Author: martinsimpsonwriting

Let’s start with the good news.  On Thursday we removed Cassie’s cone of shame, and if the resulting 3 minutes of joyful gamboling didn’t melt your heart, that organ would have to have been as calcified and insensate as Imhotep Pelosi’s botoxed facial muscles, or Bill Clinton’s conscience.

I then took Cassie up to TN to visit my mom, sister, brother-in-law, and Cassie’s two dog-cousins, Edgar (“Eddie”) and Raven.  (Yes, my sister loves her some Edgar Allan Poe!)  They’ve got a huge yard, much of which is fenced in, and can be reached by means of a wooden, dog-width ramp that runs from their second-story deck down into the yard.   

If there’s a better way to start a bracingly cold morning than drinking a cup of coffee in the free state of Tennessee while watching those three dogs racing up and down that ramp and then chasing each other around the yard with reckless abandon, I don’t know what it is.

And now to the bad news.  Joe Biden (RIP) gave a two-hour press conference, and in doing so, answered the question of the day: “Why don’t the corpse-wranglers in the White House allow Joey Gaffes to give more two-hour press conferences?” 

A better question might be, “Why don’t we give 6-year-olds caffeinated drinks spiked with methamphetamine, and then give them the keys to SUVs and allow them to do donuts in a parking lot crammed full of other hyped-up children and puppies? And oh yeah, the 6-year-old drivers have dementia, for some reason.”

By now, you’ve all seen the same press conference excerpts I have.  Because no matter how much we all want to, we can’t look away.

In a field rich with contenders, here are my low-lights from Brandon’s Big Adventure: 

1.It’s hard not to start with the incoherent ramblings on Russia that boiled down to, “Let me hold your coat, Vlad, while you enjoy your minor incursion into Ukraine.” 

Hacky Psaki tried to clean that up the next day, but the duplicitous Ginger Snap didn’t do much better than her boss.  She insisted that Biden didn’t mean what he clearly said, and that, “Our allies know where the president stands.” 

Yes, they do.  That’s why the head honcho of the Ukraine posted a quick video statement/plea for help during which he looked like the twitchy, paranoid South Park character Tweek, while in the background government officials were throwing themselves out of windows or trying to strangle themselves with lamp cords.

2.  Biden is really not good with rhetorical questions, as he proved when he got fed up with the mildest of critical questions about his manifestly disastrous first year: “Can you think of any other president that has done as much in one year? Name one for me. I’m serious. You guys talk about how nothing has happened. I don’t think there’s been much on any incoming president’s plate that’s been a bigger menu than the plate I had given to me.”

First, a plate is not a menu. Second, no waiter ever gave you a menu on a plate.  They bring you the menu first.  Then you order the food.  Then they take the menu away from you, and THEN – and follow closely here – they bring you the food. 

On a plate.

Second, that’s not how rhetorical questions are supposed to work.   Can we name a president with a better first year than yours? 

YES!  ALL of them!  And I’m including the guy who caught pneumonia at his inaugural speech and died within a month. 

In fact, my 8^th grade class president had a better first year than yours.  And she was unable to keep ANY of her campaign promises: We didn’t get a longer recess, or a ban on meatloaf from the school menu, or new bleachers at the gym to replace the rickety old ones.  And our school fight song was not changed to Foghat’s “Slow Ride.”

And yet, compared to you, Susie was a cross between Metternich, Disraeli, and Pitt the Elder!

3. Not content with posing one laughably counter-productive rhetorical question, Biden teed up another one.  Trying to deflect from his lack of achievements, Biden snarled, “Think about this: What are Republicans for?  What are they for?  Name me one thing they’re for.”

To which all Republicans, most independents and even many face-palming Dems yelled at their tvs, “A secure border!  Throwing criminals in jail!  The second amendment!  Eliminating vax and mask mandates!  Standing up to Putin and the Chicoms!  Less inflation, lower gas prices, banning dudes from women’s bathrooms and swimming competitions, firing Fauci…”

Before they all ran out of oxygen and passed out, less than halfway through the obvious answers to Biden’s idiotic question.

4. Biden even managed to undermine the Dems’ great article of faith: it is a treasonous attack on democracy to question the legitimacy of an election!  (Never mind that Hillary did that for four years after she lost, and Stacy Abrams still pretends to be the governor of Georgia, and many Dems still say that Gore beat Bush…)  

When reporters gave Biden several chances to dig out of his claim that unless his vote-fraud-enabling bill is passed, future elections will be illegitimate, he seemed unable to even understand the question.  Twice he went back to discussing 2020, and reporters had to remind him that the question was about the 2022 midterms.  Which are in the future.

Even then, he insisted on doing what he condemned Trump for having done, but went much further.  It was terrible for Trump to have questioned an election that included many fishy incidents (in Philly, Atlanta, WI, AZ, etc.), but it’s just fine for Joey Gaffes to pre-emptively claim that FUTURE elections will be illegitimate, before they’ve even happened!

D’oh!

On my drive back home from TN, I listened to Andrew Klavan’s latest podcast, during which he used a great analogy for the Democrats’ current blindness to their situation, comparing it to what pilots call a “graveyard spin.” 

I got my pilot’s license about 18 years ago, and trained in and flew several planes before selling my part of a Cessna 182 a few years ago.  Spin recovery was the scariest part of flight training, and doing it “under the hood” (i.e. with no visual references) was the toughest, because it required you to trust your instruments over your own senses. 

In the early stages of a spin, you might be banking at a 30 degree angle, but your senses tell you that you’re flying straight and level.  So you continue along as the bank angle increases, until you enter a spin, and finally a graveyard spin, from which you can’t recover.

Klavan’s analogy is perfect: Biden and the true-believing, hard-core leftist Dems’ senses are lying to them.  They think that defunding cops won’t increase crime, and printing trillions of dollars won’t increase inflation, and smearing all whites as racists won’t produce push-back, and pretending men are women isn’t crazy.     

They’ve spent the last 12 months in an increasingly steep bank, but they think their wings are level.  They’re under the hood – if by “under the hood” you mean “experiencing a cranial-rectal inversion” – and they’re not interested in what the instruments are trying to tell them. 

Everything’s fine.  Biden’s had the best first year of any president ever.  This inflation is transitory, and Que Mala is historic, and Mayor Pete’s doing a great job with the supply chain.  The fifth booster is going to make covid go away forever.  Manchin and Sinema are going to come around if we just attack them more.  

And it’s not just Joe.  Pelosi actually said this commie gobbledy gook (I miss Norm!) last week: “Here’s the thing, I say to my members on a regular basis when we gather in caucus … I’ve said to them, under this roof figuratively or actually, is the greatest collection of intellect, integrity, and imagination for doing the right thing for the American people.”

They’re in a graveyard spin with their hands over their ears and their eyes tightly closed, and they’re going to corkscrew into the ground in November. 

It’s been a long 4 years and it’s only been 52 weeks.

Avenatti/Susie the 8^th Grader, 2024!

The Cautious Optimism Roving Correspondent for Affairs (and Stuff) is trying to keep up with the news:

This year is going to be hard on me, because I’m trying to write some political mockery and sarcasm, and our entire Dem leadership is pounding us with dozens of mock-worthy stories per day.  How is a lowly roving correspondent supposed to keep up?

I mean, I haven’t even had a chance to comment on the dude swimmer who’s pretending to be a lady, and flying past the actual female swimmers like a Chris-Craft passing a sea aenemone.  Or both Cuomos going from the penthouse to the outhouse in a two-month period.  Or the entire MSM suddenly discovering that the number of covid hospitalizations and deaths have been wildly exaggerated… for two years!

I’m only one man, people!  One brilliant, charismatic – yet charmingly humble – man!

And to add to my overload, I’m having a difficulty in my home life.  Because last weekend, Cassie the Wonder Dog developed a sore on her left front paw.  And she’s a south paw (HA!), so her handwriting and batting average have both suffered tremendously. 

Because she’s a dog, without access to antibiotics or Web MD, she treated the wound by licking it relentlessly, which only made the situation worse.

So we took her to the vet on Tuesday and got some medicine for her.  Let me assure you all that she’s going to be fine — this isn’t a story that will end with flags across our country at half-mast and a nation in justified mourning – but she has suffered a tremendous affront to her dignity.

For one week, she is wearing one of those ridiculous, plastic, head cones. 

It has not been pretty to see one of the finest examples of canine intelligence and gravitas reduced to what looks like a bumbling, cognitively challenged, AOC figure.  Because she has spent her last 10 years acclimated to moving through spaces with a body that is the width of a dog’s head and shoulders, she is now adjusting to bumping into everything. 

Chairs.  Doorways. Family members. 

The doorway into my home library has smallish double-doors, and every time I get one of those doors open for her to pass, she bonks into the other door before I can open it. 

Our first evening walk with the cone was even worse, because as an alert and watchful dog, she regularly dips her head close to the ground to sniff, and detect any strange or information-packed smells.  With her extended cone, each initial dip of her head rammed the bottom of the cone into the dirt, and brought her to a jarring stop, like a bulldozer running into a hidden rock ledge just beneath the topsoil.

Of course she adjusted, because she is intelligent, and can learn from experience.  (Unlike a certain political party’s leadership I could name.)  But now she walks in front of me like some kind of weird, four-legged Terminator figure, with her head stiffly elevated and a constant side-to-side movement of the cone, to give her a clear field of vision and prevent running into trees or parked cars.    

The cone is supposed to come off tomorrow.  But for those of you who would like to see a world-class dog reduced to a temporarily sad state, I’ve posted a picture of her in her cone of shame on the main page at Martinsimpsonwriting.com. 

But the larger world has kept turning, and I’m even farther behind on my chosen avocation of mocking the mockable.

Speaking of which, AOC has covid.

What can we learn from this?

It’s obvious: by attacking the hypocritical little dullard, the covid virus has demonstrated that it is perversely obsessed with gross ginger guys’ feet and just wants to date AOC.   Duh!

From my “that iron get ya mind right,” files comes the story of another Philly driver (and concealed carry permit holder) who was confronted by an armed carjacker, and decided to get his retaliation in first.   I love this guy!

His first quote demonstrates more common sense than most of our national elected leaders have: “I saw the gun and I thought he was going to shoot me and take the car, so I retaliated as fast as I could. And just to see another day, I had to shoot the guy.”

Yes you did, boss!

But his second quote is even better, because after he gives the would-be carjacker a little of the old “lead hello,” he dishes out some worthy advice to live by: “Stay in school. Don’t play with guns. Don’t rob people. Work for what you want.”

Can we make this man the mayor of Philadelphia immediately?

Now for my shortest column item ever: Sotomayor is an absolute moron.  That is all.

Biden’s ugly speech in Atlanta has been widely and deservedly panned, because it was mean-spirited and terrible.  One of the most-quoted bits was when he insulted anyone who disagrees with him by providing a list of three sets of good and bad alternatives: would you rather be on the side of MLK or George Wallace, John Lewis or Bull Connor, Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” 

Many people have commented on the fact that all of the terrible members of those pairs are Democrats! 

And one and a half of the good three are Republicans.  (MLK was a Dem, and late in life got way too close to socialism, but his main source of moral authority was Christianity and the “content of your character not color of your skin” approach – both of which are anathema to the racial arsonists in the national Dem leadership.)

I’m really struck by that: when he’s trying to think of three morally repulsive, offensive examples of those who are worthy of demonizing, he settles on… three members of his own party!

Can you imagine any conservative making that choice, or needing to?  If we are in a rhetorical situation in which we need to come up with examples of reprehensible humans, binders full of leftists will immediately pop up. (See what I did there?) 

And not just as examples of evil generally!  We’ve got a long list of leftist examples for EACH SPECIFIC TYPE of bad behavior.

In addition to the examples of racist bigotry that Joey Gaffes already gave us – thanks, Brandon! – I can quickly rattle off many more:

When it comes to murderous hatred, you don’t want to be on the side of Stalin, Mao, Lenin or Pol Pot, etc. do you?

When it comes to sexually mistreating women, you don’t want to be on the side of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Andrew Cuomo, etc. do you?

When it comes to greedy kleptocrats, you don’t want to be on the side of Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, or one of any number of Castros (Fidel, Raul, Julian) etc., do you? 

When it comes to grotesquely incompetent governors, you don’t want to be on the side of Newsom, Pritzker, Whitman, Cuomo, etc., do you?

When  it comes to racial hoaxers, you don’t want to be on the side of Grandma Squanto (#wemustneverstopmockingher), Rachel Dolezal, Ibram X. (Henry Rogers) Kendi, Al Sharpton, etc., do you? 

When it comes to dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers malevolence, you don’t want to be on the side of Maxine Waters, AOC, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, etc. do you?   

I could do this all day, and so could all of you.  But our Cadaver in Chief got stuck, and listed all Dems.  Well done!

Finally, Que Mala Harris.  Oh, Que Mala!  Every time you sit down with even the friendliest of lickspittle interviewers, Dems everywhere hold their breath, and conservatives pause the DVR and make some popcorn.

You’ve already heard her latest gaffe-fest, I’m sure, but I want to savor her amazing word-salad of incomprehensible banality one more time before it fades in our memory because of her NEXT egregious offense against the English language and logic that comes along to replace it. 

When asked by a generic MSM stooge whether she and the administration might not consider changing strategy on covid, she excreted this beautiful mess: “It is time for us to do what we’ve been doing, and that time is every day.  Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.”

To quote the late great Norm MacDonald (peace be upon him), “No offense, but that sounds like some f***ing commie gobbledygook!”

Avenatti/the ghost of Bull Connor 2024!

First, as my New Year’s gift to you, I’ve posted a pic from several years ago of Cassie and I getting ready to take a drive around our college town with the top down.  “Have you trained her to bark viciously at every college kid in a Che Guevara t-shirt?” you don’t need to ask, because you already know.  To see that pic, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com after you finish this column.

Here are some recent stories, with no thematic coherence other than “mockable people or events.”

In late December, Business Insider ran a story on a dilemma facing the dim-bulbs on the View.  Full Disclosure: I’ve never watched the View, other than posted excerpts of times the View-sters embarrassed themselves with idiotic comments, delivered idiotically.  (So, no more than 12 times per week.) 

The story’s headline is, “The View is struggling to find a conservative woman who won’t get hostile debating the show’s liberal co-hosts.” 

I know what you’re thinking, because I am too: you had me at “The View is struggling….” 

But if you’re ever on Jeopardy, competing against a “woman” with the jawline of a young Kirk Douglas and the shoulders of an interior lineman from TCU, and the category is “Hilariously Oblivious Media Stories,” put this story in the form of a question. 

And then stand back, while your dainty opponent smashes “her” podium with “her” ham-hock-sized fists in Hulkian frustration.

Imagine the conundrum facing those low-IQ leftist ladies.  (Alliteration for 100, Alex—AHH!  Keep that “woman” away from me! I’m like a frail Fay Wray in her vise-like, hairy-knuckled grip!!”)

They’re searching for someone, as one of their former staffers put it – “who is going to fight – but not too hard, because they don’t want it to be ugly and bickering.” 

Again, you and I are on the same page: If you’re trying to remove “ugly and bickering” from the View, good luck!

I don’t know how those producers cannot tell that they’re fighting a losing battle.  They’re looking for an impossibility: a conservative co-host who can lose fair arguments to leftist harpies.  Current host Sunny Hostin put it best: “Right now, we still do need a really conservative voice. I also believe it’s really important to not have someone on the panel who spreads misinformation, who adheres to the big lies, who is an anti-vaxxer, because I think that’s dangerous.”

In other words, “I believe a bunch of wrong stuff, and I also believe that correct beliefs are dangerous misinformation and lies.  Now find me someone who disagrees with me, but who won’t look smarter than me or prove me wrong.” 

I am reminded of Adam Carolla’s observation about two of the View hosts — and another leftist human toothache — which I will paraphrase: there is no greater gap between the happiness of the names and the grimness of the person in real life than Joy Reid, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.   Joy, Joy and Whoopi sound great… the reality is that all three are miserable!

I winced when I came across this grim headline on Breitbart: “White House Sending Dr. Jill Biden to Comfort Kentucky Tornado Survivors.”

I know: haven’t those beleaguered Kentuckians suffered enough? 

I picture them being told that a famous female doctor is coming to see them, and some of them saying, “Great!  Maybe she’ll be able to look over our family’s x-rays and blood work and confirm that we’re getting top-notch treatment for our injuries sustained when our house collapsed on us.”  Or, “I hope she’s a psychiatrist or psychologist, and can help us come to terms with the PTSD arising from our horrible trauma.”

And then they find out that it’s Dr. Jill, and the only help she can give is to reassure them that increasing retention at their local junior college is a great idea.

I’m reminded of the Simpson’s episode when the townspeople had wanted a statue to great Republican president Abraham Lincoln.  But the town budget was tiny, and so, at the unveiling, they found a statue of Jimmy Carter, standing on a base proclaiming, “Malaise Forever.”  One disappointed citizen plaintively says, “Aww, come on!”  And another points an accusing finger and proclaims, “He’s history’s greatest monster!” 

And the town wisely and justifiably knocks down the statue and peacefully riots.   

And no, in case Tim Hardcastle is still around to fact-check my columns, I’m not saying that Dr. Jill Biden is history’s greatest monster. 

Am I saying that she may have married history’s greatest monster?  Ummm…

Turning to a much happier story out of the UK’s Daily Mail, Imhotep Pelosi is expected to fall down next year, clearing the way for a “civil war” between the far left and lunatic left fringes of the Democrat party.

I’m sorry, that was “step down,” not “fall down.”  But the result will hopefully be the same: a fratricidal battle between groups of outraged leftists that produces many casualties on both sides, and a weakened surviving coalition that is certain to repulse more average Americans than they are repulsing now, if such a thing is possible.

Not since the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s have I looked forward to a conflict so much.  I say we goad both sides on to escalate the battle! 

Another feel-good Breitbart story tells of a recent encounter in the City of Brotherly Murder, Philadelphia, which last year set an annual record of 562 homicides (and 2200 overall shootings).  And don’t ask which political party has had total control over that city since long before I was a hilarious roving correspondent in utero, because you already know.

In this story, two Biden-voting miscreants rear-ended a Lyft’s driver’s car, and when he got out to look at the damage, pulled a rifle and said they were carjacking him.  He asked to get his passenger out of his car, and once she was safe and the thugs were preparing to drive away, he demonstrated two important principles: he has a healthy internal locus of control, and “that iron get ya mind right.”

I.e. he pulled his concealed carry weapon and shot the thug who was getting into his Infiniti, and then shot the thug who had been driving the getaway Honda.  Tragically, both would-be predators survived, but one is reportedly in the hospital in critical condition. 

So, thoughts and prayers… that the Infiniti was not damaged.

Another recent story greatly encouraged me, until it proved to be a hoax.  The version I initially saw told about a wise CA store owner trying to respond to the leftist lunatics running that state.  After a local Soros-funded DA announced that shoplifters who stole no more than $950 worth of merchandise would not be prosecuted, and Ken-Doll Newsom did nothing to intervene, the store owner came up with a plan.

He put a $951-dollar price tag on every item in his store, so that any creep stealing as much as a pack of gum could be prosecuted.   At the check-out, he had coupons to give to each legitimate customer, changing the price of each item back to its normal cost.

I thought that this was a great example of an American can-do spirit, working hard to make a living and help our communities despite the Marxist loons who are hell-bent on thwarting that.  But sadly, it turns out that the story came from a satirical conservative site I’d never heard of called, “The Glorious American.” 

So I’m disappointed.  But if any enterprising business owner gets inspired to try this, I’ll support him or her 100%!

Finally, a melancholy note: I really miss Norm MacDonald.   

I was reminded of this when I came across one of his stand-up shows at the Improve from early last year, in which he did 8 minutes of hilarious commentary on covid.  The lines are funny, but his pitch-perfect delivery compounds the laughs.

It’s an insightful, sometimes vulgar meditation on mortality, made all the more poignant by the fact that Norm delivered it knowing that the cancer he’d had for 9 years would soon kill him – something that none of his audience knew. 

True to form, he mentions that the club owner told him not to talk about covid, because that would depress people.

And he mentions that in the middle of a long diatribe about covid!

Seeing that, I searched for other Norm clips, and came across a great snippet from 2014, when he was interviewing lefty comic Sarah Silverman outside some awards show.  He asked her about a comedy group she was in, and she windily described it as some type of “comedy collective,” going on at some length.

Norm interrupted her with, “No offense, but that sounds like some sort of f***ing commie gobbledygook.”  This stops Silverman for a moment, and then she sighs and sarcastically says, “You got me, Norm.”  

He cross-talks with her, undeterred,  “I mean I’ve never heard the word “collective” without Leon Trotsky…” 

I miss him, and I miss “gobbledygook,” a great, old-fashioned word that I am right now vowing to try to bring back. 

In fact, let’s end with a brief mention of Que Mala’s intelligence-insulting January 6^th address.  She compared the three-hour disturbance by several hundred people on January 6^th to Pearl Harbor Day and 9/11. 

Because you remember how the Japanese did only a small amount of damage to our ships by scuffing a few of them up, and how the total death count on that day was 1 Japanese soldier who stuck his head through a portal on the USS Arizona and was shot dead by a MP?  

THAT, my friends, is nothing but a bunch of f-ing commie gobbledygook!

Avenatti/She-Hulk Jeopardy Guy, 2024!

As someone who enjoys a good display of leftists stepping on rakes, 2022 is starting out with a bang.  Or rather, a resounding THWACK!  Let me point to two examples.

First we have the story of everyone’s favorite vacuous ex-bartender AOC, who came down to Florida to escape the dysfunctional hellscape she’s been working overtime to build in NY.   And she thought that it would be a good idea, while here, to engage in a battle of wits – a contest in which she’s never more than half-armed – with conservatives in general, and Ron DeSantis in particular. 

It did not go well for her.

First, when she was spotted dining outside with her unimpressive-looking boyfriend, many conservatives pointed out that neither of them were wearing masks.  Which might be considered a wee bit hypocritical, since she’s spent a lot of time in the past several years berating all who yearn to breathe mask-free, and chanting the leftist catechism of covid. (I don’t know the whole thing, because I’m a well-adjusted conservative, but I think it starts out, “There is no god but Marx, and Fauci is his prophet…”)

Also hypocritical: the fact that she vacationed in FL when she’s been shrieking that that’s a hideous death-site because our gov isn’t a power-grabbing Cuomo-Pritzker-Whitmer type.  Also, she tore into Ted Cruz for vacationing in Cancun while TX had a winter storm, and then she partied in FL while Covid was spiking in NY…

Anyway, Sandy responded to valid criticism with the kind of wisdom and maturity we’ve come to expect from her: she went all mean-girl and said that those GOP losers are just jealous of her hot bod: “If Republicans are mad they can’t date me, they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet.”

If that wasn’t laughably stupid, it would be a pretty useful go-to move whenever you are criticized.  Has Hillary called me a deplorable?  Has AOC called me a creepy weirdo?  Do many leftist women think I’m a cisgender caveman, drenched in toxic masculinity?

Well that’s just because they all want some of this sweet, sweet dad bod!  Sorry to disappoint you ladies, but I’m already taken.

…is what I would say, if I were a delusional narcissist like AOC.

Unbelievably enough, that might not have been the dumbest thing that solipsistic Sandy said on her vacation.  Because she also repeated a lefty talking point about Ron DeSantis going AWOL.  “Hasn’t Gov. DeSantis been inexplicably missing for like 2 weeks?” she tweeted. “If he’s around, I would be happy to say hello.”

First off, I think you’re only saying that because you want to “date” him, you empty-headed little horndog.  (And judging from the pic of your chubby little ginger boyfriend – no offense to those with a few extra pounds – as we say in my support group,“My name is Martin, and I’ve put on a little winter weight.” – or gingers, who more than likely actually DO have souls, Hacky Psaki to the contrary – it’s hard to blame you.) 

Unfortunately for AOC, shortly after this leftist “DeSantis is missing” trope really got rolling, it turned out that DeSantis was… with his wife, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer! 

Ouch!  That’s got to leave a mark on those slimy Dem gossips.  Especially since they have been super busy downplaying the fact that their own standard-bearer Joey Gaffes has been out of the public eye since his mysterious death in 2020!

Not content with leaving dumb enough alone, AOC also posted a short video when she got back to NY, and was walking through an empty parking garage with her boyfriend.  Oddly enough, she was wearing a mask when the video started, but took it off to speak.  By the way, she also was caught maskless on video in Florida at some kind of crowded, indoor, drag-queen social event. 

Because according to Science™, crowded spaces in the free state of Florida are corona-free, but empty parking garages in a blue city are crawling with the ‘rona.  And THAT – ya creepy weirdo – is why people were criticizing your escapades in Florida, not because of your boyfriend’s creepy feet.

(Though I’m old-school on men wearing sandals and exposing their gross feet in public: it’s acceptable (barely) when you’re on a beach, or if you’re an extra playing a Roman in The Passion of the Christ. Other than that, no bueno!)

By the way, if one were looking for physical things to make fun of about AOC, I might suggest that one watch the parking garage video, and wonder how she somehow got hold of Harry Caray’s comically oversized glasses.  (If she had any sense of humor and knew anything that happened before she was born, she would have tried a Caray impression, along the lines of, “Hey! Check out the kid in the sombrero!”) (And any of you who got that obscure joke reference are automatically dear to me. For the rest of you, go to Youtube and search for Will Ferrell doing Harry Caray.)   

The second rake-stomping story comes courtesy of a joint act of God and governmental incompetence: the snowstorm traffic jam on I-95 in VA.

Now I’m not one to blame government for not solving every problem.  In fact, I’m pleasantly surprised when government solves ANY problem.  But this story provided a lot of entertainment.

First, a bunch of lefties jumped on the situation, exploiting it to get some early shots in on the new GOP VA governor, Glenn Youngkin.  They’re still smarting from his upset victory, and this was an opportunity too good to pass up.

My favorite tweet from among many worthy choices came from some poor dope named Scott Rhodes: “So, where’s Republican Gov Youngkin in this I-95 mega-disaster???? 48 mile shutdown for hours & hours in VA & he’s nowhere to be found. This never happened under Dem Gov Northam—or any other Gov for that matter!!!!! Shame!”

But then – hilariously — it turns out that Youngkin doesn’t take office until January 15^th.  In fact, the current office-holder is Ralph Northam, the very governor whom dullard Scott Rhodes said would NEVER let this kind of thing happen on his watch.  You’re not exactly a Rhodes scholar, are you, Scott?  

And for those of you who may have forgotten, Northam is more properly known – from his college yearbook photo spread — as Governor Blackface.  Or, to be fair to him, possibly Governor Klan Hood, since we’re not sure which hideous racial stereotype was portrayed by the future gov. 

Not since police chief Wiggum’s paste-eating, slow-witted child Ralph, has there been such a stain on all who carry the name “Ralph.” 

And Blackface quickly proved his brilliant acumen… by blaming the drivers who were stuck. Again, act of God, wintertime, etc.  But when your own incompetent response has a healthy bit of the blame to take,  you may want to lay off the “idiot voters! Serves them right for getting stuck!” routine.

Finally, the story of Gov. Klan Hood Wiggum provides a teachable moment about an important aspect of the character of national Dem leadership.   

In May of 2019, the Blackface/Klanhood scandal erupted.  You don’t have to be a news junkie to know that for the last decade or more, thousands of racial molehill stories have been turned into racial mountain stories, grotesquely distorting the truth and ruining lives.

And yet, Dem governor Blackface Moonwalker is going to step down in a week, having served his full term.  Because when the woke hypocrites started gearing up to throw him out, they found out that the next two Democrats in the line of succession were also toxic!  The Lieutenant Governor had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman.  Next in line was the Attorney General… who had also posed for pictures in blackface!

At this point you are probably asking yourself, “Are there ANY Democrats who have not either assaulted women or been pictured in blackface?  Must we give them one free pass, and say that we’ll support any of them who have not assaulted women WHILE wearing blackface?”

But never fear, because the next in line was the leader of the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and that guy – mercifully! – had not done any photo shoots in either blackface or KKK regalia, and he also had managed not to go all Ted Kennedy on any female aids, secretaries or waitresses in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

So now you are saying to yourself, “Mirabile dictu, problem solved!”  If you know a few snippets of Latin, and don’t know what a hilariously untrustworthy narrator I am.

Because Virginia pol/unicorn serving as the Big Fish in the House of Delegates turned out to be… a Republican.  Cue the sad trombone.  And then cut to the chase:  yada yada yada, Governor Blackface serves out his full term.

Just thought I should remind you of the vast integrity of the leftist racial justice warriors who are always screaming that all of us “judge-by-the-content-of-their-character, not-the-color-of-their-skin” types are terrible, terrible racists.  

Avenatti/Ralph Wiggum, 2024!

I hope that all of you had a great Christmas and New Year’s, and that you are ready to get back to the regular routines of your lives, rested and energized.

I always love this time of year.  I’m not big on making formal resolutions, but I do appreciate the chance to look back on the year that has passed, and to contemplate goals and hopes for the year to come.  And this particular new year finds me in an optimistic mood – you’d expect nothing less from a denizen of this fine site! – notwithstanding the obstacles that our nation will face in 2022. 

As we all know, between the disruptions of the pandemic, a terrible election, and the even more terrible leftist mis-rule over this past year, it has been difficult to maintain a consistently positive outlook.  But the last third of 2021 brought me renewed hope for the near future.

Sadly, most of this hope has risen from the smoking ruins resulting from a year of Democrat control of the White House and congress.  I knew that they’d do a bad job and get bad results – you don’t sow idiotically self-defeating and wrong-headed policies and reap a harvest of success.  But I didn’t know just how badly things would go for them, and how quickly! 

Defunding and hamstringing the police naturally produced an explosion of crime.  Obscene over-spending naturally produced mountains of waste and runaway inflation.  Killing pipelines and oil exploration and production naturally left us at the mercy of Putin and the sheiks, and brought us high gas prices.  Pulling out troops before evacuating civilians from Afghanistan reminded everyone of why leftists can’t be put in charge of anything important. 

So although this year promises to be a long wait for November, and we know the Dems are far from done in their attempts to torment and bedevil us between now and then, it’s much easier to bear the current pain when we have the prospect of seeing them get a much-deserved comeuppance in 10 months.

Even writing that makes me cringe at the idea that I might be counting some pre-hatched chickens, or jinxing us somehow.  But if you feel a little uneasy at the thought that they might still be able to send out enough mail-in ballots or otherwise game the system – or that the GOP can be counted on to try mightily to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory! – just console yourself with this thought:

Aren’t you glad that you’re on this side of the political divide, with our chances in November, instead of on their side, with theirs? 

They can read the tea leaves and the polls, and they’ve got to be losing sleep at what they’re seeing.  Biden is visibly deteriorating with each passing day, and Que Mala is somehow more unpopular than he is.  All of the energy on their side is with the clueless Squad-ish ideologues, who are determined to keep charging head-first into the brick wall of American public opinion until they are knocked even more senseless than they already are.    

To sum up, their leaders and their policies are polling somewhere between “anesthetic-less root canals” and “chlamydia with a side of hemorrhoids,” and it’s hard to imagine that things are going to get better for them this year.  Biden is not some up-and-comer who has had a tough rookie year but can learn from it; he peaked 50 years ago, and his peak was part-way up the slope of Mount Mediocrity.   And his policies are not going to produce a delayed turn-around once they gather momentum. 

The Dem policies went into a pipeline (or was it a sewer pipe?) starting a year ago, and the rotten results that have already emerged from the other end of that pipeline are making everyone sick.  And there’s still a full load of more of the same right behind it, and it’s going to be oozing out from now until November.   

Let me turn from that nauseating image – sorry! – toward a more uplifting thought.

For that I’m going back to a concept I brought up in a series of columns on, “The Case for Optimism.”  If you’d like to read them, you can find them at Martinsimpsonwriting.com; they were posted in July of 2020. 

In those columns I discussed two psychological concepts: an internal vs an external locus of control.   The former refers to seeing yourself as mostly controlling your own life, while the latter suggests seeing yourself as primarily impacted by larger forces beyond your control.

Like the half empty or half full glass of water, both of these outlooks are partly true.  It doesn’t matter how determined or self-actualizing you are: if you are born in a socialist hellhole like Venezuela or China, or if you have a severe genetic disease, or are born to alcoholic, dysfunctional parents, your life is going to be very much harder than someone’s who is born in a thriving country, healthy, and with world-class parents like my wife and I.

But even at those extremes, and especially in between, people who see themselves as in control of their own lives will make decisions every day – work hard, don’t buy things on credit, acquire a Wonder Dog, stay off the heroin – that will make them successful.  And people who think the opposite will make decisions – work minimally, produce mostly excuses, vote for politicians to fix your life, mmmmm, heroin – that will ruin their lives.

So why do I bring that up now? 

Because the beginning of a new year seems like an especially apt time to focus on developing the most robust internal locus of control for yourself as possible.  If you are a conservative, you’re already half-way there, because conservatism is inherently about focusing on the internal vs. the external – as is clear in most conservative mottos.

“Tend your own garden.”  “If it is to be, it’s up to me.”  Because politicians can’t run our own lives nearly as well as we can, “That government is best which governs least.”  And, “Mind Your Own Business, You Totalitarian Jerks.” 

Okay, I made that last one up, and it has sadly not seemed to sweep the nation.  Probably because the acronym for it – MYOBYTJ – doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.  Clearly, I’m not in marketing. 

Anyway, as we begin a new year – even one in which the externalities of national politics seem to be turning our way — let’s not lose sight of the fact that most of the important things in life are within our control, or at least influence. 

I’m in control of what kind of husband I will be to my wife in 2022, and what kind of a father I will be to my girls, and what kind of friend and colleague I will be to my friends and co-workers.  I’ll be responsible for how I worship, and what language I use, and how many pounds I gain or lose, and whether I say, “Let’s Go Brandon!” or that other phrase.  (Which, let’s admit it, can be oh so satisfying.)

So Happy New Year, CO nation!  Let’s tend our own gardens, and take care of business, and crush it in our personal lives.

And then, in November, let’s do our part to form a red wave that will sweep away the blue majorities in congress. 

To paraphrase US Grant after the first day at Shiloh, we had the devil’s own years in 2020 and 2021.  Lick ‘em in ‘22, though!

What better time for my last post of this series than New Year’s Eve, when we celebrate that we are one year closer to being delivered from the Brandon presidency?  

As I was putting this last montage together, I realized that the columns I wrote in November and December are so recent that I probably don’t need to look back at them.  So in this third and final part, I’ll consider only columns from August through October:

In August, I ran through just one day’s headlines from Breitbart, to illustrate how insane our country has gotten.  My favorite story – because it was obscure, yet also perfectly illustrative of our political class’s foibles – was about a Michigan pol you’ve never heard of:

“But lest you think that all of the news was bad, or that there is no Democrat whom I could support, let me end with the story of Michigan state representative Jewell Jones, an attractive, clean-cut, African-American young man.

This guy is my kind of Democrat, because he’s 100% authentic.  I don’t like pols like Obama or Biden, who run as moderates (“there’s no red states and blue states, just the United States!”) and then govern like the leftists they are.

That’s not Jewell.  He’s as transparent as Elizabeth Warren is translucent (#wemustneverstopmockingher).

Sure, he may have had a run-in or two with Johnny Law, as when he drove drunk, crashed into a ditch, assaulted a paramedic and then resisted arrest.   He refused to show ID, then flashed a badge from the Inkster Police Department.  (Spoiler alert: he is not a cop.)

Then, like a young Hunter Biden when caught with meth and hookers but no laptop, he threatened to call in the Big Guy.  Or in this case, the Big Gal, i.e. Michigan dictator and finalist in the “Worst Governor in the Country” competition, Gretchen Whitmer.

“I’ll call Gov. Whitmer right now,” he threatened.  “When I call Gretchen, I need you all’s IDs and badges [sic].”  He went on to say, “It’s not going to be good for you; I run you all budget, bro [sic]…. You all don’t know who you all are dealing with, bro.”   

I know what you’re thinking: this arrogant jerk sounds like half the pols in DC.  What makes him so special?

I left out the best part.  Because his latest trouble arises from a scandal in which he spent campaign funds at a strip club.  Again, not that unusual – and I’d rather see taxpayer dollars used to make it rain on the main stage than funding Antifa and critical race theory classes, for example.

But the beautiful thing about Jewell Jones – and what makes him the archetypal Dem pol – is his reaction to the charges that he spent campaign cash on strippers.  He said, “We have to meet people where they’re at sometimes.”

Yes! And sometimes where they’re at happens to be twerking over your lap in the champagne room!  What’s he supposed to do? NOT stick taxpayer dollars into his constituents’ g-strings? That’s just rude!

And then he made his closing argument, claiming that it wasn’t all about the ogling, and stating that the establishment in question has – and I quote – “great lamb chops.”

My first thought was that you don’t eat strip club lamb chops any more than you eat gas station sushi.

But then I remembered that I’m a gentleman, and I’ve been married for 30+ years, and so am not up on all of the cool youngsters’ lingo.   Could “lamb chops” be a euphemism in this case? 

It doesn’t sound like it.  I can’t imagine overhearing someone saying, “Check out the lamb chops on our waitress!”

But then again, I have heard of a “rack of lamb.”  Coincidence?

Anyway, that’s less than one day’s headlines from one webpage.  Covering these boneheads is looking like more than a full-time job.  Luckily, I’m a working dog, not a show dog.

So I guess I’ll be here all week.  Try the veal.

But pass on the lamb chops.”

In September, I looked back at Biden’s disastrous cluster-shtup in Afghanistan, and discussed one low-light among many:

“Even though we knew many months in advance that we were going to withdraw, we needlessly left behind one of the largest military treasure troves in history.   You’ve all heard the numbers: hundreds of thousands of rifles, machine guns and small arms, thousands of night-vision equipment sets, hundreds of armored vehicles, dozens of deadly, advanced helicopters, and four gigantic C-130 airplanes.

In total, we left some of the worst people in the world – voluntarily and unnecessarily – nearly 100 billion dollars worth of arms!

And don’t overlook the last item I listed: 4 C-130 airplanes.  Those are the humongous ones, capable of carrying literally tons of material – armored vehicles and heavy weaponry and many, many troops — in each flight.

To give you an idea how big they are, if you lowered the loading ramp of a C-130, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion could walk up it side-by-side, and neither of their enormous behinds would touch either of the side walls.

That’s how huge a C-130 is!  And we left 4 of them on the ground, for no reason.

Can you imagine how stupid you have to be to do that?!  You could talk to the thickest dullard in the most remedial class in the worst middle school in any terribly run Democrat city in this country, and you could easily get this point across.

You could probably even make AOC understand it.

In fact, here’s how that conversation would go:

AOC: What’s a C-130?

You: It’s a gigantic airplane.

AOC: Is it big enough to fit Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s enormous arses in it?

You: That’s a weird question.  But yes.  Yes it is.

AOC: And when we leave, we want to take everything we can with us, so the bad guys don’t get it?

You: Exactly.

AOC:  So… why don’t we fill those 4 giant planes with all of that yucky gun stuff and fly it out of there?

You: You mean that you wouldn’t just leave those planes and all of the weapons they could carry for the bad guys to terrorize and kill people with for many years to come?

AOC (turning her empty little head to one side the way my Aussie shepherd does when she’s thinking):  Wouldn’t that be stupid?

You: I never thought I’d say this, but would you consider being a general, or the president?

And, scene.”

Also in September, I considered several nominees for “Worst Person of the Month,” and one of the nominees was Rashida Tlaib, “squad member, and spiritual twin of brother-marrying cretin Ilhan Omar.

As unattractive on the outside as she is on the inside, Tlaib reached a low point – even for her – in August, when she posted a tweet mourning that the body of Palestinian woman Mai Afana, whom Tlaib described as a “loving daughter and successful student,” has not yet been released to her family.

Tlaib wrote, “Meet Mai Afana’s mother, Khuloud, who is fighting to be able to bury her daughter & begin her healing. Mai was a mother, loving daughter & successful PhD student. She was killed by the Israeli government last June. Israel won’t release her body to her family.”

I guess because tweets have length limits, Tlaib didn’t have time to mention the circumstances of this loving, successful mom’s death: she launched a terrorist attack on an Israeli checkpoint by ramming it with her car.

“But Martin,” you are not thinking, “maybe she made an innocent driving mistake, preoccupied as she was by her PhD studies and her warm maternal love for her child.”

Well after the crash, she leapt out of her car and charged the soldiers, trying to stab them with a knife she just happened to be carrying.

As your typical PhD student does.  I remember my dissertation defense, for example, when I went in with my notes, a binder full of research materials, and a scimitar that I always carried to class.  

The next time some lefty whines about Marjorie Taylor Green, remind them that Rashida Tlaib — and Ilhan Omar, and Maxine “Melting Face” Waters, and AOC, etc. — are elected Democrat congress creatures.”

Later in the month, I got a bit of entertainment from the crowd of vapid celebrities who attend the Met Gala: “The honor of “most egregious example of a self-satirizing dope wearing clothing with words on it: goes to everybody’s favorite innumerate, incompetent bartender: AOC.  

Unlike Hester Prynne – here comes a reference that would fly right over Sandy’s tumbleweed-filled head – AOC wasn’t satisfied with one scarlet letter on her clothing.  She had to have three scarlet words that, taken together, are a lot more shameful than a little bout of adultery: “Tax the Rich.”

When I first saw the picture of her looking back over her shoulder while wearing that dress, I had several thoughts:

First, contrary to the fever dreams of AOC, Bernie and the Pale-Face Pocahontas (#wemustneverstopmockingher), the rich are already taxed six ways to Sunday, with the top 1% paying more than the bottom 90% combined.

Second, you’re at an event that costs $30K a plate, you moron!

Third, I wish some paparazzi jerk would have called out, “Who are you wearing?” so that Sandy could have said, “Karl Marx!”

Fourth, I remember a similar fashion trend from the past that this reminded me of.  In past years, many young women regularly wore a variety of sweats pants and yoga-style pants with words printed on the seat.  In particular, the words, “Juicy” and “Pink” seemed to make frequent appearances there.

I found several things about that trend to be odd.  For one, I don’t think women generally need to call attention to that particular body part.  There doesn’t have to be reading involved: your average straight guy will notice. 

In fact, putting words there might be considered counter-productive.  When dealing with the typical neanderthal male — in a half-hearted defense of my toxic brethren: we’re just as God made us — women very often need to say something along the lines of, “My eyes are up here!”

Conversely, they’d never need to utter the sentence, “My butt is down here!”   Because this is how that conversation would go:

Reasonably attractive woman:  “My butt is—”

Straight guys (interrupting): “Yeah, yeah, we got it.”

Anyway, AOC is a fairly attractive woman, assuming your turn-offs don’t include, “Googly eyes, life-threateningly low IQ, and toxic political beliefs.”

But the fact that she has a trim figure represents a real lost opportunity, message-wise.  Her petite, thin stature (very fat-shaming, by the way) required the briefest of texts.

But if a former first lady (hint: CAW CAW) wore that kind of dress, you could print the introduction to Das Kapital across her beam, with room left over for footnotes.  (I was going to say “cankle-notes,” but I am too mature for that.)”

In October, I discussed a story about the devastating effects of leftist governance in my home state’s town of Chicago:

“Let’s play a little game. Let’s assume that you’re Lori Lightfoot, and that someone in the mayor’s office in Chicago said, “Beetlejuice!” three times, and so you found yourself in that room, as the mayor.  You got elected mostly because you are not white, and you like the ladies.

And before you can say something snarky, I know: that applies to Bill Cosby and Robert Mugabe too.  But neither of them were available, and so the Dems in Chicago elected you.

And now, for reasons nobody can figure out, black Chicagoans are dying in droves amidst a hail of gunfire that only slows down when the temperature drops below zero.  The killings have continued despite the fact that you’ve taken all the logical actions that the leftist brain-trust has advised:

You’ve denounced the police, and cut their funding, and done everything you could to make their jobs harder.

You’ve denounced the white nationalism of the black street gangs doing most of the killing.

You’ve raised taxes.

You’ve dropped ominous hints about sinister Indiana gun-running syndicates.

You’ve blamed Donald Trump.

And STILL nothing has helped.  So it’s time to get serious.  To think outside of the box, and try some innovative solutions.

Do you:

1. Re-fund the police and encourage them to increase arrests?
2. Urge judges to crack down on the criminals who are caught shooting Chicagoans?
3. Rescind your counter-productive anti-gun laws, and encourage citizens to fight back?
4. Install bleeding control kits throughout the city?

If you picked any choice except “D,” you know nothing about the way Dems govern.

I am not making this story up: the party that runs Chicago is installing over 400 “wall-mounted bleeding control kits” all over the city.  According to one report, “each of the kits contains enough supplies to treat eight victims, with tourniquets, gauze, shears, gloves and an instruction manual.”

First, 400 kits, each capable of treating 8 victims?  Hmm.  Hold on a second while I do the math on that… 8 times 400… consider the draconian gun control laws in Chicago, which should produce a ratio of criminals with guns to non-criminals with guns to around 8521 to 1… that supply should last… carry the 6…

Three weekends.  Those kits will last three weekends.  Unless there is an unusual, early cold snap and the action on the automatic pistols starts to frost up and jam.

In which case: four weekends.

Second, each kit contains an “instruction manual?”  These dopes do realize that the Chicagoans who will be using these kits were mostly educated in Dem-controlled public schools, right?

You might want to try some emojis or pictograms in those manuals.

Also, if the first sentence in the manual isn’t, “As soon as you’ve got the bleeding temporarily stopped, head for the closest red state you can find pronto!” somebody has made a mistake.

Because I am as generous as the day is long, I’d like to offer my services to the city of Chicago, pro bono.  I would love to write those instruction manuals for them.

I’ve already gotten a rough draft started:

“Welcome to Chicago!  The Windy City, the City of the Big Shoulders!  Hog Butcher to the World  — no offense, vegans!

If you’re reading this manual, you’ve probably been in town for 15 minutes, and have thus been shot.  Sorry about that!

Now, you might be tempted to call the cops or an ambulance, but that won’t work.  Because even if the thug who shot you didn’t steal your cell phone, there are only 14 cops left in the city, and they’re in mandatory meetings to study the origin of white rage.   And the ambulances won’t leave the garage without a police escort.

So it’s up to you.  But luckily, we’ve got your back.

I mean, unless the bullet is actually in your back, in which case you’re screwed.

But if the bullet is in your front, where you can get at the wound, answer these simple triage questions to determine what to do next:

Am I a vegan?  If so, my weak, watery blood and my anemia mean that I’m going to die, even if it’s only a superficial flesh wound.  I should close my eyes and make my peace with Gaia.

Is the bullet lodged in my genitals?  If so, I should immediately begin to identify as an a-sexual non-binary person, or possibly as Gavin Newsom, in which case my smooth, featureless plastic crotch area will allow me to feel no pain.

Is the blood that I’m losing coming out in an arterial spray, so forceful that it is drenching the bodies of the other, surrounding victims who arrived in Chicago ten minutes before I did, and are thus already enveloped in the sweet embrace of death?  If so, I should close my eyes and join them.

If the wound is only oozing blood, you still have a chance.  Please turn on the accompanying dvd of the movie Ronin, and fast forward to minute 57.  This is the scene where Robert DeNiro lays on a table, looking at his wound in a mirror while instructing the French guy how to remove the bullet.  After watching that scene, if your vision isn’t graying out, look around for a passing French guy who happens to have a mirror with him…

And, scene.”

Happy New Year!

For the first half of May, I took a bucket-list trip with two cousins, driving Route 66 from Chicago to LA in an old Caddy convertible; if you’d like to read my daily journal from that trip, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com and scroll down to the bottom right.

When I got back home I came across a CIA recruitment ad that seemed an ominous sign of the times:

“I quote from a story in the Guardian: “A social media campaign, Humans of CIA, aimed at boosting diversity in the agency—”

Whoa, stop right there.  That’s a lot of weapons-grade wrongness in a very small collection of words.  Let me count the ways:

First, I don’t want our spy agency to have “social media campaigns.”

Clandestine drone surveillance campaigns?  Yes.  Infiltration and disruption campaigns?  Abso-freakin’-lutely.  Counter-Fang-Fang reverse-engineered triple-agent honey-trap campaigns? Sounds like fun.

But social media campaigns?  “Here’s a pic of my meal in the CIA cafeteria this morning?” “5 Reasons why Masculinity is So Toxic?” “How to Handle Micro-Aggressions When you are Undercover?”

No bueno, and no gracias.

Second, ”Humans of CIA?”  That’s what you named your social media campaign?!  As opposed to what?  “Inhumans of CIA?”  “Amphibians of CIA?”  “Deciduous Trees of CIA?”  Ugh.

Third,“…aimed at boosting diversity…”  Good lord, will this NEVER end?!

We need super-sneaky, bad-ass spies.  We don’t need differently-abled, transgender, anorexic, Zoroastrian, little-person Asian-or-Pacific-Islanders!   (Besides, that 6-box-checking unicorn is already pulling down a 7-figure income leading a grievance study program at some horrifically over-priced college.)

I mean, sure, if we need to infiltrate a bi-polar, transgender terror cell, recruit with that in mind.  If we’ve got a lead on a hearing-impaired Pacific-Islander drug cartel, go find the Samoan Marlee Matlin and coach her up.

But otherwise, can we PLEASE just find some people who like to spy and are good at it?

“I wonder what kind of employee you get, when you begin with that insane set of criteria?” you are not asking, because you already know.

Let me introduce you to a 36-year old Latina CIA officer with a lot of issues.  How do I know these things about her?  Because she yammers about it throughout the video.

In the first minute of the ad, we learn that she likes Zora Neal Hurston’s fiction (okay), that she’s the daughter of immigrants (who cares?), that “nothing about [her] “is tragic,” (what?), “[she] is perfectly made” (Meh.), and she’s bilingual (I guess that could come in handy pretty often).

Also, she can “change a diaper with one hand, and console a crying toddler with the other.”  Um, is this a job interview for a daycare provider?

Then things go seriously downhill.  “I’m a woman.  I’m a mom. I am a cisgender millennial, who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.”

Oh, no.  You want to be a spy, and you have an anxiety disorder?

“I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise.” She says, after spending the entire ad so far checking off a dozen irrelevant boxes.

Then she segues into a half-minute of unintentionally revealing “methinks she doth protest too much” guilty defensiveness: “I did NOT sneak into CIA.  My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke, or slip through the cracks.  I EARNED my way in, and I EARNED my way up the ranks of this organization.  I am educated, qualified, and competent.”

Now we’ve gone from daycare to a self-help support group led by Stuart Smalley.  (“He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him!”)

But then… the very next sentence: “And sometimes I struggle.  I struggle feeling like I could do more… and I struggle leaving the office when I feel like there’s so much more I could do.”

I’m no top-secret spy-training guy, but that sounds like a lot of struggling for someone who wants to get into the exciting field of high-stakes, life-endangering espionage.

“I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36, I REFUSE to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.”

And… there goes my gag reflex.

Imposter syndrome?! You’re supposed to be a spy!  Do you know what the operational definition of a spy is?   (Cue Sam Kinison wearing a James Bondian tuxedo.) AN IMPOSTER!!  OH! OHHH!

You pretend to be a gardener on the grounds of a ChiCom training base, or a caterer for a gathering of  Hamas big shots, or a secretary for a handsy Russian general who gets a little chatty after his third vodka.  And when Comrade Grope-ski gets a little flirtatious, you give him a sultry look and a third vodka, not a lecture on how he better keep his patriarchal mitts off your strong Latina cis-gendered butt, lest you report him to the CIA HR!

I cannot imagine anything more comforting to our enemies than watching a recruiting ad like this! 

And in case you’re wondering, yes I do have an idea for a better CIA recruiting ad, thanks for asking:

We open on a dark screen that stays dark throughout.  We hear a hoarse whisper, voiced by Clint Eastwood, or possibly Tom Waits.   

“Hey.  If you were an enemy of the United States, this is all you would ever see of me.  I might be shadowing you in a crowded public place, or behind you in line for a cab, or sitting beside your bed as you sleep.

I could be there to inject you with a drug that causes a heart attack, or to install some malware on your computer, or put a listening device in your bedside table, or a small explosive charge in your cell phone, so that you next time you call for an Uber you get your head blown clean off.

Or maybe I’ll just slide this very sharp, very thin blade between two of your ribs and into your heart or liver.  Both of which will hurt.  A lot.  So maybe you should re-think that, “Let’s screw with America,” plan you’ve got going.

I’ve got imposter syndrome.  Because I’m an imposter.  Which is why you won’t suspect that I’m the guy who’s going to get you and your fellow bad guys imprisoned or killed or both.  But I am.  And I will.

And this is all you’ll ever see of me.”

Then the following words appear on screen: “If this sounds good to you, contact the CIA.  We’re hiring.”

In June, I came up with a modest proposal to improve our criminal justice system:

“Here is the revolutionary criminal justice reform that is going to kick-start a campaign to create a Nobel Prize for Criminal Justice Reform, and then to unanimously award it to me:

I’m sure that you’ve all heard of the death tax, whereby taxpayers who pay a boatload of taxes on everything they earn and own over decades, and then when they die, the government muscles in and grabs the wallet out of their burial suit to take one more cut before their grieving family settles their estate.

My idea is as tremendous as the death tax is terrible.  I call it, “The Career-Criminal Death Tax,” or CCDT.

You may have noticed that the families of many of the career criminals who have recently died in clashes with police as they pursued their profession of crime-committing have received multi-million-dollar settlements from taxpayers.  (To cite just one example, George Floyd’s family got $27 million.) 

As a legal scholar – I’ve read many John Grisham novels and watched many episodes of Court Cam and Judge Judy – I understand that such awards are often meant to punish police departments for alleged wrong-doing.  But I also know that in many states, when someone with back child support or IRS debts wins the lottery, those debts are often deducted from the lucky, innumerate debtor’s winnings.

Enter the CCDT.  I propose that anytime a career criminal’s survivors get a windfall settlement from the taxpayers, that money should temporarily be held in escrow, during which time it should be used to first pay back all of that’s criminal’s victims, plus the taxpayers’ costs incurred because of the dead guy’s criminal and/or irresponsible behavior.   

For example, imagine a totally hypothetical criminal, with an equally hypothetical $27 mil in his posthumous bank account. 

Now go back through that person’s criminal record, and tally up his victims, from the store clerks, gas station attendants and pedestrians he robbed or assaulted, to the pregnant woman he held hostage with a gun jammed against her belly while his buddies robbed her place, to the convenience store owner where he passed counterfeit bills.

Hypothetically.

The CCDT dictates that each of those victims gets a proportional chunk of that money, up to at least mid-six figures each.

Next, we tally up how many years that felon spent in prison.  We have accounting data to tell us how much per day it takes to keep a convict in a state or federal jail.  So add up those costs, and subtract that from the $27M, and refund it back to the taxpayers.

Next, if the dead criminal spent years getting various types of assistance – food stamps, housing allowance, free public defenders, etc. – total that up, and deduct it from the $27M.  Back to the taxpayers. 

And before you object, I know that there are legitimate reasons to have a social safety net, and that some welfare payments are legitimate, and are not legally subject to reimbursement if someone later becomes a productive citizen.  But if he’s a lifelong creep who only comes into any money after he dies during the commission of yet another crime?

Back to the taxpayers.

Finally, if there’s anything left of the settlement after that, check one more thing: how many kids did that miscreant produce?  If he married the mom and responsibly took care of the kids – HA! – his estate is off the hook.

But for the other 99.99% of the deceased criminals, tally up the amount the taxpayers shelled out to feed, house, and (sadly, often) incarcerate their kids.   Since those kids were the criminal’s moral, legal and financial responsibility, if he happened to come into a windfall because he fought with cops, tased cops, shot at cops, or tried to run-down cops, that windfall should be taxed to extract enough to re-pay the costs for his kids that he didn’t pay in life.

Would I add accumulated interest to those payments, you’re probably asking, as you take notes and prepare to call your elected representatives to urge passage of the CCDT?

Only if there is any money left after all of the above deductions were taken, and only to the extent that every last penny the dead criminal’s family was going to get has been given to his victims and the taxpayers instead.  Then we call it even.

“But how will this make the dead creep’s posse feel?” you are not asking, because who gives a Schumer?

The survivors who sired, birthed, slept with or otherwise shared the destructive trail that the deceased criminal trod might ask this question: “If the victims and the taxpayers get all of the money awarded to our dead jackass son/baby-daddy/dead-beat dad/co-conspirator, it’s almost like we won’t be able to profit from his easily anticipated and probably richly deserved demise at all!”

To which we will say:  Exactly!

So that’s it, people.  Call your elected pols and urge them to pass the CCDT.

In the meantime, I’ll wait right here, anticipating the day when you all burst through my front door, heave me up onto your shoulders, and carry me off to the Nobel Prize ceremony, chanting, “Simpson, Simpson!” all the way.”

In July, President Brandon produced one of my favorite gaffes of the summer:

“Meanwhile, while Que Mala was being muy mal, Joey Gaffes was across town doing a press availability.

So you know that went swimmingly.

As he tried to explain why so many people have resisted getting vaccinated, Biden produced this little chunk of brilliance: “There’s a reason why it’s been harder to get African Americans, initially, to get vaccinated, because they are used to being experimented on — the Tuskegee Airmen and others.  People have memories.  People have long memories.”

Let’s skip right past the irony of a guy who can’t remember the names of half of his cabinet members warning us against the dangers of long memories.

Biden has mixed up – and not for the first time – the black Tuskegee Airmen/pilots who flew in WWII with the black guys who had an STD, and were victimized by the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, during which their conditions went untreated.

In the very unlikely event that he’s reading this column, please consider this a public service from a concerned citizen who would like him to be better at his job:

“Mr. President, you know those guys who are to your left when you’ve stumbled up the mobile airport staircase (which I pray will soon be taking the oath of office as our 47th president) and onto Air Force One?  Those guys don’t have syphilis.  They’re your pilots.

And your degenerate son, with the hookers and the meth and the Chinese cash stuffed in suitcases?

He’s not a pilot.  He’s got syphilis.

You’re welcome.”

Coming Friday: Part 3…

I had a great Christmas, as I hope you all did!  I know that the CO site attracts new readers all the time, so as this year comes to a close, I thought I’d take a look back at my columns from 2021, and pick some of my favorite thoughts from this challenging year.

I’ll break the year up into three parts, and post three “best-of” columns this week.  

In January all of us struggled with the ascendance of the Democrat party to control of the WH and both houses of Congress.  Even in those dark days, I tried to find a silver lining.     

Just a week into the new year, I made a prescient – if I do say so myself — prediction: “The Dems are such horrific politicians that they are going to over-reach and alienate all but their hard-core base, and to the extent that we can have even fair-ish congressional elections in the future, they should be sailing into a serious repudiation in the mid-terms, a la Obama’s 56-seat House bloodbath in 2010.

Biden has one orthopedic shoe in the grave, and Comma La is a human toothache, and all of the faces of the national Democrat party look like the Elephant Man’s family reunion, morally speaking.   They are not going to wear well.

If they were even room-temperature smart, they could do much more damage by posing as unifiers and throwing a few, pitiful bones to the spineless GOP members who always seem happy for even the most meager of scraps.  Instead, they are so driven by their own malice that they can’t help themselves: they’re going to double-down on their frothing hatreds, and pursue their “enemies” (i.e. half of the country).  Anyone who is not a completely lost cause is going to be repelled by that.”

A few weeks later, I didn’t have the heart to watch Biden’s inauguration, so I distracted myself with some analysis of the historical arc of presidential inauguration poetry, and tried my hand at it:

“And by the way, you can track America’s decline through the quality of poetry associated with presidents.  Walt Whitman wrote four poems about the death of Lincoln (among them “O Captain, My Captain” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”) that are still worth reading today.

Gifted poet Robert Frost read his poem, “The Gift Outright” at JFK’s inauguration.

Over 30 years later, mediocre poet (at best) Maya Angelou wrote a mediocre piece for Bill Clinton’s inauguration.  It is justifiably forgotten now, but I remember banal repetitions of “a rock, a river, and a tree.”  Poetry interpretation is subjective, but my take was that Slick Willie liked to take his interns to picnic at a river, where he was hard as a rock and they ended up climbing a tree to get away from him.

But I’m more of a prose guy, so that might be way off.

Anyway, Biden’s inaugural poem was delivered by an unknown young woman, and of course the media is now swooning over her, and she’ll probably get rich and famous over this “poem.”

But, to paraphrase a line attributed to Dorothy Parker, this isn’t a poem to be set aside lightly.  It should be thrown with great force.

Here are three consecutive lines from the poem, chosen at random:

“We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.

And the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it.”

Off the top of my head: “the belly of the beast” is a tired cliché; “beast” and “peace” don’t rhyme; “just is” and “justice” don’t rhyme; the third line changes verb tense in a way that doesn’t make sense.  (By the way, my last sentence rhymed better than anything in this terrible poem.)  Also, there is no referent for the “it” in the last line – what can that line possibly mean?

On the other hand, “knew it” and “do it” at least rhyme, even if they are stupid.

Good lord!  At the rate we’re going, if Comma-la manages to get re-elected in 2024, her inaugural poem is going to start with, “There once was a man from Nantucket.”

I know that some of you are probably thinking, “Sure, Martin, you may be a hilarious genius, an amazing father and husband, and a role model for us all, not to mention a fine figure of a man.  But you’re no poet, and you probably couldn’t do any better.”

To which I say, hold my Scotch and stand back, as I compose a poem – live, right now, this very minute — that is more fitting for the inauguration of Joe Biden than the actual putrid poem above:

Ode to Joe

C’mon man, he’s got a plan.

Look fat–  don’t question that.

You know, the thing,

Ring a ding ding.

He defeated Corn Pop

Zippity boop bop.

Don’t give him a quiz:

He don’t know where he is.

Stay in your lanes

Or he’ll put y’all back in chains.

Even Frank Luntz

Knows he’s a dunce.

Boom!  Admit it: you feel pretty foolish right now for doubting me.  Because that poem has all the hallmarks of deathless verse: the lines all rhyme, it works on multiple levels, and it contains a subtle allusion to Frank Luntz.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, our long national nightmare, just getting started…”

In February, I found one happy-ending story to brighten my spirits:

“In the feel-good story of February, Breitbart’s headline caught my eye: “Accidental Blast During Bomb-Making Class Kills 30 Taliban Fighters.”

It seems that a clot of happy-go-lucky jihadis had gathered in a mosque (where else?) in the Afghan village of Qultaq to learn the finer points of blowing people up.  Even though the crowd included “six foreign nationals who were expert mine makers,” it apparently also included at least one dim-witted lummox who hadn’t yet gotten to the Koranic verses on the subject of, “Don’t touch that wire!”

(Preliminary reports that the dullard in question was one Ahmed al-Biden have not been confirmed.)

The story notes that jihadis fairly regularly experience such mortifying examples of the male scourge of premature detonation. (HA!)  For example, “a similar blast occurred at a mosque in Balkh’s Chahabar Bolak district in August.”

Also in the village of Sikandar Khel, and earlier in the Ghazni district, and in the southern province of Zabul.

So what can we learn from this hilarious vignette?

First, all Afghan place names have apparently been translated from the original Klingon.

Second, one way to promote the idea that your religion is super peaceful might be to stop using your places of worship as combination ammo dumps/demolition schools. 

Third, don’t be discouraged, jihadis!  Remember the sura that goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try– KA-BLAM!”

In March, the lefties of Seattle provided another cause for mirth: 

“Seattle, fresh from months of encouraging subliterate, mouth-breathing Biden voters to destroy their city, has come up with a use for all of the taxpayer money they are saving by not employing cops.  Their DESC – which, though you might assume it stands for “Depraved Execrable Sinister Cretins“ actually stands for “Downtown Emergency Services Center” – has produced two handy flyers targeting a core element of the Democrat voting base: incorrigible drug addicts.

The first flyer advocates smoking heroin, rather than injecting it.  Because – and I cannot stress enough how I am NOT making this up – “smoking is a lower-risk alternative to injection.  Give it a try!”

Yes, by all means, give it a try!

Your city is a burned-out husk, and you’ve lost any chance at employment now that every sane business owner has fled the feral leftist hordes vandalizing what used to be their businesses.  So it’s not like you have anything better to do than smoking some heroin.

But wait!  The second taxpayer-funded flyer proposes an even better way to get your heroin fix than shooting or smoking it: sticking it up your arse.

Again, on my honor as a hilarious genius and a gentleman: I am not making this up.

This actually-existing flyer introduces the charming phrase “booty bumping.”

If you’re anything like me – and what a sweet world that would be! — when you first heard “booty bumping” you probably thought that it was a euphemistic reference to the way in which Comma-La started her political career in CA.  Or, possibly, what the nascent Biden administration has already started doing to the gullible American citizens who voted for Joey Gaffes because they believed he was a “moderate.”

But no.  The flyer educates Seattle-ites that the rectum is “very efficient at absorption.”  So cue the NBC “The More you Know” musical theme on that one.

It goes on to say that introducing heroin into yourself rectally “is a good choice if your veins are hard to hit,” and that, “it doesn’t leave tracks.”

Skid marks, probably.  But no tracks.  So you’ll have that going for you.  

That’s it in a nutshell, folks.  Socrates suggested that the unexamined life is not worth living.  Christ advocates treating others as you would be treated.  The Founding Fathers urged us toward the highest use of our Creator-endowed liberties and faculties.

But the Democrats who run Seattle have their own words to live by: “Sticking heroin up your butt: Give it a try!”

I also took solace in an April story that involved animals and karma:  “[This] story comes to us out of India, the colorful land of unpronounceable and unspellable names, friendly tech support folks who implausible claim to be named either “Andrew” or “Emily,” and hilarious cartoon characters who can no longer be voiced by white actors.  Because racism.

But if I asked you what country you associate with cock fighting – and if anybody even thinks about making a joke about any Dem politician, fundraiser, or supporter who definitely did not kill himself in prison, I will turn this car RIGHT around, mister! – most of you would say “Mexico.”

And then you’d be cancelled.

Because, as I may have mentioned before, racism.

Anyway, it turns out that Indians also fancy the occasional cockfight.  But sadly, there is now one less Indian fan of what, for all I know, they call “the sport of kings” in India.  Because last month, 45-year-old Thangulla “Hello, I’m Andrew, what can I help you with today?” Satish was killed by a fighting cock.

Not because they were in the ring – or the cage, or the pen, or the rink, or whatever they call a cockfighting enclosure in India – as opponents in a bout sanctioned by the ICFA (the Indian Cockfighting Association, duh).

It turns out that Thangulla (and if you just thought “Matata,” you are not alone) owned the bird in question, and was preparing him for the fight by strapping a 3-inch long, razor-sharp blade to the rooster’s leg.

I know: what could possibly go wrong?

Well it turns out that the rooster fatally slashed his owner.  And before I can ask the rhetorical question, “Where would you LEAST like to be slashed by the knife on your fighting rooster’s le—” every male reading this column just shouted out, “GROIN!”

Allow me to introduce a quote from the story by turning toward the big board and doing my Richard Dawson impression: “Survey says…”

“A man who tied a knife to the leg of his rooster for an illegal cockfight was killed after the bird panicked and stabbed him in the groin…” 

Yada yada yada, Thangulla bled out.

This quote should elicit several immediate thoughts:

1.HA!  HAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!

2. If at your funeral, one of your neighbors asks your family how you died, and they mumble, “He suffered a fatal groin injury in a cockfight,” those neighbors are going to wonder if you had badly misunderstood how a cockfight is supposed to work.

3. The bird “panicked” and then stabbed him?  Really?

If you were a rooster and your owner took you for a drive down to the local rooster rink, and you found yourself staring at a ‘roided up rooster who looked like a cross between John Cena and Mick Jagger, and you turned to your owner and said, “Andrew, what’s going on here?”  And your owner said, “I’ll explain in a minute.  But first I’m going to attach these razor-sharp blades to your legs.”

Do you really think your traitorous owner would die because you “panicked?”

Because I’m thinking that the rooster would give his owner the same narrowed-eyed, baleful stare that the giant rooster who regularly fights Peter Griffin on Family Guy gives him right before things kick off.

In other words, I think that it was cold-blooded murder!

Cue the “Etymology Minute” theme song: “And THAT’s the origin of the phrase, to “cold cock” someone.  (Boom!  Dad joke catches you like a crisp jab when your arms were down to protect your ribs.)

Anyway, I hate cruelty to animals, so that story makes me laugh.” 

Coming next: May through July

Well, it’s Christmas week again, and I’m in a great mood! 

I’ve got snowy scenes playing on my second computer screen, and an assortment of brass quartets and Sufjan Stevens versions of Christmas carols playing on a loop.  I’ve been listening to about 15 minutes of the late great Frank Muller reading A Christmas Carol each day.  (Can’t recommend that highly enough.  Use DuckDuckGo – because Google should be avoided when possible — to find it online. You cannot beat Dickens’ words read in Muller’s voice!)

And I’m finding reasons to be joyful at every turn. The advent services at our church have been excellent.  Our college town has quieted down, and I’m getting to do some therapeutically satisfying maintenance work on our old rental houses.  And after a bout of bronchitis, I’m appreciating good health the way you only do when you’re not taking it for granted.

So that’s me: Happy. Grateful.  Looking forward to time with family, and Uncle Jesus.

But hey, our Cadaver in Chief also has his own special holiday message for us all.  And I quote:  “[The omicron] is here now and it’s spreading, and it’s gonna increase.  For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death.” 

Merrrry Christmas!  G’night folks. Drive safely!

Good lord — Lighten up, Francis!

I don’t want to be a — what’s the opposite of Debbie Downer?  Oliver Optimist, maybe? – but give it a rest, you power-hungry old coot.  Yes, omicron is a lot more contagious.  It’s also a LOT less dangerous, which is exactly what you want in a virus.

As of this writing, it has killed fewer people than Alec Baldwin.

Rather than kicking Joey Gaffes when he’s deceased – er, down – I’m going to share a few other current events that are bringing me joy this Christmas season.

And yes, because I’m as fallen as anyone else, these examples elicit the schadenfreude-induced endorphins that come from watching creepy people get their just desserts.

1.If you had asked me to pick something that I wanted for Christmas, but that I would never get in a million years, and if I were in the middle of my fourth Scotch, I might have said this: Give me a video of Hillary Clinton reading the victory speech that she wrote before she fractured a fetlock and went down in an explosion of mud and pantsuit on the final turn of that glorious election Year of Our Lord, 2016.

And because God exists, and He loves me, I’ve received that beautiful, beautiful gift.

I’ve saved it in a folder along with videos of my wedding, Walter Payton’s greatest runs, Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison, and a montage of weeping MSM boneheads announcing Trump’s election.  And I’ve got it cued to the moment when Cankles begins to choke up when she tells her mom that her daughter is now the first female president of the United States.

For the rest of my life, whenever I face a dark night of the soul, I will watch that video.  And I will laugh and laugh.

2. Elizabeth Warren has gone three rounds in a Twitter battle with Elon Musk, and the refs had to step in and stop it. 

Grandma Squanto is so lacking in self-awareness that she imagined that an accomplishment-free grifter like her could somehow best Musk in a battle of wits.  For all his flaws, eccentric Elon has contributed more to society than 10,000 phony Warrens ever could.

Her latest humiliation reminds me of a hilarious video of Warren getting off a private jet – it was wintertime, and I think it dates back to the Dem primaries.  Find it, and you’ll see some prime comedic hypocrisy. 

After lambasting the evil rich for flying in private jets, Lizzie gets off a private jet (of course!) and starts walking with a group of others.  Then she spots the camera out in front and to her right, and she cuts in a diagonal, tucking in behind one of the unknown staffers.  She obviously and purposefully keeps ducking from side to side, always keeping the staffer between her and the camera.

I know what you’re thinking: that’s how it was for the Pale Pawnee’s ancestors if they wanted to survive out there on the prairie.  They’d hunker in behind a buffalo or a horse, and stealthily creep closer to the evil white interlopers – er, cameramen. 

In winter, they would often camouflage themselves by painting their faces a pallid, sickly white to blend into their surroundings.  They were so good at it that unexpecting settlers would often pass right by them, unawares.  “Look at all of this pristine white snow,” they’d say, taking in the surrounding landscape. 

But occasionally one wary Euro-American might say, “Hey, wait a minute!  That snowbank has suspiciously impressive cheekbones, doesn’t it?”

Then, with a bloodcurdling scream of clueless entitlement, Grandma Squanto would leap up, scattering snow from her buckskin dress in a whirl, and charge forward with her three favorite weapons: a sharp tomahawk, an even sharper tongue, and the power of obscenely confiscatory tax rates, which were known to lay waste to the hardiest economy in a matter of mere weeks!

#wemustneverstopmockingher

3. No list of underperforming female pols would be complete without Que Mala, who continues to delight with her mind-boggling ineptitude. 

Her best moment in December would have to be that time when she publicly struggled to understand how to charge an electric vehicle.  It’s not a complicated process, and considering how she began her political career, it is unfathomable that she couldn’t understand it:

You put the male part in the female part. That’s it. Duh!

Watching her constant bumbling makes me long for the days of a real Vice President, such as Dick Cheney.  With nothing more than decades of experience and competence — and one partially open ventricle — that man took on leftists with more energy that W ever managed to.

 And when times were at their darkest, he stood up and did what needed to be done: he shot a lawyer in the face with a shotgun.

And America cheered! 

4. Speaking of lawyers who deserved worse than they got, did you hear AOC and Rashida “as-pretty-on-the-inside-as-she-is-on-the-outside” Tlaib whining about their student loans, and how it’s not fair to expect them to pay them off? 

AOC is not a lawyer, of course.  She got her Econ degree from Boston University… which is reason enough to close BU, dynamite all its buildings and sow the campus with salt to make it unfit for human habitation for generations.  

Seriously.  Hang your head in shame, BU faculty, staff and alumni.  And most residents of MA, while you’re at it, you Ted Kennedy-re-electing knuckleheads.  You deserve Ben Affleck, and that ridiculous accent.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

Rashida got a law degree, and she is not happy about how much it cost.  But she’s got a solution: you can pay for it. 

During a pitch to cancel all student debt, she ululated, “I worked full-time, Monday through Friday, and took weekend classes to get my law degree.  And still, close to $200K in debt.  And I still owe over $70K and most of it was interest.” 

Ugh. 

Am I saying that Comma-la should try to improve her poll numbers by shooting Tlaib in the face with a shotgun?

Of course not.

She could use a panzerfaust, or a pellet gun, or a sling shot.

Or a crossbow.  Or she could use a catapault to land a giant chunk of stone on her, producing a noxious spray of bile, class warfare and anti-Semitism. Let’s not quibble over the details. 

The point is, shooting the insufferable Tlaib with any sort of device, projectile or implement might not be enough to salvage Que Mala’s dismal poll numbers.

But as they say in the Catskills, “it couldn’t hoit.”

5. Speaking of satisfying violence, you might have missed the story of a Connecticut school-board meeting about wokesters cancelling an American Indian school mascot.  And if you only read the MSM accounts of the incident, you would still miss the truth of it. 

According to the dishonest yahoos at Yahoo, the “board meeting turned violent when a parent punched a board member.”  But if you watch the video – which I recommend – you’ll see something quite different.

Here, I’ll re-write their story for them:  “During a break in the meeting, an arrogant board member – the appropriately named Ray McFall – came down into the audience and got nose-to-nose with American-Indian-mascot-appreciator Mark Finocchiaro, scolding him loudly.  When McFall tried to shove Finocchiaro backwards, he received a right jab in the snout.

Then McFall mcfell.  “Sit down, Gepetto!” Finocchiaro should have said, but didn’t.”

I don’t think either guy behaved perfectly.  But as a general rule, if you aren’t prepared to counter a stiff jab, you might want to keep your hands to yourself.

Okay, I know: for a Christmas column, this outing has had a lot of violence.  So let’s close with an uplifting seasonal offering.

And by “seasonal,” I’m referring to hockey season.

I’ll admit that I don’t know much about hockey.  For example, I didn’t know that Vegas had a pro hockey team called the Golden Knights.  I have heard of the Edmonton Oilers – which, as a fossil fuel fan, I could possibly root for. 

Anyway, Vegas was playing Big Oil right after Thanksgiving, and a fight broke out in the stands.  Which is something that I understand is not unprecedented in that sport.

So a big guy and a small blonde lady were in a lower row, trading words and blows with someone in a row above them.  And in a move that I bet Ray McFall wouldn’t have seen coming either, the lady hopped on one foot, reached down and pulled off her prosthetic lower left leg, and whacked a fellow combatant with it!

Now I’ve never studied any detachable-appendage-assisted martial arts, and I vaguely recall an axiom about not getting into a butt-kicking contest with a one-legged man. 

But that woman has a little thing I like to call “grit,” and I’d like her on my side if a fight breaks out.

After reading all of the odd twists in this column, you are probably asking, “Martin, are you suggesting that this hockey fan travel to DC, and allow Que Mala to pull off her leg, and then club Rashida Tlaib with it?”

That’s EXACTLY what I’m suggesting.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Avenatti/ The Prosthetic Pugilist, 2024!

In recent weeks, half of my attention has been focused on enjoying the Christmas season, and the other half has been taken up by my increasing bewilderment at the way our leftist fellow-citizens seem to have so badly misunderstood one of the fundamental aspects of human nature: criminality.

Sure, we have lately been distracted by how badly they have misunderstood so many other things: The economy.  Foreign policy.  Why countries need borders.  The difference between male and female.  The fact that math, boulders and roads – among many other things – are not racist. 

But Man o’ Manischewitz, does the Left not understand crime!

Many progressives are inordinately fond of theory, much preferring it to messy reality.  (Hence the old joke about the academic left’s commonplace question, “I know it works in the real world, but does it work in theory?”)  And nowhere does this infatuation with theory manifest itself more than when considering crime and criminals.

The left can look at a mob of looters, or gang members pimping out underage girls, or thugs carjacking unresisting senior citizens and shooting them anyway, and not see sharp gradations of good and evil. 

Instead they detect a subtle fog of societal inequities, large historical forces, and systemic unfairness that envelops and overwhelms individuals, robbing them of free will and absolving them of moral responsibility.

Think of how many recent crime stories have induced the left into the most absurd gyrations to try to deny the most obvious truths:

An idiot reporter stands before a block of burning buildings, surrounded by a howling mob of feral Biden voters, and looks into a camera and proclaims, “These protests are mostly peaceful.” 

A gormless prosecutor shows video of three violent felons chasing and assaulting a boy scout with a rifle until he’s forced to righteously shoot each of them, and the moron calls the assailants “victims” and the boy scout the “aggressor,” and his assistant/Chris Farley’s dim-witted doppleganger says that the boy scout “should have just taken a beating.” 

Elected Democrats watch packs of looters vandalizing buildings, stealing electronics and luxury goods, and see a righteous cry for racial justice. 

When video of dozens of smash-and-grab mobs in various big cities have been broadcast for weeks, silly little dullard AOC insists that rumors of such events “have not panned out.”

For many of us, it’s starting to feel like we’re on different planets. 

As a thought experiment, consider a few recent crime story examples.  I’ll give you the scenario, then – using my magical wizard hat to put myself into the mind of a leftist Soros fan – I’ll give you the lefty’s reaction.  And if I can speak for the average, level-headed conservative – and I think that I can – I’ll give you my reaction.

Crime story #1. Last December an antifa thug named Thomas Starks carried an axe into a government building in North Dakota and used it to destroy the door and window of a GOP state senator’s office.  His attack was caught on tape, and he ended up pleading guilty.  While awaiting sentencing, he showed himself to be an unrepentant creep, boasting on social media that he “will always attack fascists.” 

While FBI sentencing guidelines called for 10-16 months in prison for his crime, he instead got probation and a $2800 fine.  The icing on the cake: the FBI gave him his axe back!  (I’m not making that up.)

Lefty Soros fan’s take:  His fine was too high.  After all, he was only fighting fascists, and fascists are bad!

My take: Give him the maximum in prison, and when he gets out, give him his axe back.  Handle first.  So that if he ever approaches a government building again, security will be able to recognize him from a long way off.  On account of his funny way of walking.

Crime Story #2.  Last week the staff of a San Francisco restaurant asked three uniformed cops to leave, after complaining that their uniforms and sidearms made them feel “unsafe.”  Then they bragged about it on social media, declaring their precious eatery to be a “safe space,” where they would grudgingly allow the officers to eat,“when off duty, out of uniform, and without their weapons.”

Lefty Soros fan’s take: Yay!  Power to the people!  Mean old guns make me lose my appetite anyway!

My take: I’m tempted to follow a “when in Rome” attitude, and react as a native San Franciscan might, i.e. dropping a deuce in the middle of the dining room and then aggressively panhandling from every customer in the place.   But I’m a gentleman, and not some degenerate anarchist. 

So I’d just enter that restaurant’s number and address into the SFPD phone system and record a message, to be played in case they ever called the police: “Hello, this is the police department.  We’re sorry to hear that you are in the middle of being robbed, beaten, sexually assaulted, or murdered.  We’d love to come and help you, but unfortunately we wear scary uniforms and carry nasty old guns, and we know how those offend your delicate sensibilities.  So please enjoy being robbed, beaten, sexually assaulted or murdered in a cop-free zone.  And remember: There’s no place like a safe space!”

Crime Story #3:

Right after Thanksgiving a mob of youts went on a mass shoplifting spree at a California mall.  Afterwards, one of the ambitious thieves was running away with his arms full of stolen clothes, when he was set upon by a half-dozen other scumbags, who fought over the booty in an orgy of looter-on-looter crime.

Lefty Soros fan’s take:  That’s so sad!  Those poor children don’t even realize that their real enemy is the white supremacist, capitalist system that is oppressing them.  They should aim their anger at the real villain that’s keeping them down: Trump!  I only hope that none of them were hurt!

My take:  You do you, looters!  That stolen swag is yours, so don’t you dare let any other crooks disrespect you by trying to steal what you stole, fair and square!  Stand up for yourself, and fight to the death!    

Crime Story #4:

On December 8th, a North Carolina man arrived home to find that a thief had been trying to steal a catalytic converter (informally known as a “cat” in auto parts circles) from one of his cars in his driveway.  Unfortunately for the would-be thief, the jack had slipped, dropping the car on him, and allowing him to win the “assume asphalt temperature challenge.”

Lefty Soros-fan take:  Aww!  That poor man was a victim of the ruthless capitalist system that allows some greedy oppressors to amass many catalytic converters, while the have-nots remain converter-less.  I call for protests to shut down the city.  No catalytic converters, no peace!

My take:  Must. Not. Laugh.  (Clear my throat, take a deep breath… don’t think of any dad jokes.)  After all, it’s always tragic when someone loses his lif–  HA!  HAHA!  HAHAHA!  That cat sure didn’t have nine lives!  I wonder if the crook was wearing striped socks, and his legs rolled up like that witch’s when the house fell on her?  HAHAH—cough, cough.  I mean to say… Very sad story.  

All sarcasm aside, it has been infuriating to watch once-great American cities descend into pitiful helplessness, voluntarily and needlessly surrendering to roving bands of thugs and thieves who now attack and loot in broad daylight, with impunity! 

I’d like to blame the feckless and treacherous elected officials who have been allowing this to happen – and I do think that they are culpable.  But the people in those cities have been electing those idiots, often for many years.  

If they could be made to suffer the consequences without also victimizing the sane minority among them, there might be some justice in watching the decay and suffering they are bringing down on their cities. 

But this is Cautious Optimism, and I do see a bright side in the current chaos: these policies are now out in the open, and they are not playing well with most Americans, to say the least. 

The “defund the police” drive was all the rage (literally) only a year ago, but between that and the revolving door of deviants produced by “bail reform,” things have deteriorated so quickly that even many blue state voters are becoming distraught, and support for “soft on crime” policies is receding faster than Brandon’s cognitive abilities. 

I see two possibilities in the next several years, both of which I think would ultimately benefit the country.

The most positive outcome would be for a giant electoral wave of common-sense, tough-on-crime conservative pushback to decimate the Dems in ’22 and ’24, repudiating their failed policies so clearly that they’ll become anathema to any ambitious office-seeker for a generation.

The next best option – which is not without its dangers, but which I’d guess might be slightly more likely – will be for a continued, accelerating sorting of our society into more polarized red and blue areas.

In red states, people will beef up their police forces, and they’ll expect them to fight crime aggressively, and will support them when they do.  For that reason, red staters won’t need to form militias or take any extreme actions.  But enough of them will be individually armed and willing to protect themselves and their property to persuade most criminals to seek easier victims elsewhere.

Such as in blue states, where the undefended stores offer easy pickings, and the restaurants are full of soft eunuchs who are afraid of uniforms and sidearms.

I think the purple states will transform, as their citizens migrate toward one side or the other.  My bet is that most of them will become redder, because I can’t believe that most Americans will react like the cowed and cowering residents of Portland, Seattle or Minneapolis.

I have to believe that if roving mobs of looters, or BLM and antifa rioters, who have had free reign in blue cities try to spread their class and racial warfare to red cities, they’re going to discover a nation of honorary “rooftop Koreans.”

And the self-styled “revolutionaries” — who are used to sucker-punching individuals, terrorizing lone drivers, tearing down inanimate statues, and screaming at cops who are prevented from responding by far-left politicians — are going to learn a hard lesson.

It’s a lesson encapsulated in the words of the nameless philosopher I quoted a few columns ago, who observed an aggressive would-be bully with a baseball bat stop and retreat when she saw her target produce a pistol.

Say it with me, CO nation: “That iron get ya mind right!”

It’s been a long 4 years, and it’s only been 11 months.