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Regular readers of Cautious Optimism know that I’ve had a little fun at Elizabeth Warren’s expense over the last year or so.  I just went back through my archives and found that in a column dated last December 1st, I cited the story of Warren’s hilarious Pow Wow Chow cookbook – infamous for including two supposedly quintessential Oklahoman dishes that included the decidedly-not-indigenous-to-Oklahoma crab.

After a few more columns featuring jokes about the Geronimo in Granny Glasses, I started the #wemustneverstopmockingher references, undeterred by the fact that I wasn’t sure what “hashtag” actually meant.  And a trend was born.

Recently, however, I had started thinking about the inevitable: I would one day run out of Warren jokes, and my string of Warren mockery would come to an end.

Little did I know that the string would end in the most glorious way possible: in an incredible – and incredibly hilarious – act of unintentional self-immolation by the albino Apache herself.

Obviously, Trump was living in her empty, blonde head rent-free, or she never would have taken a DNA test in such a transparently desperate move to establish her Cherokee bona fides in the first place.  But once she took the test and found out that she is overwhelmingly white, the only rational path was obvious: swear the DNA tester to secrecy, destroy the results and start screaming about misogyny, or any other non-Indian-related bogus leftist talking point.

But no one has ever accused recent Democratic presidential contenders of being slaves to rationality.

So Warren compounded the problem.  She poured gasoline on the fire, steered into the skid, and made a terrible-PR mountain out of an embarrassing genetic molehill.

She produced a campaign-ad style video during which she talked to various members of the Warren family about how the old folks all used to wax poetic about their Indian ancestry.  If you’ve seen that video, you may have noticed something about the people in it: every last one of them is incredibly white.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I mean, unless you are a Democrat who wants to be president.

Anyway, she managed to act smug as the DNA tester confirmed that she does indeed have “some” Indian ancestry.  If by “some,” you mean “the same ratio as I have of stellar dust from ancient comet strikes in my backyard, as compared to regular old earth-dirt.”  And I’d expect all of my neighbors to mock me if I started calling my backyard “the Lawn of Tranquility.”

Of course the sweetest irony comes from knowing that Lizzie could only have thought that she’d get away with such a laughable claim if she knew that the dishonest MSM would cover for her.

And for about half a day, they tried, coming out with multiple variations of headlines touting “the strong proof” that her DNA test gave to her claims of uber-Cherokee-osity.

But within minutes, people who can do math started to point out that she is likely somewhere around 99.9% white, along with several other fun facts.  Such as that she likely has many more times as much DNA from at least one white male ancestor who helped round up the Cherokee for the Trail of Tears.  (Cue the sad trombone/peacepipe.)

And that the average white American has something like 8 times as much Indian DNA as Liz has.  Despite the fact that, according to extensive research that I just now completed, most of them have never contributed even ONE recipe to Pow Wow Chow!  You can look it up.

And that’s not all of the crab bisque that Lizzie now has on her face.  Because she hadn’t just been claiming that some distant ancestor 6 to 10 generations back was a Cherokee.  She was claiming that her own mother was so obviously Indian that her grandparents wouldn’t accept her into their family, so her parents had to elope.

During my afore-mentioned research, I covered the back of an envelope with my own mathematical calculations, and I’ve arrived at the following conclusion:  Liz’s mom was not 6 to 10 generations back.  She was roughly one generation back.

So at most, one of that woman’s grandparents’ grandparents’ parent MIGHT have been at least part Indian.  At worst, one of THAT person’s grandparents’ grandparent MIGHT have been an Indian.

But since the DNA test actually used DNA samples taken from central and south Americans, that magical Indian ancestor may have actually been a Brazilian snake-wrangler, or a syphilitic conquistador, or an alcoholic member of the lesser Spanish nobility who was forced to go to the New World to try to dry out, and also because his continually passing out in the soup bowl was proving embarrassing to King Ferdinand.

And yes, there is as much scientific evidence to support the syphilitic,snake-wrangling,hard-drinking dinner-disruptor theory as there is to support the “I’m-a-blue-eyed-Delaware-Cherokee” theory of Elizabeth Warren.

But the Mendacious Mohawk was not ready to give up yet.  In a post-disaster interview she said that she released the DNA results because, and I quote, “I am an open book.”

Yes.  And that book is called The White Pages.

She also fell back on the oldest of ploys used by people who have made some issue all about themselves.  She said, “This isn’t about me.”

No, it isn’t.  It’s about your ancestors.  Your very, very, VERY white ancestors.

She also said that she released the results because, “I see now that confidence in government is at an all-time low.  And I believe that one way we try to rebuild confidence is through transparency.”

Even better than that, in your case: translucency!

And so, I tip my hat to you, Elizabeth Warren.  After I have done my best for almost a year to mock you at every turn, you have put my feeble mockery to shame with your own towering act of self-be-clownery.

I am tempted to say that this whole charade boomeranged on you.  But I have too much respect for the aboriginal people who invented the boomerang to engage in such a gross act of cultural appropriation.

So I will just say, “Liar, liar, deerskin dress on fire.”

Now please tell me where I can go to contribute to your 2020 presidential campaign.

Before the recent Kavanaugh-related unpleasantness – and the more recent Kavanaugh-related celebration (Oh Happy Day!), I had started writing a “best-of-September” column.  So now – even though it seems like news as old as the credible accusations that Ruth Bader Ginsburg sexually harassed a young and vulnerable Hammurabi – here is my list of the highs and lows of September.

1.Trump closed the PLO office in DC.  Good!  Of course, the usual suspects quickly pulled their kaffiyehs up over their head in horror… Wait.  A kaffiyeh is supposed to be worn on the head, isn’t it?  Well, you know what I mean.  The usual terrorist-enablers lost their Pelosi, and made the usual arguments.

Husam Zumlot (and if the Japanese are not currently working on a new electric car called the “Zumlot,” they are missing a prime marketing opportunity) called the closing “reckless.”  I mean, not as reckless as strapping bombs to dimwitted teenagers and sending them into pizza restaurants in Israel to murder the lunchtime crowd.  But sure.  Reckless.

Saeb Erekat (and I’m going to avoid the obvious “Erekat Stevens” joke, because he changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and there’s nothing funny about that) said that this is just more evidence that the Trump administration wants to “punish the Palestinian people.”  Yes.  Like when the PLO routinely fires missiles into Israel from the roofs of schools and hospitals, so that any return strikes will kill civilians.  That kind of punishment.

One of the best foreign policy decisions the Trump WH has made is to drop the offensive pretense of moral equivalence between Israel and the PLO.  We moved our embassy to Jerusalem and acknowledged that it is the capital of Israel, and we stopped a $251 million “aid payment” that was supposed to go to the Palestinian people but would have disappeared into the PLO bank accounts.

Plus, American hero John “the Nuclear Walrus” Bolton (hat tip to Dennis Miller) gave an amazing speech on the subject of the deeply corrupt International Criminal Court. “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. And we certainly will not join the ICC.  We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

If John Kerry had even tried to pack that much moral clarity into a speech to the UN, the top of his elongated, horse-like head would have blown off.

And if that wasn’t great enough, Bolton completed his Michael Corleone impression by noting that the US would “take note” of any countries who cooperate with the ICC.

In other words, “You broke my heart, Fredo Erekat.  And now you’re dead to me.  Please put on this fishing cap, and one of my assistants will take you out on the Hudson River in a bass boat with an outboard motor on the back.  He’ll be sitting behind you.”

 

2. The best headline – and odds are, the only true one – to appear in the Washington Post in September was this: “Woman who wrote about how to murder your husband charged with murdering her husband.”

I don’t have any extensive commentary on this one, other than to point out Rule #1 in the How to Get Away with Crime handbook: Don’t write a how-to guide on committing a crime before you commit it.

That’s why you’ll never see my blog post entitled, “How to Travel from Florida to NYC and Punch Chuck Schumer in his Big, Fat, Lying Mouth.”  Because I’m too clever for that.

 

3. Chelsea Clinton gave a mid-September interview in which said that, “as a deeply religious person, [restricting abortion is] also un-Christian to me.”

I am normally loath to criticize Chelsea Clinton, because she had a horrible childhood at the hands of absolutely terrible parents. But she’s in her 30s now, and she’s lecturing us about how Christ would be super-pumped about infanticide.

She’s probably thinking about the passage where He says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me… so that I can end their lives and sell their body parts, and thereby afford to buy a Lamborghini.”

I never trust those modern translations.

You know what else I never trust?  Spiritual advice from a Clinton.

 

4. In other news, the transparently biased MSM kept it up with the transparent bias during September. I would quote some specific stories, but do I really need to?

Instead, try this experiment.  I’m going to list 3 headlines, and I guarantee that you will find at least one story on each of these themes on the biggest MSM websites within the next 24 hours:

1. Trump: Our experts debate whether he’s more like Hitler or Satan.
2. The unprecedented economic boom going on right now: Our experts debate whether there is nothing to report here, or whether Obama should get the credit.
3. Colin Kaepernick: Our experts debate whether he’s more like a cross between Dan Marino and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or more like a cross between Joe Montana and Jesus, if Jesus had been a little better at reading zone defenses.

 

5. The revealing internal Google video that somehow got leaked.  If you haven’t seen that video, please… um… Google it, I guess?  On second thought, I’m sure that you can’t get it by Googling it.  (Because Google is the opposite of transparent.)

It was an in-house video feed to the company’s employees, taped the morning after the Cankle-pocalypse of November 2016, when Hillary was prevented from beginning her Reign of Insufferability with what surely would have been the worst acceptance speech ever cackled.  (“Two score and a handful of years ago, CAW CAW, my reprehensible horndog husband assaulted his first campaign aide.  As I bullied that poor girl into silence CAW CAW CAW, I knew that she – and all of the dozens of bimbos whom I would have to slander in the future – CAW CAW – would not have suffered in vain, if by their destruction they would have paved my way – CAW – to the highest office in the land!”)

So all of these high-ranking Google people are on camera, commiserating in the most clueless way about how their world has fallen apart. The COO is some woman who can literally barely keep from weeping, and talks about how she and her friends were crying as the election returns came in.  Which gave me two thoughts:

First, does this mentally fragile woman realize that half of her customers disagree with her about politics, and therefore it might be a smarter business plan to at least try to hide your hatred of them?

Second, as I’ve reported in other columns, it seems like when the left doesn’t get its way, it resorts to one of two childish behavior patterns: throwing feces, or bawling like a baby.  Now that’s always good entertainment to view from a distance — or, if you happen to have a slicker, some hip-waders and a fecal-proof helmet and googles – in a live setting.

I’m considering buying one share of Google stock, just so I can attend the next shareholder meeting.  When the time comes for Q&A, I’m going to stand up and say, “Can you tell us what our company is doing to help President Trump in his attempt to Make America Great Again?”

And then I’ll step back, snap my Def-e-CAN’T Anti-fecal Goggles™ (now with “Fec-be-gone” Democrat-resistant lense coating ™) into place, and watch the festivities.

 

6.  On September 17^th, Michael Moore was inexplicably being interviewed at the release of his latest terrible agit-prop movie. (Spoiler alert: Conservatives are the bad guys, Michael Moore is the hero, and 8 people saw it. That kind of box office is not going to keep Mikey in comically over-sized turkey legs and industrial-sized barrels of gravy.) When asked what he’s thinking about 2020, he said, “I’m not thinking about 2020.  If we don’t fix this now, we may not get to 2020.”

If Michael Moore doesn’t make it to 2020, I think that’s going to have a lot more to do with furniture collapse, aspiration of a large chunk of ham while he’s sleeping, or the fact that his blood type is “pudding” than with machinations of the totalitarian Trump administration.

 

7. Finally, in the story that best exemplifies what’s wrong with kids these days, Serena Williams lost a tennis match to a smaller Japanese woman. And she stoically accepted her fate, and congratulated her opponent like a good sport, the end.

HA!  In fact she whined and moaned and broke her racket and broke the rules.  When the guy in the lifeguard chair docked her a point for that, she went more nuts.  She eventually lost a game because of her bad behavior.  I was never a fan of “bad boy” tennis players, but Serena made John McEnroe look like Pitt the Elder.

(Okay, I’m not even sure if Pitt the Elder was known for his calm demeanor.  But a buddy of mine bet me that I would not be able to work jokes mentioning ziggurats, fjord-billies and Pitt the Elder into consecutive columns.  So pay up, Darryll!)

But it wasn’t just that Serena threw a tantrum like a Democrat who was denied the chance to use the constitution as a diaper.  (I’m looking at you, Crazy Mazie.)  It’s the way she encapsulated every dysfunctional social trend as she threw that tantrum.

First, of course, was the bald-faced lying.  She was accused of getting signals from her coach, who was in the stands at her match.  So she yelled three times, “I didn’t get coaching.” (This was undercut later when her coach admitted that he had been giving her coaching.  Also by cameras, which showed him giving her coaching.)

When the umpire appeared unmoved, she took it up a notch, screaming, “You owe me an apology. I have never cheated in my life. I have a daughter and I stand for what is right for her and I’ve never cheated. You owe me an apology.”

Oh, so having a daughter automatically means that you never lie?  I guess that explains why Elizabeth Warren, once she gave birth to her twin daughters — Running Deer and Janet – did a 180 and immediately embraced her Episcopalian/Presbyterian roots.  #wemustneverstopmockingher

And what’s with demanding an apology?  Has that ever worked for anyone at their workplace?  Say the boss catches you slipping a 20 from the cash register into your pocket, or taking a pull off the bottle of whiskey that you keep in your desk drawer.

Did it ever occur to you that you could just say, “I was going to take this $20 bill home to check the serial numbers in case it’s a phony, and my sciatica is acting up, so I was using that bottle of Jack for medicinal purposes.  Now where’s my apology, Brian?”  (For this example, I’m assuming that your boss’ name is Brian.  Also, that he prefers not to be called by his first name.)

After some more back-and-forth, Little Miss Sunshine returned to her favorite theme:  “When are you going to give me my apology? You owe me an apology.  Say it, say you’re sorry. Then don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me. How dare you insinuate I was cheating? You stole a point from me. You’re a thief too.”

It’s “her apology,” don’t you get it?  He owes it to her.

When he then docked her a game penalty for verbally abusing him, she pulled the gender card: “Do you know how many men do things that are much worse than that? This is not fair.  There are a lot of men out here that have said a lot of things and because they are a man it doesn’t matter.”

Which would have made a lot more sense if it wasn’t 100% false.  And if by penalizing her, he had awarded the lost game to a male passerby, rather than giving it to Serena’s opponent.  Who, I have it on pretty good authority, is also a woman.

In the press conference afterward, Serena continued to prove that she is the most ironically named person since Nazi anti-semite Alfred Rosenberg.  (Seriously, he was a real guy.)   She said, “I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality…. I just feel like the fact that I have to go through this is just an example for the next person … [who] wants to be a strong woman.”

Which gave me two thoughts:

1. Just because you have the shoulders of a starting outside linebacker at Texas A&M doesn’t mean that you’re a strong woman.
2. With that kind of delusional, narcissistic, victim mentality, she has got to be Hillary’s running mate in 2020. Their campaign slogan writes itself: “You Owe Us an Apology!”

Of course, the conservative slogan also writes itself:  “Trump/Pence vs. Clinton/Williams – Shock and Awe vs. Whine and CAW!”

 

Can you picture the joy around stately Simpson Manor today?  After several weeks of being furious and worried and depressed as a manifestly good man was demonized and smeared, I started to enjoy a trickle of good news this past week.

First, Creepy Porn Lawyer’s client turns out to be a singularly unconvincing loon selling a story that dozens and dozens of upper class girls were gang raped over a period of months by dozens of upper class boys in a suburb of DC, and no one ever reported it.  When she gave four names of people who supposedly witnessed this, one denied it, two couldn’t be reached, and one was dead.

It’s a cliché for a reason: when your best witness is a dead guy, pull the fire alarm and run out of the court room.

Next, Ramirez turns out to be a partisan hack selling a story that she was black out drunk at a party, and there were genitals, and she wasn’t sure whose they were until she spent six days talking to her leftist hack lawyer, who – when not chasing ambulances – also specializes in helping people “recover” decades-old genital-related memories.

By the way, I went to high school and college with a ton of girls, and I tragically got to see almost none of them naked.  But if there’s a way I can go to the offices of Soros & Alinsky Esq.  and “recover” some memories in which I was actually bombarded by parade floats filled with female nudity, I’m in.

In fact, if I could please “recover” a memory of when 1983 Nena went to my senior prom with me, and sang “99 Luft Balloons” before coming home to the luxurious apartment I never had and having her lusty Germanic way with me, I’d pay double.  Throw in that time I ravaged late 1970s Farrah Fawcett, and I will sign over my 401K.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: Ramirez’s story collapsed like a house of imaginary cards.

At the same time, Ford’s story grew weaker too.  All of the witnesses she named said they didn’t know what she was talking about.  Her story that she was terrified of flying was undermined by the fact that she has 500,000 frequent flier miles.  Also, for the last six years she has had a summer job as a wing-walker on an old biplane in a barnstormer act in Branson, Missouri.

Next up, the MSM was on the case, and dug up perhaps the most damning anti-Kavanaugh account yet.  It turns out that Brett Kavanaugh – when he wasn’t drugging high school girls and defending his pimping turf in vicious running gun battles with Bishop Don “Magic” Juan (Google him) – was also involved in a donnybrook in a bar near Yale.

That’s right.  He allegedly threw ice at a guy.  You may remember it from all of those “The Cube Heard Round the World” stories that dominated the headlines in 1985.

This was the last straw for my wife, who is, as many of you know, of Norwegian descent.  Until then, she had been trying to keep an open mind.  But when she heard about the ice throwing allegations, she was triggered.

Because, as she explained to me in a tearful conversation, the Norwegian people have long been tormented by racial slurs from their less blonde, less attractive, shorter, swarthier neighbors.

Growing up, she had heard it all:  Tundra Monkeys.  Glacierbacks.  Frosties. Fjord-billies.  Svens.

But the most painful of all was the “I” word:  Ice-chuckers.

(By the way, don’t kid yourself: Lizzie Warren has heard those same, hateful words.  She might say that she’s been called “squaw” or “wigwam whacko,” but she’s got “fjord-billy” written all over her.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

So the anti-Kavanists lost my wife.

My spirits were rising as the FBI report came back the only way it possibly could, given that the alleged bad behavior happened at an undetermined location, in an unknown year, and with no corroboration. And also was totally made up.

Then Cocaine Mitch called for a cloture vote, and Lindsay Graham’s evil twin continued to dazzle us all.  When a bunch of entitled know-nothing college kids at a genteel event at the Atlantic started booing him, he snapped, “Oh, boo yourself.”

Which, for the old Lindsay Graham, would have been the equivalent of jumping to his feet, roaring, “DIE  COMMIE SCUM!” and spraying the crowd with small arms fire from a belt-fed weapon.

Also, when some embittered termagant harassing him in a hallway called out, “If he would take a polygraph this would all be over,” Lindsay came back with a professional-quality retort, which I am not making up.  He looked back over his shoulder without missing a beat, and said, “Why don’t we dunk him in water and see if he floats.”

Boom!

Finally Friday comes, and Susan Collins speaks on the Senate floor in that shaky, Kate-Hepburn-in-a-bumper-car way that has always driven me nuts, but is now just adorable.  After a 45-minute speech laying out the manifest reasons to be disgusted by the left’s smear campaign (reportedly written by her lead staffer, Harold Obvious), she supports Kavanaugh.

Twelve seconds later, Joe Manchin shoulder-rolls to the nearest microphone, gives a clavicle-snapping forearm shiver to the septuagenarian who was explaining that we should always believe all women, and grabs the mike, shouting, “Me too!  Me too!  I’m voting for Kavanaugh too!”

So I grab the front paws of a startled Cassie the Wonder Dog and dance her around my living room, singing, “Oh Happy Day,” but replacing the line, “When Jesus washed my sins away,” with, “When Lindsay cleared the goons away!”

To vicariously experience that with me, google “Ray Charles sings Oh Happy Day,” and watch the video.  It was just like that, except with a lot less dashikis, and one confused and excited Aussie shepherd.

So Saturday comes, and I DVR the usual half-dozen college football games, but also the coverage of the Kavanaugh vote and aftermath on all 6 networks.  I am going to slowly work my way through all of that video between now and Christmas, savoring every profanity-filled chant and misspelled sign and red-faced tantrum from the hordes of lefty louts who descended on Washington to celebrate “Political Impotence Fest ’18.”

In the meantime, I’ve got my snacks arranged around me in my recliner.  I’m having a foot-long schadenfreude sandwich with a side of Cheetos (because the Dems tried to cheat, get it?), and I’ll be washing it down with a flagon of Leftist Tears, vintage 2016.

With ice. Delicious, never-been-thrown ice.

That reminds me: Just-ice Kavanaugh.

Ha! Crank it up!    “Oh happy day…”

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For more of Martin’s columns – which don’t all focus on the Kavanaugh hearings, I promise – go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com

 

Several weeks ago I wrote a column called “What I learned from the Kavanaugh Hearings.”  Little did I know that there would be a sequel…

“What I Learned from the Kavanaugh Show Trial”

First, never ask the rhetorical question, “How low can Democrat politicians go?”  Because… now the only things left are cannibalism and necrophilia.  I mean, as far as I know.  (On the other hand, is it possible that Michael Moore achieved that size without consuming at least one or two human beings?  Just to be on the safe side, can someone please do a head count/wellness check on all of his family and neighbors and co-workers?)

Second, if Donald Trump does not soon tag evil sexist Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono as “Crazy Mazie,” I’m going to be very disappointed in him.   She is now my least favorite senator – and with soulless crone Dianne Feinstein, Spartacus and the dueling Dicks (Durbin and Blumenthal) crawling the earth, that is really saying something.

The nature of the sexism – and don’t tell me hating males is reverse sexism, because it’s just sexism – on display from the Democrat Senators was really stunning.  Hirono literally said that it’s the men who cause these kinds of problems, and they all should just shut up.  Gillebrand and others said that we should always and in all circumstances “believe the woman.”

What do you say to that?

Several things:  1. Try this out, “Always believe the man.”  Or “Always believe the white person.” Or “Always believe the older person.”  Or “Always believe the Lutheran.”

Sounds weird, doesn’t it?  Almost as if it is nothing but creepy, simplistic, completely unjustified blanket discrimination against one group in favor of another?  That’s because [cue Sam Kinison voice] IT IS!  THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS!  OH! OOOOHHHH!

2.I’D LIKE TO ASSIGN – oops. Sorry. [Discontinue Sam Kinison voice]

2.I’d like to assign some homework to the Democrat senators who have suggested that women must always be believed. First, read To Kill a Mockingbird. Then Google the following terms or people: Duke Lacrosse case, Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky, Mattress Girl, Rolling Stone UVA fraternity rape hoax.  Some of those are women who you did not believe, because you are hypocritical creeps.  Others are women who turned out to be lying.

Because, you know, women are human, and humans sometimes lie.

3.I thought I’d never say this, but Lindsay “Graham-nesty” Graham is – at least for today — my hero. If you opened your windows and listened carefully during his righteous rant, you could hear the sounds of millions of frustrated, fair-minded Americans simultaneously cheering and sighing in relief.

The election of Trump has been attributed to many causes – not the least of which was because he was running against CAW CAW CAW – but one crucial factor was that he’s a fighter.  He’s a flawed fighter, and a fighter who often lands punches on his own jaw and upside his allies’ heads, and a fighter who has way too much access to a Twitter account.

But he’s a fighter.  And for a long time, conservatives have been frustrated by a series of basically good men — Bush, McCain, Romney, 75% of the Senate and House — who could not bring themselves to get down in the mud and counter-punch against leftists who have had no compunction about fighting below the belt.  (That’s not necessarily a Bill Clinton joke.) (But on the other hand… sure.)

So when Trump came out swinging haymakers in all directions, we winced, but we also cheered.

And Thursday, when GOP Senators were tiptoeing around, trying not to offend the delicate sensibilities of female voters who might be offended if they asked Ford pointed questions – you know, as if she were a grown, responsible adult, rather than a fragile porcelain mouse — we were groaning.  Mobs of protesting goons clogged the hallways and chanted idiotic slogans and chased GOP politicians out of restaurants, while we all stared at our big screens, screaming, “A taser, a taser!  My kingdom for a taser!”

Or maybe that was just me.

But then, from over the horizon, comes a most unlikely champion.  Gone was the milquetoast Lindsay who used to sit obediently at John McCain’s knee and look for common ground with the enemy troops besieging the city.

Mrs. Graham must have mixed in some HGH, testosterone and just a touch of meth with Lindsay’s Cheerios Thursday morning, because he came out swinging.  And we all cheered!

4.Ford’s testimony was a mixed bag, at best. If I can put aside my pro-Kavanaugh and anti-leftist bias, she wasn’t obviously crazy, and she did seem distressed and sympathetic.

But the problems with her story are obvious, and clearly preclude taking any kind of quasi-prosecutorial action based on them.

A. Her hippocampus talk was ridiculous, in context.  She used some scientific terms to give a gloss of empirical sophistication to parts of her testimony, explaining how the hippocampus encodes memory.

I’ll plead guilty to not being a brain expert.  In fact, I thought that “hippocampus” was a nickname given to the physical environs of Wellesley college when Hillary Clinton was a student there.  (Boom!)

But while I’m not a part of the hippocampus cognoscenti – best name for a prog rock band ever, by the way – it doesn’t pass the smell test to go on about how the strong emotional distress of the moment indelibly fixed a few details in her mind, while simultaneously not fixing virtually any others.  She doesn’t remember the day or month or year, or the specific house, or how she got there or got home.  But for the crucial minute or two, her 36-year-old memory is crystal clear?

B. Specifically, not knowing the date is really unusual.  Most of us have had at least one or two traumatic or dramatically bad events – a miscarriage, being the victim of crime, the unexpected loss of a loved one, narrowly escaping death or serious injury — happen to us in our lives.  I think in most cases, it would be vanishingly rare for someone to not know at least the YEAR that happened, and most people would know the date.

Most cancer survivors can tell you the day they got their diagnosis, and virtually all of them can tell you the month and year.  Most Holocaust survivors can give you the date when the Gestapo showed up for them or their parents.  Juanita Broaddrick can tell you the exact day when Bill Clinton raped her, along with the time of day, the name of the hotel she was in, and which friend helped her put ice on her injured mouth afterwards.

And I know I’m not a woman, and I can’t fully understand what it’s like to be sexually attacked.  But my dad got his final cancer diagnosis in June of 2014, and I flew my old Cessna up to TN for his surgery in the first week of July.  (It was sunny in the morning, but pretty cloudy by the time I landed in mid-afternoon.)  And my wife and I found out that our daughter had a life-threatening condition and needed an emergency colostomy on October 18^th, 1997.  And I was having breakfast in the tv room of our old house when my mother-in-law called to tell me that someone had flown planes into the buildings on 9/11.

Also, it was January 23^rd of 2013 when I was traumatized by hearing, “At this point, CAW, CAW, what difference does it make?”  (I still shudder at the memory.)

And it was a rainy Saturday in October of 2012, when I was hiking along the northern end of the Appalachian Trail, only to be ambushed by a small band of terrifying Indians.  They all had warpaint on, but their leader stood out because she was extremely pale, with a sour expression and granny glasses.  I fled onto a nearby footbridge and pulled a pistol, threatened them that I would shoot.  Their leader, speaking in an obnoxious and somehow entitled New England accent, shook her withered fist at me and spat, “You didn’t build that bridge!  You can’t make me stop persisting!”

As she ran back into the woods, I heard one of the braves whispering to another, “You know she’s not one of us, right?”

True story.  And #wemustneverrstopmockingher

One other point re: Ford’s credibility that the MSM has somehow not discussed (Surprise, surprise.) was her claim (or her lawyers’ claim on her behalf) that because of the terrible trauma she suffered, she cannot fly. That was given as a reason to delay her testimony from Monday to Thursday – she would have to drive cross-country.

Then it turns out that she flies all the time, for work and for pleasure.  She apparently flew cross-country in the last month or two to take a polygraph.  In fact, she flew to DC to give her testimony.

Gee.  It’s almost like she lied just to delay the proceedings.  I mean, if women ever lied.  Which according to some leftist senators, they do not.

 

As I write this, Jeff Flake has apparently succeeded in postponing a final vote for yet another week, during which more incredible tales will undoubtedly come out of the woodwork to prolong the Kavanaugh family’s agony.

But no matter what happens, we have to learn from this.  Before any other Supreme Court vacancies, we have to establish a few common sense rules:

1.Anybody who has any allegations to make about any scandalous behavior that the nominee supposedly engaged in MUST report it to whomever the Senate designates for this purpose, as soon as a nominee is named. (Preferably before, if that person is discussed as being on a short list.) If an accuser waits until after regular Senate hearings start, he or she will be given the choice of being tarred and feather and ridden out of town on a rail, or being put in public stocks and having rotten vegetables thrown at him or her.  But last-minute accusations will NOT delay votes.

2.Any accusers have to know going in that they are going to face the same kind of scrutiny as any adult making a charge that could potentially destroy someone’s life. They are going to submit to questioning following a regular, consistent process that does not allow them to dictate the conditions under which they testify. They will be expected to produce any corroborating evidence possible – including documents, witnesses, etc. – ASAP.  And as has been the case in Western legal procedure since the Magna Carta, the burden of proof will be on the accuser, not the accused.

I also have Plan B suggestion.  The constitution says nothing about the advise and consent process requiring live interviewing, and it sure doesn’t need to be televised, so that a bunch of preening jackasses can grandstand and ask inflammatory questions.  If the Senate proves itself unable to conduct dignified televised hearings – and, Exhibit A: Bork; Exhibit B: Thomas; Exhibit C: Kavanaugh – we might consider going back to earlier practice, and having nominees submit written answers to the Senators’ questions, and then discussing and voting on those with no tv cameras present.

Now I am going to turn to college and pro football, to forget the leftist creeps who are trying to ruin my country.

Okay, I’ve had it!  At almost the same moment I finished and sent my latest column on the Kavanaugh smear to CO, another partisan leftist hack miraculously shows up with a decades-old recovered memory to try to reinforce the imploding Blasey-Ford story.   (I guess it’s like James Carville used to say: you drag a $100 bill through the Yale Women’s Studies Program and you never know what you’ll find.)

At first I just got even more blindingly furious, and stomped around Stately Simpson Manor with a Costco-sized bottle of scotch in my hand and murder in my heart.   But then I realized that it is time that we fight fire with fire.

After a very brief series of thoughts involving how one might find Dianne Feinstein’s house and set it on fire, I realized that I’d gotten a little off track.  So I sat down and I came up with a plan.  And although it goes against my modest nature to praise my own plan… it is quite likely the best plan since the Marshall Plan, and definitely much better than Plan 9 From Outer Space.

I call it, The Simpson Retroactive Last-Minute Supreme Court Nomination Scandal Plan™.   Here’s how it works.

If the Democrats can come up with 36-year-old tall tales about a SC nominee they don’t like, I say we go them one better.  Right now there are 4 leftist justices on the court, and I think we should re-open their nominations retroactively, because I’ve just discovered damaging allegations against one of them (so far) that deserve to be heard.

I know what you are thinking: who did Sotomayor harass this time?  Or, did Kagan really kill a man in Reno, just to watch him die?  But no.  They’ve only been on the court for less than a decade, and they’re not that old.  If the Democrats have taught us anything, it’s that the oldest charges are the most persuasive.  I mean, if 36-year-old charges are convincing, how much more convincing would charges from centuries ago be?

You know where I’m going with this: Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Again, people with less ambitious plan-making abilities than mine might be deterred by the task of going back to investigate Ginsberg’s misspent youth.  But not me.  Just because she’s been on the court for decades, wreaking havoc on the constitution and making the Founders spin in their graves, I think that the #metoo movement has taught us all that it’s never too late to pursue charges of sexual misconduct.

So I’ve done a little digging into Ginsberg, and I’ve found a young man she went to high school with: Hammurabi.  You may know him best from his Code (Google it), but the kids in Mesopotamia High in the 18^th century before Christ knew him as “that guy who Ruthie Bader traumatized at that party.”

Although he was reluctant at first, I got him to sit down with me for an interview.

Me: Hello Mr. Hammurabi.  Thank you for agreeing to share your story with me.

H (laughing): My dad was Mr. Hammurabi.  You can just call me Hamm.

Me:  Thank you.  Okay, I’d like to ask you about the incident with Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

H:  She was just Ruthie Bader back then.  I thought she was a friend of mine, but everything changed… that night.

Me: I understand.  Let’s get some details clear.  Can you tell me when this happened?

H: Well, that’s a little tricky.  You see, it was a long time ago, and the details are a little foggy.  But I’m pretty sure it was either 1815 or 1816 BC.

Me: You don’t even know what year it was?

H: Look, it’s not that easy.  I mean, it was in the BC times, so the year went backwards, which was pretty confusing.  Plus none of us knew when Christ was going to come, so a lot of the calendars were way off.  So I’m not sure I can nail down the exact year.  I remember that there was a drought that year, if that helps.

Me: It really doesn’t.  How about the location where the event happened?

Hamm: I’m a little fuzzy on that, too.  I know it was in one of my friend’s parents’ ziggurats.  And it was near a river.  I think the Tigris.

Me: You think?
Hamm (shrugging his shoulders):  It could have been the Euphrates.

Me: But it wasn’t the Nile?

Hamm:  Ummmmm…

Me: Great.  Were there any witnesses there?

Hamm: Yes.  Noah was there for at least a part of the night, I remember that.  He was a year behind me in school.  And also Tutankhamen.

Me: Tut was there?

Hamm:  Yes.  I remember, because Ruthie bothered him, too.

Me: Ooh, tell me about that, because it may help establish a pattern of behavior.

Hamm:  Well, he already got teased a lot.  Everyone kept calling him “the boy king,” and he hated that.  Ruthie picked up on that right away, and kept at him with suggestive remarks.

Me: Like what?
Hamm: I remember she was teasing him along the lines of, “How would you like it if I made you a MAN king?” That kind of thing.

Me: All right, let’s get to the details of your story.  What did Ginsberg say or do that made you uncomfortable?

Hamm:  She was just aggressive about being interested in me.  A small group of us were standing around in one part of the room, wishing that beer had been invented, when she came over and asked if we wanted to play strip poker.

Me: What did you say?

Hamm: I reminded her that poker hadn’t been invented yet, and one of the guys pointed out that playing cards hadn’t been invented yet.  But she wouldn’t take the hint.  She asked us to play spin the bottle, but that went nowhere.

Me: Because bottles hadn’t been invented yet?

Hamm:  Exactly.  I thought that that had ended it, but about 10 minutes later, I had to go to the Little Pharoah’s room, and when I came out, she was right there.   She was all over me right away, and before I knew it, she had me pinned against the wall, and was tugging my tunic upward.

Me: Yikes!

Hamm (nodding):  I know.  I didn’t know what to do.  All I kept thinking was, “Man, I wish we’d invented pants and zippers and belts!  Or even a good, locking codpiece!”

Me: What happened next?

Hamm: I wrestled with her for a minute, but when I’d forced her hands off of my tunic, she started kissing me.  I kept saying, “No,” but she wouldn’t listen.  Finally I was able to get away from her.  I ran to the courtyard and called for a chariot to take me home.  I mean, I just cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Chariot,” and eventually one showed up.

Me:  That sounds traumatic.  What did you do when you got home?

Hamm: Well, I felt so dirty.  I wanted to take a shower, but we hadn’t invented showers, or indoor plumbing yet.  So I went to the river with a reed basket, and just kept ladling water over my head until I could stop shaking.

Me: I’m so sorry.  I don’t suppose you have any physical evidence, do you?

Hamm: Well, I’ve got the notes that the police took when I reported it.  (Hamm pulls out two stone tablets covered with hieroglyphics.)

Me:  Wow!  This is great, but I don’t read ancient pictograms.

Hamm (laughing): Oh come on, they’re basically just old school emojis.  Here, I’ll show you.  (He puts his finger on a tablet, and moves it across the symbols.)  Do you see this?

Me: It looks like – bird head, eyeball, woman facing right, sun, goat head, man facing right, cat head, man holding spear, walk like an Egyptian pose, palm tree.  Can you translate that?

Hamm (clears his throat): “Victim states that the Bader chick had her hands all over his person.  Aggressive kissing.  Very gropey.”

Me: That is some explosive stuff!  Hey, what does this section here mean?

Hamm: Oh, you mean “cat head, equal sign, cat head?”

Me:  Yes.

Hamm (his voice cracking): That’s “No means no.”  It’s what the policeman told me when I said that maybe I’d led her on.

Me: I have to tell you, your story sounds pretty convincing to me, but a lot of people have a specific image of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and I think they might have a hard time believing this.

Hamm: Look, I understand.  I mean, right now she has the posture of the letter “C,” and it’s often difficult to tell if she’s awake or asleep.  But this was a long time ago, and Ruthie was a wild girl.  She was very aggressive.

Me: Okay, thanks for your time.  I’m going to report this to the US Senate, and they’ll be in touch.  Do you have anything else you’d like to say?

Hamm: Oh yes, I almost forgot.  One of my cousins left town right after this party happened.  He and a bunch of friends decided to head north because they’d heard that there was a lan0d bridge open to a continent in the northern hemisphere.  They planned to cross that, then split into different tribes, domesticate some horses, invent some arrowheads and tomahawks, and pretty much have the run of the place.

Me: Why are you telling me this?

Hamm: When my cousin heard where you were from and that I was going to be talking with you, he said to tell you that some crazy white lady in New England is pretending to be his great, great, great-grandaughter.  And that she’s absolutely full of it.  He also asked me to give you this.   (He handed me a small piece of stone with pictograms on it.)

Me: It looks like: standing lion, moon, triangle, bird feet, woman facing left, sheaves of wheat.  What does that mean?

Hamm: #wemustneverstopmockingher

And, scene.

All right, people.  Call your senators.  The day after Kavanaugh gets his vote, I want you to demand that they implement the Simpson Retroactive Last-Minute Supreme Court Nomination Scandal Plan™, and schedule some hearings to begin the process of having Ruth Bader Ginsberg removed from the court.

Early this week I was putting together a column on some of my favorite things that have happened recently, when the attack on Brett Kavanaugh hit.   I’m still going to finish and post that other column shortly, but this Kavanaugh thing has really gotten under my skin, stuck in my craw, gotten my goat, plus any other expression you can think of to describe an infuriating situation.

So here are a few thoughts, heavily redacted from my initial draft, which included so many Anglo-Saxon expletives that it read like a cross between the Grendel chapters in Beowulf and the “script” for a Stormy Daniels film.

First, I am trying very hard not to think the very worst of the woman who raised these allegations, because there is at least a possibility that they are true.  In the history of male-female interactions, teenagers drinking and making fumbling and ultimately abandoned attempts to grope or disrobe each other are not exactly unheard of.  So I resist the urge to dismiss her story out of hand.

On the other hand, anybody making a good faith effort to assess the story has to acknowledge that there is no corroborating evidence, because the accuser kept quiet for 36 years, and can’t provide even the most basic information about when and where it allegedly occurred.

So it’s “he said/she said,” and we have to try to guess which account is more credible.  Let’s put aside for a moment the absurdity of trying to scuttle a nomination based on the “we have to try to guess” standard, and just apply a common sense test.

Kavanaugh denies it.  Obviously, a guilty person would deny doing it.  (See the legal precedent established in the case of Clinton v. Anyone In a Skirt, and the famous “I did not have sex with that woman,” defense.)  Of course, an innocent person would also deny doing it, so no help there.

We might look to the question of motive: What does Kavanaugh have to gain by denying it?  He gets a prestigious appointment if he denies it, and a destroyed reputation if he doesn’t.  So he does have motive — but it’s the same motive as anyone accused of any bad action, and thus is not dispositive, to say the least.

Finally, we might look at Kavanaugh’s behavior pattern.  If we assume the worst-case interpretation of the accuser’s story, she feared that he was going to rape her.  Okay, spend 10 minutes perusing any reputable research into sexual offenders and recidivism rates, and what do you think you are likely to find is more common: a rapist who offends one time and gets it out of his system, never to rape again, or a rapist who victimizes woman after woman until he is caught?

By all accounts, until his accuser came forward with this story, Kavanaugh has an unblemished personal reputation, with no other reported sexual misbehavior or accusations from anyone in the last 36 years.

Compare that to other high profile men in their 50s who have been accused of sexual harassment or worse.  Was anyone who knew Harvey Weinstein shocked when his first accusers came forward?  How about acquaintances of Ted Kennedy, when rumors periodically surfaced of waitress sandwiches or other grotesque behavior?  (I know, Mary Jo Kopeckne was unavailable for comment.  But anyone else who knew him?) Think of anyone who knew anything about Bill Clinton and the rich oral tradition (HA!) of reports that he had harassed Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey or a bevy of other coeds and secretaries to be named later, or that he had raped Juanita Broaddrick, or that he had used Arkansas State troopers to run interference for him as he snuck a small army of women into and out of the governor’s mansion.

Do you think that ANY of them, when they heard that he was accused of defiling the oval office with Monica Lewinsky, jumped up in outrage and said, “The hell you say!”

No.  Obviously no.  1000 times no.  When Cosby’s first accuser – or Louis CK’s first accuser, or Roy Moore’s first accuser, or Anthony Weiner’s or Charlie Rose’s or Matt Lauer’s (etc.) – came forward, she was followed by a cast of dozens, if not more.

But we are supposed to believe that Kavanaugh, who has lived an assault-less life for 36 years, took the first step down Clinton Lane in 1982, but then just inexplicably quit.

Now let’s consider the “she said.”

Many leftist partisans – and a few alleged “conservatives” – have asserted that one reason we should believe her is that there is no possible motive for her to lie: “What would she possibly have to gain by telling her story?”

And they could be right.  Since she is a partisan conservative who has donated to a variety of right-wing causes and groups for years, and protested the policies of President Obama, why would she accuse an originalist judge nominated by President Trump?

Oh no, wait.  She is exactly the opposite of that.  She is a partisan leftist who has donated to a variety of left wing-causes and groups – including the DNC and Bernie Sanders, among others – and has protested Trump and his attempt to enforce our immigration laws.   As such, her motivation to try to keep a constitutional originalist off the SC is obvious.

It’s like asking what motive I would have for doing everything I could to keep Liz Warren from becoming president, even after you found out that I was a donor and founding member of the NAAPWDWWLFI-POTUS (i.e. the “National Association for the Advancement of People Who Don’t Want White Ladies who are Fake Indians for President of the United States). (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

(By the way, we are a 501-C3 tax-exempt organization, and for a donation of $10 or more, we will send you a bumper sticker with our name on it.  Please note that the sticker will only fit vehicles with a beam as wide as a supertanker, or a certain former first lady.) (CAW! CAW!)

Okay, so Blasey-Ford has a political motivation to see Kavanaugh’s nomination defeated.  But is that really enough, by itself, to get her to come forward with this kind of accusation?

Gee, I don’t know.  If only we had a precedent of some sort.  You know, like some other obscure female leftist academic who showed up at the last minute with wild accusations to try to stop some other conservative SC nominee.  But since that has never happened before, I guess we’ll never know—

Oh wait.  Anita Hill did that.  She did that same exact thing.

And you know why you didn’t just say to yourself, “Anita Hill?  Who’s that?  Is that just some obscure historical figure whom only Martin knows, because he is the kind of polymathic and very stable genius who knows things that we mere mortals have no chance of ever comprehending?”

You didn’t say that to yourself, because you know who Anita Hill is.  You may even know about the giant publicity tour and lucrative book deal she got after she smeared Clarence Thomas, and the lucrative and hagiographic biopic that HBO did about her, and her celebrity status on the left that has persisted even now, decades after she tried to do an 11^th hour hatchet job on Thomas.

So, what does Blasey-Ford possibly have to gain from coming forward to attack Kavanaugh now?  I mean, other than national attention, fawning media coverage, political satisfaction and the promise of lots of money and awards and praise that will be predictably showered on her for years to come?

Ugh.  Obviously, I’m not being entirely successful in my attempt not to think badly of the accuser.

But I’ll tell you one thing that I AM being entirely successful at: learning new reasons to absolutely despise the dishonest, hypocritical, sleazy ways that top Democrats and media figures are acting in this last, desperate attempt to subvert the law through character assassination.

They pretend they care about men abusing women, when they’ve been sheltering and covering for sexually abusive leftist men for their whole lives.

They claim with a straight face that we should always believe the woman in these cases.  Hillary Clinton even said that.

Hillary Clinton!  And God inexplicably did not strike her with a lightning bolt on the spot.  So… c’mon, God.  You’re dropping the ball here.

Some hateful sexist Asian-American Senator named Hirono blamed all men for the alleged teenage groping incident, saying that they should – and I quote – “Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing — for a change.”

Stereotype much, you female chauvinist jerk?

Dianne Feinstein has been even worse, if that’s possible.  She first heard Ford’s story in July, and she intentionally sat on it, not bringing it up in private meetings with Kavanaugh, or in the televised confirmation hearings.

Which brings me to perhaps the worst of the Democrats’ transparently bad faith arguments: that the FBI must investigate the Ford story before they can even think of voting on Kavanaugh’s nomination.

How would that possibly work?!  Can you imagine the position the FBI would be in if Christine Blasey-Ford sat down for an interview with them?

FBI Agent 1 (opening his notebook): Okay, we understand you want to report a crime?

Ford: Yes.  I was groped.

Agent 2: Let’s start with location: where did this happen?

Ford: I’m not sure.  In someone’s house.

Agent 2 (looking at Agent 1): “Someone’s house?”  Do you have an address?

Ford:   No.

Agent 2: A street?

Ford:  No.  There was at least one bedroom upstairs, I know that.

Agent 1: Okay, we’ll come back to that.  Let’s start with when it happened.

Ford:  It was… (looking up, in thought) 36…

Agent 1: Okay, that’s good.   You know that show “The First 48?”  The title refers to the fact that the odds of solving a crime drop a lot after the first 48 hours have passed.  But if this happened 36 hours ago, we should be able to gather a lot of evidence.

Ford: Years.

Agent 1: What?

Ford:  Not 36 hours.  36 years.

Agent 2: YEARS?!  This happened 36 years ago?

Ford: Or it might have been 35 years.  Or 37 years.  I think it was 1982.

Agent 2 (looking at Agent 1): I wasn’t born then.

Agent 1: Okay.  Do you have a date?

Ford: I know it was in the summer.

Agent 2: That’s a season, not a date.

Ford: What’s your point?

Agent 1: Can we see the original police report?  That will have the date on it.

Ford: I didn’t file a police report.

Agent 1: You didn’t file a report?  Okay.  Can you put us in touch with witnesses who saw the attack?

Ford: There were no witnesses.

Agent 1: Okay, then can you give us contact information for the people you told about it?  We can question them, and that will help us firm up some of the details like location and date.

Ford: I didn’t tell anyone about it for 30 years.

Agent 1: Can you tell us anything about the perp’s record?  How many times was he convicted, and can you put us in touch with the other victims?  Is he serving time right now?

Ford: As far as I know, he never did this to anyone else.

Agent 2 (clearing his throat): If you don’t mind my asking, why are you reporting this now?

Ford: He’s about to be put on the Supreme Court, and his politics offend me. (Agent 1 sighs and closes his notebook.)  So you’re not going to investigate?!  I bet if I were a man, you’d investigate!

Agent 2:  Let’s recap.  You’re here to report a crime for the first time.  It happened sometime between 35 and 37 years ago, sometime between Memorial Day and Labor Day, in a two-story house with at least one upstairs bedroom, somewhere in North America.  There’s no physical evidence, there are no witnesses, and you were both drinking.  You never told anyone about it for 30 years, and you never brought it up in public until 10 minutes ago.  The accused has never done anything like this before or since, there is nothing he could say or do to exonerate himself now, and you hate his politics.

Ford:  Yes, and I demand an investigation before I answer any other questions about this.

Both agents: Get out of our office.

And, scene.

I don’t care what your politics are – the blatant, partisan sleaziness of this scheme should be obvious to everyone, and if there’s any justice, it will blow up in the slimy Dems’ faces.   And if you were planning to sit out the November election because of Trump’s occasional childishness or the establishment GOP’s fecklessness, you’ve got to re-think that.

First, I learned that Corey Booker is a ridiculous, narcissistic man-child who should never be within 1000 miles of the White House.

His dumbness was not revealed primarily by his coming up with his idiotic stunt of “bravely” revealing classified information in the most hackneyed, transparently publicity-seeking way.  (Although that alone would pretty much guarantee him a spot in the playoffs, if hack politicians formed a league to compete to try to out-dumb each other.)

No, his dumbness only reached full flower when some smart guys in the GOP pre-emptively de-classified the info he was going to reveal the night before he was set to take his star turn as brave secret-revealer… and he STILL WENT THROUGH WITH IT!  He got up there like a dope — knowing that the secret info he was going to dramatically release was no longer secret, and had already been released – and he read the same dopey, self-dramatizing script anyway.

And the stupidity chocolate sauce on his bonehead sundae was the fact that he set up the secret info dump by ominously saying that it would reveal Brett Kavanaugh’s position on the police’s use of ethnic profiling.  (Otherwise known by competent police everywhere as, “Not wasting your time frisking octogenarian Amish people when you are looking to bust a meth ring run by 20-something Aryan Brotherhood members with swastika tattoos on their necks.”)

And it turns out that Brett Kavanaugh’s scary, scary take on ethnic profiling was that – pause for spooky organ sting – he’s against it.  Cue the sad trombones, as kooky Corey’s political ambitions slowly deflate.

Plus, he called himself Spartacus.  Everyone knows that the first rule of being Spartacus is that you don’t dramatically call yourself Spartacus.  Especially considering that Spartacus is not known for that time when he tried to pompously reveal state secrets in front of the Roman Senate, only to have the Senators laugh at him because the state secrets had already been revealed, and he had to leave the Forum with his toga tucked between his legs.

Another thing I learned is that Kamala Harris is an empty suit who almost managed to look like a statesman, if only because she was sitting next to Corey.  She is allegedly an attorney, and allegedly at least semi-smart, but neither of those qualities was on display at the hearings.  She asked a dramatic series of questions about whether Kavanaugh had ever spoken to any attorney from a giant law firm in DC about the Mueller investigation.  Kavanaugh looked confused, mentioned that hundreds of attorneys work there, asked if she was thinking of some specific incident, and then said that he didn’t remember any such conversation specifically.

And she did nothing.  She didn’t dramatically leap up and say, “Ah HA!  Bailiff, bring in the star witness, who will testify that Mr. Kavanaugh did in fact talk with a principle partner in that law firm, and that he made video and audio recordings of that conversation, which will reveal that Mr. Kavanaugh is a Tea Partier, and a Mason, and quite possibly a pedophile serial murderer!”

Nope.  She just said something like, “Huh.”  Asked later about whether she believes that he did have some incriminating conversation, one of her (almost certainly embarrassed) aides said, “We have reason to believe that a conversation happened, and are continuing to pursue it.”

Wow.  Nice going, Nancy Drew.  You’ve practically cracked the case of The Vague, Inconsequential Hypothetical Conversation that Might Possibly Have Taken Place.

But at least she didn’t call herself Spartacus-ina, Spartacus’ lesser known little sister.  So she’s got that going for her.

But I don’t want to suggest it was only Booker and Harris beclowning themselves.  It was also the other Dems on the committee.  Dick “no one ever calls him Richard” Durbin and Richard “everyone secretly calls him Dick” Blumenthal also asked 15-minute “questions” that weren’t honest inquiries, but tendentious, misleading set-ups for passive-aggressive insults.  All of which Kavanaugh dispatched without breaking a sweat.

Even Lizzie Warren tried to entrap Kavanaugh into a discussion of obscure treaties that created Indian reservations in the 19^th century.  “My people deserve a response,” the pasty-faced professor said.

“Your people?” Kavanaugh asked slyly.  “You mean the northeastern tribe of Caucasian Academics?”

(Okay, I made that last part up.  Because a day may come, when the courage of we Men of the West falters, and our ability to continue a streak of uninterrupted columns with a Lizzie Warren #wemustneverstopmockingher joke finally fails us.  But IT IS NOT THIS DAY!) (If you don’t get that reference, Google “Aragorn at the Black Gate speech,” and thank me later.)

But I also don’t want to suggest that it was only the elected Democrats in the room who looked like total jerks.  It was also the Democrats in the audience.

So now we also know that Democrats should not be allowed in to Supreme Court hearings unless they are vigorously vetted to be sure that they’re not the kind of immature jackasses who will scream and chant and do their best to disrupt the proceedings.  After about the tenth idiot jumped up and started hollering, I began to get the idea that they may not actually have any substantive arguments to make.  (I know: call me Sherlock and congratulate me for cracking the case of the “Wailing Jackasses of Pennsylvania Avenue.”  My favorite part is when the Dem senators all get into a big wooden barrel and go over the Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty, never to be heard from again.)

I mean, has any human, in any time or any place, ever uttered the words, “You know, on second thought, that hateful crone shrieks a good point?  I may have to re-think my stance on constitutional originalism?”  (Spoiler alert: they have not.)

Coincidentally, I also learned that the police at judicial hearings go way too heavily on the, “Come now, please let me escort you out in a civilized manner,” and way too lightly on the, “Let’s see what happens when I fire this taser probe into your crotch and we send a little Edison-juice down the wire.”

Not that I’d be a stickler.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Taser.  It could be some bear mace, or a pepper ball, or a good facial squirting with the urine from a pregnant deer.

Wait.  That last one might be for hunting.  Either way, I’d be open to squirting a few of the ill-mannered louts with the female deer urine, then releasing a 10-point rutting buck into the room, and letting nature take its course.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Thoughtful leftist discourse.

There ain’t any.  There’s just tantrums and insults and black-belt-level whining.

But it didn’t work, and Kavanaugh’s going to the Supreme Court.  So stick it, Linda Sarsour and your hordes of yammering fascist weirdos.

The last lesson I learned from the Kavanaugh hearings is that sweet, sweet schadenfreude never gets old.  Because as I watched MSM commentators venting their frustration that Kavanaugh wouldn’t directly answer questions about how he’d rule on abortion or a dozen other hot button issues, I couldn’t help but think back to days of yore.

And as you know, “days of yore” traditionally refers to the early summer of 1987, when a bristly originalist genius named Robert Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan (peace be upon him).

Before then, the tradition had been that the opposing party would only vote against judicial nominees in the rare instance when a serious case could be made that a judge was incompetent or unqualified.  Political ideology alone was not seen as a justification for voting against a nominee.  Presidents nominated judges who lined up with their judicial philosophy, hearings determined whether the nominee had any serious flaws, and they were then voted on.

Bork was obviously extremely qualified, but the Democrats of that day – led by the Senior Inebriated Dirigible and Aquatic Homicide Aficianado™ Ted Kennedy – broke with that precedent, and viciously and dishonestly smeared Bork because of his ideology.   He answered their questions honestly, and they twisted and lied about his answers, and they killed his nomination.  Since then, all Supreme Court nominations have turned into partisan political battles, won on party-line votes.

Savvy nominees learned from Bork – and from the rule stated by Ruth Bader Ginsburg – to meet dishonesty with guile.  If the senators from the opposing party are going to pepper them with biased, specious questions that they pretend are genuine, the nominees will respond with bland, content-less boilerplate about precedent and stare decisis and nolo contendre and carpe diem and other Latin phrases that I don’t understand.

So it was sweet to watch the frustrated hacks at CNN and MSNBC whining that Kavanaugh wouldn’t answer any questions in ways that would allow them to torpedo his nomination.

But it was even sweeter to reflect, yet again, that we owe a great debt to the holder of the highest Simpson Face Punchability Index™ of all time: Harry Reid.  The blessedly EX-Senator – arrogantly, and against the warnings of everyone’s favorite Chinless Cartoon Turtle Mitch McConnell – triggered the “nuclear” option that reduced the number of yes votes necessary to confirm a judge from 60 to 50.

So today, we have Neil Gorsuch on the court, and we will soon have “you say Kavanaugh but I say Kava-YES!” on the court right beside him.  Neither of them received 60 votes, but both of them are going to be on the court, thanks to Harry Cassidy and the Chappaquiddick Kid.

Thanks, guys!

 

With the Mueller probe entering its second millenia, I’ve been thinking a lot about Russia lately.  Inexplicably, though, no one has been clamoring to hear what I think about Russia.

“Hey Martin,” people who don’t stop me on the street never say, “We’ve been wondering what you think about all of this Russia business.”  And then a small crowd never gathers, leaning close in a hushed silence, like in those old E.F. Hutton commercials, straining to hear my words of wisdom.

So I’ve been keeping my thoughts about Russia to myself.  But then I thought, “Hey, I haven’t written a CO column in a full week, and I’m sure that the entire CO nation has been losing sleep because they don’t know what I’ve been thinking about Russia.”

So, here you are, and you’re welcome in advance.

First, I have to admit that I’m no expert on Russia.  In fact, I could list just about everything I know about Russia pretty quickly.

I don’t like Russian dressing, and I would not care to play Russian roulette.   I hear the weather is not great there, and Siberia sounds unpleasant.  I also don’t care for the empty headed Russian pol Elizabeth Warrenov, who pretended to be a Manchurian just to get an affirmative-action university job and parlay that into a political career, even though she has obviously never been east of the Urals.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher.)  Also, Russia was once ruled by a guy called Ivan the Terrible, which suggests that they have not mastered PR.

I picture three Russians sitting in a tavern shortly before the election:

Russian 1:  I’m leaning toward Fyodor the Concerned this time around.  How about you?

Russian 2:  I’m partial to Boris the Prudent.  He’s for the children, you know.

Russian 1 (to Russian 3): Hey, we haven’t heard much from you since the primaries.  Who are you voting for?

Russian 3 (mumbling): Ivan.

Russians 1 & 2 (shocked): the Terrible?  Ivan the Terrible is your choice?!

Russian 3 (outraged): That “terrible” stuff is wildly exaggerated.  The media hates him!

Russian 2: I’m sure he wouldn’t be called “the Terrible” for no reason.

Russian 3: Oh yeah?  They did the same thing to Vlad the Impaler.  He was always just plain “Vlad,” until some polls showed him ahead in a few swing states.  Then some thinly sourced story comes out that he impaled one guy, years ago, in college.  And all of a sudden, he’s “Vlad the Impaler!”  It’s fake news!

(And, scene.)

 

On the other hand, From Russia With Love was a solid Bond film, and Back in the USSR was a fair to middlin’ Beatles song.  While I’m not fond of Molotov’s cocktail (HA!), a White Russian is pretty tasty.     Tolstoy and Dostoevsky could write a little bit, and Tchaikovsky had a way with a tune.  And one of their leaders was Peter the Great; I’m not super familiar with his work, but with a name like that, he must have been pretty cool.  (In a 50-state contest of “the Great” vs. “the Terrible,” I’m thinking Peter would have won in a Reaganesque landslide.  Sure, CA, IL and NY would go for Ivan, but only because they’ve been voting for terrible candidates for decades, and at this point it’s basically muscle memory for them.)

But one thing that I do know about Russia is that for the last 101 years – since their first-ever communist revolution – the Democratic Left has been in love – I mean head-over-heels, Bonnie-and-Clyde, Joanie-loves-Chachi IN LOVE — with Russia.   The affair started right after the revolution, and has survived every disastrous failing and famine and pogrom and Five-Year Plan for over a century now.

Consider just a few examples:

In 1919 American journalist/socialist John Reed wrote the first in a long line of romanticized accounts of the great and noble commie experiment in “Rescuing Humanity from the Evils of Free Markets, Prosperity and Respect for Individual Rights.”

That’s my title for his work.  He actually called it Ten Days that Shook the World.  In case you are wondering what kind of book a lefty American journalist would write about a bunch of leftists taking total control of a nation, I can sum that up by noting that the book received a rave review from Lenin.

Not the 1960s leftist with some musical talent but horrible taste in Japanese women; the early 20^th century leftist who kicked off an impressive slaughter, and whose corpse is currently lying embalmed in Red Square.  If you ever visit, it’s the dessicated husk under glass that still manages to look more lifelike than Bernie Sanders.

If you are really a glutton for punishment, you can watch the Warren Beatty biopic/hagiography of Reed, called Reds (1981).  With a running time slightly longer than the revolution itself, it is a film so sluggish that only a leftist hack could love it.  So naturally, it was nominated for a slew of Academy Awards, and Beatty won for Best Director.  If you’d like to catch it on cable, try the Watching Paint Dry network.

For another prominent lefty journalist’s take, I can cite Lincoln Steffens, who after a 3-week visit to the USSR in 1919, returned to promote the Russian communist miracle, famously stating that, “I have seen the future, and it works.”

Which is something like saying, “I have seen Bill Clinton, and he really respects women,” or “I have seen Ted Kennedy, and he’s sober as a judge,” or “I have seen Trump, and he’s a shy, unassuming fellow.”

Flash forward to the early 1930s, and the Russian progressive experiment is going swimmingly.  Stalin had appointed (I can only guess) the great-grandmother of Crazy Eyes Chavez-Guevara-Castro as Minister of Farming & Food Supply.  So naturally, the fertile farmlands of the USSR were now producing a bumper crop of dust and tumbleweeds and sorrow, and the bodies of millions of dead and dying peasants were piling up like cordwood.

Into this agricultural Mordor came intrepid NY Times journalist Walter Duranty, who apparently inserted his cranium into his rectum (a move later immortalized as “the Krugman Maneuver”) as soon as he got to the Russian border.  He then travelled around Russia not noticing a horrific famine, and wrote a series of articles so delusional and detached from reality that their fantasy quotient was not topped for nearly a century, until Barack Obama created a healthcare system.  His basic thesis was, “Everything is great, this communism thing is really the cat’s pajamas (because that’s how they talked in the 30s), and reports of a famine here are wildly exaggerated.”

It was the kind of Mount Rushmore of b.s. that only leftist hack journalists could love.  So naturally, Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for his “reporting.”  You would think that the Times and the Pulitzer committee today would be ashamed about all of this.

Or I should say, you might think that.  I mean, if you haven’t been paying attention to the leftist MSM for the last half-century or so.  Because no – when the Times received some pressure starting in the 1980s to renounce Duranty’s Pulitzer, both the Times and the Pulitzer committee carefully evaluated the situation, and then decided to do nothing.  And the Pulitzer still stands.

Okay, this is getting tedious. So let’s just do a swift re-cap of the last 80 years or so:

1940s – Many American leftist thought leaders display a strange new respect for Hitler, after the dreamy Russians make peace with the Nazis by way of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  They only become anti-Nazi again after Hitler betrays their beloved Stalin.

1950s — The lefty “it” couple the Rosenbergs steal American nuclear secrets and give them to their first true love, the Russians.  (That was back in the good old days, when we sent traitors like them to the electric chair, instead of trading 5 captured jihadi leaders for them and then giving them a welcome home ceremony in the Rose Garden.)(Thanks, Obama.)

1960s & 70s – Academic lefties spend two decades arguing moral equivalence (the USA and USSR are both evil superpowers, even though the USSR isn’t quite so bad), and cheerleading for every Russian-sponsored proxy war from Vietnam to Cuba to the liberal arts departments at every major US university.

1980s – Ted Kennedy colludes with high-ranking Russian and KGB officials to counter what he thought were the aggressive militaristic policies of Reagan, and hopefully to hurt Reagan’s chances of winning re-election.  (I am not making that up – Google it, and behold what real collusion looks like.) Sting releases the sappy song “If the Russians Love their Children Too.”  (His first version of the song, “If the Mass-murdering Communist Politburo Members Love Russian Children Too” just didn’t have that ring to it.) Plus Bernie Sanders honeymoons in Russia, which I understand is absolutely beautiful at no time of the year.

2012 – Barack the Truly Terrible gets caught asking Putin’s puppet president to relay to Vladimir that he (Obama) will have more flexibility to decrease US military presence on Russia’s western borders with Europe once he gets re-elected.  (Again – THIS is what collusion looks like.) Later in the same year, Obama mocks Mitt Romney’s assertion that Russia is a huge foreign policy threat to the US, saying, “The 1980s called, and they want their foreign policy back.”

2016 – Hillary Clinton and the DNC fund a sleazy oppo research report on Trump that involves a Brit working with Russians to come up with all kinds of slanderous gossip to hurt his campaign.

And after all of that – after a century of deriding anybody who suggested that Russian communism might be a threat, and doing their best to undermine US opposition to Russia during the Cold War and after – the Dems and their lefty enablers in the MSM turn on a dime when it looks like the fantasy of Russian collusion is a cudgel they can use against Trump.

 

They pretend to suddenly be shocked and offended by Russian bad actors, and their malign influence in our politics.  And they spend many months and millions of dollars on an investigation that even they are now grudgingly having to admit was based on a sleazy, fallacious report cooked up by Democrat politicians who were – ironically enough — colluding with Russians, among others.

I don’t think the MSM and lefty elites know how ridiculous all of this looks to most Americans.   But after a century of mocking the idea that anything could possibly be wrong with Russian influence in the world, the leftist blowhards in politics and the media look pretty foolish trying to gin up a new Red Scare.

They may win Academy Awards and Pulitzer prizes when they stay true to themselves and embrace Russian commies, but I can only hope that their recent, amateurish attempts to pose as Red Hunters are unlikely to win them anything in the electoral college.

August has been ridiculously busy at chez Simpson, so I’ve been exhibiting less than my usual laser focus on the news.  I am digesting all of the latest Trump news, content to let CO and those more informed than me hash out the nuances.

In the meantime, I’ve been taking a few notes on what I have seen happening on the left over the last three weeks or so, and it has struck me as passing strange, even by the manifestly high strangeness ratings typically associated with the left.

Consider this:  within 24 hours a couple of weeks ago, I learned that Peter “the Z is silent” Stroke got fired (again: best porn name ever.  For an FBI agent?  Not so much.)  and John Brennan lost his security clearance.  And like you, I was shocked!

Shocked because I don’t believe that this hadn’t happened a year ago.

For the love of God, what do you have to do to get fired at the FBI?  Stroke was outed over a year ago as a biased, unethical hack.   He let his own partisan prejudices drive his actions at work, and taint several high profile investigations. He cheated with a co-worker, and left an email trail that proved that they were both scheming dunces.

And when he was called before a congressional committee, he displayed a combination of Comey-ian self-righteous cluelessness and Dan Rather-esque oily abrasiveness.  His two expressions were “smirking jerk” and “sneering comic book villain.”

Plus, his mistress is unattractive.  I cannot stress that enough.  It’s axiomatic that if you are going to risk your marriage and career to engage in an affair, she must at least be hot.  Maybe not Nikki Haley or 1983 Nena hot, but at least Crazy-eyes Castro-Guevara-Chavez hot.  Otherwise, after your wife kicks you out and you end up at 3:00 a.m., lying on the paper-thin mattress in your musty, next-to-the-airport apartment with the wheezily ineffective window air conditioner, you’ll have to stare at the ceiling and think about the horse-faced goon for whom you gave it all up.

And you’ll not be comforted, and you’ll realize that you are indeed too stupid to deserve a security clearance.

Speaking of security clearances, how in the world did John Brennan still have one?

Leave aside the fact that he’s spent the last year on MSNBC or CNN — or whatever left-slanted hack-fest that is just like MSNBC and CNN – spewing the most unhinged, reckless conspiracy theories and charges at the current administration.

Why wouldn’t he routinely – as a matter of course, and even if he wasn’t crazy “Heeerrre’s Johnny!” Brennan – be expected to give up his security clearance when he left government service, and therefore no longer had any legitimate reason to access classified information?

I honestly thought that people departing government jobs would of course routinely give up their security clearances.

When I finished my summer job of weeding soybean fields for a local farmer when I was 13, I had to turn in my bean hook.

When I finished my high school summer job of making milkshakes at the Laesch Dairy Barn in Illinois, I had to turn in my store keys.

As I understand it, when someone leaves the Hell’s Angels, he has to turn in his cool motorcycle jacket with the club patches all over it.

But you can be asked to leave the CIA and still keep your security clearance?  Just so that you can keep dipping into our nation’s secrets, in case you can pick up something juicy to leak to your fellow creeps on cable news shows?

Think about that.  Bill Cosby doesn’t still have access to roofies and women, and Bill Clinton doesn’t still have access to interns, and Kevin Spacey doesn’t still have access to boys, and Harvey Weinstein doesn’t still have access to would-be actresses.

But until earlier this month, Peter Stroke still worked at the FBI, and John Brennan still had a security clearance.  Ugh.

 

Speaking of Crazy-Eyes Castro-Guevera-Chavez, did you hear what happened when Ben Shapiro offered her a chance to come on to his podcast and debate any of the core issues of her socialist worldview with him?  He even offered $10K to her campaign or the charity of her choice to make that happen.

To be fair to Crazy Eyes, the offer was a bit of a gimmick, and there would have been no upside for her to accept.  She’s guaranteed to win in November in her far-left district, where her constituents wouldn’t recognize a reasonable economic argument if it hit them in the face like a big old hammer and sickle.  And she would have been guaranteed to lose a debate with Ben Shapiro, which would have looked like a boxing match between Mike Tyson at the height of his powers and Bradley Manning at the mid-point of his transformation into Chelsea.

So I don’t blame the Latina lunkhead for spurning the offer.  But I do blame her for the lame, victim-card playing way she turned it down.  She said, and I quote, ““Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions. And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one.“

That’s a lot of bad faith crammed into just two sentences.  And a lot of stupid, too.

She’s a politician running to propose and defend her political ideas, so to characterize an offer to do so as “bad intentions” is more than a stretch.   Her analogy also suggests that she’s never been catcalled by a human male before.

Quick quiz:  Which of the following have never, ever EVER been used as catcalling statements before:

1. “Hey baby, those are some sweet ideological principles you’ve got there.  Care to debate them in a format of your choosing in a well-lit and controlled environment?
2. “Miss, while I enjoy the way you are strutting down this street, I think you would look even more attractive strutting your way across a debate stage!”
3. “You’re pretty good at proposals, but you’d really put the “butt” in “rebuttal!”
4. “Please come and debate me, Mrs. Warren. I really have a thing for exotic Indian women!” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
5. All of the above.

I for one am glad that Crazy Eyes will apparently be on the political stage for the foreseeable future.  No matter how lame Republicans get, and how many shenanigans the media can find and exaggerate about Trump, it seems like the Left has an endless supply of knuckleheads to beclown themselves, and repel mainstream voters.

For example, did you catch NY Governor Andrew Cuomo – the sharpest knife in a drawer full of very dull, rusty hammers and an old horseshoe – respond to Trump’s desire to Make America Great Again by dismissively saying that, “America was never that great.”

This is not something he got caught saying on a hot mike, or whispering to some America-hating far-left woman he was trying to trick into bed, or drunkenly mumbling into his vodka tonic during the Cankles McPantsuit victory party after it turned into a wake.

He said this during a speech, into a microphone.  With people present, and functioning lighting.  And cameras turned on and pointed right at him!

And he’s not some homeless crank in a beret and a Che t-shirt, running for school board in San Francisco on a platform of “Free acid and sex changes for all!”   He’s the Governor of New York state, which I’m pretty sure is actually in America.

This was a gaffe so breathtakingly stupid that it boggles the mind.  Not because there aren’t a lot of lefties who don’t like their own country – duh! – but because it’s such a basic point that it should go without saying: DON’T SAY THAT OUT LOUD!

It’s politics 101.  Can you imagine anyone in any other state or country saying that?

Ever heard of a Greek politician saying, “The Greeks are a great and proud people, so it’s too bad that Greece sucks so much!”

Ever heard of a French politician saying, “The only thing wrong with France is that it’s lousy with French people!”

Ever heard a New Jersey pol say, “People are always asking me what is so great about New Jersey, and you know what I do?  I just shrug, and say, “You got me there, pal.”

Ever heard an Israeli pol say, “The state of Israel?  Feh!”

You have not.  But the Dem governor of one of the largest American states, apparently without any alarm bells going off in his big, empty head, said it.  Can you imagine what his internal monologue must be, if THIS was the part that he felt comfortable saying?

I can only guess that it’s something like this:

“My fellow New Yorkers, You disgust me.  I hate this state, and this country, along with mom, apple pie and baseball.  I don’t care for any of our allies, and I think criminal illegal aliens should be treated better than American citizens.  In conclusion, I believe that children are NOT our future, working class people are ill-educated louts, and I think Hitler got a bad rap. Good night, and see you in hell.”

Finally, a story so sad that even I cannot joke about it too much.

Jay Austin and his girlfriend Lauren Geoghegan were in their late 20s when they decided to go on a romantic-sounding adventure, spending over a year riding bicycles through much of the world.  They went through parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, before they chose earlier this month to include Tajikistan on their itinerary.

Quick tip: don’t go to any country with “stan” in its name if you can help it.  If you can’t, you probably want to be accompanied by some special forces guys and carry a belt-fed weapon.  I know it sounds harsh, but there hasn’t been a good Stan since Laurel and Musial.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, beautiful Tajikistan in the summertime.

So yada yada yada, a carload of jihadi freaks run over the bicyclists and then stab them to death.

The story has an especially poignant tragic element because of a blog entry that Austin wrote earlier in the journey.  He said, “You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place.  People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.  I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.”

These words have launched 1000 snarky comments, half of them involving Darwin Awards.  And while I share some commentators’ impatience with the folly of these young adults, and I recognize the dark humor in such a macabre and predictable outcome, I’m not mad at them, and I think they deserve better.

We’ve all done impulsive, rashly stupid things when we were young and impressionable. We chased women who were bad for us, and ingested dangerous substances, and drove way too fast, and looked up to idiots, and spouted political theories that now make us want to never stop face-palming ourselves.

But most of us never died from it, by the grace of God.

I know that young people can be given to romantic and utopian ideas, and in a wildly successful Western nation they can be sheltered from the harsher realities of life more than ever before.   But something has gone badly wrong for anyone who can make it into their late 20s and still believe something as oblivious to the human condition as “evil is a made-up concept.”

Now excuse me while I prepare tomorrow’s lesson plan for my two daughters.  In the morning we’ll start with “Countries you cannot ride a bike through,” followed by readings from Dostoeyevsky, Conrad and Elmore Leonard.  In the afternoon, we’ll do some philosophy, starting with two old proverbs (one Russian, one Latin) that should appropriately raise the hair on one’s neck, re: human nature:  “The tears of strangers are only water” and “Homo homini lupus” (“Man is a wolf to man.”)

In the meantime, yes, I’ve got locks on both of their bikes.  Why do you ask?

 

A few months ago I wrote about an “extremes of humanity” example – a badass, eye-patch-wearing ex-Seal conservative running for office vs. a 30-something millennial dope suing his parents because they wanted to kick him out of their house because he’s a worthless drain on society.

Well here’s another one, this time on the subject of having a baby.

On one side of the ledger is the most American story of the year so far: the tale of Robert and Maggie Griffin and the birth of their third child.  The couple are conservatives, and Christians, and when Maggie suddenly found herself going into labor unexpectedly, they stopped at the first available building, which turned out to be a Chick Fil A restaurant.  While the place was technically closed at the time, some employees let the pregnant woman in to use the bathroom.

When she found that the baby was coming, the father asked for some towels, and he ended up delivering the baby right then and there.  (If by “delivering,” you mean “catching.”)  The American points in this story are off the charts: conservative parents (check), pro-life enough to be having their third child (check), Christians (check) giving birth in a famously conservative & Christian-owned restaurant (check).

Oh yeah.  And the garment the father used to initially clean his newborn off with, which I swear I am not making up?  A “Trump 2020” t-shirt he had been wearing.

Also, Chick Fil A has now offered that child free food for life, but quickly countered that potential move toward creating a freeloading socialist (although that wouldn’t be likely, in this family) by offering little Grace (yes, her name is “Grace” — check) a job when she turns 14.

As the father said in an interview with Michael Knowles, the only way this story could have been more American would have been if a bald eagle flew into the Chick Fil A bathroom and cut the umbilical cord with one of its mighty, patriotic talons.

 

Now let’s go to the left side of the spectrum, to that great example of compassionate socialized medicine, the British National Health Service.  You may remember them from such stories as, “Desperately Ill Patients Wait For Beds in Hospital Hallways for Days,” “Families Forced to Bring Linens & Basic Supplies for Hospitalized Loved Ones,” and “The British National Health Service is in Crisis: What Else is New?”

The NHS has always typified the typical maladies of socialized medicine: the well-oiled efficiency of the DMV, the courteous customer service of the TSA, the fiscal transparency of the Bernie Madoff organization, and the all-around fantastic performance of Venezuela (new national motto: “We were rich 20 years ago, and now we’re starving! Please don’t let Bernie Sanders try to help us anymore!”)

But lately the NHS has added a new wrinkle to the cavalcade of leftist miseries:  they seem to really want to preside over the deaths of babies.  I mean, they REALLY want to.   Like, they’ll spend tons of time and money, and fight the parents in court, and suffer inevitable PR nightmares, just to maintain the bullying control that will allow them to ensure that seriously ill infants in their care will “die with dignity” in the tender embrace of the State.   Rather than, for example, being allowed to go to other countries or clinics who are willing to try other treatments.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Sure, the internet agrees that Martin is a Hilarious Genius™, and if I need to know whether it is time to stop mocking fake Indian Lizzy Warren, he’s the guy I would go to to find out. (Spoiler alert: It is definitely not time.  #wemustneverstopmockingher)  But what does he know about medicine?  Surely he is exaggerating the flaws of the NHS.”

Au contraire, my skeptical friend.  (And don’t call me “Shirley.”)  I know it is hard to believe, but Google the cases of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, for two recent examples.  Both are tragic, and involve infants with devastating diagnoses of different sorts.  The parents in each case ended up begging for the chance to try alternative treatments, and ultimately for the chance to take their child to other countries or other institutions for those treatments.

Gard’s parents found a NY neurologist with an experimental treatment, but as his condition deteriorated, the NHS and the neurologist thought that he would no longer be a candidate for the treatment.  Here I quote a summary of the case: “Charlie’s parents still wanted to try the experimental treatment and raised funds for a transfer to a hospital in New York. In February 2017, [the NHS hospital] asked the High Court to override the parents’ decision, questioning the potential of nucleoside therapy to treat Charlie’s condition.”

Alfie Evans’ case got even more attention.  As his condition deteriorated, he was granted citizenship by Italy so that he could be flown – at no expensive to the generous socialists at the NHS, who are super-concerned that British taxpayers not be taken advantage of by greedy parents who selfishly want to try all treatments for their gravely ill children – there for treatment.  Even the pope himself appealed for Alfie’s release.  The NHS responded by saying, “F” the pope!”  (Not their exact words.  But that was the sentiment.)

The family lost every appeal.  By this time, Alfie had been on ventilators for a long time, and the NHS doctors confidently predicted that he could not live for more than a few hours without them.  After one more lost appeal, Alfie was taken off of the ventilator.  Then, as one report put it, “Contrary to all the expectations of the doctors, Alfie continued to breathe independently.”

He fought on for five days, before dying.

Now I am not arguing that the parents in either case were right, and that their children would have been cured — or even substantially helped – by the long-shot treatments they were seeking for them.  And no, it doesn’t prove anything that Alfie Evans lived for 5 days after the doctors said he would be lucky to make it for 5 hours without a breathing machine.  To paraphrase a famous thick-ankled philosopher, “So he died in 5 days instead of 5 hours.  What difference, at this point, does it make?”

On the other hand, consider the case of Ashya King, an 8-year-old with a brain tumor.  In August of 2014 he underwent successful surgery in an NHS hospital, and he was scheduled to undergo common courses of chemotherapy and radiation.  His parents had researched his condition, and wanted him to try some new and experimental proton therapy which the NHS doctors denied.

So his parents did what I think many parents would do – they said “F the NHS bureaucrats” (not their exact words) and took their child from the hospital without government permission. (The nerve!)  They took him to Spain, triggering a continent-wide manhunt that resulted in their arrest.  Because the British have solved all of their country’s problems – having made a speedy and efficient exit from the EU, and removed all jihadi mass stabbers and rape gangs, and mastered dentistry and fine dining – and so had the resources and time on their hands to make an international case of parents who had the gall to seek the best treatment they could find for their son.

The ensuing public outcry forced the Brits to release the parents from jail, and the NHS ended up paying for Aysha to get the proton treatment in a Czech hospital.

I know what you’re thinking, as you hear the pounding of non-presidential hooves in the distance.  “So he died in a few months instead of a few weeks.  What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Not so fast, Canklesaurus.  Aysha is still alive today, four years later, and his brain cancer is gone.

But do not worry that the NHS has repented, and apologized, and embraced his family in the spirit of good will like you might have seen at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Nope.   They are big government leftists, and they know better than we do how we should care for our children.  And if we ignore their advice and remove a kid from their control, and that kid survives and even thrives, they are not pleased.

Though Aysha King’s cancer is gone, he still needs some physical and speech therapy, and ongoing monitoring of his condition.  The NHS has consistently denied him that, and his parents have been forced to repeatedly take him to Spain for his ongoing tests and check-ups.

From these examples, I draw two morals:

1.If you ever find yourself in a position where your politics make you fight the parents of a sick child for the right to keep their child under your control, so that he will die in the way that you think he should, you really should consider changing your politics.

2. I would rather deliver my own child in a Chick Fil A bathroom and swaddle her goopy, newborn body in a sweaty Trump t-shirt than trust her to the tender mercies of a bureaucratic socialized medical system.

One final personal note: my oldest daughter is going to turn 21 in two months.  Twenty years and 10 months ago, she was born with Hirschsprung’s Syndrome, which involves nerves in the colon not fully developing in utero.  Until several decades ago, this condition was usually fatal within the first few years of life.

But because dedicated doctors working in a free market system – and with the advanced technology and techniques developed in that kind of system – are now able to diagnose and treat that condition, the disease often results in life-long complications, but the death rate from it is much lower.

When she was three days old, a great surgeon did a partial colostomy on her, and two first-time parents — who a week earlier had been worrying whether they’d be able to do the simplest things that new parents have to do — found ourselves learning to clean a stoma and trim and apply colostomy bags to a newborn.

Three months later, she had grown enough that the surgeon was able to do a “pull-through” surgery to return the remainder of her colon to its regular position.  She was still hospitalized with five serious infections during her first five years of life, but when my wife read about some positive early trials in Finland using liquid antihistamines to treat related bowel conditions (did I mention I married a world-class wife?), she brought that article to our surgeon’s attention.

Because he is not a bureaucratic drone in an arrogant, sclerotic socialized medical system, he researched the Finnish trials, and said, “Why not? Let’s try it.”

That was 16 years ago, and my daughter has not had a serious infection since.

Also, our surgeon did not require any facial reconstruction surgeries, or a procedure to remove my foot from his rectum, which is what would have happened if he had told me that the US NHS would not allow my daughter to get that treatment because my governmental betters did not approve.

So, win-win, and God bless us, everyone!

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Go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com to see my past columns, as well as a picture of a young Katie Simpson, aged 5, blissfully happy that she has conquered Hirschsprung’s, and about to embark on a lifetime of turning into a beautiful, intelligent young woman, and then – though this part is still in the future -delivering between 4 and 6 grandchildren to my wife and me.