Category: Uncategorized

Everything in our public life has gotten stupid.  But the good news is, it is so plainly stupid that even minimally smart people are able to see the blatant stupidity, so I’m hoping that all of this ignorance coming out into the open will inoculate us against the stupid virus in time for the November election. (By the way, I think that the proper Latin term for the stupid virus is “imbecilus socialismus.”  But I’m no Latino, so I could be wrong.)

I’d like to make an analogy to a witticism that Warren Buffett used to describe the way that tough economic times reveals people’s bad decisions, such as taking on too much debt.    Buffett said, “When the tide goes out, you know who’s been skinny dipping.”

At the risk of triggering everyone’s gag reflex, I’d like to apply that principle to our current political situation, and suggest that the twin crises of the Flu Manchu and the peaceful riots have revealed not the financial bankruptcy (though, that too) but the moral bankruptcy of the left’s pronouncements.

Obviously, I do NOT want to conjure before your minds the prospect of seeing Imhotep Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Joe Biden — or, let’s face it, Cocaine Mitch or Donald Trump – skinny dipping.   In fact, this might be a good time to remind you to put down the knitting needles, ice picks, salad tongs, or any other implements suitable for instinctual, spur-of-the-moment eye-removal.   Also, remember that as I am just a humble contract writer for CO, he is solely responsible for any ocular damage or psychological trauma sustained due to reading any of my columns.  Address your lawsuits to “The Great and Powerful CO, at his Undisclosed Location outside of US territorial waters, beyond the reach of US extradition.”

In the meantime, to help you fight the urge to pick up the knitting needles, let me intervene with a psychological coping technique that I am just now making up.  Imagine Dana Perino, Nikki Haley and Kayleigh McEnany having a policy discussion in the surf at the beach.  And the tide goes out, and they were skinny dipping.   That’s a guided meditation technique I call, “No gag reflex, just giggity.™”  You’re welcome.

(For the women in CO nation who’d like to try this technique, you can imagine, I don’t know… Tucker Carlson, Dan Crenshaw and me?) (On second thought, I’m deeply offended that you can’t overlook my smoking hot body and just appreciate me for my mind, you animals!)

Where was I?  Oh yeah: the moral bankruptcy of our leftist overlords, exposed:

 

Exhibit A.  In a truly sad development, much of our medical establishment have shown themselves to be at least partly a politico-medical establishment, as it is now clear that they have forfeited their medical credibility in service of their political agenda.  The latest evidence comes in a ridiculous statement issued by a group of 1200 “healthcare and medical professionals.”  I wasn’t able to quickly find out who those people were – and it’s not worth more than a quick search, because I’ve got a life to lead over here – but if past experience is any guide, they are probably a handful of actual doctors who know something about medicine, and a ton of “community health experts” with grievance studies degrees.  (Similarly, the consensus of “scientists” who have warned that global warming/freezing/climate change is going to kill us all three weeks from Wednesday turn out to be a small group of people with degrees in relevant fields, accompanied by many hundreds of social science and liberal arts profs, plus Bill Nye the (non-)Science Guy.)

This motley crew actually said that, “We do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission.  We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.”  You can tell that they’re serious scientists because they apparently believe that the virus targets black people, like some sort of Chicom sickle cell anemia.

But wait!  There’s more scientizing coming your way:  “This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders.”  Of course not.  Because the virus obviously lays in wait in a crowd, until it can tell which cause they are supporting.  Then it either pounces, or else stands down.  Before you dismiss that, consider the rest of the explanations from these frauds: “Those actions [protesting leftist politicians’ oppressive over-reach] not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism.”

I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait until their new research can identify which part of the genome “white nationalism” resides in so that we can begin genetic engineering.

These liars were masquerading as scientists, and the tide has gone out and revealed that they have no lab coats.

 

Exhibit B.  Leftist speech police have also been exposed.  For years they’ve argued that “speech is violence,” i.e. expressing a thought that disagrees with them is akin to physically assaulting them.  Conveniently, they’ve also argued that “silence is violence,” i.e. that if you don’t speak up and agree with them – that whites are inherently racist and America inherently evil, for example – you’re also committing violence against them.

So if you say something they disagree with, that’s violence.  And if you don’t say anything, that’s violence.  But you know what is definitely NOT violence?

You’re way ahead of me: actual violence.

That’s right.  Marc Lamont Hill says that the riots “aren’t simply random violence or foolishness… they’re rebellion.”  (He’s right about one thing: they definitely aren’t random.) Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of a fact-free, America-hating “historical” smear-fest which recently won a Pulitzer (of course it did), explained that, “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”  The entire MSM has been bending over backwards to insist that these are protests, not riots, and never you mind the burning buildings, and looters, and defaced monuments and property, and cheerfully screamed obscenities.   Who are you going to believe, Fredo Cuomo or your own lyin’ eyes?

Speaking of science, I have a scientific experiment that you should offer to conduct with any willing leftists who pretend to believe that words are violence, while looting isn’t.  Offer this exchange: let them call you a very hurtful name (in my case, they could call me a cracker, or a non-hilarious non-genius, for example), and then you get to steal their purse or wallet, and all of their clothes.  Don’t even leave them a mask to wear, since Science™ tells us that the Wu flu doesn’t affect ideologically pure leftists.  (This would be an especially science-y experiment if you happen to run into Nikole Hannah-Jones.)

Then, as you leave them in the street with no money or clothes, you can share that Buffett quote, and say, “Now that the moral tide has gone out, don’t you feel a little silly?  Also, since your keys are in your purse, I’m going to go to your house and steal your tv and your Pulitzer prize, then burn down the house and drive away in your car.  Because it’s only property.”

 

Exhibit C.  The brilliant demand to get rid of all police.   Because nothing would help the inner cities more than allowing the thugs who have been victimizing them for the last week to continue victimizing them, unopposed, for months or years.  (And yes, the far-left white SJWs who are cheering this on will spend those months and years back in their safe, well-policed suburbs while the inner cities burn, thanks for asking.)

The gun-grabbing left, for the last 30 years:  “No private citizens should be allowed to have guns – that’s only for law enforcement!”

Also the left, for the last 10 days: “Abolish law enforcement!”

The most entertaining iteration of this idiocy happened when a small group of protesters surrounded a guy’s car, but when he got out and stood up to them, several were immediately caught on tape instinctively saying, “Call the cops!”

You cannot make this stuff up.

 

Exhibit D.  The idea that Black Lives Matter actually gives a rat’s Schumer about black lives.   Twenty black people got murdered in Democrat-run Chicago in two weekends, and BLM is silent.  Black cop David Dorn and black security guard David Patrick Underwood are murdered by peaceful looters, and BLM is AWOL.   Thousands of black people are murdered every year (mostly by black criminals), tens of thousands more are aborted, and BLM could not care less.  But THIS has awakened BLM’s moral righteousness?

I’m going to agree with marginal characters like Christ and MLK and say that “all lives matter.”  If you are offended and outraged by that concept, I suggest that you quickly try to cover yourself with your hands, because your moral shortcomings are out in the open.

The moral tide has gone out, people.  Close your eyes and step away from the knitting needles, because what’s on display on the Left is NOT pretty.

Avenatti/ Nikole Hannah-Jones 2020!

I’m still working on a few columns with some thoughts on optimism vs. pessimism.  But in the meantime, I’m blowing off a little steam with some thoughts on some leftist bad actors from the last four days…

Let’s start today with a quick round of “Stupid or Liar?”   Invented by Adam Carolla, this bit involves considering a ridiculous statement by a public figure and trying to decide whether that person is stupid enough to believe that statement, or just a creepy liar.

First player: Ali Velshi – which sounds like a delicious, exotic Middle Eastern dish, but is sadly just a hack MSNBC reporter.  He did a live shot over the weekend from Minneapolis, during which he had the “protestors, not rioters” leftist party line down pat, saying, “I want to be clear on how I characterize this.  This is mostly a protest. It is not, generally speaking, unruly…”  As these words were coming out of his mouth, he was standing in front of a raging fire destroying several buildings, and he had just mentioned that he could see four fires (one in a police station) from where he stood.

Ali Velshi: Stupid or Liar?  (“Succulent entre that goes well with hummus” has been removed from your quiz choices.)

 

Second player: “Worst Governor Ever” contestant Gretchen Whitmer.  Until 10 minutes ago, Michiganders had to stay in their houses until after the election to avoid the deadly reach of the Trump virus.

Cut to yesterday, when Whitmer said that in the wake of George Floyd’s death (and considering that fanning flames of racial hatred will help her nihilistic party in November), she is “encouraging communities across Michigan to designate areas for peaceful demonstrations.”  Got that?  If you’re a law-abiding citizen trying to work and take care of your family and pay taxes, stepping out of your house means that you’re a selfish monster who wants to KILL US ALL!  But if you want to steal a bunch of stuff that you aren’t willing to work and pay for, feel free to create a kleptomaniacal conga line and scream spittle-producing slogans into each other’s faces.

Old Whitmer motto: Covid – Destroyer of Humanity!   New Whitmer motto: Covid, schmovid.

Gretchen Whitmer: Stupid or Liar?

 

Third player: Leftist imbecile and ex-ESPN writer Chris Palmer.  On May 28^th, Palmer tweeted a pic of a Minneapolis public housing building on fire, writing, “Burn that s**t down.  Burn it all down.” Two days later, the peaceful protesters started bringing their arson-y ways to pricey Rodeo Drive.  It turns out that Palmer is something of a pampered little rich wuss who happens to live there.  So did he tweet out his support for his rioting buddies, and drop a Molotov cocktail onto the silk sheets on his king-size bed in his spacious master bedroom with the tray ceilings to start the Rodeo Revolution?

Spoiler alert: he did not.

In fact, he tweeted, “I’m as down for the cause as anybody…. [But] trying to loot Rodeo Drive is probably the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. I’m as angry as everyone else. But keep that s**t in [downtown] LA.”  When the peace-loving civil rights activists got closer, Princess Palmer panicked.  “[They] destroyed a Starbucks and are now in front of my building. Get these animals the f**k out of my neighborhood.”

Who are you calling “animals,” Chrissy?  And who are you asking to remove them for you?  It couldn’t be the brutal, racist cops, could it?  Because you are down for the cause, right?

Chris Palmer: Stupid or Liar?’

Please submit your answers in the Comments section below!

 

I want to close with the continuing adventures of the Dearly Departed Joe Biden (born in 19-clickety-clack, died in 2019).

On Monday, ol’ Joe escaped his handlers and ended up in a Delaware Bethel AME church (in this case, “AME” stands for “addled and mentally elsewhere”), where he waxed eloquent with his ideas of how the cops should be doing their jobs – ideas drawn from his zero years of being a cop.

(But he did watch a lot of “Car 54 Where Are You,” “Mannix,” and that one where the detective was that fat guy.  Quincy too, that was another one, where Klugman looks like he’s examining a dead body, but then the camera pulls back and you see that she’s a cute blonde in a bikini? Mmmm, I’d like to sniff her hair and creep her out, and that’s no malarkey!  Oh, Frank Cannon.  That was the fat detective.  I bet he could wrap his arms around Corn Pop and squeeze him until he passed out.  Rockford Files was a good one too.  I wonder what Jill is making for lunch?)

Sorry about that.  I wrote this column with my wizard hat on, and it temporarily gave me direct access to Joe Biden’s interior monologue.  (There’s more sound of wind and rolling tumbleweeds in there than you might expect.) (Or, maybe, just as much as you might expect.)

Back to Biden, and this quote of his, which I swear to you on the life of Cassie the Wonder dog I am not making up: “Instead of standing there and teaching a cop when there’s an unarmed person comin’ at ’em with a knife or something to shoot ’em in the leg instead of the heart is a very different thing.”

There is a lot of nonsense in that non-sentence.

First, he describes “an unarmed person” coming at a cop with “a knife or something.”  Ummmm.  Do you think that Joe might think that “unarmed” means a guy without arms, maybe from a birth defect, or an industrial accident?  But then how would he carry the knife?  Not to mention the “something?”

Second, if Joe were choosing body parts to target when dealing with these gutless looters, why not advise the cops to aim for the groin?  (Ladies and gentlemen, insert your own “aim small, miss small” joke here.  Hat tip to Mel Gibson in The Patriot.)

Third, it’s something of a common trope for people who have never seen combat or served in the military or been in a police force — or been attacked by another person, or ever fired a gun — to fantasize about how they would handle a split-second, high-stakes decision.   In the real world, a masked member of the Democrat voting base is sprinting toward you, screaming obscenities and threats – as one does when one is deeply committed to mourning the death of George Floyd – and his flying spittle might contain covid, and also rabies, and probably an alphabet soup of STDs.  Plus he’s got that knife in one hand and that something in the other!

In that same real world, you’d try to clear the holster in time, and aim for center mass.

But in the fantasy world of Walter Mitty Biden, you’ve got all the time in the world.  You’re like one of those snipers in a church steeple in a WWII movie.  You watch the charging maniac calmly, while you lick your thumb, and use it to click the screw on the top of your scope to adjust for windage and elevation.  Then you center the crosshairs on the miscreant’s leg and fire a shot that misses the bone and all major blood vessels, and brings him peacefully to the ground.  He looks up at you in gratitude, as you help him back to his feet, and tell him that you share his commitment to fight the vicious, systemic racism that has made America such a Mordor-ian hellscape.

The end.

Good lord, I think that wizard hat damaged some of my synapses by putting me in Biden’s headspace, even for a few seconds!

Anyway, why would anyone take firearms advice from Plugsy McRovingfingers?  Back in 2013, when he could still fog a mirror, Biden advised people to use shotguns.  He told a young questioner, “if you want to protect yourself, get a double barreled shotgun…. I promise you, as I told my wife, we live in an area that’s wooded and somewhat secluded. I said, Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out, put [up] that double barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house.”

So I guess if the cops were listening to Biden, they’d be carrying shotguns?  In which case, I’d like to witness them using his aiming strategy.  I’d stand well clear of the rioting thug, while a cop fired a double-barreled shotgun at his leg.  Then I’d play my sad trombone – which I never leave home without, especially when I’m going to a riot — as the surprised would-be murderer slowly canted to one side, and then fell in the direction of the leg he used to have.

I might even say something like, “Hey Ahab, aren’t you glad that cop aimed at your leg, like Joey Gaffes told him to?  By the way, can I have your shoe, since you’re not going to be using it anymore?

Now that I think about it – and I never thought I’d ever say this – maybe Joe Biden is on to something.

 

Avenatti / Peg-Legged Looter, 2020!

Events this weekend have made calm thought difficult.  I had some time to jot down a few thoughts last Thursday about our gradual re-opening from the virus, but now those seem less important.  However, they do tie in with a theme I’ve been thinking about during this protest/riot/lootfest over the weekend, so I decided to share them anyway…

The daily sturm und drang of all the virus news has gotten old long ago, and like most people, I’ve got virus fatigue.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say I’ve got virus coverage fatigue.  The airwaves have been full of speculation and information (the ratio: 15,000 parts of the former to 1 part of the latter), and even people who are trying to honestly understand the virus have worn us out with their contradictory pronouncements.  Never has the old cliché that someone is “often wrong but never in doubt” been more true.

First masks were unnecessary.  Then they were crucial, and you should expect them to drop from the ceiling of the church you are forbidden to go to, as if First Lutheran were a 747 that had just experienced a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure.

First the virus thrives on hard surfaces, and can live there for the life spans of three Bernie Sanderses.  Then last week it couldn’t, and it was safe to go back to licking doorknobs again.  Then this week it loves hard surfaces again, so you better get that tongue-ectomy if you took my door-licking advice from one sentence ago.

First it was going to kill at least 1.1 million Americans, and maybe twice that many.  Then it was only going to kill 60,000.  Now it looks like around 120,000.  Except that a second wave is absolutely 100% going to happen, starting exactly at 1:13 Eastern Standard Time on September 5^th.  (The first victim will be Richard Ferguson, a retired plumber from Sioux City (#wemustneverstopmockingher), in case you are interested.)

Wait, this just in.  It turns out that the reported cases in the 13 states that started opening up 3 weeks ago are down, which means that the second wave might be as mythical as Blasey-Ford’s encounter with Kavanaugh, or AOC’s knowledge of basic economics, or the existence of the dread gangbanger Corn Pop.

 

So that was last week, and in the meantime I’ve been outraged, then dispirited, and then angry at what I’ve watched spreading across our country.

The actions of those cops were terrible.  As a conservative – and therefore supporter of law and order – I am generally a supporter of the police as I am of the military.

But I’m also very much aware of how serious it is when any officers abuse their power.  It was horrifying and maddening to watch the cop with his foot on that man’s neck for so long, made worse by the other police standing around and doing nothing to stop it.  That is outrageous behavior, and it fully merits anger and protests and demands for accountability.

What’s been happening since then is sickening, too.  I can’t tell from the footage I’ve seen what portion of the crowds have been righteously angry protesters who are peacefully demanding appropriate action; I know that “if it bleeds, it leads,” has always dominated media coverage, and violent rioters looting and burning will always get the lion’s share of the coverage.

That being said, after three or four nights of this, it sure looks now like a dark version of the old joke about lawyers: the rotten 99% are giving the other 1% a bad name.

As CO and many others have noted, there is no need for this: the officers were immediately fired, the main bad actor has been charged with murder, and a high-profile investigation is already underway, with charges and likely convictions to follow.  This isn’t the old Jim Crow South (Democrat-controlled, I can’t help but remind the racial arsonists who still seem to be running that party, if the last three days are any indication), where corrupt white cops and local governments routinely victimized black people and got away with it.  Justice is already in the process of being done, and NO ONE is defending those cops’ actions.

Again, this isn’t the old days of protestors fighting on one side and racist Dems trying to enforce segregated lunch counters and water fountains and movie theaters on the other.   Or Rosa Parks or MLK on one side and racist Dem laws about segregated buses or schools on the other.  Or Emmett Till on one side and racist Dem klansmen on the other. All politicians on both sides, from Trump on down, have condemned the killing of George Floyd.

So who’s on the other side, for the rioters to attack?  Target stores.  Hundreds of small businesses (including black-owned businesses, not that that should matter, unless you’re a racist, Sharpton-style bad faith—oh, wait.)  St. Patrick’s cathedral, the WWII memorial, public housing units, and various government buildings in cities that are almost entirely Democrat-governed (and largely black-governed, not that that should matter, unless…).  That’s who you’re attacking, you vicious morons.

Ugh.

The theme I was thinking about last week was “optimism vs. pessimism.”  I’m going to write more about that later this week, because I think it is intertwined with our reactions to both the virus and the George Floyd killing, and I think it’s worth contemplating.  I want to make the case for optimism – even in days like these – while also considering the merits, such as they are, of pessimism.

Since I’m trying to stay pro-optimism, I’ll close by mentioning three potential silver linings on this darkest of clouds:

1.There have been heartening incidents of karmic comeuppance, with some thugs attacking cars and then getting run over by them (thank you, 1909 Wisconsin inventors of four-wheel drive!), one Mensa-member in NC trying to throw a Molotov cocktail and managing to set himself on fire instead (here’s hoping the burns are in an area that will preclude his fathering any future looters), and several groups of armed citizens banding together to protect lives and property against mobs of rioters, who showed their micro-phallic courage by running away to victimize softer targets.

2. If the NRA and GOP aren’t already cutting that footage into ads, they’re committing political malpractice. (Here’s some voice-over to get you started: “The next time a concerned leftist asks you why ANY law-abiding American should EVER have a gun, show him this footage…”)

3. The rioters and looters can serve at least a couple of useful public services, first by reminding voters where the political lines are drawn right now (with various local and national Dems and leftist celebrities urging on the rioters and explicitly excusing, and in some cases applauding, their vandalism and violence). And second by helping advance medical science.  It now appears that a combo of hydroxy-chloroquine and zinc may not help against the Wu-flu, but with any luck, we’ll soon learn more about the combined effects of pepper spray and rubber bullets fired into the abdomens or backsides of those not socially distancing during this terrible pandemic.

I’ve always been ethically troubled by endangering innocent lab animals in experiments.  But if we can learn from some enthusiastic SJWs who are attempted to destroy property and murder innocent people?

You do you, human guinea pigs!

This quarantine makes all holidays feel flat and unreal to me; it did it to St. Patrick’s Day, then Easter, and now Memorial Day.

But I’m lucky enough to live in Florida, where a GOP governor has allowed us to almost completely open up, so life is starting to return to normal. But our church is still not doing live services, and the library is still not open, so for a Christian and a reading junkie like me, life is still not normal yet.

All of that being said, I’ve been watching just enough news to continue to enjoy the flaming Hindenburg immolation that is the Joe Biden campaign.

His latest rhetorical rake-stomping was especially satisfying, since it made him look like a racist bonehead. As opposed to his previous iterations: pandering bonehead, corrupt bonehead, sexist bonehead, and all-around bonehead. (If you are keeping track on your Democrat bingo card, all you need is for him to say something ham-handed about transgenders… then jump up and wave that card over your head, screaming your head off. The only downside: every other person in America with a Joe Biden has already yelled “bingo.”)

Anyway, Plugs decided to do an interview with some doof who calls himself “Charlamagne tha God.” I’m no campaign manager, but did you need to know anything else about that guy other than that he misspelled “Charlemagne” and “the?” And since in his case you know that “God” should be lower case, he is 0 for 3 in spelling his own name!

Shockingly, the interview between a 112-year-old white guy who doesn’t know where he is and the African-American guy who doesn’t know how to spell his own name did not go well.

And now the Trump campaign has another bit of video to add to its attack ad library. Not since Peter Jackson had to cut The Lord of the Rings into just 3 long films has anyone faced such a daunting editing challenge.

I knew that Biden was struggling, but Andrew Klavan played some Biden audio from only two years ago — and he sounded like a different man. Don’t get me wrong: what he was saying was 180 degrees off, just as every public utterance of his since he first went to congress shortly after the Civil War ended.

But it was coherent. Not intellectually coherent. Because he’s Joe Biden. But it was syntactically and grammatically recognizable as a string of sentences that expressed a thought that had a beginning, a middle and an end.

But now? Everyone sees it: the guy is failing. Did you see when Anderson Cooper asked him to respond to a pre-taped video question from a voter, and Biden couldn’t get it that the guy wasn’t really there, live, and talking to him? Biden thanked the guy at the beginning, and made several comments to him, and never really did understand that he hadn’t been talking to a live person.

And it wasn’t cute, like when your addled but lovable grampy used to yell at people in horror movies to “Watch out!” I remember that my own grandfather would watch pro wrestling on tv, and would yell himself hoarse trying to alert the referee that the Iron Sheik was sneaking up on his opponent with a folding chair.

In his defense, grandpa was 85 at the time (slightly older than Plugs), and a retired crane operator, rather than someone vying for a shot at leading the free world. Also, he raised two sons, neither of whom scammed millions out of a corrupt Ukrainian kleptocrat.

Plus, when the older son died, the younger one didn’t immediately start hitting on his widow.

So at least grandpa had that going for him.

Anyway, my advice to Trump and the GOP is to stop hammering Biden for now. He doesn’t have the nomination yet, and a lot of Dems are already looking for a way to steal it from him (the phrase “like taking candy from a dementia patient in a coma” comes to mind), as they recognize the extent to which he is deteriorating.

It may be Machiavellian, but I think we should hold our tongues and our attacks, and let Joe coast until he officially has the nomination. Once he’s officially in, and it’s too late to replace him at the top of the ticket, we can go at him down the stretch.

The beauty is, we don’t need to do anything sleazy or underhanded. (Although no matter what anyone does, I fear the debates might garner Biden some sympathy. Trump v. Biden is going to look like 20-year-old Mike Tyson v. post-transition Bradley Manning, if Manning had astigmatism, and hemophilia, and the upper body strength of Bradley Manning.)

All we have to do is play a loop of Biden’s greatest hits on video: plagiarism scandals, position flip flops, disjointed ramblings, sexual assault. Plus a bedtime story about Mean Ol’ Corn Pop.

 

One new sign of desperation in the Biden camp is the list of people whom he is allegedly considering as possible running mates, especially since a running mate will be so crucial this year (unlike most), when the over/under on the life expectancy of the guy at the top of the ticket will be early fall of last year!

Given that, he has already handicapped himself by promising that the VP will have to be a woman. Not that it’s a handicap to pick a woman, of course – but it’s idiotic to rule out half of the population before the vetting process even begins.

And it’s not like the Dems have a deep female bench. Who are the most prominent Dem females on the national stage right now?

A cranky old white lady who pretends to be an Indian. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

A different cranky old white lady with the ankles of a Clydesdale and the soothing speaking voice of a crow with infected tonsils who just finished a tour as the lead singer with his cover band who did nothing but Tom Waits songs for two sets a night, plus encores of “Time” and “Big in Japan” after each performance.

A frozen-faced mummy.

A colorless, odorless, flavorless Minnesotan with a heck of an arm when it comes to throwing binders at the triple-A level.

The Squad (proof that the old saying that “two heads are better than one” was not only wrong, but wildly so. In this case, four heads are not even better than one.)

You might look at that Murderers Row of Incompetence and be tempted to defy Joe Biden to pick worse prospects. And if he were still alive, Plugsy would say, “Hold my beer, and get your words straight, Jack.”

Then he would leak the most prominent candidates whom he is allegedly considering: Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, and Stacey Abrams.

Good lord!

Kamala is best known for getting her first position in politics by being creepy old Willie Brown’s mistress. (I was going to say, “That’s what I call an entry level position!” But I am far too classy for that.) She ran a terrible primary campaign that garnered only slightly more black support than Mitt Romney got in 2012, and she has a laugh so phony and grating that only the Phantom of Chappaqua exceeds it.

Whitmer is the witless governor of Michigan, where she has spent the last two months (and counting) exhibiting the worst qualities of a leftist bully. She’s condescending, and stubborn, and she’s imposing needless hardships on her state through her micro-managing arrogance.

She’s resistant to logic and allergic to facts, and she’s in the top tier of terrible Dem governors – along with Newsom, Pritzker, Cuomo and Nosferatu from New Jersey.

Any sane Republican candidates would be trying to hang Whitmer around the Dem nominee’s neck, pointing to her terrible mismanagement of the virus as emblematic of infuriating leftist malfeasance.

So Joey Gaffes naturally wants her to drop by his basement for a good ol’ grope and sniff—er, “vetting.”

And Stacey Abrams? Really?

Okay, so she’s female, and she’s black. And she got elected to an insignificant statehouse seat, before losing a governor’s race, and then pretending to have won. For months!

And that is ALL of her upside. The downside was displayed in a ridiculous recent Washington Post profile of her which managed to draw eye rolls from even the leftist media. Called “The Power of Stacey Abrams,” it featured purple prose, and a pic of her standing against a darkening background in what appeared to be a superhero’s cape.

The most infamously delusional paragraph in the article offered this quote, which I swear I am not making up, “Pandemonium ensues as she walks to the far left of the stage like a runway supermodel, stops on a dime, poses, tilts her head slightly and smiles. Cameras flash… and Abrams is summoning her inner actress…”

First off, I’m afraid that her inner actress is the same as her outer actress (the one who pretended to be GA governor), and like too many actresses, this one is bat guano crazy.

Second, “like a runway super model?” When you think of a supermodel, who do you think of?

That’s right: Melania.

Now Google Stacy Abrams.

I know. When I thought of “Stacy Abrams,” I thought of the M-1 Abrams.

Which is fine battle tank, and which – coincidentally – would look no more out of place on a runway than Stacy Abrams. Google it, take a look at those steel-plated flanks – on the tank, I mean – and tell me I’m wrong.

Normally, I’m not one to body shame. I think we’d be much more justified in character shaming, if the Dems weren’t incapable of shame.

But now that Imhotep Pelosi has changed the rules by calling the president “morbidly obese,” it seems almost unpatriotic not to correct this idiotic puff piece by pointing out the obvious.

Plus, I know that no matter how cruel I might be about her appearance, Pelosi will never frown at me. Because she is incapable of frowning. Or smiling. Or expressing any human emotion. Due to all of the botox that she’s injected into her hideous face, the sociopathic old crone.

You’re morbidly obtuse, Nancy. And you deserve to look like you do. I hope Joe picks you as his running mummy.

Sorry…mate. Running mate.

 

Avenatti/Undead Mistress of the Nile, 2020!

 

I realized after writing a column last week about how terrible Andrew Cuomo has been at his job, that I had missed one of his lowlights.  I already knew that he didn’t start sanitizing NYC subway trains until early May, but I didn’t realize that he hadn’t reversed his earlier order that nursing homes must take in elderly patients with the virus (“I wonder how that turned out?” you are not asking yourselves, because even Dunce Cap Ocasio-Cortez could figure that one out) until almost Mother’s Day!

The Cuomos remind me of a very old joke, which I will tweak to fit the situation now:

Chris Cuomo dies.  It’s not important how.  (Though the smart money is on either “he wandered into traffic” or “he drank aquarium cleaner.”)  The day before his funeral a new priest arrives at his parish, and so has to give his eulogy.

During the service, the priest says, “As most of you know, since I just got here yesterday, I didn’t know the deceased personally.  In cases like these, I like to ask those who knew him best if they would like to share some of the positive things about him, and what he meant to them.”

Silence.  The priest starts to get a little nervous.  “I know that many of you may be shy about public speaking.  But please, tell us your thoughts: what did you like most about Chris Cuomo?”

More silence. Nobody can meet the priest’s eyes.   They’re all looking at their shoes, and fidgeting uncomfortably.

The priest is starting to sweat now: this is a terrible start for him in his new parish.  “Ladies and gentlemen, please.  I know that you all knew the departed well.  Someone, anyone… tell me the nicest thing about Chris Cuomo.”

After a few more mortifying moments of silence, one miserable guy in the back row gets jabbed in the ribs by a family member, and he reluctantly stands up.   The priest feels a wave of relief, and gestures for the man to speak.

He clears his throat, then quickly says, “His brother was worse,” and sits down.

That’s the best thing I can say about Chris Cuomo.  He may be a phony, fake-quarantining, partisan hack with the intellect of a petrified block of wood.

But his brother is worse.

 

Speaking of worse, I have a riddle for you: How do you take a press conference during which a dishonest reporter asked a disingenuous pseudo-question, and then played the race card when Trump pushed back, and make that situation worse?

Answer: get Brian Stelter involved.

You probably already know what I’m referring to.  On May 11th, Trump was being all Trumpy, and touting the fact that the US has rapidly ramped up our virus testing.  I’m not sure why he would do such a thing… unless it was because the MSM has just spent the last two months shrieking about how the US is not doing enough testing.

“Why are we doing less testing than South Korea or Italy?” they mope.  Fauci interrupts to say, “Actually, in real numbers we are doing more testing than—”

“But we’re a big country,” interrupts another fatuous J-school grad, “what about per capita?”

Dr. Scarf starts to say, “Per capita too, we’re doing more testing than any of our European counterpart—”

“What about Wakanda, and Brigadoon, and Xanadu and the Emerald City,” shout a chorus of doofi with press credentials, “and other made-up places that we know would be handling this pandemic much better, if they weren’t as fictional as Corn Pop and Liz Warren’s proud Commanche ancestors?” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

So, yeah.  Trump was pointing out that we’re doing a hell of a lot of virus testing.

Enter Asian reporter and leftist spinmeister (but I repeat myself) Weijia Jiang (BA in Grievance Studies from Noam Chomsky University, with a double major in Passive Aggressive non-question questioning).   When Trump called on her, she said, “”Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives?”  This is obviously not a legit question; it’s a slimy shot at Trump, insinuating that he’s been treating this virus as a game, and that he’s to blame for Americans dying from the WuFlu.

By the way, how do you know that our efforts are stacking up pretty well in comparison to those of other nations?  Because if some of the left’s beloved s-hole countries (and the “s” doesn’t stand for “socialist.”) (Though, wait a minute – yes it does.  Also, for a synonym for “socialist.”) were doing better, Jiang would be sneering, “How come we’re losing the global competition to Venezuela and Cuba?”

Anyway, Trump counter-punched on the insulting implication that the virus is his fault – which he’s only had to deal with about 10,000 times since the bat-savoring Communist slave masters in Beijing loosed this pandemic on the world – by telling her to “ask China.”

Jiang shot back, “Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically? That I should ask China?”   To his credit, Trump didn’t say the obvious: I’m saying that to you specifically, because you are the specific idiot who just implied that the virus is my fault.   Have you noticed that I never say, “Thanks for that question, random hateful reporter.  I’d like to address my answer to the secret service guy over there, or maybe to the guy selling hotdogs at the cart across the street?”

Ugh.  Just when you thought this tired race-baiting BS had become as offensive as it could possibly be, into the fray wades the hack who looks like a giant, dishonest human thumb: Brian Stelter.  And surprise, surprise – he detects racism, as he makes clear in this comment, which I wish I were making up, “It is racist to look at an Asian-American White House correspondent and say, ‘Ask China.’ This isn’t happening in a vacuum. This is part of a pattern of behavior from the president that goes back many years.”

Read that again, and wonder at the awesome thick-headedness of CNN’s Thumble-stiltskin.  In the first sentence, he says that it is racist to tell Jiang to, “Ask China,” the idea being that he only said that because she’s Asian.   In the very next sentence – that’s not a figure of speech: I mean the very. next. sentence. — he says that “this is part of a pattern … that goes back many years.”

Brian Stelter, you ignorant slut!  If you argue in one sentence that it’s uniquely racist for Trump to blame China to a Chinese-American reporter, you cannot argue (in the NEXT SENTENCE!) that he does this all the time, to many reporters, very few of whom are Asian.

It’s hard to comprehend the depth of the MSM talking heads’ delusions.  Anybody who has watched Trump for 5 minutes know that he’s a wild counter-puncher.  Anyone who attacks him – no matter their race, gender, nationality or phylum — is going to get strafed with insults right back.  Hell, he claimed that Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK, and he insulted Jeb Bush’s energy level and Marco Rubio’s manhood!  And those guys are in his own party!

Trump doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and Americans know that.  But he doesn’t trade insults with Asian fools, or white fools, or black fools, or Hispanic fools because they’re Asian, white, black, or Hispanic.  It’s because he thinks they’re fools.

And he’s not usually wrong  about that.

 

Finally, as I’ve been heartened by watching the citizens of red and blue states alike starting to resist and protest the heavy-handed bullying of their (mostly leftist) mayors and governors, I’ve come up with an idea that I wish somebody in the GOP national leadership would propose: every politician should agree to forego their salary for the duration of this crisis.

The average net worth of congressmen and senators is into the millions, and I’m sure that the same goes for most governors and big city mayors.  Because that’s true, and because they and their staffs aren’t missing any paychecks, they are out of touch with the real pain that this is causing the tens of millions of Americans who have lost jobs, and the more than 100 million who have lost income and savings, on top of the losses to their 401ks and other retirement savings, if they have any.

For them, this lockdown is like water torture, an infliction of pain as every day passes with no work or business.  That wears on a person’s mind and emotions in a way that nobody who has millions in the bank and a steady paycheck can viscerally understand.  My wife and I have both continued to get paid, so I know that even though we feel for our fellow citizens in an intellectual and empathetic way, we have not been directly suffering as they have.

And if that’s true for us, it’s true 1000 times over for the pampered, entitled narcissists who are enforcing this lockdown on us.  Add to that the palpable political gains for national leftists – an ever-more dependent populace, a commensurate increase in their own political power, and the prospect of damaging Trump’s chances at re-election – and you can understand why leftist governors like Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker and Andrew Cuomo and leftist house leaders like Captain Pencil Neck and the Botox Kid are doing their best to extend the lock down until after November, if possible.

If our GOP leaders were smart and principled – I know, I said “if” – they’d bring up a bill immediately to suspend their own salaries, retroactive to April 1^st.  Doing so would show us that we all really are in this together, and that Bill Clinton’s infamous come-on line – “I feel your pain” (not to mention your buttocks) – might finally be true.

And call me cynical, but if they did that, I think they’d be ending the lockdown by about Wednesday afternoon.

Because if there is one thing upon which nearly all Americans agree, it is that at the very top of any reasonable list of non-essential jobs would have to be “politician.”

 

Avenatti/Thumbkin Stelter 2020!

As this pandemic wears on, I find myself making up games to pass the time.  Today’s game is to choose the “Worst Performance by a Leftist in the Last Fortnight.”

I have chosen three nominees:

#1.  Andrew Cuomo.  Cuomo is a terrible leftist governor.  He’s probably no more terrible than IL leftist governor J.B. “already overweight interior lineman who retired and really let himself go” Pritzker, or than CA leftist governor Gavin “Christian Bale in American Psycho” Newsom.

But what’s extra galling about Cuomo is how the press contorts itself to cover him as if he’s done a great job throughout the pandemic.  When he says exactly the same things that Trump says, they call Trump a dolt and Cuomo a genius.  And they haven’t noticed that Cuomo forced old people with the virus to be sent back to their nursing homes.  Then when a disproportionate number of deaths came from the nursing homes… nothing.

When he finally ordered that subway cars be taken out of service for a few hours to be sanitized – in May!  Seven weeks after the country has gone into lockdown! – nothing again.

Think about that.  Imagine that you took your average 7-year-old – someone who is only two grades ahead of AOC, mentally speaking – and gave her a 10-minute Sesame Street-level explanation of the virus.  Just the high points: it spreads through the air, can survive for a while on hard surfaces in an enclosed environment, and kills mostly old people who are in close proximity to each other.  If you then asked that 7-year-old what you should do to protect people from the virus, she would say – in an adorable lisp, because a bunch of her baby teeth have recently been coming out – “Shut down the subways and close off the nursing homes.”

How did Governor Cuomo or Mayor DiBlasio answer that same question?  “Impeach Donald Trump, and send us a plane filled with pallets of cash in unmarked, non-sequential bills.”

I had thought that Cuomo had been as terrible as he could possibly be at his job.  But on Tuesday, May 5^th, 2020 – a day that should live in infamy – he gave a press conference in which he summed up leftism more perfectly than anything that has ever been said (except maybe Stalin’s dictum that, “Death is the solution to all problems.  No man – no problem.”)

Because NY is a deep blue state, its greedy government treats citizens the way a pimp treats his hookers: every question from the downtrodden citizen is answered by a balled-up fist and a scream of, “GIVE ME MY F-IN’ MONEY!!”  Coincidentally, NY has a law that says that anyone who works for more than 14 days in the state has to pay NY’s exorbitant state income tax.

I know that you can see where this is going, even if you have to look at it through the fingers of the hand you are holding in front of your face, like it was a horror movie.  Which it basically is.

Cuomo appeared on tv for weeks moaning that the pandemic was decimating his state, and begging medical personnel from around the country to please, please, PLEASE come and help the desperate New Yorkers.   Cuomo got what he asked for.  Trump sent $7.5 billion, a hospital ship and half of the ventilators in the Western hemisphere, and good-hearted nurses and doctors and other Ameri-CANs from around the country — who, because their governors were smart enough NOT to force infected, feverish octogenarians back into nursing homes like so many wrinkly biological weapons, while maintaining a 24-7 rolling infect-atorium train system, were able to leave their home states – heeded Cuomo’s call, and went to New York to help.

Then, on May 5^th, someone asked whether those big-hearted heroes from around the country would have to pay the extortionate leftist tax rate during the time they were there, literally saving the lives of New Yorkers.

Upon hearing that question, Cuomo turned to an assistant, who produced a floor-length purple velvet robe with a white mink collar, and draped it over the governor’s shoulders.  Then she lowered an enormous canary-yellow fedora with an iridescent ostrich feather in its band onto his head, and handed him an onyx cane with a gigantic cut-glass knob on its end.  And Cuomo raised the cane over his head as though to strike the cowering reporter and screamed, “”WHERE’S MY MONEY?!  GIVE ME MY F-IN’ MONEY, BEE-YOTCH!”

Okay, that’s a paraphrase.

What he actually said, and I swear I am not making this up, was, “We’re not in a position to provide any more subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit.  So, there’s a lot of good things I would like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say, ‘I’m going to spend more money when I can’t even pay the essential services.'”

Sit and marinate in that for a moment.  He’s presided over a state that confiscates a mountain of taxes and still runs up huge structural deficits, while providing mediocre schools, crumbling infrastructure, filthy subways and increasing crime.  When a pandemic hits he suddenly feels the sobering pinch of fiscal responsibility – which he believes should be provided via a bailout from the federal government (i.e. us) – and doesn’t even have the basic decency to be grateful to those who came to his rescue.

And did you notice how he described the taxes he was being asked NOT to gouge out of the rescuers?  He didn’t say, “I can’t afford NOT to financially rape these selfless people;” he said that he couldn’t afford to “provide [them] subsidies!”  And at the end, he said that allowing them to not pay his extra tax would be the same as “spend[ing] more money.”  He has the bone-deep leftist conceit that what you earn is not yours (you didn’t build that!) – it’s the government’s, and you should be grateful for anything that they let you keep. So a tax cut isn’t letting you keep more of what is already yours – it is “spending” what rightly belongs to your greedy government, and to the collective for which it stands.

He’s an unholy combination of angry pimp, entitled welfare cheat, and surly, ungrateful teenager.  Andrew Cuomo, ladies and gentlemen.

 

Nominee #2 – The late Joe Biden, who during his interview with Mika was asked about the Tara Reade allegations.  (By the way, I am able to spell Mika’s last name.  But I refuse to, by invoking Simpson’s 3rd Law of Spelling: People with two non-consecutive ‘Z’s in their last name are not entitled to anyone spelling it, ever.  Phil Rizzuto, yes.  Mika, no.)   To my amazement, Mika asked Biden a legitimate question: you joined the #metoo movement in insisting that if any woman ever makes an accusation of sexual misconduct, we must “believe the woman.”  So shouldn’t we believe Tara Reade?

The posthumous VP came back with an answer that turned the hypocrisy up to 11: “I’m not suggesting she had no right to come forward.  Any woman, they should come forward, they should be heard. And then it should be investigated.”

Whoa there, Plugsy McRovingFingers!  What’s this about investigation?  There’s no investigation in “believe all women!”  They speak, we believe, end of story.  Even Mika noticed that glaring inconsistency.  So she came back with the question again.  And Joey Gaffes fumbled it again.

“Look, women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt.” Stop right there!  If you are believed, there is NO doubt.  Belief and doubt are opposites.  It’s like saying, “Women are to be trusted – comma — called filthy liars.”

But Joe staggered onwards.  “If they come forward and say something that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption that they’re telling the truth.”  This is why I never made it through law school; on an exam, I answered that the ACCUSED has the presumption of innocence.  Turns out it was the ACCUSER, according to Judge Joe.   I was so close.

But Joe goes on: “Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts.”  No, no, no, NO!  They speak – we believe!  That’s it.  No investigation, no doubt, no looking at circumstances.

I never thought I’d say this, but that Joe Biden answer is worse than his answer when the portly Iowa voter asked about his degenerate, kleptomaniacal, brother’s-widow-jumping son, way back in 20-clickety-clack:  “Look, fat–.  Get your facts straight, jack!”

 

Nominee #3 — Texas Judge Eric Moye.

By now you’ve all heard the story: salon owner Shelley Luther decided that after 7 weeks of being locked down, she was going to open her salon a week before politicians deigned to give their permission.  She ended up in front of Judge Moye.

I would generally sympathize with a judge in his situation.  Luther had publicly defied the executive order, tearing up the notice she had received in front of media and supporters.  Because I am a conservative and thus have a general default setting of respect for the law, I could see why the judge might have to rule against her.  Many of the executive orders during this pandemic are constitutionally murky, and are being challenged everywhere; I hope that when all the legal dust is settled, many (if not most of them) are slapped down.  But as long as they are the law of the land, there is least an argument that she required some form of legal reprimand.

But that wasn’t enough for this judge.  (“I wonder what party he is a lifelong member of?” you are not asking yourself, because you already know.)  He climbed onto the bench, and then climbed further up onto his high horse, and then yet further up onto a pulpit – which was precariously balanced on the back of his high horse, somehow — and gave Luther a lecture, all the while shaking his orb and his scepter at her, and referring to himself with the royal “we.”

He told her that deciding to open her business was “selfish,” but he offered her the chance to avoid jail time.  All she had to do was apologize in a way pleasing to his highness.

Her apology must include her admission that, and I quote His Pompousness, “you now see the error of your ways, and understand that the society cannot function where one’s own belief in a concept of ‘liberty’ permits you to flaunt your disdain for the rulings of duly elected officials.”

He’s right, of course.  Why, if you allowed behavior like that, you might be starting down a slippery slope until you end up in the dystopian future of — oh, let’s say 7 years ago — when city and state governments all over the country will [did] defy the nation’s crucially important immigration laws.  They might even declare themselves to be “sanctuary” cities or states, and resist federal authorities’ attempts to enforce those laws.  If this rogue hairdresser is allowed to flaunt her flagrant haircutting – with its attendant unconstitutional mask wearing, social distancing and sanitizing – who knows what kinds of volleys of rubber bullets and educational tasering this judge would never require us to use against those disruptive creeps?

There are your nominees, folks.  I know it’s a tough choice: all three of these arrogant lefties are displaying brain cells that have been practicing social distancing.  But there can be only one winner, so please vote early and often.

Avenatti/Bishop Don Magic Juan (Google him) 2020!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I only wish Joe Biden were alive to see it!

 

Avenatti/ the late Joe Biden 2020!

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

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

And, I’m back.  Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Stressful times and shaken glasses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/Huggy Bear 2020!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh.  First, I can’t think of anything more gross for this young kid to read as he gets older than the details of his parent’s love life.  Second, what an erotic narcissist: “You plebes probably conceived your normally-named kids in a bland 3 bedroom tract house, in the missionary position.  Yuck.  Meanwhile, my lover and I (and you know this is the kind of gag-inducing male who calls his wife his “lover,” just to stick you with  a mental image that you do NOT want) hiked up a wind-swept cliff-face in a romantic foreign land during a thunderstorm to break into a century-old lighthouse, where we alarmed the livestock with our creative lovemaking and exotic outfits.”

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

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

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

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

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

And nobody is named “River.”

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Dear Katie,

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/River Weir 2020!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Down goes Chesterfield!  Down goes Chesterfield!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avenatti/ Lord Chesterfield 2020!