Martin Simpson

I’m happy to report that the Simpson family is on the mend.  We got back home on the 22nd from a great visit with the eldest daughter and our new son-in-law in Denver, and then got covid on Christmas eve.  But after a couple of days of feeling lousy, I’ve gotten back to about 75% of my usual capability.

And while I’m loath to brag on myself, even at 75%, I’m much more capable than the current presidents of Harvard or the United States at their 100%.  (I know: that’s not much to boast about.)  

Since this will be my last column of the year, my instinct is to try to look back on the major events of 2023.  But the big picture is a little too disheartening to me for that right now.  So instead, I’m going to ramble through a few stories that caught my attention recently, and that I’d taken a few notes on before I got sick.   

First up, I saw a clip of CNN Chief Legal Analyst Laura Coates on a recent edition of Bill Maher’s show.  And before you say anything, no, I’ve never heard of Laura Coates either.  And good lord no, nobody with the title of “CNN Chief Legal Analyst” should generally be taken seriously on any topic, for any reason, at any time. 

However, her response to one question perfectly represented the consistent self-regard of our leftist “betters” in the media, especially when it comes to demanding that we deny obvious realities when they contradict lefty narratives.

When Maher brought up the economy and Biden’s recent record low polling, Coates said, “I feel like people talk about the ‘feel-onomics,’ right?  How I feel about something more than what the actual data is…”   

Got that?  Leftists like Maher and Coates think that normal (deplorable) people rely on their “feelings” about the economy, rather than on “data.”  Which is more than a little ironic, coming from the ideologues for whom “feelings over data” might as well be their motto, credo, and one single commandment.

Feel like a 14-year-old girl named Genevieve?  Then ignore the 50-year-old bearded face you see in the mirror, because that’s just an irrelevant data point. 

Feel like Hamas is opposed by the peace-loving people of Gaza?  Then ignore the cheering throngs in the streets when raped and dead Israeli women are paraded around and spit on, as well as the polls showing that 75% of Gazans support this very thing.  Just more data points. 

Feel like Biden is healthy and competent, and that Grandma Squanto is an Indian maiden (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and that Ilhan Omar isn’t a brother-marrying jihadi-sympathizer, and that Hunter isn’t a brother’s-widow-jumping, degenerate, addicted bagman for his dad? 

Then ignore all the information that your eyes and brain present to you, because those are just irrelevant data points.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, people ignore data about the economy in favor of their feelings. 

I’ve got news for you, CNN lady.  Every time we go to a grocery store, or buy gas, or apply for a mortgage we are being pelted by many, many painful data points.  And similarly to when any blunt object strikes you in the groin – ice cream has doubled since Brandon arrived?  I NEED my ice cream! – you “feel” pain.

And that pain doesn’t contradict data points.  It is the natural consequence of contact with those data points.  You idiots!

Speaking of dishonest media propagandists, a recent obituary of the inventor of Glock pistols reads like a parody of ignorant, bad-faith character assassination. 

The man’s name was Gaston Glock, and he died this week at the age of 94, and the column starts with some basic information, followed by his company’s statement about his contributions to the industry.

And then it turns into a game of what Adam Carolla has called, “Stupid or Liar?”  Because the writer has to be either one or the other.

He says, “It is unknown how many people have died as a result of Glock handguns.”

What?

Then he notes that the Glock was an improvement over other guns of its time, but follows with, “But many gun control advocates criticized Mr. Glock for popularizing powerful guns that they said were easy to conceal and could hold more ammunition than other guns.”

Okay.  So gun grabbers “criticized” his product for being superior to its competitors?  Got it.

The rest of the article is a long listing of mass shootings which evil criminals carried out with Glocks!  I kept reading, certain that I’d eventually get to the part where the writer estimates how many millions of crimes have been prevented with Glocks, how many murders, assaults and rapes were stopped with Glocks, etc.

HA! I kid. 

Because I knew what to expect when I read the headline that this shmuck gave his article: “Man who made billions out of death and killing dies at the age of 94.” 

I’m not making that up.  And sadly, this article typifies the level of sophisticated thinking on display in most anti-second amendment arguments. 

Speaking of defective thinking, California leftists continue to reap what they’ve been sowing. 

From 1902 until 2019, California gained population every single year.  And now, for the third year in a row, they’ve lost population. 

Headlines throughout 2023 tell the story: “CA’s population is on the decline, and high-income earners have joined the exodus” (March 23^rd).  “CA ranks #1 state wealthy Americans are moving away from” (July 25^th). “CA is leaking vital high-income taxpayers” (August 21^st). 

My favorite LA Times headline – because of how clearly it reveals the writers’ low opinion of their lefty readers’ intelligence – comes from December 19^th: “Rich People are Leaving California. That’s bad for the economy.”

DUH! 

As the headlines suggest, the state is not getting a good trade in terms of who is leaving and who is moving in.   Even before we look at the numbers, we can all guess what each group looks like. 

People fleeing:  Those who want to work hard, earn money, and keep more than 48% of it.  Those who want to start a business and employ people.  Those who don’t enjoy physical combat with either micro-managing petty bureaucrats or violent, mentally ill drug addicts.

People arriving:  Meth enthusiasts who prefer living outdoors over gainful employment, and like warm winters.  Grievance study majors with a tackle-box worth of facial piercings and a blog espousing “quiet quitting.” Those who enjoy the freedom of waking up around noon, rolling out of their sleeping bag, and pooping on the sidewalk.   

And no offense to CNN lady, but the economic data back up those “feel-onomic” factors:  Recent IRS data shows that the average income of leavers was $137K, while the average of arrivers was only $75K.

Losing almost twice as much on every such “trade” would hurt the income of any state.  But CA is a leftist state where the evil rich have been paying their “fair share!”  If by “fair share” you mean that the most productive 1% should pay 40-45% of all state income taxes. 

The good news is that after the last three disastrous years, CA’s political leaders finally seem to have learned their lesson, and are reversing course in 2024, cutting taxes in an attempt to lure back successful citizens. 

HA!  I kid again. 

Ken-Doll Newsom, fresh from his debate beatdown by DeSantis, signed legislation to increase the top state income tax rate from the already highest in the nation 13%, to an eye-watering 14.4%!

Annnndddddd…

one year after Ken-Doll bragged about having a surplus of $97.5 billion, the state has experienced “an almost unbelievable 25% decrease” in income tax collected, and now expects a $68 billion DEFICIT next year.   

You know what I call that, don’t you?

That’s right: Bidenomics!

Finally, I’d like to end 2023 on another positive note, with a feel-good Christmas eve story from relatively near Bethlehem.

This time of year, I usually like to watch festive videos such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  But this season, my favorite video was produced by the IDF.  It tells the heart-warming tale of Hassan Atrash, the terrorist most responsible for arming Hamas, as well as smuggling weapons into the West Bank.

Since Israel has had the good sense to ignore Biden and Blinken (and Lloyd Austen and Blitzen!), they’ve been knocking off most of the worst terrorists in Gaza.  And a few days before Christmas they discovered a car that Atrash was riding in. 

They had a jet in the air, and followed Atrash’s car on video, as it wove through the crowded streets of Rafah.  Then, when it moved down a less crowded street, the Israeli pilot got the command and launched a missile.

And to paraphrase an old seasonal poem:

“It sprang off its rail, with a hiss and a whistle,

And it dropped through Hassan’s roof like the down on a thistle.

And the pilot exclaimed, as he flew out of sight,

Shalom, mother-friender, the dust you can bite!”

I love a happy ending!

By the way, THIS is a story that deserves a headline like, “Man who devoted his life to death and killing dies at the age of 68.”

But I will settle for brevity: “IDF takes out Atrash.”

I’ll see you in the new year, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!   

Today’s column is going to be a grab bag of stories I either just saw, or haven’t had a chance to comment on.  Because even in a 3-column week, there are more rant-worthy stories than I’ve had time to rant about. 

For example, if you would have asked me one week ago, “Martin, do you think it’s metaphysically possible for you to be more disgusted with Anthony Fauci?”  I would have said absolutely not.

But then Fauci said, “Hold my orb and my scepter and my holy chalice, and watch this.”  And he gave an interview to the BBC in which he explained that while he “identifies as a Catholic,” his own personal ethics are so awesome that he doesn’t need to practice religion. 

First, his “identifying” as a Catholic is no more meaningful than Richard Levine “identifying” as a woman named Rachel Levine (not to mention his identifying as Admiral of the Seven Seas).  Or the Pale Puritan Senator from Massachusetts “identifying” as the “Miss Cherokee Cheekbones” winner from the Great Plains Pow Wow of 1980.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Second, who could have guessed that a guy who had no problem identifying himself as the embodiment of capital “S” Science would also give himself an A+ for moral and theological perfection? 

(I still think that continuing to prop up and defer to Fauci was one of only two significant failures of Trump’s term.  Due to our dysfunctional government employment bureaucracy, Trump might not have been able to fire Fauci, but he certainly could have banished him to some remote clinic doing STD testing, and ensured that he would never represent the White House on national tv again.)

To summarize, Fauci is The Science.  And also, apparently, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Science except through him!

As long as we’re here in theology corner for the moment, did you catch the story on Tuesday of the  Turkish member of parliament who gave a dramatic speech berating Israel?  His name is Hasan Bitmez, and he called out his fellow Turks for not being sufficiently pro-Hamas and pro-terrorism.

He ended his stemwinder by addressing Israel directly, saying “You will not escape the wrath of Allah!” 

Then he said to his fellow pols, “I salute you all.”

And then… DOWN GOES BITMEZ!  The guy went from hate speech to horizontal in two seconds!

And this wasn’t a Joe Biden-style collapse – which happens thrice a week, and can be caused by anything from sandbags to stairs to a stiff breeze.  This was a full-on heart attack.  He was rushed to the hospital, where he died yesterday.

If this was a theological column, I might cite Jehovah on the issue of Israel (to wit, that He will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her).  But this is not a theology column, and I’m not a theologian.

So I’ll just cite Nelson Muntz, from my namesake tv show: “HA! HA!”

As long as we’re on the subject of Israel and Hamas, I came across yet another dishonest and emotionally manipulative article on the current war, this time from CNN.  (Surprise!)

It is a tear-jerker tale of a Palestinian “writer and academic” named Refaat Alareer who stayed in a part of Gaza that the IDF had warned civilians to leave, and was killed in an airstrike on December 7^th. 

The story paints him in glowing terms, stressing that he was a civilian, that he was “trapped” in Gaza, and that he had edited several collections of essays, pics and poems depicting the suffering of “Palestinians” under “blockade” and “siege” by Israelis.  He somehow never mentions why such a blockade or siege might be in place.  (Hint: Even after Israel pulled out of Gaza 17 years ago, Gazans kept murdering Jews in unprovoked rocket and terrorist attacks.) 

He was called “a towering figure in Gaza,” a “generous, gracious, gentle, patient” man and “a force for good.”  The article ends with the words of a former student of his: “We remember and carry on Refaat’s legacy.  Refaat the storyteller, father, husband, son, teacher, and friend.”

But in the middle of the story, as a kind of throat-clearing aside – quickly mentioned and then dropped –is this little nugget: “While Alareer’s death is being mourned by Palestinians (sic), some of his comments have caused offense.  In a BBC interview he described the October 7^th attacks as ‘a pre-emptive attack by Palestinian resistance’ that was ‘legitimate and moral.’”

Huh. 

Again, I’m no journalist, but I think I can fix this story’s headline: “Dishonest, Anti-Semitic ‘Palestinian’ Terrorist Supporter Reaps What He Sows.”  You’re welcome.

And while we’re on the topic, I’m seeing an awful lot of video of “Palestinian” civilians weeping over their loved ones killed or injured in the war, and their grief is understandable.  However, I’d like to hear just one of the “reporters” covering those stories ask the mourners a simple question: “What do you think of the 10/7 attack on mostly unarmed Israeli civilians?”

If the “grieving” “civilians” respond by condemning Hamas and their evil actions that have caused these air strikes, God bless them, and they deserve sympathy.

But if they respond by spitting out some genocidal hatred for Jews and praise for Hamas, the reporters should thank them for their thoughts, then hop into a Jeep and drive a safe distance away.  And then call in another airstrike on that location. 

Because “friend you,” malicious sufferers of karmic justice!

Speaking of the dishonest MSM, when CNN scooped PBS with their lying about Gaza, PBS tried to keep up, by lying about what caused recent Irish riots in Dublin. 

On 11/24, a man the media worked diligently to NOT identify stabbed five people, including three children.  After many months of crime and social unrest prompted by many unvetted immigrants being allowed into Ireland against the will of most citizens (sound familiar?), many Irish were fed up, and started protests that definitely did not remain peaceful.

The Irish press and authorities made things worse, as is their wont, by imposing an information blackout that fed rumors.  The cops had no information to release on the stabber – except, oddly enough, that they were 100% certain that the motive was NOT terrorism!  They wouldn’t comment on rumors that the knifester was an illegal immigrant from a Muslim country. 

After several weeks went by, it turned out that he was in fact an Algerian immigrant who had come to Ireland legally 20 years ago, and had been living on the dole before he went all stabby.  But the MSM focused much more on how terrible the Irish protestors were, decrying the evil xenophobes who carried such inflammatory signs as ones proclaiming, “Irish Lives Matter.”

No good person excuses the subsequent riots and vandalism.  But the same kind of arrogant leftist governments who happily go down endless rabbit holes searching for the “root causes” and excusing every murderous rampage by preferred groups – jihadis in the Middle East and around the world, BLM and antifa in the states, etc. – directed their ire solely at the put-upon Irish citizenry.

When Bill Maher asked PBS “journalist” and first-class gaslighter Jane Ferguson about the potential reasons behind the riots, she gave a very wordy answer that never mentioned Ahmed al-knife-bladi.  Instead, she described the riots as a “fomented” act by a “very tiny minority” that’s “very loud and very violent.”  She further characterized the movement as “anti-immigration” and “basically the usual populist kind of conversation.”

Funnily enough, even when MSM critics had to admit that Ferguson’s response was BS, the best they could do was to point out that the riots “were triggered by a variety of factors, not solely anti-immigration sentiment,” and claim that social media was another culprit.  In other words, they did everything but admit that the Irish people might have some legitimate cause for concern.   

Guys, I’m no journalist – neither are most of you, apparently – but you’re burying the lede, and missing the point, and you can’t see the forest for the trees (along with whatever other phrases might indicate that your heads are up your arses).

Here’s what started the riots – which you would be calling “peaceful protests” if you were at all ideologically consistent: Against a backdrop of a wave of crime and social disruption caused by illegal immigrants from Muslim countries throughout Europe and in Ireland, an unemployed and non-contributing immigrant stabbed three Irish children.  And most Irish people tend not to like that.

There.  Was that so hard, PBS cranial-rectal inversion lady?

So what have we learned here today?   

That although I’m no theologian, I’m still a better theologian than Tony Fauci and Hasan Bitmez, and although I’m no journalist, I’m still a better journalist than anyone in the “mainstream” media.

Sure, those are low bars… but I am clearing them!   

Hamas delenda est!   

Our first candidate is far-left PA representative Summer Lee (D-ullard) who for some reason is the ranking member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Gathering Taxpayer Money Into a Giant Pile and Then Lighting it on Fire.

Sorry, my crack research team tells me that she was actually heading up the subcommittee on “health.”  (I’m going to guess from what happened that it wasn’t mental health.)

Anyway, one of the speakers in front of that ridiculous committee was Riley Gaines, the excellent collegiate swimmer who was cheated out of several wins by a narcissistic, hulking dude who calls himself Princess Petunia, or something equally absurd.  

So Summer Lee spouted a bunch of nonsense about how being able to dominate women in sports would raise the self-esteem and decrease the stress of males who can’t make it in male sports.  Then she called Riley Gaines “transphobic.”  When Gaines had the chance to respond, she said that forcing women to get whipped by mentally ill males (my paraphrase) is “misogynist.”

Lee then got mad, and moved to have Gaines’ words taken down, on the grounds that “[Gaines] is engaging in personalities.”  (Whatever that means.) After consulting off-mike with several minions, she was visibly angry, but just as visibly defeated, and she finally turned her mike back on and snipped, “I move to withdraw the point of order.”

I’m no lip-reader, but when I put my conical purple wizard hat on and watched again, I think I detected that one of the helpers she consulted said, “Gaines just said something obviously true and you called her a ‘transphobe,’ so you can’t accuse her of ‘engaging in personalities’ when she rightly beeyotch-slapped you back, you ignorant wench.”

That’s entertainment!

Our second candidate is a similarly awful Democrat congresswoman who stepped on a different political rake on Saturday, receiving a similarly hilarious metaphorical rake handle across her big, stupid face.  This was Sheila Jackson Lee, who has been plaguing Texas voters during her 30 years (!) in congress, until she decided to run for Houston mayor this year. 

No, she didn’t leave congress to do it.  I guess she figured that she could be a terrible congresswoman AND a terrible mayoral candidate at the same time. And boy, did she pull that off!

On Saturday she got stomped by bland white-guy Democrat John Whitmire by 30 points!  Since Lee is black, you know why she thinks she lost, don’t you?

Bidenomics!

No, sorry about that.  I meant…

Racism!

The best part of her loss wasn’t that it was such a blow-out.  Or that she was endorsed by Cankles (CAW CAW!) Clinton and Imhotep Pelosi.

The best part was the comedy gold revealed in leaked recordings of her verbally abusing staffers during the campaign. 

Among other things, she told one, “I want you to have a [friending] brain!   Nobody knows a [GD] thing in my office!”  Of another staffer she said, “He only sit up there (sic) like a fat ass, just an idiot, talkin’ bout what the [friend] he doesn’t know… stupid [motherfrienders]… two [GD] big-ass children, [friendin’] idiots, serve no [GD] purpose!”

She seems nice, doesn’t she?  

On the other hand, if she’s talking about human beings who willingly went to work to advance the candidacy of Sheila Jackson Lee, then “sitting there like an idiot serving no damn purpose” probably deserves a big ol’ “fact check: true.” 

Still, hearing SJL calling somebody ELSE a worthless idiot seems like the pot calling the kettle… um… African-American, I guess?

By the way, after losing her mayor’s race by a mile, she turned around and announced that she’s officially running for re-election to her House seat in November.  Because of course she is.

You told her once, Texas voters.  Looks like you’re going to have to tell her again. 

But move over Summer Lee and Sheila Jackson Lee, because a different Dem politician edged you out for most hilarious self-own of the month!  I give you the so-called “Porn-Dem.”

And it’s a sad commentary on the times that when I read “Porn-Dem” in a headline, I guessed a dozen people that it could be referring to.  (Hunter Biden? Anthony Weiner? Slick Willie Clinton?  Jeffrey Tubin?  Jeffrey Epstein?  Harvey Weinstein? Etc. and etc.)

But no, this time it’s Susanna Gibson, the brainiac who narrowly lost a Virginia House seat race last month after webcam sex videos that she had distributed to paying customers came to light. 

Here are the facts: Gibson live-streamed videos of herself having sex, and received “tips” from anonymous viewers who watched.  No one knows who alerted the media to those videos, but my money is on disgruntled leftists, who were offended because the sex was heterosexual, and with her husband.  (So gross!) 

Now that she lost, she is upset. In an interview with lefty Politico, she complained about “the embarrassment” she felt when the clips were “leaked,” and how devastated she was to find out “that there are sexually explicit videos of [me] online.”

If I can just take a moment to engage my Sam Kinison filter… 

“You RECORDED them!  OH! OHHH!  THEY WEREN’T LEAKED!  YOU SET UP A COMPUTER AND A CAMERA, AND TURNED THEM ON, AND THEN YOU BANGED YOUR BETA O’ROURKE-LOOKING HUSBAND WHILE PERVS WATCHED!! OH! OHHH!!!”

The best part is that she’s REALLY mad that the stories about her videos, “implied that I performed sex acts online with my husband for money.”    

“YOU DID!! YOU TOOK TIPS!! OHHH!!”

Sorry.  Let me just turn that filter off…

She really said that: just because she took money from viewers, that doesn’t mean she did it for money.  And she really feels like her “privacy has been violated” – I’m not making that up – and she never imagined that anybody watching her sex videos would record them and spread them around. 

Because if there’s one thing that anonymous weirdos watching your sex videos one-handed are known for, it’s their principled, deep and abiding respect for copyright and privacy laws.

Considering the way this woman was able to get caught with her hand in the cookie jar – and that’s not a sexual euphemism, so get your mind out of the gutter – and still act morally outraged and lie about it with a straight face? 

She probably has a bright future in politics after all.

Hamas delenda est!   

I started writing a column on my favorite bonehead congresswomen stories from the last week, but I also wanted to do a little horse-race talk about the 2024 election, and a good news story on Israel’s war with Hamas, too.  But the column started getting a little long, so I decided to make this a rare, three-column week.

First though, I’ve been nauseated by the way Brandon and his co-conspirators have turned “the MAGA agenda” into a vague, symbolic totem that they can use to motivate the easily frightened and shallow thinkers on their side into voting for them. 

But I’ve noticed that many folks on our side have been using it in several different ways lately.  I always thought of a MAGA agenda as pretty much synonymous with traditional conservatism.  But during the clashes between Trump and DeSantis this year, I’m not sure that many people are using it to mean what I thought it meant. 

My best guess right now is that MAGA might deviate from old-school conservatism in one of two ways:  

1. Either MAGA differs on a handful of policy issues — ex: being more pro-tariff than OG conservative “free trader/laissez-faire” positions; more isolationist-adjacent than aggressive in foreign policy; more relaxed about LGB (but not necessarily T or Q?) social issues than more religious conservatives; and more pro-criminal justice reform a la the sentence reductions, commutations and/or pardons in Trump’s “First Step” act in 2018.  

(On the first three of those, if I understand them correctly, I’m probably more MAGA than OG conservative.  But definitely not on the fourth.)

Or

2. MAGA differs mostly in that it’s more about loyalty to or belief in Trump as the best chance to achieve mostly conservative goals, rather than being focused primarily on those goals in and of themselves.

But I could be wrong about both of those ideas.  I’d love to hear from some of the MAGA fans in CO nation on this topic:

What do you mean when you say “the MAGA agenda”?

Now, on to the horse race:

I’m still hoping for a Christmas miracle, and that DeSantis somehow gets the GOP nomination.  And much like a beleaguered Cubs fan, I’m going to hold onto that hope until he’s mathematically eliminated.

But assuming that Trump gets the nom, I’m feeling better lately about his chances against Biden, now that there’s a polling trend showing him with a small if consistent lead.  One usual caveat still applies: the Dems will cheat enough to win if it’s close, so any GOP candidate (Trump or anyone else) will have to win by more than the margin of fraud. 

And it’s still maddening to see neither Trump nor Ronna Romney (why did he have to back her for that crucial position?!) doing anything substantial to stop the steal next November.  Does anyone in CO nation have any info about GOP attempts to fight electoral fraud or tighten up voting procedures that I don’t know about?  (If so, please share them, and ease my mind!)

I’m also concerned that a lot of low-info voters might be dissuaded from voting for Trump if he’s got a conviction or two by November – infuriatingly unfair, but almost certain. 

One additional tricky factor for anyone trying to handicap a Trump/Biden race is the fact that a majority of voters of all stripes say that don’t want either of those two choices.   Recent Real Clear Politics average of all polls – which is probably the most accurate indicator in the goofy world of polling – show net approval ratings for Biden and Trump at the end of November as identical: they’re both underwater by 15 points, with 40% approval and 55% disapproval. 

On one hand, I can’t take those numbers super seriously, since it’s hard to take seriously the judgment of anyone who can see Trump as negatively as they see Biden!  On the other hand, those people can vote, so… yikes!

Those approve/disapprove numbers on election day would doom any candidate in political history… unless two such candidates are running against each other, which requires that much of the electorate holds their noses and chooses the guy they dislike the least.

That being the case, I think the GOP should probably stop pushing to impeach Biden.  Keep investigating him, demonstrating his corruption, and wounding him, sure.  But don’t knock him out!  Because other than Que Mala – and I’m assuming that even the Dems are not insane enough to run her if Biden is out –any other Dem (as terrible as they all are!) would have to be tougher to beat. 

And if you think it’s already too late for Biden to drop out… nope!  I’d point you to the best historical parallel of a president with lousy approval numbers who made a late exit: LBJ in 1968, whose bungling of Vietnam made him toxic.  Do you remember the date when LBJ dropped out? 

It was the last day of March! 

Besides, you can point to all of the rules, regulations and even laws you want – a candidate has to be on the ballot by this date, or nobody can receive the nomination after that date – but they all mean nothing.  The corrupt Dems can drop in a new candidate at the last minute, laws and rules be damned. 

They’ve done it before.  (I mean besides in 2020, when PA changed its rules in 2 crucial ways to allow massive mail-in voting, with no authentication of mail-in ballots.) 

In 2002, Robert “the Torch” Torricelli was the Dem candidate for Senate in New Jersey.   He couldn’t have been more transparently corrupt.  He was as obviously corrupt as Bob Menendez is now.  He was as corrupt as… well, I can think of no better metaphor:  he was as corrupt as a New Jersey Democrat.

The Dems didn’t care at all… until the fall of that year, when polls showed that he was going to lose in November.  They pressured him to resign, which he did on September 30^th.  Unfortunately for them, the deadline for swapping out a candidate for a Senate seat was September 7^th.  For an ethical party, that meant that they were stuck with the Torch. 

But these were Jersey Democrats.  So they brought creepy Frank “the lout” Lautenberg out of retirement at age 78, and put him on the ballot.  When the GOP took that violation of black-letter law to court, the Jersey Supreme Court (full of corrupt Dems) ruled that the law was flawed, because it would “prevent the voters from having a choice” in the election.

That claim was obviously and moronically wrong, because the voters had a choice: the GOP guy, or the Torch.  It’s not like Torricelli died or something; he was still there, but he was going to lose.  And if you’re a New Jersey Democrat, that cannot be allowed to happen.

So they swapped the Lout for the Torch, and the Lout won, and remained a senator until he died in 2013.  For some reason, the Dems then removed him from the Senate. 

I guess they hadn’t yet figured out the Biden Protocol (worst Robert Ludlum novel ever, by the way), which allows you to keep a deceased corrupticrat in office long after he has joined the choir invisible. 

So I’m for damaging Brandon, but propping him up to make sure that he’s on the ballot in November, because I think he’s our best chance to win!

Let me end on a happier note.  Israel continues to kill Hamas terrorists in bunches, and I’m as happy about that as Ivy League kids and the little charmers in the Squad are angry about it.

For one example, shortly after the IDF went into Gaza, they helped the commander of Hamas’ Shejaiya (pronounced just like it’s spelled) Battalion pursue his hobby of shrapnel absorption.  After which he quickly assumed rubble temperature. 

But not to worry.  Because Amad “Creaky” Kirkae, his ambitious understudy and Deputy Commander, was eager to step up to the big show.  He quickly moved into his predecessor’s old “office” (a musty, smelly section of tunnel with his blood still decorating the walls) and sent out an email announcement of his new position. 

(“I know I’ve got big sandals to fill, but with your buy-in, I know we can achieve greater evil synergy, and increase our dead-children deliverables.  Death to Israel.  Thanks!”)

Annnnnnddddd… Israel killed Creaky this week. 

Excellent!  These creeps have fruit-fly life expectancies; they’re dropping like anti-Semitic Ivy League presidents and Bud Light and Disney executives! 

Who’s on deck, Hamas?  Because…

Batter up!

Hamas delenda est!   

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but John Fetterman is the best Democrat Senator in the United States.  He said Bob Menendez should be expelled, he came out against selling farmland to shady Chicoms, and he’s stood up for Israel and mocked pro-Hamas protestors. 

He’s probably a good example to keep all of us humble: if I thought that I knew anything for certain, it would be that Fetterman would be a 100% terrible senator. 

And lo and behold, he’s no worse than a 70% terrible senator.  Which, sadly, makes him the best of all of the Democrat senators.  So yeah, I got that one wrong.

Or, as a great Babylon Bee headline put it: “Weird: Man Becomes More Conservative As He Regains Brain Function.” 

The “journalists” at the Washington Post went out on a 24-hour strike yesterday.  Historically speaking, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a strike bringing a company to its knees in less than many weeks of work stoppage, so I’m not sure what they thought they’d accomplish in a one-day strike.

In the regular working world, people call that “taking a day off.”   

The WAPO workers say they’ve been without a contract for 18 months, and the bosses aren’t giving them what they need.  But the paper is reportedly losing $100 million per year, and they’re in the middle of the latest round of layoffs (this time it’s a 240-job cut) to try to stem the financial bleeding. 

The workers put out a short video asking for people to support their negotiating position.  In that video, various WAPO reporters cite what they’ve done.  The first one out of the gate says that she’s risked her life covering Ukraine.  Which I think is a fair point.

But then the next five reporters in a row list five stories they’ve covered: “I’ve covered an insurrection.  A global pandemic.  Historic racial justice protests.  Climate change.  And gun violence in the America.” 

Yes.  And you’ve covered all of them dishonestly! 

There was no “insurrection” in the commonly understood meaning of that word.  You misled about the pandemic constantly.  (Horny pangolins started the whole thing!  It’s deadly for everyone!  Masks stop transmission!  Distancing by six feet is scientific!  The vax stops the virus!  Fauci is not the spawn of Satan!)  You called violent looting and riots by mobs of leftist, anti-white racists, “peaceful protests for racial justice.” 

You’ve exaggerated the threat of climate change based on computer models that we know are wrong, and you’ve lied about what we can do to mitigate it.  And you’ve constantly lied about who is perpetrating gun violence (it’s not law-abiding citizens and NRA members) and how it can be drastically reduced (enforce the laws on the books by giving long jail sentences to everyone who commits a crime with a gun).

Do you think that might be why fewer people are buying the WAPO, and thus paying your salaries anymore? 

In fact, I’ve got bad news for you: if the paper really is losing $100 million per year with all of you making what you’re making, you’re all overpaid already.  

And other than adopting a strategy of trying to bring in more money by not lying your ideological hindquarters off – you seem to have ruled out that possibility – the only way you could possibly get raises now would be if Bezos ponies up even more good money to throw after bad.

I don’t know Bezos, and the only one I know who might be close to billionaire status is the great and powerful CO.  But the way I understand it, billionaires are not generally in the “let me continue operating a corporation that loses $100 million per year” business.

But hey, workers of the world unite, and you do you, and good luck with those negotiations, you boneheads!

On another topic, in this winter of my discontent (despite it being the time of year when I celebrate God sending me a Savior Whom I sorely need), I am still thankful for one constant in this beleaguered world: most criminals are incredibly stupid.

One recent example was provided by four would-be carjackers in Bethesda, Maryland right after Thanksgiving.  They pistol-whipped their victim and took his keys, but then their getaway was thwarted by the fact that they couldn’t escape in his car.

Because while they should all be beaten with a stick, not one of them could drive one!

The Blaze story about their incompetence listed three other similarly moronic carjackings by bungling carjackers: one in San Antonio, who got shot by his would-be victim (because: Texas!) as he tried to find first gear; two in Maryland who had to leave the car they’d taken because they didn’t know the difference between a clutch and a marital aid; and three others who took a beating from a MMA-trained driver and had to return to their own car and lead the cops on a high-speed chase before getting arrested. 

(There’s no mention in that story of whether any of the driver’s ed rejects also had easily identifiable tattoos on their big stupid heads, but the smart money says probably.)

Another imbecilic criminal story happened last weekend in a Michigan Wal-Mart, where local police were holding a “Shop with a Cop” charity event.  Local poor kids were being escorted around the store by 75 uniformed policemen to receive some free Christmas presents.

That’s when an unnamed 62-year-old criminal genius decided that she’d fill a cart with over $700 worth of stolen stuff and roll it right out the front door. 

I’m not making that up.  In a country full of towns where cops are few and far between, because leftist supporters of criminals have defunded or harassed them off the job, this brainiac decided to stage her own little Thomas Crown Affair-style heist in a store filled with 75 cops!

She made it out to the parking lot and was stashing her loot in her car when she got arrested.

I don’t know anything about that woman other than her age, but I’d bet Joe Biden’s life on one thing.  The getaway car she was tossing the stolen goods into?

It had to be an automatic.  

But if we can categorically state that criminals are invariable dumb, can you guess which other group is also invariably d—

Oops, you got there ahead of me: Republicans.

Expelling Santos is a typically dumb GOP move.  Which is not to say that he didn’t deserve to be expelled.

He is a ridiculous dullard and delusional conman, and in a healthy political system, he would never have gotten with a million miles of winning a seat in the House.  He’s an embarrassment to the GOP and to his constituents, and free of our current context, he should have been tossed out of the congress forthwith.

Except.  Literally dozens and dozens (maybe hundreds!) of Democrats in the House – and in the GOP as well – have behaved as badly or worse than Santos, and all of them are still in the House, and probably will be until they are as broken down and senile as Joe Biden was before he passed away in mid-2020.

For a few quick examples: Maxine “Melting Face” Waters openly called for people to harass GOP pols in public; there is a jihadi caucus (Omar, Tlaib, Jayapal, et al) in the House who tacitly support terrorist groups like Hamas.

Santos is accused of using campaign funds to unethically enrich himself; name 6 Democrats (or Republicans) who haven’t!  Bob Menendez has been well-known to be a bribe-taking corrupt-icrat for years and is currently facing a raft of charges, and he’s STILL in the Senate, several decades after credible charges against him first surfaced.  

One charge against Santos was that he lied about his ethnic background when he falsely claimed to be Jewish.  Meanwhile, Grandma Squanto owes her entire academic and then Senate career to her faux Indian heritage claims, and she’ll be in the Senate until she dies, after which she’ll be the only white lady to receive a traditional Indian tree burial (look it up), despite having less connection to actual Indians than the Italian and Jewish actors who made up the Hekawi tribe on F-Troop. 

(Yes, that’s another timely pop culture reference that you only get in my columns.) (Also, #wemustneverstopmockingher) 

Therefore, since the Democrats have shown absolutely zero signs of any willingness to expel corrupt members of their own party in Congress (doing so would cut the number of Dems in congress by around 98.3%), it was political malpractice for the GOP to decrease their already razor-thin majority by expelling Santos.

So let’s re-cap.  Santos is a scumbag, but he had already been shunned by the GOP and was already getting tossed out next year.  In the interim, he would have been a reliable GOP vote, and the party would have a decent chance of replacing him with a Republican next November.  Meanwhile, the Democrat minority in the House is chock full of scumbags, and none of them have been condemned or forced out by the party, and they will all cling to their House seats like grim Biden.

I’m sorry, that’s “death.”  They will cling to their seats like grim death.

Finally, let’s go into the weekend on a high note: the many dozens of Hamas thugs who surrendered to the IDF yesterday.  Pics show them lined up on the street or riding in the back of trucks on their way to Israeli prisons, all of them stripped to their underwear.  (Not to sexually humiliate them, as they did to their unarmed victims, but because their terrorist ilk have a tendency to be armed to the teeth and wear explosive vests.)

These are heartwarming images, not just because they show that Israel is winning, but because it’s useful for the “Palestinians” to see their big, bad jihadi warriors revealed to be the weak cowards that they are. 

When they were up against unarmed hippie chicks and senior citizens, they were all “Allahu akbar” this, and fearless, “we will happily die as martyrs while killing Jews” that.  But when they have to face some pissed off Hebrews with guns, they end up standing around in the street in their undies like they’re attending a gay pride parade led by Dylan Mulvaney.  

By the way, I wonder what all of the pro-Hamas caucus in our congress and on our campuses think of those pictures?  They’ve been screaming for “proportionality” in Israel’s fight against Hamas for weeks. 

But do you think those idiots know that in this context, proportionality would mean finding hundreds of Israeli terrorists to rape hundreds of those Hamas captives, then murder all of them, but only after raping and murdering their wives and children and grandparents in front of them?

And then throwing their naked and mangled corpses in the back of open pick-up trucks and driving them through the streets of Tel Aviv while mobs of jeering Jews spit on and defile them?

I know: even though all of those captured Hamas terrorists deserve to be treated that way, that’s an insane and unthinkable scenario that would never happen in a million years.   

Which tells you everything you need to know about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in Gaza and Israel.

Hamas delenda est!   

Today I’ll start with my take on the DeSantis/Newsom debate, followed by some examples of leftists hilariously stomping on rakes in various contexts.

As regular readers know, although I vote Republican, I’m much more of a conservative than I am a Republican.  That’s because as you may have noticed, Republicans seem to divide their time between occasionally doing the right thing – in a limp, mealy mouthed and querulous way – and surrendering to leftist elites and the MSM (but I repeat myself) faster than Vidkun Quisling when a Nazi armored column is rumored to be within 100 miles of Oslo.

(Quisling is the only Norwegian my wife has forbidden me to mention.  So don’t tell her.)

As a conservative Floridian, I’m a big fan of Ron DeSantis, and I’m apparently one of the minority in the GOP who are still maintaining a faint hope that the miraculous could happen and he’d get the GOP nomination.  I’m going to hold onto that hope until – as now appears almost certain – his campaign finally succumbs to the combined onslaught from leftists and Trump.

On that day, I’m going to spend a little time with some Knob Creek 9 bourbon and mourn the loss of the best opportunity for disciplined, consistently conservative governance from the White House in my lifetime.  Then I’m going to get back up and start doing whatever I can to help persuade people to vote for Trump over Biden (or whoever will have replaced Biden on the Dem ticket by next November). 

Having said all that, you’ll probably expect me to cheerlead for RDS with a bunch of talking points about how he DESTROYED Newsom!!!

And sure, he did destroy Newsom, in large part because Newsom is such an oily and unpleasant liar that he is eminently destroyable.  And to the extent that RDS hammered Newsom last week, he advanced the cause of whichever GOP candidate may eventually face Newsom in a presidential election, whether in 2024 or later.    

But I’m not a cheerleader for particular candidates as much as for principles, and I do my best to give you an honest bounce on what I think happened, regardless of my own preferences.  And I saw some good and some bad out of DeSantis in the debate. 

The bad mostly involved style.  DeSantis is nowhere near the showman that Trump is, and he doesn’t have the charisma of a Reagan, or even of Bill Clinton (if you could stomach his falseness, which I couldn’t) or Obama (ditto).  In his weakest moments he comes across as awkward and uncomfortable.  And at a few points, he went after Newsom so relentlessly that he talked over him and became irritating.  (A more natural debater would let Newsom spout a bunch of his BS, and then counter-punch.  RDS always had the counter-punches, but often not the timing or style.)

Which leads me to the good: all of the substance, and a few moments of style.  As he always does, DeSantis had the receipts, facts and stats, and he used them to beat Ken Doll like a rented mule.  But in this instance that’s a pretty low bar, just because of RDS’ and Newsom’s records. DeSantis has been a great governor and produced great results; Newsom has been terrible, and produced terrible results.

DeSantis did a good job with the story of the guy he recently talked to who had fled California for Florida’s better governance… and that guy was Newsom’s father-in-law!  And it was fun to watch Captain Brylcreem squirm when DeSantis held up the gay kiddie porn book that the leftists want in middle school libraries, and when he held up the poop-map of San Francisco.   

So RDS played his cards well… but he was playing with a straight flush, so of course he won going away.    Sadly for me, I can’t see this debate changing anything in the GOP primaries.

In other more heartening news, lefty elites continue to beclown themselves in ways that should bolster our chances next November.  

One of the best things we have going for us is the infuriating way that MSM “journalists” keep upping the ante on their maddening racial gaslighting that repulses normal people.  And I know you’ve heard about the latest example.

It’s the one in which the black sports “journalist” that nobody had ever heard of – his name is Carron (pronounced “Karen,” perfectly enough) – attacked the kid at the KC Chiefs game for wearing blackface.  Of course the kid’s face was painted half black and half red, because those are KC’s colors. 

When Carron/Karen got blasted for his idiocy, he doubled down on the dumb, saying that the kid’s two-toned face paint was even worse, since it meant he was attacking both Indians and blacks.  Which is somehow more moronic than his initial claim.

But the extra-funny footnote is that the kid is actually part Indian.  When I heard that, I figured that in these PC times, that probably means he’s a 16th or a 32^nd Indian at most.  But no, he’s got a grandpa who is an elder in some kind of Chumash council, and his dad is a member of the tribe, too.

But even if he had been only 1/32nd, that’s still many hundred times more Indian than Liz Warren, whose great-great-great-great grandpappy (Harrington Livingston the 3rd, fourth Earl of White-fordshire and second duke of White-ingham) raced down the gangplank from the Mayflower and briefly brushed against a startled Pequot.  (Yes, I’m still beating this dead Liz Warren warhorse! Because #wemustneverstopmockingher!)

But the funniest self-own in this ridiculous story comes from some little-known sports podcaster named Dan Le Batard (he forgot the “s”), who whined that it’s NEVER acceptable to wear black and red paint on your face.  Never, never, never!

And then… wait for it… a year-old picture surfaced of LeBa(s)tard dressed in a black and red outfit that looks like something you’d see the members of Quiet Riot wearing in 1983.  And his face… keep waiting for it… is smeared with red and black face paint!  

You cannot make up people as stupid as Carron/Karen and Dan Le Ba(s)tard.

Meanwhile at the White House, the National Christmas tree was put up last weekend, in preparation for Joe Biden’s attempted tree lighting several days later. 

Annnnnddddd… God sent winds gusting to 35 mph on Tuesday, toppling the tree, in what has to be the best metaphor for the travails of the Brandon administration since Joey Gaffes shook hands with a ghost and then fell over a sandbag.

Tragically, the tree was lifted back in place, but only after we’d all gotten the clear message: God wants nothing to do with this administration.

Finally, I could not end this column without mentioning the second-best illustration of the Biden administration’s incompetence from the past week: Miguel Cardona’s mangling of the famous Reagan quote: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

Cardona was speaking at a meeting in Jackson hole, Wyoming – and boy, does this guy put the “ass” in Jackson Hole – when he illustrated how the feds are going to give “technical assistance” to schools.  Quoth the Ed Sec, “I think it was President Reagan who said, ‘We’re from the government. We’re here to help.’”

When I first read that, I thought that it must have been a misquote.  Even after I saw the transcript, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, because maybe he just had a momentary mental glitch, and mixed up Reagan’s quote. 

So I looked for other times when he discussed Reagan, and was discomfited to find these examples: “Even Ronald Reagan, on a visit to Berlin, famously said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, keep this wall standing.  And maybe even reinforce it, with more barbed wire and armed guards.’”  And “The Democrat party didn’t leave me, I left the Democrat party.’”

That was not encouraging.  But I figured that an Education Secretary can’t be that addled, so I dove deeper into Cardona’s past, but found only more misinterpretations of historic speeches:

“In these trying times, I take inspiration from FDR, when he said, ‘The only things to fear are the dark, heights, and public speaking.  Oh, and spiders.  They’re so creepy!  And don’t get me started on fanatical Japanese kamikaze attacks.  Ooh, and also, fear itself.’”

Or

“Today, on MLK Day, I’m reminded of the great man’s words of hope for the future, and I quote, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the content of their character, but by the intricate details of their racial and ethnic heritage, predominately the color of their skin.’”

Or

“Who can forget JFK’s timeless admonition: ‘Ask what your country can do for you.  And don’t trouble yourself with what you can do for your country.’”

THIS is your Secretary of Education, people! 

Have I mentioned the persistent physical reaction I got (it didn’t quite last for four hours, so I didn’t have to consult my physician) when new Argentine President Javier Milei held a running chainsaw over his head and promised to completely eliminate the Argentinian Department of Education? 

We can learn a lot from that mutton-chopped weirdo/genius.

Hamas delenda est!