We Must Keep Joe Biden in This Race! (posted 2/12/24)

Even though I am wildly popular here in CO Nation, I don’t write columns to be popular.  I’ve got to call balls and strikes as I see them.  And that’s why I must deliver this sure-to-be unpopular message:

I think the MSM is treating Biden way too harshly and unfairly.  As patriotic Americans, we’ve got to do everything we can to defend him from these spurious attacks, and support keeping him in office and running for re-election!

I know.  But hear me out. 

Yes, the guy was never more than a glad-handing mediocrity, a fumbling, bumbling low-IQ gaffe machine. And that was back when he was young and at the height of his powers, finishing at the low end of his law school class and plagiarizing his way right out of two presidential runs!

Sidebar: Can you imagine what would happen if you had the misfortune to hire one of the attorneys who finished BELOW Joe Biden in law school?!  Good lord!

You’d pick him out of the phone book, then make an appointment with him to represent you in your divorce.  Then you’d meet him at his office, which would be the smallest space in an aging mini-mall in an iffy neighborhood, sandwiched in between a pawn shop and a Tai Kwan Do studio with no Asian instructors.

And you’d explain to him that you’ve got a solid pre-nup and you caught your wife cheating on you, plus she’s got two DUI’s and an open warrant for a Failure to Appear in a meth distribution case out of Abilene, Texas. 

And the guy would smooth out his comb-over and say, “No problem, this is a slam dunk case.  I went to law school with Joe Biden, you know.”

And three months later you’d stomp back into his office wearing only a pair of mis-matched flip-flops and your oldest, threadbare boxers, holding a cardboard box of VHS tapes and a third-place bowling trophy from junior high.  And you’d drop the box on his desk and say, “You did finish higher in your law school class than Joe Biden, right?”  

And he’d say, “Why do you ask?”

And you’d say, “Because my cheating, alcoholic meth-dealer of an ex-wife got the house and the cars and my 401K and the clothes off my back.  And now I’ve got to pay her alimony and child support.  And we don’t even have any kids!!”

And, scene.

Where was I? 

Oh yeah.

Now Biden’s just a shell of his former shell of a self, and is manifestly unworthy of being president. 

So yes, it would technically be better if he stepped down today. 

Except that then, Que Mala would be the president.  And yes, we all just threw up in the back of our mouths a little.  Or possibly a lot.  And some of you are dry heaving over a waste basket right now, just because I brought up that possibility.

Sorry about that.  But it’s too late for a trigger warning, so let’s just move on.

Here’s the situation: the three people on earth most likely to be our next president are Willie Brown’s former side piece (underwater by something like 19 points on approve/disapprove), the late Joe Biden (underwater by around 17 points, and falling like Jeffrey Toobin’s pants on a Zoom call), and Donald Trump (underwater by around 12, which is roughly 3 points better than he was a couple of months ago). 

I desperately want Trump to win, and it’s looking way better for him against both Biden and Que Mala than it did in recent months.  (Please God, I don’t ask for much, but this one time… Our country needs this!)

But if anybody else is up for the Dems in November – DeSantis took Ken Doll Newsom apart at the joint, so the most likely stand-in now appears to be Big Mike Obama – Trump is going to be at a comparative disadvantage. 

As ridiculous as that is!  I’m not saying it makes sense at all, or that it’s right.  But that’s my honest take on the situation.  Trump is more underwater with the independents and the mushy middle of persuadables outside of the right-wing base – which are frustratingly ALWAYS the ones who decide presidential elections – than any pol other than Brandon and the Cackle Queen.

Have you ever seen two exhausted boxers in a late round, when the guy who’s losing starts wrapping his arms around the other boxer and holding on for dear life whenever they get close?  It’s a good strategy to run out the clock, especially when you can’t afford to go toe-to-toe with your opponent, because even a single, glancing punch is going to turn out your lights.

That’s what Trump should do with Biden, but for the opposite reason.  He should close up with him and then go into a clinch, so that he can hold Biden up and keep him upright until the final bell.

Don’t go after him 24/7 for the next nine months.  Don’t get in his face and challenge him to a debate.  (You already gave him an out for that by skipping the GOP debates anyway, but now that can actually work for you.) 

If you get on the same stage with him and start throwing rhetorical haymakers, he’s going to go down like Mike Tyson when Buster Douglas caught him with that flurry of jabs in the 10th round.  And then the Dems would discover (unexpectedly!) that’s Biden’s actually been dead for several years now, and sub in somebody with at least a 50/50 chance to beat you.

Fortunately for us, if Biden can retreat to his basement, the MSM will do everything they can to protect him.  The Dems believe that he can beat Trump (or at least they did), and their strategy to use sleazy lawfare to simultaneously help Trump get the GOP nomination and weaken him with the independents was probably their smartest course of action. 

I mean, if you accept that they have rejected their responsibility to behave as ethical and sane adults.  Which they have definitely done, for lo these many decades now.      

But now that they’re there, they just need to keep Biden away from microphones.  And cameras.  And any competent journalist who might somehow slip inside the White House cordon to yell a question at him when he’s concentrating on wobbling his way across the lawn without falling and shattering one of his bird-like hip or leg bones.  Or arm bones.  Or ribs.

The establishment and MSM have already been doing their level best to run cover for him.  And there’s no better sign of that than the DOJ’s kid-gloves decision to not go after him for his obviously illegitimate taking of classified documents and sprinkling them all over the eastern seaboard, from his beach house to his garage to his phony “Biden Center” at U Penn.

The investigation admitted that there’s plenty of evidence that Biden took docs he had no right to take… but basically says that they aren’t going to prosecute him because he’s mentally incompetent.

What?!

That’s what the lawyer for the guy who gets caught with the bodies of 5 murdered nurses half-buried in the dirt basement under his house argues!  “Sure, my guy went on a multi-state murder spree, but look at him.  The poor sap doesn’t know if he’s afoot or horseback.  You can’t convict him!”

But at the end of that story, his best-case scenario is for the authorities to put the mentally ill guy into a psych ward instead of a supermax prison. 

You know what the authorities DON’T do?  [begin Sam Kinison filter] THEY DON’T SEND HIM BACK TO THE WHITE HOUSE TO LEAD THE FREE WORLD! OH! OHHHHHHH!  [end Kinison filter]

It’s even worse than that, because you know that Ben Hur was just feeling sorry for Biden, because he actually said, in his actual report, that Biden is “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

You don’t have to understand the Latin phrase “non compos mentis” to understand what Hur just said about Joe Biden.  Even my daughter and her friends, when she was in second grade, could understand what that meant: as they would say, he’s “cuckoo fried chicken!”

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations!  You never want to be in the position of explaining away the manifest flaws of a chief executive that way. “That’s just Joe.  He means well.”

If Ben Hur was a genteel Southerner, his report would be titled, “An Inquiry Into Joe Biden’s Handling of Classified Documents: Bless his heart.”

So kill him with kindness, Mr. Trump.

No, strike that!  Don’t kill him!  For the love of God, don’t kill him!

Treat him like he is a fragile porcelain mouse.  Compliment him. You probably can’t say, “The president is a formidable opponent,” with a straight face.  So go for something more believable, like, “I know that he’s doing the best he can to implement his policies.” 

Or, “I don’t think he’s lost a step since he took office.  He looks as healthy as ever to me, and even if something happened to him (unexpectedly!), Kamala is ready to step in and take over for him.  But that won’t be necessary, because Joe Biden is every bit as effective and on top of things as he was when he was Obama’s VP.  Even though he can’t remember when that was.  Or who Obama was.”

Whoo.  This is going to be tough, I know.  But cut those last two phrases.  Just discipline yourself, and stick to the compliments.

Please Mr. Trump, we need this!  You don’t need to go into attack mode, and you don’t need to get distracted.  Don’t say that E. Jean Carroll is a loony beeyatch.  (Even though she obiously is.) Or that the judges in all of your bogus trials are evil leftists, persecuting you for political reasons. (Ditto.)

Just hold some rallies, bask in the base’s love, and stay on friendly ground.  Talk for 5 minutes, saying things like, “How about that border crisis?” Or “Remember when gas was $2.15 a gallon?” Or, “Did you ever notice that Putin took Crimea under Obama and attacked Ukraine just a few years ago, but when I was president, Putin stayed on his chain?”

Then say, “Goodnight folks!  See you in November!”

So as painful as this may be for me to write…

Biden/Harris 2024!

Oh, and also…

Hamas delenda est!

Grandma Squanto, Woke Kindergarten Fails, & A Dem Accidentally Tells a Border Truth (posted 2/9/24)

I haven’t given Liz Warren enough attention lately, but she posted a short video this week that I can’t resist.  And you’ll never guess what Grandma Squanto is on the warpath about now.

Conestoga wagons leaving muddy tracks all over her sacred great plains homeland?

The high cost of teepee insurance?

Repeating rifles that allow toxic white males to get off three shots at her before she can even notch a single arrow?

Nope.  She’s got her buckskin dress over her head because – and I cannot stress enough how much I am not making this up – big corporations are screwing the American people out of oreos and Doritos.

Her video is only a minute long, and you really should watch it.  I think of it as a sequel to her famous kitchen video, in which she won worst actress in the role of a relatable, blue-collar woman.  As you’ll recall, she said, “I think I’m a gonna have me a beer.”  And then she asked her beta-WASP husband, “Do you want a beer?” 

And he looked at her like she was crazy, because they both know she hasn’t drunk anything but chardonnay during their entire marriage.

Anyway, she starts this video by looking into the camera and saying, “You ever go for the last chip in the Dorito bag and suddenly say, “Whoa! There shoulda been more chips in here!”  And then she goes on a rant about how big corporations have been shorting a helpless public by putting less junk food in their packages.

I would say her delivery is wooden, but I’m too mature to go for the obvious wooden Indian joke.  (Or am I?)  But nobody watching is going to believe that she’s ever bought or consumed a single Dorito, or washed it down with a single sip of beer in her life. 

Besides, isn’t she undercutting her brand with this example?  If she wanted us to believe her, she’d say, “You ever open a bag of pemmican, squash and maize and say, ‘Whoa!’ There’s suspiciously little pemmican in here.  And this isn’t enough squash and maize to feed my papooses!  I detect the greedy hand of Big Pemmican behind this!”

But she is on-brand about one thing: she’s a very convincing arrogant leftist, because she knows that regular people cannot possibly decide what packaged products are worth buying.  We need her superior wisdom to protect us from Big Snack and our own ignorance.

And yet she can’t correctly identify the mysterious force that has made all products more expensive in the last three years. 

Bidenomics!

#wemustneverstopmockingher

Next up, in what is turning into a recurring series of stories about lefties “unexpectedly!” reaping what they sow, some educrats running a San Francisco elementary school got their hands on $250K of federal funds to improve their school’s performance. 

Instead of consulting me on how to spend the money – I would start by purchasing a poop plow to clear a path to allow the children to get to the school’s front door every morning, and then firing and replacing every teacher who writes her pronouns on the board or has a hair color that’s not found in nature – they gave it to an organization called – I Schiff you not – “Woke Kindergarten.”

This brain trust got right to work, training teachers to “confront white supremacy” and “disrupt racism and oppression.” 

Annnnndddd… the students’ previously terrible test scores and attendance managed to get even worse.

Unexpectedly!   

And yes, the money they spent on that boondoggle were federal funds.  Which means that you and I paid Woke Kindergarten to make an underperforming school worse.

Great.

In other news, we finally learned the identity of the ghost whom Joe Biden has been regularly shaking hands with after his public appearances: the deceased French president Francois Mitterand!

Ugh! It’s not bad enough that Brandon has surrounded himself with leftist hacks in his administration; even when he wants to talk to (other) dead people, he picks dead socialists!

If we could just find a way to get him to start talking to the ghost of Ronald Reagan, maybe there would be a slim chance that he’d be a less terrible president.

Speaking of terrible governance, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy (thanks, Connecticut!) committed a perfect political gaffe this week, i.e. he accidentally told the truth. 

Luckily for him, not many people saw it, since he said it on the MSNBC show of Chris Hayes, whom I suspect is actually Rachel Maddow in whatever is the opposite of drag.

Chris/Rachel asked Murphy to comment on the collapse of the atrocious border bill, and Murphy admitted that “the Democrat strategy for 30 years… has failed for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country.” 

Yikes!

In the annals of dishonest leftist verbiage – right up there with saying “pro choice” when they mean “pro abortion,” and “gender affirming” when they mean “gender denying” – the switch from “illegal aliens” to “undocumented” was a master stroke. 

“Illegal” and “alien” are both accurate, and clear.  “Undocumented” sounds like a guy left his wallet in his other pair of pants. 

“Undocumented immigrants” at least admitted that the people in question are immigrants.  “Undocumented Americans” is an outrageously blatant lie, and in a healthy political system, calling illegals “the people we care most about,” would be an act of political suicide.  

But we don’t have a healthy political system anymore, so Chris Murphy won’t suffer any consequences for his self-damning, inadvertent honesty.

So I guess we’ll have to settle for at least knowing that he’s got Murphy’s Law named after him.

On an “all’s well that ends well” note, in the best-governed state in the nation – although Abbott’s performance on border issues is giving DeSantis some stiff competition for the best governor title – a career criminal with the colorful name of Sterling Alavache attempted to rob a bank.  He took a hostage, claimed to have a bomb, and definitely had a knife – which he put to the hostage’s throat while holding him in a headlock and demanding cash.

If he tried this in a blue state, the mayor and governor would have offered him all the money in the bank, one free hostage stabbing, and a key to the city. 

But he was in Florida.  So the authorities decided to pound Sterling.  (Boom! Unexpected British currency pun!)

A SWAT team was called, and when Sterling refused orders to drop the knife and let the hostage go, a SWAT sniper dropped him with one shot.

Rumors that Democrat Senator Chris Murphy then ran to the nearest camera in DC and said, “In a stunning act of reprehensible gun violence, the state of Florida has failed the people we care about most: armed, recidivist criminals!” have not been confirmed.

After another week of political ugliness in our country, let me leave you with an enjoyable, escapist YouTube page that I’ve been following for the last year or so.  It belongs to Jonna Jinton, and features stunning video of the far northern Swedish landscape where she and her husband live.

As a Floridian who misses the snowy winters of his youth in Illinois, I can’t get enough of the  gorgeous video of winter scenery, the adorable Swedish accents (don’t tell my Norwegian-descent wife, to whom the devious Swedes are not to be trusted), and perhaps best of all, an amazing Aussie-shepherd-looking dog named Nanook, who is the spitting image of Cassie the Wonder Dog.

If you’re interested, the episode called “Winter is Here/Life in the Swedish Woods” is a good one to introduce you to her site. 

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!   

A Few Thoughts About How Far Left the Dems Appear to be Moving (posted 2/5/24)

With every passing week, I’m increasingly struck by how fast the gap is growing between red and blue states, and how wide that gap is getting.  And also by what seems like the single factor that explains it: while the political right has more or less maintained its position on the political spectrum, the left has moved far, far to the left. 

Elon Musk made the point back when he was thinking about buying Twitter.  He shared someone’s simple drawings of his political position.  The drawings featured three horizontal lines, labeled “2008,” “2012,” and “2021,” and three stick figures, labeled “conservative,” “me,” and a leftist.

In all three drawings, the conservative stick figure was on the right side, and the stick figure labelled “me” was in the same spot, roughly in the middle of the line.  But in 2008, the leftist figure was labeled “my fellow liberal,” and the “me” character was a little left of center, and close to the liberal.

In 2012, the leftist was shown racing to the left, and was labeled “my fellow liberal?” and the “me” character was now just barely left of center.

In 2021, the leftist was standing to the far, far left, labeled “woke ‘progressive’,” and the center line had shifted so far that the “me” character was now about 1/3 of the way right of center.

That drawing sums up our national politics pretty well.  It seems like an ideological bookend to Reagan’s old statement, “I didn’t leave the Democrat party; the Democrat party left me.”  Musk has the same message to all the lefties who worshipped him 10 years ago and excoriate him as far-right now: he didn’t move, but they went so far left that they lost their minds.

We all see this in just about every big political issue of the day.

On abortion, Dems as recently as Bill and Cankles McPantsuit used to chant the mantra that abortion should be, “safe, legal and rare.”  That never made much sense.  (What other constitutional “rights” could you apply that to?  Would you say that people should exercise their freedom of speech safely, legally and only rarely?  Should they use their freedom of religion that way?) But it was at least a nod to the inherent tragedy of abortion.

Dems were also queasy about late-term abortion, insisting that it basically never happens, and trying their best to avoid the subject.

Now the activist left is super abortion-positive!  They urge each other to “shout your abortion,” and vacuous actresses give acceptance speeches in which they say how glad they are that they were able to get abortions so that they could increase their career success. 

The same goes for gay and trans issues.  Obama ran in 2008 as anti-gay marriage, citing his “Christian faith!”  (This at a time when many people across the spectrum supported “civil unions” as a compromise that would allow gay couples the civil rights of married couples while maintaining traditional marriage.)

Of course he was lying, which he tacitly admitted when he flipped his position the minute public opinion shifted enough to allow it.  But as the old saying goes, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue,” and our society could still tell the difference between the two just a few years ago.

The trans craziness is an even starker example.  Even a short time ago, if a crazed doctor started chopping off children’s healthy sex organs and chemically castrating them because they were “really” the opposite sex, that doctor would have been jailed or committed to a psych ward.

And if men demanded access to women’s and girls’ showers and athletic competitions, or seriously injured females in physical sports, they would have been jailed immediately.  Assuming they survived the community-sanctioned beatings they would have gotten from those girls’ fathers.

Leftists used to tacitly welcome illegal immigration, since they knew most illegals would become future Democrat voters.  But they weren’t crazy enough to completely open the borders, and ship the illegals all over the country, and give them cash and prizes to come in.

And while Dems were never exactly “tough on crime” or fans of the 2nd amendment, they would at least jail repeat offenders, and require high pre-trial bail before letting them out. 

When I was a wee lad in Illinois, Chicago was run by Democrats, just as it is today.

But in 1968, when crowds of mostly young leftist dopes caused trouble in Chicago, Mayor Daley sent cops wading into the crowds with tear gas and billy clubs, and carted them off to jail, even if only for a short time.  And those were protestors who actually had some legitimate complaints (being drafted into an increasingly unpopular war), and who were being obnoxiously disruptive, but not burning down entire city blocks and injuring hundreds of cops for months on end. 

And now violent criminal aliens are allowed into the country, shipped up to NYC, and allowed to physically beat NY cops, and not only are they not jailed and deported, they are released immediately, without even having to post bail?!

I know you all know this, and I do too, but I’m still regularly shocked by how far our blue cities have fallen, and how fast!           

Ugh!  The only cold comfort I can get from many of these stories is that so many Democrats are now receiving the karmic arse-whipping that they deserve, providing me with a refreshing spring of schadenfreude, and the ongoing opportunity to mock them.

Speaking of which, have you heard that Stacy “A-1” Abrams has just laid off most of the staff of her “voting rights” (i.e. voting fraud) group, the ironically named “Fair Fight?”  It seems the rotund, race-baiting election denier raised around $100 million between 2018-2021.

Annnnndddddd… they’re bankrupt! 

She’s gone 0-2 in GA governor elections, and 0-for-three years in legal battles to advance the cause of stealing elections.  After her group lost their most recent legal challenge against the conservative group “True the Vote,” they are now $600K in the hole, with nothing to show for it. 

Also in Georgia, Fani Willis’ multiplying problems continue to entertain and delight.  Just like most of Trump’s pursuers in the bogus lawfare cases against him, she is finding out how stupid it was to throw rocks at Trump when she was living in a glass house.

Or in her case, a glass house of ill repute. 

Yes, it’s extra funny when someone embroiled in a sex scandal has a name like “Fani.”  (Remember how much fun we had with Anthony Weiner?) 

Just as it was extra funny when an old video resurfaced from when Fani was running for DA in April of 2020.  In an interview with local television, she laughingly asserted, “I certainly will not be choosing people to date that work under me (sic).”  

So she’s definitely made a 180-degree turn on that issue.  In fact, if I wasn’t such a refined and classy gentleman, I might even say that she went from cowgirl to reverse cowgirl on that issue.

But I definitely would NOT say that “working under her” is exactly the right phrase to describe boy toy Nathan Wade, whom she hired for an unreasonably high salary to go after Trump.  Nor would I say that Wade’s previous inexperience – having worked only with low-level criminal cases, and not a single felony trial – makes him a perfect example of the Peter principle.

Because I am obviously far too mature for that.   

However, at least one sexually compromised leftist is going unpunished.  (Which probably disappoints the little weirdo.) 

I’m talking about the legislative aide who was depraved and stupid enough to record himself in a Senate hearing room engaging in a squalid display that, even though it wasn’t baseball-related, involved a great deal of pitching and catching.  And then he was stupid enough to post that video online.

When that behavior caused a scandal – unexpectedly! – the little creep insisted that, “I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace.”

Yes, everybody can see that you loved your job.  Some might say you loved it too much.

And if you don’t think that making a gay porn video in your office is disrespecting the workplace, what more do you think you’d have to add to achieve that?  Scented candles and circus animals?

Don’t answer that!   

Anyway, the creep was allowed to resign, and the Capitol police have just announced that they won’t be pressing any charges.

On an entirely unrelated note, remember when the MSM and the Dems (but I repeat myself) got the vapors because the J6ers walked through the capitol building – fully clothed, and most of them with police escort? 

That was a horrific “defilement of the sacred seat of government” that sent them all to their fainting couches in shock.  

And yes, please feel free to make your own “defiling the seat of government” joke here.  Because as I may have mentioned, I’m way too refined and classy for that.

Hamas delenda est!  

Blue States Continue to “Unexpectedly” Fail, but Florida Abides (posted 2/2/24)

A couple of columns ago, I pointed out the comedic use of the word “unexpectedly” in MSM stories that recount the completely expected and predictable results of idiotic leftist policies. 

Examples would be stories like, “University Allows Dudes to Play Women’s Sports; Actual Females Unexpectedly Get Badly Beaten in Sports,” or “Ultra-White Lady Thinks She’s a Chippewa Princess; Hilarious Genius Unexpectedly Mocks Her.”  

(#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’m realizing now that I could write about those stories seven days a week.  For example…

California politicians have burned a lot of calories making criminals’ lives easier and cops’ lives harder for many years now.  (Just as CA has spent a lot of energy on making taxpayers’ and homeowners’ lives harder, and the lives of open-air pooping practitioners and meth enthusiasts easier.) 

And now – unexpectedly! – California is experiencing a severe shortage of cops. 

The town of Alameda has recently been offering starting salaries over $113K and a signing bonus of $75K to anyone who would be a cop there… and there are still too few takers! 

Because no one has ever said the words, “I would never want to live in Ken-Doll Newsom’s California, but it sounds like a great place to be a cop!”

Speaking of unexpected developments in California, for the first time since the company opened in 1948, an In-N-Out Burger is closing a location, this one in Oakland. 

Even though the company COO says that the location is “busy and profitable,” – which tells you how good their burgers must be, since that is hard to believe about a business in California! – he also says that their employees and customers have been hard hit by theft, property damage and armed robberies. 

On the same block, a Starbucks closed last year (unexpectedly!), and another fast-food restaurant is still open, but only using its drive-thru lane. 

Which tells you everything you need to know: the Biden voters roaming the area have made it so unsafe that if you can stay in your locked car with its engine running, you just might be able to grab a meal without getting robbed or killed. 

And you know what’s that’s called, don’t you?

Bidenomics!

But it’s not just California suffering the consequences of progressive a-holery.  It’s everywhere that the Dems control.

Take Boston, for example.  There are a lot of Walgreens stores in Boston.  But there are three less than there were in November of 2022.  And there’s about to be four less, since Walgreens announced that it will be permanently closing its location on Warren Street in Roxbury, which is “one of the most dangerous areas” in the city, according to local media.

(Also according to local media, that’s probably because Roxbury is home to roving bands of MAGA-hatted white nationalist thugs.)

Now if you are the kind of weirdo who is into things like logic, facts and statistics, you might guess that the latest Walgreens closing might be somehow connected to Roxbury’s violent crime rate (214% higher than the national average), or property crime rate (48% higher), or the region’s overall crime rating of “F.” 

(As in, “What the ‘F’ is going on in Boston?”)

But if you are the kind of weirdo who gets elected to Dem congressional seats – and are therefore allergic to things like logic, facts and statistics – you know why Walgreens would REALLY be pulling out of a high crime neighborhood…

Bidenomics!

No, sorry.  That should read…

Racism!

I give you Ayanna “chrome dome” Pressley, in a recent speech on the house floor which I am not making up: “Walgreens’ closures [in black and brown neighborhoods] are not arbitrary or innocent.  They are disruptive, life-threatening acts of racial and economic discrimination.”

She went on to say that she intends to “demand answers from the Walgreens CEO.  Why was there no community input? … Shame on you Walgreens!”

I wish the Walgreens CEO had been in the room, so he could jump up and say, “I’ve got some answers for you!  The problem wasn’t too little community input, it was too much community out-take.  As in, much of the community kept taking out a ton of merch without paying for it.  Which is why by the end of 2022 we had to lock up everything in the store from toothpaste to toilet paper like it was oxycontin-flavored heroin.  Shame on us?  Shame on you, ya’ low-IQ, black Lex Luthor!”   

But he never would have said that.  Because on Walgreen’s main website, they devote a lot of pixels to bragging about their devotion to diversity uber alles.  They literally say, “DEI is in our DNA.” 

(It’s also BS, and explains why your former stores in Boston were FUBAR.)

In case you’re wondering what a white guy thumping his chest about diversity looks like, go to Walgreens’ diversity page and get a look at CEO Tim Wentworth. 

The guy has the same unnerving, bug-eyed stare of Adam “Pencil-Neck” Schiff.  Seriously.  He’s a rich boss of a huge company, so you know that professional photographers took an entire portfolio of portrait shots of him, and this is the best one they could come up with.

He looks like he’s got a stand-up freezer in his basement at home that holds a half-finished skin suit that he’s making out of his female victims. 

And by the way, guess who else joined Pressley in writing an angry letter to Wentworth?  MA senator Liz Warren.  And you can tell by reading that letter that she is really on the warpath on this issue.

(Boom!  That’s a #neverstopmocking, Tomahawk Two-fer™ in this column!)

But I don’t want to give you the impression that our entire nation is imploding.  On the contrary, the conservative policies of Ron DeSantis continue to provide more reasons for the long-suffering residents of blue states to flee to our free state.  (Provided, of course, that they leave their old states’ dysfunctional politics behind.)

One example can be found in an American Thinker story titled, “Florida Leads the Way on Fighting Voter Fraud,” which documents the successes of the Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS) since it was formed in 2022. 

From arresting individuals for election fraud to exposing and fining shady, third-party registration organizations (some of them Soros-funded, shockingly enough) who broke laws to increase illegal voting, the OECS has made our elections more transparent and trustworthy. 

Here’s hoping that other states and the Trump campaign will take our template nationwide, before November’s elections!

A second example was Disney’s “last-gasp lawsuit” against DeSantis failing in federal court on Wednesday.  For those keeping score at home, that means that the woke groomers at Disney – once the Mouse House, more recently Mao’s House™ — are winless against RDS.

Disney lost their corrupt and crony-capitalistic fiefdom in the Reedy Creek Development District, and now they’ve got to pay the same taxes as other Florida businesses.  After their attempt to thwart the will of Florida voters went down in flames, their arrogant CEO had to resign in disgrace.  And when the Reedy Creek sweetheart deal was about to expire, their last-minute attempt to appoint a bunch of new board members at the 11th hour was also rebuffed.

And now their latest legal challenge has been unceremoniously dismissed by a federal judge.  More please!

But lest I suggest that everything is perfect in Florida, I have to acknowledge that we’re still living in a fallen world, and Florida Man is still alive and well.

Or in this case, Florida Woman. To wit, this week 35-year-old Celia Barrett was featured in this headlined story: “Naked Florida Woman Barges into Gas Station, Threatens to Kill Staff with Apple Peeler.”

Since the story was behind a Fox News paywall, I was only able to read the headline and first few sentences.  But that’s still enough info to allow me to make three insightful comments. 

Because I’m just that good.

Here goes:

1. Death by apple peeler would have to be one of the slowest, most painful (and yet easily avoidable) deaths I can imagine. 

2. Obviously, we need a huge, annoying and time-wasting effort directed at universal apple-peeler control.  Especially when it comes to those scary-looking “assault peelers.”  (As for me, you can have my apple peeler when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!)

3. I know you’ve heard this a million times, but the First Rule of Naked Women is that, “Any woman who shows up naked in a gas station wielding a kitchen implement in a threatening manner NEVER looks like a woman you’d like to see naked in public.” Hamas delenda est!

Hard Times at the LA Times, Leaving CA, & Professor Potato (posted 1/29/24)

In my Friday column I covered a bunch of stories in which people who have been sowing dumb policies are now reaping their deserved results.  Exhibit A was the government/crony capitalist top-down pushing of electric vehicles, and the ways in which that attempt is imploding.

Exhibit B was the ongoing erosion of mainstream media, seen in stories about how CNN has started to get worse ratings than the Ring-Doorbell network and the Watching Paint Dry network, and about how Sports Illustrated and the LA Times are both going through huge layoffs.

Please allow me to pick up where I left off, with two more fun stories about the LA Times. The first one involves one of my favorite types of situations: when lefties fight inside the tent, because two of their cherished beliefs are clashing. 

One past example is the conflict that arose when feminist multiculturalists – who believe that all indigenous/non-Western cultures are inherently superior to corrupt Western ones – were confronted with African, Middle Eastern and Asian societies who practice female genital mutilation.  (What do you do when noble, non-Western people of color… turn out to be misogynistic oppressors of women?)

(Besides burst out in a rousing, Nelson Muntzian “HA-HA!”, if you’re a reprobate like me.)

Another example was when anti-Semitic freaks carrying a “Queers for Palestine” banner found out what Palestinians would happily do to them if they were in Hamas-istan: 

Jew-hating QFP activist: What?  If I’m gay, you’d throw me off a tall building to my death? 

Peaceful Jihadi: Yes, inshallah.

QFP activist: What about if I’m bi-sexual?

Peaceful Jihadi: We throw you off shorter building, breaking some of your bones.

QFP: Well, I guess that’s not so—

PJ: Then we drop stones on you until you’re dead.

QFP: So, if I’m trans…?

PJ: Throw you off building, then crush you with stones.  Then pull stones off you and spit on you, then drive corpse around Gaza in back of truck while firing rifles in the air and giving candies to the children to celebrate.  (HA Inshall-HA!)

And, scene.   

Well just such a lefty-on-lefty slapfest is going on at the LA Times right now, this time pitting the sanctity of unions vs. the holiness of racial identity politics.

As previously covered, the paper is laying off a big chunk of its employees.  Rigid union rules dictate that all cuts must be made on the basis of seniority, i.e. last hired are the first fired. 

This policy often hamstrings struggling employers, because it puts unions’ self-interest ahead of trying to keep the best-performing employees in the fight to keep the business going. 

But in this case – oh, sweet irony! – most of the older employees are white, while most of the recent hires are “diverse” (i.e. they think exactly like all of the others in the hive, but their skins are slightly different shades than the evil, old whiteys). 

You’ve got that right: their own unions are forcing management to protect the biased whites and fire the biased peoples of color!  Oh, the weeping and the gnashing of teeth and pronouns!

If you can still read through your tears of laughter, you should check out the way that the young employees are getting their dashikis, serapes and gender-non-binary-onesies over their heads and wailing over the tragedy:

“If these layoffs go through, our caucuses will be decimated. The Latino caucus will lose 38% of its members. The Black caucus will lose 33%.  The AAPI and MENASA (I’m not looking those up, because I’ve got a life to lead over here) caucuses will lose 34%!” 

But I notice that they don’t say a word about the “old white lady who pretends to be a Cherokee” caucus!  Won’t somebody think about Liz Warren?!  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Fortunately, virtually all of the “journalists” at the LA Times are anti-conservative hacks who are terrible at journalism-ing, and whose past terribleness has brought them to this hilarious precipice. 

So whoever gets fired, it’s going to be a win-win for karma, justice, and the American way.  And for Orville Redenbacher, whose popcorn sales should be going through the roof!

Speaking of the LA Times, on Tuesday they published an editorial that was definitely worth reading.  It was written by a Letters Editor named Paul Thornton, and even though he’s a [shudder] white male, you should read his commentary.

It’s titled, “If you Want to Leave, Fine.  But Don’t Insult California on the Way Out,” and it is a thing of beauty. 

Thornton has to acknowledge that 800,000 people left CA in 2022, and more last year.  But he’s irritated because many of them “feel the need to express disdain…and even anger” for their home state.  Then he defends how great CA is, with its “liberal politics” and its irrelevantly small Republican party. 

He later insinuates that the people fleeing CA are just jealous because, as he puts it, “We have 39 million people, Hollywood and Shohei Ohtani.”  But I don’t think those examples constitute the persuasive bragging points that he thinks they do.

Sure, you’ve got 39 million people. But many of them are illegal aliens, addicts with extensive dirty-needle collections, and Democrat politicians.  (And some of them are possibly all three.)

Yes, you’ve got Hollywood.  But that seems to be mostly a collection of child-grooming, America-hating narcissists turning out unwatchable movies and lectures about how everything we like sucks, and how we suck, and how we should still give them our money.  (Hat tip to Doctor Evil: “How about NO!”)

And if I’m not mistaken, “Shohei Ohtani” is the Japanese practice of ritual suicide by disemboweling.  Which seems like an odd Chamber of Commerce talking point.

Thornton’s pivotal line is, “But reasons to leave don’t explain the impulse to insult CA on the way out.” 

Oh, but they do!  The leftist establishment has been obnoxiously dismissive of conservatives and non-leftists, smearing them as racists and bigots, and micromanaging their lives with armies of locust-like bureaucrats (my apologies to locusts, who are just as God made them) and repeatedly mugging them for tax money by using all of the coercive power a bullying government can exert.

So yeah, California’s rulers deserve worse than bad-mouthing, but that’s the least that ex-pat Californians can give them. 

And if you’re concerned with showing people civility… you first.

I can’t close without telling you about the insane video that horrific Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (from guess which party?) put out last Tuesday to tout her new plan to provide “free” community college education to kids in Michigan.

(Community note: There’s no such thing as a “free” good or service.  The new JUCO tuition will now be paid for by taxpayers.)

For some reason, Whitmer appears in the video along with – I’m not making this up – a talking potato.  The potato has a human mouth, teeth and eyes, and looks as creepy as that description sounds like it would.  (Rumors that the potato is played by Brian Stelter, in his first tv appearance since being fired by CNN, have not been confirmed.)

Whitmer calls the abomination “Professor Potato,” and she engages in a dialogue with it that is so stilted and moronic that it might have come straight from Karine Jeanne-Pierre in a press briefing. 

You’ve got to see it to believe it, but I can’t promise that you will be able to un-see it. So watch at your own risk. 

In Professor Potato’s defense, though, he has not been caught plagiarizing nearly as often as Harvard ex-president Claudine Gay has.  

So he’s got that going for him.   

Hamas delenda est!   

Two Groups of Stories on the Theme of “Leftist Chickens Coming Home to Roost” (posted 1/26/24)

First, electric vehicles are blowing up, both literally and financially.

Now I have no problem with electric vehicles on their own. I admire Elon Musk a lot, the Tesla I rode in was an impressive bit of technology, and I like the idea of burning less gasoline.

But I’m also a big fan of dealing with reality on reality’s own terms, and the reality is that right now, EV technology is not competitive with gasoline cars.

The facts have been obvious for a while, and I’m sure you’ve all heard them: the batteries are made of all of the most toxic and expensive materials on earth, controlled by Chicoms and brought to our shores after having devastated a vast swath of the earth through various mining processes; they are financially non-viable; they require a huge infrastructure of charging stations that doesn’t exist, and won’t for a long time.

Plus the electricity that powers them mostly comes from coal and nukes, which makes Liz Warren stand beside a littered highway with a tear running down her translucent cheek, just like another fake Indian named “Iron Eyes” Cody.

(Look him up.) (Also: #wemustneverstopmockingher)

Ooh, and EVs sometimes catch fire, and when they do, they burn like the eternally smoldering tire fire on the Simpsons.

Also, as we learned this month, when it gets really cold out, EVs can get you a half-mile out of town before dying. Like you then will, by freezing. And then you’ll be found two days later by a guy named Gus, or possibly Hank or Butch, driving a snowplow.

And that snowplow will be powered by gasoline, as God intended.

But other than all that, EVs are great!

“But Martin,” you are not asking yourself, because you’ve got the kind of top-shelf mind that has led you to join the CO nation, “if EVs are so obviously not ready for prime time, how come they are such a gigantic thing in our society?”

The answer is simple: Bidenomics!

Which is to say, intervention in the economy by a bunch of arrogant boneheads who throw billions of our dollars at their favorite hobbyhorses and green boondoggles, believing they can cram an entire new industry down everybody’s throats.

Fortunately, there’s a little something called the semi-free market. And that market has been speaking on the subject of EVs lately.

Here are just a selection of recent headlines:

“EV Sales in Europe Slaughtered, US May be Next.” This article reports that the sales of EVs in Europe dropped from 193K in December of ’22 to 160K in ’23. The numbers look even worse in Germany (the largest EV market in the EU by far), which saw a sales drop of 50%. And both the EU and US have recently cut tax credits which they previously used as a form of welfare to rich folks to goose EV sales.

Many articles report on American cities who threw millions of taxpayer dollars into buying electric bus fleets, only to discover that they’ve bought a Nadler in a poke, so to speak.

Asheville, NC is just one example. After spending $5 mil on 5 buses in 2018, and another $600K on chargers, electricity, battery leasing, and overages in maintenance costs, they’ve now got 3 of the 5 buses out of service and waiting for repairs.

Also, when it got cold last month, the range of the two working buses dropped to 78 miles between 3-hour charges.

Zero Hedge reports that Ford has cut production of their electric F-150 Lightning trucks in half, due to low customer demand. As a result, Ford is laying off 1400 autoworkers at a plant in Dearborn, MI.

You may remember the story of that vehicle from when Joe Biden took a test drive of it in May of 2021, in a poorly conceived publicity stunt.

After fake-jogging for a few steps across the factory floor, he tripped over a sandbag, and when two secret service guys had helped him to his feet, he had somehow got his head stuck in the right armhole of his jacket.

After Jill and a nice lady from Visiting Angels (sing it with me: “America’s Choice in Home Care!”) managed to get his head unstuck, he straightened his tie, shook hands with the ghost of Henry Ford, and climbed into the F-150.

He promptly bonked his empty head against a door post, accidentally turned on the windshield wipers, and then the wiper fluid sprayer.

Then he rolled his window down, and before he had even moved, said, “Sssiss thuckerin’ thucotash,” which the sycophantic White House press corps reported as, “This sucker’s fast.”

Then he rolled the window up on his necktie – fortunately, the resulting cessation of oxygen going to his brain produced absolutely no detectable effect in his cognitive function – and put the truck into what he thought was “drive.”

Annnnnndddd… it silently rolled backwards, crushing a mid-level Ford executive’s legs.

Who deserved what he got, for voluntarily standing within 100 yards of a vehicle driven by Ol’ ”Dead-From-the-Neck-Up” Joe.

In other green energy news, City Journal recently reported the cancellation of several huge wind projects off the shores of New Jersey and MA, because even with gigantic taxpayer subsidies, their boondogglery ™ had become so obvious and painful that even those blue state goofballs had to slink away in shame.

Second, the mainstream media has started imploding faster than the market for EVs.

You can see it in television, starting with the increasingly speedy descent of network ratings. A story from earlier this month started with a teaser question: Of the top 100 most-viewed programs on the networks in 2023, how many would you guess were football broadcasts?

I’m a big football fan, but even I wouldn’t have guessed that it was 97! Three college games made that list, plus the Super Bowl’s pre-game show, and then 93 NFL games! The remaining three programs were the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Academy Awards, and one show identified only as “political programming.”

That’s a huge indictment of how badly the once-dominant (now dormant) primetime lineup has gotten.

You can also see the failure in the political channels, and most enjoyably at the execrable CNN.

The NY Post reported that during prime time last week, CNN was beaten by the History Channel (which is lately made up of 40% programming about Hitler and WWII, 50% about aliens and mythical lost civilizations, and 10% history), and “an obscure cable network” that shows old Western tv shows and films.

Which makes sense, because who amongst us wouldn’t rather watch long-dead tv cowboys on Gunsmoke and Bonanza than watch the recently-dead lying dog-faced pony soldier in the White House?

(Plus those programs show a lot of Indians being shot off horses by toxic white male gun nuts who identify as males, which makes Grandma Squanto cry. #youknowthething)

But you can see media implosion even more clearly in print, where blue-on-blue violence has cropped up in newsrooms all over the country, as papers are forced to lay off workers after years of leftist reporters working hard to drive away most of their readers.

The most recent wave of layoffs has hit the LA Times, where the “journalists” have been dividing their time between hating conservatives, and propagandizing on behalf of Ken Doll Newsom and the Dem machine that has sent hundreds of thousands of former Californians fleeing in search of lower crime and a better quality of life.

Like that which can be found in the Gaza Strip, for example.

The Times laid off 13% of its staff last year, and still managed to lose $1 million dollars per WEEK. So when they announced another round of “massive layoffs” this month, the propagandists who work there naturally thought, “Hey, these capitalist bosses are already making negative $50 million per year from our labor. It’s time for us to go on a one-day strike.”

That’s actually a thing that just happened.

But before you settle on that little stroke of genius as the funniest media story you’ve heard lately, don’t sleep on the geniuses over at Sports Illustrated.

Because I was one of those weird young men who liked sports and girls, I used to regularly read SI. I kept up on the NFL news, dipped into some basketball coverage during the glory years of Jordan and the Bulls, and even followed a little baseball news.

And every year, when the Swimsuit edition came out, I… let’s say “closely examined”… that issue.

In my defense, this was back in olden times, when we hadn’t yet explained to our young males that the female body is not really a good thing to look at, or even notice. And that “trans-women” were women, and they should be able to kick the crap out of actual women in women’s sports.

And that if I were to throw up in my mouth at the thought to doing to a “trans-woman” what I fantasized about doing to – oh, let me just pick a few names out of the dim recesses of my memory and say Christie Brinkley or Cheryl Tiegs or Kathy Ireland – that revulsion would make me a “transphobe.”

Well, in recent years SI has gone away from the content that millions of us used to read in our formative years. They’ve run articles written by AI. (I’m old, so I don’t really understand what that means, except that it can’t be good.)

They’ve replaced sports coverage that actually focused on sports with leftist social commentary on how racist and sexist and evil America is, and how we should all admire a whitey-hating, mediocre quarterback like Colin Kapernick.

Who, I feel compelled to remind all football fans, was beaten out for his starting job by the immortal Blaine Gabbert. (Yes, THAT Blaine Gabbert. Who you will never see in Canton, Ohio, unless he’s selling programs in the parking lot outside the football hall of fame there.)

And if that wasn’t bad enough, SI also desecrated the swimsuit issue in recent years by featuring “trans” guys and what’s euphemistically called “plus-size models” on the cover!

I’m not making that up. They replaced Cheryl Tiegs with some poor delusional dude with all the sex appeal of Charles Nelson Reilly in a one-piece, and they replaced Christie Brinkley and Kathy Ireland with some gals the size of a Brinks truck and the nation of Ireland!

Aannnnnndddddd… a week ago the owner of SI announced that they are firing the entire staff of the magazine, which is likely going to go out of business shortly.

Unexpectedly!

Okay, I’ve already gone on too long, so here’s a teaser for Monday’s column: I’ve got a couple of stupid criminal stories, a feel-good story about how Florida is providing a blueprint to other states in fighting voting fraud, and the weirdest story you’ve ever seen involving horrific MI governor Whitmer and a talking potato.

I’m going to conclude this column with the inspiring recent quote from golfer John Daly. If you don’t follow golf, Daly is a lovable, overweight eccentric who could hit the ball a mile without much control, and who would smoke and drink beer during a tournament.

Seriously, the man is a legend. “Hold my beer and this lit cigarette while I drive this golf ball 375 yards, either driving the green on a par 4 or killing a senior citizen two fairways over with a head shot.”

Daly was recently asked about a “trans-female” golfer — i.e. a male golfer in lady’s clothes — who just won a women’s tournament, and is now seeking admission to the LPGA tour. 

Daly responded that, “If I’d put on a dress and called myself a tranny, I would have won 100 tournaments on the LPGA tour. That guy’s about as feminine as a Ford F-150.”

Yes, if you’re talking about the EV version.

Hamas delenda est!

I Wish DeSantis Well, and Hope Trump Beats Biden like a Rented Mule (posted 1/21/24)

I’ve got mixed feelings about DeSantis quitting the race, as you might imagine.  But after the Iowa caucus results confirmed the polling over the previous months, Trump’s nomination was a fait accompli, and DeSantis made the only logical choice.  I was glad to see him endorse Trump as the winning nominee, as he’d pledged to do at the beginning of the campaign.

I was also encouraged to read the responses to CO’s Sunday night thread on RDS’ dropping out, in terms of how little vitriol people expressed toward him.  Many wished him well, and said they’d consider voting for him in a future race, which is what I’m hoping for. 

The most frustrating part of the race for me has been seeing so many self-described conservatives doing the opposite: attacking him in the most dishonest ways, and taking such glee in the most petty smears.  Unfortunately, they were following the lead of the far left, and of Trump, who praised him to the skies (“one of the best governors,” “doing a great job in Florida,” “he did a terrific job with covid”) before flip-flopping completely (terrible on covid, worse than Cuomo, etc.) when he became a competitor.  

I understand that politics is a rough business, and I generally have a low enough opinion of politicians that I don’t mind seeing them knocked around some.  But I think RDS is an unusually good man for a politician: scandal-free in his personal life; apparently good husband and father to his wife and kids; does what he says he’ll do, relentless in pushing conservative policies, and the most consistent and successful governor in the country.

When he got a history degree from Yale and a JD from Harvard (back when both of those degrees still meant something), he could have walked into a high-paying job and written his own ticket.  But instead he joined the Navy while still in school, and spent time as a JAG officer in Gitmo and Iraq, sacrificing a ton of income to serve his country, before starting his political career. 

I don’t want to over-do it on the praise, because he’s still a politician, and a human.  He definitely has his flaws (lack of charisma, stiffness of style) as a campaigner.   And he wants to be president, which always makes me at least a little suspicious.  (A reliable Book counsels me to, “put not your faith in princes.”  And I’m Martin Simpson, and I endorse that message!)

I just hope that the smears against him haven’t precluded him from a future presidential run.  Not least because I don’t see a ton of Republican alternatives out there with strong records of consistent conservatism.  (For every Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, Ted Cruz and DeSantis, there are a hundred Romneys (Ronna and Mitt) and other RINOs.) 

If the Schiff-storm of slander against RDS has made him toxic for 2028, I think some of his “conservative” bashers are going to come to a hard realization when they are complaining next time, “Why are we surrounded by RINOs?  Why aren’t there any trustworthy conservative Republicans for us to support?”   

Because you had a great one as an option, and instead of just saying that you preferred Trump and acting like gentlemen, you took up a bunch of leftist lies (“He’s death-Santis!”) to try to destroy him. 

This is why we can’t have nice things, or decent politicians.

Okay, I had to get that off of my chest!  But having said that, I’m pulling for Trump now, and I don’t think the amount of pessimism about his chances expressed in Sunday’s thread is justified. Especially if Joe Biden continues to lie in state as his opponent.          

I know it sounds like I’m really down on Trump’s candidacy, but that’s only because I’ve come to mostly dislike him as a person.

I know that sounds weird, but let me explain:  I am much more concerned with the policies and results of a pol’s governing than I am with his/her personality.  To me, one of the most irritating tropes in politics is the idiotic cliché, “People vote for the guy they’d most like to have a beer with.” 

Ugh.  I have beers with guys I’d like to have a beer with, usually because they have a good sense of humor, are politically rational, and demonstrate good judgment when talking about books, movies, football and music. 

To me, politicians are a lot like lawyers: they have their purposes, but a life well-lived is usually one in which you spend the absolute least amount of time dealing with either of them as possible. 

I think that’s generally true of most conservatives: our philosophy is, “that government is best which governs least.”  We want law and order, strong borders, a military that will deter attacks, and defense of our constitution.  Beyond that, leave us alone, because we are free people, and we’ve got this.

That’s not the case with lefties.  Politics is their religion, and government is their jealous god, and they tend to try to make heroes of their leaders, even if that means futilely trying to hammer a dead peg into a round hole.

Sorry, that’s “square.”  A square peg.  

The left deifies their leaders.  Lenin’s corpse in Red Square, the cults of Stalin and Mao.  JFK is King Arthur in Camelot, instead of the philanderer who botched the Bay of Pigs.  Bill Clinton is a feminist hero, instead of the groper in chief and Juanita Broaddrick’s rapist.  Obama is a historic Light-Bringer rather than a spendthrift racial grifter who lied that we could keep our doctors and health plans.  

Brandon is presenting a special challenge for them, but the Dems are still praising him (“We can’t keep up with him!  Bidenomics is tickety boo!”), and are doing their best to beat a dead president across the finish line in November.

Sorry, that’s “horse.”  They are trying to beat a dead horse across the finish line.  I don’t know why I keep making that mistake.    

Anyway, my point is that I’m not looking for a drinking buddy when I vote for a president.  In fact, sometimes the very qualities that I wouldn’t want in a friend are the ones I appreciate in a president, if they produce good political results. 

For example, many said that Trump was impulsive and volatile, and he might fly off the handle and bomb another country if that country’s leaders p*ssed him off.  Not a great quality in a best friend, in a bar. 

But we all know how that worked during Trump’s presidency: Putin didn’t make a peep.  The weird beards in Iran and Gaza and Lebanon didn’t instigate a mass murder of Jews.  The Chicoms didn’t move on Taiwan, like they’re about to.  A bunch of rag-tag Houthi pirates minded both their “Ps” and their “Qs,” rather than rampaging through the Red Sea.

That’s good presidential foreign policy.  I’d like more of that.  Also affordable gas and interest rates, millions fewer illegals pouring across the border, and more strict constructionist judges.    

Don’t get me wrong: all things being equal, I’d still prefer good personal qualities in a president.  (Sobriety, honesty, self-control, no intern-banging, etc.)  But the main thing I want is disciplined, successful, conservative governance. 

If I can get that – whether from a man or a woman, or a straight person or a gay person, or a black person or a white person or an orange person, or an old guy or a young gal, or an extrovert or an introvert, or a boring guy, or a nerd, or a braggart, or a skirt-chaser, or a guy in a Stephen Hawking wheelchair who speaks with an electronic, robot voice – I don’t care! 

So yes, while I recognize and admire some of Trump’s good qualities, I don’t like him much as a person, and that’s a shame.  At my age, I’m still looking forward to voting for a president whom I think can do the job AND whom I can look up to as a person.  (I got to do that in the last several governor’s races, and it felt GREAT!)

But as I understand it, conservatism and MAGA have a lot in common.  In fact, if you drew up a Venn diagram of conservatism and MAGA (the sound you just heard is Que Mala perking up her ears), you’d have around 90% of overlap. 

The only MAGA stuff outside the conservative circle seems like personal loyalty to Trump, and a requirement to side with him when he’s doing something anti-conservative. 

And while I’m going to give that one a big ol’, Dr. Evil-style, “How about no!” I’m happy with the other 90%.  In fact, that’s more than I’ve had with any president over the last 4 decades.

Now I hope we can all do as much as possible to support Trump for the next 10 months, and call attention to the myriad of reasons why Biden and the Dems need to be swept from power, so we can start undoing the damage of the last 3 years. 

Hamas delenda est!   

Mostly Good News Stories, Despite the Iowa Caucus(posted 1/19/24)

Today I’ve got a couple of lighter stories, and a few post-caucus thoughts on the state of the election.

First up, the great conservative humor site Babylon Bee continues to impress.  They ran into a little controversy this week with a joke they posted about Vivek after he dropped out of the race.  It was a silly and harmless joke, but apparently a lot of conservatives got upset enough to give the Bee some grief about it.

Which is really annoying, because we’re supposed to be the folks with a sense of humor.  It’s the humorless leftists who are always getting triggered, pulling their non-binary onesies over their heads and running for safe spaces when a somebody tells a joke involving ethnicity, gender, or pretty much anything.

(I remind you of this oldie:  Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb.  A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!) 

In his response to the critics, the Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon confirmed my positive impression of him: “Some of our readers have expressed concern about this report, suggesting it did not meet the high journalistic standards they’ve come to expect from us. We want you to know that we’ve listened to you. We’ve heard your voices. And they are stupid.”

Perfect! 

Of all the things that should not be taken too seriously, jokes are right up there near the top.

For example, here’s a humor test: a Breitbart story yesterday reported a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the headline, “Factory activity in New York suffered an unexpected collapse in January.”

The story goes on to fill in the gory details: the index of business conditions plunged 29.2 points in January to a negative 43.7, and a drop of 58.2 points over two months.  (Numbers below zero indicate worsening conditions.)  Those stats are the worst since April of 2020, when the economy was decimated by the sudden pandemic lockdowns.

Don’t see the humor in that?  It’s in a subtle word choice from the headline: “unexpected.” 

Okay, so I’m no Norm MacDonald.  But I find the absurd to be funny, and nothing is more absurd than a bunch of leftists foisting economy-crippling policies on a state, and then calling the resulting cripple-ation (cripple-osity?  cripple-tude?) “unexpected.”

It would be like saying, “Dems Prevent Cops from Arresting Criminals; Crime Unexpectedly Skyrockets.”  Or, “Newsom Tries to Fiscally Rape Productive Taxpayers; Productive Taxpayers Unexpectedly Flee California.” 

Or, “The DNA Test Results for Blonde, Blue-eyed Liz Warren are in: She’s Unexpectedly Categorized as Super-Duper-Blindingly White.”  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In another feel-good story, Bilal Nofal has been eradicated.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, “Bilal Nofal” is not a super contagious virus that we’ve discovered a cure for.  Although come to think of it, you should have probably always maintained at least 6 feet of distance from Bilal Nofal.

Because Nofal was a top Hamas spy chief, “in charge of investigating suspects of espionage.”  That means he sadistically tortured people he suspected of helping the Jews.

I use the past tense because on Tuesday the IDF was flying a plane over Nofal and then – yada yada yada – he experienced a SBAMD.  

If you’re not up on your military acronyms, that’s a Sudden Ballistically-Assisted Molecular Disassembly.

Also, since it’s never “too soon” to mock a dead terrorist scumbag, here’s a fun fact: Bilal Nofal’s name can be disassembled and reconfigured (just like his body was on Tuesday) (HA!) into the anagrams “albino fall” and “anal fob ill.” 

(Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)   

Ooh, I’ve got one more.  If only CO would make me the honorary headline writer for Cautious Optimism, I would title the above story as follows:

“Anal Fob Ill F**ks Around with the Jews; Unexpectedly Finds Out.”   

And here’s one more feel-good story, this time from Missouri, where a burglar named Darren Venneman was plying his trade of breaking into houses on Strawberry Lane in Qulin last Saturday night.

Unfortunately for him, the homeowner was a Second Amendment enthusiast, who responded by shooting him five times.  In other words, Venneman got ventilated on the mean streets of Qulin, Missouri. 

If by “mean streets” you mean… Strawberry Lane, I guess?  Yeesh.

Venneman was airlifted to a hospital, but died of his wounds.  The local sheriff says that the homeowner won’t face charges, since he acted in self-defense. 

Because: Red State!

But even in common sense red states, people still have to endure the scourge of the media.  And local media seemed to sympathize with the burglar, calling his death “tragic” and “untimely” and an “unforeseen tragedy.”

Though it sounds to me like his death was extremely timely, in that he broke in and was immediately – you might even say “punctually” – shot. 

Also, “unforeseen” is close enough to “unexpected,” and thus worth a Simpsonian “HA-HA!”  (As in, “Moron Breaks into Gun Owner’s House, is Unexpectedly Shot.”)

Nonetheless, the media story ends by expressing condolences to Venneman’s friends and family, saying, “May they find strength and support during this difficult time.” 

But judging from local commenters’ reactions to the local news story posted on Facebook, the community is coping with their grief just fine. 

Sample comments include, “Excellent! Good for that homeowner!” and, “Try that in a small town!!” and, “This is how we thin the herd.” and, “Bet he won’t do that again.”

Indeed.  God bless Missouri!

Finally, I congratulate the always-Trump contingent of CO nation after the first caucus; the polls were accurate, and Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa was impressive.

I’m still a DeSantis supporter, and while I’m not surprised at the depth of support for Trump among the base, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see RDS give Biden the old SBAMD in November.  (Not least because I think Biden would have been forced to debate RDS at least once, and that would have been a blood bath for Brandon!  I know that Trump would destroy Biden too, but by refusing to debate in the primary, he’s given Biden’s handlers the excuse to refuse a debate in the general, which he will absolutely do.)

DeSantis is a fighter, but absent a meteor strike in the next month or so he’ll have to withdraw, and Haley is farther to Trump’s left than Trump is to DeSantis’ left, and thus she’s not an option for me.   

So the base has made its choice, and the die has been cast, and we must win in November, so when RDS suspends his campaign, I’ll be getting back on the Trump train with both feet.  

I’m really hoping that the optimism of the super-MAGA segment of CO nation (and the entire nation) is justified.  I’m more worried than that, for reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I also see some positive signs, too.  The bogus lawfare cases against Trump seem to be crumbling on several fronts, and polls indicate that a lot of people (though not as many as should!) see those cases as illegitimate.

Trump still has his strengths, and if we can keep Biden from dropping out, Trump’s biggest weakness (his historically bad, underwater disapprove/approve numbers of -15 points) should be trumped by the fact that Biden is the only other pol in recent history with the same, -15 number. 

And Biden’s all-around terribleness should ensure that number doesn’t get any better, and will likely get even worse!

And Trump’s numbers in Iowa remind us that you’ve got to give it to him: the man is a human tornado!    

I want to see him drop out of the sky and destroy a bunch of MSM empty heads, then skip a few miles before descending and turning the DNC headquarters into kindling, then skip up again and come down on Biden’s White House and level the place. 

Would I like it if he could also discipline himself, and maybe avoid dropping down and taking out some grade schools and orphanages, and some conservative subdivisions full of people who don’t love him but will support him, too? 

Absolutely.   And if he could say at least two or three smart and funny and true things for every counter-productive one, that would be another bonus. 

His speech on Monday and his interview on Wednesday were steps in the right direction: “We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not gonna have time for retribution.  And remember this, our ultimate retribution is success.” 

Yes!  More of that, please! Hamas delenda est!

I’m Still Capable of Being Surprised, Up to a Point (posted 1/15/24)

You know the kind of cliches that indicate that something will never happen?  Like saying, “The gals on the View will have an intelligent conversation… when pigs fly.”  Or, “Joe Biden (RIP) will achieve a foreign policy success… when hell freezes over.”

Well I think I’ve discovered a new cliché of that type.  And I can use it in a sentence.

Like this one: “The MSM will cover a conservative fairly … when a big blue city’s Democrat mayor says something true about economics.” 

Okay, so it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  But on January 10th, when a reporter tried to get New York City (RIP) mayor Eric Adams to criticize Gov. Hochul’s decision to not raise taxes, he said this accurate thing, which I swear I am not making up:

“Well, we are one of the highest-taxed states in the country outside of California, and you have to find the right balance.  [I]n NYC in general, 2% of New Yorkers pay 51% of our taxes.” 

And then – flap your wings to warm them up, piggies – he said, “We’re seeing a hemorrhaging of, not only working class people, but we’re concerned about losing that high tax base…” 

Before he finished with – strap your skates on, Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein and Fidel Castro – “…because that tax base pays for our police officers, our teachers, our firefighters, keeps our streets clean.”

I know.  You could have knocked me over with a feather plucked from the wing of an aerodynamically successful swine. 

A leftist mayor said something true about the dangerous results of leftist fiscal policy.  I think this might be a new day dawning.  We might be on the verge of a return to sanity, opening the possibility of a functional bipartisan—

Oh no, wait.  This just in, from one day later:

When asked in an interview about the unfolding illegal immigrant disaster in his city, Adams said that NYC “has done a great job” handling the surge, and that, “This has nothing to do with sanctuary cities.  Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the [country].  They’re here legally.”

Annnddddd… we’re back.  Pigs can’t fly.  Hell is still hot.  And big city Dem mayors are still allergic to reality and accountability.

Case in point, the Round Mound of Unsound Policy, Illinois Governor Pritzker, has sent a letter to Texas Governor Abbott, asking him to stop sending illegals to Chicago.  “I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves.  Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives… do not send more people to our state.” 

In recent months, Pritzker has called Abbott’s policy “a cheap political stunt,” and in his new letter he complained that, “Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.” 

Got that?  It’s not Biden’s fault for inviting millions of illegals to flood across the border, and it’s not Illinois Democrats fault for declaring Chicago a sanctuary city for all of the future illegal Democrat voters in south and central America (mi casa es tu casa!).  It’s the Republicans’ fault.

Your party has opened the border, J.B.  I know how surprised you are that even with all of this global warming that is about to boil us to death, the forecast for Chicago right now is for a freezing cold winter.

If only there were some places where the Mexicans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans and Venezuelans could live where they weren’t in danger of becoming Latinx-cicles.

Oh wait.  There are such places.  And they’re called Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela. 

So get off your high horse, put down that comically oversized turkey leg, and give your party’s leader a call.  (Fair warning, though: you may need a Oujia board.)   

One final piece of advice, and this is a paraphrase of Claudine Gay’s immortal words from Animal House (“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”):  

Delusional, two-faced and double-chinned is no way to go through life, Governor.

Meanwhile, in Texas, rational people are continuing to do things right. 

One such rational person is Terry Willis, a resident of a Houston suburb.  This week his surveillance cameras alerted him to a small group of Biden voters (I’m guessing about that part… but I’d bet Hunter’s life on it) going through his neighborhood, trying the door handles on parked cars.

When four of them came up his driveway and let themselves into his ATV, which was on a trailer behind his truck, he walked out into his yard to speak with them. 

He said, “I apologize that our evil society has given you such a bad deal in life.  Please help yourself to my sanctuary ATV.  Because: Massachusetts!”

Oh no, wait. This story happened in Houston.

So when he walked into his yard, he was carrying his AR-15 rifle.

Because: Texas!

He racked in a shell and said, “I don’t think you want to do this.”  And the criminals ran away, leaving a trail of cowardice and human waste in their wake.

When interviewed, Willis said, “For approximately 20 years, I’ve had a concealed weapons permit.  I’ve also been through hunter safety courses.  I’ve built guns.”

Did you get that?  While leftists have been building DEI programs, abortuaries and memorials to recidivists like Michael Brown and George Floyd, Terry Willis has been building guns!

Did I get a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, watching that news story?  Maybe.

I can’t think of a better way to end this column than with Terry’s closing words to a local reporter:

“I’ve worked for 40 years of my life.  Everything that I’ve got… never stole anything, and I’m just not taking it anymore.  This ain’t the place to come, because we’re tired of it.”

Yes.  Yes we are.

But if those misunderstood youngsters are looking for a place where citizens ARE willing to take it some more, and are NOT tired of it, I’d suggest Chicago.

But get yourself a clean pair of pants and a nice warm coat first!

Hamas delenda est!   

I’ve Noticed That There Might Be Something Wrong with San Francisco (posted 1/12/24)

Today, I’m starting off with a hypothetical question: What would be your top governmental priority if you woke up and found that through some horrific series of unfathomable events, you had become a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors?

I know.  It sounds like the premise of one of the darker episodes of the Twilight Zone.  Or that Franz Kafka story, “The Metamorphosis,” in which the protagonist finds that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant bug.

I remember the first time I read that weird opening scene, when Gregor Samsa wakes up to discover his shell-like back and his segmented belly and his numerous, creepy, insectile legs.   And he fought off despair only by telling himself, “It could be worse: I could be a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.”

That’s how I remember it, anyway. 

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  You wake up to find that you’re responsible for the management of San Francisco.  And after you struggle manfully with your gag reflex and the instinctive impulse to leap from the nearest window, you stagger over to a huge table and sit down amidst the collection of oddballs, weirdos and nutjobs who are responsible for managing what was once one of the finest cities in America.

What would be your first order of business? 

Maybe tackling the piles of human excrement encroaching on every doorway and park bench in the city, like snow drifts in North Dakota in January? 

Or maybe dealing with the zombified army of meth heads slumping in those doorways and on those park benches? 

Or possibly starting an innovative pilot program in which cops are actually empowered to arrest criminals, instead of helping them steer their shopping carts full of stolen loot around the poop drifts between the soon-to-be-closed stores and “Syringe City.”  Which is what they call the motley arrangement of tents and broken-down RVs in which they “live.”

Would it surprise you to know that the actual board of supervisors recently marched right past those options and chose Door #4: “Let’s pass a resolution to tell a successful foreign country how it should conduct a war of survival against a feral mob of genocidal, jihadi freaks.”?

I’m not making that up.  In early December, a board member proposed a resolution urging Israel to agree to a ceasefire so that Hamas could try to recover from their well-deserved butt kicking, and live to rape and terrorize another day.  (I’m paraphrasing here.  But accurately so.)

And since then, countless imbeciles have spent countless hours debating countless amendments and revisions to this meaningless exercise in governmental Toobin-ing.  Tears were shed in public comment sessions.  Badly rhyming slogans were chanted.  Idiotic pronouns for non-existent genders were thrown about with great abandon. 

A giant photo of a bombed out hellscape that had once been a business district in Gaza was projected onto a wall of the meeting room.  The audience booed, and lambasted the Israeli government that caused such destruction.

Until someone noticed that the giant photo of a devastated Gaza was actually a giant window, through which the audience was looking at the bombed out hellscape that had once been a business district in San Francisco. 

So somebody closed the curtains, and the Jew-bashing went on. 

And finally, this week, the epic debate moved into its final phase, before culminating in a vote on the resolution.  One Supervisor who had been born in Iran talked about the Islamic fanatics who had tormented her family.  She testified movingly that, “I was born in a place where I heard gunfire outside my window.”

Or at least I think that’s what she said.  In the video of the event, I couldn’t hear her clearly over the sound of gunfire outside the window of the building she was in.  In San Francisco.

Another loon, Hillary Ronen (and what is it with women named “Hillary” in this once-great nation?), spoke through tears of how the backing of the evil USA is enabling “the far-right” (sic) Israeli government to “continue its ethnic cleansing campaign” (sic) against the “Palestinian” (sic) “people.” 

When the gaggle of morons in the room cheered her ridiculous statement, Ronen said, “This is one of those days where it feels like we are still San Francisco.” 

She got that right, at least.

Finally, on Tuesday, the board voted 8-3 in favor of the resolution. 

And throughout Israel, when the Jews heard about the vote, they immediately saw the error of their ways, and they beat their swords into ploughshares, and offered the peace-loving “Palestinians” a two-state solution.

And the “Palestinians” crawled out of the rubble, and shook the concrete dust off of themselves… and immediately started raping and torturing Jews, and beating them to death with their own ploughshares. 

Or they would have, if the Jews had been foolish enough to pay any attention at all to the delusional denizens of San Fran-feces.  Thankfully, since the IDF was busy hunting and killing terrorists, they just mumbled about the fakakta California Democrats and went about their business.

But the resolution was still a success, because it achieved its primary goal: making a bunch of impotent losers and pseudo-revolutionaries feel good about themselves.  They cheered, preened, and congratulated themselves for their great victory.

One spokesman, Wassim Hage, summed it up this way: “The hope is that this resolution will put the Biden administration on notice.  San Francisco leads Democratic politics in a lot of ways in the United States.” 

He’s not wrong about that.  I hope that people will recognize that when they go to the polls in November.

The Babylon Bee summed up the entire farce well: “War Ended For All Time After San Francisco Board of Supervisors Votes for World Peace.”   

But as is often the case, the eloquent former Harvard president Claudine Gay said it best: “War (huh) What is it good for?  Absolutely nothin’! (Say it again.) Blessed are the peacemakers.  All you need is love.  I am the walrus, goo-goo, g’joob.”  

Hamas delenda est!