Que Mala’s Hindenburg/Train Wreck/Dumpster Fire Interviews (posted 10/22/24)

A brief Katie update: She had another good day yesterday, and though the docs haven’t guaranteed anything, she may be going home today!  If she does, she will have spent the last 27 days in the hospital.  Thanks again for all of your very kind words, CO nation!

Moving on to the national and world events that are less important than my daughter’s health…

I loved Bret Baier’s interview with Kamala!  Before it happened, a lot of people were dissing Baier, suggesting that he’s some kind of RINO who would go easy on Harris, which never made sense to me.  (The only Fox that I routinely watch is Special Report and the first 10 minutes of Gutfeld, and I generally like Baier.) 

One can always quibble over one detail or another, but I thought Baier did to Kamala what JD did to Walz: pressed her on details and pushed her into revealing her essential emptiness.  She demonstrated the main danger of avoiding challenging interviews, which is that if you ever finally face one, you crumble.  She dodged questions, squirmed, got angry, and tried to filibuster and run out the clock

For me there were two highlights.  The first was when Baier wrong-footed her into addressing Biden’s dementia.  He started by pointing out that Kamala has accused Trump of being mentally unstable, which was bait that she bit hard on, diving into her talking points about how unbalanced Trump is.

Then Bret segued into, “When did you first notice that President Biden’s mental faculties were diminished?” clearly catching her off guard.  She furrowed her brows and paused for what seemed like a minute.  You could almost see the cartoon thought-bubble appear over her head:  “D’oh!” 

She finally said that she’s watched Biden in various contexts, and that, “He has the judgment and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions.”

Yes.  He’s made a series of horrifically bad decisions, and by now I think we all know that he has the judgment and experience to do exactly that.  Even Kamala seemed to sense the danger there, so she immediately pivoted to, “Joe Biden is not on the ballot.” 

Which begs the obvious question: If he’s so fantastically capable of being president, why did you and your party bum-rush him out of the Oval like Bill Clinton tossing out a half-naked intern when Hillary was clomping down the hallway toward him?     

The second highlight was when Baier nailed her on her previous support for making taxpayers pay for sex change operations for criminals and illegal aliens.  After he showed a 2019 clip of her advocating that very unpopular position and asked if she still supports it, her response was clearly a dodge: “I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump followed.”

Of course she was lying.  As California AG, she lobbied to get rid of the existing law that disallowed taxpayer-funding mutilations, and as president, Trump fought in the courts against that change.  Baier countered with that info, and pointed out that as president, she would have a say in the matter, rather than having to passively “follow the law.” 

When he cited Trump’s argument that he opposed that law, poor Que Mala crowned herself with a dunce cap and launched a thousand devastating attack ads against her, saying, “You know, you’ve gotta take responsibility for what happened in your administration.”

Yes, you cackling doofus.  Yes you do.

If I were a Trump advisor, I’d start an ad with the clip from the View in which Kamala was asked what she would do differently from Biden, and said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”  Then I’d put together a 30-second montage of the last 4 years – thousands of illegals crossing the border, Afghanistan falling, Biden screaming through his Reichstag speech, damning stats on inflation and crime – followed by her statement that “you’ve gotta take responsibility for what happened in your administration.”   (I’m Martin Simpson, and I approve this message.)

It’s worth noting that in spite of the ridiculous obfuscation that Que Mala has become infamous for, the woman is actually capable of speaking clearly when she wants to.  Consider her aforementioned support for taxpayer-funded phallectomies (if that’s not a word, it should be) or her well-known 2019 statement that, “There’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.” 

Those are concise, grammatically understandable sentences, completely different from her usual syntactical goulash. Because in those sentences, she was telling the truth about what she really believes.

Except.  Even when she accidentally bumps into a bit of truth-telling, she still resorts to one of the most irritating figures of (dishonest) speech.

No, I’m not referring to “Let’s be clear,” which virtually always precedes a miasmic verbal fog of such suffocating vagueness that it could choke a horse. 

And no, I’m not referring to “speaking the truth,” as in “Speaking truth to power,” or “Speaking our truth,” or “Speaking the truth about American history,” etc. – which always precedes a whole bunch o’ lyin’.

I’m talking about,“We need to have that conversation.” 

If you watch Kamala’s speeches from her California days all the way through her Hindenburg disaster of a 2019 campaign, you’ll see her talking to various far-left groups or groupies. And they would invariably ask her about some proposal from the farthest left fringe: “Would you agree that every black person in America should receive $10 million in reparations?” or “Would you support immediately freeing every person of color in prison, since they are obviously the innocent victims of racist Amerikka?” or “Do you agree that we should confiscate all of the earnings of everyone who makes more than $500K per year?”   

Instead of giving the politically smart answer – “What’chu talkin’ bout, Willis?  NO!” – or the likely true answer from her heart – “YES!” – she always used the same weaselly phrase: “I think we need to have that conversation.” 

Ugh.  That’s clearly such an obvious attempt to simultaneously deceive both the low-IQ extremists in front of her (“I’m with you!”) and the sane but gullible people who are watching at home (“Don’t worry, I’m not that extreme”).

I hate that phrase, even as I must grudgingly acknowledge that it can be useful when you believe something that you might not want to openly admit. 

Okay, I’m going to need to write another column shortly, because I haven’t even gotten to half of the stories I wanted to talk about, including the karmically satisfying death of Yahoo Sinwar and the hunting prowess of Tim “Elmer Fudd” Walz. 

But I have to end with one of my favorite Florida stories, in which a bad guy is being brought to justice, and Ron DeSantis is proving himself to be a boss.  NOT UNEXPECTEDLY!

On October 9th, as hurricane Milton was bearing down on Florida, a state trooper rescued a frightened dog who had been chained to a fence and abandoned alongside Interstate 75.  The dog was trembling and growling, standing in water that had already risen to his belly when the trooper found and freed him. 

Few things make me angrier than cruelty to animals, and this story was outrageous.  I figured that in the devastating aftermath of the third giant storm in as many months, that dog’s heartless owner would never be brought to justice.  But I live in the free state of Florida, and I’d foolishly underestimated our law enforcement and our governor.    

When a reporter asked DeSantis about the story, the guv started out perfectly, as is his wont:  “First of all, what kind of an animal would just leave a dog chained to a pole in the middle of a hurricane?” After praising the work of the FHP for rescuing the dog and expressing the confidence that many people will “compete” for the chance to give it a good home, he expressed the right amount of moral outrage.

“I hope they find the person who did it, and that person should have the book thrown at him.  We’ve got very good laws in Florida against animal cruelty.”  Then he gave a shout-out to the excellent police working dogs that will be helping in the storm.  (Insert Shane Gillis doing his Trump impression here: “Beautiful dogs. Talented dogs.”)

A short time later, DeSantis gave an update.  The dog was going to get a good home, and had been renamed “Trooper.”  Then the kicker: “I’m proud to announce that the authorities have identified the dog’s former owners, and [a state attorney] is now pursuing animal charges against the individual.” 

The creep in question, 23-year-old Giovanni Garcia, is charged with a felony that could bring up to 5 years in prison.  State officials are calling for changing the laws to allow for harsher penalties against people who abandon their animals during an emergency.

Cassie the Wonder Dog and I approve this legislation, and neither of us thinks that 5 years in jail is enough for this bum.  

Am I saying that Garcia should be chained to a post in the bottom of an empty pool, which should then be filled up with water that slowly rises over his head, killing him in the same way that he’d callously left his dog to die?

Say it with me, CO nation: 

I think we need to have that conversation.

Hamas delenda est!

A Promising Katie Update (posted 10/20/24)

I’m back at home, and will be writing another column for tomorrow, but I wanted to post another brief Katie update, since many of you had sent such thoughtful comments and prayers to my post on Friday.

I’m very happy to report that Katie has continued to improve since last Thursday, and will likely get out of the hospital today or tomorrow.  Since her last release only lasted 14 hours, we’re a little gun-shy about celebrating too soon, but she has rapidly improved.  The NG tube was taken out on Friday and she’s been eating more, and everything is functioning as it should.

I flew back to Florida on Friday and am taking care of business here, and God willing, my wife will be returning this week, after she’s gotten Katie settled back in at home.

Over the last several days, I’ve had a lot of time to get caught up on the larger world, only to find that the last ten days have somehow contained about three months’ worth of political and cultural events.  From the IDF whacking Sinwar to Bret Baier whacking Que Mala to A-WOLz not whacking any pheasants, everything’s been happening, and most of it has been good. 

Sure, none of it compares to finding out that your daughter won’t need another surgery.  But still, it’s good stuff, and I’m looking forward to getting at some of it tomorrow.

In the meantime, Katie’s on the mend, and I can’t thank you all enough for your support, kind comments, and prayers.  I didn’t have time to respond to them, but I did read them, and they meant the world to me.  Really, thanks!

I’m looking forward to getting back to the usual mockery and happy-political-warrior mode tomorrow.    

Hamas delenda est!

My Daughter is in the Hospital, & Little Else Matters (posted 10/17/24)

I am writing this from my daughter Katie’s hospital room in Denver, to update and touch base with those who have emailed or are wondering why I haven’t posted a column this week. 

Katie had a set-back this past weekend, but she’s doing better now, and I appreciate all your prayers and well wishes posted after my last column.

Katie continued to improve after her surgery, and last Saturday afternoon she was released after two weeks in the hospital; her husband and my wife were ecstatic to finally have her home again.  They got her settled in, and my wife prepared to fly to Vermont on Sunday, to join me and some friends of ours on a previously planned fall getaway.

Unfortunately, in the middle of the night Katie once again started experiencing a lot of pain, and she was rushed back to an ER, and eventually re-admitted to the hospital she’d left only 14 hours before.  Since then she’s been on antibiotics and pain meds, and the doctors have been watching her closely.  

She’s got an infection that has been responding to treatment, and the docs are doing various tests to diagnose the cause of the problem.  They’re fairly optimistic that they’ll be able to get her through this without another surgery, and she has been feeling a little better each of the last several days.

I flew to Denver, and we celebrated her 27th birthday in the hospital on Tuesday.  Which stinks.

On the other hand, she’s an optimistic young woman, and she knows that she’ll now have a birthday story that will make her extra grateful during all future birthdays.  Just like many people who had that one horrible trip – with the canceled flights and the food poisoning – that makes every subsequent vacation sweeter, or the WWII vets who never had a tough winter after that freezing Christmas of ’44 in Bastogne.  

It’s a cliché to say that tough times reveal people’s character, but I’m happy that this truism has been confirmed in our lives over the last several weeks.  My wife has been a doting mom at her daughter’s bedside, trading off night shifts with Katie’s husband, who has proven himself a stand-up guy. 

He’s been with her every day, making sure she has everything she needs, and reading one of their favorite Tolkien books to her every evening.  He has been bringing her things from home, including some kind of scent-diffuser – her hospital room smells like sage, instead of like a hospital room – which has to be the most thoughtful thing I’ve ever heard a straight guy do.

And something that I have to admit I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years!

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.  In addition to the increasingly positive prospects suggesting that our nation might be nearing a return to political sanity in a few weeks – I’ll be posting about that stuff again shortly – our homes and hometown have survived three hurricanes in the last two months. 

And we’re living in a time of unbelievable advances in medicine, in a great nation that has helped to produce – and benefit from – those advances. 

It’s the middle of a quiet night, and I’m watching my beautiful daughter sleeping peacefully in a sage-scented room, surrounded by amazing technology in an impressive building filled with skilled professionals dedicated to returning her to health. 

My heart is full, and I can’t believe that 27 years have passed since my wife and I were watching her sleep in another hospital bed, her face as innocent and her expression as untroubled as it is right now.     

We Were Spared by the Latest Hurricane, But Kamala’s Interviews Did Cat 5 Damage to her Campaign (posted 10/11/24)

I’ll start today with a storm update.  Because Milton took a slight southern turn before landfall, our area in north central Florida got off easy, with winds just gusting into the weak tropical storm range, and less rain than had been forecast.  I never lost power, and with my wife and daughters out of state and my stalwart canine companion at my side, the storm was no more than a cozy night at home for me.

Even the storm-ravaged path across the state from Tampa to the Atlantic appears to have fared better than the worst-scenario forecasts, and although there are heartache and losses to contend with, the death count is much lower than we had feared.

As with past storms, Ron DeSantis continues to crush it in the “Great Governor” bidness.   He competently managed the pre-storm organization and warnings, and staged the resources to come in afterward and get power restoration and rescue missions underway quickly.  He also made a great statement re: any potential looters, which I roughly paraphrase as, “You loot, we shoot.”

And he sharply Hillary-slapped Que Mala’s pathetic attempt to play politics with the storm, and make herself look important.  She wanted to cosplay as a president and force him to drop everything to take her phone calls, and he rightly pointed out that he was busy, and that the only federal official that he should logically be talking to would be the president (if we had one) and a competent FEMA official (if we had one).

Speaking of Kamala, she’s had quite a week, hasn’t she?  She’s gone on what one media source called a “charm blitzkrieg” of media appearances.  Unfortunately for her, her efforts were about as charming as the original blitzkrieg in 1939.  (Carried out under false pretenses?  Check.  Leaving a trail of destruction in its wake?  Check.   Executed heartlessly but competently?  Yes and no.)

As I said in a previous column, I think the decision to have Kamala do a round of interviews – even if they are given to bootlicking leftist presstitutes – is strong evidence that her internal polling is looking lousy.  All competent leftist pols know how terrible she is at this, so things must be bad if they are risking it anyway.       

And holy cats, did she double and triple down on the banality and word goulash in all of her interviews!

The biggest one was the 60 Minutes shot with Bill Whitaker.  That one was bad enough even before we found out that the CBS hacks had heavily edited and “polished” what they showed.  (This practice followed the pattern the Dems used with Biden for the last several years: his ads and pre-taped appearances were always horrific, which meant that the unexpurgated outtakes must have been the rhetorical equivalent of a crime against humanity!)  

Whitaker actually asked her some legitimate questions, and several times – after she excreted a rambling stew of obfuscation – he followed up with a gently chiding, “Yes, but the question was X.”  He didn’t go after her as hard as he could have – or as hard as every MSM interviewer always goes after every conservative or GOP candidate or spokesperson – but the fact that he pushed at all was enough to pierce her wafer-thin veneer of non-idiocy.

He asked her repeatedly how she’d pay for her plans, and if she regretted opening the border and thus allowed a quadrupling of Trump’s number of illegals getting into the country, and why she’d changed her position on so many issues.  And each time he got a variation on the same response: a CAT-5 yammer storm.  (“People have hopes, dreams and ambitions; I was raised in the middle class; My background is in law enforcement.”)

The brainiacs on the View tried to go much easier on her.  (Unexpectedly!)  But even their softballs baffled her like a wicked splitter from Ohtani when he’s really feeling it.  Then Sunny Hostin asked her a question that she had to have expected: “Would you have done anything differently than President Biden during the last four years?”

Now every Dem pundit has been talking about this since they threw Biden under the bus and made Que Mala the candidate: she has to distance herself from Biden’s policies, whose popularity ratings fall somewhere between chlamydia and bestiality.  That’s a tricky tightrope to walk, but she absolutely MUST do it.

So how did Sophocles Harris start her disjointed mess of an answer?  “There is not a thing that comes to mind…”      

And at that moment, at Trump HQ, a top aide turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Cut that video, slap on an ‘I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message’ at the end, and air-drop it into heavy rotation in every battleground state immediately!”

When she taped an interview with the execrable Stephen Colbert later that same day, she still hadn’t come up with a passable answer for that question.  His variation on it was roughly, “How would you be a different president than Biden?”  And she started out with, “First of all, I’m not Joe Biden.”

And the entire land echoed with a million leftists simultaneously and violently face-palming themselves.

She also gave an interview to Howard Stern, for some reason.  On the upside, Stern is an unhinged, perverted crank, so he’s right in the sweet spot of her demographic.  On the downside, he recently said that he doesn’t just hate Trump, he hates anyone who votes for him.  In other words, he basically called half the country “deplorables.”  And you know how well that works in politics.

During the interview, Stern was a real voice of reason, claiming that “the sun’s literally going to go out” if Trump wins in November.  And if there is such a thing as a Pyrrhic compliment, he gave one to Kamala: “Yes, I’m voting for you, but I would also vote for that wall over there, rather than [Trump].” 

Ringing endorsement there, Howie: Kamala Harris and a wall would do an equally good job as  president.  I’ve got to give that one a grudging, “Fact check: true.”   

Finally, for the part of the electorate who finds Howard Stern too highbrow for their tastes, Kamala went on some sleazy sex podcast called “Call Her Daddy.”  I’d never heard of it – because I was raised right, and am not impressed by graphic vulgarity.  (Plus I’m old enough to admit that that kind of talk strikes me as extra gross coming from females.  Call me sexist if you must.) 

I could only think of two discussion topics that might make Kamala a good fit on that podcast: 1. The host could grill her on what techniques she used on Willie Brown to get her political career started in California. 2. They could talk about the many wonders of abortion.

They did talk about abortion a lot.  Because, surprise!  The sex podcaster with the sexual ethics of an alley cat in heat is a fervent abortion enthusiast.  (Unexpectedly!)

The low point was when the host asked her a set-up lefty question to the effect of, “Can you think of ANY law that restricts what men can do with their bodies?”  And the cackle appeared, along with the predictably brain-dead answer: NO! 

And for the thousandth time, I asked myself the question that is on everyone’s mind: How can this imbecile have any chance of getting elected president?!

No one should have to explain this, to anyone older than around 8, but here goes:  Laws regulating abortion aren’t aimed at restricting what women can do with their bodies—only the bodies of the baby they are carrying.  (Spoiler alert, for when you take 7th grade biology: a baby has different DNA from her mother, which is true about NO part of any mother’s body, ever, anywhere.) 

Besides, just about EVERY law restricts what men can do with their bodies!  A few target men exclusively or almost so (coercing participation in the draft during times of war; laws against rape, the vast majority of which apply primarily to men), but nearly all laws affect men as well as women. 

My fists are part of my body, and I cannot use them to punch irritating leftists in the face, no matter how much they may deserve it.  The same goes for my feet, my elbows and my knees.  And don’t get me started on my skull, which in addition to sheltering my national treasure of a brain, is excellent for delivering head-butts to deserving morons.

And yet, many laws prevent me from doing so, no matter how loudly I chant, “My forehead, my choice!” or “Keep your laws off of my cranium!”

White collar crimes are also done with the body – signing fraudulent checks, conning people with your mouth/voice – as are petty crimes like pickpocketing. 

And any crime with a jail sentence as a potential outcome – i.e. nearly all of them – necessarily restricts what men (and women) can do with their bodies, since it dictates where your body can reside, when you can exercise or eat and etc. 

So Kamala’s interviewers were sycophants, or dullards, or both.  And still she has gone 0-for-8 in interviews, demonstrating an uncommon knack for metaphorically screwing the rhetorical pooch in every situation.

We cannot allow this empty pantsuit of a candidate to get elected! 

One final note: Katie’s improvement has continued, and she will likely get out of the hospital this weekend. (Yes!)  Emily is safely in California for a short visit, and Karen and I will still be able to head to Maine and then Vermont on Sunday, to enjoy the company of some old friends, and of God’s creation, in the form of fall leaves around Lake Champlain.    

I won’t have a column on Monday, but I’ll be back at it when I get home.  Have a great weekend, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!

Riding Out the Storm, & What is Wrong With Leftist Men? (posted 10/9/24)

First, I’ve got a quick update on my family during this tumultuous week.  Katie continues to improve in the hospital in Denver, and my wife continues to crush her role as loving and supportive mom with her. 

However, my youngest daughter was booked to fly from her school in the storm’s path to CA on Thursday, for a long-planned visit with some of the friends she’d met in Boulder in the summer.  But since the winds in Orlando during her scheduled take-off were predicted to be out of the northeast at 110 mph, those plans had to change. 

So she flew to Denver yesterday, surprising Katie in her hospital room, in a moment that Karen caught on a video that is so sweet that I can’t share it with you for fear it will give you Type 2 diabetes.  She will spend a few days with sis and mom, before flying on to CA, where the only potentially troubling weather condition is chances of feces-and-dirty-syringe tumbleweeds blowing across the runways.

So Cassie the Wonder Dog and I are going to be hunkered down in stately Simpson manor during the storm.  Luckily for us – though our hearts go out to those in Tampa and the middle of the state – it looks like we are far enough north that we should be spared the worst of the damage, and may even get away with just a short power outage. 

Oddly enough, Karen and I were scheduled to fly to Maine on Friday, from where we were going to drive to Vermont with an old grad school buddy and his wife, to see some fall colors and decompress.  Those plans are up in the air, since my Friday flight was cancelled, and my wife is now trying to re-book so that she can fly straight there from Denver, and I can try to get up there to meet her on Saturday.

Thankfully, I’ve got political shenanigans to write about, to keep my mind off of the storms outside.  

First, when I saw some clips from the Vance/Walz debate, I came across a moment that I hadn’t noticed.  The moderator asked Walz a rare, pointed question, about that time when he told the compelling story of his being in Hong Kong when the Chicoms started murdering free-speech advocates in Tiananmen Square.  (You don’t have to ask which side Wolz was on, sadly.) 

Except that he was in Nebraska then, and only arrived in Hong Kong several months later.

Walz tried to take a page out of Harris’ Big Book of Debate Tactics, and blather.  I’m not sure why it didn’t work for him like it did for his running mate.  Perhaps because he’s neither non-white or a female, which have both been very useful for Kamala. 

She used her gender to get her first important jobs in California politics, and as a political shield to miraculously cover and compensate for her manifest unfitness for high office.  And MSM figures have lined up to point out how all criticism of her is sexist and therefore illegitimate.

She’s basically a vagician, is what I’m saying.  And hapless Tim Walz is not. 

He began his answer with a variation of Que Mala’s “I was raised in the middle class” gambit.  To wit: “I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, [in a] town of 400.  A town that you rode your bike with your buddies ‘til the streetlights come on.  And I’m proud of that service.”

He meandered on for several hundred words without approaching an actual answer (a la Kamala), and the moderator actually followed up, pointing out that he hadn’t answered the question.  Whereupon he melted down into one of the worst moments in a very weak debate for him.

But I initially overlooked that first part.  He referred to riding bikes around in a small town to some sort of “service,” of which he seems inordinately proud?!

I’m used to politicians fluffing up their resumes, and Wolz is certainly expert in that skill.  He’s bragged about serving as a teacher and a coach, serving in the National Guard – right up until that would have involved serving in a war zone, at which point he severed himself from that particular service – and serving in Congress and the MN’s governor’s office.

But if riding bikes around small Midwestern towns until the streetlights came on constitutes “service,” I may have to nominate myself for a whole raft of medals.  Because I served six or seven summer terms on a three-speed Schwinn (for which I’d like a Congressional Medal of Honor), which also involved many skinned knees and various bruises (three Purple Hearts, please). 

I also dispatched many pop bottles and cans with a pellet gun.  So I think that at least a bronze star and an infantry sharpshooter badge are in order. 

But I never completed the requirements to become a Command Sergeant Major, and I never stood beside a skinny Chinese hero while the tanks of a murderous socialist dictatorship bore down on him. 

Then again, neither did Tim Walz.  (And as Tampon Tim will tell you, one man’s socialism is just another man’s, “You die now beneath tread of tank, enemy of state!!”) 

Walz is as phony as Kamala’s stories about her deprived childhood.  (“We had to burn mom and dad’s PhD diplomas to keep warm in the harsh Montreal winters, and I had to steal chicken nuggets from my childhood McDonald’s job, just to keep the family from starving!”) 

And only a non-binary far-leftist with fluid pronouns could mistake Walz for a traditional Midwestern male.  Because dressing up an off-putting socialist in a ball cap, flannel shirt and coach’s whistle doesn’t make him an alpha male.  It just makes for a hilarious costume for him to wear at Halloween.

Speaking of caricatures of authentic masculinity, I can’t be the only one who’s noticed the Democrats’ recent weird dysfunctionality on the subject of men and masculinity, can I?

The most flamboyant examples are the many deeply confused trans and trans-adjacent eccentrics in their ranks. They seem to love themselves some gender dysmorphia sufferers, from Biden giving an interview to obnoxious Dylan Mulvaney (a 27-year-old male who identifies as a 13-year-old girl), to Richard/Rachel Levine (a 60-something divorced father who identifies as Captain Kangaroo’s more successful sister, Admiral Kangaroo), to Sam Brinton (the bald guy with garish lipstick in a job involving nukes, but who identifies as a serial luggage thief).    

But it’s not just that.  They’ve also had great difficulty putting forward male candidates whom average voters might consider to be regular men.  And I’m not talking about Mayor Pete, who disappeared for months of maternity leave after not having a baby. 

I’m talking about effete candidates like Beto “Beta” O’Rourke and Ken-Doll Newsom, as well as the afore-mentioned Tim Walz, who has to be the only volunteer football coach in America who also has an unhealthy fascination with putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms and starting transgender clubs in local high schools. 

(For a guy who obsessively threw around the word “weird” about Trump and Vance, he would be well advised to grab a Shakespeare concordance and search for the phrase “doth protest too much.”)

Which brings us to perhaps the oddest of an odd bunch: Doug Emhoff, the “second gentleman” who aspires to be the first gentleman, despite being no kind of gentleman at all.      

Our laughably corrupt mainstream media has been trying mightily to portray Emhoff as an admirable figure and – maybe even a heavier lift? – as a wildly attractive man. 

I’m not making that up. Leftist WaPo columnist Catherine Rampell wrote a glowing opinion piece in which she called Emhoff the “embodiment…of modern female fantasy,” and a “progressive sex symbol.”   She doesn’t dwell exclusively on his appearance – her main argument seems to be that she’s turned on by a man who “prioritize[s] his wife’s ambition over his own.” 

But then again, she does call him “a hunk” and a “dreamboat,” and suggests that Ryan Gosling should “move over,” because here comes Fabio Emhoff.  (Okay, I made up the “Fabio” part.  But that’s the ONLY part I made up.)

I’ll admit it: I am the last one who should criticize anyone else’s looks.  I broke my nose multiple times in high school.  I’m what they call an Illinois 6 (and that translates to a Florida 3) at BEST.  I’ve never heard the whisper of multiple female undergarments simultaneously dropping to the floor because I enter a room.

But look at 30 seconds of any recent interview of Doug Emhoff.  Listen to his voice; note his affect; take in his visage.

If THAT guy is a “hunk,” I’m Brad Pitt’s ruggedly handsome cousin. 

And while I’m too much of a classy and refined gentleman to ask female friends what kind of libidinal effect they experience when looking at Doug Emhoff, I’d be willing to bet that “severe v*ginal dryness” would appear on the medal stand of their responses. 

Perhaps I’ve said too much.  Maybe his strong character makes up for any less-than-optimal physical characteristics.

Annnnnnndddd… NOPE!   His first marriage ended because he impregnated a nanny who taught at their children’s school.  Which is not exactly first-ballot “Great Husband Hall of Fame” material. 

But it gets worse, because nobody has been able to find any trace of the child.  The most likely conclusion is that the baby was aborted, and unnamed sources report that Emhoff paid the nanny a six-figure settlement and got her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. 

(Remember that time when Trump paid Stormy Daniels and had her sign a NDA – with no pregnancy or abortions involved – and the left wanted to imprison and possibly execute him for it?)     

But hey, everybody makes mistakes, and maybe the nanny-banging was a one-time—

NOPE.  Because the story recently came out that he was at the Cannes film festival in 2012 when he saw his girlfriend talking to a valet.  So he slapped her in the face so hard that it spun her around. As one apparently does, if one is a progressive sex symbol.

I mean, how else is she going to learn not to talk to valets?  

Seriously though, what is wrong with these people?  And what is wrong with the media who cover for them and fawn over them?         

If it’s not Nina Burleigh offering to service Bill Clinton just for keeping abortion legal, it’s Catherine Rampell writing a heavy-breathing “50 Shades of Gross” article about the dreamboat nanny-banger.  “He supports women!”  (Yes.  Because after you slap them so hard, you’ve got to support them with both hands so that they don’t fall down, and make a scene on the red carpet.) 

“He supports abortion!”  Yes.  The guy whose nanny has an extremely inconvenient pregnancy is a big abortion fan.  UNEXPECTEDLY! 

After watching Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary and Kamala, et. al., I know that the powerful leftist women in the Democrat party are pretty terrible.

But their men might be worse!

Hamas delenda est!

On the Anniversary of 10/7, Terrorists Try to Replace Leaders Faster than the IDF Can Kill Them (posted 10/7/24)

Once again, events are happening too fast for me to keep up with.  The presidential campaigns are accelerating, the polls remain tight, and FEMA’s relief efforts in the wake of Helene are being badly bungled, in keeping with Biden-Harris’ sterling record over the last four years.

Meanwhile, my oldest daughter remains in the hospital in Denver – she’s making progress and doing well, and thanks for your continued prayers — and now it’s my youngest daughter’s turn to be in the path of a second storm in as many weeks.  Thankfully she’s on the Atlantic coast, and so Milton will likely be a tropical storm rather than a hurricane by the time it reaches her campus. 

Additionally, I’ve noticed a moment in the Vance-Walz debate that I’d over-looked before, and I also need to take some well-deserved shots at Que Mala’s beta-boy role-model husband, Doug Emhoff. 

But I’m going to have to save all that for a Wednesday column, because today is the anniversary of the evil attacks on Israel last October, and attention must be paid.

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Israel’s approach over the last several months: they’re ignoring Biden and the Democrats’ advice and input – everywhere and at all times a wise move! – and they’ve been pursuing terrorists with the wrath of an Old Testament God.  (Some might even say THE Old Testament God.) 

I admire the way they’ve minimized civilian casualties, achieving a civilians-to-enemy-combatants-killed ratio far lower than in any war in all of history, including the ones we’ve waged during our own country’s history. 

And I love the way they’ve mixed traditional arms and operations with high-tech tweaks, psychological warfare, and hilarious, intelligence-aided trickery to take out the top levels of Hamas and Hezbollah.  The latest details came out in a story this weekend, explaining how the weapons geeks in Israel had wired the explosive pagers such that an authentication message appeared on the screens of those pagers that didn’t detonate in pockets.

The authentication process to read the page required the users to touch two different buttons on both sides of the pagers, which meant that many of the terrorists who received the page had both of their hands mangled or blown off, along with being blinded if they were holding the pager close to their faces when they pressed those buttons. 

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them, until you remember who they are, and what they did to end up holding those pagers in the first place.  

The frequency of Israel’s successes is making it hard to keep up with the latest news.  I remember that during the Iraq war, we made a deck of cards featuring the 52 top scumbags in Saddam’s regime.  As our forces advanced, we started taking playing cards off the table.

That wouldn’t work for Israel, though, because they’d be changing out cards faster than a casino trying to cool off a gambler on a hot streak at the blackjack table.  In just two air strikes – the one that took out Nasrallah and his deputies and the one the week before that – they wiped out the equivalent of three entire suits of cards.      

Each day I come across a story about the latest Hezbollah boss to assume rubble temperature.  These guys are dropping like old Soviet commies in the Reagan era.  We try to set up a phone call with Achmed Brezhnev, only to find out that he’s been replaced with Muhammad Andropov, and before Tony Blinken can catch a flight over to kiss his butt, he’s replaced by Hassan Chernenko. 

Last Wednesday, Israel located Khider al-Shaebia, the terrorist responsible for the rocket attack on 7/27 that killed 12 Druze children playing soccer.  Apparently al-Shaebia wasn’t carrying a detonating pager in his pocket on 9/17, because he didn’t get turned into the Queen of al-Shaebia that day.  So the IDF had to eliminate him the old-fashioned way: with an airstrike. 

The latest head of Hezbollah was Hashem Safi Al-Din, who enjoyed a tenure of 7 days in office before experiencing rapid molecular disassembly last Friday, courtesy of an IDF air strike.  Several of his likely successor candidates are high-ranking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Fortunately, they were gathered around Al-Din when the clock struck Boom!     

At this point, I’d love to be a fly on the shell-pocked wall, observing a bunch of the remaining, twitchy Hezbo commanders meeting to decide the next leader.  I don’t know how they do that in the first place.  It’s not like they’ve got a phone chain they can use.  And I’m guessing that emails or zoom calls are out, too.

But however they put the word out, they somehow end up cowering around a folding table with one leg missing under a half-collapsed parking garage down a rubble-strewn alley.  I’m picturing it goes something like this:

Weird Beard #1: You’ve probably already heard that Muhammad Abdul Aziz was killed by the Jewish pig-dogs. 

Weird Beard #2:  Oh no!   How’d they get him?  Exploding pager?  Exploding radio?

WB#1:  Poisoned hummus.  (One guy starts spitting violently.)  What are you doing?

Spitting Guy:  I just ate some hummus. 

WB#3:  We ALL just ate hummus.  The Jews haven’t poisoned all the hummus in Lebanon.

WB#2:  Are you sure?  

(They all look at each other uncertainly.) 

WB#4:  I thought Muhammad Abdul Aziz got killed when his scooter exploded.

WB#1:  No, that was Abdul Aziz Muhammad.  He died last Thursday.  We’re talking about Muhammad Abdul Aziz.  He was halfway through a romantic dinner with his goat bride when he pitched down face-first in his bowl of hummus.

WB#5:  I thought he was blown up when he knelt on an explosive prayer rug?

WB#6:  No, that was Mohammad Aziz Abdul, last Friday.  The hummus thing was this Monday.

WB#2:  Are you sure?  Because I thought—

WB#1:  Okay look.  For the last time, here’s the rundown:

A week ago Friday, Hassan Nasrallah got a building dropped on him, along with a half-dozen other Nasrallah cousins and brothers, two of his brother’s-in-law, and his father-in-law.

On Saturday, Muhammad Suleiman was named as his replacement.  When he went to his brother Abdul Suleiman’s house on Sunday to announce the good news, a ring doorbell that the Jews had installed two months ago blew his head off. 

Abdul became the leader, but on Wednesday he used a q-tip that Mossad had coated with napalm, and his head caught fire.

Hassan Suleiman was elected on Thursday, but on Saturday he found—

WB#5 (snapping his fingers and pointing): The kosher cobra in the toilet!

WB#1 (sighing): Yes, the cobra in the toilet.  Then Hassan Abdul took over, and he stayed in his house until Wednesday, when someone slipped a copy of the Beirut Post under his front door.

(The men in the circle looked at each other.) 

WB#3: Self-igniting newspaper?

WB#4: Poisoned newsprint ink?

WB#6: Oh, I know!  The paper had the transcript of a Kamala Harris interview, and halfway through reading it he shot himself in the head because he couldn’t stand it any more?          

WB#1 (shaking his head):  Exploding eyeglasses, courtesy of Shin Bet Optometrists.

Then it was Abdul Aziz Muhammad on the scooter on Thursday, then Muhammad Aziz Abdul with the detonating prayer rug last Friday, then Muhammad Abdul Aziz with the poison hummus on Monday.

WB#2:  So now who’s up? 

Everyone looks at everybody else, then most of them stare at their sandals, or at the ceiling, or out into the alley, whistling softly.

WB#1 (pulling out a bunch of straws, snapping one off, then mixing them up and holding his hand out with their ends sticking out) Everybody pick one.

They all choose with shaking hands, and Muhammad Muhammad Aziz pulls the short one.  He sighs deeply, while everyone bows their head to him and calls him “Sheik.” 

MMA: Great.  Let me ask one favor though.  Whatever you do, when you are setting up the seating chart for my funeral, don’t seat my goat wife anywhere near my goat mistress.  They do not get along, and I don’t want trouble.    

And, scene. 

On this somber anniversary, I wish fitful sleep, haunted dreams and swift justice for the Iranian government, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.  For the Israelis, I wish good luck and good hunting, and the return of the remaining hostages.

Hamas delenda est!

Israel Goes Michael Corleone on Its Enemies, and J.D. Vance Shines in the VP Debate (posted 10/4/24)

Before I get started, thank you all so much for your kind words and prayers for Katie!  She is continuing to improve, if not as quickly as we’d all like. 

I’ve learned something new about surgeries and the human body.  It turns out that after intestinal surgery, your bowel needs to “wake up” before you can eat solid food and get everything going again.  Apparently every patient is different in this respect, and generally speaking, the more the surgeons had to handle your intestines and work on them, the longer it takes to get to the post-surgery “waking up” part.

Katie said that her surgeons “pulled out and handled my entire bowel before throwing it back in,” which is why she’s not yet been able to start eating normally again. 

I didn’t appreciate her word choice there – I would prefer “…before lovingly and gently putting it back in place” over “throwing it back in” – but she has been decreasing her pain meds and moving around more.   We’re just waiting for everything to wake up.

So now I’ve learned that my daughter has at least one flaw: a drowsy bowel.  (And no, if you’re thinking of starting a garage band and are looking for a name, I do not recommend “Katie and the Drowsy Bowels.” Even though it does sound sort of cool.)

Speaking of drowsy bowels – I know: very graceful transition – how about that Joe Biden?  Even though he’s shuffled off this mortal coil, he’s still keeping his unblemished “wrong about every foreign policy decision he’s ever made” losing streak.

This time he’s very concerned that Israel has been taking down terrorists like Ted Kennedy knocking down rum-and-Cokes at an open bar.  He once again called for the Israelis to grant the terrorists a cease-fire.  You know, like the ones we gave Hitler in April of 1945, and the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that August.   

Biden has perversely made Trump’s prediction from 2015 come true: In his eyes the Jews are doing too well lately, and he’s saying, “No! Please!  We’re tired of winning. It’s too much winning!”  

Within a couple of days of Hassan Nasrallah’s death – reportedly via many 2000-pound “bunker buster” bombs – the IDF also took out Nasrallah’s brother-in-law, as well as hitting another building where Hashem Safieddine, who is now presumed but not confirmed dead.

Hashem – his friends called him “Hash,” which is what he hopefully looks like now – was a cousin of Nasrallah’s, and one of the senior leaders most likely to be his successor.  Which appears to be a temp position, now that Netanyahu is ignoring Joey Gaffes, and is busily engaged in a carnival game of “whack-a-turban” with the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is darkly comic to see hapless Antony Blinken trying to negotiate with what one news report called “the remnants of Hezbollah.”  Who could he possibly even be talking to?  I doubt that anybody who was anyone in Hezbollah’s higher ranks is still answering his phone, even assuming his answering hand is still attached to his body! 

Which means that Blinken is likely standing around near a mosque, talking to the first Tom, Dick or Achmed who will give him the time of day.  That’s what Biden’s vaunted diplomatic strategy has come to: the lead guitarist for the unknown band “Ablinken” (I’m not making that up), “negotiating” with a slow-witted, one-handed assistant goat-wrangler who is now the highest-ranking surviving member of Hezbo terrorist union Local 157. 

I love it!  A few months ago, Netanyahu was fighting for his political life.  Now he’s Michael Corleone, settling all the family business as he attends his nephew’s bris. 

Mohammed “Moe” Green gets shot through his glasses by IDF commandos.  The Mossad traps Hezbo’s top drone guy in a revolving door and then beeps the exploding pager in his pocket.  Shin Bet catches Abdul Tattaglia in bed with a goat and machine-guns them both. 

Two Israeli soldiers dressed like Muslim Virtue Police gun down Bilal Barzini on the steps of a Sharia Court-house . 

Nasrallah himself (played by Abe Vigoda in a keffiyeh), when confronted by a senior IDF commander, says, “Tell Bibi it was only business.  Jihadi business.  Can you get me off the hook?  For old times’ sake?”  And the commander says, “Can’t do it, Hassan.”  And then leaves the building right before the bunker buster hits. 

And now the weird beards running Iran are apparently as imbecilic as the former leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, because they fired 180 missiles into Israel, hitting very little, but giving the Israelis the justification (as though they didn’t already have it) to go simultaneously high-tech and Old Testament on their evil arses.

I can’t wait to see what Israel does next.  But if I were working at an Iranian nuclear facility or missile battery, I’d consider calling in sick, like Carlo when Sonny was set up for the toll booth massacre.   

One other positive development was the reaction of many Lebanese and Syrians when the Jews whacked Nasrallah: they were passing out candies and celebrating in the streets!  I’m sure that doesn’t mean that all of those people are enlightened Jeffersonian democrats and philosemites.  They might just be a different brand of Muslim, glad because some of the “bad” Muslims got the crotch-detonating pager treatment.

But still, I was reminded of the mobs of Gazans celebrating on October 7th.  They were celebrating and spitting on the corpses of poor Jewish girls whom their horrible co-religionists had raped and murdered, and then paraded through their streets.  So good riddance to them, and good luck to the Syrians and Lebanese.

In domestic news, I was thrilled with J.D. Vance’s debate performance! He did everything I’d wished that Trump would do in his debate: kept his cool, stuck to specifics, and parried every attack on Trump by citing his record, and then reminding viewers of Kamala’s record.  He also came across as empathetic, sensitive and positive, thus giving himself the best chance to persuade any female voters who are still persuadable.

Walz was better than Kamala – the lowest of low bars – but was still bumbling and gaffe-prone.  Even viewers who were only passing through an airport and didn’t hear him call himself a knucklehead – fact check: true! – got a visual of his bug-eyed awkwardness. 

The moderators were once again biased hacks, though not as thoroughly awful as David Muir and Linsey Davis.  I’m more convinced than ever that I was right in my columns a couple of weeks ago: future debate moderators should just be time-keepers, and stay out of the way.

It’s infuriating to see some “journalist” cutting off the candidates with comments like, “I want to move on” and “There’s a lot more to get to.”  We don’t care what you want, Teleprompter Reader.  No one’s voting for you, and you’re not the candidates’ parents!

They once again fact-checked the GOP candidate, even though they had agreed not to fact-check either side, and their “fact check” was once again wrong.  When Vance called the Haitians in Springfield “illegal immigrants,” Margaret Brennan jumped in to misleadingly condescend:  “Just to clarify for our viewers, [the Haitians in Springfield] have legal status.”

Vance handled it perfectly.  As soon as he started to correct her, both moderators interrupted him and tried to move on, but he wouldn’t let them.  He kept speaking until they had to momentarily shut up.  He pointed out that they had broken their promise not to do fact checks, and then accurately destroyed the faux fact check. 

He correctly said that the Haitians came illegally, and then used the CBP-1 application to file an asylum claim and then, “be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”  As he pointed out how different that was from going through the legal immigration process, the moderators realized he’d just pantsed them on live tv, and frantically cut his mike. 

Perfect!

I don’t know where this race stands, because there are contradictory polls everywhere, and the average of all polling shows the race tied.  That’s a depressing thought, but my gut instinct is to guess that Trump’s at least a little ahead.  Though it’s only a guess, I will cite two bits of evidence.

First, Kamala has been her terrible self in a series of recent interviews.  Her rambling, word-goulash answers (“word salad” is a too healthy and positive metaphor for the verbal dog’s breakfasts that she has been serving up) aren’t getting any better. 

You can always tell when she learns a new word or phrase, because she immediately starts beating it into the ground.  We all know “see what could be, unburdened by what has been,” and “in terms of…” and “dreams, aspirations and ambitions.”  Last week someone gave her a notecard with the word “holistic” on it, and she went on a compulsive, Tourette’s-like seizure of  holistically holistic holisticality.   

In her recent talk to a bunch of athletes – huh? – she rolled out one of her old favorites, which she must think makes her sound tough: “I eat ‘no’ for breakfast!”

And Willie Brown for lunch.

Okay, that was beneath me.  Withdrawn.

By the way, I am pleasantly surprised that her handlers have been putting Que Mala out there as much as they have over the last couple of weeks.  They have to know how terrible she is at speaking, and they’ve gotten her into a dead heat by hiding her completely. 

In fact, my main argument for Trump debating her again was that she otherwise won’t say another word in public between now and election day, thus hiding her total vacuity in a way that she wouldn’t have been able to in a debate.  But she’s actually been fielding some pitched softballs in interviews, and somehow still managing to miss the balls and hit herself in the head with the bat.

And I know what you’re thinking when you heard ‘softballs’: “Ooh, Martin’s going to talk about Doug Emhoff now.” 

And I am.  But not until my Monday column. (Consider yourself teased.)

The only rational reason I can think of for the Dems putting her out there is that they must have some internal polling that shows that Trump is ahead of her.

Which brings me to my second and last point: the cross tabs in the polling don’t make sense.

Nearly all polls show the overall race within the margin of error, but they also show Trump doing substantially better than he did in the past with important sub-groups of voters.  For example, he trailed Biden in 2020 among Hispanics by 34 points, but is only down to Kamala with them by 14. 

The same goes for a lot of groups: blacks, young people, independents, etc.  In every case, Trump is doing markedly better with each sub-group than he did in 2016 or 2020, yet he’s supposed to be in a dead heat with the electorate as a whole.

He was never going to get votes from hard-left Dems.  (Fun fact: after the Biden self-immolation/train-wreck debate in June, 20% of viewers said that BIDEN WON!  Those people are un-freakin’-reachable.)  But he certainly hasn’t lost any of his base. 

So either the internals are accurate and Trump is ahead overall, or the internals are all wrong and the overall race is really tied.  Either way, the left is going to try to cheat, so we need to get out our vote and aggressively poll watch.

The bottom line:  I won’t be able to relax until Katie is home and fully recovered, and Trump has won the election. 

And I’m praying for both! 

Hamas delenda est!

Getting Through the Storm, and a Daughter’s Surgery (posted 10/2/24)

This has been a hectic week for me, and I’ve been out of the loop re: both national news and the CO site and community.  You know it’s bad when the great and powerful CO himself texted me to say that some COers have asked if I’m okay, and he suggested that I provide a “proof of life” post for my “adoring fans.” 

Did I need to quote that “adoring fans” part? 

Probably not.  But I like the sound of it, so sue me. 

Anyway, I’m still here, and thanks for your concern.

I last posted in the early hours of last Friday, after I’d inadvertently left my wife to face the hurricane alone in Florida, while I went up to Tennessee to stay with my mom, while sis and her husband took a short trip to listen to some gospel singing in east Tennessee.     

Of course the storm had been stronger than we’d expected, knocking the power off at my house, and actually causing some flooding that devastated the Carolinas and east Tennessee, causing my sister and her husband to come home a day earlier than planned.  (By the way, our power came back on after around 30 hours, and our house and rentals and tenants were all unharmed.)

But it turned out that early on Friday, the storm became much less important to us, because that morning, my daughter Katie’s husband rushed her to the ER in Denver, where she had surgery later that day.

Regular readers will remember that Katie is the best pediatric nurse in the mountain west (references available on request), and that she is an apple of her dad’s eye.  I’m not sure how much I’ve written about this before, but she was born with Hirschsprung’s syndrome, a condition involving under-developed nerve endings in the colon, in utero.  She had a colostomy and half of her colon removed when she was three days old, and then another major surgery when she was three months old.

Thankfully, she takes after her old man, in that she is as tough as a $2 steak.  She fully recovered, and after some daunting infections and hospitalizations during her first five years of life, she has been blessedly healthy since then.

Until Friday, when it was discovered that she had many adhesions throughout her intestine, unwelcome leftovers from her long-ago surgeries and internal scarring. 

Before Friday, if you’d asked me, “What is the longest and most painful four and a half hours anyone can experience?” I would have said, “Listening to Que Mala Harris trying to answer a straightforward question.” 

But now I know that I was wrong.  Because my Katie was in surgery for four and a half hours, during which my wife prayed and worried in a dark house in Florida, and I did the same in rainy Tennessee.  While we were waiting, we contemplated how we were going to get flights to Denver from two different towns in the aftermath of a storm that had caused havoc at the local airports.

Then the news arrived: her docs were fantastic, and she’d come through the surgery like a champ.  They’d initially tried to do the operation laparoscopically, but when they got inside and saw the extent of the scarring, they realized they’d need to open her up more comprehensively. She’s got an impressive scar, but thank God the docs didn’t need to take out any more of her bowel.

Before the surgery she had been hesitant about my wife making the trip out until she saw how the surgery went, but afterwards, she wanted her mom there.  (Mom was chomping at the bit, and I’m not sure it would have made a difference.  Apparently there is a Norwegian-American rule to the effect that once you’ve given birth to someone, you have the inalienable right to go see them whenever they’re sick, and regardless of their feelings on the issue.  Or so she explained.)

So it was decided that I’d keep the home fires burning, while Karen flew to Denver on Saturday.  Katie will be in the hospital for another three or four days at least, with her husband and mom nearby. 

As always happens after a very bad scare, the world seems a little more vibrant now.  Colors are brighter, food tastes better, and politics seem like insignificant annoyances.  Our prayers have been answered, and our worst fears averted, and life is good!

Tonight, for the first time in nearly a week, I started paying attention again, and watched the VP debate.  I’ll have more to say on Friday, but when our opponent confesses on tv that he’s a knucklehead, and our guy does so well that the partisan moderators have to turn his mic off, you know things went well for the good guys. 

Speaking of which, if I were in the Iranian government, I wouldn’t be answering any phone calls, pages, texts, or radio messages anytime soon.    

Hamas delenda est!

Israel Continues to Win, and a Hurricane Approaches (posted 9/27/24)

Before I get on to personal stuff, I saw that Israel took out yet another Hezbollah big shot yesterday, this time the head of their drone unit, a guy named Mohammed.  (Unexpectedly!)  He had an apartment on the third floor of a 10-story building, and the IDF managed to put three missiles into his apartment. 

The tone of the media coverage is interesting.  The AP mentioned that Mohammed’s apartment – it used to be turn-key, but now it’s a fixer upper – is in a building very near the one where the Dirty Dozen Hezbo commanders were flattened last Friday.   The story noted that Thursday’s strike was the fourth to hit a specific area in Beirut, calling that neighborhood “a Hezbollah stronghold.” 

The AP needs to look up the definition of the word “stronghold,” because I think they’ve confused it with “missile magnet.” 

You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh at the no-win situation the terrorists have gotten themselves into.  They can’t use cell phones, pagers, radios, walkie-talkies or smoke signals – unless the smoke involved is rising from their braised hands or genitals.  They can’t meet out in the open, and they can’t meet in an office building.

And now they can’t spend time relaxing in their own apartments, flipping through potential matches on Goat Tinder™. 

And you know that none of them saw this coming when they decided to fire off a few hundred missiles at Israel, thinking that they were preoccupied with the terrorists in Gaza, and wouldn’t be able to respond effectively.

How does that old cliché go?  “Everybody has a plan until their pager blows various appendages off?”

On a personal note, I am writing this from Tennessee, where I have once again come up to visit my mom, while my sister and her husband took a previously scheduled trip for a few days.  Regular readers will remember that mom is dealing with Alzheimer’s, which makes every trip to see her both precious and a little heartbreaking.

This trip is a little more fraught because I’ve inadvertently left my wife at home in Gainesville, to ride out a hurricane!  When I got up here on Tuesday, Helene was tracking out in the Gulf, around 300 miles from our home in the middle of north central Florida, so we expected some heavy rain and only some moderately gusting winds.

But the storm grew stronger in the last two days, so even though the track has not come closer to our area, the expected winds are stronger.  As I’m writing this overnight, my wife has texted to say that she’s lost power, and she’s going to be updating me regularly.  She’s got the company of our Wonder Dog and three moderately-useful-at-best cats, and her brother lives nearby, but it feels lousy to not be there with her.

Of course we are praying for the residents of the Big Bend area where the storm has made landfall.  The expected devastating effects there will dwarf any that we expect to see in our area, so we won’t be complaining about any clean-up that we’ll need to do in the coming days. 

At a time like this I’m grateful for our excellent governor, and the efforts that our state has made to prepare for and respond to this storm.  And I hope to be able to report good news and then get back to the usual commentary and snarkery next week.

Hamas delenda est!

Israel Still on a Roll, + Advice for Trump (posted 9/23/24)

In my first two columns last week, I made a case for why Trump should try to take on Kamala in one more debate.  In my other three columns, I focused on Israel’s amazing technical feats, including blinding the Iranian ambassador with science (ear worm!), and converting thousands of Hezbo pagers into pocket-sized Elvis impersonators (“We’ll take your hand/ we’ll take your eye sight, too/For we’re Mossad/and we’ll have revenge on you!”)

Boom!  Double-ear-worm paragraph, right out of the box!

Oh, wait! 

“Last Tuesday, all the Hebrews seemed so far away,

Now it seems they’re in Beirut to stay,

Oh I regret…last Tuesday. 

Suddenly, I’m not half the thug I used to be.

All my friends are calling me Lefty,

That phony page, came suddenly.”

That’s an ear-worm stand-up triple to start the week.

The good news is that Israel is still on a roll.  No, they haven’t pulled off their next sneaky tech masterpiece yet – I’m betting on either exploding K-cups (the “k” is for “kaboom!”) or else chemically re-engineered breakfast cereal (in the bowl they look like normal Frosted Flakes, but add milk, annnnndddd… Shrapnel Flakes!) (“Theyyyyyrrrrrrrreeee Grape[shot]!”)

But they did execute a Friday airstrike (9/20/24) that collapsed a building in Beirut on 12 senior Hezbollah commanders.  How spoiled am I by the wizardry of Operation Pin-Point Pager on Tuesday? 

So spoiled that when I heard that the IDF flattened the Hezbollah Dirty Dozen in a conventional airstrike, I thought, “Borrrrrinnng!”

And just in case any CNN hacks are reading this, of the 12 ex-terrorists now being spit-roasted by Satan, one was named Abdul, but there was also one Abdullah, one Abu, two Husseins and three Hassans.

[engage Hans Landa filter] That’s a BINGO! [end Landa filter] 

And I didn’t even have to use the free space on my “Smashed Jihadis” bingo card. 

How would you like to be a terrorist Hezbollah member right now, even assuming you weren’t badly wounded last week?  You can’t call your fellow scumbags, you can’t page, you can’t text, you can’t radio.  And now you can’t talk in person! 

The best their propagandists could do over the weekend was to make the scary announcement that Hezbollah is now calling for “a new phase of battle!”

I’ll bet they are, since the last phase was the “Getting Your Cojones Blown Across the Lebanese Countryside” phase.  I should think they’d like to put that phase in the rear-view mirror.

Except that they can’t adjust the rear-view mirror, since their mirror-adjusting hand has been blown off.  And it wouldn’t do any good anyway, because during two-fer Tuesday, they lost both their hand and their eyes, and thus can’t use any kind of mirror. 

So that’s the good news. 

The bad news is that there has been no movement on the “Trump should debate Kamala” front, though I’m still holding out a faint hope.  I think she’d be stupid to debate Trump again, because she’s so vulnerable, and she may well win by hiding for 6 more weeks. 

But because I know that she could do so much worse than she did in the debate, and that Trump could do so much better than he did, I’m still hoping it could happen. 

Even if it doesn’t, I’ve still got some advice for Trump that would work well in a debate, and also in future interviews, since his interviews with MSM “journalists” are basically hostile debates anyway. 

I know I’m far from the only one to comment on this, but I’d love to see him make more specific claims, instead of defaulting to making bombastic/exaggerated claims, and vague ones – often at the same time.  Both of those allow his opponents easy opportunities to refute him.

The exaggerated claims can be discounted because they can be factually refuted.  Ex: “We’re winning by a lot,” (when he’s winning within the margin of error); “We had the best economy the world has ever seen,” (there are so many ways to measure that, and one indicator or another can always be cited to show stronger performance in some other historical period). 

In the debate he said (roughly) this about immigration: “Biden didn’t let in 10 million, like people say.  It’s more like 21 million.  In fact, I’m sure it’s more than that.” 

As is often the case with Trump, he’s far closer to right than the Dems are.  If they’re admitting that 10 million have come in, you know there are a ton who got in without being caught or counted, and they’ve got every incentive to keep their estimate on the low end. 

But if Trump is going to cite a stat, he needs to back it up with a source… and it’s never a good idea to undermine your own statistic!  “It’s more like 21 million… it’s probably way more than that?”  Which is it?  It looks like you’re just picking a number out of your AOC, and that’s not a good look.

The histrionic claims are mistakes too, because they cannot be fact-checked or supported, and because he throws out so many that it’s easy for many persuadable voters to start discounting everything he says. 

Consider the impact of this example:

Kamala says she’s going to do everything possible to bring down inflation.  (And yes, it’s a lie, and she’s the one who caused it, and etc.)

Option A: Trump responds with, “Under Biden-Harris, inflation exploded!  No one had ever seen anything like it.  I left them perfect inflation and the best interest rates in 100 years, and they blew both through the roof.  People didn’t think such a thing was possible, but they did it.  They destroyed the economy with their skyrocketing inflation and interest rates.”

Yes, Trump’s basic point is true.  But by not giving any numbers at all, and piling bombast upon bombast, he makes it too easy for anyone not already in his camp to either tune him out or disbelieve him.

Option B: “The day I left office, inflation was 1.4%, and it had averaged under 2% for my entire term.  Biden-Harris and a Democrat congress pushed through $4.7 trillion in extra borrowed money in the mis-named ‘Covid Relief Bill’ and the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ and within 16 months inflation had exploded to a peak of 9%.  Today it’s still 2.7%, which is almost double what she inherited from me!  That shocking inflation spike forced the Fed to raise interest rates; when I left office the 30-year mortgage rate was 2.65%.  Today it’s over 6%, meaning that a $220K mortgage that used to cost you $778 per month now costs you $1297!”

It’s easy to refute glittering generalities, but how can she (or some MSM hack) refute or distract from statistics like those?  I guess she could say that he’s making up those numbers, and she doesn’t believe him, but that’s only setting herself up to get pantsed, when he comes back with, “The interest rate numbers are from the Federal Reserve, and the inflation rates come from X government agency.  If you don’t accept those numbers, what numbers would you cite instead, and from what source?”

Trump has a great story to tell, and the Dems and the MSM – but I repeat myself – are doing everything they can to keep him from telling it.  He spent too much of the middle of the first debate helping them. 

He’s been doing better at many events since then, and I’m really hoping he takes one more shot at her in a debate, and uses the opportunity to tell his story, and destroy hers.

If she chickens out, he should hammer her on that in every speech and appearance.  And then he should treat the MSM drones who interview him as if they are nothing more than a platoon of little Que Malas.

Because they are.

Hamas delenda est!