Category: Uncategorized

Three quick stories today, and they’re all pretty positive.  Because even in the midst of this train wreck/dumpster fire/Hindenburg disaster of an administration, we’re all cautious optimists up in here.

First, I’d like to lavish a little praise on the Brits.

Sure, they’ve made a few mistakes through the years.  Dressing your troops in bright red coats and having them stand in straight lines in open fields while surrounded by woods crawling with Simpsons with Kentucky long rifles comes to mind.  (Do you want to lose a continent to a bunch of stubborn rustics with a little something I call grit?  Because THIS is how you lose a continent to a bunch of stubborn rustics with a little something I call grit.)

But one thing I’ve always admired about them is the way they let their prime ministers speak to parliament, surrounding by the other politicians who are allowed to holler and jeer at them. 

Compare that to our congress.  When Obama was giving a dishonest speech touting Obamacare and insisted that it would not force American taxpayers to foot the bill for the care of illegal immigrants, one GOP member called out, “You lie!”   (Spoiler alert: Obama was absolutely lying. Of course.)

And every Dem partisan and MSM empty head – but I repeat myself – began shrieking through the dresses that they’d pulled up over their heads, and ran for the nearest fainting couch.

Now I ask you, is that any way for a great country to behave?  Shouldn’t it be our right as free citizens to have our elected representatives mock and heckle our leaders when they are spouting dishonest nonsense?

Well, the Brits have answered “yes” to that question, and God bless ‘em. 

But I hadn’t realized until the past week that the Canadians have the same tradition.  But there was Blackface McSnowflake Trudeau in the Canadian parliament, being dressed down on his anti-scientific covid mandates and lockdowns by an opposition party lady.   

So Trudeau gets up to answer.  (And by the way, does that guy give off a Gavin Newsom, Ken Doll, smooth-plastic-genitalia-area vibe, or what?)  And within the first sentence, he’s already lying his hoser hindquarters off at full highway speed: “Mr. Speaker, every step of the way we’ve had Canadians’ backs by following the science.  By working closely–”

But by that point, my soul-mates in America’s Hat are scoffing loudly, and he turns around and sits down, pouting.

And then, in what has to be a top 5 political moment in the history of Canada – sure, I can’t name any of the other 4… because it’s Canada – the guy in charge tries to quiet the crowd so that the blow-dried castrato can resume his lying.

Above the chorus of mockery, a lone opposition voice can be heard above the others: “Let him answer – he’s not good at it!”

Perfect!  Those words have been echoing in my head for the last week, and if they don’t describe the elite lefties’ (in Canada and America) governance over the last 14 months, I don’t know what does.   

I’m always going to think of that whenever I see Biden sliding into incoherent word salad, or Que Mala stumbling over herself and then laughing maniacally, or AOC excreting inanities that shave IQ points off of anyone unfortunate enough to hear her: “Let them answer – They’re not good at it!” 

That should be our campaign theme for the next several elections, and yet another reason to defend  freedom of speech, and to NOT censor our opponents, whether in debates, or public speeches, or on their execrable talk shows and news networks. 

The more they explain themselves and their policies, the better off we are.

Because they are NOT good at it!

The second tale today is a feel-good crime story that comes to us out of Michigan, where a 32-year-old convicted sex offender named Aian Tracy was out among the public on February 10th.  (Apparently the hospital was having a sale on vowels when his mom was picking out a first name for this creep.)  

His last conviction was for third-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2015.  I’m not sure what that is exactly, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he should have been in jail for many years.  But he was given 5 years probation instead.  So yay, soft-on-crime justice system!

Fortunately for Michiganders from 2015 – 19, “Dick” Tracy couldn’t leave well enough alone and “violated the terms of his probation.”  Don’t know what that means either, but it got him 4 years in jail.  (I know: the original crime should have gotten him 10 years, at least.)

Anyway, he gets out and goes straight, never causing anyone any harm ever again.  The end.

HA!  I kid.

Because on February 10^th he was doing something bad to a woman with two kids – the crime reporting is vague – and she called the cops.  When the cops arrived, he pulled out the hatchet he was carrying – as one does – and attacked the cops with it, wounding one in the neck before they shot him with what I can only hope was many, many bullets.  

Sadly, he died… at least 7 years too late.

I know what you are thinking, because I’m thinking it too:  What are we going to do about all of these hatchets?   Many of them doubtless ghost hatchets, bought in Indiana from shady, unlicensed hatchet dealers. They’re going crazy, with the unregulated whacking and the chopping. 

And don’t get me started on the scalping… no offense, Grandma Squanto Warren, but what about the scalping?  (#wemustneverstopmockingher).  

Who will introduce the long-overdue hatchet-control bill on the floor of the house?  Because I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’m quite sure that women and minorities are being hardest hit by the Tomahawk Scourge™

Oh, won’t someone think of the children?  The traumatized, hatchet-mangled children?!

Second, what does it take to be thrown in jail forever in this country? 

I mean, beside walking around inside a government building in a set of buffalo horns like a drunken tourist for half an hour?  Obviously that guy is what happens if Bin Laden and Dillinger’s ghosts identified as a living heterosexual couple and had a baby, so definitely throw the book at him. 

But for anyone other than him, how many repeated sex offenses and other felonies does it take?

On the bright side – I’m here at Cautious Optimism, people – if that creep had been in jail where he belonged, those cops wouldn’t have had the opportunity to shoot him dead. 

So let’s take our wins where we can get them.  And good riddance, Mr. Last of the Mohicans!

Finally a story that is at least a little bitter, but mostly sweet.  By now the data is in, and it’s clear that masking is basically “facial decoration” (according to the CDC!), and that kids in particular pay a high price for being masked, with no corresponding health benefits.

But the left is doing their best to hang on to mask mandates, with teacher union head – and all around terrible human – Randi Weingarten leading the way.  Democrat Boston Mayor Michelle Wu – as in, “Wooo, is she not smart!” – may have summarized it best, when she claimed that, “Kids want to keep masking!”

Now, for an alternative take from the real world, I give you this video of a Las Vegas elementary school classroom when the teacher announced that the mask mandate had been lifted: https://www.bizpacreview.com/2022/02/11/elementary-kids-dance-with-joy-hearing-the-end-of-mask-mandate-and-win-the-internet-1200113/

Man, does watching that video do my heart good!  I’ve watched it a dozen times, and I love everything about it.

I love the immediate, ear-piercing screams, and the spontaneous burst into applause and frenzy.  I love the way it recreates the Charlie Brown Christmas special, in which each kid has his or her own dance. 

The girl in the front starts doing jumping jacks, then transitions to hopping in place.  The boy on the right picks up his chair and looks like he might toss it through a window.  In the background one girl raises both hands over her head and sprints around the room shouting.

 One kid does some kind of Peewee Herman-esque move, one does the Dougie, and the girl in the sweat pants whips off her mask and starts twirling it over head, then starts some kind of swinging her hips and pointing at the sky with both hands thing. 

THAT’S how kids are supposed to act!  That’s what being young means. 

Not being bullied into following baseless orders that are justified only by the neurotic fears of totalitarian adults and the mania for control of totalitarian politicians.  And yes, I’m looking at you, Stacey Abrams, with a self-satisfied smile plastered over your unmasked, bowling-ball head, while you’re surrounded by a bunch of powerless kids who’ve been forced into masks.

The only way this video could have been any better is if — after the teacher’s final rhetorical question, “Is anybody excited?!” — she had said, “Let’s go Brandon!!” to the even more manic cheering of those adorable kids.  

Avenatti/ the ghost of Aian “Dick” Tracy, 2024!

Before I turn to our national challenges, I’d like to say a personal goodbye to an old car that is moving on from my life. 

About 10 years ago, I went to a car dealership to find a pickup to replace my 30-year-old Silverado.  My wife went along for the ride, and when the dealership didn’t have a suitable truck, I noticed a used, sleek, black BMW Z4 roadster on the lot.  I joke that that looked like a fine mid-life crisis car to me.

According to the universal law of wifely duties, my better half was supposed to follow the script, and mock me for my foolishness, and substitute her wisdom for my own whimsy, and steer me off the lot.

Instead, she suggested that I take a test drive.      

I was raised by great parents who were children during the Great Depression, plus I chose a profession that was never likely to bring a princely salary.  So I know better than to buy a new car, and have always opted to buy at least a 2-3 year old car and let the original owner take the butt-kicking on the depreciation. 

(I trust that my economic mentors Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Christopher Silber would approve.)

But this car was 10 years old, and affordable, so I bought it. 

I’ve had a lot of fun with it over the last 9 years, and this week I took it out for a top-down ride around town with Cassie riding shotgun.  There are few things in life more fun than tooling around in a convertible on a sunny day, with a Wonder Dog holding her head into the wind with that blissful look dogs get during a ride.

As we arrived back home, my wife was getting the mail, and she told me to stop so she could get a picture of one happy canine.

The next day, a very expensive part broke (insert your own BMW joke here), and I just got the post-mortem from my mechanic: it doesn’t make financial sense to fix her, so I’m selling her to someone who wants a project. 

If I had known that that last ride in that car was going to be my LAST ride in that car, I couldn’t have picked a better one.  I’ve posted the pic my wife took on my page at Martinsimpsonwriting.com, if you’d like to share that bittersweet moment with me… 

Speaking of bittersweet, watching two bits of tv in the last week provided a sobering experience.

First up was Biden’s brief press availability, after which he repeated the gaffe that he can’t seem to stop making: he called on someone, saying, “They tell me I’m supposed to call on him first.” I’d find it less worrisome if he were listening to the voices in his head, rather than taking orders from some nameless flunky, like the slowest trainee on his first day behind the cash register! 

But then it got worse, when an off-camera female voice started telling everyone the conference was over, and ushered the reporters toward the exits, with a passive-aggressive, “Thank you… thank you…” 

Would any competent, in-control leader allow that?  For a subordinate to just decide that you’re done talking, and announce that you’re finished, and clear the room?  Would a husband or wife allow their spouse to announce, mid-story, that the dinner party is over, and your guests all have to beat it? 

Biden’s reaction was terrifying, considering his office: he looked vaguely disoriented, then plastered an empty grin on the front of his empty head, and just stared around the room at nothing until the feed was cut. 

That evening, as I was clearing some programs from the DVR, I caught a repeat segment of 60 Minutes about Tony Bennett’s final concert, with Lady Gaga, last summer. 

It turns out Bennett has advanced Alzheimers, which is always sad.  But it was fascinating how he came back to himself when the music started playing.  His near-catatonia and minimally responsive reactions disappeared, and he started singing along with the piano, ripping through a dozen songs without a mistake.   The concert itself was also moving, and for the same reason: when the band started playing, the old Bennett came back. 

I couldn’t help but think of watching Biden’s performance.  He’s got exactly the kind of diminished function – the flat affect, the stiff, minimal verbal ability — that Bennett has.  Except that Bennett has, buried within him, a real talent, and one that practically resurrects itself when the moment calls for it.

But Biden has no talent.  At the height of his powers – I know, there’s no way to read that phrase without it being sarcastic! – he was a vapid, backslapping political hack. 

Bennett has a kind of musical muscle-memory that is still there.  The only muscle memory Biden has is that of a peevish, thin-skinned jerk.  When he gets an even mildly pointed question, his vitriolic, inner bully resurfaces, and he calls the questioner fat, or an SOB, or challenges him to a fight or a pushup contest. 

If Jill really loved him, she should have put a stop to this two years ago, when he was flailing in the primaries, insulting voters, and fantasizing about Corn Pop, his own non-existent job as a truck driver, or the marching at Selma that he never did. 

Now we’re stuck with him, and one man’s diminished denouement has become a great nation’s tragic burden.

Another mistake of Biden’s – his ham-fisted declaration that his SC nomination will be an affirmative action pick – provoked an unintentionally revealing analysis from a Slate writer named Christina Cauterucci.

Partisan though she is, Cauterucci has to acknowledge that Biden’s roll-out was botched, in a brutal title and sub-title: “How Biden’s Vow to Name a Black Woman to the SC Backfired – A campaign promise has needlessly tokenized future nominees.”

She begins by pointing out that around ¾ of Americans (including an astonishing 54% of Dems!) reacted negatively to Biden’s statement that he had a racial and gender litmus test for his nominee.  That’s a heartening reaction, and while I’m a little surprised by it, I’m grateful.

But she can’t consider the simple virtue of that position; her ideology is too steeped in racial poison, so she has to explain away obvious implications, and distort the reality of the situation, while (of course) smearing conservatives.

She starts by reciting lefty shibboleths about the proper kind of racial discrimination: judges’ skin color should reflect the population’s, turnabout against white guys is fair play, etc.  She even quotes the least-bright current justice: “As Sonia Sotomayor once said, in a line that was ghoulishly twisted by the right, life as a woman of color offers a ‘richness of … experiences’ that brings great value to judicial decision-making.” 

Of course, that line wasn’t “ghoulishly twisted” by the right – it was accurately quoted. 

Unfortunately for the hard left, most people want judges to interpret the law, rather than following the standard m.o. of Sotomayor and activist leftist jurists, and re-making it according to their own political/ideological preferences. 

Cauterucci stumbled on, trying to excuse Biden’s gaffe.  She faulted his pledge only for being “overly candid,” and pre-emptively blamed conservatives, who she says will “tarnish” the nominee “as lesser,” simply because, “they will assume that anyone chosen in part for her gender and race will not be the best candidate on the merits.”

YES!  Of course they will.  But they won’t need to assume it; it will be the self-evident reality.  Because any time you favor or eliminate any candidate because of genitalia or skin tone, you are by definition not seeking the best-qualified candidate.

You may still end up with a very qualified person, but there will always be some doubt about her merit – that’s one of the terrible but unavoidable consequences of racial preferences.

But Cauterucci really gives the game away when she plaintively asks why Biden couldn’t have just kept his mouth shut.  (We feel your pain, Christina!)  Why couldn’t he have just picked a black woman “without the premature, identity-specific fanfare?”  Why did he have to position his nominee as “only best[ing] other black women for the role, rather than the entire pool of possible nominees?”

And then, in the ultimate self-own: “Wouldn’t she have been better served by the perception that Biden had also considered white men for the slot, and found them wanting in comparison?”

Ah, yes: the perception!

She isn’t arguing that Biden should not have established a blatantly discriminatory racial quota for his pick – only that he shouldn’t have been HONEST about doing so.

And there’s one of the left’s biggest liabilities, in a nutshell: to achieve their goals, they have to lie.

If they admitted that they want open borders and welfare benefits for illegals in exchange for their votes in perpetuity, they’d be rejected.

If they admitted that they want to confiscate the guns of law-abiding citizens, they’d be rejected.

If they admitted that they want high taxes, and high energy costs, and CRT in schools, and forced lock-downs and masking forever, they’d be rejected.   

Far be it from me to contradict Uncle Jesus, when He said that, “The Truth will set you free.” 

But for the hard left – anywhere outside the deep blue cities like SF, LA, NYC, Minneapolis, the bad Portland, etc. — the truth will cost them elections.

Hence their frustration with Biden, who committed the political version of a gaffe: he inadvertently told the truth.

And Slate can’t have that!

Finally, in yet another tragic story, Michael Avenatti has been convicted of yet another crime; this time, it was stealing from his client, Stormy Daniels. 

But don’t lose heart, CO nation!  I, for one, am not giving up on his prospects of rising to the top of his party’s ticket.  It’s not like terribly sleazy and dishonest behavior has kept past Dems from succeeding in politics.

And sure, Avenatti could get sentenced to as long as 20 years.  But if he gets a typical leftist prosecutor and judge, the DA will likely ask for 3 years, and the judge will sentence him to 18 months and a $10 fine.  He’ll be back on the streets – tan, fit and rested – in time for the primaries, where he’ll face Que Mala, Grandma Squanto, and a stage full of extremist deplorables. 

My money is still on the Creepy Porn Lawyer!   (Hat tip to Tucker.) 

Avenatti/ Any Female Minority Person with a Pulse, 2024

I’m sure you all saw the story on the highway crash involving a truck carrying some research monkeys that could be infected by God knows what.  The account I read suggested that a female motorist stopped to see if the truck driver was all right, and he asked her if she could check around the back of the truck to see that nothing was badly damaged.

When she did so, the story said that she “came into contact with at least one of the monkeys,” and she’s now gone into self-quarantine.

First, I hope that quarantine goes better than the covid ones, or else brace yourself for a monkey-pox outbreak of Biblical proportions. 

Second:  Hey truck driver, how about giving the good Samaritan a little head’s up on the trailer-load of infected monkeys before asking her to check things out back there?!

Third, my initial thought upon hearing “rabid monkeys causing chaos in the northeast” was, of course… “Biden’s cabinet?”  

But when I didn’t hear anything about the lead monkey getting captured as he stopped to groom the intoxicating-smelling hair of the female passerby, I knew we weren’t talking about Joey Gaffes.    

On the crime front, if you’re looking for another reason NOT to live in a city run by soft-on-crime Dems, consider the latest in what seems like dozens of cases of people being shoved onto subway tracks by an apparently limitless supply of thugs, mental patients and dead-inside ghouls who make up a substantial slice of Biden’s base voters. 

In this case the victim was able to avoid a direct hit and was only injured, though many previous victims have not been so lucky.  

But don’t worry, because the leftist brain trust has your back.  No, they’re not considering jailing more criminals or institutionalizing more of the mentally ill.  They’ve got an even better solution: don’t stand so close to the tracks, you dope!

I’m not kidding.  The person in charge of the MTA – in a quote I swear I am not making up — said, “I don’t want to tell people that they should stand on subway platforms and feel like they’re, you know, in threat of their lives.  But everybody should stand away from the edge of the platform.”

Or how about all New Yorkers wear red capes whenever they ride the subway?  That way, they can stand on the platform flourishing their cape to attract the attention of any murderous Biden voters in the area.  I don’t think I have to spell out what happens next, but I will anyway:

• Dem-voting meth fan notices the red cape, flares his nostrils, and paws the filthy platform floor
• As he charges, the alert urban bullfighter yanks back the cape as the Dem voter dives forward
• The squeal of train brakes and a hearty “Ole!” mark the end of the would-be murderer
• But he still manages to vote in the next 12 elections

All hilarious kidding aside, I agree with the MTA big shot: wary New Yorkers should avoid standing too close to subway tracks. 

By the way, what’s the closest red state to NYC?  Because that’s how far I’d recommend standing from the subway tracks. 

And now, to give you subject matter whiplash, I have a few thoughts on the arts:

First, I’ve seen the trailer for the new film version of MacBeth, and it looks incredible!  Denzel Washington – an amazing actor and an admirable human being (an exceedingly rare combination) – is MacBeth, Francis McDormand is Lady MacBeth, super-gifted oddball Joel Coen directs, and Shakespeare wrote it! 

I can’t wait to see it.

On the other end of the artistic spectrum, we have a talented writer marring a book with his politics, and a washed-up rocker providing some delicious schadenfreude.

The writer is novelist Daniel Silva, who writes the series of thrillers featuring Gabriel Allon, an Israeli art-restorer and assassin.  I’ve really enjoyed that series, but I was disappointed to see the way Silva allowed his lefty politics to turn the last third of his latest novel, The Cellist, into cartoonishly Trump-hating agitprop.

The book’s villain is a Putin-figure, and it takes place in the aftermath of January sixth, an event which Silva turns into a far-leftist conspiracy theorist’s fever dream: the protestors were a heavily armed, they mounted a serious coup attempt that came within a whisper of toppling the US government.

But those distortions of real life are not enough, and Silva writes a sub-plot in which Biden was nearly assassinated at the inauguration by a crazed right-wing congresswoman who then shoots his protagonist.  He also imagines that Trump himself calls the Putin stand-in, warning him about a plot against him, and nearly getting the book’s noble title character killed.

But even more unbelievable than all that, Silva presents Joe Biden – the real-life one – as a righteous figure who wants to heal the nation, and who will take a firm stand against Putin, and who – get this! — has all his wits about him. 

Talk about asking your readers to suspend their disbelief!

Silva had given signs of his political leanings at various places throughout the series, but he was also the rare lefty who actually defends Israel’s right to exist.  His fictional protagonist got his start as the primary Israeli assassin who took out many of the Palestinian terrorists who murdered the Jewish Olympians at Munich, and Silva doesn’t sugarcoat the jihadi aspects of the Islamic world.

That’s why it’s so disappointing to see an accomplished writer and an obviously smart guy show himself to simultaneously be such a simple-minded, ham-fisted anti-conservative loon.  After I finished the book, I looked into Silva’s bio, and was not shocked to find that his wife works at CNN, and that he used to. 

So I’ve added him to the long list of artists whose work I admire, despite their idiotic politics. 

Speaking of idiotic politics, I have so enjoyed the saga of old Canadian hippie Neil Young facing off against Spotify in a quixotic attempt to get Joe Rogan cancelled! 

The story is a perfect distillation of the four apocalyptic horsemen (horse-persons?) of modern leftism: hypocrisy, ignorance, arrogance and totalitarian bullying.

Let’s start with hypocrisy. 

Last year, the self-styled rebel who casts himself as an enemy of Big Business and the establishment… sold the rights to at least half of his music to Big Business for a reported $150 million.  Why did he do this last year?  Because Biden has been trying to push through a huge increase in the capital gains rate, which would require a lot more taxes from Noble Neil. 

So all of a sudden Mr. “Tax the Rich” is dodging taxes like a veteran Democrat politician.

Plus, he now gets to virtue-signal as if he’s willing to sacrifice song-writing profits for his bold stand, when the only ones who will take a financial hit will be his corporate partners who were gullible enough to trust Neil Young!

Ignorance:  And what was the issue that had the septuagenarian hoser all upset?  He’s offended that Rogan has been spreading “covid misinformation!” 

Wait until the arthritic Canucklehead finds out that everything that Rogan suggested – vaccines don’t prevent infection or spread, masks are only facial decoration, lockdowns don’t work – has now been said by the CDC.

How about arrogance?

Neil Young’s middle name should be “Is Not.”   His last hit was on the charts when Imhotep Pelosi was celebrating her 2300^th birthday, and Ted Kennedy was wearing a fake neck brace to evade responsibility for killing a young campaign worker.

He gets around 6 million downloads a month, a figure that is about a million times more than I would have guessed.

Meanwhile, Joe Rogan gets around 200 million.  Plus he’s a big deal right now, and he doesn’t have the sideburns of a deranged Civil War general.

So naturally, Neil Young figures he can go mano a mano with Rogan, and he called Spotify to demand that they show Rogan the door. 

Man, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the nasally crooner from America’s Hat made that phone call!

NY:  Hello, Spotify?  This is Neil Young, and I’m offended by Joe Ro—What’s that?    

Spotify (sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher):  Wah waaah wah wah?

NY: Neil Young.  From Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Spotify:  Wah wah?   

NY: No, it’s not a law firm.  It’s a rock band.

Spotify:  Waw ah wahh?

NY: No, that’s Stills.

Spotify:  Wah wah wah walrus?

NY: No, that’s Crosby.  I’m Young.

Spotify:  WaWa! WaWaWa!

NY: That’s not funny!  Now listen, I’m offended by Joe Rogan, and I’d like you to get rid of him.

Spotify (long silence): Wa?

NY: Because he doesn’t understand science.  He disagrees with me, and he’s misinforming people.

Spotify (long silence):  Wa Wah Wa?

NY: Neil Young.

Spotify:  Wa Wa Wah?

NY: N-e-i-l  Y-o-u-n-g.

Spotify: Wah wah wa wa?

NY: I already told you: I want Joe Rogan gone! 

Spotify: Wa Wa Wah 200 million.

NY: I don’t care how many downloads he has.  It’s not aboot that, it’s aboot principle, and—

Spotify: WaWa! Wah wah wa?

NY: That’s how we say it up here.  Shut up!  Listen, I’m putting my foot down.  You can have Young or you can have Rogan, but you can’t have bo—

Spotify: Click.

NY: Hello?  Hello? 

And, scene.  

Finally, totalitarian bullying.

It wasn’t that Young disagreed with Rogan, or that he wanted to express himself.  And it wasn’t that Young wanted to make a stand, and pull his music from Spotify.

He wanted to cancel Rogan. Censor him.  Get him fired.

Because elite leftists don’t want a debate, and they don’t tolerate dissent.  Speech that disagrees with them is violence. In fact, they sometimes insist that even silence is violence.

We disagree.  Because when it comes to being threatened with having to listen to a Neil Young song… silence is golden.

Avenatti/ Infectious Highway Monkeys  2024!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On a plate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D’oh!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/Susie the 8^th Grader, 2024!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chairs.  Doorways. Family members. 

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of which, AOC has covid.

What can we learn from this?

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

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

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

Yes you did, boss!

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

Can we make this man the mayor of Philadelphia immediately?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/the ghost of Bull Connor 2024!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/She-Hulk Jeopardy Guy, 2024!

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

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

It did not go well for her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/Ralph Wiggum, 2024!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why do I bring that up now? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But pass on the lamb chops.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could probably even make AOC understand it.

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

AOC: What’s a C-130?

You: It’s a gigantic airplane.

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

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

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

You: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

And, scene.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reasonably attractive woman:  “My butt is—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’ve raised taxes.

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

You’ve blamed Donald Trump.

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

Do you:

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

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

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

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

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

In which case: four weekends.

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

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

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

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

I’ve already gotten a rough draft started:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, scene.”

Happy New Year!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No bueno, and no gracias.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And… there goes my gag reflex.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hypothetically.

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

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

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

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

Back to the taxpayers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which we will say:  Exactly!

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

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

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

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

So you know that went swimmingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’s not a pilot.  He’s got syphilis.

You’re welcome.”

Coming Friday: Part 3…