into it.

We’ve spent the several days preparing.  My world-champion wife has been gathering supplies and stocking and preparing the homestead, while I’ve been out putting up what seems like 10,000 square feet of plywood on our handful of rental houses.  Our store shelves are empty, our gas stations are out, and the only books left on our library shelves were “An Inconvenient Truth” and Hillary’s new book.

So I’m going to be sitting with my family on our bathroom floor, using a flashlight to read the Owner’s Manuals for every tool and appliance I own.

If the current predictions are right, we will start feeling the effects of the storm on Sunday afternoon.  We will likely lose power Sunday evening, and if we’re lucky we’ll all come through safely, with our house intact, and we’ll only be without power for a day or two.

Before that happens, though, I’m posting this column at my dead drop for CO.   I’ll be back online as soon after the storm passes as possible.

In the meantime, if the worst should happen, no one is going to know what my last words were, which is really irritating.

I’m going to try to think of something really stirring.   But if I come up empty, I’m going back to a past classic.

After a tree has fallen through our ceiling, pinning me beneath it, I hope that I am able to gasp to my daughter, “You know who I blame this on?”

And she will respond, “The Democrats!”

I’ll wink at her lovingly.  And then the next face I expect to see will be Christ’s.   And he’ll fist bump me, in silent celebration of my awesome parenting skills.

As September begins, I’d like to look back on a column I wrote in February, filled with good advice (if I do say so myself) for leftists who were struggling to find useful ways to respond to the new Trump presidency.  Let’s re-visit my 5 tips, and see whether the left has taken any of them.

Tip 1 was not to over-react to every Trump miscue, no matter how small:  “If you start with the outrage meter pegged to 11 for every garden-variety bonehead comment that Trump makes, you’re going to lose your voice, burst a blood vessel, and be thoroughly ignored when Trump does something truly egregious.”

To put it mildly, the left has not taken that advice.  They built a new outrage meter that goes up to 27, and they have dialed it up and left it there.  Trump compliment’s Macron’s wife?  27!  Trump threatens nuclear war against the Norks? 27!   Trump fires the third cousin of the assistant to the undersecretary of the department of weights and measures?  27!

Maybe the best recent example is shoe-gate.  (27!)  When Trump and Melania walked to the helicopter to visit the hurricane damage at Houston, did the MSM focus on weighty issues like the latest assessment of the storm’s strength, or how efficiently the Trump team was coordinating federal relief efforts?

No.  They were flabbergasted by the fact that Melania wore stilettos across the lawn.  (I’ll pause here so that you can gasp in outrage, and clutch your pearls, and shake your head mournfully.)

Remember when it was the height of sexist piggery to comment on – or even to notice – a woman’s clothes or appearance?  It seems like just last election cycle – because it was just last election cycle – that Hillary’s clothing choices, for example, were off limits for discussion.

If a dashing, insightful male columnist happened to notice that her usual Mao-inspired blocky pantsuit made her look like a cross between a beige, deuce-and-a-half troop carrier and a Soviet brutalist apartment building, that columnist was harshly judged for giving voice to such an improper thought.  (Even though I thought it was a hilarious comparison when I came up with it.)

But Melania’s stilettos were the lead story on all the networks and cable channels for several news cycles.

That’s not just superficial.  It’s also misreading an audience.

Consider: almost half of the American population are males.  And contrary to every sitcom you’ve ever seen, about 98% of those are males are heterosexual. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  When they watch video of Melania walking away from the camera in a pair of fashionable, snug slacks, do you know what they are NOT focusing on?

Her SHOES!  She could have been wearing combat boots or ballet slippers, and we would not have noticed.

As the CO Roving Correspondent for Affairs (and stilettos) (…er, “stuff”), I am burdened by the professional duty to observe the news, so I forced myself to watch that video of Melania very closely and repeatedly, as if it were the Zapruder film.

On my 17^th viewing, I detected that she has feet.

And I don’t think that makes me an evil, sexist creep.  (Stop laughing.)  Because I can turn the tables.

For all the straight women or gay men out there – do you remember when you saw the scene in which Daniel Craig walked out of the surf in his first turn as the new James Bond?   How many of you were thinking, “I can’t wait until he’s all the way out of the water, so I can see if he’s wearing swim fins or flip flops?”

My point is that if your analysis of Trump’s presidency is at all centered on his ridiculous hair style or Melania’s choice of footwear, no one is going to take you seriously.  And they shouldn’t.

By the way, would you like to see one of the lefty women who criticized Melania’s fashion sense?  Google “Lynn Yaeger,” who is a Vogue fashion writer.  But wait!  Before you do, if you happen to be holding knitting needles, please put them down.  Because you may inadvertently have the defensive, autonomic instinct to plunge them into your eyes.  I’ll wait….

So…yeah.  For those of you who have always said to yourselves, “I wonder what Ronald McDonald would look like if he was halfway through transitioning to a female in his late 70’s, and then had a grand mal seizure in the middle of cutting his own hair, and while he was unconscious on the floor cruel local teens came in and drew black cat’s ears on his/her upper lip?”   Wonder no more, my friends.

And yes, this person does not approve of the way that Melania looks.  So take that, Melania!

 

Tip 2:  “Stop calling yourself The Resistance.  It’s creepy, and self-dramatizing, and it makes you sound like a 15-year old.  (And not a popular, well-adjusted 15-year old.)”

Well they certainly haven’t taken that one to heart, have they?

After 6 months of the ironically named “Antifa” – they really should be just “fa,” which would have the added benefit of being a word that their members might have at least a shot at spelling correctly – they’ve gone beyond self-dramatizing adolescence, and added thuggish violence to the mix.  You can almost hear many millions of Americans being repulsed all over again by these creeps.

 

Tip 3:  “Don’t think you are going to get any mileage with most Americans by pointing out how badly Trump is treating the press.  Do you not know how despised the press is?“

I didn’t think it would be possible to hate the dishonest media more than we hated them back in February.  But they’ve worked hard to earn even more enmity from all reasonable people, and they’ve succeeded.  Just the words “Don Lemon” make me throw up in my mouth.

I would sooner get a fashion makeover from Lynn Yaeger than believe anything I hear about politics from the MSM.

Tip 4: “Consider not insulting everyone you are trying to persuade.”  I know this one can sound rich, coming from a snarkster like me.  But I’m not insulting anyone who is remotely persuadable.

And after the last six years, the right doesn’t need to persuade any new people.  (I’m not saying that we shouldn’t always be trying to enlarge the conservative base by advancing conservative ideas, which work whenever they’re tried.  I just mean that it’s the Dems who have lost 1000 nationwide seats since 2010, including congress and the WH; they’re the ones who need to change their ways if they want to get back into power.)

The last few months — pre- and post-Charlottesville – have featured leftists doubling down on their campaign strategy of trying to brand all conservatives as Nazis and white supremacists.  You don’t have to know many conservatives to know how ridiculous that is.  I’ve said it before: you could fit all the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the country into a mid-sized community college gym.  Pretending that half of the country belong to that group is a great way to keep that half of the country voting against you.

Why do you think that millions of people are proud to wear all kinds of “Deplorables” gear?  Because your insults – like your tears in November – are sweet to us.

Tip 5:  “We remember Obama.  And we remember that you spent the last 8 years getting him his pipe and his fuzzy slippers…”  This one was about the left and MSM’s obvious double-standards, and that’s another lesson that they haven’t learned.

After covering for the left 24/7 for 8 years – ignoring Lois Lerner and “voters are idiots” Gruber and Obama promising Vlad that he’d be flexible after his last election, and doubling of the national debt, and Obama’s bumbling, inadvertent midwifing of the birth of ISIS – their over-the-top smears of Trump aren’t fooling anybody who doesn’t desperately want to be fooled.

Crypt-Keeper Pelosi is still out there.  Crazy Maxine Waters is too.  We don’t have Pajama Boy Ossoff to kick around in GA anymore, but the Left’s first string is still on the field.  They’ve got no bench, Kapernick is their QB, and the average age of their backfield is the late 100s.

All things considered, the left should be doing great.  Though the MSM has greatly exaggerated the problems of Trump and the GOP, those problems are real, and they are maddening to the base.  With control of all three branches, they’ve failed to repeal the disastrous flaming wreck that is Obamacare, they’ve not gotten to tax reform yet, the wall is not being built, and the number of White House firings (Comey and Bannon and Mooch, oh my) is dizzying.

Yet while Trump’s numbers are down and the GOP establishment is widely reviled, the left is in arguably worse shape.  Even with Trump’s personal flaws, and the fact that the GOP congress’ best move has been to go on vacation, and my growing suspicion that McConnell is actually a chinless cartoon turtle, can you picture anyone who didn’t vote last time — or who voted for Trump — looking at the Pelosi/Waters/Durbin Dems and saying, “That’s for me!  I can’t wait to vote for the Left in 18!”

Me neither.

So here’s my Top 5 favorite things that happened in the last half of August:

1.I’ve got to start with the obvious.  In a feat of thick-headed leftist insanity that would rival the average Tuesday at CNN, ESPN decided that they could not have one of their broadcasters give color commentary on a UVA football game because his name was Robert Lee.

Never mind that this Robert Lee’s middle name didn’t start with an “E.”  And never mind that this Robert Lee was Asian.  (Fun historical fact: surprisingly few Confederate generals were Asian.)  And never mind that the civil war ended 152 years ago.   They nixed his coverage of the game because he shared his name with a famous Confederate.

Many pundits have had a lot of fun with the stupidity of this move.  But those pundits don’t have my top-secret access to a recording of ESPN’s board meeting at which this programming decision was made.

Because I love the members of CO nation – especially Gail Patty, and she knows why – I give you the transcript of that meeting:

CEO:  “What a mess!   How did we even hire Robert Lee in the first place?”

Minions around the table look at each other sheepishly.

Minion 1 (squirming):  “We never noticed the name.  I mean, come on, you’re looking at an Asian guy, you don’t think, ‘I wonder what Confederate general he’s named after.’”

CEO (loudly):  “I guess that’s how we ended up with Stonewall Chang scheduled to anchor the half-time coverage?!”

Minion 2:  “We probably should have caught that one.”

CEO: “What about Nathan Bedford Wong, who was all set to do on-field interviews in the same game?!”

Minion 3 (shrugged helplessly):  “We made a few mistakes…”

CEO:  “A few?  A FEW?  Help me out here.  Remind me who was in the lineup on the desk in New York?  The guys who would be anchoring our day-long coverage of ALL of college football?!”

The minions all stare at their hands.

CEO: “Remind me!”

Minion 1 (clearing his throat, and keeping his eyes down):  “Jeff Hitler, Tommy Stalin, and Keith Bin Laden.”

CEO:  “That didn’t send up any red flags for anybody?!”

Minion 2: “I mean, in retrospect—”

CEO:  “Ugh.  Nevermind.  Lee is out.  Who can we sub in for him?”  Minion 2 raises a hand, but the CEO fixes him with an icy stare.  “If you say Billy Gosnell, I swear to God…”

Minion 2 slowly lowers his hand.

CEO:  “Great.  I’m surrounded by idiots.  Everybody OUT!”

As the minions file toward the door with slumped shoulders, the CEO stabs a button on his intercom.  “Get me Fred Mengele from the PR team.  We’ve got to do some damage control!   Who’s the new hire in social media?”

Intercom voice: “Bobby Goebbels?”

CEO: “Yeah, I’ve heard good things.  Get him, too.”

And, scene.

 

2.  Trump’s Afghanistan speech. Even though Lindsey Graham praised it – usually a benchmark of all that is crappy – I liked it. He explained why he had changed his mind – from wanting a complete pull-out, to seeing the wisdom of leaving a big enough force to prevent the kind of dangerous collapses that have happened in Syria and Iraq.  He also had the common sense to defer to his generals, and he gave a verbal rib kick to Obama’s decision to put a timeline on a withdrawal, rather than letting conditions on the ground dictate future moves.

By the way, that’s another idiotic mistake of Obama’s that the MSM has somehow managed not to notice.  When he announced his surge in Afghanistan, he said that he’d also be pulling the troops out again in 18 months.

You don’t have to be a military genius to know how stupid that is.  If you’re facing a determined guerilla force that cannot oppose you in fixed battle but can only hope to out-wait you, you don’t announce a new force deployment while at the same time saying, “Oh, by the way, you only have to wait for 18 months, and we’ll be leaving.”

Thanks, Barack von Clausewitz.

 

3.  Speaking of idiotic decisions, some publishing house inexplicably paid Hillary Clinton to write a book on her spectacular failure in the last election. If you haven’t seen that book yet, take a look at the cover:  The top half says, “What Happened,” and the bottom half says “Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

May I suggest that if you put a question mark after the first half, the cover of the book is a question that answers itself?

Anyway, the first excerpt from this horrible book focused on her reaction to Trump during one of her debates.  She says what a “creep” he was, and how he “loomed” over her, and made her “incredibly uncomfortable” by “invading her space.”

And she knows what she’s talking about.  Because she spent 8 years in the White House with a huge creep looming all over the place, invading intern’s spaces (among other things) with a cigar (among other things) and making any female within groping distance “incredibly uncomfortable.”

Don’t you love it when leftist gender feminists proudly proclaim what strong women they are, but then get the vapors and stagger toward the nearest fainting couch when a big mean man gets too close for their fragile sensibilities? Put on your big girl pantsuit, Hill-dog!

The best part of this story:  guess who they got to read the book for the audio version?

Gilbert Gottfried was apparently unavailable.

Fran Drescher wasn’t returning calls.

All of the teenage girls who sprinkle their speech with “like” were too busy taking selfies.

Crows – who can caw in just the right grating, unpleasant manner – cannot read English.

Not even poor, pedestrian Chelsea Clinton, whose terrible childhood at the hands of horrible parents has drained every bit of life force out of her, was up for this task.

No.  The publisher’s staff — saddled with a book filled to the brim with leaden, dishonest, mind-numbingly banal, sludge-like prose – decided to steer into the skid when choosing a reader for the audio book.

They picked Hillary Clinton.

Ugh.  Imagine that voice.  And then imagine listening to that voice, reading those badly written thoughts, from that mediocre mind.

This book raises so many questions.   Such as, “Why on earth did she write it?”  And, “Who on earth is going to buy it?”

And, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

 

4.  After the last two weeks, I think it’s time to start commissioning a bunch of new confederate statues. Who’s with me?

No one?  Really?  Wait — hear me out.

Did you notice anything that the MSM did NOT mention during the entire Charlottesville statue kerfuffle?  Here’s a hint, in the form of the news copy that I would write about this story, if I somehow had a job as a journalist:

“Over the past several weeks, crowds have been outraged by various slavery-supporting Democrats commemorated in hundreds of statues and memorials throughout the southern states.  Protesters have called for the removal of artwork that honors Democrat Robert E. Lee, and Democrat Stonewall Jackson, and Democrat KKK-founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, among many others, every last one of them Democrats.

A few of these statues were put up by Democrats after their slaves were freed by Republicans after the Civil War, but many more of them were put up by Democrat mayors and town councils and governors in the 1920s, when Democrat-invented and -enforced Jim Crow laws held sway.  Many were also put up and/or celebrated in the 1960s — by Democrat politicians and racists such as Orville Faubus (D), George Wallace (D), Al Gore Sr. (D), and Bull Conner (D) — angry about the Civil Rights movement.

We reached out to all of the national Democrat leaders who had total control of the White House, House and Senate from 2008 – 2010 and yet did not say a word or lift a finger to do anything at all about the plague of Confederate monuments dotting our landscape.  But all of those Democrats were all unavailable for comment.”

Do you see the subtle theme?

So let’s move all of those statues – and maybe make a few more – and display them all in a grand building called “The Hall of Famous Democrats.”  I hear that Hillary had a huge presidential library half-built, until November 9^th happened.   That sounds like the perfect venue!

 

5.  Finally, a great story about academia!

After what seems like decades of stories about spineless administrators capitulating to leftist loon professors and know-it-all brainwashed undergrads, and Antifa thugs preventing free speech, and safe spaces and trigger warnings and infantile demands that various privileges be checked, there comes a story that starts the same way.

But oh, how this one ends!

Several years ago, a handful of ne’er-do-wells and jack-a-napes and cranial-rectal-inversion sufferers at the University of Missouri got it in their heads that Mizzou was a hotbed of hateful racists devoting their lives to oppressing the perpetually oppressed types.

The details are not important, because they are well-nigh universal in these morality plays: some folks from the wrong group looked askance at those from another group, and complaints were made, and administrators groveled, and a creepy ginger leftist prof solicited male students to assault people who were filming the protest.  The mediocre school football team (“the Fightin’ Kapernicks”) said they wouldn’t play again until confessions were forced and demands were met and reparations doled out.  And all of that happened, and it wasn’t enough, and spineless administrators were fired, and the whole world was watching.

And the part of the world who were Mizzou alums and benefactors said many words of Anglo-Saxon derivation, and sent some of those words to school officials in emails and letters and phone calls.  And then they closed their wallets, and kept them closed.

The delicious, satisfying result?  Google it, and behold the headlines and details:  “Mizzou Misery.”  “Catastrophic 35% Drop in Mizzou Enrollment.”  “Seven dorms closed, 400 positions lost.”  “Tumbleweeds rolling through empty campus.”    “Mizzou Alumni: Why didn’t Administration listen to Martin Simpson, and break out the tear gas, rubber bullets and industrial drums of Whup-ass in response to student protests?”

All but the last two headlines are real.  And they should be.

The moral of the story: the next time a bunch of faculty and student crybullies try to take over your campus, stand up to them.  Fire the profs, expel the students, and toss them off campus like you were John Wayne running the town bully through a pair of swinging saloon doors and pitching him out into a muddy street.

Or else prepare for your school to be crippled by idiots.

Call this “The Tale of Two Columns.”  Because it was the best of times (I’m going to introduce you to a new hero) and the worst of times (Charlottesville).

Let’s take our medicine first.   But I’m not going to say a lot about Charlottesville, because:

1. Some people have complained that my pieces are too long. (How dare you!  I slave all day over a hot keyboard, and this is the thanks I get?  I’ve got half a mind to go back to mother.)
2. Lots of people who are smarter than me (including CO) have already commented on it.
3. I’m sick of everybody involved.

But here goes:

White racists are a sad little group (emphasis on both “sad” and “little”).  Hateful Antifa jerks are equally sad, but I fear/know they are more numerous, and more influential on their side of the political aisle.

Taking down confederate statues is 10% understandable and 90% ill-thought out.  Already, some are wondering where this might stop.  Bulldoze the Jefferson Memorial?  Blow up the Washington Monument?  They both owned slaves.  And Lincoln didn’t make a move to emancipate until very late.  Plus, he was a Republican – so…

Anyway, if we do decide to take down confederate statues — because racism — that won’t break my heart.  But I hope that we can then also agree to take down any statues or plaques and change any roads or buildings named after whitey-hater Malcolm X, and genocidal anti-black racist (and Planned Parenthood founder) Margaret Sanger.  Plus at least half of our Democrat presidents. (Have you heard how LBJ talked about blacks, or Wilson talked about any non-WASPs?)  And half the public buildings constructed in the South in the last 30 years are named after Grand Wizard (and member of guess which party?) Robert Byrd.

So gentlemen, start your jackhammers.

The most aggravating part to me is that the far-far fringe white racist groups are such a small and impotent group.  But our horrible MSM has a vested interest in hugely exaggerating their numbers and influence, and trying to tie them to mainstream conservatism, with which they have nothing to do.

That’s not just galling because they are trying to smear all of us – though Lord knows it’s galling for that reason!

It might be even more galling because for the last several years, the MSM has gone out of its way to NOT notice or cover all of the violent leftist hate groups – Antifa, BLM, Occupy Wall Street, plus a menagerie of various “red” subgroups flying hammer-and-sickle flags — and their consistent hateful rhetoric, violence, and crimes against persons and property.

The murderous loser in VA who drove into those people – and I’m an old school (even Old Testament!) conservative, so here’s hoping he hangs himself in his jail cell – has gotten wall-to-wall coverage.  But that John Goodman-figure who opened fire on GOP congressmen on the softball field while screaming, “Bernie Sanders Akbarrrrrrrr!”?

The MSM covered the story, because they had to.  But remember that flood of stories about him being a Bernie devotee, and a symbol of a threatening and disturbing trend on the left that the entire Dem leadership is complicit in, and must answer for?

Me neither.

Anyway, to quote Mr. Gump, “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”

 

And now for something completely different:

I have a new hero.

Usually, being dead is almost a prerequisite to be a hero, partly because it often takes a lifetime of good deeds to qualify for hero status, and partly because having passed confers a kind of fixed, larger-than-life gravitas.  Thus, most of my heroes – Johnny Cash, Walter Payton, Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, my dad – are no longer with us.

But this new guy is alive and kicking.  Despite the fact that he shot himself in the heart with a nail gun.

You read that right: Shot.  In the heart.  With a nail gun.

Let me introduce you to Doug Bergeson, 52, from Green Bay, Wisconsin.  His story is here: http://abc11.com/man-accidentally-shoots-nail-into-heart-drives-to-hospital/2313245/

I first learned of him while avoiding work by browsing the internet, and coming across this arresting headline: “Man accidentally shoots nail into heart, drives himself to hospital.”

It’s not the nail-in-the-heart part that got me.  I mean, we’ve all been there, right?  You’re doing some rough carpentry, your focus drifts for a moment, and bing/bang/boom – you’ve got a cement-coated ring shank stuck in the old aorta.

It’s the driving-himself-to-the-hospital part.  Read the amazing story, because each paragraph is better than the last.

After the nail ricochets off some wood and lodges in his chest, Mythical-Olympian-Figure Bergeson says, “I thought it just nicked me. I looked down. I couldn’t see anything.  I felt OK. I wasn’t worried about the injury. I couldn’t feel any pressure or blood building up.”

But when he found the nail, “he realized only about 1 inch of the 3-inch nail was sticking out of his chest.”   Then, in the second-best quote of 2017 (Maddog – and I don’t mean Rachel – is still on the gold medal platform with, “Nothing.  I keep other people awake at night.”), Bergeson said, “I could see the nail moving with my heartbeat. It was kind of twitching with every heartbeat.”

Read that again, puny mortals.  The nail.  In his chest.  Was TWITCHING WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT!

The next lines of the story: “He was more annoyed than worried. He knew he had to go to the ER.”

Because you know how annoying it can be when you perforate your pericardium with a piece of sharp metal.  I mean, I wouldn’t exactly get “worried” about it.  Let’s not get carried away.  But annoyed?  Sure, I guess.

“I was frustrated because I knew I wasn’t going to get home until late and I couldn’t get anything done,” Bergeson said, adding that “common sense” told him not to pull the nail out.”

He calls it common sense.  I call it the most counter-intuitive thought since Napoleon said, “Hey, winter’s coming on.  Why don’t we attack Russia on horseback?”

What would I have done in that situation, you ask?

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I would have run around in circles, waving my arms over my head and defecating all over myself, squealing like a 10-year-old girl, “Get it out, GET IT OUT, GETITOUT!”  Then I would have closed my tear-filled eyes and pulled out the nail.   Then I would have staggering around the room in quickly degenerating figure-eights, splattering my DIY project with arterial spray before collapsing to die in a mound of sawdust and ignominy.

(And, scene.)

Not Achilles Bergeson.  He “washed up, hopped [HOPPED!] in his truck” and drove himself to the ER.

I must interrupt the story for just a moment.  If you don’t know the work of comedian Brian Regan, you must watch one of his routines on YouTube right this minute.  Google “Brian Regan” and “Emergency Room,” and watch the funniest 8 minutes of comedy since Sam Kinison died.  Regan also drove himself to an ER, and the story, though not as amazing as Bergeson’s, is hilarious.  (Full disclosure: I want to be a cross between Brian Regan, Clint Eastwood and Doug Bergeson when I grow up.)

Back to Samson Bergeson.  He parks, walks into the ER – because wheelchairs are for wussies — and alerts a security guard to his annoying situation.  “If you could find someone, that would be great, I’m just going to sit down.”  Then he texts his wife, Donna (whom I can only assume requires weeks to recover from each time her bad ass husband has carnal relations with her), “to bring him a new shirt because medical staff had cut off the one he was wearing.”

By the way, this situation constitutes the first time in human history that this combination of words have ever been transmitted – by telegraph, telegram, letter or text:  “Honey, I blasted a nail into one ventricle or another this afternoon.  So my darn shirt is ruined.  Could you stop by the hospital with another one?  Sorry for the inconvenience.” (By the way again, all of the quotes in this column, except the last one, are real.) (And the Napoleon one.  You knew I made that one up, right?)

The surgeon who worked on Bergeson, Alexander Roitstein, “confirmed the nail hit [his] heart, saying it was also 1/16 of an inch from a major artery. He said it was difficult to assess how deeply the nail penetrated, but the nail left bruising and a nail-sized hole.”  (So you’re saying that a nail penetrating one’s chest would leave a “nail-sized hole?”  Thank you, Sherlock Descartes Roitstein.)

Apparently there is something in the water in Green Bay that makes men prone to stoic understatement.  Because Roitstein also praised Bergeson for letting doctors remove the nail.  “It shows the great composure this gentleman had after a very bad day’s experience.”

Yes.  A very bad day’s experience.  Like when your cell coverage is spotty.  Or when the Bears win, but don’t cover the spread.  Or when your Gender Studies prof gets your pronoun wrong, even though you’ve told him/her 1000 times that you prefer “ze.”

Or when you fire a nail into your heart, and it gyrates along with your heartbeat while you are driving and walking and canoeing and cross-country skiing your way to the ER.

And how does Hercules Bergeson sum up the experience?  “I feel pretty good. I’m back to doing things carefully,” he said. “It was a pretty awakening experience.”

We salute you, Doug Bergeson.

Now, let’s give this guy a 10 penny nail and some beef jerky, and air drop him over PyongYang, with instructions to find the guy with the worst haircut, shove the nail into his heart, then pull it out.  Then prepare for a million North Koreans to hoist you onto their shoulders and parade you thorough the city, chanting “Belgeson, Belgeson!” and make you their Emperor.

Problem solved.

I have a lot of thoughts about the North Korean situation.  Well, not a lot of thoughts.  But I do have 5 thoughts:

Thought 1:  We should probably be more worried about this than we seem to be — it should be a huge story, involving as it does the potential for someone using nukes for the first time since we provided a couple of teachable moments to the empire of Japan. (You’re welcome, Japan.  Let this be a lesson to you.)  Instead, most people’s reaction to this whole situation is muted, and I think that’s because this is a classic case of the boy who cried wolf.  Since November 9^th the left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) has been so deeply (and laughably) immersed in drama queen anti-Trump mode over every tiny story, no one is listening any more.

Trump gets petulant about the size of his inaugural crowd?

MSM:  He’s a dictator!  Dictators do that!  It’s the END OF THE WORLD (EOTW, for short)!

Trump compliments the looks of the French president’s considerably older wife?

MSM: That kind of sexism is what sexist dictators do, and it causes millions of women to have anorexia and low self-esteem, and probably shingles and psoriasis!  It’s the EOTW!
Trump says that he’s going to withhold some federal funds from sanctuary cities who defy ICE and proudly break federal law?

MSM:  This is the first step dictators take when they commit genocide!  First they force people into the shadows, and then – yada yada yada – Auschwitz!  EOTW!

Trump responds with juvenile insults to the juvenile insults from Mika Consonant-filled-last-Name?  (If you think I’m going to spend my precious time looking up how to spell Mika’s ridiculous last name, you are crazy.  I know her dad had the same last name, but that was balanced by one of the coolest first names ever: Zbigniew.  The fact that no rapper has taken that as his stage name – Z-big — shows just how stupid rappers are.)

MSM:  He’s punching down!  You know who else punches down?  (The bored-out-of-his-skull union camera operator mumbles, “Dictators?”)  That’s right – dirty, rotten, down-punching dictators.  EOTW!

So now, when an actual dictator actually does threaten to use nukes, we’re all watching Game of Thrones and tuning the MSM hysterics out.

 

Thought 2: I also have a hard time taking North Korea seriously because I’ve seen Team America: World Police a dozen times.  This probably does not speak well of me, but what can I say?

If you haven’t seen that movie yet, you are doing yourself a disservice.  Yes, it is a puppet movie.  And yes, the puppets’ every movement and gesture is as awkward and graceless as you would expect.  Yet it transcends all of that and provides what can only be called an eerily accurate presentation of Islamic terrorists (Fun fact: Arabic vocabulary consists entirely of the words, “Dirka dirka, Mohammed jihad!”  True story.) and of whichever Kim was dictator at the time.  (Does it really matter?  Am I alone in thinking that poor North Korea has been ruled by a series of interchangeable Kims for 1000 thousand years?)

(And if you mean to tell me that there is a better name for a Korean improv comedy troupe than “Interchangeable Kims,” I can only say an emphatic, “Good day, sir!” and slam a metaphorical door in your face.)

Seriously, Team America has the three essentials for drama that Aeschylus first laid out 500 years before Christ:  1. Rising tension between protagonists that is eventually resolved in the final act.  2. Disturbing puppet sex.  3. Hans Blix (“Brix”) being eaten by a shark.

Plus, it features what has to be the most impressive, nuanced performance of Matt Damon’s career.

Anyway, enough about the movie.  I’m just saying that once you’ve seen one of the assorted Kims wandering the over-sized palace hallways — in those ginormous Harry Caray glasses, singing, “I’m so  ronery!  So ronery!  So ronery and feering so brue.” – it’s hard to feel threatened by North Korea.

 

Thought 3. One other reason it’s hard to be too worried about North Korea?  They threatened to shoot a missile at Guam.

Not Hawaii.  Not San Francisco or LA or stately Simpson Manor.

Guam.

Now I don’t mean to disparage Guam, or the Guamians.  (Guamese?  Guam-bats?  I don’t know.)  But is it unfair to note that Guam has not occupied a preeminent position in the thoughts and hearts of the West in general, or Americans in particular?

Is there a Guamian dream that stirs your heart?  Have you ever choked up at the first notes of the Guamian national anthem (“Guam, Guam, Uber Alles” for all you know), or found yourself reciting the national motto of Guam (“Vive la Guam?”  “Semper Guam?” “Live Free or Get out of Guam?”)?  I think not.

Picture the scene at the White House.   The latest Kim is addressing his starving, twitchy, fearful nation.  Trump and his advisors and generals are on the edge of their seats around a huge oval table, watching a big screen as the speech reaches its zenith.  “And if America does not agree to our demands, we will attack… Guam!”

The generals and advisors look at each other for a long moment.  Then they all slump back into their chairs in relief.

Advisor 1: “Did he say Guam?”

Advisor 2: “Oh thank God!”

General 1: “I was sure he was going to say Hawaii!”

General 2: “I know, right?”

Trump (with a big sigh of relief): “Okay, how many people are in Guam?”

Advisor 3: “Dozens?”

Advisor 4:  “It’s got to be thousands, at least.  Right?”

Shrugs all around.

Trump: “How about the economic impact?  If there was a strike on Guam’s capital…?”  (looks around the room for help)

Anthony Scaramucci:  “Guadalupe?”

Trump gives him a dirty look.  “Mooch?  What are you still doing here?  I fired you weeks ago.”

Mooch hangs his head, slowly gets up, starts for the door.

Trump (to the rest of the table):  “Economic impact?  If Guam was hit, God forbid, would that interfere with our supply of…?”  (looking for more help, while his advisors study the ceiling or their shoes)

Mooch: “Guava?”

Trump: “Out!”  (Mooch shuffles the rest of the way to the door, and closes it behind him.)

Trump:  “It’s not guava, right?”

Shrugs all around.

Trump: “All right, somebody Google Guam, and we meet back here in 10.”

And, scene.

Thought 4.  It’s not the Kim haircut that makes me dismiss him.  It’s the judgment call that he made AFTER getting that haircut.

He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror – the poor barber trembling beside him, sure he was going to be executed for creating such a ridiculous look – and said, “Yeah, that’s it!  My biggest problem now is that once my people get a look at this, they’re ALL going to want it.  General Kim?  You and the other generals Kim are to issue a nationwide decree: No one else can have this haircut.”

General Kim (with a straight face):  “That’s going to be a tough one to enforce.   I mean, with that haircut being so awesome and all.”

Kim:  “I know, right?  Hey, get my publicist in here, what’s his name?”

General Kim:  “Kim?”

Kim:  “That’s right.  I need to get some publicity shots taken right away.  I’ve got to share this haircut with the nation.”

 

Thought 5:  I don’t care for the professional wrestling language going back and forth between Kim and Trump.  Kim always talks like that:  “We’ll reduce you to jelly!”  (Millions of starving Norks then begin salivating at the thought of sweet, sweet jelly.)   And Trump is usually half-way there too (“We’re bringing Fire and Fury, baby.   Believe me.  It will be like nothing the world has ever seen.”)  I find myself agreeing with Trump’s critics: a president shouldn’t talk like this.

But on the other hand, we all know how presidents are supposed to talk, right?  Diplomacy-speak:  The world community won’t stand for this.  It’s in all of our interests that we avoid conflict.  We can get past this misunderstanding.  With mutual respect, we can move forward to a settlement…

How’s that worked out for us?

After a little Trumpian tough-talk, Bill Clinton arrived at a diplomatic coup that would appease the Norks and keep them from developing nukes.  (Spoiler alert: they developed nukes.)

Bush mixed some tough talk with some diplo-speak, carrot-and-sticking the Norks to stop testing their missiles.  (Spoiler alert: they kept testing their missiles.)

Obama muttered his way through the kind of banalities that most of us outgrew by the spring of freshman year (No one wins in a nuclear war, you’ll be on the wrong side of history if you don’t agree with me, the entire world community agrees that…), in an effort to stop the Norks from developing and testing longer-range ICBMs.   (Spoiler alert: they developed and tested longer-range ICBMs.)

Bottom line: North Korea is a mess that threatens its neighbors, and that’s going to continue until the demented socialist regime that has been torturing their people is gotten rid of.  All sarcasm aside, the recent history of NK is a devastating story of incredible suffering and almost incomprehensible evil, and it’s tragic that China has enabled it, and that no other nations have been able to stop it.

But I don’t think anyone has a clear idea of how to solve this.   The only thing that seems clear is that it’s infinitely better to prevent despotic regimes from getting nukes than to try to deal with them once they have nukes.

Speaking of Iran…