martinsimpsonwriting

Family Reunion: Mom Did Well, and Uncle Bob Saved a Flaming Tractor (posted 8/8/25)

I’m happy to be back home in the free state of Florida, after my trip up to Illinois for the family reunion. I just saw CO’s post celebrating over 33,500 followers on this site, and after everybody’s generous responses to my column about the struggles of my friend’s wife, my mom, and Cassie the Wonder Dog, this growing group feels like a huge family right now.

As it happens, this is my 700^th Cautious Optimism column, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to write every one of them. Especially since number 700 will be less somber than number 699 was.

Starting with the best news from the trip, mom had a really good time, and everybody was glad to see her. My sister arrived with her around 2:00 on Saturday, which gave us a chance to drive her around town for a couple of hours before the reunion dinner started.

The weather was great, sunny and in the 70s, and we first drove past the house mom grew up in on Post Street. The current owners have let some over-grown bushes and trees obscure part of the building, but mom recognized it right away, pointing out the porch before we drove around to an angle that let us see it.

At this point her Alzheimer’s is like a fog that descends on her and then lifts for a while, following no particular pattern. We never know when the mists will dissipate or for how long, but seeing her face light up when she recognized the house made the trip worthwhile all by itself.

From there we drove down Ottawa’s main street, through a quintessential Midwestern downtown, past the leafy town square featuring a fountain and a statue of Lincoln and Douglas, commemorating their debate there. Mom recognized the square and the courthouse, but enough of the old buildings have received face lifts over the years that she didn’t recognize a lot more.

We drove to the cemetery beside the Illinois River where her parents are buried, and while she didn’t recognize the cemetery, she recognized their headstone. We wondered how she might react, because for the last several months she has gone back and forth between remembering that they are dead, and thinking that she just talked to Grandma on the phone, and is supposed to meet her at the Post Street house.

But the fog seemed to have lifted for most of the weekend, and she seemed undisturbed, and contented to visit their graves. From there we drove by grandpa and grandma’s last house, a tiny place on the other side of the river that she didn’t recognize. We drove her over to Marseilles, the town where she and dad had started their married lives, and where I spent the first 10 years of my life.

As we crossed the river and drove up Main Street, she recognized the downtown, and a few familiar sights. One of the two houses we lived in has been extensively remodeled, and all of us had a hard time figuring out which one it was. But she recognized their first marital home, on Fillebrowne Street.

I don’t think mom remembers the story of how they bought that house anymore, but she and dad told us so many times that Rhonda and I will never forget it. Mom was going to a baby shower for a friend of hers, and dad wanted to go to a garage sale on Fillebrowne. But because they were broke and he was impulsive, she made him promise not to buy a mower, or tools, or anything.

And he didn’t. He bought the house! For $4500. Then they had to go to see her dad, to ask him to borrow the $450 down payment.

Over the years, every time that house has come up in conversation, or whenever we’ve been back in town and seen it, mom and dad would tell us that story. On Saturday, for the first time, mom didn’t repeat it. But she recognized the house, and that was good enough for us.

We all met for dinner at a local restaurant. Dad had been one of nine kids – five boys and four girls – and eight of them survived past childhood, which was not something to take for granted in their generation. (Dad’s brother Donnie got sick and died before he turned two, and nobody is even sure what he died from.) Three of the nine siblings in dad’s generation are still alive, and two of them were able to make it, along with their spouses. We had 27 people there, including 8 of my cousins and their assorted kids, and the food and the conversations were great.

Afterwards we went to my Uncle Bob’s homestead north of town, for more visiting and stories. Bob’s got about 60 acres, some of it cornfield, but a lot of timber and a huge, shady yard with old oak trees. He’s got a big, old barn and several smaller and newer ones, and he built a nice shelter between his house and the treeline years ago. It has a fireplace, and enough tables to hold 35 to 40 people, and several of the attendees brought possessions that had belonged to their parents or our grandparents.

Everybody did a show-and-tell, and there was a lot of laughter, and some tears. A lot of people brought pictures that most of us haven’t seen in years, if ever. My cousin had an old trunk full of grandpa and grandma’s stuff. There was a wooden high-chair that all 9 kids had used at one time or another, and an old, red onesie and a metal toy car of Donnie’s, which choked everybody up. There was also a pair of his baby shoes, though there was some joking that, as poor as the Simpsons were, every boy and a few of the girls probably wore those shoes before they were handed down to Donnie.

Mom recognized everybody from her generation and most of the cousins, and she had a great time. There were a lot of stories about dad and Uncle Bob, who were “Irish cousins,” and very close. (Dad was born in January of 1938, and Bob in December of that same year.) Mom soaked it all in, and was happy but tired by the time Rhonda and Jimmy took her back to their hotel.

The fog descended on her again the next day. A little while after they got back on the road for Tennessee, she became worried that they’d left dad behind in Ottawa. Rhonda reminded her that he passed away ten years ago, but mom was certain that she’d seen him the night before, apparently thinking that dad had been there with the rest of the family at Uncle Bob’s. To be fair to her, a lot of us felt that way.

When they got home that evening, mom went to bed early, and by the next day she didn’t remember the trip at all. But for that one night, she was in her old hometown and surrounded by family. And when she wakes up from this life and the fog has lifted for good, she’ll remember it all.

One more story from the weekend. I got up to Illinois on Thursday night, planning to pitch in with some preparations, including cleaning up and stocking the shelter for the reunion. But as I was driving up on Thursday, Uncle Bob couldn’t wait for the kids to get there and help. So that morning he took one of his two tractors out and mowed the ginormous yard, before returning the tractor to the newer barn, and going back in the house.

A little while later he smelled smoke, and ran out to the barn to find that the tractor that he’d put away hot was on fire. He ran back to the house and told his wife to call the fire department, and then ran back to the barn. The burning tractor was parked between his bigger tractor and their Miata; the Miata had a full tank of gas, and it was on fire, and the other tractor’s front tires were on fire. And Bob is going to turn 87 in a few months.

So naturally, he ran into the barn and jumped onto the big tractor to try to drive it out of the barn and save it. The metal he grabbed to get up into the seat was hot, and the seat was hot, and the gear shift was hot. But it started up, and he drove it out of the barn – both front tires fully engulfed – and drove it into the closest grass that was still damp from dew, and drove in a serpentine pattern to put the tires out.

His daughter and her husband had gotten there that morning from Minnesota, and she came out of the house to see her octogenarian dad come barreling out of a burning barn on a smoking tractor, twisting the steering wheel from side to side as he tried to extinguish the flaming front tires.

THAT is an Ameri-CAN, people!

Afterwards, he felt a little shaky about what he had done, and his wife and daughter were mad at him for doing it. But he got a lot of furtive fist-bumps from the Simpson men and cousins at the reunion. And Saturday night, when all but six of us had gone home, and we were sitting around a fire under a clear night sky, my cousin Darryll told Uncle Bob that he was his hero, and that he hoped he’d be able to pull stupid stunts like that when he’s 86.

Because: toxic (or at least reckless) masculinity.

I just wish that my uncle had a ring camera on the door of his house, because that video – possibly with a little Indiana Jones theme music as the soundtrack – would be great for a show-and-tell 20 years from now, with our kids and grandkids.

Next week I’ll be back on the politics beat – there is so much great stuff going on!

But tonight I’m just appreciating the afterglow from the trip. Cassie is asleep beside my desk, where she’s been while I’ve written all 700 columns, except for the small number I’ve written when I was traveling. And we’ve made some new memories with mom, and the rest of the family.

Thank you all for being part of CO Nation, and have a great weekend!

Throw-Back Friday (posted 8/1/25)

I’m up in Illinois with the cousins now, and looking forward to the reunion on Saturday. I was overwhelmed with the warmth and number of your responses to my bittersweet column on Wednesday. Thank you, one and all!

When I checked my computer last night before hitting the sack, one of my old columns came up in my feed. I don’t know how that works, but it felt like a sign, since it was as goofy and lighthearted as my Wednesday column was somber.

So I thought I’d re-post it here, for those of you who might have missed it the first time around. I posted it 5 years ago in May (as you might be able to tell from the fact that I was still half-accepting the “covid came from Chinese bats” cover story).

I don’t know if it’s a “Best of,” but I hope it will be a little palate cleanser for you as you start your weekend!

New Entry in the “Stupidest Article of the Year” competition (posted 5/1/20)

Bill Weir has a newborn son, born during the quarantine. That’s a cause for celebration, maybe even more than usual, against the backdrop of this time of disruption and social isolation. After spending part of the lockdown watching hours of You Tube videos of surprise pregnancy and twins and even triplets announcements – with all of the accompanying shouts and cheers and tears and joyful shock – I’m even more attuned than usual to appreciation of new life.

But there are some red flags for the newborn Weir boy.

First, his dad named him “River.” And no, it’s not a “Boy Named Sue” situation, in which you stick a kid with a name guaranteed to toughen him up via all of the expected abuse he’ll suffer because of it. He’s just the kind of dad who names his kid “River.” Strike one.

Second, Bill Weir works as the Chief Climate Correspondent for CNN. Strike two.

Third, he wrote a ridiculous letter to his son, and published it for all the world to see. And it is long, and tiresome, and packs more wrong-headed leftist tropes into one column than I would have thought possible. (And I’m known for packing lots of tiresome and wrong-headed political tropes into over-long columns myself!) (By people who are wrong about everything, I mean.) Strike three.

I won’t put you through the whole thing, but I think it’s worth sharing a few lowlights.

The letter starts, “My dearest River, Against all odds you were conceived in a lighthouse, born during a pandemic and will taste just enough of Life as We Knew It to resent us when it’s gone. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we broke your sea and your sky and shortened the wings of the nightingale. I’m sorry that the Great Barrier Reef is no longer great, that we value Amazon™ more than the Amazon and that the waterfront neighborhood where you burble in my arms could be condemned by rising seas before you’re old enough for a mortgage.”

Yikes! There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t know where to start.

No, wait a minute: I do know where to start.

Don’t tell your kids where and how they were conceived! The letter starts and ends with references to a vacation that he and his wife took to Croatia, and the Dubrovnik lighthouse they stayed in. Where – he wants River and the world to know – they “did it.”

Ugh. First, I can’t think of anything more gross for this young kid to read as he gets older than the details of his parent’s love life.

Second, what an erotic narcissist: “You plebes probably conceived your normally-named kids in a bland 3 bedroom tract house, in the missionary position. Yuck. Meanwhile, my lover and I (and you know this is the kind of gag-inducing male who calls his wife his “lover,” just to stick you with a mental image that you do NOT want) hiked up a wind-swept cliff-face in a romantic foreign land during a thunderstorm to break into a century-old lighthouse, where we alarmed the livestock with our creative lovemaking and exotic outfits.”

As you regular readers know, one of the best life strategies you can follow is to ask WWMD (What Would Martacus Do?), and then act accordingly. So what have I told my children about their conception, I know you are wondering.

Did I tell them, for instance, that their mother and I – having grown bored after romping our way through a series of sexual escapades that made the Kama Sutra look like a spring 1956 edition of the Saturday Evening Post – decided to try something different, when the Ringling Brother’s Circus came to town? So we broke into the big tent at 2 in the morning, and after spending a half hour getting the hang of the trapeze, managed an aerial encounter involving several flips, hanging onto a bar upside down with just my knees, and finishing in a fall into a giant net, and 9 months later our oldest was born?

Or that four years later, we came up with the idea for an assignation on the back of a 2-year old Palomino that incorporated the kind of horsemanship worthy of a young Crazy Horse at the height of his powers, in a little trick I like to call the ol’ “canter-canter-trot-TROT-GALLOP!” And that 9 months later, our youngest was born?

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

The point is that of course I haven’t told them that! All they know is that when a man and woman love each other very much, the man carries the woman through a bedroom doorway that is in black and white for some reason, and then the door shuts and the credits roll (“Gregory Peck as Martacus,” “Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Simpson.” “Nancy Pelosi as the Mummy,” “Elizabeth Warren as the Cigar Store Indian.”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher) And nine months later, one of them is born.

And nobody is named “River.”

Weir moves from erotic narcissism to climate narcissism: “I’m so sorry that we broke your sea and your sky?” I’m pretty sure that the sea is still there, and I was just looking at the sky this afternoon. Doesn’t seem broken.

And because he’s apparently learned all his science from Al Gore and Captain Planet, he thinks that his house is going to be underwater in 20 years or so. And just like with my old lefty buddies who were sure that the oceans would be dead by now, and acid rain would have wiped out half of our population, and a new global ice age would have wiped out the other half, I’d like to call Weir and remind him of his hysteria and laugh at him, as he sits in his un-condemned and totally dry house.

Weir goes on: “See, for decades, scientists told us that if we weren’t careful, humans would unleash an invisible enemy out of the jungle and into our lungs. But that was a story few wanted to believe. So we kept cutting down jungles — and prairies and mangroves and the last few the places where the wild things are — to pave and plow, develop and devour everything inside.”

Does this guy think that the Flu Manchu came from humans cutting down jungles? Has nobody told him about the Chinese boneheads eating the bats, or the Chicom boneheads and their fifth-rate lab safety procedures, or the progressive slave-state bureaucrats in Beijing who lied about everything (as commies are wont to do) until it was too late to stop a pandemic? Apparently not.

“As you get older, this will be hard to understand. But we were under the spell of Genesis 1:28: to take dominion over every living thing.”

Good lord! I love when non-Christians who wouldn’t know Saint Paul from Minneapolis-St.Paul expound on how the evil Bible teaches that we should destroy the environment. “And God said, go forth and cut down the jungles, and pile up the wood and make a great fire, upon which thou must roasteth the bat, notwithstanding that it is the least delicious of all the fowl that flieth through the air. Then shalt thou cough on thy neighbors, who must thenceforth flee to the airports and disperse throughout the globe, spreading the pestilence while your vile and indolent government lieth about it all, and keepeth on with the intellectual property theft and the exporting of lead-based toys and contaminated drywall.”

I’m no theologian, but you don’t have to be Aquinas to understand that the Biblical mandate is for humanity to be stewards of the environment, not destroyers of it.

Weir isn’t done: “We had the strange urge to carve straight lines out of nature’s curves and were under the spell of a uniquely human force called “profit motive.”

You mean like the profit motive that has allowed you to get a six-figure job writing terrible “journalism,” and allowed you to afford a house to take River home to?

The article goes on and on, but it’s too painful to spend any more time on. I just find myself feeling sorry for his son, because he’s less than a month old and his dad is already filling his mind with alarmist doom and gloom. “We’ve killed the planet, we’re all cursed, you’ll never know how things used to be so great, but now they’re terrible, and getting worse every day. Sorry about that. By the way, did I ever tell you the story about the time I absolutely wrecked your mother doing downward-facing dog on a faux bearskin rug on the flagstone floors of a Dubrovnik lighthouse?”

Not since the Cuyahoga was so filled with chemicals that it caught fire has any River been so badly treated.

To get the bad taste of this article out of my mouth, I’ve written a letter to my oldest daughter, to cosmically balance Weir’s toxic letter:

Dear Katie,

First, aren’t you glad to have a great name like “Katherine,” which is classic, timeless and versatile, and not something ridiculous like “Conifer” or “Aquifer” or “Saguaro Cactus Simpson?” You’re welcome.

Second, never mind how your mom and I made you. You’re here now, and you’ve been nurtured and educated and equipped to make your own way in the best nation ever. You’re welcome again.

Third, we used to be much worse stewards of the environment that God has given us responsibility for, but because we have free markets, we have gotten wealthier, and our wealth has allowed us to innovate and improve our treatment of nature. We’ve found ways to grow more food on less land, and our modes of building and transportation are becoming cleaner and less destructive with each passing year. If we can just not watch CNN, elect less leftists, and get the Chicoms to stop eating the freaking bats, your future is going to be brighter than for any other generation in history.

Now get out there and be an Ameri-CAN!”

Avenatti/River Weir 2020!

This Week I am Feeling the Bittersweet Brevity of Life (posted 7/30/25)

This is going to be an unusual column for me, because I’m in a more contemplative frame of mind.

As you’re reading this, I’m on the road heading up to Tennessee and then Illinois. I’ll stop over in TN and see my mom and sister – today is mom’s 87th birthday – and then continue on to Illinois, where we’re having a family reunion on Saturday. My sister and her husband are bringing mom up on Friday, and this will be her last trip back home.

Regular readers know that my mom has been struggling with Alzheimer’s, as her mother did before her. She lives with my sister and her husband, and they have risen to the occasion beautifully. Mom is still as sweet as can be, so her care is less challenging than it often is for people whose loved ones’ cognitive decline can be marked by belligerence and inappropriate behavior.

But it still takes its toll, and while I’ve been lucky to be able to go up there frequently and give my sis and her hubby the chance for week-long vacations on a fairly regular basis, Rhonda has still been doing the lion’s share of the work with mom. We’ve recently come to the point where we’re looking at some memory care nursing home options for her.

Rhonda took her for a visit to a very nice one close to her home, and was impressed with it. Mom talked with the people there and took a tour, and at the end, she said that she really liked it, and asked if she could stay there now! Which lifted some of the burden.

Of course, the next day she’d forgotten that she’d been there. On the bright side, when Rhonda showed her brochure from the place, mom thought it looked great, and agreed that she’d like to go see it.

Our fear is that when the moving day comes, if mom gets upset or cries when we take our leave, that’s going to be brutal.

We’ve read a lot about the importance of routine and familiar surroundings to ease an elderly person’s disorientation and anxiety, which has motivated us to keep her at home for as long as possible. A while ago we arranged for someone to come in and stay with her several days a week, and that has helped Rhonda.

But over the last six months or so, mom doesn’t recognize the house or her room as hers, and every evening has involved reassuring her that she’s at home. She’s had a harder time going down for the night because she doesn’t like being alone, even if Rhonda is only 70 feet away, in her own bedroom.

The memory care center has two nurses on duty 24/7, and we hope that mom will likely recognize her room there as well or better than she does her own room now.

The whole situation is fraught, of course, and this weekend will be a bittersweet one. We know it will be her last visit to her old home state and hometown, and the area where she and dad raised us. We hope that she’ll recognize all the family who will be gathered there, and her old church, and her parents’ graves in a pretty cemetery overlooking the Illinois River.

We’re pretty sure that she’ll recognize the two-story brick house she lived in on Post Street, and from where she moved away to begin her adult life when she married dad in 1958. Because she’s been obsessing about that house, convinced that her folks just sold it, and she needs to get back there and help them clean it out before the new owners arrive to move in.

In addition to mom’s decline, a few months ago I got some tragic news from a good friend of mine. He and I met in grad school 40 years ago, and we’ve been close friends ever since. My wife and I have vacationed with him and his wife over the years, and I’ve gone up to Maine to see him at least a couple of times per year for the last 15 years or so. He and I both know that we outkicked our coverage when we managed to land our amazing wives, and have been greatly blessed in our marriages.

In April, doctors discovered that his 50-something wife had a glioblastoma brain tumor, and although they performed a successful surgery and she’s been getting the best care, that kind of tumor is heartbreakingly aggressive, and she probably has around a year to live. We’ve been praying for both of them, and I’d ask that if you’re so inclined, you would do the same.

We husbands know that we usually die younger than our wives, and we are generally prepared for that, in no small part because we know that most of us would be fairly helpless without our wives. So it seems especially cruel when a younger wife gets news that upends her life and family so shockingly.

She has two kids and a husband who love her, and a church family who is surrounding and supporting her. But still, there are no words.

On a much less weighty note – but one that still involves grieving – my much-loved Cassie the Wonder Dog seems to have entered the last stretch of her life. Since the late winter she has been gradually losing steam. She’s got the heart of a lion, but it’s in the body of a 13-year-old Aussie shepherd.

I’ve always taken nightly walks with her for around a mile and a half, which involved going to the edge of the UF campus and through the law school; I tried to teach her to bark and lunge at lawyers, but she’s more well-mannered that I am, and has charity for everyone.

In the late fall I noticed that she was missing a step – just a momentary stumble – maybe half a dozen times during the walk.

Around four months ago, she started to sit in the street when we got a couple of blocks from our house, until I turned around and we headed for home. For a while she would only do the whole law school route 4 times a week, and now we’re down to maybe once.

We have a steep set of stairs in our house, and she started to struggle getting up them, stopping several times on the way up. A couple of days ago I carried her up them for the first time.

There’s nothing dramatic going wrong, and no sickness or injury. Just aging. She’s getting regular check-ups, and we’ve got her on food for older dogs, and we’re giving her a little helping getting into and out of the car. Her eyes are getting slightly milky; it’s easier to see in the brown one than in the blue one.

I know. A dog, even a world-class one like Cassie, is not the moral equivalent of a mother, or a wife. But we’ve had her since she was a year old or so. She delighted my kids when they were young teenagers, and she’s co-existed with my wife’s cats like a champ.

She made the weekly trip up and back to Tennessee with me throughout a tough autumn 10 years ago, when my dad was dying, and I think he was almost as glad to see her as he was to see me every time we got there.

She’s going to leave a little hole in our world when she’s gone.

In the meantime, I’m spoiling her more than usual, and spending as much time with mom as I can, and praying for and talking to my buddy and his wife as often as I can.

All of these gut punches from mortality lately have got me thinking about Shakespeare, even more than usual. Because: English prof.

Sonnet 73 has always been one of my favorites, and as with most of Shakespeare, it gets richer and deeper, the more life experience I get. The speaker is an old man, and uses metaphors of the parts of a day and the seasons of a year to describe his mortality.

The two opening couplets:

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

That last line always kills me.

I’m in my 60s, but I was a young man just a few months ago. I was king of the world, broke and living in a tiny apartment, my sights set on landing my smoke-show wife. Dad was still alive, and mom was fully herself. My buddy and his wife were newlyweds with kids and life and love ahead of them. Cassie was still a glint in her great-great-grand-dog’s eye.

And now, life is still amazing, and beautiful. But I don’t have to look too far or too hard to see “bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

The final couplet sums things up the way only a God-touched poet could:

“This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Yes!

And ouch.

I won’t have a column on Friday, and likely not on Monday either, while I’m the road, trying to savor the choirs before they become bare and ruin’d. I’ll be back with my usual goofiness and mockery next week, because so many good things are happening for our country, and our political opponents are making such entertaining fools of themselves.

And as jarringly dislocating as this is to say – considering what an elegiac column this has been – I look forward to getting back to it, and celebrating our victories in our national life, even as I’m simultaneously struggling with the impending losses of loved ones in my own.

But isn’t that our natural state? “In the midst of life, we are in death,” as the Book of Common Prayer says. (There is a great Gregorian chant on that theme, if you like that sort of thing, in Latin: “Media Vita in Morte Sumus.”) Despite the current storm clouds, I’ve got a Savior, and the hope of a life beyond this one.

Shakespeare knew it, and we’re all learning it: the sweetness of this life is heightened by the knowledge that it is fleeting.

So I’m going to make the most of this week, and I hope you will too.

I’m Losing my Patience with Celebrities (posted 7/28/25)

Is it just me, or are leftist celebrities getting even more obnoxious?

On Friday I wrote about the insufferable Stephen Colbert’s firing, and the celebrity responses to it, which were as inane as you’d expect. But then I was scrolling the net over the weekend, when a picture of Rosie O’Donnell popped up on my feed. I responded, instinctively, the way I always do when that happens.

“GAH! Boy, Michael Moore has really let himself go.” But then I recognized that it was Rosie. And I knew that she must have posted another anti-Trump rant. Sure enough, she got that camera right up close to her face – and that angle doesn’t do anybody any favors, even if you don’t have a face for radio – and went to town.

She pointed out that ICE is like the Gestapo. Because if you’re a history buff, you surely remember how the Gestapo only arrested people who had illegally entered Germany, and then followed the rules and gave them three hots and a cot until they could safely deport them to their home countries.

And we all remember the Gestapo officers’ ominous first statement when they started interrogating an illegal immigrant: “Ve haf vays of making you…comfortable.”

She mourned Colbert’s firing, and preached that it shouldn’t have mattered that he was losing $40 million per year for CBS, saying that, “people who only measure in money…it’s a disease.”

No, Rosie. DPGS (Delusional Political Grievance Syndrome) with accompanying TDS as a co-morbidity is a disease.

“Measuring in money” is how a business stays in business.

I had hoped that when Rosie crossed the ocean to bother the Irish, their loss would be our gain, and we’d get a little peace over here. Sadly, it was not to be.

But in Rosie’s defense, as disconcerting as her appearance has been, and as deranged as her thoughts usually are, at least she wasn’t swearing like a sailor who’d just hit his thumb with a hammer. And I can’t say the same for just about any other Democrat celebrity or politician lately.

I’ve read that many Dem politicians have intentionally started swearing on camera, as part of an effort to seem cool, and appeal to young male voters. So many of them do it so awkwardly that those rumors must be true, and that is really pathetic.

Colbert himself used the f-word – and I don’t mean “friend” – when he announced his own cancellation. He quoted Trump dunking on him because, “His talent was even less than his ratings.”

Colbert’s self-owning comeback? “How dare you sir. Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism?… Go friend yourself!”

Ugh. Yes, that’s exactly the sad excuse for a witticism that an untalented man – backed up by a staff of 20 writers, don’t forget! – would come up with!

But another talk show “comedian” – Jon Stewart – one-upped Colbert, friend-wise.

A quarter-century ago, Stewart was a cool young comic/host, surfing the political zeitgeist and having way more political influence with young people than he deserved. He could be authentically funny, but even in the early days, way too many of his “jokes” relied on him reading a stupid statement from a politician and then making a stupid face at the camera.

Being cool is like being attractive; it’s a lot easier when you’re young, and it often doesn’t age well. It’s especially hard to stay cool when you are elderly. A few can pull it off. Clint Eastwood is still cool in his 90s. Dean Martin was cool into his late 60s, and Tom Petty was cool until the day he died. I’m an elderly gentleman myself, and yet still as cool as the other side of the pillow.

But we’re the exceptions, and Jon Stewart is decidedly not. After he recently came back to do one Daily Show per week, it was clear that his schtick had aged like milk left out in the sun in August. Endlessly ranting about Trump, especially when the Democrats are providing such a rich vein of comic material that you’re ignoring, is not bringing in the ratings. And mugging for the camera with an old-guy face doesn’t work as it once did.

To make matters worse, Stewart chose to do his performative rant about Colbert using a repetitive string of F-bombs, accompanied by – of all things – a gospel choir.

Now I’m not the type of Christian who is easily offended by what more sensitive types would consider Christian-mocking humor. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything funnier than Kinison’s take on Christ coming home to his hypothetical wife after being dead for three days, for example.

Although if Stewart could be held to his own side’s rigid standards of wokeness, I’m not sure I could think of any more extreme example of “cultural appropriation” than a Jewish atheist carpet-bombing a tv audience with F-bombs to the musical stylings of a Gospel choir.

(By the way, if you like actual gospel music, I’d point you to Ray Charles and the Voices of Jubilation’s live performance of “Oh Happy Day.” (I listened to that multiple times every day for a week after Trump got re-elected.) Or, for a modern variation on the theme, you could watch Tyler Childer’s video of “Way of the Triune God.”)

Anyway, Stewart did his impression of a Baptist/Jewish minister (?) flailing around in front of a gospel choir, hollering, “Go friend yourself!” and “Friend, friend, friend yourself, just go friend yourself” over and over again.

Only it wasn’t a real gospel choir, just a half-dozen blackground singers doing a parody, and the whole thing smacked of trying way too hard.

But when it came to mind-numbingly relentless over-use of the f-word, nobody could top Hunter Biden’s bizarre interview with some unknown guy called Andrew Callaghan, who the left is hoping will become their Joe Rogan. (Spoiler alert: they’re out of their friending minds.)

Hunter’s interview was a fascinating combination of brutally cruel truth-telling and colossally clueless self-deceiving, all delivered with a mother-friending friend-storm of friended-up vulgarity.

He definitely told the truth about a lot of leftist figures. He said that George Clooney doesn’t know a friending thing about politics and is just a brand, and that James friending Carville hasn’t won a friending election in 40 years, and that Jake Tapper has the smallest friending audience on cable.

He also touted the healthiness of crack cocaine over both alcohol and regular cocaine, because when you make crack, you burn off all of the impurities, or something. I think we’ll all just take your word for that, scooter.

But his lack of self-awareness resulted in some entertaining moments, as when he attacked David Axelrod and David Plouffe for “dining out on their relationship with Obama for years, making millions of dollars.”

Um, Hunter, remember that time when you had no skills or knowledge about painting, or Ukraine, or energy, and yet brought in millions of dollars for your terrible paintings, and your positions with energy companies in Ukraine? Because your name was Biden?

Finally, my personal favorite story of the last several days involved everybody’s favorite faux-Bronx girl from Westchester, AOC. Most people remember when she went to the fancy Met Gala a few years ago, and wore a white designer dress with the words “Tax the Rich” in big red letters on its back.

Well it turns out that even though she’s a self-proclaimed socialist who shouldn’t have been willing to be caught dead mixing with the evil rich folks at their fancy ball, she also improperly accepted free admission to the party for her boyfriend, and she didn’t pay full market value for her statement-making dress.

Unexpectedly!

So now a House ethics commission is requiring her to cough up $2700 that she should have paid.

Got that? She’s a gal from a tony suburb pretending to be from the Bronx, and a rich person pretending to be a lower-middle class person, and a tax dodger pretending to be all for rich people like her paying lots of taxes.

When she was shopping for her dress, AOC almost certainly asked, “Does this ‘Tax the Rich’ dress make my juicy booty (her words, not mine) look fat?”

But she failed to ask, “Does this idiotic, hypocritical slogan make me look stupid?” or “Shouldn’t I be paying taxes on this expensive donation to emphasize my best political asset?”

Contemplating these stories has given me an idea for two Executive Orders that Trump could use to address our budget deficit.

EO #1 would require a full audit of every Democrat House member and Senator – and throw the Republicans in there too, just to keep things kosher – and then a Brinks truck to be sent to all of their offices to collect the billions in taxes that they’ve undoubtedly dodged.

EO #2 would install a series of swear jars in every Democrat office and public building in the DC metro area. Charge a buck for every “friend” – and while we’re at it, five bucks for every “narwhal.”

We’ll have the deficit closed by Christmas.

Hunter “friending” Biden/AO- “friending” -C, 2028!

Two Economics Lessons, from the WNBA & Stephen Colbert (posted 7/25/25)

Hey kids, today I’m introducing a new feature called Economics Corner with Martin!

Before you can scroll to the next story, I know what you’re thinking: “Martin, we come to you for the humor and the mockery. And sure, for the eye candy. But what do you know about economics? Would anybody with any economic sense spend a decade getting a PhD in English? If we want some smart econ talk, we’ll go to the mysterious and powerful CO, or to Christopher Silber.”

To which I can only say, fair enough. I’m no financial brainiac like those guys, with their 10-year-T-bill this, and their Laffer Curve that, and their bitcoin other thing. But in my defense, I have a little something I like to call “horse sense.”

Which, ironically, is the kind of instinct that tells you not to bet on horses. But it also allows me to be smarter about economics than you’d expect, as I will demonstrate with the following two cautionary tales.

The WNBA is a professional basketball league, like the NBA, only with female players. Until a year and a half ago, the most exciting thing to happen in an WNBA game would be a steal, leading to a pulse-pounding sprint down court, ending in a thrilling…lay up.

In addition to routine lay ups, like you might see during your grandson’s middle school basketball games, the WNBA offers something that middle school basketball games couldn’t offer. Lesbians.

So many lesbians.

Unfortunately, these aren’t your Cinemax lesbians, which you might remember from educational women’s prison movies from the 1980s. These films taught viewers that most lady criminals are in their 20s and cute as a button, and that nobody enters a women’s prison without being strip searched, and that the best place to plan a prison break is always the shower room.

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Anyway, the WNBA lesbians aren’t those lesbians. They’re the kind who look like they could drive an 18-wheeler, or teach shop, or be a hulking defensive presence in the paint. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But alas, it has not made for ratings gold.

The league was started 28 years ago, and it has never made a profit. Despite tons of promotion and oodles of “you go girl” gender cheerleading, reports suggest that on the most optimistic view, the league has lost an average of $10 million per year. Gallingly, the NBA has actually been subsidizing the WNBA all that time.

This situation has flummoxed the marketing geniuses behind the WNBA. Their thinking seems to have been, “We’re giving them lay ups and lesbians! What else do they want?”

But last year, a galvanizing presence entered the league. Caitlin Clark is an excellent player. She’s a skilled ball-handler, a deft passer, and she regularly drains threes from the parking lot. She quickly developed an energized fan base, and her presence on the court guaranteed bigger crowds and higher ratings.

People who know sports and money say that’s she not just a franchise player, she’s an entire league player. Her games have been moved to bigger arenas, and when she’s out with an injury, attendance and viewership drops by over half. She’s truly a Golden Goose for the WNBA.

Which leads me to one of the common-sense economic principles that even I understand: if you’ve got a Golden Goose, you pamper that fine fowl. Make it a soft bed, feed it a good-tasting and nutritious diet, monitor its health and its cholesterol, if geese have cholesterol. Surround it with a security team that will tase first and ask questions later.

You know what you shouldn’t do with a Golden Goose?

Scratch its eyes, knock it down, and then kick it. And then call it racial slurs.

Because Clark is only part Golden Goose; she’s also a swan.

She’s white, is what I’m saying. And that’s a problem in the WNBA, because about 65% of players in the league are black, and many of those are super jealous, and super racist. (Let’s just say that while there has NEVER been a narwhal reference during a WNBA game, there have been plenty of derogatory “white girl” insults thrown her way.)

Most major sports leagues have been smart enough to protect their players, and especially their star players. During the Bulls dynasty the NBA used to have what was derisively called “The Jordan Rules,” which meant that Michael Jordan got many close calls, and the refs got whistle-happy when opposing teams started fouling him too hard.

The NFL has done something similar, evolving their rules to give more protection to quarterbacks, and to minimize the types of plays that usually result in more and serious injuries.

But not the WNBA. They’ve got two main groups making two major economic – and I would say ethical – mistakes. The owners have ignored the racial animus and jealousy directed at Clark, and have allowed a bunch of little-known, angry, and less talented players beat the hell out of her.

They’ve allowed their swan who has been laying golden eggs to be surrounded and set upon by a bunch of no-name Mallard Luther Kings. (Hat tip to Theo Von.) Except that that’s a terrible analogy, since MLK was fighting the good fight, while these harpies are fighting to kill off their own meal ticket.

The other group making a dumb economic decision, sadly, is the players. Before the recent WNBA all-star game, they came out for warm-ups wearing t-shirts saying, “Pay Us What You Owe Us.” Which is the most obnoxiously entitled way to phrase what is an insane economic proposition.

In a free market, you are owed what you earn. And in big-time sports, what you earn is a piece of what you bring in: gate receipts, product sales, tv ratings and ad revenue. Unfortunately for the WNBA players, what they’ve been bringing in is less than zero, for a very long time. If they were paid what they are truly owed, Clark and maybe another 8-10 players would make very good livings, and the rest of the players would have to pay the league to let them play.

And I don’t say that with any animus. I’ve seen bits and pieces of WNBA games and clips over the last year and a half, and the league has some talented players. If they can weed out some of the racism and envy in their ranks, they can put out a good product. They’re not as strong or fast as their male counterparts, but that’s a matter of biology, and non-insane people don’t see that as an insult, or a deal-breaker.

Women’s tennis and golf are popular, and women’s gymnastics are more popular than men’s. But none of those sports are peopled by petty, racists jerks. Because that’s bad for business.

Speaking of bad for business, have you ever heard of an angry, unfunny professional comedian?

If you’ve heard of Stephen Colbert, you have.

You’ve also probably heard that his late night show has been cancelled. Which has unleashed a cavalcade of leftist outrage and general imbecility. Celebrities like Ben Stiller and Jimmy Kimmel panned the decision, as did the actress last seen killing the Snow White IP as dead as Julius Caesar, Rachel Zegler.

Many dimwits saw conspiracies behind the decision. “I am so upset about this. I need more information,” said the once-perky Katie Couric.

A certain Pale Pawnee went further, detecting the malignant influence of an orange hand working behind the scenes. (#wemustneverstopmockingher) Grandma Squanto noted that the axe fell only three days after Colbert had called out CBS’ corporate owner Paramount for settling with Trump for $16 million over his lawsuit against 60 Minutes for dishonestly editing Que Mala’s interview to make her look less idiotic shortly before the election.

Warren self-importantly proclaimed that “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”

Yes. And America deserves to know how a blue-eyed blonde straight from the fjords went to a job interview at Harvard wearing a buckskin dress “Apache Princess” Halloween costume and came out with a tenure-track job. And whether we should ever stop mocking her.

Which we should not, as I may have mentioned before.

You may have noticed that I just slid right past the fact that Colbert had publicly crapped all over his bosses. And then, three days later, his cancellation was announced. Unexpectedly! Many sharp-eyed students of cause and effect might have connected those dots.

But it turns out that there is an even bigger and more obvious elephant in the room. And that elephant is called “economics.”

Colbert’s show brings in $60 million per year, which is pretty amazing, because he despises more than half the country, and spends the lion’s share of his air time being doggedly, relentlessly, remorselessly unfunny.

Unfortunately for CBS and for Colbert, it costs $100 million per year to produce his terrible show. (Which even by my English professor math means that the show is losing $40 million per year.) Colbert’s salary is $15 million, and more than 200 people work on that show, including 20 writers! 20!

By comparison, I write this column all by my lonesome, and my entire overhead is the electricity for my computer and a minimal bourbon budget that covers just enough to lubricate my coy muse. I’ve signed an NDA with CO that forbids me from revealing how much he pays me, but if you guessed, “Less than $15 million per year,” you’d be safely in the ballpark.

My least funny column – it was probably either the one about my dad’s death, or the one after Biden’s election – was still three standard deviations funnier than Colbert’s average show.

And if I ever wrote anything as horrifically unfunny as that musical sketch when Colbert danced around the stage surrounded by gay guys dressed as giant human syringes in service of a creepy propaganda push to urge people to get injected with an experimental, ineffective vaccine, I’d go straight from the studio to a lonely hilltop, where I’d hang myself by the neck until I was dead.

By the way, I loved how CBS twisted the knife with a double insult to Colbert. First, they issued a transparently false fig leaf excuse for his cancellation, claiming that the move was “a financial decision,” and “not related in any way to the show’s performance [or] content.”

Right. The fact that the show was so repellent to audiences that it was bleeding viewers and cash had nothing to do with the show’s performance.

That’s as believable as breaking up with your significant other right after she banged your best friend, got a Swastika neck tattoo and emptied your bank account and sent it to the “Mamdani for NYC” super-pac, and saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Second, they announced that not only is Colbert being cancelled, but he’s so badly damaged the Late Show franchise that they’re permanently ending the program as well. That’s like if I finally realized my life-long dream of playing quarterback for the Bears, and after a few horrendous seasons, the owners decided that they were disbanding the team, dynamiting Soldier Field, and dousing the site with radioactive waste so that no one else will ever go there again.

So congratulations, WNBA and Stephen Colbert! You’ve both failed Econ 101.

WNBA, if you don’t repent and change your ways, you’re going to be the dancing gay syringes skit of the sports world.

And Colbert, you’re already a Caitlin-Clark-less WNBA. May God have mercy on your unfunny soul.

And by the way, Stephen, it’s not us. It’s you.

Colbert/Angel Reese 2028!

More (Belated) Good News from Florida (posted 7/21/25)

I was so excited to hear on Friday that Trump was signing the GENIUS act into law, thinking that finally, at long last, my status as hilarious genius would be formally acknowledged by an act of state. I sat with my phone all day, waiting for a congratulatory call from the White House that sadly, never came.

Finally, around midnight, after my wife had gone to bed and Cassie the Wonder Dog had fallen asleep at my feet, I gave up and went online to read about that act.

Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was about crypto, which I can’t even pretend to understand. So maybe it’s possible that I’m not the genius I think I am…

In my column last week about how Florida is kicking arse and IL and CA Dems are making arses of themselves, I didn’t mention two of my favorite Florida stories from the last month, both of which demonstrate common sense in crime fighting.

The first is Alligator Alcatraz, which is an example of amazing branding attached to a great idea. The name has it all: pleasing alliteration, a reference to a famous prison that all Americans know, and the vivid, evocative mental image that it creates.

As in, “You thought the Rock was a tough place to escape from?” At least there, if you made it out and could survive the swim, you’d find yourself in San Francisco. Sure, that’s not the reward that it might have been, decades ago. But still, if you stepped carefully through the human feces and filthy syringes, and could avoid getting bitten by a shambling, zombi-fied, narcotics-addled, straight-ballot Democrat voter, you’d soon be free.

But Alligator Alcatraz? If you manage to make it out of there, you’d be facing miles of uncharted swamps, filled with animals whose bite is even more terrifying than that of a hepatitis-riddled leftist with meth mouth.

And no, I’m not talking about the Sexual Harassment Panda. (Sing it with me, people, “Don’t say that, don’t touch there. Don’t be nasty says the silly bear!”) I’m talking about an apex predator from the age of the dinosaurs, with a mouth as big as Maxine Waters’ and skin as tough and scaly as… Maxine Waters’.

Many soft-hearted lefties have pronounced themselves appalled and offended by the cruelty of conservatives who would subject the “undocumented” to such a place, and would even give it a hilarious name like “Alligator Alcatraz.” (I would have also accepted “Sing-Sing in the Swamp,” but that is wordier, and many youngsters might not have heard of that northern prison.)

But since very few of them have expressed any regret or shame over Biden’s-open-border-enabled rape and murder of Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, or the myriad victims of illegals’ violence, we are not going to lose any sleep over their bruised feelings.

In fact, DeSantis has released a useful list of some of the delightful illegals whom Biden and the Dems invited into our country, and who are now at Alligator Alcatraz. These Citizen-of-the-Year candidates include a Cuban convicted of sexual assault in Texas; a Honduran convicted of murder in Florida; a Guatemalan convicted of burglary, forced entry and voyeurism in Miami. Another Cuban slit the throat of an old woman and then tried to burn her house down to destroy the evidence.

Yep, this group is like a United Nations gathering of terrible human beings. (Coincidentally, many UN committees are actually a United Nations gathering of terrible human beings. I hope Trump has got a team looking at the process for pulling out of the UN ASAP.)

My favorite scumbag on the first list of detainees at AA – and one I hope will soon prove his machismo by trying his luck in the swamp – is a Honduran MS-13 member with a string of charges including assault, resisting arrest, RICO offenses and conspiracy to commit murder, called – and I swear I am not making this up – Oscar “Satan” Sanchez.

That’s who the Democrats are fighting for. Drug traffickers, sex traffickers, human traffickers, gang bangers, wife-beaters like Cuddly Kilmar, and Satan! (I couldn’t help by hearing Dana Carvey’s Church Lady voice just then.)

I’m trying to get a suggestion to Ron DeSantis. (Maybe CO can reach out to him when he and the COW get back from Alaska, because I’ve heard that they have friends in high places.) And that is: pay-per-view gladiator-style cage matches featuring the worst-of-the-worst in Alligator Alcatraz who are willing to get into the octagon with a gator, with a guarantee of freedom if they win.

Trump is already friends with the MMA’s Dana White and Joe Rogan. White can set up the matches, and Rogan can call them. We can put the proceeds from the pay-per-view – which should bring in as much as the tariffs – toward hiring more ICE and border patrol bad-asses.

I can see it now. A huge gator wriggles into the cage, while a graphics package lists his stats: Length, 13 feet.

Weight, 1000 pounds.

Number of teeth: 80.

Bite strength: 2,125 PSI.

Record: 37-0 – 33-0 vs foreign criminals, 2-0 vs. dull-witted tourists taking selfies, 2-0 vs oblivious poodles.

Then Satan Sanchez struts in, and his stats are listed:

Height: 5’ 9”

Weight: 185

Record: 9-1 – 3-0 vs children, 4-0 vs women, 2-0 vs senior citizens. One loss to an ICE agent using the Simpson Gender Confirmation Protocol (groin kick) followed by pepper spray.

Life Expectancy: 2 more minutes.

Then they throw to Joe Rogan with the call: “Our first bout tonight features The Gator vs. Satan. In this corner, a slimy, dead-eyed, reptilian killer.

In the other corner, an Alligator. Let’s get ready to rummmmbllll—

Yow! Ouch. The gator just took off Satan’s right arm. That’s going to be a problem for him, since he’s a rightie, and his right cross is his best mov—

Gah! There goes the left arm. And…down goes Satan! Down goes Satan!!”

And, scene.

The second great Florida crime-fighting story is from a DeSantis interview with Dave Rubin on June 13. (Before you can ask, I know: this story is over a month old. And no, I’m not tired of winning. But I am getting a little tired trying to keep up with writing about all of the winning!)

Rubin asked DeSantis about several recent stories from blue states wherein people whose cars were surrounded by violent protestors hit a few protestors in an effort to get away, and were subsequently charged with a crime.

DeSantis said that Florida drivers “have a right to defend themselves” if they feel threatened. “If you are driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety, and so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.”

He further explained that, “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”

A minute after I heard that on Rubin’s show, my wife walked through our dining room and stopped in her tracks, saying, “Are you re-enacting that Meg Ryan scene in the diner in When Harry Met Sally?”

And I said, “Maybe.” And ran a hand through my hair, while I tried to get my breathing back under control.

In a recent email exchange with a lefty buddy, he said that he thinks conservatives don’t have as much empathy as leftists do. I countered that both sides of the political divide have empathy; the difference is in who we empathize with.

Many lefties seem to feel a lot more empathy for criminals than for cops, and “trans women” athletes than for their actual women competitors, and for illegals than citizens.

Meanwhile, we righties feel empathy for ICE agents being attacked by rioters, and people victimized by criminals. And yes, alligators.

Because some day soon, God willing, some poor gator is going to have to pass chunks of Satan Sanchez in his stool. And that seems like it would have to be uncomfortable.

In the meantime…

“Satan” Sanchez/Gavin “Satan’s Helper” Newsom, 2028!

Hamas delenda est!

Three Tales, About Three Stooges (posted 7/18/25)

I missed a WAPO op-ed last week.

Actually, I think I’ve missed every WA-PO op-ed since late May of 1972. Because that’s when I turned 10, and officially became too wise and world-weary to trust anything I read in the WAPO.

But I saw this opinion piece, one week late, because it made its way into my news feed as a great example of MSM imbecility. You may have seen it too. It’s the one titled, “I’m a clown. Donald Trump is not one of us.”

It appeared over the picture of a guy in a bowler hat and a red nose, and my first thoughts were: “I thought Ted Kennedy was dead,” and, “Where’d he get that bowler hat?”

But no, the piece wasn’t written by the late drunken weather balloon from Massachusetts. Its author is an actual clown named Tim Cunningham, and the op-ed is one long, unfunny joke to the effect that we shouldn’t call Trump a clown, because being a clown is a noble profession, and should be taken way more seriously than a fascist like Trump.

I’ll bet that Jeff Bezos is just thrilled with his management team’s efforts to restore the Washington Post’s credibility.

But I’ve got news for Mr. Cunningham. Trump is not a fascist, and clowns are mostly not funny.

How un-funny are clowns?

Three of the most famous clowns in the world were John Wayne Gacy, Jerry Lewis in that Holocaust movie (look it up), and that super-creepy guy who lived in a sewer and had a disturbing affinity for frightening children.

No, not Joe Biden (RIP). Although if you’ve seen any of those photos of him sniffing the hair of traumatized kids, that’s an image that will stay with you. Also, he did that one trick where he pulled a bowel movement out of his hat.

The Pope was expecting a rabbit, and was not pleased.

Also, rumors that Biden once tried to make a very simple balloon animal, and the secret service had to intervene because he nearly strangled himself have not been confirmed.

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the WAPO editorial meeting when they came up with the idea of asking a leftist clown – of all people! – what he thinks about politics. Because who needs a Marxist Abbott and Costello when we already have the comic stylings of Crockett and the Booty in congress?

(Yes, I know: that would be a great name for a wacky FM “Morning Zoo” DJ team. And in a sane world, that would be the most prestigious job that Jasmine and AOC could aspire to.)

Speaking of beclowning oneself, did you catch Grandma Squanto’s attempt to dunk on Trump on Wednesday? She tried to play the corruption card against Trump. (By the way, have you ever seen a Democrat pack of cards? All four queens are scowling gender feminists, so naturally, all four kings are suicide kings. And the Jacks can all turn into Jills, somehow. And there are still four suits, but diamonds are “corruption,” hearts are “weird sex stuff,” clubs are “sexism,” and “racism” is…. I’m not saying.)

You could say that Lizzie’s attempt at a card trick blew up in her own face, as if someone had rigged her peace pipe with an exploding charge, like a Dakota (Sioux) Daffy Duck. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In an X post, she presented a chart listing six entities and how much they donated to the Trump library. Above the chart she wrote, “Government should work for the people, not whichever giant company or foreign government can dump the most money into the president’s future library.”

Never mind that most of the billionaires who donated in 2020 gave to the Democrats, or that Cackling Que Mala was given $2 billion to blow (phrasing) in a few months.

Just look at Lizzie’s six categories.

She doesn’t even bother to try in the last one; the “Who” is “other special interests” and the amount listed is “unknown millions.” Which is brilliant! “I accuse you of taking…some money, from…somebody.”

But the other five are hilarious. See if you can spot the pattern:

Paramount/CBS News gave $16 million. Meta gave $22 million. Disney/ABC News gave $15 million. X gave $10 million. And Qatar gave $400 million (Jet)

The Qatari jet was not given to Trump, but to the United States, and if the gift ever does happen, the jet will act as Air Force One, and then go to his library. He will never have any private use of it at all.

(I still don’t think that he should accept the jet, but it is not personally enriching corruption like – oh, I don’t know – [begin Kinison filter] HAVING YOUR HOOKER-BANGING ADDICT SON COLLECT BAGS OF CASH FROM THE CHI-COMS! OHH! OHHHHH! [end Kinison filter])

The remaining four examples were not bribes, happily given by fat cats wanting to buy Trump’s favor. They were ALL lawsuit settlements, grudgingly handed over to their hated nemesis by corrupt MSM power players who had slandered him so blatantly that they stood to lose many millions more if they had gone to court, where Trump would have beaten them like Cuddly Kilmar beat his wife.

If I thought Elizabeth Warren was capable of feeling shame, I might say, “Boy, is her face red!” (#wemustneverstop) But I’ll just leave it at, “Nice forked tongue, Lizzie. (#mockingher)

Finally, Scott Jennings continues to be the only reason to ever watch CNN, and as of Tuesday, he has run his record to 147-0 in his battles against hapless leftist panelists. The latest contender was Democrat Strategerist Julie Roginsky, with an attempted assist from host Abby Phillip.

The on-screen chyron defined the topic this way: “The Debate: US Inflation Rises as Trump’s Tariffs Push Up Prices.” That subject should offer Ragin’ Roginsky a chance to score at least a few minor points. I mean sure, when Biden took Trump’s 1.5% inflation rate up to 9% in 14 months, CNN probably called that “a barely noticeable bump,” whereas an increase of .2% from May to June under Trump gets WWIII-level headlines.

So how does Roginsky kick aside a chance for a tiny victory and grab hold of defeat with both bony hands? When Jennings suggests that the current small increase is no reason for panic, she says, “When we were promised on August 15^th last year that the price of eggs, the price of bacon, of apples—”

Obviously at this point she was going to say, “would be down.” But once he heard “eggs,” Jennings jumped in, as one does when an opponent makes a mistake. Because of all the things she could cite, she chose the one grocery item that was hyped in the news before the election and inauguration, and that everyone knows has dropped in price.

So Jennings says, “The price of eggs are down.”

If that segment had been a fencing competition, a little buzzer would have sounded, and a ref would have announced a strike. Or a stab. Or whatever they call it when one fencer skewers the other’s thorax. (Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the fencing analogy, since I obviously don’t know much about it.)

But apparently Roginsky’s thorax is as numb as her skull, because she offered a meaningless rebuttal. “Year over year, eggs are up 27%.”

Jennings shook his head as if he didn’t think she’d really said that, and replied, “Since he took office, they’re down.”

And Roginsky insisted, “Year over year!”

Think about that. Roginsky thought that she could score a point by saying that since last July 15^th, egg prices have gone up. But since Joe Biden was still the president for six more months – during which egg prices nearly doubled – she surely couldn’t be dumb enough to claim that Trump was responsible for the increase in egg prices when he had no ability to influence egg prices, could she?

Don’t call her Shirley. But you can certainly call her dumb. Because that IS what she was claiming. And Jennings’ response was the only sane one: since Trump took office and had the chance to influence egg prices, they’ve gone down.

This is the kind of dispute that could be solved in 5 seconds by looking up egg prices, which reporter Joe Concha did (but CNN didn’t). And it turns out that the national average price of eggs (according to TradingEconomics) when Trump took office was around $6.60 a dozen. Because Biden needlessly killed 4 million chickens in his last days in office – and because dead chickens lay surprisingly few eggs, for you city slickers out there – the price climbed to a little over $8 in the first week of March. Since then, it has plunged to $2.89 this week.

So Jennings was right. But Abby Phillip – noticing that Roginsky had suffered a serious thorax poke – put that weird fencing strainer thing on her face and rushed in to help her slow-witted friend.

To wit, “Let’s not fight over statistics here.” Oh good, maybe Abby knows a chicken’s hind-end from a hole in the ground— “She’s right, year over year, they’re up significantly.”

Good lord!

Since a good thorax-piercing apparently cuts off blood flow to the brain, Roginsky stepped on the same rake again, in this quote which I could not make up, no matter how much bourbon I drank:

“Let’s be clear. He promised three things: the price of eggs, bacon and apples were going to go down. I can quote him, it was on August 15^th of last year…. All of them are up. They’re up year over year, and that’s a fact.”

Yes it is. An utterly irrelevant fact.

As she pushed on and doubled down on the year-over-year thing, Jennings was finally exasperated enough to say, “You are literally lying—”

And then the tide of imbecility rose up all around the table, with several people saying, “Whoa!” and Abby jumped in again, unknowingly taking another skinny fencing sword in the soup-strainer mask:

Abby: Before you accuse her of lying, I literally just went over this. She is correct that year over year—

Scott (speaking slowly and emphatically): Since Donald Trump took office, what’s happened to the eggs?

Abby: Oh my god, do you not understand—

After more insane crosstalk that lasted for the longest minute of your life, Abby accused Jennings of derailing the conversation, and ended it this way: “I think people have the ability to understand the difference between the price of eggs today and the price of eggs a year ago today. Versus what you would prefer to talk about, which is the price of eggs when Donald Trump was inaugurated. You’re just talking about two different time horizons.”

YES! He “would prefer to talk about” the relevant time horizon, rather than one that holds Trump responsible for what Biden did as president.

Whatever else you can say about that segment, it’s clear that Jennings foiled them again. (Boom! Late, game-saving proper fencing reference. Because I looked it up, and a fencing stick is called a “foil.”)

Whatever CNN is paying Scott Jennings, it’s not enough.

And whatever they’re paying Julie Roginsky and Abby Phillip, it’s way too much.

So…

Roginsky/Phillip, 2028!

Also,

Hamas delenda est!

Florida vs. Blue States — It’s a Rout!(posted 7/16/25)

Today’s hump-day column will be a Florida-centric one, starting with a little gushing over the founder of the CO Nation feast himself, the great and powerful CO, who has been doing an excellent job curating and commenting on an interesting variety of stories lately.

As I’ve started writing more columns, I’ve taken less time to comment on the stories and columns – and the comments – here, but everybody has been hitting the ball hard lately! The COSIE’s offerings have been great – and not just because of the awesome Aussie pics – and Christopher Silber keeps breaking down economics and Chinese history in columns that make me feel smarter after reading each one. The Correspondent for Thinly Researched Conspiracy Theories doesn’t write often enough for my taste, but each posting is a gem.

In an online world that sometimes seems to consist mainly of Temu ads, porn, and fighting characterized by the bad manners born of keyboard courage, this site continues to be a refuge, with the comforting ambience of a virtual corner pub. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to hang out here and crack wise!

I have one more request of CO, and that is for him to post a review of the Elvis Costello concert he went to a few days ago. I’ve been a huge fan of Elvis since the “My Aim is True” days, but have never seen him live. So please assuage my jealousy, and allow me to live vicariously through your account of the evening.

Okay, since I’m a “count your blessings” kind of optimist, CO’s recent post about the amazing roll that Florida is on lately got me thinking.

You remember the bullet points: The #1 economy for the third consecutive year; #1 in new business formation; fewest state workers, lowest per capita debt, second-lowest per capita spending, law-and-order policies; lowest in-state tuition; no state income tax, etc.

Fortunately for us, we don’t take all of this for granted, because televisions and computers exist. And each day we can use them to check on how things are going in the blue cities and states in this great nation. And… yikes!

Comparing Florida to blue states is enlightening, and allows for some healthy, Nelson Muntzian “Ha-Ha!” gloating, with a side of soul-restoring in-your-face-y “I told you so!”

For example, I lived in my beloved home state of Illinois for my first 24 years, and have been in Florida for the last 39. Florida’s financial success and growth is the mirror opposite of what’s been going on in Illinois. They’ve got a state income tax and higher property taxes, but their infrastructure is deteriorating. They’ve got a greedy D-irigible for governor, and we’ve got a lean, mean D-Santis.

They’ve welcomed in hordes of illegals, and they’ve spent $2.5 billion – with a “b” as in “bonehead” – on them in the last three years, and their state debt is amongst the worst in the nation. Chicago public schools just announced that they’re staring at a shortall of $750 million (with an “m” as in “moron”), and will have to make deep cuts to their already atrocious system.

Florida grabs our illegals and flies them to Martha’s Vineyard. And then we laugh and laugh at the rich white liberals panicking and giving the noble brown folks the bum’s rush right off of their precious island.

The most obvious counterpart to Florida is California, and there too, the big picture is obvious. Florida is economically health and vibrant, while California is stagnant and covered in feces and the bodies of homeless people, some of whom may have actually been dead since February.

Florida cops fight crime; California cops fight for their lives. Florida is building; California watches their buildings burn down.

Florida’s main immigrant group is plucky Cubans who came legally, and will punch you in the face if you say something nice about communism. California’s main immigrant group is (mostly) entitled Mexicans who came illegally, and will punch you in the face if you say something nice about America.

We prepare for hurricanes, and when one knocks a bridge down, we rebuild it in 72 hours.

Californians drain their reservoirs and allow homeless addicts to make campfires among their native kindling plants, and when entire zip codes burn to the ground (unexpectedly!), they issue permits to rebuild…to the great-grandchildren of the owners, just in time for the tri-centennial celebrations in 2076.

Both states have a Disney park. When covid hit, Florida’s Disney World closed for less than 4 months, and re-opened to a blizzard of headlines along the lines of “Reckless Red State Re-opens ‘Disney Dachau’ Despite Raging Epidemic that Will Kill Us All!”

Meanwhile, CA’s Disneyland was closed for over a year, while they watched people enjoying Florida’s Disney World, and waited for the pile of bodies stacked up like cordwood that never materialized.

Both states took on an ambitious high-speed train project. Florida built the Brightline to connect Miami and Orlando (with a stop near the CO compound and world headquarters). The project broke ground in mid-2014, with a few parts of the route opening in 2018 and the entire line being finished by September of 2023. It was largely privately financed, and cost $6 billion.

California’s high-speed rail project was talked about since the 1990s, and was approved by voters in 2008, with the goal of linking San Francisco and Los Angeles by 2020 for an estimated cost of $33 billion. But CA politicians all held their hands out, and CA environmental activists all stuck their feet out, and it was decided that Phase 1 would join the small inland towns of Bakersfield and Merced, neither of which most Californians had ever heard of, except for those who had heard the song “Streets of Bakersfield.” (Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam did it best.)

By the time Trump took office this year – five years after the line was supposed to have been completed – the estimated cost had ballooned to $128 billion, with an estimated completion sometime in the 2030s. At this point, a grand total of zero feet of track has been laid, for the low, low price of… wait for it… $7 billion dollars!

So if you’re counting on your abacus at home, that sums up the difference between the prudent, conservative governance in Florida and the Marxist/Leninist Schiff-show that is Democrat rule in California:

The citizens of Florida got a high-tech train joining thriving population centers in 9 years and at the cost of $6 billion dollars.

Meanwhile, the likes of Haircut Newsom and Big Mouth Bass took 17 years and only one billion more dollars to provide Californians with no tracks laid between two towns that nobody wants to go to anyway.

Newsom/Mamdani, 2028!

Also…

Hamas delenda est!

Our Lefties Are Loopy, but the Finns and Germans Have Lost It! (posted 7/14/25)

To start your week off on an upbeat note, I’ll recount how two girls under the age of 14 have applied the Simpson Gender Confirming Protocol™ to a surprised volunteer on the Fourth of July. The girls were swimming at the Little Platte Swim Beach in Missouri and waiting for the fireworks to start when a strange man swam up to them.

After asking them inappropriate questions, he allegedly groped them and tried to remove part of their swimming suits. They administered a SGCP™ maneuver to him (i.e. kicked him in the groin), then got out of the water and alerted their parents. The groper had apparently been identified by the SGCP™ as an intact male, because the police were able to catch him as he limped toward the parking lot a short time later.

The miscreant – one Carlos Climaco-Garcia – only had identification from Guatemala, and was found with someone with an ICE detainer. So the police reported that “the suspect’s citizenship status is unknown.”

Because of course they did. (I’m sure that his great-great-great-great abuelo and abuela came over on the Mayflower.)

Sure, technically this creep wasn’t claiming to be a female trapped in a male body when he underwent the procedure – the primary test subjects for which I’d invented the SGCP™. But the salutary effect the procedure had in this case is a testament to the incredible versatility of the SGCP™. Is there anything it can’t do?

It slices, it dices, it determines gender, it dissuades descendants of pilgrims who celebrate Independence Day by groping pre-teen girls.

It’s going to be tough to work that into my Nobel prize acceptance speech, but I accept the challenge.

Speaking of immigration-related foolishness, I’m beginning to suspect that Trump has planted a bunch of undercover agents in the leftist “peaceful riots” movement to discredit all leftist efforts to fight deportation. The only alternative is that that movement is littered with poor souls with Crockettian levels of intelligence. (Yes, I have turned Jasmine Crockett’s name into an adjective indicating barely detectable levels of brain activity.)

In every anti-ICE protest story, MSM and Democrat commenters describe ICE acting like the Gestapo, terrorizing blameless citizens, and arresting Gandhi-esque peaceful protestors for no reason at all.

And then video comes out, and it shows that the ICE officers were arresting a bunch of illegals and showing great restraint while violent mobs of protestors screamed and interfered and attacked them.

To pick just one example, we can look at the case of Jonathan Caravello. He is a Cal State Channel Islands (?) professor and a member of “an anti-racism, social justice union” which is now claiming that he was “kidnapped” for no reason by federal agents last Thursday, during a peaceful protest of an illegal raid by fascists.

Alternatively, he was “protesting” at the raid on the Glass House pot farm, where a lot of illegals were found. A US Attorney says that Caravello “was arrested for throwing a tear gas canister at law enforcement” and is charged with “assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers or employees.”

Customs and Border Protection officials said that 10 of the illegals found there were juveniles, and 8 of those were unaccompanied minors. Oddly enough, the Glass House corporation has been “hit with multiple wage and labor law complaints in recent years,” and the president and co-founder has donated many thousands of dollars to Democrats in CA, including $10K to Ken-Doll Newsom.

Unexpectedly!

While we’ve all been told that you can’t judge a book by its cover, we’ve all also noticed that you can very often judge a book by its cover. And if you’ll look up Caravello’s faculty photo – the official one, that he posed for, knowing it would go on the university’s website! – you’ll see what looks like the cover of a book entitled, “Nightmare Journals: What if Charles Manson and A Crazy Karen from Libs of Tik-Tok Had a Baby?”

He’s got the wildly unbrushed long hair, the sad attempt at a beard. And the eyes. Always the crazy eyes. And again, this was an official photo! You just know that the photographer had to say something like, “Hey Jon, would you like to borrow a comb before I take this professional picture?”

And Caravello said, “No, no, I’m good. I’m going for the Jim Ignatowski from Taxi look.” And damned if he didn’t nail it!

He also has a pic on a CSU-associated Instagram page, a self-dramatizing shot of him posing with a fist upraised and a somber expression. (By the way, in that photo he’s got a SFPI™ [Simpson Face Punchability Index] rating of 93 out of 100.)

But before you conclude that the US of A is the most screwed up country when it comes to dealing with immigration, I’ve got to stop you right there. Because the nations of Finland and Germany exist, and they have been making complete fools of themselves on this subject.

I can’t say that I’ve thought a lot about the Finns during my life – around here, when you discuss the Finns, you’re talking about the Miami Dolphins – but what thoughts I’ve had have been positive. I like Scandinavian types, and I love the fact that plucky little Finland kicked some Soviet arse in the Winter War.

And I find a lot to like about Germany too, despite their…oh, let’s call it “uneven performance” in the 20^th century. But both Germany and Finland have in recent years decided that it would be a great idea to welcome a large group of Islamic immigrants into their countries. And things have not gone swimmingly.

Unexpectedly!

Finland’s population is one of the oldest in Europe, and whiter than Liz Warren. #wemustneverstopmockingher (The white part is irrelevant; I just couldn’t pass up a chance to mock the Albino Apache.) The majority (70%) of Islamic asylum seekers in Finland, on the other hand, are male and under 35, and they come from cultures who believe that foreign women who reveal more than their eyes are infidel harlots who are there for the taking.

Thus, a story in the liberal Helsinki Times that tried to downplay migrant crime, had to admit that “Certain nationalities…have been disproportionately represented in specific crime categories. Iraqi and Somali men, for example, appear more frequently as suspects in sexual and drug-related offenses.”

Odottamatta! (That’s Finnish for “Unexpectedly!”) (Research!)

So what have the Finns done to combat the (migrant) sex assault crisis? The town of Oulu spent 2.5 million euros to make the strangest video you’ve ever seen. As soon as you’re done reading this column, look it up – search for “Finland no-no video” – because I’m not sure I can do it justice with a verbal description.

But I’ll try.

Five Finns stand in what looks like a hallway – three women in front, and two men behind – and they gyrate and gesture to what sounds like a $4 synthesizer. They have grimly serious looks on their faces and never open their mouths, but a voice-over song repeats these lyrics, which I swear to you I am not making up: “Stop, don’t touch me there/This is my no-no square.”

It’s tough to pick which element of the video is more amateurish. The music is terrible, the lyrics are a joke, and I could “dance” as well as these people do. (And that comparison is not even damning with faint praise. It’s just damning!)

But the choreography. Good lord, the choreography! When they say, “Stop,” they hold a hand up to the camera, palm out. When they say, “Don’t touch me there,” they cross their arms in an “X.” When they say, “This is,” they point at their hips, and then they gesture vaguely at their thorax as they say, “my no-no square.” Then they hold both arms out to their sides, bent at the elbow with their forearms hanging down, and gyrate back at forth.

If you haven’t seen the great South Park’s parody of this very type of misguided liberal insanity, you have to find and watch the episode where the school has a mascot come to visit the children and sing a song to teach them about sexual harassment.

Search “Sexual Harassment Panda song,” and behold some satirists putting the Finns to shame. But trigger warning: that stupid song is an earworm, and you may find yourself humming it to yourself for several days.

I’ll try to paint the picture: A guy in a panda suit stands in class and does a minimalist jig, while singing in a voice muffled by a panda costume head, accompanied by what sounds like a middle-school quartet recording of a circus merry-go-round soundtrack.

The immortal lyrics:

“Who lives in the east ‘neath a willow tree? Sexual harassment… panda

Who explains sexual harassment to you and me? Sexual harassment… panda

Don’t say that! Don’t touch there!

Don’t be nasty says the silly bear.

He’s come to tell you what’s right and wrong. Sexual harassment… panda.”

The Finns could have saved themselves 2.5 million euros and had a better product if they’d just dubbed over those lyrics in Finnish. If they wanted to make it a little more relatable to their Finnish audience, they could have used AI to sub-in a native Finnish animal, producing the same video about the “Sexual Harassment… Reindeer.”

Germany has the same problem – an increasing rate of sexual crimes, and a rate of violent crimes committed by foreigners that is 400% higher than that of native Germans – but they’ve reacted even more stupidly than the Finns, if that is possible.

The Germans have created a series of cartoon “Don’t touch me there” educational posters depicting gropers at public swimming pools, an environment that has proved problematic for interactions between Islamic males and scantily clad German women and girls.

It’s sad enough that a country would even have to create a campaign to explain to people that sexual assault is bad. But it’s infuriating that the German posters actually cast the Germans as the villains and the foreign immigrants as the victims!

I’m not making that up. One poster shows two white boys shoving a brown girl into a pool. Another shows a white boy grabbing the butt of a brown girl as they’re both floating in the pool. A third shows a white guy in swim trunks going into a women’s locker room to peep at a brown woman in a towel.

And best of all, a fourth poster shows a large white woman with red hair floating in a pool behind a brown male, who is for some reason missing his lower leg! He’s got a peg leg there, presumably from being blown off in a peaceful suicide bombing or by an IED, I guess?

And the redhead is grabbing his butt with both hands!

So it’s not just male Germans who are vile, groping offenders. Female Europeans also cannot be trusted around Muslim males, who are apparently stereotypically known for being sexually preyed upon by infidel women! (Oh, won’t someone think of the Muslim males?! Where is their “Me Too” campaign?)

Bah! The slow-motion suicide of much of the European West should be a powerful warning to us. Our elite leftists are as reflexively dishonest as the Europeans – they refer to illegal immigrants as “immigrants” or “undocumented migrants;” they call legal arrests “kidnapping” or “disappearing innocent people;” they call men “women,” and gender-denying mutilations “gender-affirming treatment.”

But most Americans see through those lies, and reject them.

Not the Europeans. Throughout much of the EU, members of groups who disproportionately prey on European women are not only not chastised, they are cast as victims. And a public “education” campaign that is supposed to decrease sexual harassment cannot even honestly identify the source of the problem.

One bit of good news: after sustained backlash and public pressure, the idiotic German posters were removed and an apology issued. So maybe there’s hope for Europe yet.

Speaking of how we can often judge books by their covers, I found a picture of the German woman who created the public service posters in Germany, and she looks exactly as you would expect her to:

Large very white lady, wearing a childish black-and-green horizontally striped sweatshirt (and those stripes are NOT slimming). Round, large glasses, unhinged smile. And her dark hair is dyed bright green.

Because of course it is.

Rumors that she is the white lefty lady who would have had carnal knowledge of Charlie Manson and produced California kidnapping victim Professor Jonathan Caravello have not been confirmed.

Hamas delenda est!

I See Some Bad Things on the Horizon for the Dems (posted 7/11/25)

Yes, faithful readers, your eyes are not deceiving you: you are reading my fifth consecutive daily column.

I know: a five-column week is an impressive achievement. It’s like shooting under 60 in one round of a golf tournament, or throwing back-to-back no-hitters in the MLB. Or the Bears drafting a quarterback who doesn’t rip the hearts out of Bears fans and stomp on them with inexplicably sharp cleats by the time Halloween rolls around and we’re eliminated from the playoffs.

Would I be able to do this if I weren’t semi-retired? No.

Would I be able to do it without your faithful readership, which I might even describe as verging on adoration, if my instinctive modesty didn’t restrain me? No.

Would I be able to do it if I didn’t have the strength of ten men, because my heart is pure? No way.

Okay, enough of that. It’s Friday, baby, so where my narwhals at?

Today I’m focusing on some escalating bad behavior from mainstream Dems in the congress and the MSM that is not going to end well for them. I’m talking about their increasingly unhinged and violent rhetoric aimed at ICE agents who are just doing their jobs and enforcing our immigration laws.

The Dems are in such an impenetrable bubble that they really do seem to think that the public is on their side, and that the Cuddly Kilmar doll is going to be a big seller this Christmas. (You pull a string on his back, and he says, “MS-13 forever, homes!” and “My old lady had that beating coming, your honor.”) (Unregistered car filled with illegals he was caught trafficking sold separately.)

Many Democrats are in the throes of anger, and convinced that it’s the righteous kind. Axios interviewed a dozen Democrat House members who anonymously reported that their voters are getting more and more heated. One said that, “our own base is telling us that there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public.”

Another reported that his constituents are saying that “civility isn’t working” and to prepare for “violence…to fight to protect our democracy.” A third said that “people online have sent me crazy sh*t, told me to storm the White House and stuff like that.”

(Because insurrection is (D)ifferent when they do it.)

Of course, this is the predictable result of Democrat elites ramping up hatred on their side in recent years. By last November, their supporters didn’t think Trump could ever win, or that if he did, it would be through some illegitimate trickery. So when he swept the swing states, won the popular vote, and beat Que Mala in the electoral college like Kilmar tuning up his wife because she looked at him wrong, they didn’t know what to do.

The same boneheads telling them to “fight for democracy” – until democracy worked, and swept Trump into a second presidential term – have now gone back to the Extremist Handbook of Inflammatory Slogans and recycled “Conservatives are Nazis and ICE is the Gestapo!”

They have no idea that they’re racing down F**k-Around Street with the pedal to the metal, and they’re fast approaching Find-Out Avenue. And that intersection is strewn with spike strips and Jersey barriers, and both sides of the cross street are lined with empty prison buses. The seat belts in those buses come with complementary handcuffs, and in front of each bus is a squad of Homan’s Heroes®. And those guys are there to do calligraphy and jail rioters.

And they’re all out of fountain pens.

Okay, that got a little weird at the end. Annnndddd…I’m pushing away the glass of Knob Creek 9 until I finish this column.

Anyway, the lefty activists have been asking for trouble, and now they’re starting to get it. More and more stories are coming out about imbeciles interfering with ICE and getting arrested or worse.

On Tuesday four morons were caught after they put out devices that spiked the tires of ICE vehicles. Their mugshots send the clear, non-verbal message we’ve all come to expect in these situations: “My prospects for ever having sexual congress with a decent woman are slim and none, and slim has left the building.”

A day earlier, at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, TX, an idiot armed himself and dressed up in tactical gear and attacked border patrol agents and local police. He managed to wound one of them before they shot him a lot, and he quickly took the pavement temperature challenge. Because: Texas.

Or, as a Breitbart story put it, “Cops Neutralize Attacker.”

I love the use of the term “neutralized” here. You almost never hear it outside of thriller novels or movies, or IDF after-action reports, which regular readers know are my favorites. “We neutralized that Hezbollah leader’s eyes and hands in our pager attack three weeks ago. And we just neutralized the rest of him with a missile strike on a goat pen where he was having a conjugal visit. Shalom, and thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Ten radical freaks ambushed an ICE facility on the Fourth of July, wounding one agent before escaping, frustratingly un-shot. But they were soon arrested, and their chances of being home in time to find a Cuddly Kilmar under their Christmas tree are not good.

Just yesterday a Texas Constable arrested a 22-year-old Mensa member named Serio Olivares (tragically, an American citizen), whose dad owns a business where ICE agents arrested some illegals. As the agents were about to leave, Serio arrived and confronted them, damaging one of their cars. When they left, he pursued them, driving recklessly, until they stopped and arrested him.

The local “liberal Democrat district attorney’s office” would not press any more serious charges than misdemeanor traffic violations, so the constable is contacting the Feds to bring more serious interference with federal agents charges.

My favorite part of the story is that Serio is a serial offender. Unexpectedly!

Because last November, he was charged with interfering with an officer’s public duties – sound familiar? – but that charge was later dismissed, in a deal in which he pled to one felony charge. In March he was given diversion after cocaine possession and unlawful carrying of a gun – C’mon, Texas! You’re letting me down here – on the condition that he not commit another crime within one year.

Right now Serio is staring intently at a calendar, trying to do some basic calculations. I’d love to be there when he figures out that from March to July is four months. And I’d REALLY love to be there 10 minutes later, when he realizes that four months is less than one year.

Which means that he can still serve two years on the earlier coke charge, in addition to whatever sentence the Feds are going to give him for his latest stunt.

To paraphrase the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to cogitate.”

If the Dems keep this up, one of their unstable foot-soldiers is eventually going to kill an ICE agent, and they are not going to enjoy what comes next.

In the meantime, I’m praying for our cops, border patrol and ICE agents, and bracing for more winning, and the lefty activist tantrums that come with it.

Hamas delenda est!