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As we headed into the summer, I was shocked to find that the MSM was not happy with the way Trump referred to immigrants:

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Later that month, I had the chance to rant about a pet peeve of mine that involves actual pets – “the boneheads who have convinced themselves and the airlines that they require an “emotional support” animal to accompany them to whatever destination they are traveling to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Speaking of listening to me, in June I read about leftist bullies in Colorado forcing a Christian baker to make a cake for the wedding of two hateful gay activists, and introduced what should become a bedrock principle of our democracy: “Mind Your Own Business You Totalitarian Jerks” (or MYOBYTJ):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is that?”

“Google him!” I yelled.

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

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

 

In July, one of my least favorite Obama administration officials – in a very crowded field – Jeh Johnson drew my ire afresh:

“You may remember him as Obama’s DHS secretary.  I remember him primarily as the man with the most annoyingly spelled name since Brett Favre.

Call me old fashioned, and a traditionalist.  And even ruggedly handsome, if you must.  But I am not one to go along with a society’s insane agreement to pronounce names incorrectly.  “F-A-V-R-E” features an “R” that comes after the “V” – therefore, “Fav-ruh.”  But all of sports media agreed to call him “Farve.”  The same thing happened with Cub shortstop Shawon Dunston (1985-2002), when everyone agreed to pretend that that “O” was not there, and call him “Shawn.”

But not me.  I could accept “Shawn” or “Sean,” but not “Shawon.” So I spent the better part of two decades talking about “Sha-won” Dunston and Brett “Fav-ruh.”  And people around me continually stared at me with what I choose to interpret as quiet admiration for my fidelity to the rules of English pronunciation.

Which brings me to Jeh Johnson.  In a sane world, his first name would have to rhyme with “meh” – which coincidentally enough, matches the emotion that the mention of his name should inspire, in even the best-case scenario.

But no.  “Jeh” wants to be called “Jay.”  And our sheep-like media just go along with it.  But we have a spelling for “Jay.”  It’s “Jay.”  I could even accept “J” for a first name, because that would be almost cool, and how else could you pronounce “J?”

But come on.   Pilots in trouble do not make frantic “Meh Deh” calls on the radio. I don’t sing “Oh Happy Deh” in church on Sundeh.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

So Chris Wallace interviewed Jeh on the subject of the morality of separating children from their parents when those parents illegally cross our borders.  Wallace pointed out that this was Obama’s policy, and that such hideously inhumane and cruel proceedings went on for years, with nary a peep from our debased, Jeh-humoring media.  Until Trump became president, and then separating children became the new Holocaust.

If you want to watch an example of a politician dancing around his obvious culpability while acknowledging nothing, watch that interview.  When Wallace asked him for a solution to illegal immigration, Jeh said, “We can’t have catch and release…”  Even though that’s what Jeh and his boss did.

And he said, “We did not want to go so far as to separate families.”  But that’s what Jeh and his boss did.

You almost get the sense that Jeh and his fellow leftists wants us to forget that Trump inherited the child-separation policy – the very one that the lefty mobs now claim to be so offended by – from Obama.

I have only one response to that: Not to-deh, Jeh.  No weh.

 

 

As another year has come to an end, I want to continue the tradition that I began last year, of doing a Dave Barry-esque look back at my favorite moments of the past year, as I commented on them in various columns.  Especially since CO’s site has continued to grow – over 23,000 followers now, and counting! — I know that many of you may not have caught these musings the first time around.  For those of you who did, I hope they bring back fond memories of mockery from days of yore.

So I give you “2018 Retrospecticus, Part 1: January – April”

2018 started on a high note, with me making a resolution to be more patient with people who disagree with me.

That resolution lasted until January 16^th, when a gaggle of reporters – and those mopes really put the “gag” in gaggle – interrogated Trump’s doctor for an hour.  The president had taken a physical along with a mental acuity test, and I wrote about the resulting press conference:

“The travesty started with the doc stating that Trump’s health is “excellent” and that he has “no mental or cognitive issue whatsoever.”  For a normal bunch of humans, that would elicit a “no story here” reaction, followed by a few perfunctory follow-up questions (“How about that cholesterol, though?”) and an early break for lunch.

But for this bunch of hacks, it was the opening salvo to a 21-gun salute of stupid.

They spent an hour asking variations on the same few questions (“But he might be crazy, right?” “Can you definitively rule out that he’s nuts?” “How many chicken nuggets is Trump short of a Happy Meal?” “But what about the dozens of leftist hack ‘doctors’ who have diagnosed Trump as a paranoid schizophrenic without ever having been in a room with him?)

The “mental acuity” test was a highlight of the circus.  The reporters thought it was a trap they were going to spring on Trump, but it turned out to be a rake that kept whapping them in their empty, coconut skulls.

Usually, I’m very content with my lot in life.  I married up, I’ve got two world-class daughters, I’ve got a good career and a small real estate empire, and the strength of 10 men, because my heart is pure.  My mental acuity is off the charts, and I own a dog who is the envy of the entire canine community.

But I think I would give all of my earthly possessions to have been in that doctor’s place at that press conference:

Reporter: “Why did you give him a mental acuity test in the first place?  Were you worried about that?”

Doctor Me: “Thanks for that inane question, you dolt.  Actually, he asked to be given that test.”

Reporter: “Is that because he is worried about his mental acuity?”

Me: “No.  It’s because he knows that a bunch of you soul-less hacks have been smearing him as mentally unfit.”

Reporter: “So how did he do?”

Me: “He got a 30.”

Reporter (beside himself with glee): “30%?!  That’s awful!”

Me: “Not 30%, you moron.  30 out of 30.  Put your shoes back on, Acosta – that’s 100%.”

Reporter:  “But this test doesn’t mean that he’s psychologically healthy, necessarily.  It only measures acuity, right?”

Me: “You can’t even spell ‘acuity,’ can you?”

Reporter:  “A – Q –”

Me (slapping my forehead):  “Idiots.”

Reporter: “Hey!  These are legitimate questions.  The people have a right to know about their leaders’ health!  We’re just doing our jobs!”

Me: “Like when you ignored Hillary Clinton’s bi-weekly near-death experiences during the campaign?  She had to wear Coke-bottle Mr. Magoo glasses for a while to help prevent seizures, and you never mentioned it.  She collapsed into the side of a limo like the sniper victim in Saving Private Ryan, and you ignored it.”

Reporter: “That wasn’t—”

Me: “During every other speech she went on a coughing jag like a chain-smoking octogenarian in a TB ward!  Nancy Pelosi slurs her speech like Chelsea Handler on the last night of Mardi Gras, and Frederica Wilson’s hat collection is clear prima facie evidence that she’s clinically insane!  And you’ve never asked any questions about any of them, have you?”

Reporter: “But—”

Me: “Shut up.  We’ve administered that same mental acuity test to some of the congressional Democrats.  Would you like to know how they scored?”

Reporter (in a wee, small voice): “no.”

Me (flourishing a print-out):  “Chuck Schumer got half a point.”  (looking over my glasses at the reporters)  “You get one point for spelling your name correctly.”

Reporters: “I don’t think we—”

Me: “The rest of the Democrat leadership scores didn’t make any sense to us, so we consulted a variety of experts.  Finally, a zoologist recognized that their calibrated scores were equivalent to those of several animal species.”

Reporters: “Oh, come on!”

Me: “According to these results, Elizabeth Warren has the mental acuity of a platypus.  And not the brightest platypus, either.  Fourth quintile platypus at best.  The kind of platypus that – if platypi had developed a tiered university system – would be trying to get her gen ed requirements out of the way at a community college with the hope of transferring to a weak state school.   Also, little known fact: the platypus is not a Native American species, even though the slower ones pretend that they are.”  (We must never stop mocking Elizabeth Warren.)

Reporters: “We don’t see what this has to do with—”

Me: “Nancy Pelosi?” (pause for effect)  “Third quintile racoon.”  (uncomfortable murmuring in the room)  “Dick Durbin?”  (no one will meet my eyes)  “Second quintile marmoset.”

Reporters: “What’s a—”

Me: “We had to re-test Frederica Wilson twice, before someone found a botanist who confirmed that she has the acuity of an unspecified deciduous tree.”

Reporters (after a long, shamed silence): “But still, what about Trump’s weight?  That’s not good, is it?”

Me: “That’s it.  Everybody line up.  I’m going to give a Three Stooges’ style sequential face-slap to the whole rotten lot of you!”

And, scene.”

By the way, one commenter noted that “Fourth Quintile Platypus” would be a fine name for a punk band, and I can’t disagree.

In February … Elizabeth Warren gave us all a Valentine’s Day present by revisiting her fairy tale genealogy at a speech to an American Indian group.

“This story has been extensively researched – and extensively debunked – and the smart thing would have been for Warren to let that old story get older.  But “smart” is not the Nordic Cherokee’s strong suit.

She used fake Indian ancestry to get an affirmative action job at Harvard, and launch her academic and later political career.  And she contributed a few alleged Indian recipes for Oklahoma Crab Bisque to a cookbook called (I’m not kidding) Pow Wow Chow.  (This clever recipe would definitely fool anyone who has never seen a crab, or been to Oklahoma, or is otherwise unable to look up either crabs or Oklahoma.)

But that’s done.  It’s in the past.  Or it would be, if she wasn’t stupid enough to bring it up again in front of the National Congress of American Indians!

Look, Liz, you’ve got to face facts.  You’re the least convincing Indian since Cher put on a bedazzled loincloth with a ginormous headdress and sang Half Breed.  (Watch that on Youtube right now, if you haven’t seen it.)  Or since an entire cast of buckskin-wearing vaguely ethnic extras made the tv show F-Troop (Youtube.  Right now!)  Larry Storch, who was supposed to be a white soldier, was a more convincing Indian than you.

Remember Iron Eyes Cody, the Indian who cried over litter in commercials? (Youtube, I tell’s ya!)  He was not an Indian.  He was an Italian guy named Vito Lucchese Siciliano, or something like that.  But at least he had dark skin and dark eyes, and changed his name to “Iron Eyes.”

You’re blonde, and blue eyed, and you look like a New England WASP who is none too pleased that the help is getting a little chatty as she dusts the cherry wood harpsicord that great-great-great-grandfather brought over with him on the Mayflower.   And your name is ELIZABETH!  First it was Elizabeth Herring, and then you married some sap named Warren.

And you know what no librarian has ever said, when surrounded by a semi-circle of bright-eyed four-year olds, on a faded carpet near the circulation desk?  “Gather round, kids, and I’ll tell you story of when the noble Sauk Herrings went on the war path against the fearsome Chickasaw Warrens!”

You’re a doddering old white lady, Liz, and you’re as phony as a Clinton wedding vow, and we will never stop mocking you.

 

In March… Planned Parenthood had a busy month.

“First, they supported the “March for our Lives,” gun-grabbing extravaganza.  Savor the irony: a Planned Parenthood event supporting children’s lives.

On a related note, mark your calendars for April: don’t miss the “National Socialist March for B’Nai B’rith,” on the fifth, the “Silicon Valley Amish Tech-stravaganza,” on the tenth, and the Bill Clinton “Promise Keepers,” rally on the 18th.  (Free “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” keychains to the first 200 people through the doors!)

Not satisfied with that shameless stunt, P-squared also took a brave stand on Disney princesses.  A Pennsylvania PP affiliate tweeted earlier this week – and I am not making this up, because no one could – the following:  “We need a Disney princess who’s had an abortion.”

Yikes.  That’s definitely what I wanted I wanted to hear from my daughters, when they were little: “Daddy, remember when Cinderella used to like that shiftless drifter, and then her belly started getting big, but by the time it was time for her to meet Prince Charming, she was skinny again?”

“Yes, honey,” I would never say in a million years, “she had to do that so that she could self-actualize, and marry up, and then slowly reveal her moral vacuity and make the Prince’s life a living hell until he prayed for the sweet release of death.”

“What’s ‘vacuity’?” my daughter would ask, and I’d say, “Look it up in the dictionary.  It’s next to the picture of Elizabeth Warren.”

“Should we ever stop mocking her?” my innocent daughter would ask.

And I’d say, “What do you think, Sweet Pea?”

And she’d look down at her shoes sheepishly, and mumble, “Never?”

And I’d say, “Never, ever, ever.”

 

But Planned Parenthood wasn’t through tweeting yet.  It also called for “pro-choice,” “Illegal immigrant,” “union worker,” and – wait for it – “trans” Disney princesses.

Yes.  A “trans” princess.  Because nothing brings a fantasy story alive like having a prince climb up the side of a tower using Rapunzel’s thick, lustrous beard.  Or like having the prince wake Snow White with a kiss, only to notice as her eyes flutter open that she has morning wood.

Nice job Planned Parenthood!

 

In April… I noticed a small story that struck me as emblematic of the bad behavior of elected leftists that is doing so much to worsen our civic culture.  The culprit this time was a Houston councilwoman named Kellye Burke:

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

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

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

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

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

HA!  I kid.

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

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

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

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

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

Next up: the best of May – August.  And in the meantime, please enjoy the 2018 Christmas portrait of Cassie the Wonder Dog.  Her favorite gift was a copy of Charles Krauthammer’s essays, which she has given a two-paws-up rating.

It has been depressing to watch politics over the last several weeks, but the Christmas season reliably pulls me out of all that.  We’ve put up the tree and trimmed out our new/old house, and I’ve had the first few fires in the fireplace lately.  As is my tradition, I’ve re-read The Christmas Carol, and I’ve been listening to a lot of great Christmas music.

This year I’ve got Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (you can’t go wrong with Bach) and Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (my favorite recent version is on a website called Reawaken Hymns), in heavy rotation.  But I also appreciate secular seasonal songs, and I’ve been enjoying various versions of ephemera like Santa Baby.

Also, in the wake of the recent leftist idiocy about Baby It’s Cold Outside, I’ve immersed myself in that one again.  Would it shock you to know that Ray Charles probably did it best?  Not if you’ve been paying attention.

I guess I’m saying that I’m a pretty ecumenical celebrator of Christmas, and I spurn no one of good will.

Except Zoroastrians.  They know why.

But enough about that contemplation of a loving God and our eternal souls – there’s a screwed up culture to discuss.

On the “reap what you sow” front, let’s look at two stories:

1.The Boy Scouts of America are filing for bankruptcy.   On the one hand, that is a sad commentary on our current cultural hostility to the kinds of values that scouting used to be associated with, and it might have been inevitable.  But recent attempts to fashion a new, “woke” Boy Scouts certainly didn’t help.

Brief aside: As someone who loves the English language, I beg you to stop mis-using “woke.”  It is NOT an adjective.  It’s the past tense of the verb “wake.”

As in, “When I woke, I found that I’d pummeled into unconsciousness the hipster doofus who’d told me that I need to be more woke about the environment.”

Back to the Boy Scouts:

So they decided to admit girls in 2013, confusing many of us.  “Wait a minute,” we said, pensively.  “So you’re a girl.  And you’d like to join some sort of a scouting organization?  Gee it’s too bad that no one has invented such a group for girls.  I mean, they could call it the Girl Scouts, and then girls would have a place to–.  Oh, wait.”

Then they decided that admitting gay scouts, and later gay scout leaders was a great idea.  Because the higher-ups in scouting were trying to teach the benighted people of America that there are really no differences between the sexes, and no reason to take sexual attraction into account when putting a bunch of adolescents together in such activities as staying away from home overnight, sleeping in cabins, swimming and showering together, etc..

And now the benighted people of America have given their response to the BSA: enjoy bankruptcy, you morons.

2. The Weekly Standard is closing.  This one saddens me too, because they hosted a lot of very smart thinkers and writers, and I once respected Bill Kristol.  But he has lost his mind about Trump, and for some reason the Standard has gone full Titanic, steering toward the Trumpian iceberg.  But the original Titanic, once it hit the iceberg and started taking on water, did not circle around and intentionally hit it again, and then again.

And the original captain did not ask his first mate, “Hey, who are all of those people jumping over the side?”  To which the original first mate did not reply, “Our subscribers.  They don’t seem to want to keep crashing into the iceberg over and over again.  Plus, the iceberg is now wearing a giant red hat and calling us all losers!”

But Bill Kristol was all, “Full speed ahead!  Republicans should vote for Hillary!”

And now, the icy waters of bankruptcy close over the wake (not the woke!) of a once-lively conservative publication.  RIP, Weekly Standard.

“Yes, Martin,” I’m sure that you’re saying.  “You’re obviously right.  Again.  When groups and individuals make bad choices and fail miserably, they are punished.   Also, I agree that you got screwed on that People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2018 thing.  If you and Idris Elba both had sexy 2019 calendars out, I would totally buy yours.”

First, thank you for your support.  But it’s too little too late, because in the lead up to the award, I became a little over-confident, and gave a vanity publisher a big down payment.  And now I’ve got a garage full of unsellable “People’s Sexiest Man Alive: Martin Simpson” 2019 Calendars sitting where my car should be, and my wife is furious.

But to your first comment: I’ve noticed that there is one place where failure is rarely punished: the Left.

I know you’ve heard it a million times, but socialism has turned huge swaths of the planet into rust belts and gulags and graveyards, and college kids are still wearing Che t-shirts.   Socialized medicine has led to first world countries with third world hospitals, but half of our citizenry is still clamoring for it.  Decades of exclusively leftist governance has turned once-proud American cities into blighted wastelands, but the lefties who flee the hellholes they created vote for Beto O’Houlihan McMurphy to try to do the same thing to Texas.

Ugh!  Even on an individual level, lefties tend to fail upward.  Bernie Sanders never had an honest job in his life, until he started getting elected to local office as a socialist in Vermont in his 40s.  And he was almost president!

Or take an even better example: the google-eyed It Girl of the Left, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She’s almost 30 years old, and her curriculum vitae so far consists of being an incompetent bartender.  (I have it from very reliable sources that if you ordered a scotch and soda from her, you’d be equally likely to get a glass of Pine-sol and a sugar cube, or a V-8 with a dandelion garnish.)

After an undistinguished career in drink mixery, she decided to run for a House seat in a heavily blue district against the semi-animated corpse of a soul-less leftist hack who hadn’t stepped foot in the district since the close of hostilities in the Spanish-American War.  Because it was an off-year primary and voter turnout was very low, she managed to win with a get-out-the-vote effort that focused primarily on a tight-knit group of both Ocasios and Cortezes.

So now she’s off to Washington to represent the people of her district, whom I wish well in their ongoing efforts with their methadone treatment.  (The plan’s not going to work unless you work the plan, people.)

A few weeks ago she spoke to a temple in Queens, and came out with the startling news that she’s recently discovered that she is Jewish. (Hat tip to Bill Leggott, who reminded me that I’ve missed this golden opportunity for mockery.)  I haven’t been able to find video of this speech, but if anyone finds it, PLEASE post a link.

But even without seeing the link, I’m going to put my wizard hat on (Yes, I’ve got a wizard hat.  I keep it on the top shelf of the closet, between the sombrero and the conquistador’s helmet.) and predict what it looks like: Big smiles from Alexandra that show off her undeniably cute dimples, hugs to sweet little Jewish ladies, some ridiculous platitudes delivered with energetic obliviousness, followed by her standing there with an expression that you’ll recognize if you’ve watched a recent NFL game, when a player was being taken into the tent for a concussion protocol.

If the rabbi allowed her to try lighting the menorah, I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance that she partially burned her own clothing.

In other news, the leaderships of both Jewish and Italian-American anti-defamation groups have recently opened high-level negotiations. So far, the Italians have suggested that they will claim Ocasio-Cortez, if the Jews will take Michael Avenatti.  But the Jewish response was, “Whoa. Hang on.  Give us a chance to think about this. You might need to take Michael Cohen, too.”  The Italians came back with, “Only if you’ll accept the Mooch.”

The talks are still on-going.

But lest we despair about the way things are going here, let’s remember that it could be worse.  We could be the English.

Consider the story – which I swear to God I am not making up — that a British school will now be teaching primary school children “that ‘all genders’ can have periods.”  The story goes on to say, “Advice on menstruation will be issued to boys and girls after Brighton and Hove City Council passed a motion to help minimise discrimination against the trangender community.

So the next time that obnoxious British guy in the next cubicle is mocking you because Americans have elected Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, you now have a pre-loaded reply: At least our schools aren’t teaching our sons how to handle their periods!

Come on, England!  You gave us Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, and Benny Hill.  Has it really come to this?

And it’s not just literature and government and great music and hilarious videos of nurses running around in lingerie.  Look at the history of medicine, and you’ll find an over-representation of great British docs and discoveries.  They came up with first way to measure blood pressure and the first smallpox vaccine, they pioneered the use of general anaesthetic, and on and on.

In fact, a Brit (Stephen Hales, 1677-1761) first came up with surgical forceps, and 200 years later a group of British pharmaceutical chemists working in Kent first synthesized Viagra.

And now you’re telling me that British school boys are being taught that they can benefit from the use of forceps to gently ease the delivery of the children from their non-existent wombs, while British school girls are being taught that Viagra can help them increase their sexual performance with the genitalia that THEY DON’T HAVE! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!  OH!  OOOHHHHHH!”  (Yes, English people, you could all learn something from a late, great American named Sam freaking Kinison!)

My only hope is that the kids are going to be smart enough to recognize their educrat overlords for the leftist dolts they are, and ignore them.

And if any British schoolboys happen to be reading this column, I have two messages for you.

First, yes, Nigel, I know that Idris Elba is British, and he was once in contention to be the next James Bond, but I don’t care: he’s dead to me.

Second, if you ever find yourself bleeding profusely from your genital region, ignore the idiotic mewlings from your teachers that this is just a natural part of the process during which a young boy becomes a woman.  Put down the chain saw and pick up your severed body part, and go to the closest hospital straightaway.

If, 30 days later, you find yourself bleeding from the genitalia again, this is NOT a sign that Aunt Flo is back for her monthly visit.   It’s a sign that you need to take a good long look in the mirror, and determine whether you’re the kind of person who should be operating power tools.

On that terribly inappropriate note, I want to wish all of CO nation a very Merry Christmas!

We’re already halfway through December, but I’ll confess that I’m having a tough time getting into the Christmas spirit, and I’m sure that you regular members of CO nation know why: Idris Elba was recently named as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2018.

Which means that I was unfairly passed over.  AGAIN!  And that’s after I spent the entire year following a strict regimen: I cut down to no more than 3 servings of ice cream per day; I spent 15 minutes four days a week practicing my smoldering, partially-raised-eyebrow look in the mirror; I never skipped leg day.

And still I was edged out by a guy whose name sounds like a sub-tropical disease that can only be treated by an extensive course of antibiotics and months of physical therapy.

You know, I’ve never really understood the kind of emotional pain that some women feel, as described in the old saying, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”

But now I understand.  Because I am living through the male equivalent:  “Always a hilarious genius, never People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.”  If Christmas weren’t coming, I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning.

 

Leaving aside my personal pain, my spirits have recently been lifted by the knowledge that America is apparently officially out of problems.

I know that some of you just choked on your egg nog.  “Out of problems?” I can almost hear you yell.  “The Democrats are about to take over the House, Mitchell Trubisky’s shoulder thing might still be going on, and Bush 41, Stan Lee and the guy who invented Sponge Bob are dead, while Nancy Pelosi and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are still plugging away, healthy as a couple of octogenarian oxen!”

Those are all good points.  But the Congressional gavel was held in Pelosi’s dessicated mummy hands before, and the nation survived.  And the Bears having signal-caller issues is not exactly unprecedented.  In fact, if you consult the New Testament, I think you’ll find that Christ himself warned that, “The poor – and uncertainty at the quarterback position in Chicago – shall be with you always.”

But if we are not out of problems as a nation, how can you explain the following 3 stories, which no culture with actual problems could ever trouble itself with:

1.The charming, witty and harmless seasonal song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” has become the subject of annual controversy.  What an earlier era saw as a light-hearted and flirtatious duet, the censorious kill-joys on the feminist left see as an ominous ode to rape.

By the way, here is the chorus from every top 10 rap song of the last 10 years:

“Ima f*** you up and your [n-word] beeyotch too

Ima f*** you up and your [n-word] beeyotch too

You betta [anatomically impossible transitive verb], you [expletive] [N-word] ho.”

Those lyrics are fine.  But, “This evening has been (Been hoping that you’d drop in)/ So very nice (I’ll hold your hands they’re just like ice),” is terribly offensive, and rapey.

Lunatic censors also point to the female singer slyly asking,”What’s in this drink?” as evidence that the male singer is about to roofie and ravage her.

Which answers the age-old question: Can humorless leftist scolds tell the difference between Bill Cosby and Bing Crosby?

Sadly, they cannot.

Before you object that frivolous complaints about one inoffensive song don’t prove much, consider

2. The story of the Princeton a capella singing group — which despite being the least threatening collection of males since the court eunuchs of ancient Babylon — are apparently also a part of rape culture.

It seems that the Tigertones have for a number of years been singing a song originally featured in the Disney film, The Little Mermaid.  The song is called, “Kiss the Girl,” and it features a singing crab urging a handsome prince to kiss a mermaid who obviously wants to be kissed.

Because nothing communicates evil patriarchal oppression like a crustacean with a Jamaican accent urging a white Idris Elba-figure to try for first base with a mythical half-woman/half-fish creature.

3. Our good friends at PETA have finally addressed another scourge of modern American life: insufficiently sensitive animal-related idioms.

I am not making that up. They issued a press release suggested that we replace offensive sayings like, “Bring home the bacon,” with “Bring home the bagels.”  Or “take the bull by the horns” with “take the flower by the thorns.”

Yes, their ideas are idiotic.  But this could be a fun parlor game for us to all play: let’s draw animal-related sayings out of a hat, and then come up with a PC reason to object to them.  I’ll start:

“a horse of a different color” – Somehow, I’m sure that that’s racist

“don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” – Obviously classist, because who but the evil 1% could afford to give horses as gifts?  Plus, why should any human have the right to “own” an animal?  Plus I suspect that there is a subliminal Stormy Daniels joke in their somewhere.

“sly as a fox” – Are you suggested that other animals are stupid?  I mean, “mentally handicapped.”  I mean, “mentally handi-capable.”  You know what I mean!

Don’t get me wrong: I love animals.  In fact, I’d rather spend time with some particular animals – Cassie the Wonder Dog, most other dogs, even our three indifferent cats – than with many people.  People like the PETA officials who came up with this ridiculous list.  If I met one of them on the street, I’d be tempted to beat them like a rented mule.  No offense.

So I rest my case: if we have time to worry about innocent songs and animal metaphors, America is out of problems.

 

But you know who is not out of problems? Europe.

You might have heard that snooty Macron is having a touch of trouble with mobs of violent protestors trying to burn Paris to the ground every weekend for the last month.  Hilariously, the trouble started because the lefty elites who run France decided to inflict a 47 euro-per-liter gas tax on everyday French people, all in the name of stopping global warming.  Which it definitely will not do.

By the way, I made up the “47 euro” amount, because I refuse to look up the ridiculous made-up money that the EU-nuchs have chosen as their currency.

Brief diversion: I love the names of money that different countries come up with.  America did it best (obviously) with the dollar.  (I know: it was originally some kind of Spanish word.  But we took it and improved it.  You’re welcome, Spain.)  You can pay top dollar for something; you can bet your bottom dollar on something.  Clint Eastwood made a fine film with the super-cool title “Fistful of Dollars.”

My second favorite foreign currency name is the Polish “zloty.”  Partly because I love the Polish people, and partly because I love anybody sticking a “z” and an “l” together in any word.  Also, can the zloty be subdivided into 100 groszy, you ask?  You bet your bottom dollar it can.

My favorite foreign currency name?  The Vietnamese “dong,” obviously.   Mostly because of how fun it would be to be an adolescent boy in Vietnam, constantly referring to your money and snickering because adults couldn’t do anything about it.

Also, if “Fistful of Dollars” was re-made for a Vietnamese audience, it would have a hilarious title.  And Stormy Daniels would star in it.

 

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the collapse of Europe.

So you may have heard that another European gunman attacked another Christmas market, this time in  Strasbourg.  He killed at least 3 and wounded 11.  Which means that it’s time to dust off my timeless favorite quiz game: Guess that Murderer!

Question 1:  Just before opening fire on his innocent victims, the killer screamed a blood-chilling phrase at the top of his lungs.  Was that phrase:

1. Onward Christian soldiers!
2. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it OUT OF CLAY!
3. That government is best which GOVERNS LEAST!
4. Allahu Akbar!

 

Question 2:  What was the closest variant to the killer’s name?

1. Francois D’Orleans
2. Sven Nordstrom
3. Jim-Bob Thompson
4. Ahmed Yemeni Mohammed bin Sulamein

 

Cheer up, Europeans.  You may have to deal with bi-weekly terror attacks, but at least you aren’t forced to live with species-ist idioms like “cat’s pajamas” or “bees knees.”

Okay, rather than ending a column during this Christmas season on such a dour note, I will leave you with my two favorite recent feel-good stories.

First, Elizabeth Warren’s representatives reportedly started talking with Beta O’Rourke’s people recently, causing rumors that they may be contemplating a joint run at the presidency in 2020.  Which would be just perfect: a fake Hispanic Irish-American guy teaming up with a fake Indian WASP lady (#wemustneverstopmockingher) on the same ticket.

I can’t think of a picture that better sums up the phoniness of the Democratic party in 2018.

Second, a judge has ordered Stormy Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees, racked up (HA!) to defend himself against the defamation suit which a court threw out as frivolous.

To repeat, for the record: I didn’t vote for Trump in the primary, and voted more against Hillary than for him in the election.  I don’t like the way he has acted with women in general, and with ol’ Equine Visage in particular.  I wish he’d stay off twitter, and that he could maintain his aggressive counter-punching with about 90% less boorishness.

But you’ve got to give credit where credit is due.  He had an affair with a porn star, then paid her $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about it.  When she did not keep her mouth shut (I haven’t seen any of her films, but I understand that that is not a-typical behavior for her), he ended up winning a judgment against her for $292,052.

Do you realize what that means?  He had sex with a woman who is a professional at having sex for money, and SHE ended up paying HIM $162,052.

That’s right, lefties who say that Trump is a failed businessman: he had a one-night stand with a porn star, and made a tidy profit on it!

Top that, Idris Elba!

A lot of the best and worst of November involved the mid-term election, and I feel like that has been talked to death.  So this will be an election-free column, and you’re welcome in advance.

Here, then, is an eclectic mix of stories that caught my attention last month:

1.God opens a Job-style can of whoop-arse on Creepy Porn Lawyer.  Be grateful that you didn’t have the November that Michael Avenatti had.  As recently as early October he was riding high on a fetching little filly called Horseface and some speculation that he might make a run for the White House in 2020.  As the Kavanaugh hearings heated up and the media showed a ravenous appetite for more accusers – no credibility required – Avenatti came up with another accuser, this time one who allegedly witnessed a series of obviously fictional gang rapes.

But Swetnick proved to be a sweat act, and she almost immediately backed off of her ridiculous story.  Then the Kavanaugh backlash brought increased attention to the miasma of malodorous sleaze that surrounds Avenatti like a cloud of Democrat rhetoric.  He and Swetnick were referred to the DOJ for investigation of their presentation of false testimony.  His law firm was evicted from their offices for non-payment of rent.  His porn star client accused him of filing a lawsuit against her wishes and behaving unethically.

Usually, you would think that if your porn actress client is saying that her reputation is being tainted by her association with you, that would be the low point of your month. But not for Michael Avenatti.

Because next up, he was accused of beating up his estranged wife.  The good news? It wasn’t his estranged wife.  The bad news?  It was his mistress.  The worse news? Witnesses report him yelling to the cops who showed up, “She hit me first!”

Nice legal defense, Rumpole of the Bailey.

Allow me to remind you of the top two rules of politics in 2018:

1. If you’re a pasty white northeasterner, don’t pretend to be Geronimo’s great-great-grandaughter. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
2. In the middle of a #metoo frenzy, don’t respond to a violence against women charge by touting your ability as a counter-puncher.

I’m no F. Lee Bailey, but I think he should have gone with the classic old defense of, “I was clenching my fist in righteous anger at the terrible way that Donald Trump has treated women, when my mistress tripped and fell into me, striking my innocent knuckles with her orbital socket.”

I almost feel sorry for Avenatti.  The way things are going for him, he will likely soon come down with boils, and all of his cattle will die, and spokesmen for the Gambino and Genovese crime families will release a statement distancing themselves from Avenatti and questioning whether he is, in fact, of Italian descent.

But I’m still looking forward to his trial, when the prosecution quotes him during the Kavanaugh hearings saying that, “We must always believe the woman!”  And then the Creepy Porn Lawyer will squirm in the witness box, and lean forward and mumble, “Well, not this one, obviously.  Because she’s lying.  I never laid a hand on her.  Also, she hit me first.”

 

2.Speaking of morally bankrupt leftist creeps getting their comeuppance…  Have you been following the saga of the Clintons’ Speaking Tour?  (And if you think I’m too high-minded to go for the “they put the ‘sag’ in ‘saga’ joke, you really overestimate me.)  They’re calling it, “An Evening with the Clintons.”

Which is better than the original title: “Handsy McGroperton and Coughing Cankle’s Whine-Fest ’18.”

Opening night of the tour was November 27^th, and a friendly CNN report (of course) noted delicately that, “the event was not sold out.”

No kidding. I looked it up, and the Scotiabank Arena holds 19,800 people.  I mean, it would hold 19,800 people, if a popular event – like an action-packed curling tournament, or a symposium on buying viatical insurance contracts with no money down – was happening.

Let’s look at CNN’s account again:  “Organizers cut the Scotiabank Arena in half and blocked off the upper level, but as the show got underway there were sections of seats unoccupied.”  Not empty seats.  Empty “sections” of seats.

In the end, they managed to cram 3300 people into the 19,800 seats.   The highlight of the evening – and I am not making this up — was when Hillary had another coughing fit.  Some might say – and by “some” I mean “me” – that that 3 minutes was the rhetorical high point of her entire career in politics.

The crowd seemed a bit disappointed, though, when she didn’t re-create the familiar routine from her presidential campaign, during which she would invariably launch a spirited attack along the lines of, “CAW CAW, CAW CAW CAW!” and then explode into an explosive coughing jag, followed by falling into the side of a limo, or down some temple stairs, or into the open doorway of a campaign jet.

 

3.”Presidents with Enormous Egos for 1000, Alex.”  Also in November, the incredible shrinking post-presidency of Barack Obama continued apace, with two really shameful appearances, even for him.

The first was on November 19^th, when he gave a talk to a bunch of camp followers in Chicago.   The most widely reported quote from that event came in response to a question about climate change, which prompted Obama to wax eloquent on one of this favorite themes: the left already knows how to fix every problem in the world, but evil conservatives keep stopping them:  “The reason we don’t do it [i.e. solve problems like climate change] is because we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.”

By “we,” he means “you.”

He goes on to rhetorically stroke himself on how much he believes in “reason and logic and Enlightenment values,” noting that, “people call me Spock for a reason.”

Yes.  And that reason is your ears, which are very weird-looking.

In one sense, Obama’s unearned arrogance is typical of lefty elites.  They are so sure that they are right, and so impervious to mountains of evidence to the contrary (see: socialism, the repeated failure of), that they cannot conceive of a legitimate opposing argument.

If you oppose him, it has to be because of racism.  If you oppose Hillary, it has to be because of sexism.  If you oppose Michelle, it has to be because you have an irrational aversion to scowling people with the shoulders of a welterweight boxer.

Obama also shares the left’s disdain for the common people.  How else could he speak so blithely about how we’re all confused and blinded and shrouded by all things evil?

But “mommy issues?”  What does that even mean?  And it’s pretty rich coming from a guy raised entirely by his mommy, yet who wrote books all about the absentee father he never knew.

A week later, Obama was speaking at Rice University, and he once again played Mr. Modest.  He said that the stock market rise during his presidency and afterward is all because of him.  He said that he brought “homespun values” to the presidency, citing specifically – and I am not making these up – “tell the truth and try to see the other person’s point of view and treat people kindly and with respect.”

What can you say to that?

I mean, besides, “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor,” and “conservatives are bitter clingers to their God and their guns,” and “you regular Americans are shrouded by hatred, anger and racism.”

I guess those are “homespun values.”  Assuming your home was run by Saul Alinsky, Maxine Waters and Satan.

He even took credit for lower oil and gas prices, and the increase in American energy supplies now.  Really, he did.  After doing everything he could to stop all oil exploration and every pipeline proposal.

It was like watching Harvey Weinstein brag about how he was the one who got that whole “#metoo” ball rolling.

Obama’s total classlessness is still shocking, but it shouldn’t be.  We’re told that Trump is an egomaniac, but Obama literally said that his election would stop the oceans’ rising.  Obama brags with a straight face about how scandal-free his administration was, and how none of his appointees was ever indicted, seemingly unaware that these facts are proof of how corrupt and supine the media was in the face of Fast and Furious, weaponizing the IRS, Benghazi,  etc. and etc.

Barack Obama has gotten more mileage out of sycophantic media coverage and a superficial glibness than any public figure of the last half-century.

4.Non-existent voting fraud almost seems like it might exist.  You might not have heard, but a Texas woman has had her conviction for illegally voting confirmed, and is heading to jail.  You can find the story in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, but I’m going to let you guess which party she voted for.   And which nation she’s not a legal citizen of.

This innocent victim first illegally registered to vote in 2002, and voted in at least 4 elections after that.  In 2014 she moved to a different Texas county, and when she tried to register to vote there, the county told her that as a non-citizen, she could not vote.  So she registered again, this time claiming to be a citizen, and she voted in at least one more election.

The same news story refers to a recent “alleged” voter fraud ring involving at least four named and indicted women.  The five relevant names in the story are Ortega, Solis, Parra and two Sanchezes.  In a totally unrelated story, the Democrat party is desperately trying to ensure that as many millions of illegals from Mexico as possible get into the US immediately.  Also, if you think that any of them would ever think of voting illegally, you are a filthy racist.

And in case any slower-witted readers think that the adjective that we object to in the phrase “Hispanic illegal voters” is “Hispanic,” you have failed the reading comprehension portion of our test.   To begin studying for your re-take of the test, consider the following:

“Canadian illegal voters”

“Scandanavian illegal voters”

“amphibian illegal voters”

Hint: there is one objectionable adjective common to all of these phrases.

Hint 2: “voters” is not an adjective, but a noun.

 

5. R.I.P., creator of Sponge Bob Squarepants. Last week, Stephen Hillenburg died at the age of 57 from the terrible disease of ALS. I’d never heard his name, but I’m the father of two girls aged 16 and 21, and his work brought my girls a lot of happiness.  While I didn’t feel particularly moved by Sponge Bob or Patrick, the show had a demented little minor character named Plankton.

Because I’ve always been more than a little partial to curmudgeon Americans, I liked Plankton.  And my girls absolutely loved him.  So I developed an eerily accurate Plankton impression, which I regularly deployed as part of my wildly successful “Father of the Century” campaign.

A particular favorite was the F.U.N song, which you can Google.  In it, Sponge Bob sings a saccharine version (“F” is for friends, etc.), to which Plankton responds with his own, acid version: “F” is for fire that burns down the whole town, “U” is for uranium (pause) bombs…”

Especially when my oldest daughter needed cheering up, I could launch into my screaming Plankton song, knowing that by the time I howled, “N is for no survivors!” she’d be giggling.

Or mortified, if I did it as I dropped her off at school.  Good times.

Rest in Peace, Stephen Hillenburg.

 

 

 

It’s the time of year to write about all the things we are thankful for, and like most of you, I’ve got more than my share.  A loving wife, two fine daughters, an Aussie shepherd who is the pinnacle of canine virtue.  A Chicago Bears team that is suddenly fun to watch again.  Plus all the opportunities that come from living in the best damn country in the world.  (Pipe down, all of you “She Guevara” Ocasio-Cortez types with that, “You’re celebrating genocide!” schtick.)

But in addition to personal things, I’m also always scanning the news of politics and culture to find things that we as a nation can be grateful for.

Things like the fact that Florida was able to disrupt the attempt by dishonest lefties in Broward and Palm Beach counties to steal the too-close elections of our governor and senator.  I generally don’t like talk of “stealing elections,” but if we don’t implement a sane system of managing an election and preventing fraud, we’re asking for everything we get.

Fortunately, this time around the fright-wigged South Florida Snipe was not able to prevail.

I’m also thankful for all of the left-on-left fighting we’ll be seeing in the near future.  Admittedly, this is finding a silver lining on a pretty dark cloud – I would gladly sacrifice the entertainment in exchange for having the Dems nowhere near the levers of power.  But we optimists find good cheer wherever we can.

And watching the potential Dem presidential candidates try to out-Stalin each other next year is bound to be entertaining.  Especially considering the – I was going to say “Murderer’s Row” of candidates, but that phrase suggests talent and skill.  What’s the opposite of Murderer’s Row?

How about, “Petty Thieves’ Row?”  Malicious Vandals Row?  Bumbling Incompetents Row?

Anyway, consider the potential field of Dem presidential candidates.  Paddy “Beta” O’Houlihan in Texas is 0 for 1 in political races for Senate, so naturally he’s contemplating the presidency.  Spartacus is said to be considering throwing his galea in the ring.  (Yes, that’s a Roman headgear reference.  Because I want this column to be both entertaining and educational.  You’re welcome.)   Bernie is only in his late 100s, so he’s likely to take another crack at it.

Even Hillary is said to be positioning herself for another presidential limp.

Er, run.  Presidential run.

She’s already got her campaign slogan ready to go:  CAW CAW CAW 2020.

Don’t forget Lizzie Warren, who is ready to roll out her “Put up the Teepee in DC” primary tour in the new year.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I wouldn’t be surprised if Ocasio-Cortez took a stab at it.  If her entire previous job experience as a part-time bartender qualified her to be in Congress (thanks again, blue state voters), why shouldn’t a few months in Congress qualify her for the White House?

By the way, did you catch her interview the other day, in which she referred to the three branches of government as the House, the Senate and the White House?  Or when an interviewer asked her how she would pay for the obscenely expensive package of socialist giveaways that she’s proposing, and she said – and I quote — “I find the question so puzzling because ‘How do you pay for something that’s more affordable? How do you pay for cheaper rent?’ You just pay for it.”  Gee, I wonder why Milton Friedman never thought of that.

(By the way, here’s a VERY partial list of other things that Ocasio-Cortez finds puzzling:  Which shoe goes on which foot.  Where the moon goes in the daytime.  Four-piece children’s puzzles.)

Am I the only one who thinks that if you had walked into the bar where Ocasio-Cortez was working last year and ordered a margarita, you would likely get a glass of dishwater with a lemon slice in it. And then when you pointed that out, she’d apologize and come back with a cup of cream with a tiny umbrella in it and some sawdust sprinkled on top.  And when you pointed that out, she’d furrow her brow and take it away and come back with a soap dispenser from the bathroom.  And then she’d slip in the spilled dishwater and fall, hitting her head, and then slowly get up with little cartoon birds flying around her skull.

Which explains why her eyes look like that.

Anyway, I’m also very thankful that our cranky, small-minded previous president and his scowling wife are not still our president and first lady.  I’m thankful that Jeff Flake is on his way out the door, and that bitter Stacy Abrams is not the governor of Georgia.

I’m thankful that one-eyed badass former SEAL Dan Crenshaw is going to congress.  If you didn’t see his recent interview with a panel of lefty hysterics on Face the Nation, you owe it to yourself to give it a watch.  (And yes, I’m as shocked as you are to learn that that show is still on the air.)

My favorite part was when one of the moonbats breathlessly claimed that Trump “has literally attacked the press,” and Crenshaw responded, “I’ve been literally attacked, so let’s choose our words carefully.”  Boom!  Drop the mike, and the eyepatch.

Finally, I’m thankful that I’ve had the chance to write on this website for almost two years now.  (This is the part when I’d lay in some soft violin and piano music, if this column had soundtrack capabilities.) After the Great Cankle-cide of November 2016, I’d written a snarky email about the joyous aftermath to a small circle of friends.

Though I’d never met him in person, the great and powerful CO was one of those friends.  He emailed back to ask if I’d mind if he posted my email to his new Facebook page.  And after negotiating a six-figure licensing fee, I reluctantly agreed.

HA!  Of course I jumped at the chance to do some ranting to a larger audience than my put-upon wife and the always attentive Cassie the Wonder Dog.  I could not imagine then how much fun it would be to be part of the growing CO nation, or how many great people I would “meet,” or how rewarding a writing experience this would turn out to be.

So this Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for CO, COW, COSE and all of the amazing contributors and readers of the CO page.  I’m grateful to have met some of you in Denver this past summer, and look forward to meeting and spending some time with more of you in Key West in February.  You’ve made my life appreciably more fun that it had already been, and I wish all of you a very happy and safe Thanksgiving.

Oh, I almost forgot.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  BOOM!

When I discussed the midterm results, I was partly too optimistic – I didn’t think there was a chance that extremists like Sinema in AZ (love the nerd glasses, though) or Abrams in GA would ultimately prevail.  I also forgot the adage that the past 20 years of elections should have taught all of us:  we’ve got to win by so much that the left can’t cheat and steal an election.

Mea culpa.  This is where I have to acknowledge and wrestle with my own bias.  I’ve always felt like there is good and bad in all of us, and that no one party has a lock on virtue, and that it’s a bad sign when you start to think that all of the bad actors are on the other side.

On the other hand, look at the last 20 years!  I’d have to have a gold medal in Greco-Roman bias wrestling to be able to escape the conclusion that the sleaziness on the left outweighs that on the right by about 10-to-1.

Consider a few examples:

Yes, the right obviously has some sleazy characters.  We’ve had our share of pols chasing interns around tables and taking political payoffs through the years.  That toe-tapping congressman prowling the bathrooms of DC was a creep, Dennis Hastert was a pedophilic, abusing super-creep, and Roy Moore was… Roy Moore.

But have you noticed how we treat the creeps among us?  In the vast majority of cases, we throw them out.  Nobody knew about Hastert’s sordid past when he was in office, and no one defended him when it came out and he went – rightly! – to jail.  When his proposed successor turned out to have a mistress, his candidacy for House speaker failed.  And a deeply red district elected a Democrat rather than support Roy Moore.

Have you noticed that Dems don’t police their side that way?  Menendez in NJ is a good analogy to Roy Moore in AL.  Menendez has been obviously corrupt for decades, and despite all of this #metoo business, he has basically walked through the halls of congress with a thong-wearing underaged Filipino hooker draped over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and a big bag of cash with a cartoon dollar sign on it draped over the other.  So naturally he won re-election by double digits.

The other examples are too numerous and obvious to mention: Bill Clinton groped and raped his way through two terms with no blowback until the last 10 minutes. MA Senior Dirigible and Aquatic Homicide Aficionado™ Ted Kennedy died as the Lion of the Senate, despite a trail of empty kegs and dead or molested young women in his wake.   Pseudo-Hispanic Beto O’Rourke – of the Tijuana O’Rourkes, you ask? – is the son of a white millionaire whose only experience is in the field of  “getting away with a DUI hit-and-run,” and he’s the exciting new It-Boy of the Left.

Also, the nuts who could loosely be described as on our side – David Duke, Richard Spencer types — are fringe characters with no real power in our establishment and are shunned by virtually all national GOP pols.

But the nuts on the left – racial arsonists like Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters and Cowboy-pimp hat lady in Florida – are integral parts of the left establishment.  She-Guevera Ocasio-Cortez has parlayed her vast experience as a part-time bartender into becoming a “thought leader” (and yes, the sarcasm-rating of those quotation marks is 11 out of 10).  Crazy Mazie Hirono is a raving sexist and racist who literally condemned all white men – and she’s a respected figure on the left.

Speaking of leftists who went all Joe McCarthy during Supreme Court hearings, you may have noticed that conservatives have absolutely hated the jurisprudential philosophy of every far left Dem SC nominee for decades – Ginsburg, Kagan and Soto-mediocore (I might have that Spanish spelling wrong).  You also may have noticed that we gave them all dignified hearings, and that many on our side ultimately voted for them, on the grounds that even though we vigorously oppose their philosophy, the president’s choices for SC should be given deference if they are technically qualified.

Now think of the three most shameful smear campaigns/witch trials of modern SC nominees: Bork, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.   I rest my case.

I could go on and on: Before the ‘16 election, the Left lambasted Trump because they said he wouldn’t accept the results if he lost.  Since then, the Left has done nothing but throw fits and tantrums and feces because they do not accept the results.  Because they lost.

Finally, have you noticed a pattern of close election results being changed by corruption and various shady dealings on the right?  Any examples of a rightie winning on repeated recounts under fishy circumstances?  (And if you say Bush in 2000, I’m going to rhetorically slap you with a rotting flounder.  Bush was ahead in every count and re-count, despite a dozen leftist scams: not counting military votes from sailors that came in late even though the law specifically allow for that; announcing that Gore had won before the polls had even closed in the panhandle; widespread cheating and chad-deciphering in deep blue Broward and Palm Beach counties.  The lefty Miami Herald did a cursory story after the election that found that over 1000 convicted felons illegally voted – guess who they voted for?)

On the other hand, Al Franken lost on election night, before boxes of late and undocumented ballots showed up in leftist partisan poll workers’ car trunks, and shazam, the Franken-groper wins!  Years ago in NJ, corrupt Dem Senate candidate “Torch” Toricelli was indicted after the legally prescribed deadline for putting in a new candidate, ensuring that the GOP opponent would win.  Until the state Dems went into an illegal session, changed the law, and pulled corrupt old cadaver Frank “the Lout” Loutenberg on the ticket.  Of course he won, despite technically lacking any of what the scientists would call “vital signs.”

And now we have Florida. Again.  A corrupt, fright-wig wearing leftist hack – after failing in multiple previous elections, but somehow being kept in her position – cheats so openly that even the MSM gets embarrassed about it.  I’m sick just thinking about it, but there is a real possibility that the leftists will steal a senate seat, and maybe even the governorship, despite the entire nation knowing that they are cheating.

But the national, mainstream Left does not care.  They never do.

When we lose, we mourn for a while and then get back to our jobs and our families and our lives.  When the Left loses, they threaten people in social media and rampage in restaurants and vandalize property and besiege Tucker Carlson’s house and terrorize his wife.

On the bright side, the loony left is going to give us a lot of entertainment in the next two years, and they should be unhinged enough to give all independent or truly moderate voters second thoughts.

For example, Mad Maxine Waters is already in mid-season form, and she hasn’t even taken power yet.  She was last seen blathering about how, “They fear me because I’m a strong black woman… They’ve never seen anyone like me before.”

No, M-squared, we are repulsed by you, because you are a thug who calls for attacks on your political opponents.  And our children fear you, if they happen to be walking by the tv when you are shrieking one of your screeds, because your face appears to be melting off of your creepy old skull.

And come to think of it, we have seen someone like you before: in the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the German socialists opened the ark and their faces turned into goo.

Spartacus is energized, as is Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher), who says she “is taking a hard look at running for president.”  (Keep reading those smoke signals, Lizzie!) Even Hillary is said to be mulling another run.  Because everyone knows that the third time is a disastrously bad omen.

I mean, “charm.”  The third time is a charm.

I’m hoping that the Dem cheating in Florida doesn’t succeed, and that the newly empowered leftists in the House let their freak flags fly.   And I hope that the entire nation pays attention for the next two years.

As is my traditional practice on election evenings, I got back to Stately Simpson Manor after a hard day’s work and spent a few minutes in prayer, beseeching God to smite my leftist enemies with His fuuurrrious anger (and, this year, to speed up the healing on Khalil Mack’s ankle, while He was at it).  Then I put on my lucky smoking jacket and poured a little scotch, and called my old grad school buddy.

For the last 8 elections or so, we’ve either hung out together, or had some marathon phone conversation about the incoming election returns.  (This is the guy who was friends with CO when he had not yet attained legendary status, and the guy through whom I first made CO’s acquaintance.)  We’ve seen worse elections – Obama’s expected first win, his soul-crushing second win, Al Franken’s ascension to begin groping female posteriors at the senatorial level – and better ones – Bushie’s miraculous comeback over Gore, and the glorious slaying of the Canklesaurus under the intact glass ceiling at the Battle of the Javits Center.

Last night was a mixed bag.  Here are my initial impressions of the highs and lows:

The Good:

We hold Florida, narrowly winning the senate and governor seats.  It was especially aggravating that far-left corrupt-ocrat Andrew Gillum barely lost for governor.  Now he can return to what he was doing before Tuesday: putting on a series of disguises, jumping into a windowless van and racing from one safe house to another, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of an FBI corruption investigation.

And by the way, though I am loath to toot my own horn, I have now played a pivotal role in several crucial elections.  I was among the handful of votes to deny Al Gore the presidency in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004; I helped put Trump over the top in 2016.  And now, I helped give razor-thin victories to Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott.  You are welcome, CO Nation.  (And yes, hitting the tip jar at Martinsimpsonwriting.com would be an appropriate way to express your gratitude, thanks for asking.)

The Dem senators in Red states who voted against Kavanaugh – Donnelly in IN, McCaskill in MO, Nelson in FL, Heitkamp in ND — mostly went down.  We almost got Tester in MT, and Manchin in WV likely saved himself by voting for Kavanaugh at the last minute.  (That shouldn’t have happened, though: he votes with the Schumer far lefties 90+% of the time, so the Rs in WV shouldn’t have let him slip into another term just because he did the right thing one time, and just before the election.) I was so furious at the Dems’ mistreatment of Kavanaugh, and I am loving the schadenfreude of watching at least some of those creeps get defeated because of it.

Adding to our total in the Senate obviously improves our ability to push through the next SC nominee, if and when God appears to Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a dream and convinces her to retire, lest He break out the smiting stick.

But not only did we add a few much-needed Senate seats, we also made a couple of excellent upgrades.  Marsha Blackburn in TN is at least two standard deviations better than the departing Corker.  And if McSally can hold on in AZ, she’ll be a big improvement over the aptly named Jeff Flake.

Speaking of ridiculous names, Democrat Ben Jealous lost the race for Maryland governor, which just illustrates the old political cliché: don’t name your candidate after one of the 7 deadly sins.  (If we consider “jealousy” to be adjacent to “envy.”  Which we do.)  I can’t wait for 2020, when he teams up with VP nominee Bobby Sloth.  And yes, Bill and Hillary will form a husband and wife team – Lust and Wrath, respectively – at State and Treasury. Michael Moore will step up to take the Gluttony position at HUD, and Obama – of course – will bring Pride to the Ambassador to Iran position.

And by the way, nicely done, Barry.  Besides the sure-thing Dems he backed in IL and a few other places – all of whom, absent a meteor strike on Tuesday morning were going to win easily – his endorsement proved to be the kiss of death in all of the close races he bumbled into: Donnelly in IN, Abrams in GA, Gillum in FL and Cordray in OH.

In the feel-good story of the night, eye-patch-wearing SEAL badass Dan Crenshaw wins in Texas, after being mocked by SNL half-boy/half-shrew Pete Davidson last weekend.  We’ve got two words for you, Pete, and they aren’t “Happy Birthday.”

In the feel-weird story of the night, a brothel-owning GOP candidate who died in October won a House seat last night.  When first hearing that, I briefly considered laying off the Scotch.  I mean, I know that many thousands of Democrats routinely vote after they’ve died, but I never heard of anyone winning a race after he died.

I don’t know what it says about the voters in that district, or what it says about the character of that fine, deceased brothel-owning American.  But I do know one thing: the guy he defeated is never going to hear the end of it from his family and friends.

You know how every argument for the rest of his life is going to end:  “Oh yeah?  Well at least I didn’t LOSE TO A DEAD PIMP!”

The Bad –

Obviously losing the House to evil mummy Pelosi’s control is a terrible thing.  On the eve of the election, she touted “San Francisco values.”  Which I guess means that the rest of the country is now supposed to break out the ass-less chaps and get to work on creating Poop Map Apps (again, the worst Dr. Suess book ever) for the entire country.  I do not look forward to watching her shuffle across the well of the house, leaving a trail of her rotting burial wrapping behind her, before clenching her bony fist around the speaker’s gavel, then tilting her head back in a triumphant howl, forming a rictus grin and thus unleashing a furious cloud of stinging wasps out of her gaping maw.

But maybe that’s just me.

Good man and better governor Scott Walker narrowly lost the governorship in WI.  Or as the benighted slight majority in Wisconsin put it, “We’re sick of balanced budgets and a competent state government.  Let’s try a little of that dysfunctional leftism that is slowly turning the once great state of Illinois into a dumpster fire that burns tax dollars.

Speaking of which, Illinoisans replaced an unpopular billionaire GOP governor with a soon-to-be-unpopular billionaire Dem governor who has vowed to immediately begin colluding with the corrupt Chicago Dem machine in an attempt to increase the speed at which the state is plunging toward a fiscal cliff.  So I’m sure that’s going to end well.

Though it wasn’t a surprise, Liz Warren wins again in MA.  Never has the old political saying been more justified: “The MA voters have spoken. The bast**rds.”  I know that you, like me, are praying that she will shortly launch her kamikaze presidential campaign.  (Fun fact: she is actually 1/1023^rd Japanese.  So, rising sun first, whimsically decorated tepee second.)  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Sinema still might win in Arizona, which begs the question: what exactly do you have to do to lose an election in Arizona?  I mean, besides calling your state “the meth lab of democracy” that is full of “crazy people,” and warning others to be careful that their state not turn into Arizona.  And also arguing during the Afghanistan war that it would be okey dokey if American soldiers fought for the Taliban?  I mean, I know that she’s got that hot blonde woman in the nerdy glasses thing going for her – [begin Austin Powers voice] she puts the “sin” in “Sinema,” baby! [end Austin Powers voice] — but come on!

 

I do see a bright side, even in the terrible Dem wins in the House.

It’s true that having the same old leftist fossils once again in power – Pelosi, Mad Maxine, Jerry “the Hutt” Nadler, et. al. – will be a thorn in Trump’s side, and will bog down any useful action in the House for the next 2 years.

But to win the majority, the Dems had to run candidates who appeared to be moderates – including some women with military backgrounds, of all things – in a bunch of House districts.  Good for them, for recognizing that the Chavez-Guavara-Casto-Cortez act wouldn’t play in any but the deepest blue districts.  But I can see two potential silver linings on those victories:

1.Because the Dem majority is a narrow one, the loony leadership are likely to clash with the newly elected alleged moderates.  The extremists at the top have to answer to a crazy extremist base, and they will not tolerate compromise – so some very entertaining blue-on-blue fights are likely.

2.On the other hand, if the newly elected Dems prove to be faux moderates, and vote like their extremist chain of command, they are likely to alienate their voters, and those seats will be vulnerable to turning red again in 2020.

Finally, we must all wince that a vacuous non-entity like Beto O’Rourke – with a Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI) of 95 – could come so close to beating Ted Cruz in Texas.  But his undeserved close finish isn’t the most aggravating thing about him, because that would be his phony name.

How can an uber-Irish goofball like Robert Francis O’Rourke just slap a bogus Hispanic nickname in place of his first name, and have the whole world go along with it?  Sure, Declan Patrick MacManus could become Elvis Costello.  But he’s a musical genius.  And he wasn’t trying to pander to under-informed Hispanic voters.

Beta (he sure ain’t no alpha!) has inspired me, though.  From now on, I’d like you all to call me “Julio Drew Simpson.”

Or maybe Martin “Juan” Simpson.

No, no!  I’ve got it!   “El Jefe Simpson.”

I’m going to print up some new business cards in the morning.  My candidacy for a Texas House seat begins in 2019.  Arriba, Arriba! Andale!

Thoughts on the Eve of the Midterm Elections

William Goldman is a novelist and screenwriter who wrote The Princess Bride, which is a fine book and movie.  But that’s not important right now.

He also wrote a book on screenwriting, in which appears perhaps his most famous line: “Nobody knows anything.”   He was talking about movie-making, but his words are equally true about how the election is going to go on Tuesday. Nobody knows anything.

But we all have some guesses.  So here is some of the nothing that I personally know:

I know that I can’t trust my feelings on who is going to win, because the bias is strong within me.  American voters broke my heart in 2012, when they re-elected Obama.  I understood his initial election: he was superficially charismatic, and if you didn’t know much about economics or history or politics, what he said sounded pretty good.  His race gave him a huge boost, despite the left’s slanderous insistence that America is a viciously racist country.  Plus John McCain was a terrible candidate who seemed to intentionally sap conservatives’ will to vote for him.

But by 2012, everyone knew better.  After Obama’s first term — the four biggest yearly deficits ever, the implosion of shovel ready jobs, the botched takeover of healthcare – Mitt Romney was conservative-ish, in a way that seemed tailor-made for the squishy, independent middle of the electorate who always claim to want niceness and moderation.  He would never cheat on his wife with a porn star, and he’d never call anyone “horseface,” no matter how equine her features!

So I didn’t believe the polls showing that Obama was going to win.  How could a majority vote for him against obviously decent Mitt?!

Cue the sad trombones for young Martin, in the dark November of 2012.

Fast-forward four years, and I mostly did believe the polls saying that Trump would lose.  It was hard to imagine a majority voting for Hillary, but I could imagine a ton of people voting against Trump, and with the media spinning and covering up for her, plus her huge money advantage, I lost hope.

Oh me of little faith.

So now here we are.  On the one hand, polls are often wrong, especially when it comes to predicting turnout. On the other hand, the polls in 2016 weren’t wildly wrong.  Despite Trump’s comfortable margin in the electoral college, Hillary did end up winning the popular vote, and a relative handful of votes in a few states made the difference.

But after 2016, I can’t shake the hope that the GOP might barely hold onto the House.  I know that might be mostly sentiment on my part, and that the parties of WH incumbents typically lose tons of seats in their first mid-term, the left is galvanized by Trump-hatred, and etc.

But three things give me hope:

1.The Kavanaugh effect seems to be real, and I can only hope that it still persists.  The Dems behaved so terribly as they smeared him, to the point that even the most politically apathetic people had to see them for what they are, and be repulsed.

2. The illegal immigrant caravan seems to come straight out of central casting to help the conservative cause by illustrating the dangers of giving leftists control.  And when top Democrats respond to even the most thoughtful questions about the wisdom of admitting thousands of unvetted foreigners into our country with cries of “RACIST!” they certainly don’t motivate people to join them. Speaking of which…

3. The existential awfulness of the left’s behavior.  Between screaming protestors repeatedly interrupting the Kavanaugh hearings, and mobs of shrieking jerks hounding politicians through the halls of congress, and mobs of other shrieking jerks harassing people in restaurants and on the streets, I can’t bring myself to think that a majority of my fellow citizens will want to reward that behavior. Especially since the Dems are running on almost nothing except Trump hatred.

On the other hand, I know that you can’t reason someone out of a position or behavior that they did not reason their way into.  And reason is the farthest thing from what motivates those mobs!

So, for what it’s worth, I think the GOP is likely to gain at least a couple of Senate seats.  There is no logical reason why the red state voters in West Virginia, Montana, Indiana and Missouri should vote for Democrats who they know will ultimately vote to support the Schumers and Pelosis of the world, even if Manchin, Tester, Donnelly and McCaskill pretend they’ll be moderates.

There are a lot of very close races – in Florida, Arizona and Nevada, especially – that could swing to the GOP, and if I had to bet, I’d say that the Rs should take 1 of those three, and might take 2 of them.  If it’s a good night for the GOP, they could pick up all 3.

I don’t know what to think about the House.  So many of those races are local ones, and in places (CA and PA specifically) where the battlegrounds are said to favor the Dems.  I would love to see the GOP narrowly hold on to control, but my gut says that they won’t.

I haven’t followed any governors’ races except the one in my state of Florida, and I’m shocked that a corrupt, leftist hack like Gillum appears to be leading in the polls.  I can’t bring myself to believe that he’s going to win.  (Do you sense a subtle theme here?)

It’s an empty cliché, but it really will come down to turnout, and I don’t know what to expect in that area.  I know the Dems – and especially the most rabid ones – have gone to 14 on the Trump-hatred scale, and will likely crawl across broken glass to vote.

But the Kavanaugh hearings seem to have lit a fire under conservatives, and if those in the mushy middle were as turned off as should have been, I think they’ll be enough to stop a blue wave, at least.

I’m hoping that the polls are skewed to the left, and that the outcome is going to be better than we expect.  And I’m hoping that CO nation will all vote.

Unless you’re one of the lefties with the good taste to follow CO. In which case, don’t forget to show up to the polls to vote on Veteran’s Day.

If it looks like the polling place is closed, never mind that.  Just press your face to the glass, and continue to ask if anyone is there, until the sun goes down and the janitor comes out to ask you to go home now.

I was on the road for much of the last week, and was able to follow the news just enough to pick out a few of my favorite things from the last half of October.

You know how if you condense coal under enough pressure, it turns into a diamond?  Well I have a theory that if you did the same thing with a block of a wood – if you exerted such enormous forces that it was forced into a tiny, infinitely dense sliver of super-thick wood – you would not end up with a glossy piece of wood-colored jewelry sure to impress your romantic partner.

You would end up with the cerebral cortex of Don Lemon.

What follows is a quote from Lemon, which I swear to God I am not making up.  He said it in front of a television camera, while apparently sober, on October 29th: “We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.”

Now if you listen to the speech of garden variety idiots – say a drunk in a bar just before closing time, or an ancient Roman who had been drinking water laced with lots of lead, or someone driving a Prius with “Coexist” and “I’m With Her” bumper stickers on it – you’ll notice those folks contradicting themselves a lot.

They’ll say something like, “Gender doesn’t exist,” and five minutes later they’ll say, “Men are terrible, and women are great.”  Or they’ll say, “Homophobia is evil,” and ten minutes later they’ll say, “We can’t judge Muslims for throwing gays off buildings, because they come from a different culture.”

You can probably make a rough judgment about the intelligence of those people by how much time lapses between their contradictory statements.  Because you’d have to be a real dope to push two of those statements together without noticing that they contradict each other, right?

Again, Don Lemon: “We have to stop demonizing people and realize that the biggest terror threat in this country is white men…”

Translation: We must not demonize.  Have I mentioned that white men are demons?

Even that paraphrase can’t capture Lemon’s physics-defying stupidity.  Because there is at least a period separating those two sentences.  But in his version, there is only the humble coordinating conjunction “and” between his two contradictory statements.

 

Speaking of racism-revealing coordinating conjunctions – and to all those who thought I wouldn’t be able to deftly deploy a grammatical-parts-of-speech transition, BOOM! – have you heard the latest gaffe from the Indiana Senate debate?

It seems that Democrat Joe Donnelly is inexplicably leading in his reelection campaign, and he had a debate last week.  Of course, the moderator asked him how he would promote diversity.  (Because that’s the best way to uphold and advance the greatest experiment in democratic self-government in the history of the solar system: create a giant Excel spread sheet and fill it with a count of the genitalia and skin colors of all job applicants.  Thanks, you SJW jerks!)

Donnelly said — and again, this is a real quote – “Our state director is Indian American, but he does an amazing job. Our director of all constituent services, she’s African American, but she does an even more incredible job than you could ever imagine.”

Afterwards, many people pointed out to Donnelly that “but” is a coordinating conjunction which connotes contrast, so his comments seemed to be racially insensitive.  He didn’t seem to get that, so I came up with a few examples of my own, to try to explain the error of his ways:

• My friend is an Asian female, yet she is not a terrible driver.
• My boss is Irish, but I’ve never seen him passed out drunk in a puddle of his own vomit.
• My cousin votes a straight Democrat ticket, yet he can dress himself and is relatively high functioning.

Some of you are probably thinking, “C’mon, Martin.  You’re too smart, and insightful – and dammit, ruggedly good-looking too – to think that Donnelly said something truly offensive.  It was obviously just an innocent slip of the tongue.”

To which I would say, “Thanks, thanks — and aw, shucks, these are just the chiseled features and strong jawline that God gave me – and I could almost give Donnelly a pass.”

But then I remember 2012, when Mitt Romney said that he had “binders full of women” and the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) pretended to believe that The Cleanest Man in Utah™ commonly deployed handcuffs and restraints and other devices favored by those of a Clintonian persuasion when working with members of the fairer sex.  And I’d declare that all Democrats have officially given up their “innocent slip of the tongue” passes.

Then I’d fight fire with fire, lefty-style:  I’d point out that Donnelly apparently believes that his staffers are managing to overcome their Indian and African heritage and do good work in spite of those terrible handicaps. Is that the kind of racist whom Indianans want to represent them in the Senate?  Won’t they please think of the children?   Who, I feel obligated to point out, are our future?

Speaking of white leftists who say pretty racially offensive things but somehow don’t seem to pay any price for it, how about that Hillary Clinton?  She was recently interviewed by someone named Kara Swisher in front of a lefty audience, and Swisher asked her what she thought of Cory Booker.

Instead of the only logical response – taking a long drink of water, then doing a volcanic spit take and howling, “Spartacus?  Are you kidding me?!” – she said that she adores him.  When Swisher asked how Hillary felt about Booker’s comment about when the GOP goes low, we should kick them, Hillary corrected her: Eric Holder had said that.

Then Hillary ad libbed: “I know, they all look alike.”

Now that’s the kind of joke that minority politicians could tell on themselves and get away with it.  But if you haven’t noticed, Hillary is white.

I mean, she’s not as retina-searing, lacking-in-all-pigment white as Lizzie Warren.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher).  But she’s pretty white.  She puts the CAW in “Caucasian.”

Sorry.  That was beneath me.  But at this point, what difference does it make?

 

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Democrats and the infuriating racism double standard.

There’s been a lot of talk since Trump’s election of the “dog whistle” of racism, and I think that is a telling metaphor.

First, it’s species-ist, and thus extremely offensive to someone of my delicate sensibilities.

Second, it’s another way of saying “racism that is a figment of leftists’ imagination.”  In the past several weeks, I’ve heard leftists say that it’s a “dog whistle” to, among other things:

• say that we shouldn’t allow people to stay here who broke our country’s laws to get here
• say that admission to our universities should depend on merit and not skin color
• say that America should be a melting pot

That’s not real racism.  Real racism isn’t super subtle, and it doesn’t take preternatural listening skills to pick up on it.

For an example, take the racism of Democrats.  Please.

When they ran the confederacy and fought until Lincoln and the Republicans defeated them and freed their slaves, there was nothing subtle about their racism. After they lost the war, Democrats like Nathan Bedford Forrest formed the KKK, not a group famous for the subtlety of their hatreds.

As the decades went by, Democrats passed Jim Crow laws and instituted poll taxes and fought integration tooth and nail.  The closest thing to a dog whistle ever deployed by southern Democrats like Bull Connor and George Wallace and Orville Faubus was actual dogs, attacking black folks while they were simultaneously being blasted with firehoses.

No one ever had to get out their decoder rings or read any tea leaves to figure out the meaning of a burning cross on their lawn, or a “Whites Only” sign, or a lynched relative.

Now I don’t think it’s fair to tar today’s Democrat leadership with the sins of their political ancestors.  But they have plenty to answer for on their own.

When Obama said that his mother feared black people because she was a “typical white person,” that was no dog whistle.  When Screwy Louie Farrakhan calls Jews “termites,” you don’t have to read between the lines to get his point.  (And when Obama takes a picture with him after he’s talked about evil Jews and white devils for decades?)  When Pelosi and Schumer et al claim that blacks couldn’t possibly get their act together enough to procure ID to vote, that’s some 160-proof racism.

I could go on with examples for pages.  Jessie Jackson calling NYC “hymie-town.”  Al Sharpton – whom the MSM and fellow Democrats treated like a legitimate candidate – inciting murder with references to “white interlopers” and “diamond merchants.”  Andrew Gillum’s college buddy and campaign aide caught on tape by Project Veritas last week raving about what a “cracker state” Florida is.  Etc. and etc.

And what does the Left have?  David Duke and dog whistles.  And David Duke has as much to do with the GOP as Duke Ellington or the Duke of Earl.

If there’s any justice, the lefties won’t be rewarded for their all-around awfulness in the mid-terms, about which I’m putting together some thoughts for a column on Monday.

In the meantime, I hope that Hillary and Obama and Don Lemon all stay on the air 24/7, reminded us all of just how terrible and obnoxious they are.