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I’ve been working about 12 hours a day since this month started, and I fell out of the current events loop a bit.  I’ve got a couple of old, restored rental houses in a college town, and this is the hectic time of year when the tenants turn over, and I turn from trying to fix the world through the magic of sarcastic mockery, to trying to fix the damage to a two-story Craftsman left by marauding undergrads.

I even spent less time reading Cautious Optimism than usual, which is obviously a sign of a life in danger of going off the rails.  So over the last two evenings I caught up on CO and some of my other favorite media sources.

And now I feel like I may still be feeling the effects of a Percocet hangover.  Has everyone lost their freaking minds?

Of course, one place where they have not is at CO.  CO himself continues his unerring streak of picking All-Star CO Follower of the Month selections with Don Deere.  Laura Belveal introduces me to the story of an amazing woman I’d never heard of named Temple Grandin.  (It’s a sign of our society’s decay that you can find a million people who know Lena Dunham for every one person who knows Grandin.)  And the site continues to enlighten and entertain, through the story selection and the sparkling commentary.

But the rest of the world?  Bah!

There were so many odd stories that it was hard to pick just a couple:

• Google bloviates about how much they value diversity, and welcome all sorts of divergent viewpoints. Then they fire a guy because he expressed a divergent viewpoint.
• The MSM keep up their 0-for-August accuracy record by smearing the Google guy’s memo without quoting any of it. In fact, their claims about his memo are Schumerian in their dishonesty.  They claim that he is against diversity.  (Quote from the memo, “I value diversity.”)  They claim that he says women aren’t biologically capable of succeeding in tech jobs.  (Quote from the memo: “I am not saying that women are biologically incapable of succeeding in tech jobs.”) etc.
• A German newspaper reports that the German military is now actively recruiting transgendered people and disabled people as soldiers. Now I know that Germany has a little bad karma to work through, military-history-wise.  But no matter what happened in the past, can any conceivably rational solution possibly involve fielding a Panzer division headed up by Caitlyn Hawking-Rommel?

(Okay.  I know that at this point, Caitlyn jokes are low-hanging fruit.  And Stephen Hawking is a pretty prominent disabled celebrity.  And folks who know their WWII German generals will recognize the name of the Desert Fox.  But I ask you, how many website columns have you read that have pulled off that rare reference trifecta in one joke?  Normally I would hesitate to call myself a hero, but…)

Anyway, here’s a round-up of other odd stories that fascinated yet repelled me in the last 10 days or so:

1.Al Gore is apparently still alive.  And he’s made a horrible sequel to his horrible, error-filled An Inconvenient Truth.   And it made $47 in it’s opening weekend.  And in an interview, he suggested that Trump might not finish out his term for “ethical reasons.”

That’s Al Gore, ladies and gentlemen.  Talking about ethics.  The guy who preaches an austere lifestyle, and leaving a tiny carbon footprint, while he owns one of the biggest houses in Tennessee, which uses something like 30 times the electricity of the average American home; the guy who flies everywhere in private jets, and who sold his hideous tv channel to a company owned and funded by an oil-soaked Middle Eastern emir.

None of that keeps Gore up at night.  But Trump’s ethics do.

My faith in God is a little shaken, because He has not stricken Gore with an all-natural, gluten-free, eco-friendly lightning bolt.   I think Sodom and Gomorrah are owed an apology.

2. Royal Dutch Airlines (slogan: “We’re not just wooden shoes and open-air heroin markets. We have airplanes, too!”) decided that the best way to entice people to fly with them was to tout their hyper- extra- super-gay friendliness. So they created an ad that features three sets of rainbow-colored seatbelts.

On top – no offense – is a pair of what might be called “female” seatbelts.   (Those are the ones with the handle that you pull on to release the belt in case you’ve crashed into a rocky outcropping 7 miles from Denver at 350 mph and are now experiencing discomfort, and would like to exit the plane in an orderly manner.)

In the middle is a pair of what might be called “male” seatbelts.  (Those are the ones that you would usually shove into the “female” ones – no offense – until you hear a satisfying click.  Or a less satisfying click, if both of you are tired and your mother-in-law called with some advice during supper and your boss has been on your back at work and won’t those freaking kids ever shut up and go to sleep so I can concentrate on what I’m doing here?!)

On the bottom – no offense – is one “male” piece and one “female” piece.

The tag line: “It doesn’t matter who you click with.  Happy #Pride Amsterdam”

As many commentators pointed out, the flaw in the ad is so obvious that even Paul Krugman could spot it: only one set of those seatbelts actually work, and this ad undermines its point hilariously.

If the Cautious Optimist produced videos – and really, why doesn’t he? – this would be a prime candidate for a response ad.  Here’s the scenario:  The pilot announces that there is turbulence ahead, so he (or she – no offense) turns on the “fasten seatbelt” sign.   Everybody with heterosexual seat belts (no offense) snaps them on, and lives happily ever after.

Everybody with the “alternative lifestyle” seat belts rattles and pokes and bonks them together ineffectually, and then increasingly frantically, until the turbulence hits, throwing them all violently about the cabin, breaking limbs and fracturing T-3 vertebrae hither and yon.

Tag line: “Lufthansa.  We could not care less who you sleep with.  And our seatbelts work.”

3. Some guy named Jim Chambers owns a gym in Atlanta. And because he was once bench pressing 300 pounds when the bar broke, dropping many heavy weights onto his head, he scrawled a sign in his fine establishment expressing the idea that cops were not welcome there.

You know that Jim is a classy guy, because:

1. He hand-scrawls the signs in his windows.
2. He can’t express his hand-scrawled opinions without tastefully dropping in an F bomb.
3. He is a self-proclaimed “activist” who hates cops.

But the story gets better.  When local media heard about his “cops suck” stance and asked him whether he regretted it, he conferred with his p.r. team (i.e. a poster of Arnold from his “Pumping Iron” days, but with Bernie Sanders’ head taped over the Terminator’s – which he hears talking to him on a regular basis).  Then he says no.  He doesn’t like cops.  Plus, soldiers suck too, so no military veterans, either.

When I was doing the coursework for my Ph.D. in Public Relations, I learned that this tactic is called “steering into the scandal skid.”  The textbook example was Ted Kennedy right after Chappaquiddick; when a reporter asked him whether he’d been drinking before he drove off the bridge, he said, “Yes.  A lot.  But that cold water sobered me right up.  And then I left my date to drown.  Any more questions?”

Anyway, back to Jim Chambers.  Before you dismiss him as a bigot and a moron, consider his reasons: he claims that many of his clientele “are minorities, and not comfortable around cops,” and also that law enforcement “serves capitalism and white supremacy.”

Okay, NOW you can dismiss Chambers as a bigot and a moron.

He states that he doesn’t like capitalism… in an interview given in the for-profit business that he owns.  Plus, he is doing classic niche marketing: folks in his part of town belong to a demographic which tends not to like cops, so he caters to that dysfunctional and self-defeating attitude as a marketing strategy.

It’s like Louis Farrakhan and Gordon Gekko had a baby, and that baby was raised by Karl Marx, and then had heavy weights dropped on his head.  And then he opened a gym.

Proving once again that cops are better people than me, the Atlanta PD confirmed for the media that Chambers’ sign and attitude would not prevent them from responding if he ever calls the police.   Whereas I would respond too.   But by laughing, and laughing and laughing.  And then hanging up.

4. But just as I was contemplating giving up on the world, I saw this story: During a minor league baseball game, an autistic boy tried to get the attention of Tim Tebow, who was warming up on deck. Tebow saw him, and came over and shook his hand. (The kid was so happy that he ran back up to his parents in the stands, literally crying with joy.)  Then Tebow hit a 3-run home run.

The only way that story could have be sweeter would have been if the towering homer would have forced a low-flying Royal Dutch Airlines jet equipped with gay seat belts to make a crash landing into a Radisson ballroom, killing only two of the speakers – Al Gore and Jim Chambers — on a panel addressing the topic, “How the Police, White Supremacy and Capitalism are responsible for Global Warming.”

Since my last piece for CO, a lot has gone on around stately Simpson manor.  As our national political in-fighting has gone in a more frustrating, “a pox on both houses” kind of a direction, I’ve turned toward tending my own garden, metaphorically speaking.  I’ve done a few home maintenance projects, took the girls for a visit with their grandmother, etc.   And a few days ago, I went to an oral surgeon to have a troublesome molar removed.

By the way, for all of you CO readers out there who may be studying or practicing the black arts of dentistry, here’s a little advice.  When you are part way through the process of removing a pesky molar that has roots that somehow extend down into the lower abdomen, do NOT say, “This one is stubborn, so I’m going to cut the tooth in half and then remove it in pieces.”

That information helps no one.  Especially when the patient has a powerful imagination, so much so that – numbed though half of his jaw and face may be – he can imagine the vertical sawing through of the tooth, and the violent removal of jagged pieces with what must have been pliers and a very, very small jackhammer.

Anyway, long story short, I survived the kind of violent molar-cide that would have killed a lesser man.  And for 48 hours afterward, I had the pronounced jawline swelling that made my already excellent Godfather impression even more eerily accurate.  Though now that I think about it, the effect was more like Michael after that corrupt police captain punched him in the face, and he had to have his jaw wired shut.   (If you didn’t get those references, for shame.  Stop reading this and watch Godfathers I and II immediately.)

And now, thanks to the wonders of anesthetic and Percocet, I’d like to follow in the footsteps of one of my idols, Thomas Sowell, and present a few Random Thoughts:

First, a toast.  To the inventor of Percocet, who ranks behind only Jonas Salk, Les Paul and the inventor of scotch as a benefactor of mankind.  Hear hear, and well done, Frederick J. Percocet!

Second, a symbolic groin kick to the national GOP leadership.  In my last CO piece I offered 5 options to vote for the Hypocrite of the Year, a list that included such lowlife weirdos as CNN, a Florida woman who left her kid in a broiling car and then complained that the cop car she rode in was too hot, and the national Democrats.  And the mostly conservative and wise CO readership voted about 95% for you, the leaders of the GOP.

After years of pretending to want to repeal the freedom- and health-care-degrading disaster that is Obamacare, you’ve revealed your utter fecklessness.  (Seriously, you people are completely and utterly lacking in even the tiniest morsel of feck.)   And now most of you seem determined to achieve the worst of both worlds, by producing a non-repeal that keeps many of the worst features of O-care, and calling it a repeal.  When that monstrosity inevitably fails, the corrupt media will not point out that it was originally a leftist creation.  They’ll call it Trumpcare and use its failure as a way to smear you, and an excuse to move on to the wasteful morass of mediocrity and rationing that is national health care.

Speaking of which, can there ever be a better illustration of nationalized health care than the tragic Charlie Gard story?  I know that that kid was almost certainly going to die no matter what happened.  But his parents had hope, and they had raised enough money to take him to the states, where a competent doctor proposed a treatment that offered at least a chance of improvement.

But the arrogant health care bureaucrats at the British NHS would not let the parents take their own child out of the hospital to try to save or prolong his life.  Instead, they forced the parents to go through protracted court proceedings, arguing that they had a right to their child while that child’s life slowly slipped away.

Think about that.  The parents didn’t need money or anything else from the State.  They just wanted to take their own kid to another doctor who offered to treat him.  And they had to beg for that chance, while the State kept their son from them until it was too late.

And for everybody who mocked Sarah Palin for coining the phrase “death panels?” I hope that you will one day have a stubborn molar that needs to be removed, but that you end up in a NHS hospital that is running short of anesthetic and Percocet.  And that instead of having the stoicism and strength of ten men – like a certain writer for a great web page whom I could mention – you have the general wussiness and low pain threshold of a Cryin’ Chuck Schumer.

And when you cry out, “But you said that if I liked my Percocet, I could keep my Percocet!”  I’m just going to laugh at you.  And tell you that there’s a 3-month wait for Percocet.  But that you can have this pair of rusty pliers and tiny, tiny jackhammer if you’d like.

Finally, I’ve discovered the purest distillation of a certain kind of misanthropically deranged feminism that you’ll ever see.   Please google “Jody Allard,” and read her article called, “I’m Done Pretending Men are Safe (even my sons),” and prepared to be dazzled by her contemplative open-mindedness.   Allard is a feminist writing about how horrible men are (surprise, surprise), with the added twist of calling out her two young sons as potential rapists, too.

After first throwing her boys under the gender bus in an article for the Washington Post, she writes this follow-up article in which she reports that even though her sons are “good boys,” they aren’t “safe.”  In fact, she cluelessly shows that she’s not just a sexist, but a racist too, by proclaiming, “White people aren’t safe, and men aren’t safe, no matter how much I’d like to assure myself that these things aren’t true.”

The kindest compliment that she can manage is to say, “My sons won’t rape unconscious women behind a dumpster, and neither will most of the progressive men I know.”

Gee thanks, mom.  Love you too.

And by the way, you’re probably asking yourself, does that imply that non-progressive men will obviously be raping women behind dumpsters pretty much every weekend, and on alternating Tuesdays?

Yes.  Yes it does.

At one moment in her written Rohrschach test of a screed, Allard almost achieves a tiny flicker of self-awareness, but then fights it off:  “I love my sons, and I love some individual men. It pains me to say that I don’t feel emotionally safe with them, and perhaps never have with a man, but it needs to be said because far too often we are afraid to say it. This is not a reflection of something broken or damaged in me…”

NO, of course not!  You’re doing great, just the way you are.  You just keep doing you, and I’m sure your boys — Norman Bates Allard and Ted Bundy Allard — are going to turn out just fine.

Or maybe that’s just the Percocet talking.

Anyway, read the whole thing for yourself.  And then raise your kids in the exact opposite way that she is raising hers, and you’ll be fine.

The last election was so much fun that I thought it was time for another one.  This time, we’ll be voting on the “Hypocrite of the Year” award.  There are 5 worthy nominees, so pick up your ballots and put on your hip-waders.

Nominee 1 – Serena Williams, for criticizing McEnroe for suggesting that she couldn’t beat top male tennis players, four years after she admitted in a Letterman interview that she would be destroyed by a top male tennis player. (I wrote about this one in my last CO column.)  Serena gets a hypocrisy two-fer: She implies that she could defeat the best male players while having already admitted that that’s not the case, AND she pleads for privacy during her pregnancy while also doing a nude Vanity Fair cover photo in what appears to be her 14th gestational month.  (I might be speaking only for myself, but the last time I was trying to keep a low profile in my town, I arranged to have a nude photo of myself – holding the strategically placed trophy I won in Men’s Singles at Wimbledon in ’92 – on the front page of our local paper.  Now I feel like all of the women at the grocery store are undressing me with their eyes.  Needless to say, I’m horribly offended.  Won’t anyone please just give me my privacy?!  And my eyes are up here, thank you very much.  And yes, I have been working out lately.  Why do you ask?)

Nominee 2 – This nominee is a horrible mother.  And before you can guess, no, it’s not Hillary Clinton. (Though don’t get me wrong, she was a horrible mother, who enabled her creepy husband to victimize many people, and helped to create what appears to have been a miserable childhood for her daughter, who is now showing signs of the damage, in the sense that she seems to have become a bit of a creep herself.)

No, this mother is 30-year-old Floridian Colleen Walker, who left her 5-year-old son in a hot car for 30 minutes while she shopped in a Dollar General.  And I know what you’re thinking:

1.None of these geniuses who leave their kids or pets to broil in their cars are ever parked in front of a church, or a library, or an opera house or an art museum.  It’s always a strip club, or pawn shop, or a Dollar General.

2.What could possibly take 30 minutes to find in a Dollar General?   Did she get distracted while comparison shopping among several varieties of off-brand shampoo, expired medicine, and “beef” jerky (small print: “Contains no actual beef.”)?

Fortunately an alert bystander – and we really should be posting alert bystanders outside Dollar Generals for just this very purpose – noticed the 5-year-old crying, and police and firefighters intervened and got the kid out.  The temperature inside the car when they did so was 107 degrees Fahrenheit.  (That’s 210 Celsius, or the square root of 14 Kelvin for all I know, in case you’re a self-loathing metric-system-using Canadian or something.)

Anyway, the kid’s okay, and mom gets to take a ride in the back of a cop car.  On her way to the jail, she complains to the officer because …

Wait for it…

IT’S TOO HOT IN THE COP CAR!

If I were that cop, I’d make sure that my seat belt was on, and that her seat belt wasn’t, and then I’d drive into a cinderblock wall at 80 miles an hour.  Then, when I pulled her out of the car to see if she was okay, I would bounce her face against the hot concrete repeatedly, while whispering into her ear, “How’s the temperature of this concrete?  Just about right?”

And that’s why I washed out of the police academy in my first week.

(It had nothing at all to do with my nude photo on the cover of the Police Gazette, which accompanied my editorial protesting how little respect is given to the privacy of police cadets.  Those rumors are very hurtful.  And I’m super offended.)

Nominee 3 – National Democrat leaders, for whining that the GOP healthcare plan is being written behind closed doors, without any of the transparency and openness that they hold sacred.

You read that right, and once again I know what you’re thinking:  It seems like only a few short years ago those same Dems marched through an elaborate series of Maxwell Smart-style doors into a secret chamber carved deep into a mountain, sequestered themselves there for months, only to emerge and begin bribing every senator in sight, from Louisiana to Nebraska.  Then they showed us the cover of a 2000+ page bill and scheduled a Senate vote on it for Christmas eve.  (I’m not making that up.  They voted to destroy 1/6 of our economy.  On. Christmas.  Eve.)

Sure, they left about 4 hours for debate.  During which they filled the air of the capitol with a heavy, malodorous fog of lies and obfuscation, and then hammered down a few pitiful GOP objections.  And San Fran Nan said that we could learn what was in the bill AFTER it was passed.

At least I think that’s what she said.  After that much Botox, she always looks like the Tin Man to me, speaking through one pinched corner of her mouth.  She could have said, “Oil can,” for all I know.

But whatever she said, it came just before they rammed through the hilariously mis-named, “Affordable Care Act.”  (Do you remember the old joke about the Holy Roman Empire – it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire?  Well the ACA was not affordable, and it prevented people from getting any care.  But it was all an act, so I guess one out of three isn’t bad.)

And now those same Democrats are offended because the GOP’s attempt to replace the “Dumpster-Fire Train-Wreck Hindenberg New Coke Edsel Peace-in-our-Time Act” (Obamacare, for short) is NOT transparent enough.

Nominee 4 – Media goofs at CNN (new slogan: “Where weapons-grade ignorance meets bone-deep dishonesty!”) claimed that Trump re-tweeting the wrestling meme video is going to get journalists killed!  Killed, I tell’s ya!!!

And you know, they’ve got a point.  Because just last month a right-winger inspired by Trump went to a DC baseball field, and asked if the journalists playing there worked for CNN. When told that they did, he opened fire with a rifle, nearly killing—

Wait. What’s that you say?  That wasn’t a right-winger Trump supporter, but a left-winger Bernie supporter?  And he didn’t target a bunch of CNN journalists, but a bunch of GOP lawmakers?  Huh.

Nominee 5 – GOP knuckleheads who promised for years to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare, but have proven themselves to be barely more honest and transparent than the Democrats.  (That’s the worst insult I could think of, without using the kind of vulgarity that will arouse the FB censors.)   “But we need the House,” they said – so they got the house.  “But we need the Senate,” they said – and they got the Senate.  “But we need the White House,” they said.

Now they have all three, and they punt.  Bah!

Please register your votes now.

My choice, if it won’t taint the judging, goes to the GOP, for several reasons:

1. Serena is a dope who doesn’t ultimately matter to the nation. Plus, she’s about to give birth to what appears to be octuplets, so she gets some sympathy from me.
2. Creepy mom is an evil dope who matters even less than Serena. (Though her child should be taken from her and given to a loving family to raise.  Or even an apathetic family.  Or, if none of those are available, a family of raccoons.  Or even a single-mother raccoon, if she’s got her GED and is trying to get her act together.)
3. & 4. The media and the Dems (but I repeat myself) are 50 shades of awful, but we expect no better. After years of (insert your own examples here) — Clinton preaching feminism while he chased women around every desk he’s ever had, Obama promising the most transparent administration in history and then fighting off every FOIA request with both hands and a broadsword, Bernie criticizing the rich while buying 3 houses – we know that they are hypocrites.  Giving them a hypocrisy award would be like giving a life-long Spanish speaker an “A” for minimal competence in a first-year Spanish class.

But the GOP should know better, and their appalling lack of adherence to what they’ve called their bedrock principles is doubly galling.  As a conservative who is registered as a Republican only because there is no viable Conservative party, I want to support Republicans whenever I can.

But these idiots seem determined to screw this up.  So, sadly, they are my Hypocrites of the Year.

A lot has happened in the world since my last piece for Cautious Optimism.  The Supreme Court temporarily backed Trump’s travel ban, with all indications pointing to a permanent smack-down of the dopes in the 4th and 9th circuit courts later this year.

Elmo went to Jordan, and is back to report that Syrian refugee kids are just like other kids.  (Even Jewish and Christian kids, whose lives are routinely threatened by at least some of the parents of the Syrian kids.)

Trump posted a juvenile but hilarious wrestling video of him pummeling a CNN figure, after which CNN pulled its collective dress over its head and stomped around in a room full of rakes – “This video constitutes a threat to journalists’ lives!  We must find the meme-maker and give him the Otto Warmbier treatment!” — making themselves look much worse than Trump.

Jamie Galioto captured a much-deserved CO Follower of the Month award, to the acclaim of a grateful nation.

But one story captured my attention, not because it was the most politically significant, but because it might offer one of the most painfully indicative “sign of the times” in terms of our society’s growing insanity when it comes to issues of gender and sexism.

This was the mind-numbingly stupid controversy over John McEnroe’s comments about Serena Williams’ hypothetical competitiveness against the top male tennis players in the world.  There were three parts to the story:

Act 1: The Interview.

In the course of an NPR interview with someone called Lulu Garcia-Navarro, McEnroe praised Williams as probably “the greatest female tennis player of all time.”  Ever vigilant for sexist thought, the interviewer said, “Some wouldn’t qualify it, some would say she’s the best player in the world.  Why qualify it?”

McEnroe was apparently too stunned by the weapons-grade obliviousness of the question. “Oh!” McEnroe replied. “Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?”

“Yeah, the best tennis player in the world,” Garcia-Navarro said. “You know, why say female player?”

Luckily, McEnroe wasn’t drinking anything at that moment, or he could have done a classic spit take, drenching Lulu, as she so richly deserved.  He said that he thought she would be ranked around 700 if she played against men, which led to howls of outrage from those who are perpetually on the verge of howling with outrage.

By the way, you’re probably asking yourself if interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro is the same Garcia-Navarro who won dozens of professional women’s tennis tournaments, and for whom the oversized crystal trophy awarded to each year’s Wimbledon champ – “The Lulu” – is named.

No and no.

First, there is no Wimbledon trophy called “the Lulu” – I made that up.  You should be a little embarrassed if you believed me.

Second, my extensive research – by which I mean, two minutes of Googling Garcia-Navarro – shows that Lulu has never played professional tennis.  Or, as far as I could tell, college tennis or high school tennis.  She may never have picked up a tennis racket in her life.

Which might start to explain – although a room temperature IQ might also be a contributing factor – why she thinks that there is no reason (except sexism, of course) to say that a female tennis player might be better than any of the male tennis players in the world.

I’m going to mention a few biological facts now.  So, I guess… trigger warning for those of you who cannot tolerate reality?  For the rest of you, stand back while I blow your mind:

Males are physically larger, with more muscle and less body fat than females.  They are faster, and hit the ball harder than females do.  Extensive research (i.e. another 90 seconds on Google) shows that the top 20 male serve speeds range from 144-163 miles per hour, compared to the top female speeds from 124-131, and that the average male serve speed is around 30 kilometers per hour faster than the average female serve speed.  (I don’t know how much that is in miles per hour, because I’m not a commie who uses the metric system, except when buying a gun or tools.  But I’m guessing that it’s a significant difference.)

These aren’t insults; they’re facts.  And there’s no reason for a rational person to be offended by them.  But sadly, it’s the mark of a certain kind of feminist to not be able to acknowledge the most basic biological differences without being angered by them.   (Full disclosure: I consider myself a feminist, but not the “all men are horrible, and women are superior” kind.)

My wife is good at many things that I’m not.  Though I sometimes envy her for that, I can’t imagine getting angry about it.  And if I point out that I can do many more pushups than she can, I don’t have to worry that she’ll go off on a spittle-flecked rant insisting that I take that back or she’ll kill me.

That was an old girlfriend.  And things didn’t end well.

Anyway, it’s a very bad sign when our society can’t acknowledge the naturally differing abilities of both genders without being infuriated by them.   I hope that one day we’ll all meet at a big Cautious Optimism convention, and if we do, I expect that many people will say things to me like, “Wow, you smell nice.” Or “I noticed you doing many one-armed push-ups earlier. Impressive.”

But if one of you – say, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, if she somehow snuck past CO’s security – were to say something like, “Simpson, you think you’re so great, with your Nobel prize in ornithology and your fashionable tuxedo.”  (I picture all of us at a Cautious Optimism convention in formal wear.) “But you, sir, are horrible at lactating.  In fact, I bet I could lactate circles around you!”

I might respond in several ways, including wondering who this crazy woman was, and how she got in here, and what circular lactating would look like.

But do you know how I would NOT respond in a million years?

I would not get defensive and say, “Oh yeah?!  Them’s fightin’ words!” And then I would NOT ball up my fists and flex like Hans and Franz, grunting loudly while I tried to force myself to lactate on cue.

Because men don’t lactate nearly as well as women.  (Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)  We also don’t tend to listen as well as women.  Or have as much emotional intelligence as women do.  Or exercise basic common sense when it comes to things with motors in them.

And that doesn’t make us less worthy as human beings.  Any more than the fact that the best male tennis players in the world would dominate the best female tennis players in the world.

Act 2: The Coerced Apology

Well, that’s it, you’re thinking.  Garcia-Navarro is a dim bulb, but an idiosyncratic one.  Surely no one else could be stupid enough to–  Wait.  This just in from an Inside Edition interview with McEnroe a few days after the controversy broke.

Co-host Gayle King complains, “I think it belittles what women do on the tennis court, that’s why people are upset,” she said.

Because stating an undeniable truth is seen as “belittling.”  Duh.

McEnroe tries to explain himself – that is, tries to explain the obvious – when Norah O’Donnell chimes in with, “I’m just waiting… would you like to apologize?”

When McEnroe says, “No,” Charlie Rose says, “Why was it necessary to say that?” and the three hosts badger him for several more painfully comedic minutes.

In recent years everybody seems to be getting awfully sensitive on various topics, but it seems like we’ve really lost our mind when it comes to gender (and race, too).  I can’t imagine, for example, similar comments being made about someone on the Senior PGA tour, which is a league in which famous pro golfers over 55 compete against each other.  But if a commentator mentioned that he thought that some old guy was the best golfer on the senior tour, no “journalist” would be goofy enough to say, “Why do you qualify that?  Why best ‘senior’ golfer?  Why not just say that he’s the best golfer in the world?”

If anyone WAS dopey enough to say that, the commentator would say something like, “Because he’s 86!  His drives go as far as Dustin Johnson’s 7 irons!  Are you nuts?  Hold on, let me take a long drink, so you can ask that question again, and I can spit it on you in disgust.”

Act 3: In Which the Poor Victim Proves to be a Hypocrite

So after McEnroe initially refuses to apologize for saying something that is obviously true, the empty heads work on him for a few minutes until he cracks, mumbling about not wanting to upset Serena while she’s pregnant.

But as part of the Inside Edition piece, they quote a tweet from Serena herself: “Dear John, I adore and respect you, but please, please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.  Respect me and my privacy as I am trying to have a baby.”

By the way, my favorite part of the Inside Edition piece was that the story cut immediately from Serena’s plea for respecting her privacy as she has her baby to – wait for it – “Speaking of her baby, look at this provocative new Vanity Fair cover: a very pregnant Serena!” Sure enough, they plaster a big nude photo of Serena in what has to be the fourth trimester, at least.

Because nothing says, “Why won’t anyone give me my privacy?!” like a nude cover photo on Vanity Fair.

Anyway, look at her tweet one more time: she objects to McEnroe’s “statements that are not factually based.”  Does that mean that she agrees with Lulu that she could beat the best male players?  It sounds like it.

But then, Serena’s appearance on Letterman from four years ago surfaced.  Letterman talked about the Billie Jean King/ Bobby Riggs match, and asked Serena, “What would happen if something like that happened today?”

Williams said essentially what earned McEnroe such scorn.  Her answer, which I’m not making up, was, “Andy Murray [at that time, the 3^rd ranked men’s player in the world] has been joking about myself and him playing a match… For me, men’s and women’s tennis are completely almost two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe ten minutes…. The men are a lot faster, they serve harder, they hit harder.  It’s a different game.  I love to play women’s tennis, and I only want to play girls because I don’t want to be embarrassed.  I would not do the tour or Billie Jean King any justice, so Andy stop it, I’m not going to let you kill me.”

Hypocrisy, thy name is Serena.

So what have we learned from this?  Maybe that men and women are different?

If you still needed to learn that, you should sue the Gender Studies program from which you received your degree.

I come to you today bearing only good news.  I’m back from Illinois, I had a great Father’s Day, and I’m in a great mood.  So today we’re going to stay on the sunny side.

In political news, Democrats nationwide scrape together $24 million, and then take a vote on what to do with it.  While many of them voted for

Option A – Put it in a big pile, light it on fire, and dance around it wearing Guy Fawkes masks and Antifa hoodies while screaming obscenities aimed at Trump – the narrow winner was

Option B.  Which was to donate it to the Georgia House campaign of 15-year-old Jon “Pajama Boy” Ossoff, a ne’er-do-well from two counties over.

And he wisely used it to win… (trumpet fanfare)… a moral victory… (sad trombone fanfare).

By which I mean, he lost.  In the most expensive House campaign ever.  In a bellwether contest to demonstrate that Trump is done for.  In a harbinger of the glorious leftist victories to come.

He lost.

I know, the lefties are already counter-spinning.  This was a red district, and the GOP spent a lot too, and Handel under-performed the previous GOP seat holder.  And the sun got in our eyes, and the dog ate our homework, and the Russians did it.

You’re probably right.  You just need to double-down on the Trump hatred, and things are bound to turn around for you.  But there have been 4 congressional elections since November, and you guys are 4-0 in moral victories.  And 0-4 in actual victories.

That gigantic cash bonfire idea is looking pret-ty good about now, isn’t it?

In happy international news, an ISIS chief cleric who called himself “the Grand Mufti” – probably because “Grand Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops” were already taken, and his real name was Turki al-Bin’ali – caught an air strike in the face on May 31^st.

I would like to renew my call that instead of a respectful moment of silence, we greet this kind of news with a few moments of raucous and celebratory noise.  I’m recommending a garage band playing the first 45 seconds of the Beastie Boy’s Sabotage, followed by the open to Stranglehold, followed by my dad’s 1972 Gran Torino with the pedal floored, and then a wood chipper working through a cedar tree.

(“Hey Martin,” I can almost hear you asking, “What dad joke did you tell your 15-year-old-daughter about this international incident that made her roll her eyes and slap her forehead and mimic the dry heaves?”  Since you asked so nicely: That’s one Turki who didn’t make it until Thanksgiving.  Boom!)

One news source called al-Bin’Kaboom “one of the most visible ISIS preachers.”  Am I the only one who sees the irony in a group who forces their women to wear tarps in public being done in because their Grand Mufti was too visible?

I am?  Fine.  I get it.  Everyone’s sooooo much more mature than me.  Moving on…

Crime stories don’t usually make me happy, but this week two of them did.  The first took place in Tennessee, where two felons and alleged (HA!) murderers who escaped from prison had exchanged gunfire with cops and were engaged in a high speed chase.  A local guy who lives in the area with his wife and daughter got a warning phone call from a neighbor.  He did several wise things: he “prayed like I had never prayed before,” and he “load[ed] every weapon I could,” and shortly afterwards he saw the criminals climb over a barbed wire fence onto his property.

They saw him, and before he could even show them the shotgun that he had with him, they both laid down on his driveway and surrendered.  One possible reason for their action can be gleaned from the statement of a local resident: “When you mess around out here in the county, most of us here have carry permits and carry (weapons).  And it’s our job to protect our families and our homes.”  If that statement doesn’t warm your heart, there’s something wrong with you.

(For comparison, consider a typical quote from a Chicago or New York resident in similar circumstances: “We huddled in our living room defenseless, because the leftists who run our lives have decided that we shouldn’t be able to defend ourselves.  Thanks, Mayors Emanuel and De Blasio!”)

When I read the story online, everybody in it was straight out of central casting: young Jimmy Stewart-esque gun owning father, pretty wife, adorable 3-year old daughter.  The convicts were what you’d expect: an older, mopey looking one who doesn’t have “Born to Lose” tattooed on his forehead but looks like he should, and a younger one who does in fact have prominent facial tattoos – including a sweet set of devil horns that just screams out, “Gainful employment? No thank you!”

I love every bit of this story, but my two favorite details are:

1. The dad loaded “every weapon he could.” Does that imply that of course he has more than one weapon available to him?  You’re damn right it does.
2. His name, which I’m not making up, is Patrick Hale. Obviously the bloodlines of Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale have merged to produce… this badass guy.

In the second good news criminal story, two model citizens had broken into a woman’s home in Georgia, and were in the process of stealing her tv, when she surprised them by being home, and by yelling at them.  They fled the scene, but while doing so, Genius #1, who was in the lead, fired back in the direction of the house.  Genius #2 was following him, and graciously stopped the bullet. With his head.

You’ll be shocked to learn that he was a 41-year old career criminal who was out on parole.  Maybe he’d been inside for so long that he didn’t realize that you can buy a tv now for $27 at Wal-Mart.  Any tv worth stealing would be so big you’d need a forklift to move it.

Also, if you were driving the tv away with a forklift, the bullet that your Mensa-member buddy fired your way might have struck the forklift.  Instead of your defective forehead.

Quote of the story goes to the local lawman, Sheriff Buford T. Obvious: “I’d much rather see one burglar shoot another burglar than an innocent homeowner.”

In a media story that threatened to intrude on my good mood, I heard that Reza Aslan was fired by CNN.  The headline that I saw said, “Aslan fired by CNN over vulgar anti-Trump tweet.”

Of course, my first thought was, “Why would a magnificent lion/Christ figure be writing vulgar anti-Trump tweets?”

My second thought was, “Why would a magnificent lion/Christ figure work for CNN?”

Then I read the story, and found out that it was Reza Aslan, and that he is an angry, angry little man.  The story is still amazing though: would you have believed that CNN would fire someone over vulgarity directed at Trump?  How is there still anyone on the air over there?

On a final, personal note, my wife got me a present for Father’s Day.

Before you can ask if it was a man romper, or a little scrunchy thing I could use to give myself a man bun, or a “Now You’ve Pi**ed Ossoff” bumper sticker, I rhetorically slap you.  (Though the bumper sticker would have been cool.  I thought of it weeks ago as a slogan for the Dems who were supporting Pajama Boy.  And I kept it to myself.  HA!)

No, my wife gave me… drumroll…a mug with a picture of Mad Dog Mattis on it, with the question, “What keeps you awake at night?” at the top, and his answer below: “Nothing.  I keep other people awake at night.”  I love looking at that mug first thing every morning.

It’s true that being a good spouse is not a competition.  But somehow, my wife is winning anyway.

I was on a trip this past week back to Illinois to see family and friends, and so only caught a few minutes per day of news on either the internet or tv. And oddly enough, by the time I got home my blood pressure was lower, I slept better, the acid indigestion was gone, and my hair had a silky, lustrous sheen. Men wanted to be me, and women wanted to be with me.

But being the wonky doofus that I am, I couldn’t help spending the last couple of days going through my DVR and the internet, trying to catch up on all things political. Which was a terrible idea. Now I’ve got insomnia, acid reflux, blurred vision, my Tourette’s Syndrome is acting up, and my hair is coming out in big clumps like I just finished a third round of chemo.

So read quickly, because after this I might have to take a month off.

The Comey hearings have been talked to death, so I’ll just mention a couple of issues that struck me:

1. Rubio had the quote of the week, when he pointed out (and Comey had to admit) the only fact that hadn’t been leaked during the whole pseudo-collusion farce: Trump was never under investigation for any Russian collusion. What else do you need to know about MSM corruption? They’ve floated 854 sleazy rumors, and somehow managed to NOT report the central fact of the story.

2. Comey admitted that he was one of the leakers, which violates the prime directive for intelligence officials. For the rest of his life, he should be forced to wear a scarlet “L,” and be shunned by decent people everywhere.

3. The only public official discussed in the testimony who likely obstructed justice and deserved a proctological-level investigation was Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch. In fact, Comey said that she directly told him to lie – to call the “investigation” of Clinton a “matter.” Comey said that he felt queasy after that request, because he knew how wrong it was. But look at what he did next: he started referring to it as a “matter,” and he did NOT leak Lynch’s order to anyone. That alone proves that Comey is a partisan hack.
(Also, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: How bad is Obama’s judgment, when Eric “Steadman” Holder may arguably NOT have been his worst AG appointee?!)

4. Trump needs to give his enemies less ammunition in their scorched-earth battle against him. He’s his own worst enemy. (And considering the mangy menagerie of sociopathic leftist loons who are out to get him, that’s saying something!)

Et tu, Lefties? In other news, how about those arts lovers staging performances of Julius Caesar in Central Park with a Trump look-alike as Caesar? The obvious move is the “shoe on the other foot” question: Can you imagine how the MSM and the Dems (but I repeat myself) would react if someone put on a production like this with a leftist pol being killed? Would an Obama look-alike not make a serviceable Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, or Hillary a great wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz? (Or one of the witches in MacBeth? Or Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmations? Or Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? I could go on and on.). Would Joe Biden not make a great Lenny in Of Mice and Men?

I’m kidding, of course. (Not about Biden though. Was that guy born to play Lenny, or what?) We wouldn’t stoop that low, and we’d expect to be raked over the coals if some conservative staged such a performance. Not so with the other side, though.

Three quick thoughts:

1. The only way you can get a lefty crowd to celebrate a classic Western work authored by a dead white male is if you can turn it into political propaganda appealing to base instincts.

2. Predictably, the sweet-tempered, pacifistic, morally superior lefties in the crowd cheer the murder like… well, like a barbaric Roman crowd cheering on a murder.

3. And they made the citizens of NYC pay for at least part of the costs of their little bread-and-circuses performance. Some big corporate sponsors, in a fit of sanity, have backed out of their sponsorship, but last I heard, the city and the “arts community” is hanging in.

Some of my friends on the right want us to boycott, protest or otherwise try to stop such distasteful shenanigans, and while I understand, I disagree.

This is who they are: they shout “’F’ Trump” in front of their children, they use homophobic slurs about the prez and Putin, they fantasize about beheading the president, or stabbing him to death.

Let the country see them for who they are. And let the decent Democrats in the country rise up and disassociate themselves from this repulsive behavior, and the extremist goons who have taken over their party.

Or not. That will be instructive, too.

On a potentially related note, an angry leftist John Goodman-figure from The Big Lebowski shows up at a GOP softball practice. (Google that hateful shooter in his tinted shades, then pull up a picture of Goodman in the movie, and tell me they’re not angry, long-lost twins.) But instead of hollering at Donny and ranting about Nam, this guy’s all hopped up on political outrage, and he starts shooting. Thankfully, that story ends the way many such stories do: the bad guy with the gun gets stopped by good guys with guns. I hope that the victim recovers, and I’m not too torn up that the shooter won’t.
But I won’t do what the other side does, and claim that the hateful rhetoric of Bernie and the other Dems is responsible for this jerk’s actions. Bernie rightfully condemned him, and even though the MSM consistently tries to blame the actions of killers on conservatives, even when those killers are in no way connected to conservatives, I think they’re wrong to do so.

It doesn’t help when the leaders of a political party paint their opponents in hateful terms – and the GOP isn’t totally innocent of this, though I think they do it MUCH less than do the national Democrats. But this guy’s actions are his responsibility, and he has paid the just consequences.

Wow. I was going to end this piece there, but that was too much of a downer. So I’ll close with a happy ending instead.

Google the name Charles Zachary Howard, and you’ll learn that he is a sad little man who called a Republican congressman and left a vile message. He cited many of the popular lefty talking points – Nazis, the Klan – in addition to a few unusual ones. (The Freemasons? Hey Charlie, Nic Cage has his next National Treasure movie in pre-production, and his people will be issuing you a cease-and-desist order shortly.)
Did he close his little love note with a pledge to disagree without being disagreeable, you ask? He did not. He promised to, and I quote, “hunt your a– down, wrap a rope around your neck and hang you from a lamppost.”

Why do I mention this? Because that man is going to be on the 2020 ballot as the Democratic candidate for president.

HA! I kid. (I hope.) I actually mentioned Mr. Howard so that you will go onto YouTube, and watch a short video of him in action. A local reporter confronts him with a transcript of his phone call, and he starts bullying and taunting the reporter, saying, “Is there a warrant for my arrest? Show me the warrant for my arrest! Where is the warrant?!”

Then, because God exists, and He loves us, the police show up. And one of them says, “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

And, as a sad trombone plays (in my head if not on the video), they put the creep in cuffs.

Watch that video – it’s the feel-good hit of the summer!