Author: martinsimpsonwriting

As Father’s Day is upon us, I’d like to wish everyone in the CO nation a happy holiday.

Last June I wrote a tribute to my own dad whom I lost a few years ago, and I won’t repeat any of that here.  But if you’d like to read that column – and hear the last joke he told me from his death bed, for example — you can find that in the archives from June 2017 in the column to your right.

I’ve been thinking about dad a lot lately, partly because our move to a new old house has given me the chance to set up an organized workshop.  Dad was always very organized, but I’ve been storing tools haphazardly for years, and I know that he would be so pleased to see me setting up such an orderly work space.  The first step was to put doors on the old garage, and with the help of a guy who built two steel frames, and a carpenter who let me help him put wood over those frames, I now have some functioning garage doors.  (I’ve put a pic of those doors on my website, too.)(I know…that’s what the public wants to see: hot carpentry project action!)

As I was moving one of the toolboxes I inherited from him into my new space, I looked inside, and found a wood plane.  The plane still held some wood shavings in it, and it suddenly hit me: the last time this was used, dad drove it across something that he was working on, and then replaced it on his tool bench.  Those shavings suddenly seemed almost like a part of dad himself, and it felt like he was right there with me again.  It’s funny what can catch you by surprise and choke you up when you’ve lost a loved one.

Okay, so writing about pop always constitutes “things I love.”  But as is always the case, there are plenty of “things I hate” to deal with in our public life, too.  Things such as the MSM, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton, for example.

It’s still too soon to tell what may come of Trump’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim, but if it has done nothing else, it has given the lefty, Trump-hating MSM another chance to beclown itself.  They are so transparently biased that they’ve flipped positions half a dozen times in a perverse game of “heads Kim wins, tails Trump loses.”

Remember when Trump spoke rudely of Kim, calling him little Rocket Man, and noting that he was fat?  I thought that his words weren’t wise, but the MSM acted like it was Armageddon:  “You can’t talk about world leaders like that!  Trump should be diplomatic, and temperate, and stick to the niceties of etiquette.  His idiotically insulting language is going to start WWIII!”

Then Trump spoke positively about Kim (he’s talented, he’s a tough leader).  And the MSM lost it again:  “You can’t talk about dictators like that! This is no time to be diplomatic, and temperate, and stick to the niceties of etiquette!   To compliment a dictator is as bad as being a dictator.  Trump’s cuddling up to Kim is going to start WWIII!”

When Trump originally announced the summit, the left dismissed it: “You don’ t just schedule something like this so casually!  It takes months of working through diplomatic channels, and an intricate series of negotiations.  This thrown-together set-up will never amount to anything!”

Then Kim gets aggressive, and Trump cancels the summit.  “HA!  This summit could have accomplished so much, and now Trump has blown it!  Presidents work for years to arrange for diplomatic breakthroughs like this, and now a precious opportunity has been squandered!”

Then Kim reverses course, Trump declares the summit back on, and the MSM spins so fast they get motion sickness: “This meeting won’t accomplish anything.  Nothing to see here.”

Don’t misunderstand: I don’t have high hopes that a totalitarian regime like Kim’s is going to give up its nukes and become a responsible citizen on the world stage.   But it’s worth a try.  And it’s not like Trump is going to upset some marvelous status quo:   NK is a nightmarish moonscape of oppression and starvation and dysfunction, and decades of diplomatic efforts on the parts of a half-dozen presidents have done nothing to prevent or change that.

Bill Clinton said all the right platitudes and tried a combination of scary talk and diplo-speak and bribes to prevent NK from getting nukes.  And they got nukes.  Bush talked tough, and Obama talked smoothly, and neither of them made a bit of difference.  The traditional approach has gotten us to here; how bad could an unconventional approach by Trump be?

Regardless, the MSM have once again demonstrated their bad faith.  If Trump is nice to Kim, he’s being played and tacitly approving evil; if Trump plays rough with Kim, he’s needlessly rude, and provoking Kim.  If the meeting happens, it will mean nothing, but if the meeting gets called off, it’s a golden opportunity lost.

We hate you, MSM.  We really, really hate you.

Speaking of things we hate, Lizzie Warren was talking to cute little guy Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and she admitted that she’s “filled with terror” about the possibility of the GOP hanging on to the Senate and House in November: “If Donald Trump remains in control of the House and the Senate, and the Republicans won’t stop him, I don’t know what happens in the next two years.”

Don’t get your headdress feathers ruffled, Liz.  If the past year is any guide, what happens might turn out to be continuing economic growth, lower unemployment than King Hussein ever achieved, and maybe even an end to the Korean war.  Sure, there will be a downside for you: more judges who try to follow the constitution will be appointed, we’ll likely get more regulation reform, and ordinary people will get to keep and spend more of their own money.  But you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

On the other hand, you are also up for election in November, and the dopey voters in MA have not shown any inclination to toss out the cranky old papoose with the bathwater.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  So you’ve got that going for you.

Finally, it’s been fun to watch the incipient fallout from the IG report, which appears to be every bit the broadside fired into lefty Washington that we thought it would be.  It turns out that Peter Stroke and Comey and McCabe WERE dishonest and unprofessional, and Obama DID lie about not knowing about Hillary’s private server, and that Hillary WAS treated with kid gloves instead of competently questioned and exposed.

It’s been very frustrating for those of us on the right to see another Clinton apparently getting away with terrible behavior again.  Yes, she lost the election.  (giggle)  And yes, her behavior since losing has revealed just how awful she is (chuckle), and what a nightmare of a president she would have been (snort).  But it feels like she still hasn’t been called to account, and forced to answer for her actions.  In any fair system, she should be facing prosecution.

On the other hand, I’m Mr. Glass-half-full.  An inveterate optimist.  I like to stay on the sunny side of life.

So I’ve been thinking hard, trying to come up with some silver linings on the dark cloud that is Hlllary’s eluding prosecution for her intentional, reckless mis-handling of classified materials.  And I’ve come up with two.

First, if she was standing trial and on her way to jail, she would not be free to stay in the spotlight, and go on a terrible book tour and give terrible speeches and CAW CAW CAW her way through one television appearance after another, and thus remind the American people of exactly how terrible she and her party are.

Second, if she were charged, she would have to post bail, and then be released on some kind of modified house arrest while she awaited trial.  And you know what that means: (cue scary organ sting) an ankle monitor.

That’s right.  Some poor, unlucky member of the law enforcement community would draw the short straw, and would end up with the job of trying to get an ankle monitor onto one of those fetlocks of hers.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is more than we can — in clean conscience — ask of any man or woman.

Happy Father’s Day!

 

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding, and while I’m not a lawyer (which is only part of the reason that I am such a boon to society), I have a few thoughts.

First, this is the worst possible case for the “let’s force businesses to agree with our positions” advocates.  The gay couple in question seemed to have gone out of their way to find a baker who would turn down their request, and come across as obnoxious activists looking for a legal fight.  That doesn’t make their argument wrong, but it also doesn’t make them look good.

The baker, on the other hand, comes across as a decent person who was just trying to follow his religious beliefs.  He’s not an angry homophobe, screaming at the gays to get out of his business and burn in hell! He had apparently made cakes for gay people before, and did his best not to offend anyone, while at the same time sticking to his religious beliefs.

The Colorado commission who initially ruled against the baker were angry, condescending leftist hacks right out of central casting.  They made no effort to hide their disdain for the baker’s Christian beliefs, comparing his thinking to the kind of worldview that led to the Holocaust.  In fact, the reason that 2 of the leftists on the SC joined the opinion of the 5 intermittently sane SC justices was that even they couldn’t overlook the transparently prejudiced ruling of the Colorado commission.  (Which begs the question: What would a far-left lower court have to do to get Methuselah Ginsberg and Kid Latina Sotomayor to rule against them?  The smart money is on “not possible, under any circumstances.”)

While I’m a Christian, I’m pretty libertarian in my politics, and I’d like nothing more than for the government to back way off on almost every front.  In fact, I think a lot of our current problems stem from the fact that there’s one aspect of English Common Law – maybe it was in the Magna Carta?  (did I mention that I’m not a lawyer?) – that we have tragically lost in recent decades.  I’m referring, of course, to the bedrock principle of “Mind Your Own Business, You Totalitarian Jerks.”  (MYOBYTJ, as it appears in Black’s Law Dictionary.)

“How would MYOBYTJ apply to this situation, Dr. Simpson?” you may ask.  “Also, how it is pronounced?”

It’s pronounced just like it’s spelled, of course.  And here is how it would be applied in the case of “Angry Gay Activists v. Baker Who’s Never Hurt Anyone:”

Two Christophobe gay guys walk into a bakery.  (I know – sounds like the start of a good joke, though sadly, it is not.) (Also, yes, I called them “Christophobes.”  Because “homophobe” is a linguistic pet peeve of mine.  “Phobe” comes from “phobia,” which is a fear, and makes no sense in this context.  People who aren’t thrilled with gay people don’t fear them.  No one has ever heard two suspiciously well-groomed males discussing musicals and suddenly shrieked and passed out like a tarantula just descended from the ceiling and landed in their lobster bisque.  On the other hand, plenty of lefty activists have come across a 10 commandments plaque or a Nativity scene and immediately pulled their unisex dresses over their gender-binary heads, and ran around shrieking and hyperventilating and fumbling in their transgender wallet/purse/biodegradable bag to find their cell so they could speed dial the ACLU number to make the scary Christian inanimate objects stop torturing them.) (So yeah.  “Christophobes.”)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.

Two gay guys with nothing better to do go into a bakery and ask the baker to make a fabulous cake for their gay wedding.  He respectfully declines, stating that doing so would violate his religious convictions.  The two hair-trigger Christophobes become outraged, and call the local Sheriff, their Congressman and Senators, the Governor, and the Colorado Commission on Very Important Issues.  They explain the situation to each of them in turn.

And each time, the official on the other end of the phone should have said something to the effect of, “So why don’t you just find a more gay-friendly baker to make your cake?  Or maybe boycott that baker, and tell your gay friends not to use him for their weddings or Oscar parties or gay-mitzvahs or whatever.”

And when the busybodies reply, “Don’t you understand?  This baker thinks differently than we do!  He should be forced to run his business in a way that doesn’t offend us!”  each and every official should respond, “Mind your own business, you totalitarian jerks!”

I’m serious about this.  I’d like to see business owners free to operate how they’d like, and let the market and a free society handle that.  And not just about issues that I have a rooting interest in:

• If a Jewish deli doesn’t want to serve pork, anybody insisting on a pork chop wrapped in bacon should be told MYOBYTJ!
• If a Muslim baker doesn’t want to bake Christmas cookies and some boneheads object? MYOBYTJ!

And I wouldn’t just apply it to religion, either.   For example, I dislike smoking; it’s expensive, and makes your clothes stink, and it caused the deaths of my mother-in-law and a favorite aunt in the last 6 months.  If someone wanted to open a bar or restaurant in my town that allowed smoking, I wouldn’t go there.

But you know what else I’d do?  I’d mind my own freaking business!  If a smallish town has 6 bars, why couldn’t one of them allow smoking?  No one who objected would have to work there, or eat there, or drink there, and most people wouldn’t.  If enough people voted with their dollars and stayed away, the bar would close.  But not because some crybullies forced them out of business.

I know that smoking is not good for you, but that’s not the point.

You know what else isn’t good for you?  Ice cream.  Riding a motorcycle.  Women half your age.  Many other women.  Many men, too.  Playing the lottery.  Cocaine.  Red meat.  Electing delusional white ladies to the Senate from Massachusetts. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  Really loud music.  Stepping in to defend a weak person against a bully who’s much larger and stronger than you are.

Half the juice in life is negotiating your way around and through those things.  For example, I once had a good meal at a steakhouse with a woman who wasn’t good for me (despite a cuteness of almost Nikki Haley-esque proportions), and then took her back to her apartment on my motorcycle, where she fed me some ice cream.

But just when I was about to do some things that would have left me with terrible regret (and possibly some soft-tissue injury) she pulled out some cocaine and said, “Let’s snort this, and then buy a lottery ticket and vote for Elizabeth Warren.”

Of course, I jumped up in righteous outrage and tossed some clothes at her and said, “Put your clothes on and get out of my apartment!”

And she said, “Those are your clothes, and this is my apartment!”

To which I wittily replied, “Oh, yeah.”  The next thing you know, I’m making a dignified (if pantsless) retreat, while she is screaming from the second floor landing like a crazy person, “Elizabeth Warren is a Native American role model!”

And I’m screaming back at her, “She’s as Indian as Ingemar Johanssen!”

“Who is that?”

“Google him!” I yelled.

“You better stop mocking Elizabeth Warren, and I mean it!”

“NEVER!” I screamed, as I roared away into the night, having learned a valuable lesson.

 

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Minding my own business.

I think most rap music sounds like racist and misogynistic cats mating inside a metal garbage can in a concrete parking garage.  I think vegan food tastes like a cruel experiment concocted by misanthropes with defective taste buds.  I think that leftist policies are destructive to all I hold dear.

But if someone wants to open a socialist vegan restaurant that features rap music all day, God bless them.  Not my cup of tea, and I would not think highly of anyone patronizing that establishment.  But I would not in a million years walk in there in a MAGA hat, and insist that they play some Hank Williams while making me a hamburger.

Because I know how to mind my own business.

Of course, there is a political element to this.  While all of us are fallen and imperfect and prone to want to impose our wills on others, the vast majority of totalitarian bullying today comes from the left.  Who is imposing speech codes and shouting down speakers they disagree with?  Who knows better than I do what kind of lightbulb I should be able to buy, and how many gallons of water my toilet should hold, and how big of a soft drink I should be able to buy?  Not the political right.

(And to anticipate one mistaken to objection from the left, we don’t want to dictate what any women do with their bodies.  That’s why you’ve never heard of any conservative legislative pushes to ban piercing, or tattooing, or appendectomies, or surgeries that make you look like a duck-billed platypus with cartoonishly large breasts. When we try to prevent abortion, it’s not because we want to control women’s bodies.  It’s because we took biology in school, and recognize that something that has different brain waves, and a separate heartbeat and DNA is not, technically speaking, “part of your body.”)

In conclusion, the Supreme Court got it right this time.  Don’t force an African-American baker to make a stars-and-bars cake to celebrate Jefferson Davis’ birthday.  Don’t force a white baker to make a Malcolm X “Kill Whitey” cake.  Don’t force a socialist baker to bake a “Trump 2020” cake.  Don’t force a sane baker to make a “Hillary 2020” cake.

Mind your own business, you totalitarian jerks!

So it’s June, and you know what that means: another month of leftists behaving badly.

Let’s start with Samantha Bee.  And before you say, “WHO?”  I’ll point out that she has an alleged comedy show watched by many of her relatives and a few poor souls being held against their will by sadistic kidnappers who have duct-taped them to chairs with those crazy Clockwork Orange eyelid-clamped-open-things on.  She’s currently in a neck-and-neck competition with Noah Trevor, Jimmy ”Waaah!” Kimmel and Stephen Colbert – or as you may know them, “Who?” and “He was a little funny when he hung out with Carolla,” and, “Ugh.” – for the “Least Funny and Lowest Rated Human on TV.”

A week ago, Ivanka Trump put out a picture of her and her adorable two-year-old son.  So naturally the leftist twittersphere went into a spittle-flecked rant about it.

I know what you’re thinking.  She must have given the sweet pic some sort of inflammatory caption, right?  Like, “Don’t forget, his grandpa is going to be president for 6 more years!” or “Look how beautiful and white he is!”  or “So glad I didn’t abort this little guy! #no-more-infanticide.”

But no.  The pic was sweet, and the caption was sweet:  “My [heart] #Sunday morning.”
And the lefties went NUTS!  A writer named Casey Quackenbush (man, I bet middle school was a picnic with that last name) at Time magazine – which I was shocked to learn still exists – put it this way:  “Ivanka Trump faces a storm of online criticism for tweeting a photo of her embracing her son, with critics denouncing her as “tone deaf” amid emerging reports of immigrant families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

I am not making that up.  A “storm of online criticism.”  “Tone deaf.”  For a picture with her son.

And it wasn’t just Senora Quackenbush.  (snort) I think Andy Ostroy said it best, by which I mean “stupidest,” (and no, I’ve never heard of him either):  “As screaming children are being ripped from their horrified parents at the border because of daddy’s unconscionable cruelty…@IvankaTrump demonstrates a staggering measure of tone-deafness & insensitivity in her “Sunday morning” snugglefest with her kid.”

Look up “drama queen” in the dictionary, and you’ll find a picture of Nancy Pelosi, beside the quote, “No, this IS the end of the world.  It’s Armageddon!”  But then, in the small print, you’ll find, “See also: Andy Ostroy.”

Anyway, when Samantha Bee and her crack team of writers saw that beatific photo of maternal love, they knew that had to marshal all of their talent to expose this outrage.  So they locked themselves in a room for a week, to focus their attention and their rapier wit on the First Daughter.

You know that old saying that if you put 1000 monkeys in a room with 1000 typewriters for 1000 years, they’d produce the works of Shakespeare?  Well, this was just like that.  Except that when they came out of the room, they were babbling incoherently, and covered in feces, and all they’d come up with was a list of vulgar words for the female anatomy.

So Slanderin’ Sammie went on the air, and called Ivanka a “feckless c-word” and suggested that she use her body to tempt her father into incest in an effort to change his mind about applying US law to people who break it and thereby endanger their own children.

Sidebar: Take it from a guy who is almost too modest to mention that the internet has agreed that he is a #hilariousgenius – that’s not comedy.  Anybody can drop an “F” bomb or a c-word.  I do that every time I drive across town, or accidentally come across a Samantha Bee monologue, respectively.  And I don’t even have a team of writers to help me!

Comedy takes a little more thought than that.  I mean, you try coming up with a humorous reference to Liz Warren for a dozen columns in a row.  It’s not as easy as I make it look.

Sure, I could just call her a feckless squaw, and pour myself a scotch and call it a column.  But no.  I have higher standards than that.  So I pour that scotch first, and I tilt back in my chair, and try to think of the whitest people I know.

I think of that actor from the movie “Powder,” but that’s too obscure.  I remember a disturbing Martin Short albino character from some long-ago tv sketches, but that’s even more obscure.  Scotch, scotch, scotch… Boom.

Edgar Winter and Tilda Swinton had a baby (look them both up).  And that baby was still three shades darker than faux Indian Liz Warren.  #wemustneverstopmockingher

Okay, maybe not my best work.  But still better than Sam Bee and her over-paid menagerie of hacks could come up with.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Incest-implying, c-word deploying Samantha Bee is obviously a feminist heroine.   Which is why she was honored by the Television Academy (I’m not making that group up, even though no one’s ever heard of them before) with an award for “Programming that Advances Social Change.”  If by “advancing social change” you mean “making society much, much worse.”

Meanwhile, crazy loon Roseanne said something equally offensive about truly terrible leftist hack Valerie Jarrett, and now she’ll never be on network tv again.   The end, and nothing to see here, and move along.

 

The two most recent Democrat presidents were also in the news this week, with a couple of schadenfreude-tastic interviews that I’ve been savoring and re-reading.  First up was Barack “Sophocles” Obama, whose philosophical musings in the days after Trump’s election were excerpted from Ben Rhodes’ forthcoming dumpster fire of a book.

In the days after the shocking electoral reversal, Obama had a dark night of the soul, during which he carried out a caustically critical self-inventory.  According to Rhodes, Obama mused, “Maybe we were wrong.  Maybe I shouldn’t have had such faith in my own god-like ability, and such disdain for everyone who disagreed with me.  I mean, did I really say that my election would stop the oceans from rising, and begin the healing of the world?  What was I thinking?  I’ve become a character out of a Greek tragedy, whose hubris finally called down an epic punishment from the gods. I’ve got to repent, and change my ways, and spend the rest of my days trying to undo some of the damage my obviously flawed worldview has caused to the greatest nation on earth!”

HA!  Of course I kid.  What Obama really said was this:  “Maybe we were wrong.  Maybe we pushed too far.  Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe…. Sometimes I wonder whether I was ten or 20 years too early.”

Translation: “I am so amazingly wonderful.  It’s too bad that Americans are such primitive, tribal ignoramuses that they cannot appreciate the wonderfulness of me.  Maybe in a few decades, they will have caught up to my greatness, and regret electing a cartoon character who is erasing all of my glorious achievements.  But probably not.  Because they suck.”

 

But even more fun was a series of interviews that Bill “Handsy McGroperton™” Clinton found himself entangled in.  He recently pretended to co-write a novel with an author who has lately made a career of getting other writers to write novels that he can pretend to have co-written, and then they went on usually friendly NBC to do an interview promoting that book.

And things went well, for a while.  As long as the interview stuck with questions along the lines of, “Why did you decide to pretend to write this book,” and, “What do you think of your co-author?”  Bill was his old affable, self-deprecating, superficially charming self.

But then things went off the rails.  The interviewer actually started asked some tough questions – after only 20 years, I was as shocked as Bill was! — such as did Bill ever apologize to Monica Lewinsky, and in these days of #MeToo does he see things differently?  And the mask dropped, and Bill revealed his true nature.  He became visibly angry, and pointed his finger, and tried out one lame defense after another:

He denies what everyone knows happened, and what he has admitted in the past:  “I don’t think it would be different today… because people would be using the facts, instead of the imagined facts.”  (i.e. “I did not have sex with that woman.”)

He denies that he was wrong:  “No, I think I did the right thing.  I defended the constitution.”  (Question for any constitutional scholars in the CO nation:  which amendment is it again that protects our God-given right to cavort in the Oval office with gullible girls our daughter’s age?  I think it’s right around the part where we don’t have to quarter British soldiers in the mother-in-law suite anymore, but I couldn’t find it in a quick search.)

He deflects to make his horniness a problem for Trump: “[People are accusing me] partly because they’re frustrated that they’ve got all these serious allegations against the current occupant of the oval office, and his voters don’t seem to care, so you don’t ever talk about that.”

I know.  Re-reading that makes it no clearer.  First, is Bill Clinton seriously claiming that no one ever talks about allegations of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump?!  After Billy Bush was suddenly the most famous Bush in the fall of 2016?  After we’ve spent more than a year on an investigation that originated with Democrats paying a foreign spy to come up with fictional stories of Trump throwing bundles of  cash at troupes of acrobatic Russian hookers to get them to urinate their way through the presidential suite at the Moscow Hilton?

And yes, Bill is self-righteously pontificating on how immoral it was for Trump to have a consensual one-night stand with an adult woman who makes her living having sex with strangers for money.  “Serious allegations” indeed!  Why, do you remember when Trump exposed himself to Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones, and dozens of others?!  If Harvey Weinstein is awaiting trial, and Bill Cosby is awaiting sentencing, how is it that Donald Trump could have raped Juanita Broaddrick, and has never had to answer for that!  I mean—

Oh, wait.

Bill also played the victim, whining that he left office $16 million dollars in debt.

He even trotted out the faux-feminist version of “some of my best friends are black,” saying how many women he has hired and appointed over the years:  “I had a sexual harassment policy when I was a governor in the 80s.” (Yes, but does, “I am ALL FOR IT!” technically count as a “sexual harassment policy?”) “I had two women chiefs of staff when I was governor.”  (I guess it depends on what the meaning of “had” is, right Bill?) “Women were over-represented in the attorney general’s office in the 70s.”  (And some of them weren’t even C-cups!  I mean, come on!  Give the guy some credit.)  “I’ve had nothing but women leaders in my office since I left.”  (Mr. President, you’re not helping yourself.  Please stop talking.)

Seriously, if you haven’t watched that interview, you must.  Because there are few things more satisfying than watching a self-righteous, hypocritical old reprobate starting to reap what he has spent decades sowing.

Before I get to today’s semi-random meditations, I want to thank CO and the readers of this site.  After a couple of weeks without the internet I posted a column last week, and the response was really gratifying, and it has put a smile on my face for several days running.  In only two weeks I had really missed following the site, and to find that the feeling was mutual felt amazingly good.  So thank you all for your kind words, and the shares, and such a warm welcome back!

Now onto today’s theme, which is how vastly different two humans can be from each other.  Exhibit A is a GOP candidate for congress from Texas, and Exhibit B is a 30-year old who got sued by his parents to get him to move out of their house.

The first guy came to my attention arising from the state primary elections last Tuesday.  The consensus coming out of the primaries seems to be that things are getting even more polarized: more conservative candidates have beaten some moderate ones, and on the left, farther left candidates have beaten more centrist ones.  The prime example of the latter would be the battle of the two Staceys for Georgia governor, in which a farther left African American Stacey defeated a plain vanilla (no offense) white leftist Stacey by a surprising 3-1 margin.

I think this trend favors the GOP in the fall, because the general public is moving more to the right, while the Dems are moving from pretty far left to super far left.   Even though I think we’ve acclimated ourselves to way too much big government control over our lives, the polls seem to be moving rightward, probably starting with resistance to Obama’s hard-left (and uber dishonest) push to take over health care in 2009.  On issues from the Second Amendment to lower taxes to sane border controls to a more pro-American foreign policy, most voters are moving right.  At the same time, most lefties have become so deranged with Trump hatred – and so sure that regular people share their frothing hostility – that they may well be pushing the mushy moderates to either stay home or vote GOP.  Several months ago I was afraid that the historical trend that pointed to a blue wave in a GOP prez’s first midterm was going to hold true, but now I’m becoming more hopeful that 2018 might buck that trend.

My favorite GOP primary winner this time around was a guy you’ve probably never heard of:  Dan Crenshaw, from Houston.   He’s an ex-Navy Seal and a conservative… and he just about had me at ex-Navy Seal.  Did I mention that he wears an eye patch, after having lost an eye in an IED explosion in Afghanistan?  That’s right… an EYE PATCH!

Call me superficial.  (You won’t be the first.)  But I think eye patches make men at least 163% cooler than they would normally be.   And yes, I said “men.”  Call me sexist.  (Again, you won’t be the first.)  But eye patches don’t necessarily work on women.  That woman in Kill Bill had one, and it was just creepy, even before Uma plucked her other eye out.   And if you slapped an eye patch on Liz Warren, she might try to pass it off as an old arrow wound, but it would not work for her.  And she’d still be about as Indian as that translucent woman who dumped Tiger Woods after that unpleasantness with the Waffle House waitress.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But you put an eye patch on a man, and I’d follow that magnificent bastard to the gates of Hell!  A young, impressionable me was always a big John Wayne fan, not least because of his appearance in True Grit as “one-eyed fatman” Rooster Cogburn.   Then Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in “Escape from New York?”  Then, when I was reading a book on military history I came across Claus Von Stauffenberg, the reformed Nazi who tried to kill Hitler – even with Tom Cruise playing him, that guy was an eye-patch-wearing bad ass.

Of course, if you were giving out medals for “Best Use of an Eyepatch,” the gold has got to go to Moshe Dayan.   Little guy, tough as nails, led some tough Israelis in some tougher battles.  He lost his eye when a sniper’s bullet hit the binoculars he was looking through.

You heard that right, puny mortals.  A sniper’s bullet.  In the binoculars.  Which were on his face at the time.

And it just made him mad.  So mad that the next time the jihadis attacked his country, he led the forces that whipped them in six freaking days.

By the way, I always thought that that had to be the coolest name for a war ever.  If you had to be in a  war, is there any doubt which one you’d choose?    Especially considering the alternatives when a recruiter was pitching you:

Recruiter:  “How’d you like to sign up, do your duty for king and country?”

You: “What’s this war called again?

Recruiter (almost under his breath): “The Hundred Years’ War.”

You:  “Yikes!  You mean, with any luck I could die in this one, along with my son, and my grandson, and my great grandson?!”

A few centuries later, and it’s getting close to Halloween, when you come across a recruiter who has a better deal.  “What’s this war called?” you ask.

“The War of 1812.”

“Sweet,” you say.  “New Years Eve is only two months away, and then it’s 1813.  So I’m in.”

But wait.  Say it’s 1967, and a tough little bantam rooster of a guy wearing a wicked eye patch pitches you on a little conflict he calls the Six Day War.

“Well, it’s already Sunday evening,” you think to yourself,  “so if we kick things off at dawn, I’ll be home in time for the Bears’ early game next Sunday.  Done and done.”

As a kid, I flirted with the idea of getting an eye patch.  And there were various ways that I could have ended up with one.  I ran with scissors on occasion.  I rode a bicycle with reckless abandon, and later on I rode a motorcycle without a helmet.  Plus, several friends and cousins and I were raised on the Three Stooges, so you’d expect that at least one of us would end up in a Curly-eye-poke-related incident.

Skip ahead to my adulthood, and I’m not out of the eye-patch-related woods yet.  I have the high honor of writing for the Cautious Optimism website, a job that requires me to scour the internet for tales of leftists behaving badly.  In the course of that, I necessarily (and often unexpectedly) come across photos of Antifa chick mug shots, or pics of Lena Dunham, or Kathy Griffin, or any number of other hideous leftist crones.

At moments like that, one has to manfully resist the almost autonomic reflex to plunge any nearby sharp objects into one’s own eyes to make it stop.   But that is a risk I’ve been willing to take for the CO Nation.  (You’re welcome.  And yes, I do have a tip jar on my web page, thanks for asking.  Because when the inevitable happens, that eye-patch isn’t going to pay for itself, people.)

Where was I?

Oh yeah.   Dan Crenshaw for the House of Representatives.  Hopefully that blue wave will be no match for the one-eyed Seal!

 

On to the other end of the spectrum of humanity – prepare yourself for the whiplash: Exhibit B.  I give you Michael Rotondo, 30 years old, and a resident of New York.  Actually, a resident of mommy and daddy’s house in New York.

You’ve probably heard about the story, and if you haven’t, you can Google it.  But the general outline is that the guy apparently went to college, and – in a testament to the unfathomable generosity of women – somehow fathered a son.  But he’s been staying in his parents’ house for the last 8 years, even after his parents have written him letters and given him eviction notices and offered him cash to leave.

They finally took him to court, where a judge heard the case – and, I’m hoping, face-palmed himself repeatedly – and told the bum to get out of his parents’ house.  Rotondo has since been giving tv interviews in which he explained that he wants to get out, and has been planning to get out, and he’s trying to focus on regaining custody of his son.  Also, he’s a great father, and he no longer wants any relationship with his parents, who have been very mean to him.

I know nothing at all about the kid’s mother, but unless she has heroin for breakfast and meth for lunch and has a huge “I’m with Her” tattoo on her forehead, she better not lose custody of that kid!

Why did I put these two people in one column?  Because I am fascinated by humans.  Half of the time I find myself agreeing with Shakespeare, in his famous lines from Hamlet:

“O what a piece of work is man! how noble in reason!/ how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how/ express and admirable! in action how like an angel!/ in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the/ world! the paragon of animals…”

And then I read about Michael Rotondo, and am moved to compose a few lines myself:  “O what a piece of crap is man!  How feeble in reason!/ How finite in faculty! In form and moving how/ sluglike and repugnant! In action how like a fungus! / in lassitude how like a sloth!/ how did he beguile a female to couple with him?/ even one solitary, misbegotten time?/Seriously, poor Yorick, what gives?”

Okay, I know.  I’m no Shakespeare.  But Michael Rotondo is no Dan Crenshaw.  It’s hard to believe that he’s even in the same phylum!  Nobody could be more different from an eye-patch-wearing Navy Seal than this human walrus.  And yet Rotondo seems oblivious to his true condition, and how he comes across.

Though the analogy is admittedly a stretch, I see a lot of Rotondo in today’s Left.  Obama dangled before pupal-stage Bernie Sanderses like him the chance to stay on mommy’s insurance until 26, and he went one better, staying on mommy’s guest room bed until 30!  He’s entitled, and he’s been enabled right into a pathetic, gelatinous state of complete dependence.  And when he finally couldn’t get his way, he ran crying to the courts to try to avoid the consequences of his (in)actions.

Now if only we could get more GOP pols to emulate Dan “Rooster Cogburn-Plisken-Von Stauffenberg Dayan” Crenshaw, there would be zero chance of a blue wave in November!

 

During the transition process of moving into a new house – mission accomplished, as of Friday! — I’ve been somewhat out of the loop.  We were without the internet for two weeks, which is both blessing and curse.  On the one hand, being temporarily disconnected from social media felt great.   My blood pressure is lower, I’m sleeping better, and I’ve even had several conversations with my wife and children – I apparently have two beautiful daughters, who have been sneakily turning into top quality young adults.

On the other hand, I haven’t been able to keep in touch with CO or the CO Nation, and that’s too high a price to pay, obviously.

So after just watching a bit of tv news, I’ve finally had a chance to catch up on several stories.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

1.Hostage stories are fun.  Remember when the Left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) praised Obama to the skies when he got that one mostly dead kid back from North Korea?  And then the kid died right away, but Obama was just the best?  And remember when Obama marshalled all of his canny, big-brained horse-trading skills and went into negotiations with the Taliban, and all he had to do was give up five high-ranking Taliban POWs – which seems like a lot, until you consider that what we got in exchange was a creepy little defector whom we probably should have tried and hung for treason.  But instead Obama invited him and his weird-beard dad to a press conference in Mecca, where daddy took advantage of the occasion to praise Allah.

Correction:  that press conference was actually in the Rose Garden.  It only seemed like Mecca, what with all of the Allahu-akbar-ing going on.

I remember all of that, which was why it made perfect sense when the MSM all started shrieking in outrage when bumbling Trump tried his hand at negotiating for hostages.   All he got was three NK hostages returned, but all three of them were deathly ill with rickets, or scurvy, or housemaid’s knee, or a condition endemic to North Korean prisons called “spontaneous orbital bone fractures.”  And to achieve this paltry result, Trump was forced to give up five high-ranking NK terrorists.

HA!  I kid.   All three hostages were not dead, or near dead.  In fact, they were as healthy as little North Korean miniature horses, which for my money are the cutest of all of the miniature horses.  (And please don’t tell me that they are just regular-sized horses who have never grown any larger because they’ve been starving since 1953.) Plus, when they spoke to the media, none of them blurted out anything about infidels or death to America or how much they despise baseball or apple pie.  And Trump did not give up any Nork bad guys, or any pallets of cash, or anything at all, as far as we know.

So naturally, the MSM are incensed at how badly Trump botched the whole deal.

2. Also, they are really, really mad about Trump’s latest despicable insult to immigrants.

You probably haven’t heard about this – because CNN has been obsessed with covering nothing but the historically low black and Hispanic unemployment rates, and the strong economic numbers, and the way Mueller and McCabe and Comey and John Brennan and Clapper and Peter Stroke and his unattractive mistress have all been exposed as a cabal of sleazy perjurers who need to be jailed immediately – but Trump called some immigrants “animals.”

No, really.  He did.  I flipped back and forth through half a dozen channels for the better part of two days, and had it confirmed over and over again.  Apparently, he described as “animals” the following groups: hard-working Mexican single mothers, saintly Guatemalan priests, impeccably dressed Ecuadorian honor students, Costa Rican abuelas who are bravely fighting stage three breast cancer, adorable Chilean first-graders, and Salvadoran first responders who specialize in rescuing adorable Salvadoran kittens who get stuck in an especially sticky species of Salvadoran trees.

Of course, as it turned out, Trump was referring to members of MS-13, a merry bunch of sociopaths who divide their time between beheading innocent teenagers and competing in round robin “who can get the most hideous tattoos” tournaments.

My favorite MSM idiot in this story – in a very crowded field — is someone named Ana Navarro.  Ms. Navarro clambered onto her high horse to say how contemptible it was that anyone would ever refer to any human beings – no matter what they’d done – as “animals.”

Then, because God loves us and has a real grudge against Ana Navarro, 8 million Americans immediately Googled “Ana Navarro” and “animals” and “hypocritical beeyotch” (maybe that last one was just me), and came up with this tweet of hers from 2016:  “Should Donald Trump drop out of the race? Yes. He should drop out of the human race. He is an animal. Apologies to animals.”

Move over, “Boy who Cried Wolf,” and “The Scorpion and the Frog,” because I have a new favorite Aesop’s Fable: “How the CNN Horse’s Ass got Hoof-in-Mouth Disease.”

3.  But if you think that the MSM is mad at Trump about his freeing non-dying hostages from captivity in North Korea, or about his hurting the feelings of foreign tattooed homicidal freaks, you should hear how they caterwauled at his unconscionable decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to – you’re not going to believe this — the capital of Israel!

This story might be the single best indication of how dishonest, morally bankrupt and out of touch with reality the Left has become.   I mean, think of all the ridiculous lies you have to believe to buy into the Left’s coverage of the embassy:

A.  Jerusalem has no connection to Jews, and is not in any way the capital of Israel.  (For rebuttal, I’d like to call the jury’s attention to exhibits A- Z: every book of the Old Testament after the first 5, plus the fact that Jerusalem is also known as “the City of David.”  If you look him up, you’ll find that the David referred to there is not Letterman, or Bowie, or Cassidy, but “as in ‘vs. Goliath.”  Plus, guess which language the word “Jerusalem” comes from?  And before you guess Swahili, Old Norse, Persian, or Arabic, I’m going to suggest that you use your “phone a friend” option.)

B. Palestinian terrorists rushing the wall/fence were nonviolent “protestors.” You know, like the folks marching with Dr. King. Except instead of “We Shall Overcome,” these protestors were singing whatever is Arabic for “Allah Allah Uber Alles.” And you remember how you used to hear about Dr. King’s followers bringing sling shots, and setting tires on fire, and flying Molotov cocktail kites with swastikas on them, designed to try to set fires in the fields around Selma and Birmingham and other Democrat-controlled cities?  Me neither.

C.  Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is an outrage. Even though Obama, Bush and Clinton all promised to do that, the MSM never criticized any of them because of that. Mostly because they knew that Clinton was no more likely to keep that promise than to keep his wedding vows, and that Obama was less likely to move the embassy than he was to provide shovel-ready jobs or let you keep your doctor.  What does it tell you when the most effective leftist response to the charge that their guys promised to do what Trump just did is to say, “Yeah, but everybody knew that they were lying!”  Touche, Saul Alinsky!

D.  Israel is the main problem in the middle east. Not murderous jihadi regimes who control much of the region.  Not the kleptocratic autocracies who control the rest.   Not the near universal oppression and violence against women and gays and religious minorities that reign in every middle eastern country except Israel.  Nope, the big problem is Israel, where gays can go for weeks at a time without being stoned or thrown off of roofs, and women can drive, and religious minorities are elected to the government rather than murdered or driven out of the country.  And where funds intended for infrastructure and the welfare of the citizens are spent on… infrastructure and the welfare of the citizens, rather than on buying weapons and paying terrorists and indoctrinating kids to grow up and become hateful, murderous adults.

Even though it’s been happening for decades, it’s really shocking to see how the Left continually sides with misogynistic, homophobic Islamic theocracies over the one pluralistic democracy in the Middle East.  Most battles in the world involve shades of gray —  the Apaches vs the Commanches (Lizzie Warren stayed on the sidelines for that one, with a big tear rolling down her face like someone just threw a McDonald’s bag into a protected wetland) (#neverstopmockingher), Spain vs. Portugal five centuries ago, Ohio State vs Michigan — but not this one.

In Israel, they fight defensively, and do their best to avoid civilian casualties.  For example, of the 62 Palestinians killed in the assault on the Israeli border last week, at least 53 were known terrorists.  So either the percentage of terrorists in the general Palestinian population is 85.48%  (did I mention that I kicked butt in Finite Math class?) – a ratio that is sadly not that far-fetched, if you read a few reports from MEMRI – or Israel was targeting violent terrorists who were attacking their border.  (Or, as CNN put it, “indiscriminately firing on protestors.”)

On the other hand, Hamas wrote “death to all Jews” into their charter.

So by all means, MSM, tells us how the Israelis are the aggressors, and Trump was foolish for keeping the promise that Clinton, Bush and Obama made before him.

Update: The Washington Times reports that a 23-year-old member of MS-13 just got sentenced to 40 years for murdering a 15 year old.  His given name is Joel Martinez, but his gang name – which I swear I am not making up – is “animal.”

HA!  Ana Navarro is so far unavailable for comment.

 

 

I hope you’re not getting tired of columns about entertainingly stupid people, because here’s the fourth in a row:

Exhibit A: the Hillary Clinton Comedy tour continues.  This week Hillary admitted to a sympathetic interviewer that she was probably hurt in the Democratic party because she was a capitalist.   That is both funny and depressing: funny because she doesn’t know the difference between a capitalist and a crony capitalist. (How’s that income to the Clinton Foundation coming along, now that you don’t have any “quo” to distribute for any “quid” that might come your way?)

And depressing because in one of the two major parties in the most powerful nation in the world, it’s a serious liability to be considered a capitalist, and a plus to be seen as a socialist.  (And that’s after a century since the Russians first put socialism into practice, starting a run that has produced a record of 0 wins,  88 losses, and 3 ties – assuming you count three wildly anomalous Scandanavian countries managing to limp along with a capitalism/socialism hybrid without totally imploding as “ties.”)

But the best Hillary-related news is from a story reporting that she is “gearing up to influence the mid-term elections.”  That’s right – the Achilles Cankle of the Left ™ is getting ready to tug on her dancing galoshes for one more spin around the mine field—er, dance floor.  (And yes, I know I used that joke in a previous piece.  But c’mon – “Achilles Cankle” is funny.  If I were doing stand-up, I’d work that into every set.)

This is so great!  All GOP fans should be praying that Hillary will come tromping through their district, giving off the thick musk of voter repellent that she seems to generate as a part of her normal biological functioning.

Which reminds me of one bit of 2016 post-election analysis that I’ve always disagreed with.  The commentariat seems to have accepted as axiomatic the idea that Hillary’s decision not to campaign in states like Wisconsin and Michigan were fatal errors, the idea being that she lost those states narrowly, and that spending more time there would have allowed her to win them.

But had those people ever heard or seen a Hillary campaign event?  Think a bunch of creaky folding chairs in a community college gym, with a couple of local pols whom nobody knows giving a few banal comments, followed by ferret-like John Podesta or some other listless, unattractive Dem introducing the Candidate Herself.  She takes the stage, stumbling several times before clinging to the podium for dear life, and starts her speech.

“Hello, Ypsilanti!  It’s always good to be here with the deplorable scum—I mean the common people.  CAW, CAW.  Isn’t that Donald Trump just terrible?  CAW.  We’re on our way to a historic victory, after which I’ll be doubling down on the unpopular policies of Obama, only without the glib speaking skills.  CAW, CAW.  Plus, you’ll have a president with different genitalia from all past presidents!  CAW.  In conclusion, I look down on all of you, and I believe the opposite of what you believe about everything.  CAW!  So get out on Tuesday and vote for me, and you can look forward to being condescendingly  lectured to in this grating tone of voice for the next 4 years!  CAW CAW CAW!”

Her opinion polls as first lady almost always went down as she gained visibility – pushing Hillary-care, for example – and went up only when she disappeared from the public stage for extended lengths of time.  So it’s likely that if she had spent more time in the Midwest, she may have lost the popular vote, too.

In other words, you go Hillary!  Please make an extended, nationwide tour of every battleground state in October, stumping for every Dem candidate in sight.

 

Exhibit B: more animal follies.

In a recent column I noted the increasing menagerie of emotional support animals making air travel increasingly unpleasant.  In the last several days, I’ve come across several more animal stories, one depressing and one uplifting.

The depressing one happened at the home of many depressing trends:  Yale University.  The Yale Daily News featured a story entitled, “Emotional Support Animals Proliferate at Yale.”  (“Proliferate” is fancy Yale talk, but it’s not helping:  a headline like, “Holy Crap! We’re Ass Deep in Support Animals” would not make Yale sound any dumber than this story does.)

The trend is what you would expect: last year there was one registered support animal on campus, this year there are 14.  Soon our Ivy League campuses will look like a cross between a Southwest non-stop from San Francisco to Austin and an off-broadway production of 101 Dalmations.

The story also reports that support animals aren’t just dogs or cats anymore – you species-ist jerk! – noting that one Yale student has a support hedgehog on campus.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but aren’t hedgehogs one of those animals that curls into a defensive ball when startled?  Because if so, I’d like to go to New Haven, startle the hell out of that emotional support hedgehog – perhaps by sneaking up on it and screaming a Squanto Warren-style war-whoop (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – and then hurl the hedgehog with great force at the empty head of the Yale student who thought it was a good idea to bring an emotional support hedgehog to campus.

I’d tell you what I’d do with the emotional support porcupine and the moron who brought him to campus, but that would be a hate crime.  (“GET YOUR HATE QUILLS OFF OUR CAMPUS!)

On a lighter note, the other animal story has a much happier ending.  You can find it in the NY Post, under the title,”Man Mauled to Death by Bear While Taking a Selfie.”

Oops.  Spoiler alert.

This delightful tale takes place in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.  (I know: I thought she was married to Jay Z, too.  But apparently she is a state in India.  Live and learn.)

It seems a super genius named Prabhu Bhatara (one of those “B”s might be silent) was urinating beside the road (as one does), when he spotted an injured bear.  I can only assume that he was urinating what had a short time before been some frighteningly potent alcohol, because his next thought was apparently, “You know what would look good in a photo snuggled up right next to that injured apex predator?  My stupid face!”

By the way, it wasn’t just a bear.  It was an INJURED bear.  You may have noticed that you never read stories about how serious injuries are known to improve the disposition of giant predatory beasts.  “Wounded Bengal Tiger is Looking on the Sunny Side,” said no headline ever, or, “Lion with Infected Thorn in Paw Surprisingly Upbeat, Mellow, according to authorities,” reported CNN.

The story offers video of the mauling, which it helpfully identifies as “disturbing.” But I found that if you watch it while listening to the Benny Hill/Yakety Sax theme song, it’s not that bad.

The cherry on this Darwin Award Winning sundae of a story is that this is at least the third selfie-related animal-induced death in Odisha since December!  Early that month a 50-year old man was taking a selfie with an elephant when he was crushed, and not too long after that a younger man, in a separate incident with another elephant, did the same thing.

At least I think it was a different elephant.

How cool would it be if there were one hilarious, photogenic elephant making the rounds in Odisha and Nicki Minaj — and whatever other Indian states there are that I don’t know about – playing the same practical joke on various dim-witted Indians?  Step 1: Spot a guy with a cell phone.  Step 2:  Give him a tusk-y smile.  Step 3: CRUSH! (and for the soundtrack, it’s the obvious choice: “Baby Elephant Walk”)

And, scene.

 

Exhibit C: Speaking of famous Indians in the news…

No.  This is not another Liz Warren story.  That would be too easy.

This is an Apu story.  As in Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian character on the Simpsons.  In yet another example of how the humorless, perpetually offended left is doing their damnedest to rob all life everywhere of its joy, some moron didn’t just object to Apu.  He spent a year of his life making a documentary about how offended he is by Apu.

This alleged comedian whom you’ve never heard of called his documentary, “The Problem with Apu.”  The “problem” is exactly what you’d guess: humor based on the ethnicity of a character – even a cartoon character – is offensive and terrible and a hate crime, you European-American creeps.

Now, you might be thinking that if we have to go to a broadly-written character in a well-intentioned cartoon to find a serious problem, we are officially out of problems.   And you’re right.

In a sane world, this bonehead would be laughed at and then ignored and forgotten.  But not in our world.  In our world, the actor who voices Apu – Hank Azaria — has taken this dope seriously.  He apologized to the Indian and south Asian people, and offered to stop doing Apu.

What a relief it is to know that the Simpsons will no longer feature a hurtful stereotype of a character that some hyper-sensitive group could object to!

I mean, other than angry Scottish Groundskeeper Willie.  And oily Italian mafia character Fat Tony.  And slack-jawed yokel and Appalachian-American Cletus. And drunken womanizing Irishman Mayor Quimby.

Come to think of it, the cops on the show are all incompetent boobs, and the teachers are all lazy, burned-out clock punchers, and those groups both have unions that should be contacting Fox any minute.  And Mr. Burns is a heartless, greedy 1%er, and Barney has a serious alcohol problem that is played for laughs, and Nelson’s single mom might be a drunken hooker.  Flanders and the Reverend Lovejoy make Christians look stupid, and Grandpa Simpson is mocked for his age and incipient dementia.

Homer is a working class idiot, and Bart’s juvenile delinquency and troubles in school are no laughing matter in a nation where young boys are falling behind girls in every significant social category.  And I suppose we are to believe that all comic book fans are obese, sexless nerds like Comic Book Guy?  (Worst. Stereotyping. Ever.)

If the makers of the Simpsons keep caving to these humorless social justice warriors, they’ll have no characters left except Lisa and Maggie.

Wait: Maggie is a voiceless female, the most potent symbol of patriarchal oppression there is, so she’s out.  And Lisa plays blues and jazz on her sax – be gone, culture appropriator!

Ugh.  I hope the maker of this stupid documentary agrees to sign autographs and take fan pictures after one of his speaking engagements, and finds himself posing with one arm around an injured bear and the other around a smiling elephant.  Then let nature take its course!

 

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For those of you who like short fiction, I’ve posted another short story called “Dancing About Architecture” on my site,  Martinsimpsonwriting.com.   Full disclosure: it’s a magical realism piece, with no political snark or Liz Warren mockery, so proceed at your own risk.  If you like it, let me know.  If you don’t, keep it to yourself, bub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As we approach the end of another month, I expected to be writing another “best of the month” piece. But it turns out that the theme of April has been the continuing cavalcade of idiots in public life. So here’s the third consecutive installment:

Exhibit A: Comey Comey Comey Comey Comey Chameleon. (now try getting that terrible song out of your head.)
Watched the Bret Baier interview with Comey, and I agree with the consensus here: if it were a fight, they’d have stopped it. I think the thing that shocks me the most about the whole sordid Comey mess, though, is what a sterling reputation that goof had before 2016 or so. When he first rose to prominence, all you heard in the MSM and on both sides of the aisle were his impeccable credentials, what a straight shooter he was, etc. And now he’s revealed to be a sleazy, unethical, smarmy, partisan creep.
To call him an empty suit would be an insult to all of the fine Mannequin-Americans who are doing yeoman’s work in store-front windows all over this great nation.
I can’t think of another public figure who has had such a dizzying fall from grace. Most scandalized people recently seem to be those who already looked shady from the get-go. Was anyone surprised when it came out that Anthony Weiner was a perv, or that John Edwards was the kind of guy who would impregnate a mistress while his wife was dying of cancer, or that Bill Clinton was playing hide the cigar with an intern, or that Trump had a one-nighter with a porn star? Or that the Mooch was the kind of guy who would have a nickname like “the Mooch?”
But Comey looked the part of an FBI director, and had a superficially sober-minded gravitas thing going for him, so it was a shock to see the real him.
On second thought, Bill Cosby might have fallen as far as Comey. And it’s a sad state of affairs when the best I can say about the former head of the FBI is that, “At least he didn’t drug and rape any actresses. That we know of.”
Still, the Comey story did give me one of my favorite Trump tweet lines: “It was my great honor to fire James Comey.” Part of the reason I love that so much is that I can’t imagine another president ever writing it. Usually when I say that about one of Trump’s tweets, it doesn’t reflect well on Trump… but not this time!

Exhibit B: From England — British kids are morons too.
Just when I was beginning to despair about the state of American youth, I came across a cheerful story in the UK Telegraph, which reports that schools across that nation are going to digital clocks in exam rooms, because so many of the high-school-level students can’t tell the time using an analog clock. Or as we called them, “clocks.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
My first thought was, Good! If you can’t tell the time on a clock, you should automatically fail any test you are taking. What’s next? Students who can’t read an analog calendar all freezing to death because they went outside in December wearing shorts and flip flops? People who can’t read analog ballots accidentally electing Nancy Pelosi fourteen times in a row? People who can’t read analog books descending into illiteracy?
Oh, wait.
Of course the temptation for me is to come across as Ol’ Pops Simpson, who can’t relate to young people. Why, these kids today don’t know how lucky they are to even have analog clocks. In my day, we used sundials, and talk about stress: half-way through finals week the sky could get overcast, and the next thing you know you’ve lost track of time, and the teacher snatches away your papyrus and quill pen, and you’ve flunked calculus. Which was already difficult enough, on account of its only having been invented the previous February.
But I am trying to resist that temptation. I mean, if you grew up with only digital clocks, I guess an old-fashioned clock face could be a little intimidating.
But then I made the mistake of reading to the end of the article, where I came across this additional complaint: a senior pediatric doctor warns that technology usage may be rendering British louts unable to hold a pencil or pen. I would now like to quote Sally Payne – a real person who I am not making up – who is the head pediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust, whatever that is, on the subject of kids who are increasingly unable to hold writing implements:
“To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers. It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them (sic) to do muscle-building play…. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”
That’s an enormous hurdle for youth to overcome? The basic skills required to hold a pencil?!
Not too many generations ago, English teenagers were using their fine motor control to shod horses and harvest wheat with scythes. (And not those new-fangled digital scythes, either – analog scythes!) A few generations later they were using their dexterous fingers to put on gas masks while simultaneously raking charging Germans with machine gun fire. A generation later they were working on the foundation skills to dive a Spitfire into a bomber formation and shoot down some Heinkels and Messerschmitts.
And now they’re struggling to hold a pencil?
After about 30 seconds’ thought, I realized that as bad as things are, they’re not THAT bad. Most teenage girls I know can type 120 words a minute with only their thumbs, a feat of dexterity that far exceeds the difficulty level of managing not to stab yourself in the eye with a pencil.
And teenage boys?
Let me put it this way. I can only vaguely remember when my buddies and I were teenagers. But if I’m not mistaken, all of us had already demonstrated a world-class ability to handle cylindrical objects with dexterity, strength, and control of the fine muscles in our fingers like nobody’s business. Somehow I doubt that technological advances – I’m looking at you, internet porn – has degraded that fine muscle control in our youngsters today. Quite the opposite, if I were forced to guess.
Still, my first official act upon becoming Education Czar would be to issue a ruling: if you can’t read a clock, you can’t take high school exams. So let it be written; so let it be done. (For some reason I picture myself on an Education Czar throne, and wearing an Egyptian headdress. And yes, my forthcoming Education Czar-dom will require me to hold both an orb and a scepter, thanks for asking.)

Exhibit C: GQ Punches Up
In a recent click-bait article, GQ magazine listed 21 supposedly great books that you actually don’t have to read. By far the most attention-getting choice was the Bible, which provoked a lot of people who probably should know better. Even if you’re not religious, the Bible is obviously a foundational document, without which no one can fully understand Western civilization and history, and putting it on this list is the act of an attention-seeking dunce.
Some of the other claims in the article strike me as more or less fair game, especially given the subjectivity of everyone’s literary tastes: I didn’t enjoy The Old Man and the Sea either, Gravity’s Rainbow and Blood Meridian are both impressive but not worth the effort, Slaughterhouse-Five is wildly over-rated.
But in addition to the ridiculous call on the Bible, the article is fatally flawed for other reasons as well. It disses Lord of the Rings and Dracula, and suggests replacing Catcher in the Rye with a tale of an adult lesbian seducing a teenage girl. The list demonstrates the same PC blindness in other selections, bashing masculinity in Lonesome Dove and Hemingway, and racism everywhere.
Two separate writers denigrate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and on the dumbest of grounds: Twain is a racist, and it’s full of the n-word.
Yes, the n-word is offensive, and it can make for some awkwardness in the classroom when teaching Huck Finn. But I don’t think we made a huge step forward when we replaced, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” with “Sticks and stones constitute aggravated assault, but words are AGHH! AGHH! KEEP YOUR HATE SPEECH OFF MY CAMPUS!!”
And it’s really staggering that any sentient person can read that book – which argues for the fundamental, existential worth and equality of blacks and whites – and come away calling it racist.
Overall, in this time of illiterate teens who can’t master the pencil or tell time, do we really need an article discouraging the reading of some great (but in some cases over-rated or dated) books?
Exhibit D: Liz Warren gets hoisted on her own totem pole.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t much care for Elizabeth Warren. So I was delighted to see how Mick Mulvaney has been outmaneuvering her lately. Mulvaney – and if ever a name screamed out, “Let’s go have a beer!” it’s Mick freaking Mulvaney — is now the head of the useless, vestigial tail of an agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This terrible waste of taxpayers’ money was created by the equally terrible Dodd-Frank law. (Chris Dodd used to create “waitress sandwiches” with Ted Kennedy – Google that, if you’ve got a strong stomach – and Barney Frank kept a gay lover who used his DC townhouse as a gay brothel which Barney supposedly knew nothing about. So you know that any law named after those two gems just has to be great!) It was created over the objections of conservatives, and with the enthusiastic support of Squanto Warren, when Obama was in office and busily fixing everything wrong with the world.
Fast forward a few years, and Trump is the president, and he appoints CFPB critic Mulvaney as its head, with the goal of curtailing its powers. (Although why they don’t just close it down is beyond me.) Now Warren is on the warpath (HA!) about one thing or another, and she submits a list of 105 questions to the Mickster, demanding quick and complete answers.
And Mulvaney responds with the most beautifully ironic karmic arse-whupping since a certain future president (CAW CAW CAW) discovered that a complete lack of character was her Achilles’ Cankle in November of 2016.
According to a recent story in the Washington Examiner, he told Senator Forked Tongue that he did not plan to respond to her questions, and that it was her fault that he is not required to answer, because the structure of her pet agency “shields him from accountability.”
Then – in what might be my favorite words ever uttered by a politician –
“I encourage you to consider the possibility that the frustration you are experiencing now, and that which I had a few years back, are both inevitable consequences of the fact that the Dodd-Frank… Act insulates the Bureau from virtually any accountability to the American people through their elected representatives.”
Then he dropped the mic, put on a pair of shades and stuck a giant blunt in the corner of mouth, in a real-life recreation of that “Thug Life” meme that all of the kids seem to enjoy.
The only way his response could have been better would have been to end it with the words, “So put that in your peace pipe and smoke it!”
Say it with me, kids: We must never stop mocking her.

In last weeks’ column, I took as my thesis the idea that people are idiots.  Guess what?  Over the past week, people didn’t get any smarter.  So consider this Part 2 (of a potential 5,000-part series) on the same topic.

Exhibit A, in the “Public Transport” division: boneheads who have convinced themselves and the airlines that they require an “emotional support” animal to accompany them to whatever destination they are traveling to.

And before I get going on the details, trust me: these folks are not flying to the International Symposium on Particle Physics convention, or Mensa-fest 2018, or the Simpson Family Reunion.  No. They are going to the Women’s March, or the Democratic National Convention, or the David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg fan club meeting at the Hilton by the airport.

Anyway, as most disastrous trends in our recent history, this one started out with good intentions.  Blind or physically disabled people needed the help of a smart, well-trained seeing-eye dog, so they were given permission to travel with their dogs.  (FYI, Cassie “the Wonder Dog” Simpson briefly considered a career in the helping professions – assisting the blind, or sniffing out drugs carried by criminals, or giving a vicious and well-deserved mauling to this nation’s enemies as a military dog – before settling on a lucrative position as my faithful companion.)  But immediately after the tiny number of people who legitimately needed a dog to travel with them got that permission, a horde of grifters and ne’er-do-wells and narcissistic scam artists followed hard on their heels.

Seeing-eye dogs were followed by support dogs and then by other support species.  Which was already a bridge too far.  I mean, how much support can your reasonably get from a cat, for crying out loud?  I love cats, my family loves cats, we’ve got several.  But no cat is ever going to pull a handi-capable senior citizen from a burning house, or run-down a fleeing Democrat voter with an armful of stolen loot, or sprint back to town to alert the police that Jimmy has fallen down the well.

Anyway, allowing other support species then devolved into perhaps the best indicator of modern American moral degeneration: the “emotional support animal.”  Ugh.  With 10 minutes of internet searching you can find stories about lost souls traveling with pigs, peacocks and monkeys, all of whom are supposed to be giving vital emotional “support.”   If you can stand to learn more about this, read a recent Dallas News article on efforts of several airlines to curb the explosion of support menageries tromping onto every flight and turning them into a demented Noah’s Ark with spotty wifi.

I’ll mention just one specific example.  A 39-year-old Kentucky resident named Carla Fitzgerald has recently traveled on multiple flights with her emotional support Indian Runner duck, which she named Daniel Turducken Stinkerbutt.

Where do I start with that?  First, the only acceptable animal middle name is obviously  “the Wonder Dog.”  Second, that name you stuck one of God’s innocent creatures with is not cute – it’s really, really stupid.  Other ducks are mocking your duck, and if he could get out of your clammy grasp, he’d gladly launch himself into the airplane’s jet turbines just to end his shame.

When I first read that story, I came to the detail that Fitzgerald was allowed to travel with her mortified duck because she had PTSD.  For the briefest of seconds, I thought, “Ah, geez, if she’s a combat veteran, I don’t know if I can savagely mock her…”  But then I read on: “…PTSD from a carriage accident years ago.”

A carriage accident?  What the hell?   Is this woman an upper-class 18^th century lady whose vehicle suffered a broken wooden axle on the rutted path between Boston and Philadelphia?  Was she taking a romantic horse-drawn ride around Central Park after Kramer had fed the horse something that made it gassy?

And her “accident” took place “years ago?”  What’s the statute of limitations on carriage-accident-related trauma?   Forty years ago I saw a Benny Hill skit where he dressed up like a highwayman and robbed a stage coach, leaving the female riders in only their 1970s-style underwear and garters, for some reason.   Do I still get to drag my three-named platypus through first-class to an aisle seat in coach?

By the way, this might have to be a topic for a future column: the mission creep that has come to surround PTSD.  If you ran over an IED outside of Kandahar, or were raped by the kind of animal that Lil’ Mike Dukakis gave weekend prison passes to, you legitimately have PTSD, and God bless you.  If you had a bad experience in a spelling bee in 3^rd grade, or someone called you the wrong pronoun, or you still can’t leave the house after the 2016 election, you don’t have PTSD.  You have TWS (terminal wussiness syndrome), and need some SKA (swift kick in the arse) therapy immediately.

I know this is a hard issue for the emotionally mature, well-adjusted readership of CO nation to identify with.  None of you reading this can likely imagine a circumstance in which you would ever find yourself calling Customer Support at Delta and saying the words, “Can I bring my therapeutic ocelot on Flight 3245 to Newark?”

Why not just walk up and down an airport concourse wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, “I have no pride, dignity or value to society.  Please commit me to an institution where I can get the electroshock therapy that I so desperately need.”

Or, alternatively, you could just listen to me, as the entire world should: if you are too emotionally fragile to travel in public without your support macaque, please stay home and work on your issues.

 

Exhibit B, in the “International Division,” comes from France, where a hard-working business owner fell afoul of the local socialist labor laws.  During the summer tourist season, the owner of a small French bakery made fresh bread 7 days a week.   “Good for him,” you’re probably saying.

But that’s because you’re an American — who appreciates the free market and individual initiative and a strong work ethic — rather than a leftist French poke-nose bureaucrat who is congenitally unable to mind your own business.

Since the local laws forbid anyone – even business owners working in their own freaking business – from working 7 days a week, the local gallic Bernie Sanderses fined the baker the equivalent of $3600.  For working. too. hard.

It’s hard to imagine a more perverse disincentive to the kind of behavior that any sane nation would want for their citizens.   What can the end result of that kind of world view possibly be?

I’ll tell you: German soldiers sauntering down the Champs Elysees, angry antisemitic Middle Eastern immigrants taking over your suburbs and victimizing Jews and other natives, and the flight of every ambitious French man and woman to countries that have enough on their plate that they won’t bother themselves to be sure that nobody is working too hard!

 

Exhibit C.  In the “academic all-star” division, we have Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar, whom a recent Daily Wire story reports had a unique reaction to the death of former first lady Barbara Bush.  (You can Google the story and see a picture of Ms. Randa.  If you don’t want to do go to that much trouble, or if you value your eyesight: think a much less attractive Carmen Miranda who has REALLY let herself go.)

Barbara Bush was a pretty uncontroversial first lady.  Unlike other recent first ladies I could mention – scowling wookie, and CAW, CAW, CAW! – she was not an abrasive attention-seeker.  She married a guy who became president and raised another president, and unlike other recent presidents I could name – “You didn’t build that.” And “Step into the oval office and I’ll show you a neat trick with a cigar” – both of them did a respectable job.  She seemed like a no-nonsense person, and decent people around the world respectfully took note of her passing.

Not Randa Jarrar, who is described as “an award-winning novelist” (I’ll bet), and “executive director of RAWI, the “Radius of Arab American Writers.”   By the way, what is “Radius” doing in this group’s title, as opposed to in a Geometry textbook, irritating our children, as it’s supposed to be?  (And any group headed by Jarrar should probably have “circumference” rather than “radius” in its title.) (That’s right, a geometry/body mocking joke!  Don’t tell me that I didn’t get anything out of Finite Math class.)(Though, now that I think about it, that joke is absolutely all I got out of Finite Math class.)

Also, while I’m at it, I don’t know if Randa’s group really understands how acronyms are supposed to work.   Because “Radius of Arab American Writers” would form the acronym “RAAW.”  Whereas “RAWI” might refer to “Random Assortment of Worthless Idiots,” for example.   Or “Reprehensible A**load of Windbag Imbeciles.” Or even, “Repulsive Academic Wretches Incorporated.”  And you wouldn’t even have to change the stationery, Kareem abdul Jarrar!  You’re welcome.

Anyway, here are some quotes from tweets written by Repugnant Randa on the passing of a former first lady who never did anything to her: “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F**k outta here with your nice words.” And “PSA: either you are against these pieces of s**t and their genocidal ways or you’re part of the problem. that’s actually how simple this is. I’m happy the witch is dead. can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeeee.”

You know what bothers me most about this nitwit’s tweets?  Not the illiteracy of them.  (Though, here’s a tip for Randa, if she is reading this, which she obviously is not:  We start the first word of an English sentence with a capital letter.  And “Iraqi” would also get a capital letter.  And saying “byyyeeeeee” makes you sound like a dimwitted 7^th grader.) (No offense, dim-witted 7^th graders.)  And not the black-hearted malice of them.

No, it’s what she said in a subsequent tweet, after she quite naturally got a lot of outraged blowback for her creepy comments: “sweetie i work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. i will never be fired.”  (“I” always gets capitalized.  And you need a comma after “sweetie,” which also should be capitalized.  And you had a pretty bad typo: you spelled “colossal douche” as “t-e-n-u-r-e-d p-r-o-f-e-s-s-o-r.”  You’re welcome again.)  She even had the gall to give her university president’s name and email address, daring her critics to contact him and complain about her.

The saddest thing is that she’s probably right – in modern academia, she’ll never be fired.  She’s a far left, hate-filled minority member, and thus unfire-able, unless she commits a triple homicide in front of a roomful of witnesses.  If you think I’m exaggerating, consider the case of Elizabeth Warren, a hate-filled leftist white lady with a mediocre mind who could not write or think her way out of a wet paper bag.  On the merits, she couldn’t have gotten a job as an adjunct at a third-rate school like Fresno state.  But stick a feathered warbonnet on her empty head and call her a Cherokee, and she gets a job and tenure at Harvard.  (#never stop mocking)

So, Randa is a vile person, and it seems cosmically unfair that she will not suffer any consequences for her evil tweets.  On the other hand, she has to go through life looking like that, and thinking like that, and listening to undergrads singing, “Help me Randa, help me transfer out of your class.” (My apologies to the Beach Boys, who did nothing to deserve any association with this hateful loon.)

And when she (finally) dies, she will not leave behind a husband and son who were presidents of the greatest country in the world, but only (I’m guessing) a couple of cats, who won’t even miss her.

Post Script: I drafted the bit on Randa Jarrar a couple of days ago.  But in the last day or two, there are rumblings that Jarrar might actually suffer some professional consequences for her hideous tweets.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but if it happens, I’ll be the first to congratulate the administration at Fresno State for taking action.

Now if we can just do something about the rest of academia…

My thesis today is that people are idiots.

No, wait.  Hear me out.  I mean, not me, obviously.  And not you, if you are a CO follower and thus a person of taste and class and impeccable table manners.

But pretty much everyone else.

Exhibit A.  Houston councilwoman Kellye Burke.  This upstanding citizen shares a last name with conservative genius of yesteryear Edmund Burke, so I’m predisposed to like her.  But it turns out that her last name is absolutely the only thing she shares with Burke.  For example, she spells her first name with a comically misplaced “e.”

Now maybe we shouldn’t judge her for that, because her parents might have stuck her with that spelling.  But she could have changed it.  “Kelly” is a fine name.  Kelly is the kind of girl who’s a lot of fun on a first date, and she smells nice, and she kisses you for just long enough when you’re dropping her off, and a few months later you take her home to meet mom and dad.

“Kellye,” on the other hand?  As soon as she gets off the main stage, she’ll be going to the Champagne Room, where you can buy her a watered-down drink for $47, followed by a lap dance during which she tells you how she is working her way through community college, and last fall she co-starred in a movie with Stormy Daniels.

Anyway, Kellye recently went into a little store called – I am not making this up – Tiny’s Milk and Cookies.  (I’m so hoping that “Tiny” is a good-natured 300+ pounder who gets a kick out of his/her ironic nickname, and I’d bet you that that place has some darn good cookies, which Tiny has perfected after long, exhaustive process of trial and error and taste-testing.)

At Tiny’s, Kellye sees four teenage girls, who are in line waiting – again, not making this up – to buy cookies for their church group.  Of course, they were wearing Antifa and “I’m With Her” t-shirts.

HA!  I kid.

One of the girls was wearing a Trump “Make America Great Again” t-shirt.

So naturally, “Wrong E” Kellye did what any mentally stable, enlightened leftist adult would do.   She walked up to them and screamed, “Grab them by the p—sy, girls!”  The girls were startled, and tried to laugh it off, but, “Nevertheless, she persisted!”  (Get it?  There’s the required Elizabeth Warren reference.  NSM) (i.e. Never Stop Mocking.)

Then, according to one of the girls’ fathers, “She yells it again.  At that point the girls were getting kind of scared, and then the woman starts going, ‘MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!’ while shaking her fist.”

Someone in the shop reported the woman to the cops, and when they investigated and cited her, they found out that she was a city councilwoman.  She was charged with a Class C Misdemeanor.

I think I know what the “C” stands for.

 

Exhibit B.   In 2016, Londoners elected a Labor Party angry Muslim guy as their mayor, and that is working out just great.

Sadiq “no one ever calls him sa-Richard” Khan (cue the Star Trek 2 Shatner meme, “KHAN!!!”) has been doing a bang up job, as the English say.  (Or at least, as they used to say, along with “pip pip” and “cheerio.”  Now, they mostly say, “Allahu akbar!”)

KHAN! ran on stopping such racist crime-fighting tactics as stop-and-search, has advocated trying to ban anti-Islamic comments on the internet, and has been feuding with Trump.  Fortunately, everything in London is so tickety-boo (as the English used to say), that he has plenty of time to devote to such pursuits.

Oh, wait.  Upon further review, it turns out that there have been a few bumps in the road for London, if by “bumps in the road” you mean “vicious terrorist attacks.”  Last March 22^nd, for example, a British citizen drove through a bunch of pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, injuring dozens, before jumping out and stabbing everyone within stabbing range, until a cop shot him dead.  When reached for comment, David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg said, “Why should British police have guns?  They’ve got blood on their hands!”

Yes, they do, Davy.  And also on the bridge, and spattered on lots of civilians.  But that’s mostly from the vehicular homicide and the stabbing.

On June 4th, a couple of Brits carried out a terrorist attack at London Bridge, until they too were shot dead.  Their names were something like Philip and Nigel.  What’s that?  Oh – actually, their names were Khuram and Rachid.  And the stabby guy in March was named Khalid.

Ah, what’s the difference? You say “tomato,” I say, “Muhammad.”

Anyway, it finally came to KHAN!’s attention that in February and March, for the first time in history, London had more murders than New York City did.

“See!” said Kewpie Hitler.  “What do you expect, when it’s so easy for Londoners to get hold of assault weapons, and AR-15s, and high capacity magazines?”

Alas, despite all of the life experience a snotty 17-year-old can bring to the table, it turns out that the vast majority of the London murders have been done with… wait for it… knives.

That’s right, the ever-quickening arms race has produced the latest in lethal technology ravaging our cities: the sharp piece of metal.

If only we’d stopped inventing things after fire, the wheel, and irrigation!  But no, we just had to have a Bronze Age, didn’t we?  Oh, the humanity.

Well, at least Khan has to know that since London is essentially gun-free, it’s obviously not the weapon that is the prob—

What’s that?  He’s instituted a policy of extreme knife control?  Really?  Now you can’t carry a knife in London?

Take that, chefs and drywall installers and fishmarket workers and rope salesmen!

Though it’s only April, I’d like to get in an early bid on the end-of-year predictions for next year:  “Wave of blunt-object clubbing attacks ravages London in 2019 – only common thread in the attackers is that they are not clean-shaven, or named either Benedict or Cumberbatch.”

 

Exhibit C.

On the other hand, maybe I’m being too hasty in condemning KHAN!

Because on Friday, April 6^th, in Pittsburgh, a woman had cooked supper for a swell guy named Shannon Lynch.  And then Shannon stabbed her with a steak knife.

I know what you’re thinking: what did she do to provoke him?  Maybe she had it coming.  She could have been wearing a MAGA hat or something, and thus needed a good stabbin’.

But no.  It turns out that Shannon Lynch stabbed her because he – and I quote – “objected to the texture of his steak.”

And that, boys and girls, is why there’s a lot of turnover in the kitchen of steak houses in the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area.

Sadiq, you might be on to something.

Okay, I won’t lie: the trend in our national politics is veering toward the depressing.  It’s looking more and more likely that a blue wave is going to hit in November, returning the majority leader’s gavel into the shaky, dessicated hands of evil Alzheimic mummy Nancy Pelosi.  Paul Ryan is leaving (a less-than-catastrophic loss, but a loss nonetheless), Trey Gowdy is retiring (a disastrous loss), while Dick “no one ever calls him Richard” Durbin and Mad Maxine Waters and Frederica “Cowboy Pimp Hat” Wilson and hundreds of other horrible leftist pols aren’t going anywhere.  Plus re-roofing a cool 1930s house is too damned expensive.  (Maybe that last one just applies to me.)

On the other hand, Cautious Optimism followers have rocketed past 10K, 11k, 12k and then 13K, I’ve still got a world-class family, my dog is still a paragon of canine virtue, and creepy leftists who need mocking are everywhere, so I’ve got Work That Matters to do.

First up this time: it seems that the latest hereditary evil Middle East dictator was featured in a story in the NY Post, entitled, “Assad and the First Lady of Hell Live Life of Luxury as War Rages.”

The gist of the story is that Mr. and Mrs. Assad have been doing what dictators do: living it up while their people suffer.  It mentions that their mansion – built by alleged Japanese architect Kenzo Tange – is rumored to have cost $1 billion dollars.   (Meanwhile, my renovation of the house we are moving into is threatening to cost only slightly less than that.) (Also, if you’re at a restaurant where you trust the chef, I recommend the puffer fish, with a side of Kenzo Tange.)

I only have a few things to say about this story.   First, nice job, Middle East, on another vile dictatorship that still somehow doesn’t offend leftist sensibilities as much as scrappy, democratic little Israel.  Second, if I weren’t too mature to stoop to mocking someone’s appearance, I would point out that Assad’s head is the shape of a perfect upside-down triangle, and he apparently donated his chin for a transplant operation for Mitch McConnell.  (The transplant obviously didn’t take.)

Third, the article claims that Assad’s British-born wife has been dubbed “The First Lady of Hell.”  Hillary Clinton’s lawyers were on the phone immediately, threatening a trademark violation suit, until they heard back from Assad’s lawyers.   “Ohhhh, it’s “OF Hell,” not “FROM Hell?  Nevermind.”

 

Speaking of unpleasant former first ladies, on April 5^th Michelle O was at it again, when she spoke to a women’s leadership conference in Boston. (By the way, no women’s leadership conference that has Michelle O and not Nikki Haley is worth attending).  Among her brilliant comments:  she compared the Obama administration to the experience of “having the ‘good parents’ at home…. The responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time.”  Unsurprisingly, she compared the Obama greatness to the Trump Mordor-ishness: “And now we have the other parent.  We thought it’d feel fun – maybe it feels fun for now, because we can eat candy all day and stay up late and not follow the rules.”

What can one say about that?  When you think of the Obama administration, does anyone think of a slavish obsession with “following the rules?”  (Rules like, “Don’t use the IRS against political opponents,” or, “Don’t be a racial arsonist,” or “Don’t lie about everything all the time,” or, “Don’t appoint horrible leftist mediocrities as attorneys general and secretaries of state?”)  I think it’s indicative of arrogant leftist condescension that she thinks of the American people as children who need the wise guidance of know-it-all political parents in the first place.

But even taking her pols-as-parents analogy, it doesn’t pass the smell test.  I wouldn’t argue that Trump has exactly been “Father Know’s Best” era Ward Cleaver.  But at least he hasn’t been an Obama-era America-hating Ward Churchill.  (That’s right, a trenchant dual Ward reference.  You won’t get that at the Huffington Post!)

And if the Obama administration had been parents, they’d be the kind of parents who taught their kids that Dr. Suess is racist, and America is terrible, and tofu is delicious.  They’d forbid their son from playing with any toys that he’d like, and make him wear a dress, because gender doesn’t exist, and if their daughter had a doll, they’d take it away, because motherhood is slavery.  And if either of their kids built a sandcastle they’d kick it over and lecture them about unfairness because, “you didn’t build that.”  And all of the books in the house would be written by either Noam Chomsky or Saul Alinsky, and all of the videos would be Michael Moore “documentaries,” and they’d only take their kids to church if a racist creep like Jeremiah Wright was preaching.

Then, after a tasteless vegan supper and a crackpot lecture about the NRA and racism, they’d give their kids each a pair of scissors and tell them to go out into the street during an eclipse, and then run with the scissors while looking directly into the sun instead of looking both ways before they cross the street.  (And, scene.)

 

Next, on the topic of famous leftists behaving badly and never paying a price for it, I give you… all of them!

I kid.  Actually, let’s talk about Ted Kennedy.   After decades of drunken, lecherous behavior, conspiring with Russian commies to try to undermine Reagan, plus killing a young woman, when he gets to the end of his life, the MSM celebrates him as the “Lion of the Senate.”  First, because “The Perpetually Inebriated Dirigible of the Senate” just doesn’t have that ring to it.

Also, lion?  Really?  The King of the Jungle?  I could buy, “The Skink of the Senate,” or maybe the “Remora of the Senate.”  But Lion?  That’s way too cool of an animal to besmirch with a Kennedy comparison.  “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” is a favorite book.  “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is not a bad novelty song.  The “Lion of Judah” is a bad ass Hebrew tribal reference and metaphorical title for Christ. “The Lion in Winter” is a solid play and movie.  (And by the way, hat tip to Lloyd Billingsley, who wrote an article about Kennedy on the American Greatness website called, “The Lion in Water.”  HA!)

But Ted Kennedy doesn’t deserve association with any lion, except maybe The Cowardly Lion.  I could see ol’ Teddy – four beers into a seven beer dinner – reciting the lines from the Wizard of Oz:  “Who put the ape in the apricot?  What makes the Hottentots so hot?  Whadda they got that I ain’t got?  Courage.”  (Close your eyes and imagine those lines delivered in his New England braying, while he’s soaking wet and swaying back and forth.) (Also, if those lines aren’t better than any rap lyrics written in the last decade, I’ll eat my metaphorical hat.)

Which is all to say… I saw Chappaquiddick over the weekend.  Well-acted, well written, infuriating to watch.  It brings back decades of sycophantic press coverage.  I was reminded especially of the creepy article by Boston Globe’s Charles Pierce in a 2003 profile on Ted.  Pierce tiptoes around Kennedy’s bad behavior with sentences like, “It might not have mattered to anyone, the fistfight outside the Manhattan saloon, the foozling with waitresses in Washington restaurants…”

What the hell is “foozling,” other than a goofy-sounding word you make up to take the sting out of more accurate words, like “harassment” or “sexual assault?”  It’s a word Cosby would use when he was scatting over the open to a sitcom, or maybe when he is faking diminished capacity during a civil trial.  (“Your honor, who among us hasn’t foozled around a little from time to time?  But I swear I never foozled with her drink.”)

Later, Pierce bemoans how the Mary Jo story is “always there” to haunt poor Ted.   “She denies to him forever the moral credibility that lay behind not merely all those rhetorical thunderclaps that came so easily in the New Frontier but also Robert Kennedy’s anguished appeals to the country’s better angels.”  Look at that syntax: SHE denies HIM moral credibility! How dare she!

The article ends with one of the most egregious leftist quotes ever:  “If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age….”   Yeah.  If only he hadn’t KILLED HER, she’d probably still be voting for him.

In fact, knowing what I know about voting practices in Democrat areas, I think someone should check to be sure that she didn’t continue to vote for him, long after she was buried.

 

Finally, in the wake of my aunt’s passing last month, her son has been going through the house, and finding old Simpson photos.  I’ve just posted one of them on Martinsimpsonwriting.com.

If you’ve ever wanted to see a future snarkster as a kid, check out that pic: Dad’s got the Ron Swanson-approved flattop, mom’s rocking the cat’s eye glasses that were all the rage among 28-year-old women who wanted to look like 62-year-old schoolmarms, my spoiled sister has a smile as big as her head.  And then there’s me, in a tasteful v-neck sweater that foreshadowed the dapper lady killer I would one day become.

Why am I smiling so hugely?  Because I was growing up in the best country ever, and God was in His heaven, and somehow I knew that that very day, in Oklahoma, a young Elizabeth Warren was picking out a squaw outfit for her class’s Thanksgiving play, foreshadowing the lifetime of richly-deserved mockery that I would one day be blessed to heap upon her (#wemustneverstopmockingher).