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During the transition process of moving into a new house – mission accomplished, as of Friday! — I’ve been somewhat out of the loop.  We were without the internet for two weeks, which is both blessing and curse.  On the one hand, being temporarily disconnected from social media felt great.   My blood pressure is lower, I’m sleeping better, and I’ve even had several conversations with my wife and children – I apparently have two beautiful daughters, who have been sneakily turning into top quality young adults.

On the other hand, I haven’t been able to keep in touch with CO or the CO Nation, and that’s too high a price to pay, obviously.

So after just watching a bit of tv news, I’ve finally had a chance to catch up on several stories.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

1.Hostage stories are fun.  Remember when the Left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) praised Obama to the skies when he got that one mostly dead kid back from North Korea?  And then the kid died right away, but Obama was just the best?  And remember when Obama marshalled all of his canny, big-brained horse-trading skills and went into negotiations with the Taliban, and all he had to do was give up five high-ranking Taliban POWs – which seems like a lot, until you consider that what we got in exchange was a creepy little defector whom we probably should have tried and hung for treason.  But instead Obama invited him and his weird-beard dad to a press conference in Mecca, where daddy took advantage of the occasion to praise Allah.

Correction:  that press conference was actually in the Rose Garden.  It only seemed like Mecca, what with all of the Allahu-akbar-ing going on.

I remember all of that, which was why it made perfect sense when the MSM all started shrieking in outrage when bumbling Trump tried his hand at negotiating for hostages.   All he got was three NK hostages returned, but all three of them were deathly ill with rickets, or scurvy, or housemaid’s knee, or a condition endemic to North Korean prisons called “spontaneous orbital bone fractures.”  And to achieve this paltry result, Trump was forced to give up five high-ranking NK terrorists.

HA!  I kid.   All three hostages were not dead, or near dead.  In fact, they were as healthy as little North Korean miniature horses, which for my money are the cutest of all of the miniature horses.  (And please don’t tell me that they are just regular-sized horses who have never grown any larger because they’ve been starving since 1953.) Plus, when they spoke to the media, none of them blurted out anything about infidels or death to America or how much they despise baseball or apple pie.  And Trump did not give up any Nork bad guys, or any pallets of cash, or anything at all, as far as we know.

So naturally, the MSM are incensed at how badly Trump botched the whole deal.

2. Also, they are really, really mad about Trump’s latest despicable insult to immigrants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.  But if you think that the MSM is mad at Trump about his freeing non-dying hostages from captivity in North Korea, or about his hurting the feelings of foreign tattooed homicidal freaks, you should hear how they caterwauled at his unconscionable decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to – you’re not going to believe this — the capital of Israel!

This story might be the single best indication of how dishonest, morally bankrupt and out of touch with reality the Left has become.   I mean, think of all the ridiculous lies you have to believe to buy into the Left’s coverage of the embassy:

A.  Jerusalem has no connection to Jews, and is not in any way the capital of Israel.  (For rebuttal, I’d like to call the jury’s attention to exhibits A- Z: every book of the Old Testament after the first 5, plus the fact that Jerusalem is also known as “the City of David.”  If you look him up, you’ll find that the David referred to there is not Letterman, or Bowie, or Cassidy, but “as in ‘vs. Goliath.”  Plus, guess which language the word “Jerusalem” comes from?  And before you guess Swahili, Old Norse, Persian, or Arabic, I’m going to suggest that you use your “phone a friend” option.)

B. Palestinian terrorists rushing the wall/fence were nonviolent “protestors.” You know, like the folks marching with Dr. King. Except instead of “We Shall Overcome,” these protestors were singing whatever is Arabic for “Allah Allah Uber Alles.” And you remember how you used to hear about Dr. King’s followers bringing sling shots, and setting tires on fire, and flying Molotov cocktail kites with swastikas on them, designed to try to set fires in the fields around Selma and Birmingham and other Democrat-controlled cities?  Me neither.

C.  Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is an outrage. Even though Obama, Bush and Clinton all promised to do that, the MSM never criticized any of them because of that. Mostly because they knew that Clinton was no more likely to keep that promise than to keep his wedding vows, and that Obama was less likely to move the embassy than he was to provide shovel-ready jobs or let you keep your doctor.  What does it tell you when the most effective leftist response to the charge that their guys promised to do what Trump just did is to say, “Yeah, but everybody knew that they were lying!”  Touche, Saul Alinsky!

D.  Israel is the main problem in the middle east. Not murderous jihadi regimes who control much of the region.  Not the kleptocratic autocracies who control the rest.   Not the near universal oppression and violence against women and gays and religious minorities that reign in every middle eastern country except Israel.  Nope, the big problem is Israel, where gays can go for weeks at a time without being stoned or thrown off of roofs, and women can drive, and religious minorities are elected to the government rather than murdered or driven out of the country.  And where funds intended for infrastructure and the welfare of the citizens are spent on… infrastructure and the welfare of the citizens, rather than on buying weapons and paying terrorists and indoctrinating kids to grow up and become hateful, murderous adults.

Even though it’s been happening for decades, it’s really shocking to see how the Left continually sides with misogynistic, homophobic Islamic theocracies over the one pluralistic democracy in the Middle East.  Most battles in the world involve shades of gray —  the Apaches vs the Commanches (Lizzie Warren stayed on the sidelines for that one, with a big tear rolling down her face like someone just threw a McDonald’s bag into a protected wetland) (#neverstopmockingher), Spain vs. Portugal five centuries ago, Ohio State vs Michigan — but not this one.

In Israel, they fight defensively, and do their best to avoid civilian casualties.  For example, of the 62 Palestinians killed in the assault on the Israeli border last week, at least 53 were known terrorists.  So either the percentage of terrorists in the general Palestinian population is 85.48%  (did I mention that I kicked butt in Finite Math class?) – a ratio that is sadly not that far-fetched, if you read a few reports from MEMRI – or Israel was targeting violent terrorists who were attacking their border.  (Or, as CNN put it, “indiscriminately firing on protestors.”)

On the other hand, Hamas wrote “death to all Jews” into their charter.

So by all means, MSM, tells us how the Israelis are the aggressors, and Trump was foolish for keeping the promise that Clinton, Bush and Obama made before him.

Update: The Washington Times reports that a 23-year-old member of MS-13 just got sentenced to 40 years for murdering a 15 year old.  His given name is Joel Martinez, but his gang name – which I swear I am not making up – is “animal.”

HA!  Ana Navarro is so far unavailable for comment.

 

 

I hope you’re not getting tired of columns about entertainingly stupid people, because here’s the fourth in a row:

Exhibit A: the Hillary Clinton Comedy tour continues.  This week Hillary admitted to a sympathetic interviewer that she was probably hurt in the Democratic party because she was a capitalist.   That is both funny and depressing: funny because she doesn’t know the difference between a capitalist and a crony capitalist. (How’s that income to the Clinton Foundation coming along, now that you don’t have any “quo” to distribute for any “quid” that might come your way?)

And depressing because in one of the two major parties in the most powerful nation in the world, it’s a serious liability to be considered a capitalist, and a plus to be seen as a socialist.  (And that’s after a century since the Russians first put socialism into practice, starting a run that has produced a record of 0 wins,  88 losses, and 3 ties – assuming you count three wildly anomalous Scandanavian countries managing to limp along with a capitalism/socialism hybrid without totally imploding as “ties.”)

But the best Hillary-related news is from a story reporting that she is “gearing up to influence the mid-term elections.”  That’s right – the Achilles Cankle of the Left ™ is getting ready to tug on her dancing galoshes for one more spin around the mine field—er, dance floor.  (And yes, I know I used that joke in a previous piece.  But c’mon – “Achilles Cankle” is funny.  If I were doing stand-up, I’d work that into every set.)

This is so great!  All GOP fans should be praying that Hillary will come tromping through their district, giving off the thick musk of voter repellent that she seems to generate as a part of her normal biological functioning.

Which reminds me of one bit of 2016 post-election analysis that I’ve always disagreed with.  The commentariat seems to have accepted as axiomatic the idea that Hillary’s decision not to campaign in states like Wisconsin and Michigan were fatal errors, the idea being that she lost those states narrowly, and that spending more time there would have allowed her to win them.

But had those people ever heard or seen a Hillary campaign event?  Think a bunch of creaky folding chairs in a community college gym, with a couple of local pols whom nobody knows giving a few banal comments, followed by ferret-like John Podesta or some other listless, unattractive Dem introducing the Candidate Herself.  She takes the stage, stumbling several times before clinging to the podium for dear life, and starts her speech.

“Hello, Ypsilanti!  It’s always good to be here with the deplorable scum—I mean the common people.  CAW, CAW.  Isn’t that Donald Trump just terrible?  CAW.  We’re on our way to a historic victory, after which I’ll be doubling down on the unpopular policies of Obama, only without the glib speaking skills.  CAW, CAW.  Plus, you’ll have a president with different genitalia from all past presidents!  CAW.  In conclusion, I look down on all of you, and I believe the opposite of what you believe about everything.  CAW!  So get out on Tuesday and vote for me, and you can look forward to being condescendingly  lectured to in this grating tone of voice for the next 4 years!  CAW CAW CAW!”

Her opinion polls as first lady almost always went down as she gained visibility – pushing Hillary-care, for example – and went up only when she disappeared from the public stage for extended lengths of time.  So it’s likely that if she had spent more time in the Midwest, she may have lost the popular vote, too.

In other words, you go Hillary!  Please make an extended, nationwide tour of every battleground state in October, stumping for every Dem candidate in sight.

 

Exhibit B: more animal follies.

In a recent column I noted the increasing menagerie of emotional support animals making air travel increasingly unpleasant.  In the last several days, I’ve come across several more animal stories, one depressing and one uplifting.

The depressing one happened at the home of many depressing trends:  Yale University.  The Yale Daily News featured a story entitled, “Emotional Support Animals Proliferate at Yale.”  (“Proliferate” is fancy Yale talk, but it’s not helping:  a headline like, “Holy Crap! We’re Ass Deep in Support Animals” would not make Yale sound any dumber than this story does.)

The trend is what you would expect: last year there was one registered support animal on campus, this year there are 14.  Soon our Ivy League campuses will look like a cross between a Southwest non-stop from San Francisco to Austin and an off-broadway production of 101 Dalmations.

The story also reports that support animals aren’t just dogs or cats anymore – you species-ist jerk! – noting that one Yale student has a support hedgehog on campus.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but aren’t hedgehogs one of those animals that curls into a defensive ball when startled?  Because if so, I’d like to go to New Haven, startle the hell out of that emotional support hedgehog – perhaps by sneaking up on it and screaming a Squanto Warren-style war-whoop (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – and then hurl the hedgehog with great force at the empty head of the Yale student who thought it was a good idea to bring an emotional support hedgehog to campus.

I’d tell you what I’d do with the emotional support porcupine and the moron who brought him to campus, but that would be a hate crime.  (“GET YOUR HATE QUILLS OFF OUR CAMPUS!)

On a lighter note, the other animal story has a much happier ending.  You can find it in the NY Post, under the title,”Man Mauled to Death by Bear While Taking a Selfie.”

Oops.  Spoiler alert.

This delightful tale takes place in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.  (I know: I thought she was married to Jay Z, too.  But apparently she is a state in India.  Live and learn.)

It seems a super genius named Prabhu Bhatara (one of those “B”s might be silent) was urinating beside the road (as one does), when he spotted an injured bear.  I can only assume that he was urinating what had a short time before been some frighteningly potent alcohol, because his next thought was apparently, “You know what would look good in a photo snuggled up right next to that injured apex predator?  My stupid face!”

By the way, it wasn’t just a bear.  It was an INJURED bear.  You may have noticed that you never read stories about how serious injuries are known to improve the disposition of giant predatory beasts.  “Wounded Bengal Tiger is Looking on the Sunny Side,” said no headline ever, or, “Lion with Infected Thorn in Paw Surprisingly Upbeat, Mellow, according to authorities,” reported CNN.

The story offers video of the mauling, which it helpfully identifies as “disturbing.” But I found that if you watch it while listening to the Benny Hill/Yakety Sax theme song, it’s not that bad.

The cherry on this Darwin Award Winning sundae of a story is that this is at least the third selfie-related animal-induced death in Odisha since December!  Early that month a 50-year old man was taking a selfie with an elephant when he was crushed, and not too long after that a younger man, in a separate incident with another elephant, did the same thing.

At least I think it was a different elephant.

How cool would it be if there were one hilarious, photogenic elephant making the rounds in Odisha and Nicki Minaj — and whatever other Indian states there are that I don’t know about – playing the same practical joke on various dim-witted Indians?  Step 1: Spot a guy with a cell phone.  Step 2:  Give him a tusk-y smile.  Step 3: CRUSH! (and for the soundtrack, it’s the obvious choice: “Baby Elephant Walk”)

And, scene.

 

Exhibit C: Speaking of famous Indians in the news…

No.  This is not another Liz Warren story.  That would be too easy.

This is an Apu story.  As in Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian character on the Simpsons.  In yet another example of how the humorless, perpetually offended left is doing their damnedest to rob all life everywhere of its joy, some moron didn’t just object to Apu.  He spent a year of his life making a documentary about how offended he is by Apu.

This alleged comedian whom you’ve never heard of called his documentary, “The Problem with Apu.”  The “problem” is exactly what you’d guess: humor based on the ethnicity of a character – even a cartoon character – is offensive and terrible and a hate crime, you European-American creeps.

Now, you might be thinking that if we have to go to a broadly-written character in a well-intentioned cartoon to find a serious problem, we are officially out of problems.   And you’re right.

In a sane world, this bonehead would be laughed at and then ignored and forgotten.  But not in our world.  In our world, the actor who voices Apu – Hank Azaria — has taken this dope seriously.  He apologized to the Indian and south Asian people, and offered to stop doing Apu.

What a relief it is to know that the Simpsons will no longer feature a hurtful stereotype of a character that some hyper-sensitive group could object to!

I mean, other than angry Scottish Groundskeeper Willie.  And oily Italian mafia character Fat Tony.  And slack-jawed yokel and Appalachian-American Cletus. And drunken womanizing Irishman Mayor Quimby.

Come to think of it, the cops on the show are all incompetent boobs, and the teachers are all lazy, burned-out clock punchers, and those groups both have unions that should be contacting Fox any minute.  And Mr. Burns is a heartless, greedy 1%er, and Barney has a serious alcohol problem that is played for laughs, and Nelson’s single mom might be a drunken hooker.  Flanders and the Reverend Lovejoy make Christians look stupid, and Grandpa Simpson is mocked for his age and incipient dementia.

Homer is a working class idiot, and Bart’s juvenile delinquency and troubles in school are no laughing matter in a nation where young boys are falling behind girls in every significant social category.  And I suppose we are to believe that all comic book fans are obese, sexless nerds like Comic Book Guy?  (Worst. Stereotyping. Ever.)

If the makers of the Simpsons keep caving to these humorless social justice warriors, they’ll have no characters left except Lisa and Maggie.

Wait: Maggie is a voiceless female, the most potent symbol of patriarchal oppression there is, so she’s out.  And Lisa plays blues and jazz on her sax – be gone, culture appropriator!

Ugh.  I hope the maker of this stupid documentary agrees to sign autographs and take fan pictures after one of his speaking engagements, and finds himself posing with one arm around an injured bear and the other around a smiling elephant.  Then let nature take its course!

 

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For those of you who like short fiction, I’ve posted another short story called “Dancing About Architecture” on my site,  Martinsimpsonwriting.com.   Full disclosure: it’s a magical realism piece, with no political snark or Liz Warren mockery, so proceed at your own risk.  If you like it, let me know.  If you don’t, keep it to yourself, bub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As we approach the end of another month, I expected to be writing another “best of the month” piece. But it turns out that the theme of April has been the continuing cavalcade of idiots in public life. So here’s the third consecutive installment:

Exhibit A: Comey Comey Comey Comey Comey Chameleon. (now try getting that terrible song out of your head.)
Watched the Bret Baier interview with Comey, and I agree with the consensus here: if it were a fight, they’d have stopped it. I think the thing that shocks me the most about the whole sordid Comey mess, though, is what a sterling reputation that goof had before 2016 or so. When he first rose to prominence, all you heard in the MSM and on both sides of the aisle were his impeccable credentials, what a straight shooter he was, etc. And now he’s revealed to be a sleazy, unethical, smarmy, partisan creep.
To call him an empty suit would be an insult to all of the fine Mannequin-Americans who are doing yeoman’s work in store-front windows all over this great nation.
I can’t think of another public figure who has had such a dizzying fall from grace. Most scandalized people recently seem to be those who already looked shady from the get-go. Was anyone surprised when it came out that Anthony Weiner was a perv, or that John Edwards was the kind of guy who would impregnate a mistress while his wife was dying of cancer, or that Bill Clinton was playing hide the cigar with an intern, or that Trump had a one-nighter with a porn star? Or that the Mooch was the kind of guy who would have a nickname like “the Mooch?”
But Comey looked the part of an FBI director, and had a superficially sober-minded gravitas thing going for him, so it was a shock to see the real him.
On second thought, Bill Cosby might have fallen as far as Comey. And it’s a sad state of affairs when the best I can say about the former head of the FBI is that, “At least he didn’t drug and rape any actresses. That we know of.”
Still, the Comey story did give me one of my favorite Trump tweet lines: “It was my great honor to fire James Comey.” Part of the reason I love that so much is that I can’t imagine another president ever writing it. Usually when I say that about one of Trump’s tweets, it doesn’t reflect well on Trump… but not this time!

Exhibit B: From England — British kids are morons too.
Just when I was beginning to despair about the state of American youth, I came across a cheerful story in the UK Telegraph, which reports that schools across that nation are going to digital clocks in exam rooms, because so many of the high-school-level students can’t tell the time using an analog clock. Or as we called them, “clocks.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
My first thought was, Good! If you can’t tell the time on a clock, you should automatically fail any test you are taking. What’s next? Students who can’t read an analog calendar all freezing to death because they went outside in December wearing shorts and flip flops? People who can’t read analog ballots accidentally electing Nancy Pelosi fourteen times in a row? People who can’t read analog books descending into illiteracy?
Oh, wait.
Of course the temptation for me is to come across as Ol’ Pops Simpson, who can’t relate to young people. Why, these kids today don’t know how lucky they are to even have analog clocks. In my day, we used sundials, and talk about stress: half-way through finals week the sky could get overcast, and the next thing you know you’ve lost track of time, and the teacher snatches away your papyrus and quill pen, and you’ve flunked calculus. Which was already difficult enough, on account of its only having been invented the previous February.
But I am trying to resist that temptation. I mean, if you grew up with only digital clocks, I guess an old-fashioned clock face could be a little intimidating.
But then I made the mistake of reading to the end of the article, where I came across this additional complaint: a senior pediatric doctor warns that technology usage may be rendering British louts unable to hold a pencil or pen. I would now like to quote Sally Payne – a real person who I am not making up – who is the head pediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust, whatever that is, on the subject of kids who are increasingly unable to hold writing implements:
“To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers. It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them (sic) to do muscle-building play…. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”
That’s an enormous hurdle for youth to overcome? The basic skills required to hold a pencil?!
Not too many generations ago, English teenagers were using their fine motor control to shod horses and harvest wheat with scythes. (And not those new-fangled digital scythes, either – analog scythes!) A few generations later they were using their dexterous fingers to put on gas masks while simultaneously raking charging Germans with machine gun fire. A generation later they were working on the foundation skills to dive a Spitfire into a bomber formation and shoot down some Heinkels and Messerschmitts.
And now they’re struggling to hold a pencil?
After about 30 seconds’ thought, I realized that as bad as things are, they’re not THAT bad. Most teenage girls I know can type 120 words a minute with only their thumbs, a feat of dexterity that far exceeds the difficulty level of managing not to stab yourself in the eye with a pencil.
And teenage boys?
Let me put it this way. I can only vaguely remember when my buddies and I were teenagers. But if I’m not mistaken, all of us had already demonstrated a world-class ability to handle cylindrical objects with dexterity, strength, and control of the fine muscles in our fingers like nobody’s business. Somehow I doubt that technological advances – I’m looking at you, internet porn – has degraded that fine muscle control in our youngsters today. Quite the opposite, if I were forced to guess.
Still, my first official act upon becoming Education Czar would be to issue a ruling: if you can’t read a clock, you can’t take high school exams. So let it be written; so let it be done. (For some reason I picture myself on an Education Czar throne, and wearing an Egyptian headdress. And yes, my forthcoming Education Czar-dom will require me to hold both an orb and a scepter, thanks for asking.)

Exhibit C: GQ Punches Up
In a recent click-bait article, GQ magazine listed 21 supposedly great books that you actually don’t have to read. By far the most attention-getting choice was the Bible, which provoked a lot of people who probably should know better. Even if you’re not religious, the Bible is obviously a foundational document, without which no one can fully understand Western civilization and history, and putting it on this list is the act of an attention-seeking dunce.
Some of the other claims in the article strike me as more or less fair game, especially given the subjectivity of everyone’s literary tastes: I didn’t enjoy The Old Man and the Sea either, Gravity’s Rainbow and Blood Meridian are both impressive but not worth the effort, Slaughterhouse-Five is wildly over-rated.
But in addition to the ridiculous call on the Bible, the article is fatally flawed for other reasons as well. It disses Lord of the Rings and Dracula, and suggests replacing Catcher in the Rye with a tale of an adult lesbian seducing a teenage girl. The list demonstrates the same PC blindness in other selections, bashing masculinity in Lonesome Dove and Hemingway, and racism everywhere.
Two separate writers denigrate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and on the dumbest of grounds: Twain is a racist, and it’s full of the n-word.
Yes, the n-word is offensive, and it can make for some awkwardness in the classroom when teaching Huck Finn. But I don’t think we made a huge step forward when we replaced, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” with “Sticks and stones constitute aggravated assault, but words are AGHH! AGHH! KEEP YOUR HATE SPEECH OFF MY CAMPUS!!”
And it’s really staggering that any sentient person can read that book – which argues for the fundamental, existential worth and equality of blacks and whites – and come away calling it racist.
Overall, in this time of illiterate teens who can’t master the pencil or tell time, do we really need an article discouraging the reading of some great (but in some cases over-rated or dated) books?
Exhibit D: Liz Warren gets hoisted on her own totem pole.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t much care for Elizabeth Warren. So I was delighted to see how Mick Mulvaney has been outmaneuvering her lately. Mulvaney – and if ever a name screamed out, “Let’s go have a beer!” it’s Mick freaking Mulvaney — is now the head of the useless, vestigial tail of an agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This terrible waste of taxpayers’ money was created by the equally terrible Dodd-Frank law. (Chris Dodd used to create “waitress sandwiches” with Ted Kennedy – Google that, if you’ve got a strong stomach – and Barney Frank kept a gay lover who used his DC townhouse as a gay brothel which Barney supposedly knew nothing about. So you know that any law named after those two gems just has to be great!) It was created over the objections of conservatives, and with the enthusiastic support of Squanto Warren, when Obama was in office and busily fixing everything wrong with the world.
Fast forward a few years, and Trump is the president, and he appoints CFPB critic Mulvaney as its head, with the goal of curtailing its powers. (Although why they don’t just close it down is beyond me.) Now Warren is on the warpath (HA!) about one thing or another, and she submits a list of 105 questions to the Mickster, demanding quick and complete answers.
And Mulvaney responds with the most beautifully ironic karmic arse-whupping since a certain future president (CAW CAW CAW) discovered that a complete lack of character was her Achilles’ Cankle in November of 2016.
According to a recent story in the Washington Examiner, he told Senator Forked Tongue that he did not plan to respond to her questions, and that it was her fault that he is not required to answer, because the structure of her pet agency “shields him from accountability.”
Then – in what might be my favorite words ever uttered by a politician –
“I encourage you to consider the possibility that the frustration you are experiencing now, and that which I had a few years back, are both inevitable consequences of the fact that the Dodd-Frank… Act insulates the Bureau from virtually any accountability to the American people through their elected representatives.”
Then he dropped the mic, put on a pair of shades and stuck a giant blunt in the corner of mouth, in a real-life recreation of that “Thug Life” meme that all of the kids seem to enjoy.
The only way his response could have been better would have been to end it with the words, “So put that in your peace pipe and smoke it!”
Say it with me, kids: We must never stop mocking her.

In last weeks’ column, I took as my thesis the idea that people are idiots.  Guess what?  Over the past week, people didn’t get any smarter.  So consider this Part 2 (of a potential 5,000-part series) on the same topic.

Exhibit A, in the “Public Transport” division: boneheads who have convinced themselves and the airlines that they require an “emotional support” animal to accompany them to whatever destination they are traveling to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Exhibit B, in the “International Division,” comes from France, where a hard-working business owner fell afoul of the local socialist labor laws.  During the summer tourist season, the owner of a small French bakery made fresh bread 7 days a week.   “Good for him,” you’re probably saying.

But that’s because you’re an American — who appreciates the free market and individual initiative and a strong work ethic — rather than a leftist French poke-nose bureaucrat who is congenitally unable to mind your own business.

Since the local laws forbid anyone – even business owners working in their own freaking business – from working 7 days a week, the local gallic Bernie Sanderses fined the baker the equivalent of $3600.  For working. too. hard.

It’s hard to imagine a more perverse disincentive to the kind of behavior that any sane nation would want for their citizens.   What can the end result of that kind of world view possibly be?

I’ll tell you: German soldiers sauntering down the Champs Elysees, angry antisemitic Middle Eastern immigrants taking over your suburbs and victimizing Jews and other natives, and the flight of every ambitious French man and woman to countries that have enough on their plate that they won’t bother themselves to be sure that nobody is working too hard!

 

Exhibit C.  In the “academic all-star” division, we have Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar, whom a recent Daily Wire story reports had a unique reaction to the death of former first lady Barbara Bush.  (You can Google the story and see a picture of Ms. Randa.  If you don’t want to do go to that much trouble, or if you value your eyesight: think a much less attractive Carmen Miranda who has REALLY let herself go.)

Barbara Bush was a pretty uncontroversial first lady.  Unlike other recent first ladies I could mention – scowling wookie, and CAW, CAW, CAW! – she was not an abrasive attention-seeker.  She married a guy who became president and raised another president, and unlike other recent presidents I could name – “You didn’t build that.” And “Step into the oval office and I’ll show you a neat trick with a cigar” – both of them did a respectable job.  She seemed like a no-nonsense person, and decent people around the world respectfully took note of her passing.

Not Randa Jarrar, who is described as “an award-winning novelist” (I’ll bet), and “executive director of RAWI, the “Radius of Arab American Writers.”   By the way, what is “Radius” doing in this group’s title, as opposed to in a Geometry textbook, irritating our children, as it’s supposed to be?  (And any group headed by Jarrar should probably have “circumference” rather than “radius” in its title.) (That’s right, a geometry/body mocking joke!  Don’t tell me that I didn’t get anything out of Finite Math class.)(Though, now that I think about it, that joke is absolutely all I got out of Finite Math class.)

Also, while I’m at it, I don’t know if Randa’s group really understands how acronyms are supposed to work.   Because “Radius of Arab American Writers” would form the acronym “RAAW.”  Whereas “RAWI” might refer to “Random Assortment of Worthless Idiots,” for example.   Or “Reprehensible A**load of Windbag Imbeciles.” Or even, “Repulsive Academic Wretches Incorporated.”  And you wouldn’t even have to change the stationery, Kareem abdul Jarrar!  You’re welcome.

Anyway, here are some quotes from tweets written by Repugnant Randa on the passing of a former first lady who never did anything to her: “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F**k outta here with your nice words.” And “PSA: either you are against these pieces of s**t and their genocidal ways or you’re part of the problem. that’s actually how simple this is. I’m happy the witch is dead. can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeeee.”

You know what bothers me most about this nitwit’s tweets?  Not the illiteracy of them.  (Though, here’s a tip for Randa, if she is reading this, which she obviously is not:  We start the first word of an English sentence with a capital letter.  And “Iraqi” would also get a capital letter.  And saying “byyyeeeeee” makes you sound like a dimwitted 7^th grader.) (No offense, dim-witted 7^th graders.)  And not the black-hearted malice of them.

No, it’s what she said in a subsequent tweet, after she quite naturally got a lot of outraged blowback for her creepy comments: “sweetie i work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. i will never be fired.”  (“I” always gets capitalized.  And you need a comma after “sweetie,” which also should be capitalized.  And you had a pretty bad typo: you spelled “colossal douche” as “t-e-n-u-r-e-d p-r-o-f-e-s-s-o-r.”  You’re welcome again.)  She even had the gall to give her university president’s name and email address, daring her critics to contact him and complain about her.

The saddest thing is that she’s probably right – in modern academia, she’ll never be fired.  She’s a far left, hate-filled minority member, and thus unfire-able, unless she commits a triple homicide in front of a roomful of witnesses.  If you think I’m exaggerating, consider the case of Elizabeth Warren, a hate-filled leftist white lady with a mediocre mind who could not write or think her way out of a wet paper bag.  On the merits, she couldn’t have gotten a job as an adjunct at a third-rate school like Fresno state.  But stick a feathered warbonnet on her empty head and call her a Cherokee, and she gets a job and tenure at Harvard.  (#never stop mocking)

So, Randa is a vile person, and it seems cosmically unfair that she will not suffer any consequences for her evil tweets.  On the other hand, she has to go through life looking like that, and thinking like that, and listening to undergrads singing, “Help me Randa, help me transfer out of your class.” (My apologies to the Beach Boys, who did nothing to deserve any association with this hateful loon.)

And when she (finally) dies, she will not leave behind a husband and son who were presidents of the greatest country in the world, but only (I’m guessing) a couple of cats, who won’t even miss her.

Post Script: I drafted the bit on Randa Jarrar a couple of days ago.  But in the last day or two, there are rumblings that Jarrar might actually suffer some professional consequences for her hideous tweets.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but if it happens, I’ll be the first to congratulate the administration at Fresno State for taking action.

Now if we can just do something about the rest of academia…

My thesis today is that people are idiots.

No, wait.  Hear me out.  I mean, not me, obviously.  And not you, if you are a CO follower and thus a person of taste and class and impeccable table manners.

But pretty much everyone else.

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

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

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

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

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

HA!  I kid.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Exhibit B.   In 2016, Londoners elected a Labor Party angry Muslim guy as their mayor, and that is working out just great.

Sadiq “no one ever calls him sa-Richard” Khan (cue the Star Trek 2 Shatner meme, “KHAN!!!”) has been doing a bang up job, as the English say.  (Or at least, as they used to say, along with “pip pip” and “cheerio.”  Now, they mostly say, “Allahu akbar!”)

KHAN! ran on stopping such racist crime-fighting tactics as stop-and-search, has advocated trying to ban anti-Islamic comments on the internet, and has been feuding with Trump.  Fortunately, everything in London is so tickety-boo (as the English used to say), that he has plenty of time to devote to such pursuits.

Oh, wait.  Upon further review, it turns out that there have been a few bumps in the road for London, if by “bumps in the road” you mean “vicious terrorist attacks.”  Last March 22^nd, for example, a British citizen drove through a bunch of pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, injuring dozens, before jumping out and stabbing everyone within stabbing range, until a cop shot him dead.  When reached for comment, David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg said, “Why should British police have guns?  They’ve got blood on their hands!”

Yes, they do, Davy.  And also on the bridge, and spattered on lots of civilians.  But that’s mostly from the vehicular homicide and the stabbing.

On June 4th, a couple of Brits carried out a terrorist attack at London Bridge, until they too were shot dead.  Their names were something like Philip and Nigel.  What’s that?  Oh – actually, their names were Khuram and Rachid.  And the stabby guy in March was named Khalid.

Ah, what’s the difference? You say “tomato,” I say, “Muhammad.”

Anyway, it finally came to KHAN!’s attention that in February and March, for the first time in history, London had more murders than New York City did.

“See!” said Kewpie Hitler.  “What do you expect, when it’s so easy for Londoners to get hold of assault weapons, and AR-15s, and high capacity magazines?”

Alas, despite all of the life experience a snotty 17-year-old can bring to the table, it turns out that the vast majority of the London murders have been done with… wait for it… knives.

That’s right, the ever-quickening arms race has produced the latest in lethal technology ravaging our cities: the sharp piece of metal.

If only we’d stopped inventing things after fire, the wheel, and irrigation!  But no, we just had to have a Bronze Age, didn’t we?  Oh, the humanity.

Well, at least Khan has to know that since London is essentially gun-free, it’s obviously not the weapon that is the prob—

What’s that?  He’s instituted a policy of extreme knife control?  Really?  Now you can’t carry a knife in London?

Take that, chefs and drywall installers and fishmarket workers and rope salesmen!

Though it’s only April, I’d like to get in an early bid on the end-of-year predictions for next year:  “Wave of blunt-object clubbing attacks ravages London in 2019 – only common thread in the attackers is that they are not clean-shaven, or named either Benedict or Cumberbatch.”

 

Exhibit C.

On the other hand, maybe I’m being too hasty in condemning KHAN!

Because on Friday, April 6^th, in Pittsburgh, a woman had cooked supper for a swell guy named Shannon Lynch.  And then Shannon stabbed her with a steak knife.

I know what you’re thinking: what did she do to provoke him?  Maybe she had it coming.  She could have been wearing a MAGA hat or something, and thus needed a good stabbin’.

But no.  It turns out that Shannon Lynch stabbed her because he – and I quote – “objected to the texture of his steak.”

And that, boys and girls, is why there’s a lot of turnover in the kitchen of steak houses in the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area.

Sadiq, you might be on to something.

Okay, I won’t lie: the trend in our national politics is veering toward the depressing.  It’s looking more and more likely that a blue wave is going to hit in November, returning the majority leader’s gavel into the shaky, dessicated hands of evil Alzheimic mummy Nancy Pelosi.  Paul Ryan is leaving (a less-than-catastrophic loss, but a loss nonetheless), Trey Gowdy is retiring (a disastrous loss), while Dick “no one ever calls him Richard” Durbin and Mad Maxine Waters and Frederica “Cowboy Pimp Hat” Wilson and hundreds of other horrible leftist pols aren’t going anywhere.  Plus re-roofing a cool 1930s house is too damned expensive.  (Maybe that last one just applies to me.)

On the other hand, Cautious Optimism followers have rocketed past 10K, 11k, 12k and then 13K, I’ve still got a world-class family, my dog is still a paragon of canine virtue, and creepy leftists who need mocking are everywhere, so I’ve got Work That Matters to do.

First up this time: it seems that the latest hereditary evil Middle East dictator was featured in a story in the NY Post, entitled, “Assad and the First Lady of Hell Live Life of Luxury as War Rages.”

The gist of the story is that Mr. and Mrs. Assad have been doing what dictators do: living it up while their people suffer.  It mentions that their mansion – built by alleged Japanese architect Kenzo Tange – is rumored to have cost $1 billion dollars.   (Meanwhile, my renovation of the house we are moving into is threatening to cost only slightly less than that.) (Also, if you’re at a restaurant where you trust the chef, I recommend the puffer fish, with a side of Kenzo Tange.)

I only have a few things to say about this story.   First, nice job, Middle East, on another vile dictatorship that still somehow doesn’t offend leftist sensibilities as much as scrappy, democratic little Israel.  Second, if I weren’t too mature to stoop to mocking someone’s appearance, I would point out that Assad’s head is the shape of a perfect upside-down triangle, and he apparently donated his chin for a transplant operation for Mitch McConnell.  (The transplant obviously didn’t take.)

Third, the article claims that Assad’s British-born wife has been dubbed “The First Lady of Hell.”  Hillary Clinton’s lawyers were on the phone immediately, threatening a trademark violation suit, until they heard back from Assad’s lawyers.   “Ohhhh, it’s “OF Hell,” not “FROM Hell?  Nevermind.”

 

Speaking of unpleasant former first ladies, on April 5^th Michelle O was at it again, when she spoke to a women’s leadership conference in Boston. (By the way, no women’s leadership conference that has Michelle O and not Nikki Haley is worth attending).  Among her brilliant comments:  she compared the Obama administration to the experience of “having the ‘good parents’ at home…. The responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time.”  Unsurprisingly, she compared the Obama greatness to the Trump Mordor-ishness: “And now we have the other parent.  We thought it’d feel fun – maybe it feels fun for now, because we can eat candy all day and stay up late and not follow the rules.”

What can one say about that?  When you think of the Obama administration, does anyone think of a slavish obsession with “following the rules?”  (Rules like, “Don’t use the IRS against political opponents,” or, “Don’t be a racial arsonist,” or “Don’t lie about everything all the time,” or, “Don’t appoint horrible leftist mediocrities as attorneys general and secretaries of state?”)  I think it’s indicative of arrogant leftist condescension that she thinks of the American people as children who need the wise guidance of know-it-all political parents in the first place.

But even taking her pols-as-parents analogy, it doesn’t pass the smell test.  I wouldn’t argue that Trump has exactly been “Father Know’s Best” era Ward Cleaver.  But at least he hasn’t been an Obama-era America-hating Ward Churchill.  (That’s right, a trenchant dual Ward reference.  You won’t get that at the Huffington Post!)

And if the Obama administration had been parents, they’d be the kind of parents who taught their kids that Dr. Suess is racist, and America is terrible, and tofu is delicious.  They’d forbid their son from playing with any toys that he’d like, and make him wear a dress, because gender doesn’t exist, and if their daughter had a doll, they’d take it away, because motherhood is slavery.  And if either of their kids built a sandcastle they’d kick it over and lecture them about unfairness because, “you didn’t build that.”  And all of the books in the house would be written by either Noam Chomsky or Saul Alinsky, and all of the videos would be Michael Moore “documentaries,” and they’d only take their kids to church if a racist creep like Jeremiah Wright was preaching.

Then, after a tasteless vegan supper and a crackpot lecture about the NRA and racism, they’d give their kids each a pair of scissors and tell them to go out into the street during an eclipse, and then run with the scissors while looking directly into the sun instead of looking both ways before they cross the street.  (And, scene.)

 

Next, on the topic of famous leftists behaving badly and never paying a price for it, I give you… all of them!

I kid.  Actually, let’s talk about Ted Kennedy.   After decades of drunken, lecherous behavior, conspiring with Russian commies to try to undermine Reagan, plus killing a young woman, when he gets to the end of his life, the MSM celebrates him as the “Lion of the Senate.”  First, because “The Perpetually Inebriated Dirigible of the Senate” just doesn’t have that ring to it.

Also, lion?  Really?  The King of the Jungle?  I could buy, “The Skink of the Senate,” or maybe the “Remora of the Senate.”  But Lion?  That’s way too cool of an animal to besmirch with a Kennedy comparison.  “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” is a favorite book.  “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is not a bad novelty song.  The “Lion of Judah” is a bad ass Hebrew tribal reference and metaphorical title for Christ. “The Lion in Winter” is a solid play and movie.  (And by the way, hat tip to Lloyd Billingsley, who wrote an article about Kennedy on the American Greatness website called, “The Lion in Water.”  HA!)

But Ted Kennedy doesn’t deserve association with any lion, except maybe The Cowardly Lion.  I could see ol’ Teddy – four beers into a seven beer dinner – reciting the lines from the Wizard of Oz:  “Who put the ape in the apricot?  What makes the Hottentots so hot?  Whadda they got that I ain’t got?  Courage.”  (Close your eyes and imagine those lines delivered in his New England braying, while he’s soaking wet and swaying back and forth.) (Also, if those lines aren’t better than any rap lyrics written in the last decade, I’ll eat my metaphorical hat.)

Which is all to say… I saw Chappaquiddick over the weekend.  Well-acted, well written, infuriating to watch.  It brings back decades of sycophantic press coverage.  I was reminded especially of the creepy article by Boston Globe’s Charles Pierce in a 2003 profile on Ted.  Pierce tiptoes around Kennedy’s bad behavior with sentences like, “It might not have mattered to anyone, the fistfight outside the Manhattan saloon, the foozling with waitresses in Washington restaurants…”

What the hell is “foozling,” other than a goofy-sounding word you make up to take the sting out of more accurate words, like “harassment” or “sexual assault?”  It’s a word Cosby would use when he was scatting over the open to a sitcom, or maybe when he is faking diminished capacity during a civil trial.  (“Your honor, who among us hasn’t foozled around a little from time to time?  But I swear I never foozled with her drink.”)

Later, Pierce bemoans how the Mary Jo story is “always there” to haunt poor Ted.   “She denies to him forever the moral credibility that lay behind not merely all those rhetorical thunderclaps that came so easily in the New Frontier but also Robert Kennedy’s anguished appeals to the country’s better angels.”  Look at that syntax: SHE denies HIM moral credibility! How dare she!

The article ends with one of the most egregious leftist quotes ever:  “If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age….”   Yeah.  If only he hadn’t KILLED HER, she’d probably still be voting for him.

In fact, knowing what I know about voting practices in Democrat areas, I think someone should check to be sure that she didn’t continue to vote for him, long after she was buried.

 

Finally, in the wake of my aunt’s passing last month, her son has been going through the house, and finding old Simpson photos.  I’ve just posted one of them on Martinsimpsonwriting.com.

If you’ve ever wanted to see a future snarkster as a kid, check out that pic: Dad’s got the Ron Swanson-approved flattop, mom’s rocking the cat’s eye glasses that were all the rage among 28-year-old women who wanted to look like 62-year-old schoolmarms, my spoiled sister has a smile as big as her head.  And then there’s me, in a tasteful v-neck sweater that foreshadowed the dapper lady killer I would one day become.

Why am I smiling so hugely?  Because I was growing up in the best country ever, and God was in His heaven, and somehow I knew that that very day, in Oklahoma, a young Elizabeth Warren was picking out a squaw outfit for her class’s Thanksgiving play, foreshadowing the lifetime of richly-deserved mockery that I would one day be blessed to heap upon her (#wemustneverstopmockingher).

As an action-packed March comes to a close, it’s time for another Best and Worst of the Month column

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first:  the omnibus spending bill.  My first thought was, “Well, this is probably the best we can expect, when the Democrats hold the House, the Senate and the White House.  I mean, you—“

Oh, wait.

Come on, GOP! Remember when the Dems were in control?  Remember how they respectfully negotiated with you, did a little giving and a little taking, and came up with a very moderate health care bill, incorporating some of your ideas (making health insurance portable over state lines, tort reform to reduce unneeded tests, etc.), and compromising to earn it some bipartisan support?

What’s that?  You don’t remember that?

Why, that must be because… IT NEVER HAPPENED!!!  OH!  OHHHH! (I miss you, Sam Kinison.)

When the Dems held the whip hand, they crammed through an unpopular Christmas tree of a bill.  (I mean, if Karl Marx had celebrated Christ’s birth instead of being a godless commie creep.)  They covered it with little red hammer-and-sickle ornaments, and crammed beneath it the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase, and a box promising a GI Joe-style Doctor, whom if you liked, you could keep.  Never mind that when you opened the box, instead of the promised cool guy with kung-fu grip and a working crossbow, you found a near-sighted doll in a dirty white lab coat, holding only a rectal thermometer that was covered with sandpaper, for some reason.

Trump’s unexpected victory has given you a 2-year window of control that is likely to close this November, if current House projections are correct.  Instead of making the most of this window and cramming through some legislation that – unlike the Dems’ continual Rube Goldberg, exploding cigar, laxative-in-the-candy-bar contraptions – would actually work, and garner public support, you’re…

I don’t know what you’re doing.  I have no words.  I’m out of metaphors.  I was going to say, “fiddling while Rome burns,” but I’ve just spent the last 10 days listening to some good fiddle music, so that’s not an insulting enough description.

Wait.  Is “simultaneously pleasuring yourself and projectile vomiting while the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves, and the entire middle of the country wishes we were also blessedly dead, so we could begin to spin in our welcome graves too” a saying?

If not, I would like to invent that saying now.   That’s what you are doing.   Jacking and puking and making the living envy the dead.   CUT IT OUT!  (and…scene)

 

Okay, one more bad thing.  Or to be precise, two bad things, but from the same good people who bring you taxpayer-funded infanticide on an industrial scale.   That’s right, Planned Parenthood had a busy March.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I’d say, “Never, ever, ever.”

(and scene, again)

 

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

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

Nice job Planned Parenthood!

 

Okay, enough with the bad.  Let’s turn to the good:

1.The “Tumblin’ Cankles Comedy Tour” continued, with an interview on an Indian program that I’d somehow missed, during which Hillary bragged, “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”  Yes, those states like Illinois, Connecticut, California, New York and New Jersey, where optimistic and dynamic folks are definitely “moving forward.”  If by “moving forward” you mean “cramming a U-Haul with your worldly possessions and lighting out for the nearest Red State.”

 

2.Also in Hillary news, as CO noted in a recent post, her speaking fees – now that she no longer has the expected political favors to dole out to the sycophants who used to line her path, tugging on the hem of her pantsuit – have collapsed from $250K per speech to a fraction of that.  Which still seems irrationally high, to me, even if the CPD ratio (yes, that’s the “Caw-per-Dollar” ratio, duh) is better than it once was.

3. In other washed-up-has-been news, Barack Obama was speaking in Japan, babbling about some hare-brained idea that he hoped would help him achieve his life-long goal of “creat[ing] a hundred or a thousand or a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas.”

Always remember: Trump is a bad man, because he is narcissistic, with an unpresidentially large ego.

Also, while I wouldn’t be thrilled with the prospect of either a world full of Donalds or Baracks, the choice between a million Michelle Obamas or a million Melanias would not require a long deliberation.  On one hand, one million scowling wookies tramping the countryside, complaining about how they never loved the country until Barack was elected.  On the other hand, a million slinky supermodels with an adorable accent, leaving stiletto prints all over the place.

I’ll take Door #2, Monte.  And you had me at “scowling wookie.”

 

4.  Trump’s revolving door o’ staff positions has continued to rotate, but all of the recent changes have been improvements. I’ll gladly take Mike Pompeo over T-Rex at State (even though Tillerson did some good work, I hadn’t expected him to be at cross purposes with Trump as often as he was), Larry Kudlow is a hoss on economics, and John “the Nuclear Walrus” Bolton (hat tip to Dennis Miller) is a clear-thinking giant among men, if you ask me.

 

5.  Finally, is there any better, more upbeat way to end a month than with another stupid criminal story? (There’s not — that’s a rhetorical question.)

This time it’s 27-year-old Terry Adams Jr., a convicted felon in Nashville TN who was just minding his business, breaking into a house, when he was shot to death by the kind of creepy homeowner that Lil’ Davy Hogg just hates.   If you haven’t Googled the story yet, you should, but I’ll do my best to paint a picture:

White guy with an experimental haircut: drunk Nick Nolte mugshot on top, filthy white-guy dreads on the bottom.  (Strikes 1 and 2.)  Tats all the way up his neck (strike 3), and – if he was playing a game when more than 3 strikes were necessary to be called out – on the inside of at least one ear.  (Eww.)  Also, previous convictions for meth and guns and assault.  (Any decent prosecutor in TN could get a meth conviction on this guy with a two-sentence closing statement:  “Look at that haircut.  The prosecution rests.”)

The story is brief, but it’s highlights all the way:

Mr. Adams Jr. (and you just know that Terry Adams Sr. has to be so proud) entered the house through a back door and immediately hit Brent Bishop’s wife in the face.  (Nice guy!)    When Mr. Bishop objected, Adams whacked him in the head, and forced him to give up, and I quote, “3 long guns and a pistol” from his gun safe.

But when Adams and his unknown accomplice started to leave, Bishop – and I’m quoting again – “got a pistol from another room” and managed to put a shot into Adams Jr.’s good-judgment-deficient head, killing him.

Did you get that?  After losing 3 long guns and a pistol from his safe, he still had one more pistol (at least) in another room!  God bless Tennessee!

From a press conference with teenage super-genius David Hogg:

Hogg: “Why does anybody need 5 guns?”

Me (screaming at the tv):  “In case Terry Adams Jr. takes your first four guns, Kewpie Hitler!”

My second favorite detail in the story?  (For the top spot, you cannot beat a criminal stealing 4 guns from a guy who has at least 5!)  Mr. Dead Guy Jr. is a suspect in a February 8^th burglary at Bishop’s house, during which a tv was taken.

So he was 1 for 1 on the tv stealing, but only 4 for 5 on the gun stealing.  So close!

 

Just in case any other Terry Adamses are still out there, and thinking about breaking into our new-old house, check out the new picture I just posted at Martinsimpsonwriting.com:  youngest daughter in the background working on her Van Gogh wall painting, older daughter smiling in the mid-range, and Cassie the Wonder Dog in the foreground, staring out the window, one ear cocked alertly, listening for any felon foolish enough to test her.

 

 

 

Last week I began by observing that I don’t usually laugh when senior citizens fall down the stairs, but that I’d make an exception for Hillary.

This week I’d like to begin by noting that I don’t usually finding myself aching to punch a teenager in the face, but I’d make an exception for little David Hogg.

If you haven’t seen young master Hogg in the media lately, consider yourself fortunate.  He’s one of the kids who go to Parkland High School in Florida, where a colossal failure of local government (and the FBI) allowed a red-flag-waving misfit the chance to shoot a bunch of kids in a gun-free zone.  So naturally Hogg blamed the NRA and law-abiding gun owners, who had nothing to do with said shooting.

The “arguments” he makes are as threadbare and simple-minded and thoroughly debunked as you might expect, and at first I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  He’s 17, with all of the obnoxiousness that most of us have at that age, a toxic brew of ignorance and unearned self-assurance.   Until now, I’ve saved my ire for the dishonest MSM jerks who have been exploiting the Parkland kids, using them as puppets to spout the MSM’s own anti-gun and anti-conservative talking points.

But at some point the grace we should grant to kids who don’t know any better runs out.  And that point has arrived.  In countless appearances, he’s smeared everyone who appreciates the second amendment as evil child murderers, as well as accusing the NRA of desiring and profiting off of such murders.

It’s not his fault that he’s an adolescent.  It’s not his fault that he has a Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI ™) of 9.8.  It’s not his fault that his parents apparently dropped the ball on the old “don’t drop the F bomb every other sentence on national tv” moral training.

But he’s been spouting off for long enough now, and since he seems to lack any self-awareness, and is blessed with a young leftist’s immunity to self-reflection, someone should probably give him a good jab to the snout.  Possibly followed by a right cross, delivered with just enough force to pierce his thick cloud of self-regard.   And make his eyes water.

Ironically, if someone were to give him such a pummeling, he’d likely find himself wishing that he had some way to defend himself.  Some sort of a device that could level the playing field.  Maybe a device guaranteed to him by a crinkly old document written by a bunch of dead white male geniuses in the 18^th century.

If only his cramped and bile-flecked world view allowed for the existence of such a device, and the right to use it for self-defense.  (Cue Nelson Munch:  HA HA!)

 

Well, Stormy was on tv last night, and the result was apparently not quite as earth-shattering as the MSM had hoped.   I didn’t watch it – life is too short – but I read a couple of quick recaps of it today, and apparently Trump had a consensual one-nighter with a porn star in 2006.

That’s not a good thing.  I’d like to go out on a limb here, and say that I wish that married presidents wouldn’t have one-nighters with porn stars.

Of course, I also wish that past presidents didn’t carry on strings of affairs, and use interns as humidors, and rape Juanita Broaddrick.  And that presidents before that didn’t deflower teenagers while being married to Jackie O, and bully other teenagers into sex with his corrupt dirigible of a younger brother.   And that that brother didn’t leave Mary Jo Kopeckne to die in a car.   And I wish that the MSM wouldn’t cover up and downplay those sleazy actions, while waiting for a GOP prez to do something 1/100^th that bad, and then pull their dresses over their heads and run around shrieking in feigned outrage until they ran into the nearest wall, leaving an ugly divot in the drywall and concussing their already pitifully weak and frail brains.

While I’m at it, I also wish that Hillary would tumble down a flight of stairs and land on David Hogg, and that the two of them would then careen into Elizabeth Warren’s teepee (we should never stop mocking her), flattening it and her.

But if wishes were horses, I’d have a ranch.

In the end, my guess is that Stormy’s wished-for Trump-killing scandal will turn out to be a tempest in a D-cup teacup (HA!).   I like to imagine Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, Don Lemon et al sitting around in a dive bar, drunkenly singing the following lyrics:

“I walk around, heavy-hearted and sad/Night comes around, I’m still feelin’ bad/Rain pourin’ down, blindin’ every hope I had/This pitterin’, patterin’, beatin’ and spatterin’ drives me mad/Love, love, love, love/This misery is just too much for me.”

That verse, of course, comes from an old standard called “Stormy Weather.”   Stick it, mainstream media.

And, I guess, don’t stick it anywhere else any more, Donald Trump.

 

I’d like to thank everyone in CO nation for your kind words about my aunt last week.  I’m back home now, after the visitation and funeral, with a renewed sense of gratitude for my family.

The whole small town turned out; the visitation was packed, as was the funeral.  During the funeral, the pastor preached on hope, and they played three songs: Johnny Cash singing, “I’ll Fly Away,” and my uncle Don singing two songs for Donna, which he had recorded for her on a little tape deck more than 20 years ago, a few years before his final sickness started.

Then the drive to a hilltop Illinois cemetery.  (Lots of tombstones with names of my family and those related to us, plus a nearby grave over which a Cubs “W” flag – placed there two Novembers ago, over a man who never lived to see the World Series victory — snapped in a brisk March wind.) We pallbearers carried her to the spot next to Uncle Don, and some words were said, some Scripture recited, a few jokes were told.  And then off to the VFW hall for a feast prepared by some ladies from the Baptist church.  (Guess how many of the dishes were either gluten-free or vegan.)  (Then guess a lower number than that.)

(Unless you guessed zero the first time.)

(In which case, bingo.)

(Quick: name that movie:  “That’s a bingo!  Did I say that right?”  “Ya just say ‘bingo.'”)

I know that a few pharaohs and kings over the centuries have had some elaborate funerals, probably accompanied by the best singers in their respective lands, with some nice arrangements of Gregorian chants or pan flute recitals or whatever music was in vogue at the time.

But if you tell me that any of them had more moving singers than Johnny Cash and my Uncle Don, I’m going to call you a bald-faced Schumer.

Oops.  Liar.  Bald-faced liar.

 

On a happier note, we are still working on the house we’re hoping to move into next month.  My youngest daughter is thrilled with her room, which is an anachronistic wood-paneled time capsule right out of Mad Men.

But she’s decided to recreate a wall-sized version of one of her favorite paintings, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, on one of those walls.  She’s part-way through, and I’ve posted a picture of her at work – along with Cassie the Wonder Dog, who is supervising the production.

First, let me say that I’m not usually the kind of guy who enjoys watching senior citizens falling down the stairs.  Not usually.

But I’ll make an exception for Hillary Clinton.  I probably watched her slipping down that stone staircase in India half a dozen times, before I searched the internet, and sure enough, somebody has put together a montage of Hillary slipping, stumbling and falling, set to “Stairway to Heaven.”  Pretty good stuff.

But if I had any tech talent, I would do a mash-up of Hillary’s India trip (ha!) with Cagney tap dancing down the White House steps at the end of Yankee Doodle Dandy, and maybe for a little extra salt in the wound, Gene Nelson dancing up and down the stairs (and a bannister) in Tea for Two.

I can almost hear you saying, “Martin, we didn’t know you were 112 years old, and gay.”  Well I’m not.  I had to search “funny staircase dancing clips” to find both of those.

But once I found them?  I wish I could put them together with Hillary’s wild ride, maybe with a little Trump coming down the cheesy escalator, too, just for good measure.  By the way, whoever is in charge of Hillary’s security these days?  You might want to consider having the advance team build escalators every place she’s going to visit.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not concerned for her safety.  I just want to see what it looks like when a septuagenarian tumbles down a freaking escalator!

My favorite part was after Hillary slipped the second time and decided to kick off her shoes to give her a better chance of making it down alive.  And yes, the shoe did look familiar, to anyone who follows the Indianapolis Colts.  (That’s right, a subtle helmet/horseshoe joke.)

“Come on now, Simpson” you’re probably thinking, “You’re better than that.”

First, obviously I am not.  Because while you were thinking that, I was thinking that it might be cool to also inter-cut an old Howard Cosell fight call (“Down goes Frazier!”) in with Hillary’s staircase debacle.

Second, it’s not just Hillary.  I’ve also appreciated other presidents’ physical gaffes.  I thought it was pretty funny when Bush 41 vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister.  (Though I wished it had been on Arafat instead.)  And when Bush 43 dodged those shoes thrown by an ungrateful Iraqi at a press conference.

But I have noticed a subtle bias in media coverage of such things.  (The hell you say!)   Gerald Ford was a college athlete, yet he fell once or twice, and Chevy Chase turned that into a long (and painfully unfunny) career.  41’s vomiting makes lists of all-time presidential gaffes, and the media thought the shoe-throwing was hilarious, even though Bushie showed some pretty good reflexes while successfully dodging.

But compare Bush’s throwing out the first pitch in a major league game in 2001, to Obama’s attempt in 2010.  (Someone has already put those together on Youtube.)  Bush throws a strike.  But Obama’s pitch?  If Bush’s dad saw that, he’d pull another “bow to the Japanese Prime Minister” move, as I’m going to call it whenever anyone vomits on anyone else, from now on.  I’m surprised that half the dictators in the world didn’t start planning to invade the US after watching our commander-in-chief make that Malibu Barbie throw.

As unbelievably bad as that pitch looked, I’ve got something worse.  You’ve probably never seen this video before, but once upon a time, Barack did a photo op in which he showed off his basketballs skills.  The slick, cool, collected first African-American president started putting up shot after shot.

And – in the most perfect metaphor for his presidency that I can imagine – he looked great doing it, while getting terrible results.   He’d catch a pass gracefully, and square up, and follow his shot with a deft wrist-flip, like you’re supposed to.  But he Missed.  Every.  Shot.  Shot after shot.  With a clank clank here and a clang clang there, here an air ball there an air ball, everywhere a missed shot.

The guy built a brick house.  Then a brick guest house, with a brick six-car-garage.  Then he started on a brick driveway.  It got so embarrassing that he got closer, but still missed.  Then he missed a lay-up that was worse than his baseball pitch.  Then he missed a shot from right underneath the basket.

When he finally made a shot from about 6 feet, the crowd cheered the way you’d cheer if Stephen Hawking drained one from the top of the paint.  (Too soon?)

 

Anyway, lots of other stuff happened this week, and all of it was more important (but not more enjoyable) than Hillary falling down the steps of the Temple of Clutz-a-coatl.

(Okay, I know I’ve got the wrong continent and the wrong culture.  But c’mon, how many jokes combining Quetzalcoatl and Stumblin’ Hillary are you likely to read this month?  That one has to be in the top three, at least!)

Andrew McCabe got fired – and fired like a boss, only 2 days before he would have been eligible to collect his full (and fully UN-deserved) pension!  The only way that could have been better was if Sessions had waited to call him just before midnight on the last day before.  Don’t let the door hit you, you leaking, perjuring weasel!

When she wasn’t tumbling down the architectural treasures of India, Hillary also spoke, and you know that’s never good.  This time she blamed all the little American ladies who were bullied into voting against her by their big, mean husbands and bosses and sons.  That’s right, the Feminist Icon Who Would be President said that women are too weak and malleable, and that’s why she’s auditioning for a Falling Wallendas tour of the third world instead of barking orders from a double-wide recliner in the White House.

Crazy Walter Brennan released the tweet of the year, full of vitriol and drama-queenery and not-so-veiled threats against the president.

No, wait.  Not Walter Brennan.  He was a hell of a character actor, played Stumpy in Rio Bravo.  (I didn’t have to look that one up.)  My grandpa introduced me to him in some westerns when I was a kid, and we both developed a limping, old-timer-voiced impression of Brennan that cracked my grandma up.

I meant John Brennan.   He played a CIA head, but he wasn’t much of an actor, and had no character at all.  It’s hard to believe how many of these empty suits with formerly good reputations – Comey, Mueller, Strzok, McCabe and now Brennan – have shown themselves to be bitter, partisan hacks.

Finally, on a sad personal note, my aunt passed away this weekend.  I’ve written about her here before – she got a cancer diagnosis back in October, and by Thanksgiving it looked like she might not see Christmas.  But she rallied, and held on for a couple of more good, mostly pain-free months with her kids and family.    I’m heading up to Illinois to be a pallbearer for her later this week.

She had the best spouse-meeting story I know:  She was waitressing in a diner in the late 50s on a Thursday night, when my uncle was driving past after a shift at a chemical plant.   (I’m not making that up: my relatives are all straight out of a Tom Waits song.)  He saw her through the window and made a u-turn, went in and had a cup of coffee, and introduced himself.   His name was Don; her name was Donna.  (Really.  Not making this up.)  They went out on Saturday, he proposed on Sunday and they were married the next Saturday.   And they stayed that way for over 40 years, happy as clams, until he passed in 2003.

The moral of the story: marry someone after you’ve known him/her for 10 days, and everything will work out fine!

I’ve spent a big chunk of the last few days listening to some music that reminds me of her, and that comforts me.  I know that many in the CO nation are likely not Christians, and that very few are likely quasi-hillbillies like my dad’s family.  But no matter your background, if you haven’t heard some of that old time rootsy/gospel stuff, you’re missing out.  Especially when it comes to burying a loved one, the consolation of faith is all the sweeter when accompanied by some fiddle, banjo, mandolin and accordian.  (As a general rule, most 15^th English hymns/drinking songs are at least 23% better when some small self-taught Bluegrass group sings in southern accents and “grasses it up” with an acoustic arrangement.)

For anyone interested, you could do worse than this list:

All My Tears – Julie Miller wrote this, and I like her version that appeared on the Songcatcher sountrack.   But some crazy Norwegians called the Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra do a pretty cool version too, until they go all Whitney Houston and overdo it at the end.  (Something about the idea of a bunch of Viking descendants named Ole and Magnus and Joakim singing Kentucky Simpson songs cracks me up.)

By the Mark – Gillian Welch wrote this one, and the Appalachia in her version is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Nothing But the Blood – this old standard works just about every way it’s played, but Nathan Drake does a good, stripped-down acoustic version.

I’ll Fly Away – Aussies Ashleigh Dallas and Kasey Chambers play a live duet version that is imperfect but somehow better for it, and there’s a little violin business in the middle that always gets me.

Because we’ve got some Irish background too, I couldn’t skip the Wailin’ Jenny’s doing the best version of The Parting Glass that I’ve heard.

 

Here’s to you, Aunt Donna, until we meet again.

There’s a lot to hate, unfortunately:

1.Trump took a couple of left turns that resurrected some conservatives’ worries about his ideological consistency.  His post-Parkland statements about guns may have been well-intentioned, but were not helpful.  I think the left’s instinctive gun grabbing dishonesty has earned our slippery-slope-based resistance to their efforts: they say they’ll only go after “assault-style” weapons, or automatic weapons, or energy-pulse weapons that only exist in science fiction movies.  But the next thing you know, they’re talking fondly of British or Australian-style handgun confiscation.

That being said, I’d rank Trump’s proposals — from justified to unjustified — as follows: allowing teachers with gun training to carry at school, banning bump stocks, and raising the age to buy rifles from 18 to 21.  I like the first one, don’t care a lot about the second, but am bothered by the third.

In a perfect world, I’d like to see us decide on a single age of maturity, and make that consistent across the board.  Let’s decide when people are old enough for adult responsibilities:  consuming alcohol, voting, buying rifles/guns, etc.  Let’s make up our minds whether that age is 21 or 18.  I wouldn’t mind seeing it raised to 21, if that meant we’d have fewer 18, 19 and 20 year olds voting!  (No offense, 18-20 year olds.  But c’mon.  Too many of you know who DJ Khaled is, but not who Johnny Cash or John Prine is.  Plus, very few of you pay taxes, and a lot of you voted for Bernie in 2016.  So a lot of you would do way more damage at the polls than at a gun range.)

In fact, I’d rather see a mandatory IQ test before you vote:

Question 1: Is Elizabeth Warren (we should never stop mocking her) a Cherokee?

Question 2: Would you rather trust Sheriff Steve “not an Israeli” Israel to protect you more than you would trust yourself with a gun to protect you?

Question 3: Should any country be forbidden from controlling its own borders?

Question 4: Does socialism work better than free market capitalism?

Anyone answering “yes” to any of these questions should be banned from voting.  Problem solved, and you’re welcome.

The worst part of the gun debacle, for me, was Trump’s castigating GOP pols for being “afraid of the NRA.”  That’s the kind of shoddy talk that we expect from Dems, and it’s not justified.  The NRA has sway in Washington – to the extent that it does – because millions of Americans value the 2^nd amendment and support the NRA’s agenda.  The NRA doesn’t give nearly as much money as Big Labor or George Soros or a bunch of other interest groups, and it’s lazy to make the ad hominem “bought and paid for” charge.  I love to see Trump slap around GOP pols when they deserve it, but in this case they don’t.

Next: tariffs.  Ugh.  CO knows more about this than I do, but even I know that trade wars aren’t great things, and easy to win.  Again, Trump’s heart is in the right place, but his head isn’t.

Finally: Stormy Daniels.  I think this story has been overblown by the hypocritical media and Dems, who were more than happy to cover for girlfriend-murdering Ted Kennedy and rapey perv-meister Bill Clinton.   And don’t get me wrong: if the alternative is voting for leftist Clydesdale Hillary or socialist mummy Bernie, I wouldn’t care if Trump came down the escalator with an unconscious stripper draped over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, he’d have my vote.  But it’s still depressing to see a GOP president credibly accused of affairs with strippers.

It’s also depressing that someone named “Stormy” is involved.  At first I assumed that that was a nom de nude, but it turns out that her sisters are Misty and Sunny.  (Oddly enough, her other sister, “Occluded Front Daniels” went into accounting.   True story.)

2. On the other hand, the Dems have engaged in a lot more hate-worthy behavior, as always:

Creepy CA senator Kamala Harris said that she 100% supports creepy Oakland mayor Libby (HA!) Schaaf’s decision to warn a bunch of criminal aliens about pending ICE raids, allowing hundreds of them to avoid capture.   If there were any justice in the world (full disclosure: even though I’m a Christian, I sometimes think I’d prefer my Deity with 10% more Old Testament in Him, with the wrath and the smiting and the plagues of boils), the very next victims of criminal alien attacks or robberies in CA would be Schaaf and Harris.

Skeevy Hollywood lefties rolled out another unwatchable Oscars, and proved themselves impervious to all objective feedback about their condescending politics.  My favorite part was when Jimmy “waaaah!” Kimmel defended a movie featuring a 17 year old gay kid having an affair with a 24-year old man, and admitted that the Best Picture nominees were mostly financial losers.  Old Quiver Lips said, “That’s not the point.  We don’t make films like “Call Me By Your Name” for money. We make them to upset Mike Pence.”

So let me get this right: if Trump sails a few “Stormy” seas, that’s an outrage.   But when moral dinosaur Mike Pence – with his anachronistic “fidelity” and “wedding vows” and “Christian principles” – seems to object to adult-adolescent sex (even when both parties have the same genitalia!), he’s also outrageous.

Okkkaayy, Jimbo.  And by the way, re: “we don’t make these movies to make money?”  Mission accomplished.

 

Thankfully, there’s been more to love than to hate:

1.Along with the Bad Trump, we’ve had a few servings of Good Trump, as during his boisterous speech the other day, when he laid into many worthy targets, including labeling Maxine Waters as a “low IQ individual.”  And before you object that that isn’t presidential, let me point out that truth is an absolute defense to charges of slander.

Also, to say that Waters has a room temperature IQ is an insult to the temperature in most rooms, which in my experience is usually quite comfortable.  Okay, sure, she might actually have a room temperature IQ … but only if that room is in an uninsulated house in northern Minnesota in the third week of January, and the house is heated only by solar panels, and the sun hasn’t been out since St. Crispen’s Day.

Once someone explained to Mad Maxine – repeatedly, and slowly, and in very small words — what the president had said about her, Waters shockingly accused him of being a racist.

2. The unwatchable Oscars turned out to be… unwatched, with the lowest ratings in years. The preening leftists in Hollywood have made it clear that they hate more than half of their (former) audience, and that audience is saying, “Right back at ya, you bunch of preaching Polanskis!” It always warms my heart to see people vote with their remotes, and their feet.  Although there are some good people in high-tax, business-hostile blue states, it is gratifying to watch productive citizens fleeing CA and IL and NY for places like TX, TN and FL.  It’s also satisfying to see big gains in NRA membership after the shameful post-Parkland straw-man bonfire.   Reap what you sow, you condescending jerks.

3.  Ah, Elizabeth Warren — the gift that keeps on Indian-giving. (HA!) She went on Fox on Sunday, and be-clowned herself yet again.  When John Roberts told her that a local MA paper had asked her to take a DNA test to once-and-for-all settle the question of her alleged Indian heritage, she declined, saying, “I know who I am,” and repeating the slanderous stories about how her Injun’-hatin’ paternal grandparents objected to their son marrying a (blue-eyed) squaw like her mom.

Because who would believe something as sketchy as DNA evidence, when you’ve got family gossip and rumors?  The Party of Science™, that’s who!

Tragically, Warren said that she won’t be running for president in 2020.  Say it ain’t so, Liz!

4. Finally, my favorite kind of favorite stories: another dumb criminal tale.

This time, let me take you to Hartford, Connecticut, where an upstanding young man named Jonathan Rivera went to Superior Court to answer a charge of car theft from February.  While he was in court talking to the judge – mentioning how he was the victim of a corrupt judicial system, and racial profiling, and the kind of brutal capitalism that prevented him from getting access to transportation, I’m guessing – parking enforcers were scanning license plates in the courthouse parking lot.

One set of plates came up stolen, and when the parking cops checked the VIN on the car, it turned out to be stolen, too.  So they set up an elaborate sting operation.  By which I mean, they stood around until someone came out of court and got into the stolen car, and they grabbed him.

Guess who he was?

Anthony Weiner!

Ha!  I’m kidding of course.  Because the car was not in fact a 15 year old girl, but a 4 year old Subaru.

And the driver was Jonathan Rivera.

That’s right.  This criminal mastermind went to court to contest a stolen car charge, driving a stolen car, with stolen plates on it.

I give you the next Democratic candidate for Governor of Connecticut: Jonathan Rivera!