Author: martinsimpsonwriting

When I last left you, I was exploring the idea that times of crisis often reveal people’s character, and I had mentioned that this virus quarantine has revealed some flawed tendencies among conservatives, but more disturbing ones (IMHO) about leftists.

I mentioned virtue-signaling hypocrisy as the first of those character flaws.

The second is an affinity for totalitarian, micromanaging bullying.  For examples, look at the way that red state governors have moved much more quickly to phase out the lock-down, while blue state governors are hanging on to their newly-minted powers like grim death.   (And that’s not a gratuitous Nancy Pelosi reference.) (Although… sure.  If the sarcophagus lid fits, wear it.)

Conservative governors have generally put more trust in their citizens’ ability to make their own decisions.  While still calling for people to take precautions – wear masks, keep their distance, sanitize equipment, etc. – their general default has been to let people start to get back to work, as quickly as possible.  Because they know that politicians are supposed to be our employees, not our bosses.

Blue staters, on the other hand – despite differences of conditions in their states, including population density and climate, among others – are extending lock-down waiting periods, and issuing more directives and dictates than the Politburo at the height of the Cold War.  Gavin Newsom says that Californians can’t go to the beach.  J.B. Pritzker says that Illinoisans can’t leave their houses (even as he blew a goodbye kiss to his horse-whisperer wife as she left her mansion to go to Florida).  Chicago Mayor Lori “I feel pretty, oh so pretty” Lightfoot says that Chicagoans can’t get haircuts (right before she gets her “female George Jefferson” hairdo refreshed at an underground Supercuts Speakeasy, in the finest Chicago tradition of past Democrat greats like Al Capone).

Bill “Heinrich Wilhelm von Richthofen” DiBlasio tells New Yorkers that they can’t go to the gym… while he’s on the treadmill at a gym.

My favorite example is Governor Evita Whitmer in Michigan.  This little princess extended the lockdown in her state until the end of May, and issued a helpful list of behaviors she would allow, and those she wouldn’t.  On the naughty list, among other things, was paying someone to mow your lawn.  You could buy a propane tank, but you couldn’t buy a propane grill.  You could go to Lowes or Home Depot, but when there, you couldn’t buy paint or plants.  In fact, you could go to Lowes, or Wal-Mart, or an abortuary… but you couldn’t go to church.   Because nothing spreads the Kung Pao Sicken like reading aloud from the New Testament.

On her nice list?  Pot bought at a weed shop (some plants are more equal than others, I guess), liquor bought at liquor stores, or lotto tickets bought anywhere.  (I’m guessing it’s totally coincidental that three of the most profitable items for the state government of Michigan are pot, booze and lotto tickets?)

Whitmer’s rulings showcased the kind of byzantine micromanaging you might expect from quarrelsome rabbis disputing what constitutes “work” on the sabbath, rather than a directive from an elected representative of a free people.  Consider this quote, which I am not making up:  “The DNR states that “Non-motorized boating, such as canoeing, kayaking and sailing, falls within the outdoor activities permitted under the ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ Executive Order. However, the use of a motorboat, jet ski or similar watercraft is not permitted for the duration of the Executive Order.”

My first thought was that it was very appropriate for this twerp to be issuing a “do not resuscitate” order for her state’s economy, on which she was doing her best to pull the plug.  But then I found out that the “DNR” in question refers to an order issued through the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Still, did you get that?  You can go out onto a lake in a canoe, but not in a motorboat.  Because the Chicom virus is apparently allergic to varnished wood, but it finds outboard motors absolutely irresistible!

 

The third lefty character flaw that has been revealed during this pandemic is a tendency to condescend to and demonize their opponents.

I know that this one is not exactly news.  Even before the virus, you may have noticed that every objection to Obama’s bumbling was due to conservatives’ racism, and every objection to Hillary’s general terribleness was due to their sexism, and every objection to Grandma Squanto’s rantings was due to their fear of (to paraphrase Donna Brazile) “a Powerful Red Woman.” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  And you may have noticed that elite Dems were occasionally a tad bit condescending… you deplorable, transphobic, in-bred, trailer trash bitter clingers.

But the pandemic has highlighted the malevolence.  If any of us want to get back to work before our society implodes, it’s not because we’ve grown fond of feeding our children or putting a roof over our head.  And it’s not because we are trying to make rational calculations about the lives that will be lost to the virus (whether we stop the lockdown now or in June or in September) versus the hundreds of millions of lives that will be greatly damaged plus the tens of thousands of other lives lost (to depression, suicide, substance abuse, heart attacks, lack of access to medical help for other conditions, etc.) if we stay trapped in our homes by power-mad politicians for a year or more.

According to the Schumers and Cuomos of the world, it’s because we are greedy for all of those corporate profits.  Also, we want to kill people.

 

Beneath all three of these flaws is a common thread of narcissism.

I’m not the kind of political partisan who sees intrinsic human flaws as unique to one side of the political divide.  We are all latent narcissists at the very least; we are all the main characters in the story of our lives, and we view the world at least partially through the lense of “how will this affect me?”

And politicians are necessarily a narcissistic bunch.  When you or I get up and look in the mirror in the morning, we think things like, “You know who is going to double-check that he’s wearing socks that match today? Me!” or “You know who’s about to make some toast without burning it? Me!”

But every presidential candidate in my lifetime has gotten up and looked at him or herself in the mirror – even if s/he had terrible breath, or “bed head,” or the cheap lipstick of a medium-priced hooker smeared on his big, fat, lying face (I’m looking at you, Bill Clinton) – and said, “You know who’d make a fantastic leader of the entire free world?  Me!”

And that goes for all politicians, even the ones on our side.  No one can reasonably argue that our current president is a shrinking violet in the ego department.  (Quick: how many times have you been tempted to put your name – in giant, gold letters – on every building you bought, or built, or passed by?)

But conservatism – if actually adhered to – is a natural check on narcissism.  Conservatives come in many flavors – religious conservatives, economic/fiscal conservatives, libertarian-leaning, etc. – but a general principle they share is the idea that “that government is best which governs least.”  Government should do only a handful of things that we can’t do for ourselves, and most of our lives should be left up to us, with only enough laws and regulations to keep us from hurting others or violating their rights.

Leftism, on the other hand, magnifies and weaponizes the natural narcissism of politicians, and fans the flames of their innate hunger for power.  It tells them that they are the elites, and know better than the unenlightened proles how those mopes should live.  It encourages them in the pursuit of top-down, centralized planning of the economic system.  And the criminal justice system.  And the education system.  And the metric system.  And the solar system.

What could be more arrogant than making a list of which jobs are essential and which ones aren’t?  How could anyone with an ounce of self-awareness sit down around a big table with a bunch of other people – who also probably never started a business, or raised a crop, or hung drywall, or cut hair, or bussed tables, or went to a trade school, or paid their own way through college – and confidently start deciding which jobs are important, which families should be allowed to financially survive, and which should be forced into bankruptcy and foreclosure and poverty?

Even if you had enough hubris to start doing that – because you were educated to believe that you know better than other people what a “living wage” is, and what a “fair share” is, and how much profit is “obscene” – wouldn’t you quickly get bogged down in details, and realize that you are on a fool’s errand, and in way over your head?

One silver lining is that we might have the chance to learn to appreciate federalism again.  The Founders wanted the states to be “little laboratories,” and they’re becoming just that.  Illinois is going to stay locked down, while Iowa and Indiana open back up.  New York and Michigan are going to stay locked down, while Florida and Georgia open up.  Let’s see who does better.

In the meantime, I’m encouraged by the protests that are starting up all around the country.  I like to see California surf kids and Texas salon owners and Midwestern blue collar workers going all “don’t tread on me.”   I hope to see some arrogant Democrat leaders find out that Americans won’t be pushed around for too long, before they start pushing back.

I only wish Joe Biden were alive to see it!

 

Avenatti/ the late Joe Biden 2020!

There’s an old aphorism to the effect that stressful times reveal character the same way that shaking a glass reveals its contents: whatever splashes out is what was inside all along.

That reminds me: I forgot to pour my purely medicinal “writing Scotch.”  Let me just take care of that…

And, I’m back.  Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Stressful times and shaken glasses.

One virtue of this pandemic is that the reactions to it have revealed a lot about the character of people, in ways large and small.  Scammy creeps have exposed their scammy creepiness, by trying to buy up a truckload of masks or ventilators and sell them at huge mark-ups to desperate over-reactors.   Desperate over-reactors have desperately over-reacted, dressing themselves in space suits and retreating to their panic rooms to tweet out their last wills and testaments because they woke up with a little throat tickle.

On the bright side, people of strong character have exhibited that, too.

Delivery drivers and restauranteurs and pastors and health care workers have done their jobs, and kept our country running.  Closer to home, over the last month my wife has helped to test around 3500 senior citizens for the Wuflu, plant a bunch of flowers in our front yard, and set up a Zoom virtual graduation party for both of our girls that allowed around 40 people from around the country to share in the celebration and give my daughters a great memory, all while managing NOT to pretend to be a Native American (#wemustneverstopmockingher), try to kill me with aquarium cleaner, or launch a profanity-laced tirade blaming Trump because a bunch of godless Chinese communists with bat breath and a ton of frequent flier miles caused a world wide pandemic.

More tellingly, the reaction to the pandemic has also revealed the mindsets of adherents of the two major political positions in this country.

Conservatives almost universally went along with the lockdown initially, because we are way more rational than you’d suspect if you watched several hours a day of MSM conserva-phobia.  But we started chafing more quickly, and have been getting ever more froggy about ending the lockdown, because we are stubborn, and skeptical about government, and want to get back to work.

Those qualities are not completely positive.  Stubbornness can help you invent WD-40 (after WDs 1-39 didn’t work), but it can also turn you into a leftist activist, trying to make socialism work yet one more time, after a century-plus of gulags and oppression and environmental devastation and 100 million dead.  Skepticism about government can make you resist seat belt laws and building codes.  Wanting to get back to work can make you jump the gun, and aggravate an old injury, or cause a new one, or potentially infect some vulnerable people.

So we’re not perfect, and what comes out when our glasses are shaken isn’t always pretty.

But over the last 6 weeks, I’ve seen the leftist sippy-cups get jostled, and out has come a virtual Chernobyl chowder of toxic character flaws.  Off the top of my head, here are the top 3:

 

1.Self-aggrandizing virtue signaling joined at the hip with shameless hypocrisy.

One example is petrified block of wood Fredo Cuomo, who broadcast from his basement for weeks, reluctantly calling himself a hero for quarantining himself to protect his family and community.   Then he staged a hokey re-emergence, when he was filmed walking up the stairs to once again re-emerge into the world.  (The rumor that he saw his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of idiocy, are as yet unconfirmed.)  Then it turned out that he had been out in the world repeatedly during his supposed hibernation, including one incident in which he tried to bully a citizen who confronted him about being outside and not socially distancing, like his governor brother was forcing other New Yorkers to do.

Another example would be Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker — billionaire and “before” picture model for a weight loss product ad campaign — who extended his state’s lockdown until the end of May, insisting that Illinoisans must stay at home for all but “essential” travel or we’re all going to die.  When a reporter asked why Pritzker’s wife thereafter left the governor’s mansion in Illinois to go to their palatial $12 million equestrian home in Florida, Pritzker responded  that that travel was essential, because their super-expensive horses get very lonely all the way down there in Florida.  To prove his point he showed a photo of the horses, all of whom had long faces.

HA!  I kill me.  And yes, I made that last part up.  But his real answer was just as bad.  He said, and this time I am not making it up, “My official duties have nothing to do with my family. So, I’m just not going to answer that question. It’s inappropriate, and I find it reprehensible…”

Yes.  SO reprehensible.  How dare someone question him, just because he left a press conference forbidding American citizens from leaving their homes and went straight to his own house, where his wife was carried out in a diamond-encrusted sedan chair by four burly Democrat union members (Spoiled Wench Bearers, Local 202) from the mansion to his limo, which drove her to a private jet, which flew her out of state.

One more example:  Democrat mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot, who won her office last year because despite not holding office before, she could boast three formidable qualifications: she is black, female and gay.  (Lightfoot defeated Toni Preckwinkle.  I bring that up only because, as I mentioned in an earlier column, the best possible name for a 1970’s cop show would be “Preckwinkle and Lightfoot.”  You plop that baby down with Starsky & Hutch as a lead-in and you will own the Tuesday night ratings!) (Also, fun fact: beloved ethnic stereotype “Huggy Bear” from Starsky and Hutch was actually the inspiration for Joe Biden’s totally fictional ethnic nemesis Corn Pop.)

Anyway, if there’s one thing that Lori Lightfoot knows – other than that out there on the streets, you can’t play the game “by the book,” like her stick-in-the-mud partner Preckwinkle – it’s the existential danger posed by allowing Illinoisans to get their hair cut during this Plague Year.  In fact, the second leading cause of death in 2020 – just slightly behind “traveling non-essentially”—is unsanctioned hair cutting.  So obviously, she vigorously supported Gov. Pritzker’s order closing salons and barbershops.

3…2…1   Annnnnnd, a photo came out showing her getting a haircut during the pandemic.

When someone – probably the same troublemaker who reprehensibly asked Governor Big-and-Tall about his globe-trotting wife – asked Lightfoot about the haircut, she said – and I’m not making this up, “I’m the public face of this city.  I’m on national media, and I’m out in the public eye.”   You can Google her pictures, and you will find – how can I put this delicately, especially given my own “face made for radio” looks? – that she was not elected to be just a pretty face.  I hope.

Also, her hairstyle is not exactly a challenge to maintain.  She’s not 1976 Farrah Fawcett, who needed a team of stylists with hairspray and blow dryers to keep those layered waves of gorgeousness just so (Giggity!) (Full transparency: a 13-year old me had a poster of Farrah – you know the one — on my bedroom door.  I stared at it for approximately three hours per day for several months before I realized that she did, in fact, have hair.) (Still… giggity giggity!)

But Lori Lightfoot is no Farrah Fawcett.  In oh, so many ways.

Lightfoot has a short, tight, perm!  Get an electric trimmer. Set the depth on “3.”  Go nuts.

But, apparently not content to leave terrible enough alone, she added, “The woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on so we are, I am practicing what I’m preaching.”

NO!  No you’re not. You’re preaching, “NO HAIR CUTS FOR YOU!”  And you’re practicing, “HAIRCUT FOR ME!”  That’s the OPPOSITE of practicing what you preach.  That’s pooping on what you preach!

Now give me your badge and your gun, and get out of my office, Lightfoot!  You’re on suspension!

Ugh.  I got a little carried away there.  I started a Top 3 list and only got to 1.  So I’ll complete the list in another column in a day or two.   Spoiler alert: totalitarian, micro-managing bullying is on the list!

Avenatti/Huggy Bear 2020!

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 Youtube 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 because of 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.”).  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 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!

Samuel Johnson was an English genius and a great writer in the 18^th century.  Among other things, he wrote the first dictionary of the English language, which – as you might imagine – was a pretty daunting feat.  He said two things that I’ve always loved, both associated with the dictionary.

First, when he initially set out to write it, by himself, in three years, an old Oxford friend was skeptical, pointing out that the recently published dictionary of the French language had taken 40 French academics 40 years to complete.  Johnson said, “ Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”

I like that kind of patriotic confidence!  And I feel about America the way Johnson felt about England, and so appreciate a cocky, light-hearted slap at a rival nation.

But his second statement is my favorite, because it might be the most erudite literary napalming of a smarmy bigshot in history.  So it naturally reminds me of how Joe Biden – if he were conscious, and alert, and 158 times smarter than he is – should have responded to Obama’s endorsement of his candidacy last week.

When Johnson’s dictionary came out – it took him 7 years, instead of 3 — and quickly appeared to be a triumph, he got an endorsement from the Earl of Chesterfield, an entitled blueblood who was born on third base and thought he’d hit a triple.  Think of an 18^th century Ted Kennedy, or Chris Cuomo.

But it turned out that when Johnson had been just beginning his dictionary, he had unsuccessfully tried to get Chesterfield’s patronage, because that’s how writers did it back in old timey days: you found a rich guy to financially support your writing projects.  (Nowadays, a struggling writer with a need for purely medicinal Scotch and a Wonder Dog to feed puts a Tip Jar on his website.)

Anyway, Johnson composed a famous letter to Chesterfield, which perfectly combines a superficial fawning with repeated rhetorical kicks to the groin.  He wrote, “When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might … obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.”

Yes.  Smart guys wrote like that in the 18^th century, God bless them.

Johnson continued, “Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.”

You can see where this is going.  Johnson has set up his foppish opponent with repeated verbal jabs to the body, and now the guy’s hands are down, leaving his chin vulnerable.  And Johnson heaves a roundhouse haymaker that starts on the far bank of the Thames and gains momentum as it nears the target:

“Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it: till I am solitary, and cannot impart it;  till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which providence has enabled me to do for myself.”

Down goes Chesterfield!  Down goes Chesterfield!

When I heard Obama’s endorsement of Biden last week, I thought of Chesterfield’s self-serving attempt to jump onto a bandwagon had already left town without him, and to take credit for launching it.

For the better part of a year, Biden hoped for Obama’s support.  He was in a field of a dirty dozen demagogues (alliteration for the win!), and his best talking point was that he had been Obama’s hand-picked right-hand man in the White House for eight years.  Given that, Obama’s inaction felt not just like the lack of an endorsement, but a pointed refusal to endorse.

And Plugs really needed that endorsement!  He was flailing and stumbling from one mistake to another, and as soon as the primaries started, he slid disastrously from undisputed front-runner to guy who didn’t know where he was, or who he was, or why that fat guy in Iowa was challenging his degenerate son’s getting in bed with Ukranian kleptocrats.  (Not to mention his dead brother’s widow!)  As he got trounced in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden was plainly “a man struggling for life in the water,” and the water was filled with sharks, in the form of preachy tween gay guys, and old Cherokee white ladies (#wecanstillmockherforawhilelonger), and centenarian socialist loons, and midget billionaires.

And all the while, Obama stood on the shoreline, as a drowning Joe pounded the water into a froth around him, sputtering about lying dog-faced pony soldiers and trying to remember what you’re supposed to say on your deathbed, except that it came out, “Forgive me, father, for I… have spinned… or spun… or… you know the thing!  The thing I’m supposed to say now!”

Then, when it looked like Bernie might actually win, the lefty establishment finally roused itself, and knifed him in the back, and oh-so-reluctantly got behind Biden.  After he’d won in South Carolina and swept on Super Tuesday, it was clear to everyone that he would be the nominee.  After more weeks went by, even Bernie finally accepted the inevitable, and endorsed Sleepy Joe.

So there’s ol’ Joe.  He’s managed to climb onto a raft made of equal parts economic ignorance, hatred of Trump, and the resignation of millions of uneasy Democrats.  He’s gasping for breath, his false teeth have come out, he’s bleeding from both eyes, and he thinks he’s on a raft floating down the mighty Mississippi with his ethnic sidekick Corn Pop back in 18-clickety-clack.

And then, at long last, a life preserver thrown by Obama whistles across the water and catches Biden right in his fragile, plug-riddled head, and knocks him out cold.

 

If you haven’t seen Obama’s endorsement, good on you.  You’ve got a life to lead, and that life is too short to spend it listening to the smug musings of a mediocre ex-president with less self-awareness than Alyssa Milano in an Angry Strawberry Shortcake outfit yowling outside of the Supreme Court building.

Luckily for you, you’ve got me.  And I took one for the team, and watched Mr. “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” give his endorsement.   But before I watched it, I put on my patented Martacus Wizard Hat, which – among its many powers, allows me to read people’s thoughts.

(By the way, I wore that hat when I read the comments from my last column, and I have a message for the female readers in CO nation: My eyes are up here, ladies.  Also, I’m a happily married man, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Here are some excerpts from Obama’s endorsement – which I swear I am not making up – with his unspoken thoughts in brackets:

“That’s why I’m so proud to endorse Joe Biden for President.”  [Because there is literally no one left.  How did this happen?]

“Choosing Joe Biden to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” [Hey, wait a minute.  What does that say about the quality of my other decisions?  Good lord!]

“He’s someone whose own life has taught him…how to bounce back when you’ve been knocked down.” [Or when you’ve stepped on the same rake three times in a row.  Or when you walk into a corner and just bump back and forth, unable to get out.]

“I know he’ll surround himself with good people.”  [I promise: he won’t trust his own addled instincts.  He’ll listen to other people.] “Experts, scientists, military officials…”  [All of whom will overcome his crippling mental deficits.]

“…who actually know how to run the government.” [Oops!  Did I say that out loud?  That these others would be people who actually know something? Unlike Joe, who mixes up his wife and his sister, and who thinks half of the country is dead from AR-14 wounds?]

“… and care about doing a good job running the government.” [Yikes! Somebody stop me! I’m literally saying that Joe doesn’t know anything, or care about governing well!]

“Joe will be a better candidate for having run the gauntlet [I mean “stumbled” the gauntlet] of primaries and caucuses alongside one of the most impressive Democrat fields ever.”  [HA! Did I say that with a straight face?  What have I become?]

“Each of our candidates were talented and decent, with a track record of accomplishment, smart ideas, and serious visions for the future.”  [Ugh!  Come on, man!  I’m going to hell just for saying this crap.  Who loaded this teleprompter?]

 

Okay, at this point I have to stop, just to protect my blood pressure.  But here’s the big picture: the endorsement was 12 minutes that I’ll never get back.

Of those 12 minutes, he talked about Biden for about 2 minutes tops, with equal time given to stroking Bernie, so that his voters will consider holding their noses and voting for Joe.  He spent about 6 minutes demonizing conservatives – they want to destroy the environment, rob the poor, reward the rich, kill sick people and then pee on their graves.  Amidst the litany of all of the horrible things that “the other side” wants to do, he gave the usual hypocritical call for us to resist partisanship and come together for the common good.

And he couldn’t bring himself to give even this dog’s breakfast of a speech — made up of partisan bile, insincere praise, and empty boilerplate – until after the race was long over, and Biden’s nomination a fait accompli.

What a small man he is, and what a blessing that he’s no longer president!

Trump’s flaws are manifest, and he receives a torrent of criticism for them, while Obama has an undeserved reputation for being classy and above the fray.  But I defy anyone to watch minutes 6-12 of his endorsement video, and not recognize the vicious, bitter partisan beneath that glib delivery.

If Biden was a smarter man, with self-respect and in possession of his wits, he would say, “Now that I’ve reached ground, you’ve encumbered me with help.  Your endorsement, had it been early, had been kind.  But now that providence (and Jim Clyburn) has allowed me the nomination… stick it, Barry!”

Avenatti/ Lord Chesterfield 2020!

 

So John Prine is dead.

Is it too sour of me, or too much of a damning statement to make, the day before Easter, if I note the following:

Bernie Sanders is older than John Prine, and he’s still alive.

Joe Biden and Harry Reid are both older than John Prine, and they’re still alive.   (By the time he was 24, John Prine had written his first album, which includes the songs, “Spanish Pipedream,” “Hello in There,” “Sam Stone,” “Paradise,” and “Angel from Montgomery,” among others.  By the time they were in their 70s, Reid and Biden had written many, many bills and regulations that made the world a worse place.)

Nancy Pelosi is 23 centuries and several Ptolemaic dynasties older than John Prine, and she is still, sort of, “alive.”

That’s the kind of world we live in.  Nancy Pelosi survives locusts and frogs and the Angel of Death taking out first-born sons and the other Biblical plagues, and then she lives through the Black Plague in the Middle Ages, and 800 years later she walks through the Spanish flu of 1918 like it was nothing.    Polio, TB, whooping cough, German measles, the vapors, ebola, housemaid’s knee, tennis elbow, affluenza, carpal tunnel syndrome, the heartbreak of psoriasis – none of these have any effect on her.

And then in late 2019 – when Nancy is in her early 2400s – which you would think would put her in a vulnerable age group – and when she keeps all of her internal organs in canopic jars beneath the haunted pyramid she lives in – which (I’m not a doctor) should probably compromise her immune system, shouldn’t it?! – a bunch of Chinese knuckleheads over-do it on the bat buffet. And then a bunch of murderous slave-state Chicom socialists cover up the resulting disease outbreak, so that it can spread all over the world and kill a lot of people, and then some empty-headed mouth-breathers like Jim Acosta can blame Donald Trump for it.

And it kills John Prine.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t miss a day of work.  A private nurse stops by to check on her, and Nancy tries to shoo her away with a wave of her hideously desiccated mummy hands.  But the nurse is dedicated, and she rolls up the burial wrappings from Nancy’s bony arm and finds that her pulse hasn’t changed from its usual zero beats per minute, and then takes her temperature and finds that it hasn’t changed from its normal: “room.”  She tries to listen to Nancy’s heart, but is then reminded that it is in the smallest of the canopic jars beside the stone slab that she sleeps on each night, and so she gives up.

And Nancy gets right back to her important work, making sure that not a single baby goes tragically un-aborted during this world-wide pandemic.

 

Ugh.  I know that tomorrow is Easter, so I can’t post something this completely negative.

Instead, let me put aside the pols and the pundits who are testing our patience, and meditate for just a moment on the value of language and music in the hands of a talented artist.

I envy people like CO, who have musical talent.  Though I haven’t played an instrument since the saxophone in high school, I’ve always enjoyed many different types of music.  I especially love lyrics that capture a perfect, telling detail, or suggest an entire story in just a few words.

I remember the first time I heard Johnny Cash sing, “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout/We’ve been talkin’ bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out.”  Many angsty novels go on for hundreds of pages, and many people spend months talking to therapists, without sketching out the story of a relationship any more clearly than that!  Listen to the rest of that song – it’s not more than a couple of hundred words – and you’ll learn more about male and female psychology than you can get in four years and $150k worth of debt from any gender studies program in the country.

My favorite songwriters are an eclectic bunch – Tom Petty, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Dylan, Springsteen – but they all have a gift for language and the mot juste.  (And yes, I realize how weird it sounds to try to describe the language skills of such quintessential American or Brit songwriters working in English with a snooty-sounding French term.)

John Prine, at his best, was as good as it gets.  He could be goofy (“Daddy’s Little Pumpkin,” “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian”), and he could make you laugh (“I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve”) and he could inhabit wildly different characters from himself in the way that  Shakespeare could write everyone from women to workers to nobles to social outcasts like Africans or Jews.

Prine was around 22 years old when he wrote “Hello in There,” a pitch perfect song about old people which seems more and more true the older I get.

The song “Sam Stone” is a jewel, as tragic as Macbeth and as concise as a Hemingway paragraph.  The story has been pared away to sinew and bone, and if there’s a better description of the pain experienced by children of an addicted parent than, “there’s a hole in daddy’s arm, where all the money goes,” I haven’t heard it.

If you don’t know Prine’s music, take advantage of the downtime from this quarantine and check out his songs on Youtube.

As I was writing this, I remembered a short story I wrote around 25 years ago, in another life.  An editor had asked if I had written any stories about music for a theme-centered issue he was going to be publishing later that year.  I said, “Absolutely I do.  Let me polish it, and I’ll send it to you.”

I had no such story, of course.  But I loved music, and I loved writing, and I had an editor actually asking ME for a story.  So started sketching out a few ideas, and ending up writing a story called “Dancing About Architecture.” In the story, I had the protagonist recite some of his/my favorite musicians, and of course I included a little shout-out to John Prine, a quarter century before I sit here tonight, writing about how much I’m going to miss him.

If any of you are John Prine fans – or if my recommendation causes you to check out his music for the first time – I’d be honored if you’d check out that story of mine.   You can find it on this website; it’s one of two short stories, the only non-politics-mocking pieces there.   If you like it, let me know.

If you don’t, keep it to yourself: I’m mourning a great musical hero over here, and there’s a pandemic going on too, you heartless critic!

One final and very different note, on the day before Easter.  A couple of years ago, I came across a Youtube video of what looks like a Russian orthodox priest and a young girl singing a chant of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, and it is absolutely incredible.  I don’t understand a word of it, of course, and it comes from a culture very different from mine.   It’s sung in front of the pope (I’m not Catholic), and the lead male singer looks like the terrorist villain from a Michael Bay film.  But if Christ had an amazing singing voice (and looked like a villain from a Michael Bay film), this is how I picture Him pouring out His heart in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But whether you’re an atheist, agnostic, Buddhist or Zoroastrian, or festivus-celebrating philatelist, if this music doesn’t give you chills, there’s something wrong with you.  Go to Youtube and search “Aramaic lord’s prayer chant,” and you’ll find it.

Happy Easter, and RIP, John Prine.

There are some hopeful signs that we may be reaching the peak of the virus, and I’m confident that you all are doing your best to ride this thing out with your heads held high.  Because if there’s one thing I know about CO nation, it’s that we’re a bunch of Ameri-CANs, not a mopey crowd of Ameri-CAN’Ts.

As this quarantine has dragged on, and I’ve tried to minimize my exposure to rage-inducing boneheads in the news, I began to question whether it’s appropriate to keep writing jokey columns and continue mocking people in such a sober, disquieting time.

But then I got my back up.  Because no, I’m not desperate enough to buy the last scraps of vegan monstrosities in our supermarket.  And no, I’m not beaten-down enough to follow the demands of power-hungry DeBlasio types to stay in my house clutching my knees to my chest and hoping that the feds will save me.  And no, I’m not cowed enough to forgo using my God-given gift of sarcasm to lambaste those in our culture who need a good, old-fashioned lambasting.

So I give you three nominees for “Hypocrite of the Week:”

1. Start with an easy, collective one: every leftist reporter in every Trump press briefer.

They called him xenophobic for cutting off travel from China while they were still downplaying the virus, and they also say that he acted way too slowly to cut off travel from China.  They politicize every virus-related development, and then accuse him of politicizing the virus.

They used doomsday predictions that 2.5 million Americans might die from the virus to create panic that would hurt Trump, and when Trump cites that number to tout how much lower the current death predictions are, they accuse him of using that unrealistically high fake number to make himself look good.

They employ Clinton sock-puppet Maggie Haberman, and petrified block of wood Fredo Cuomo, and Brian “giant dishonest human thumb without glasses” Stelter and Jessie Smollett’s slower-witted cousin Don Lemon.

 

2. Little-known hate-filled anti-Semite Omar Barghouti. This Palestinian activist founded the BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) movement that advocates economic warfare against the Jewish state, with the goal of preventing anyone from doing business with the evil Joooos. But when news recently surfaced that Israeli scientists are researching and starting to test potential vaccines against the flu Manchu, old Omar changed his tune.  He said that his hateful followers will be “permitted” to take a vaccine developed by the Jews if they need to do so to fight the virus.

Which gave me two thoughts:  First, why don’t a few of his rabid followers give him a traditional ROP (religion of peace) beat-down for suggesting that they accept help from the worst of the infidels?  And second, won’t he feel foolish if a vaccine is developed by Palestinian researchers, who are famously productive scientists, with Nobel prizes in many non-Jew-slaughtering fields, such as bio-chemistry, and—

Ah!  It’s no longer April Fool’s Day, so I am incapable of continuing with my lighthearted counter-factual mirth-making.

But Omar, I hope that one of your corona-riddled goats coughs on you the week before the Jews come up with a vaccine, so that you can die with a clean conscience, knowing that you didn’t pollute yourself with any of that haram Hasidic healing.  (Extra points to me for the triple alliteration, and demonstration that I know at least one Islamic word.  Next, I’ll take “Potent Potables” for $1000, Alex.  And before you can say anything else, the answer is, “Scotch.”)

 

3. Formerly attractive actress – and current cautionary tale — Alyssa Milano is a Joe Biden supporter. So, not a big brain. But she can serve a useful purpose in society… as a source of entertaining hypocrisy.

You may remember Milano from such programs as “Who’s the Boss.” But probably not, because that show was a long time ago, and pretty forgettable.   Also, as an actress… Tony Danza acted circles around her.

Tony.  Danza.

Or you may remember her from, “Who’s That?”  Which is not a tv show, but the question most frequently asked when she pops up on tv – or in a supermarket, or a mall, or on the sidewalk —  sounding all ragey.

Or you may remember her from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, when she paraded around in an Angry Strawberry Shortcake costume, and advanced the novel legal theory that whenever a gyno-American says something, you must believe that thing, no matter how bizarre or malicious or disconnected from reality that thing is.

I’m sorry.  My crack staff informs me that that was not a Strawberry Shortcake costume that Milano was wearing, but a Handmaid’s Tale costume.  (If you have not read the novel or seen the television version of Handmaid’s Tale, I can save you the trouble by giving you a synopsis: This story is a leftist bigot’s fever-dream conception of how conservatives would treat women if they had the chance, and it is as about as realistic as the Green New Deal.)  In my defense, google her picture and tell me who she looks more like.  Also, an angry Strawberry Shortcake costume would make at least as much sense as a Handmaid’s Tale costume.

Where was I?  formerly attractive … tiny brain… out-acted by Tony Danza… strawberry shortcake…

Oh yeah: her legal acumen!  So Milano argued that women are incapable of lying.  In Kavanaugh’s case, the charges came from a partisan hack who couldn’t remember where the alleged incident happened, or in what year, or who was there.  Also, she was caught in other demonstrable lies, and she provided no proof whatsoever.  But Alyssa “Clarence Darrow” Milano proclaimed that we must believe that woman, because we must believe all women who accuse men of sexual misbehavior.

Fast-forward about 20 minutes, and of course Milano is now behind Joe Biden. (Which is a nice change of pace for him.) Because who else would she naturally support, but the guy known informally in the halls of DC as “Sniffy Stroke-y Grope-Grope?”  (Worst children’s book sequel to “Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang” ever, by the way.) (Although both titles seem tailor-made for a porn parody video double-feature.)

And now comes before us a human named Tara Reade, who accuses that same Joe Biden of having sexually molested her in 1993.  Important details about Tara Reade: she could also out-act Alyssa Milano, even though Reade is a non-actress, and not the Tara Reid who was an actress.  (And who still could out-act Milano, even though Reid is not exactly Dame Judy Dench, or Meryl Streep.  Or even Judy Landers.) (Yes, that’s a deep pull for those of you who appreciate fine acting, and went through puberty in the 1970s.  You’re welcome.) Tara Reade is also a woman.  Which according to Alyssa “Atticus Finch” Milano, means that we MUST believe her.

And that is why today, Alyssa “Learned Hand” Milano renounced Joe Biden’s candidacy, and replaced her Strawberry Shortcake bonnet with a MAGA hat, announcing that she will be voting for Donald Trump in November.

HA!  I kid.

Because in the several months since the Kavanaugh hearings, Alyssa “Solomon” Milano has discovered an obscure little footnote in constitutional law called “due process.”  In an interview with a sycophantic non-entity, she shared her new discovery, in this quote which I am not making up:  “…I believe that even though we should believe women, and that is an important thing…  What that statement [“believe all women”] really means is like, you know, for so long, the go-to has been not to believe them.  So really, we have to sort of societally change that mindset to believing women.”

Okay, got it.  We’ve got to sort of societally change our mindset.  Right.  So you believe Tara Reade, then?

Not so fast!  Because Alyssa “Judge Judy” Milano (yes, I’ve run out of famous judge references) continues thusly:

“But that does not mean at the expense of not, you know, giving men their due process and investigating situations and giving, you know, it’s gotta be fair and in both directions.”  (Now I believe that Milano actually IS a Joe Biden supporter, because she can torture the grammar out of a non-sentence just like Joey Gaffes!)

I don’t know anything about Tara Read other than what I’ve read in the last day, and if Biden did what she accuses him of, he’s the worst.  But I hate the idea of people coming forward decades later with accusations that can’t possibly be investigated, and I don’t know how we can ever fairly treat both parties in that case.  But I wouldn’t not vote for Biden because of that – especially when there are so many other fantastic reasons to vote against him: he accused the GOP of wanting to enslave black people (historically, the Dems have the trademark on that move, so he might just be protecting their intellectual property); he doesn’t know where or who he is; his lefty ideas are older and more discredited than he is, which hardly seems possible;  he might well be technically “dead,” etc.

But Milano is right about due process.  (Hence the old saying, “even a bad-acting broken clock in a Strawberry Shortcake bonnet is right twice a day.”) (It’s a cliché because it’s true.)  But she’s too much of a hypocrite to apply that same standard, the next time the accuser is a lefty and the accused a non-lefty.

 

So there are your nominees, folks. Vote early, and vote often.

 

Avenatti/Strawberry Shortcake 2020!

 

I never thought I’d write this, but I’m thinking it might be time to abandon Trump.  He’s governed more conservatively than I’d feared he would, and he’s definitely been a better president than a certain Clydesdale-Ankled harridan would have.  But his interminable press conferences are driving me crazy, to the point that I think Nancy Pelosi has been offering some reasonable criticisms of him.  I’m not thrilled with Biden, but it may be that if he can spend this quarantine time to rest up and prepare himself, he might turn out to be—

Ugh! I was going to try to write a longer April Fool’s opening to this column, but I couldn’t force my recalcitrant fingers to type one more sentence of tongue-in-cheek tripe, just to spring the hoary old “April Fools” jibe.   In fact, I’ve got such a bad taste in my mouth from even typing that first paragraph that I need to pause and gargle with some purely medicinal Scotch.

(By the way, while others are doing valiant work on testing treatments such as chloroquine and z-packs, I am conducting my own rigorous research trials into the virus-suppressing qualities of Scotch.  I’m not ready to publish yet, but preliminary results are encouraging, even though more testing is needed.  I’m going to soldier on with this, because as most of you know, I am all about the empirical method.)

Moving on, I’ll just mention a few of the good, bad and the ugly parts of my experience so far during this quarantine.

THE GOOD:  1. I’ve always enjoyed the chance to write for CO’s site, but it’s been especially gratifying over this past month, because this social isolation has started to make me cranky.  And the best cure for crankiness is the opportunity to vent.  Last Friday I posted a column that was pure catharsis for me, and while I haven’t had the chance to respond to your funny and gratifying comments, it really warms my heart to know that so many of my fellow citizens share my total disdain for the self-satisfied, virtue-signaling celebrities who tortured us all with their smarmy rendition of the terrible lyrics to “Imagine.”  You’ve all restored my faith in humanity!

2. I’m also glad to see how much of our nation can pull together in a crisis. Despite being the boogeymen (“boogey-persons”?) of Bernie’s fevered socialist imagination, some private sector businesses have turned to making masks and ventilators, and others are using ingenuity and hard work to explore experimental treatments and crank up the search for a vaccine and other treatments that will eventually allow us to triumph over this threat. Many truck drivers and delivery people and employees of various businesses are keeping things moving, and health care workers of all stripes are going above and beyond the call of duty.

Closer to home, my wife’s work group virus-tested over 2200 seniors last week, and she’s back at it this week.  (Only a small number of them had the virus, which is encouraging.)  We had our 31^st anniversary about 10 days ago, and the fact that it involved social isolation, carry-out and Netflix did nothing to dim my appreciation for how far up I married.  I met her when I was a young man, which meant that I could not see much beyond the fact that she was a total smoke show.  Imagine the pleasant surprise when I find out that she’s got character, and intelligence, and a work ethic, and trivial stuff like that!

3. Some enforced down time has given me the chance to do some more reading, and some home improvement projects, along with listening to some music on the computer. When I heard that John Prine has the virus, I went on a Prine music bender, and can’t recommend him highly enough. Also, the Bare Naked Ladies have written some fine pop songs, and a young woman named Kina Grannis can carry a tune, and Youtube has a bunch of Tom Petty live performances, all of which make me miss him even more.

4. I was amused by a story in the Miami Herald that had a picture of totally empty store shelves, except for one section that was still fully stocked. The catch: it was stocked with various vegan choices. There were several heartening details in the story, including one guy’s quote that, “The people have spoken and it is a resounding “Hell No!” We would rather starve in a pandemic before eating plant-based meat!”   The writer also observed that, “despite living in desperate times, we’re still not desperate enough to eat a tofu hot dog.”

Amen!  While Venezuelans are eating housecats and shoe leather (“Thanks, socialism!”), and some Chinese are chowing down on civets and bats, Americans are still a proud people.  It’s going to take a little more than a worldwide pandemic to drive us to eating Satan’s turducken, i.e. a tofu hotdog stuffed into a Wuhan bat crammed into a Caracas calico.

And yes, I did get to see Satan’s Turducken open for Spinal Tap at Alpine Valley in 1991.  Changed my life!

THE BAD: 1. Even I am tired of hearing me say it, but our mainstream media are absolutely horrible.   One whingey little pajama person after another, pestering Trump with dishonest smear after tendentious question after rhetorical gut punch.  As annoying as I often find Trump’s boorishness, as long as he continues to routinely Hillary-slap various leftist hacks posing as journalists, he’ll have my enthusiastic vote.

A particular recent low point was the way the MSM played the story of the old couple who took Trump’s medical advice and drank some chloroquine, and the husband died, and the wife nearly did.  She was quoted warning everyone that nobody should believe a word the president says.  The “journalists” hammered that story for an entire news cycle, lambasting Trump’s dangerous lunacy and the threat it poses to all of us.

Then the real story came out.  The old couple didn’t have any symptoms, but after (presumably) listening to MSM coverage for a week, they were scared out of their wits, so they heard Trump mention chloroquine, and they rummaged through their pantry until they came across some aquarium cleaner called “chloroquine phosphate.”   So they drank the aquarium cleaner – I’m sure we’ve all done that — with terrible results.  Bottom line: Trump mentions a possible virus treatment, couple sees aquarium cleaner with a similar name and drinks it, and the MSM blames Trump.

Similarly unbiased brilliance has also been on display in the way the MSM has reported every Trump word about the virus: no matter what he says, it is wrong and dangerous.  My favorite examples are the way they covered Cuomo and Trump saying the exact same thing:

Trump: We’re hoping to get 20,000 ventilators to NY ASAP.

MSM: Why aren’t they already there?  Will that be enough?  Isn’t this a governmental failure that will kill many Americans?!

Cuomo: We’re looking forward to getting 20,000 ventilators ASAP.

MSM:  Brilliant leadership!  Look how calm and focused and in control he is.

Trump: We’re going to defeat this virus.

MSM: Aren’t you spreading false hope?  The American people deserve to be told the truth.  Stop lying to them!  You’re killing them!!

Cuomo: We’re going to defeat this virus.

MSM: (swoon) That’s the kind of can-do New York spirit that we need!  Inspiring!  When Joe Biden turns out to have died in his sleep in February of 2019, you must become the Democrat nominee!

 

THE UGLY:

Dem pols in several states have been letting all kinds of criminals – including those accused or convicted of violent crimes — out of jail, claiming that the jails can’t handle thugs who might catch the virus in the joint.  But those same pols have also been threatening any law-abiding citizens who resist their orders to stay inside their houses 23/7.   Violators are subject to hefty fines and… wait for it… jail time!

My advice: if the beleaguered police force of some petty leftist bureaucrat catches you out mowing your lawn or jogging, run to the closest neighbor or stranger and immediately assault him or her.   Boom: get out of jail free card!

 

Kathy Griffin did her part to smear the president, when she went to the hospital and then tweeted that the hospital “couldn’t test me… because of CDC (Pence task force) restrictions.”  The fright-wigged (some might say “fright-faced”) alleged comedian had already damaged her “career” by posing with a simulated severed Trump head in 2017, but she has apparently not learned her lesson.

It turned out that Griffin was lying – shocker – and that she wasn’t tested because she didn’t have corona-like symptoms.   Instead she was experiencing “intense abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea” – eerily enough, these are the exact same symptoms reported by people who have been unlucky enough to catch Griffin’s “act.”   She did manage to get released from the hospital before she drank any aquarium cleaner, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing from her again in the future.

 

But for sheer recent ugliness, no one can top the Wicked Witch of the West Coast, Nancy Pelosi.  She flew into DC (insert your own “Surrender Dorothy!” joke here) in time to try to stuff the $2.2 trillion relief bill with money for every leftist cause under the sun: taxpayer-funded abortions for all, unemployment pay for life, strong-arm take-overs of any desperate business who takes government bail-out money, etc.   When that proved to be too much even for the MSM to cover for, she pivoted from attempted “Grand Theft: Cheops” (for my money, the finest ancient-Egyptian-themed video game on the market today) and started blaming Trump for “fiddling” while the virus struck.

Never mind that she had lambasted Trump’s January travel restrictions on the Chinese as “xenophobia!” while also going to Chinatown on February 24^th and begging people to “please come and visit and enjoy Chinatown.”  The nearly lifelike hypocrite waved her burial-wrapped arms and said, “We know that there is concern surrounding tourism, traveling all throughout the world, but we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come,” she said. “It’s lovely here.  Try the bat foo yung.”

The only part of that quote that I made up is the last sentence.

So as April begins, and the fools in the MSM persist, I hope that this month will be the turning point in this crisis.  Stay safe, CO nation! Spend time with the family, listen to some good music and read some good books, and be ready to hit the ground running when this current unpleasantness is over.

Avenatti/Satan’s Turducken 2020!

I’ve got two things on my mind today – one that makes me sad, and one that makes me furious.

The sad one involves – as you may have guessed – the continuing mental deterioration of Joe Biden.

The latest sigh-inducing incident came when he was giving another recorded address, and the teleprompter went out.  He hemmed, then he hawed, and faint wisps of smoke began to rise from around his plugs. He stumbled through until the prompter came back, but even then, he managed to mangle some names in his loveable Biden-y way, calling MA governor Charlie Baker “Charlie Parker.”

To be fair to Biden, he could have called him “Ginger Baker,” which would have been another mistaken, yet fine musician reference.

But he picked Charlie Parker, one of my favorite jazz musicians, so that was a good pull from the part of Joe’s brain where some lonely synapses are still feebly firing.

Charlie Parker’s music has been in heavy rotation with me over the years.  I usually put music on when I’m writing, and I Iearned a long time ago to choose music without lyrics, because lyrics tended to seep into my writing.  (As you may recall from such columns of mine as “Elizabeth Warren is getting under my skin… and… under my thumb, that squirming dog who just had her day!” and “Biden is leading us down the wrong road, a long and winding road, that leads to my door, for some reason.”)

I don’t blame Biden for the teleprompter failing, nor for his fumbling when that happened.   Did you ever see Obama when he was off prompter?  He was a bumbling, stumbling oaf just like Biden.

But again, do you want this guy in the White House?  Do you look forward to him drifting in and out during cabinet meetings, asking if Secretary of the Treasury Thelonius Monk has a report on the bond market?  Or in a session with the joint chiefs, when he calls on General John Coltrane for an update on the threat posed by the Quds force?

You do not.

 

From sad, I moved on to furious.  And nothing makes me furious more quickly than a bunch of self-important, virtue-signaling famous people when they deign to condescend to us lowly deplorables.

You may have heard that last week, a bunch of celebrities – inconvenienced by the third consecutive day stuck in their mansions, with the incessant noise from their gardeners’ leaf blowers and hedge trimmers driving them to distraction – decided to bless us all with a song.   A beautiful song.  Written by a Beatle.

Unfortunately, it was the dumbest of all songs ever written by a Beatle.  “Band on the Run” was the 95 Theses compared to the lyrics of this song.  “We all live in a yellow submarine,” was Magna Carta-esque by comparison.  “I am the walrus, goo goo ga joob,” had the clarity of “cogito ergo sum” next to this song.

I’m speaking, of course, of that hallmark of smarmy leftist naivete, “Imagine.”

I’ve always loved the tune, and hated the message.  But now that I’ve heard clueless celebrities singing it in the most self-satisfied way possible, I may just have to start hating everything about it, full stop.

The lyrics are unbearably smug just on their own, but when you put them in the mouths of pampered Hollywood pharisees, the breathtaking hypocrisy and stupidity of some of the lines beggar description:

“Imagine there’s no countries”?

Great.  Perfect.  That’s what the no-borders crowd has been pining for.  Now that we’re getting a little taste of that, how do you like it?  Because if there were no countries, we’d all be living a lot more like the immiserated third world than the first world oases, with their individual freedoms and wealth and generally much better conditions for all.

A world with no countries would soon become one gigantic Chinese wet market, with a bunch of knuckleheads washing down a bat salad with a bat shake and then coughing in our faces, before our oppressive government full of Chi Com “dreamers” threw us in jail for pointing out that the winner of the batdog eating contest seems to have keeled over dead, a few feet away.

“Imagine no possessions”?

Recorded from inside a bunch of palatial estates, and sung by a gaggle of ignorant, preening hacks with an average net worth in the 8-figure range.  Put your money where your mouth is, you hypocrites!  Put down your cell phones, turn off your alarm systems, and invite the hordes of homeless people from right outside of your gated walls to come on in and make themselves at home.   Invite them to inject heroin in your walk-in closet, and urinate in your salt-water infinity pool.   Throw open your Sub-zero fridge and invite them to clean it out, and then to drop a deuce in the vegetable crisper when they’re done.   Hypocrites!!

 

“Imagine no religion”?  That depends on the religion, doesn’t it?  Jihadi Islam?  I’m with you.  Christianity the way Jesus taught it?  That’s the only thing keeping many of us from punching you in the face if we ever see you in person, you obnoxious jerks… so you should appreciate that.

Also, for most committed, hard-core leftist/socialists, their political ideology IS their religion.  Bernie might be technically Jewish, but does anyone believe that he’s spent more time reading the Torah than Das Kapital?  Lots of Dems are nominal Catholics, but does anyone believe that when push comes to shove, “suffer the children to come unto Me” trumps “I pledge allegiance to Planned Parenthood, and to the abortions for which it stands,” for them?

Also, since atheism is an essential tenet of the religion of socialism – and is at the heart of why Lenin et al could so cavalierly sacrifice tens of millions of human lives to achieve their “heaven on earth” — isn’t it accurate to say that religious atheism caused more death in one century (from 1917-2017) than did almost all other religions in history, combined?

Sure, if you’re a socialist, I’ll grant you that those tens of millions of murders might not be fairly laid at the feet of YOUR interpretation of your politico-religion… if you’ll grant me that the many crimes committed in the name of (but in all other ways totally opposed to the teachings of) Christ have nothing to do with my religion.

What’s that?  You’d never grant that in a million years?

Okay, fine.  Then own the gulags and the Sean Penns and the famines and the world wars and Bernie Sanders and Alyssa Milano and the 100 million dead in one century, buddy, and I’ll learn to live with the Knight Templars and the Irish troubles!

 

“Imagine all the people, living for today”?

You know who lives for today, you preachy jackasses?

Infants.  Junkies.  Degenerate gamblers.  Serial killers.  People who don’t understand cause and effect. Rapists.  People with poor impulse control.

Sleazy car dealers.  (Not honest ones.)  Sleazy lawyers. (Not either of the honest ones.)  Sleazy salesmen.   College kids who went on spring break last week and gave each other corona virus and chlamydia.   Charlie Sheen.

I’m not finished.

High-self-esteem-having career criminals.  Broke people.  Alcoholics.  Grifters.  Young people with no life experience.  Old people with no life experience.  Rich people who got their money from mommy and daddy.  Poor people who want to get their money from the evil 1%.

Still not finished.

Desperate and greedy people who fall for get-rich-quick schemes.  Bernie Madoff.  People who get married 8 times, because each spouse gets boring, or old.  People who spend every penny they earn, and count on their fellow citizens or socialist politicians to bail them out.

Harvey Weinstein.  Con artists.  Jeffrey Epstein.  People who say, “YOLO, dude,” unironically.  Woody Allen.  Sociopaths.  Narcissists.  Narcissistic sociopaths.

YOU, in other words!

And we don’t like you.  We REALLY don’t like you.  We don’t want to live like you, and we don’t want to live near you.  We don’t want to hear your sophomoric philosophy that the slowest amongst us outgrew by our senior year, if not before.

If you can sing, sing.  If you can act, act.  If you are funny, tell some jokes.  If you are smoking hot, stand there with your yap closed, and look hot.  (Mark Ruffalo, I don’t know what it is that you’re supposed to do.  But whatever it is, you’re terrible at it – so you should just go away now. Right now.  Go!)

But you don’t know how the world works, and you couldn’t identify a logical fallacy or a category error if your life depended on it.  You don’t know where money comes from, or what a successful society depends on, or where the sun goes at night!

You couldn’t start a business, or make a payroll, or keep a vow.

If you all moved from America to Venezuela, as you keep promising to do – but never do (see the “can’t keep a vow” above) – you’d improve the collective IQ of the former, and starve to death in two weeks.

And the world would be a better place for it.  In fact, that would be my version of Imagine:

Imagine there’s no celebrities,

It’s easy if you try,

No one to insult and lecture us,

And metaphorically poke us in the eye.

 

Imagine all the people,

Ignoring Mark Ruffalo

Oh – oh – no Ruff-a-lo!

 

You may say that I’m a hilarious genius,

And you’re not the only one. (HA!)

At no time can you join us,

Or we’ll beat your arse for fun!

 

Avenatti/ Narcissistic Sociopath 2020!

As week two of our national quasi-quarantine begins, I’ve realized yet again that I’ve married way, way up.

My wife has a medical education background, and of late has been working on a grant involving TB education.  But she has now shifted to an all-hands-on-deck effort to assess at-risk elderly people in assisted living facilities in our community.  My oldest daughter, a senior in college who will become an RN in a few months, is going to spend the coming week helping her mother in that endeavor.

Between the two of them, they may actually save some lives this week.

Meanwhile, I am writing a snarky political humor column, and managing a work force from home while neither shaving nor wearing pants.

Because we all must use the gifts we have, to serve as best we can.

 

Anyway, in my continuing efforts to write about something other than this virus situation, I have a few stories for you.  My theme: in this time of uncertainty, we can take comfort in predictable consistency.

For example, the consistency in the way our media will say virtually anything to cover for terrible leftist political candidates.

A couple of weeks ago, when it looked like Bernie was going to run away with the Dem nomination, I was already pre-loading some “this old guy will never make it to November” jokes.  I mean, there was an actual movie called “Weekend at Bernie’s,” based on the conceit that an old guy named Bernie was dead, but everyone propped him up and carried him around, and nobody noticed.

Talk about “too on the nose”!

But then Biden charged past Bernie – think the chariot race from Ben Hur, only with octogenarians tottering around, grasping walkers instead of horses’ reins – and I realized that the same jokes would work.

Sure, “Weekend at Bernie’s” was out.  But “Super Thursday at Old Joe’s” would do in a pinch.

However, it’s starting to just get sad, even for me.  Did you see the end of Joey Gaffe’s statement after winning last Tuesday?  He was behind a microphone in an empty room because of the virus, and he read his prepared statement.  Then he just stood there, staring vacantly ahead for what felt like 5 minutes.

When his wife finally stepped in – she could have been his sister, for all he knew – he jumped when he noticed her.  (Maybe he thought she was Corn Pop, back for revenge after their epic poolside battle back in 19-clickity-clack!)  Then he kissed her, and muttered, and stared back at the camera, and finally shuffled away.

I’m telling you, this is elder abuse.  The Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) should be ashamed of themselves.

Enter the Washington Post, and perhaps the most oxymoronic job title in the known universe: “the Washington Post fact checker.”  (The other contenders: “the Bill Clinton chastity consultant,” the “Washington DC Chief Executive Officer of Fiscal Restraint,” and “Elizabeth Warren, Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”) (#notquitedonemockingheryet)

It seems the Washington Free Beacon had reported that in their last debate, Bernie accused Biden of not supporting a ban on fracking, and Biden lied, saying that he did support a ban.  (Forget for a moment that fracking has provided great benefits while causing little to no environmental damage, contrary to all leftist doomsday predictions.)  The Beacon agreed with Bernie that Biden was lying, pointing to video of Biden saying he’d allow fracking on private land.

This bit of journalistic truth-telling triggered the Washington Post fact-checker – I feel funny just typing that! – by flashing his warning signal – a giant poop emoji – high in the nighttime sky over Washington.

The fact checker (snort!)  leapt from his desk, abandoning several other hot stories he was finishing up: George Bush really WAS behind 9/11; You really CAN keep your doctor under Obamacare; A man really CAN become a woman by clicking the heels of his ruby slippers three times and chanting, “I am Woman, Hear me Roar!”

He raced across the office and dove into the “Cubicle of Ignorance” – which, to uninformed eyes, resembles a port-a-potty that hasn’t been cleaned since the last Burning Man festival – and came out, an hour later, with a comfortably consistent piece of leftist legerdemain.

To wit, Biden hadn’t technically lied when he claimed that he would ban all fracking, after earlier stating that he would NOT ban all fracking.  No!  What he had done was innocently “describ[e] his fracking stance inaccurately.”    And for that, the Post gave him – I am not making this up — Zero Pinocchios.

Beautiful!

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is staring at a mirror in upstate NY, saying, “When I said that I did not have sexual relations with that woman, I was just describing my earlier stance inaccurately.”  And Harvey Weinstein is sitting in Riker’s Island saying, “When I denied raping all of those women, I was just describing my position – usually reverse cowgirl, but sometimes missionary or San Antonio Sidewinder – inaccurately.”

 

For another example of comforting consistency, consider the national Dems’ love affair with abortion.  When Trump suggested an emergency funding bill to help Americans who are being financially harmed by the virus shut-down, Imhotep Pelosi naturally offered a bill jam-packed with unrelated pork, including a sneaky little provision to make sure that abortion funding would not be affected.

Because wouldn’t it be unfair if a lot of the oldest among us have their lives snuffed out in this crisis, but the youngest among us get off scot free?

In a totally related story, the last pro-life Democrat in the House of Representative has now been determined to be unviable, cut down in his 60^th trimester as a congressman.  Illinois’ Dan Lipinski was first elected in 2005, but AOC-supported newcomer Marie Newman defeated him in the Dem primary last week.

Newman is apparently a talented stand-up comedian, because she describes herself as a “suburban mother” who supports “working families, healthcare for all, and everybody’s rights.”  Good one, Marie!

I know that the great and powerful CO lives in Illinois, and I’m sure many in the CO nation live there, too.  I hereby call on all of you to troll Marie Newman’s debate with her GOP challenger this fall.

She shares her last name with songwriting great Randy Newman, so it will be a crying shame if someone doesn’t hack into the PA system when she begins to recite her pro-abortion bona fides at her debate and play Newman’s oldie “Short People:”

“Short people got… no reason,

Short people got… no reason,

Short people got, no reason to live.

They got… little baby legs,

And they stand so low…”

 

Go to it, CO and CO-supporters.  Make us proud!

 

Avenatti/Washington Post Fact Checker 2020!

I’ve been totally out of the CO Nation loop since late last week, when I found out that my work group was going to be going all online-starting this past Monday.  What followed was a hectic, headlong dash toward minimal technological competence on my part.

Over the past 4 days I’ve held over 30 online meetings to train my employees in some new-to-us software, and written and revised supporting documents, with the help of some amazing colleagues.   I’m an old dog, and I’ve been learning new tricks, and I’m feeling equal parts exhilarated and exhausted.

Now that I’ve caught my breath, I realize how much I’ve missed the CO nation, and am glad to share a few thoughts on recent events, most obviously the virus and its effects.

I hesitate, though.  I don’t mean to make light of the virus – obviously – or anyone who has gotten it – obviously – or who has a loved one who has gotten it – obviously!  And since this thing is going to get worse before it gets better, I know that writing anything sarcastic or mocking at this point might be the very definition of “too soon!”

So let me issue a friendly warning.

Not a “trigger warning,” because CO readers are old-school, grown-ass adults and not emotional hemophiliac, infantilized, bubble children.

But a sincere note of caution: if you are not up for reading some of my usual, light-hearted goofiness, please skip this column, and no hard feelings.   My stuff isn’t for everyone in the best of times, and in times like this, which are sad and scary for many, my writing might sound inappropriate, to say the least.

On the other hand, birds got to fly, fish got to swim, and I’ve got to make childish jokes at the expense of self-important leftists.

So fair warning, and off we go…

 

This isn’t a new idea, I know, but the MSM has really covered themselves in shame once again with their politically hack-tastic coverage of the virus.

Exhibit A:  “Don’t call it ‘Chinese virus,’ because that’s RACIST!”

Never mind that every empty head on the MSM called the virus either the Wuhan virus or the Chinese virus until the beginning of February.  Then Donald Trump said the same thing, so… it’s RACIST!

The knucklehead MSMers seem to think that none of us can remember as far back as a month ago, and that there’s no such thing as video.  Or audio.  Or the DVR, or the internet.

For extra hilarity, they actually claim that identifying a virus by its place of origin is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances!

Which is why you’ve never heard of the Spanish flu.  Or the German measles.  Or the West Nile virus.  Or Ebola (after a river in Africa).  Or lyme disease (after a town in Connecticut.) Or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Or Washington DC TLABFS  (Total Lack of Any Brain Function Syndrome).

Or the IHGS – Illinois Hilarious Genius Syndrome, named after the condition for which I am Patient Zero.  (The “Typhoid Marty” of this affliction, if you will.)

By the way, what do you think MERS stands for?

Mindless Erectile Randiness Syndrome?  (Many young males suffer from this affliction.)

Malevolent Enduring Ridiculousness Syndrome? (Many old white ladies who imagine themselves to be Indians fall victim.  In extreme instances, this can develop into GSD – Grandma Squanto Dementia — and sometimes even late-stage WMNSMHS.  Pronounced roughly like “women’s mess,” this is the dreaded “We Must Never Stop Mocking Her Syndrome,” and is virtually always fatal to one’s political career.) (HA!)

No.  MERS actually means, “Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.”  So let’s all get our hijabs over our heads and ululate in rage at the unfairness of it all.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  If we dropped the locational naming, what label could we choose instead?

Would they rather we pull a “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” and search out the first bat-eating dope who started this pandemic, and named it after him?  Then we could call it the “Ming Wong virus,” or whatever.  Which I suspect would not placate the perpetually aggrieved SJWs among us.

I think I can speak for most conservatives — who are well-meaning people who have no tolerance for racism, or even its dimwitted cousin, Identity Politics – when I say, “Stick it, MSM!  We’re not going to play your childish PC games.  In fact, we’re going to intentionally tweak your hypocritical pseudo offense-taking.”

So it’s the kung flu!

Or the Wu Flu.

Or the Asian Contagion.

Or the Flu Man Chu.

Or maybe most accurately of all, the CCCUS — Chi Com Cover-Up Syndrome.

 

As far as we’re concerned, MSM, you all have third-degree SCRID – Socialist Cranial-Rectal Inversion Disease.  The best hope for recovery is an aggressive course of reading Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell and Cautious Optimism for at least an hour per day, while symptoms persist.

Surgeon General’s Warning:  Side-effects of treatment may include initial discomfort, sheepishness, regret, dawning self-awareness, and vigorous forehead-slapping.  Then increased joie de vivre, and euphoria.

 

Ugh.  I can’t let this entire column be about this stinking virus.  So let’s turn to a more amenable target, shall we?

Have you been watching the “Panzers-Through-Belgium” juggernaut that is the Joe Biden for President campaign?

Because… wow!  The man is a mess.  And even with all of the uncertainty from a virus and an economic and social meltdown that throws everything into chaos, it’s hard for me to imagine him becoming president.

Let’s list the things that we already know are not his strong suit:

Math: He thinks 150 million Americans were shot to death by AR-14s in a decade.

People:  He got his wife and his sister mixed up, and he’s forgotten the name of the president he served under (he called him “Bama” and “my president”) and himself (“O’Biden”).   He told a guy in a wheel chair to stand up and be acknowledged, and parents to play the Victrola for their kids to improve their education, for some reason.

Dates:  He might not know that there’s a Wacky Wednesday, or what day the Fourth of July falls on this year, but he’s all over the importance of Super Thursday.

Geography:  He can’t tell the Midwest from the Middle East, or Iowa from the Isle of Wight, or Rhode Island from Rhodesia.

History:  He can’t remember the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.  Or the Gettysburg address.  Or his own address.  He thinks he played poker with Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu when they wrote a letter from Birmingham Jail.  Or maybe that he put a guy in a full nelson while wearing a tutu in Folsom Prison (“that ol’ Amtrak keeps a rollin’, and that’s what tortures me”).  Or something.

Basic psychology: Potential voters don’t like to be called “lying,” or “dog-faced,” or “pony soldiers.”  Or “fat” or “full of Schiff.”  They don’t like it when you challenge them to a push-up contest, or rub their shoulders, or sniff their children’s hair.

So what does that leave?  Colors?  The alphabet?  Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?

 

The guy is like a walking version of that great old Sam Cooke song:

“Don’t know much about history

Don’t know much biology

Don’t know much about a science book

Don’t know much about the French I took.”

 

“But I do know… um… a red kazoo,

And I know that if… cockatoo,

What a… um… what a…

You know!  The thing!  The thing that I sing at this part of the song…”

Congratulations, all other Democrat candidates.  You were beaten. By. THIS. GUY!

 

For the first time in my lifetime, the VP choice looks to be hugely important.  Back in the day, candidates would pick a VP in the hopes that he could bring his home state, or bring some geographical balance to a ticket.

Northeastern pretty boy JFK picked crude Texan LBJ.  Northeastern snoot John Kerry picked the poor man’s Bill Clinton, John Edwards, to give him a chance in the South.  (I know what you’re thinking: Bill Clinton IS a poor man’s Bill Clinton.  Edwards was a smarmy, cornpone clone of Slick Willie, except that unslick Johnny got caught.) (And yes, Cornpone Clones would be a fine name for a short-lived garage band.)

In recent years, the geographical argument has fallen by the wayside, and candidates usually pick a VP that brings a quality to the ticket that the top guy lacks.  So a supposedly callow W picked gruff old gravitas-master Cheney.  Decrepit male RINO John McCain picked young, female, seemingly conservative Palin.   Obama was black, and glib, and could complete an English sentence, so he picked… stammering, awkward white guy Biden.

But this year, Biden’s pick is crucial.  Because no one in Christendom thinks that there’s a great chance that Joey Gaffes lives through a four-year term, at least with his faculties (such as they are) intact.

Which means that we’ve got to be ready to tell the truth about Biden’s VP nominee from day one.   And I don’t have to get my famous wizard hat out of its climate-controlled, bullet-proof glass case to go out on a limb and predict that that nominee will be a terrible leftist hack.

Because Joe Biden is going to pick that person.

 

Let me end on a more hopeful note that you’ve been hearing from various conservative and level-headed quarters: this too shall pass.

The MSM has obviously been hyping the virus because it is likely their best chance to unseat Trump.  They have been claiming that the economy is in a freefall, and particularly that the stock market has imploded disastrously.  After the most traumatic fortnight in the history of the stock market since at least 1929, on Wednesday the Dow dropped to the level it had been on 11/6/16.

Which should provoke two realizations:

1. The MSM has somehow managed not to notice – or report – the market growth under Trump… until this month. A change of 10,000 points as the market was rising drew a big, fat, “No story here, move it along” reaction from the MSM.  The exact same change in the opposite direction?  Armageddon!  The End Times are here! Run for your lives!

 

2. Which means that Trump’s disastrous, unconscionable, incompetent, unforgiveable mismanagement has wrought such existential damage to our economy that it has reduced it to an apocalyptic Mordor-ishness that we haven’t seen since… Barack Obama was president.

Say it with me, people: Stick it, MSM!

Avenatti/ Cornpone Clones 2020!