Romney Finally Retires, Sen. Kennedy reads Dem-approved Child Porn, & Chicago Teachers Union Boss Sends her Kids to Private School (posted 9/15/23)

Normally, if you could trade places with me, you’d do so in a heartbeat. 

I’ve got a smoke show wife whom I had no right to able to close on, and two daughters who divide their time between saving lives and doing astrophysics while brushing off concussions the way CO brushes off lewd propositions by women other than the COW. 

Plus I’ve got a Wonder Dog, and a wizard hat and crystal brain that allow me to see the future as clearly as most people see that Joe Biden is decomposing before their very eyes. 

Not to mention my humility, which draws people to me.

But I’m currently facing a dilemma that would make all of you hesitate to be me for a day.  Because I’m in the mocking leftists bidness, and that is now a Sisyphean task! 

What am I going to do, NOT talk about hilarious Senator John Kennedy reading gay child porn in his corn pone accent to a bunch of smarmy leftist educrats who are horrified to realize that they have outed themselves as gay-child-porn-in-grade-school enthusiasts?

Am I supposed to just skip the story about the Chicago teachers’ union boss who got caught sending her own kid to charter schools, and then inadvertently said her kid is special and should get a good education, while you nobodies should be forced to send your kids to the union-controlled Malcolm X Super-Max/Junior High?

Am I not supposed to comment on NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D-lusional) ranting that the illegals who 18 months ago were our strength, and the best among us, and fully deserving of all of our taxpayer dollars they could grab are now a pestilence of Biblical proportions?  “They’re going to destroy our city!  There’s no end to this situation!  Flee for your lives, because our city is becoming a sulphurous hellscape!!”

Way ahead of you, Eric.  And we eagerly await your groveling apology for calling us racist demons when we warned you about the very situation that now has you hysterical.  You can send that formal apology – and your resignation letter – to CO HQ/ Free State of Florida.

And that’s not to mention lonely and embittered misogynist Keith Olbermann getting rhetorically pantsed by Riley Gaines, whom he mocked because she lost a swimming race to a hulking dude.  Or Biden giving a veteran an award and then just wandering away in the middle of the ceremony.

Or Que Mala, continuing to be Que Mala. 

Ugh.  I’m only one man, people.  One charming, sharp-witted role model of a man. 

So I’m going to soldier on, and do what I can do. 

I love that Biden’s show-runners’ latest attempt to propagandize on his behalf – the term “Bidenomics” – has so spectacularly blown up in their faces.  They tried to take back the term from his detractors, and they’ve managed to make it an even more blatant signifier of justified derision for their economic plan, such as it is.

Not since “Let’s Go, Brandon” has a phrase become such clear shorthand for a laughable screw-up.

So I now pledge to you that going forward, I’m going to do my best to turn that term into even more of a running joke than it already is.

If you think I’ve gone to the well too often with Imhotep Pelosi, or Juicy Booty AOC (her words, not mine) or Lizzie “Land o’ Lakes Butter Maiden” Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher), buckle up.  Because “Bidenomics” is going to become my newest, almost Tourettes-like verbal tic.    

Anyway, let’s start with football.  Because it’s football season, dammit.

We’re not going to talk about how my Bears or Gators did to start the season.  Because there’s already enough going on in this country to be sick about.

ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) ranks college football teams after Week 2.  And they have Texas, who beat Alabama at Alabama by 10 – at number 6, and Alabama (who you may remember just lost to Texas at home by 10) at #1. 

I know that ESPN is owned by Disney, and thus can’t distinguish between a man and a woman.  But are you telling me that they don’t understand that a team who outscores another team by 10 points should NOT be ranked above that team?   

You know what I call that kind of reasoning? 

That’s right: Bidenomics!  (Boom!)

Speaking of losers of indeterminate gender, Mitt Romney is finally retiring, just a scant dozen years after he should have.  Hey everybody, strike up the New Orleans-style parade with the kind of jazz funeral that they’re known for!  (Of course, no state is as closely associated with the Afro-Caribbean roots of New Orleans jazz as is Utah.  Hence the name of their pro NBA team.)  

The Babylon Bee headine said it best: “Democrats Scramble to Find Replacement for Retiring Mitt Romney.” 

Many of us were willing to cut Mittens some slack when he was a pol in MA, because no actual conservative can win there.  So he actually was – tragically enough – the most conservative electable person in his MA gov race.

But once he went to Utah and got elected in that deep red state and STILL acted like an MA mush?  He proved himself to be the dictionary definition of a RINO.

And by the way, everyone who is throwing around that smear term indiscriminately?  If you think that rock-ribbed conservatives like Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, or DeSantis are in the same political solar system as Romney or Dr. Oz or Liz Cheney, you need to seriously re-examine your premises.

Speaking of politically despicable hacks, the leftist prosecutor in GA wants to try Trump and codefendants on October 23, or by the spring at the latest, as do the corrupt lefties in the other cases. 

I’m no law-talkin’ guy, but I think a common sense rule should prevail: if Arse Willis in GA (she spells her first name wrong, so I’ve corrected it for her) wants to sit around for two and a half years putting a “case” together to charge Trump and his supporters, then the Trump people need to have the same amount of time to prepare their defense. 

So we’ll see you in late 2025, beeyotch.

On the same general topic, I don’t know if any of Trump’s advisors have mentioned this to him, but it would be smart for him to pay for the defense of his co-defendants.  Morally that’s true for 2 reasons:

1. All of them are in this position because they supported him and his post-election efforts, and the corrupt GA Dems are targeting them just as unfairly as they are targeting Trump.  That’s not Trump’s fault, but it’s not theirs either.  And they aren’t multi-billionaires. 

2. Paying for the little guys’ defense out of his own deep pockets would also help Trump address a weak spot of his that many people with functioning eyes have noticed, i.e. his tendency to demand loyalty while simultaneously attacking and/or throwing under the bus many members of his own administration when they’ve disagreed with him on any point, large or small.  

Well, these innocent co-defendants of relatively modest means have been nothing but loyal to him, and now they’re looking at bankruptcy and legal peril.  Trump could bolster his image re: loyalty if he would put his money where his mouth has been.  (I don’t mean that part pejoratively.  Trump has been rhetorically writing checks that – unlike most weasel politicians – he actually CAN cash.  So I hope he does so, in defense of his supporters.) 

If none of that reasoning moves him, there’s also a pragmatic reason to pitch in for their costs: if he allows the system to grind them down and bankrupt them when he could easily prevent that, the likelihood of some of them flipping on him (even if they have to lie to do so) is greatly increased.  

And that would give the Left an outrageous and undeserved win.

Okay, I’ve got to at least do a drive-by on the stories about Sen. Kennedy reading child porn and the Chicago teacher union hypocrite.  What do these stories have in common?  They both involve abuse of children.  And they both illustrate the truism that sunlight and transparency are to Democrats what a cross is to a vampire. 

(Now that I think about it, the cross is as threatening and disgusting to the elite of the national Democrat party as it is to vampires.)

If you haven’t seen the video of Kennedy reading excerpts from “All Boys Aren’t Blue” – and if you have a strong stomach and a dark sense of humor – it is must-watch tv.  That book is one of several which leftists across the country have insisted must be bought with taxpayer funds and made available to children.

But of course they NEVER name that book, or Gender Queer, or any of the others.  Because they’ve acted out a hysterical psychodrama to make us think that the books that evil conservatives are trying to “ban” are great works of Western literature.

So when septuagenarian southern grandpa John Kennedy cleared his throat and began to read through his thick grandpa glasses, it was an epic moment in the history of Senate hearings:   

“I put some lube on, and got him on his knees.  And I began to slide into…”

During the next 45 seconds – featuring more bleeped-out words than a Redd Foxx nightclub performance – it was joyous to behold the horrified leftists before him. 

They squirmed in their chairs like so many terrified Nosferati (obscure Latin plurals for the win!) trying to duck out of any random shafts of sunlight that might pierce the gloom of the hearing room, and cause their sickly flesh to begin melting and then burst into flames.

(The analogy judges would have also accepted “like the Nazis when the ark of the covenant was opened at the end of Raiders.”)

The corrupt president of Chicago’s teachers’ union similarly tried to hide her own creepiness. 

In the past Stacy Davis-Gates – who is black, so you know the black kids trapped in failing Chicago schools feel just great about being led by someone “who looks like them” – has smeared school choice advocates as “bigots,” “racists” and fascists.”  (Oh my.)

She also called private schools “segregation academies,” and “the choices of racists.”

Racists like her, as it turns out.  Because she’s been sending her son to just such a private school!  Cue the sad trombone.  (What’s that?  All public school music classes have been cut so that the schools could focus on America-hating CRT classes?  Of course.)  

But don’t worry, because she has a good reason, unlike you segregationist bigots.  She and her husband were “forced” to send her kiddo to a klan-tastic racist school “so he could live out his dream of being a soccer player” while also getting a solid curriculum.

I’m not even going to bring up the terrible parenting that results in your child dreaming of being a soccer player!  (Yuck!) But she’s here to tell you that her son has dreams. Not like your bigoted segregationist spawn, who are as racist as their deplorable parents, and are naturally dreamless. 

But she’s not done, because she knows who the real bad guys are: they’re the “same school-choice operators” who “take action to shortchange students” and “engage in fraudulent practices and provide substandard services to Black and Brown families.”

Do you need more weird capitalization?  She’s got you: “If you are a Black family living in a Black community, high-quality neighborhood schools have been the dream, not the reality.”

Boy, if only we could find the MAGA-hat wearing racists who are responsible for this tragic—

Wait a minute.  That’s YOU, Stacy!  You’re the ones with total control over Black neighborhood schools for the last century.  You’re the ones shortchanging students, engaging in fraudulent practices and providing substandard services.   

Don’t you understand what we’ve been trying to tell you for decades, Stacy?  Black Lives Matter, you hypocritical bigot! 

See, I’m at the end of another column, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. 

So here’s a few teasers for Monday:

Hang on, Ukraine, because help is on the way.  Our posthumous Prez has appointed an official US rep to your country, to take responsibility for rebuilding your economy.  Hooray!  

Also, Biden goes to Vietnam, and the results are only slightly worse than the late unpleasantness there.

Plus an EV road trip turns into a Bataan Death March into PR hell, and a leftist politician gets spanked by a drag queen, and shockingly enough, it’s not Hunter Biden.  (The spankee, I mean.  Or the drag queen.)

Bidenomics delenda est! (Boom!)

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Stacy “Lousy schools for thee but not for me” Davis, 2024!

More Crime Stories (posted 9/11/23)

Today I’m going to avoid the recent trend toward in-house sniping among the GOP, because while I support the best governor in these United States, the always-Trumpers are not my enemies, even though I disagree with them.

But when the left is damaging my country on every front, they need to be mocked and opposed.  And that’s what I’m here for.

I’ll start with crime in long-suffering Chicago, where Mayor (and dimwitted Tracy Morgan impersonator) Brandon Johnson has got a new leftist plan to fight crime.  And it’s called… Bidenomics!

No, wait. That’s a leftist plan to fight prosperity and economic success.  ≤begin creepy whisper≥ And guess what?  It’s working! ≤end creepy whisper≥

But Johnson’s plan is just as brilliant.  From his predecessor, Bug-Eyed River-Carp Lightfoot, he inherited a huge crime wave in general, and a skyrocketing carjacking rate in particular.  Because who could have ever anticipated that hamstringing cops and releasing criminals with no bail requirements would cause crime to explode?   

(Before you answer that, remember that many leftists are severely allergic to the law of cause and effect.  They have to wear three masks and get an unending series of vaccinations to fight off its effects.)

If you’re an old fogey who believes that people are responsible for their actions, and therefore criminals are responsible for the crimes they commit, you’re not a Chicago Democrat.  Or an idiot.  But I repeat myself.

Anyway Brandon’s on the case, and he’s identified the real culprits in this wave of carjacking.  And it’s… wait for it… the car makers! 

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?  But the City of Chicago is now suing Kia and Hyundai, because their cars “are being disproportionately stolen.” 

They’ve already tried to sue gun makers because guns are responsible for shooting people, so why not go after the cars for getting themselves stolen? 

Up next: Many shiftless crooks break into houses through windows and doors.  So expect trial lawyers (guess which political party gets the lion’s share of their lobbying money?) to sue construction companies next. 

“Your honor, I’d like to point out that in the Middle Ages, responsible builders used heavy wooden draw bridges and tiny arrow-slit windows cut into thick stone walls.  But the greedy exploiters in Big Plywood and Big Glass – don’t get us started on Big Open Floor Plan! – are more worried about their obscene profits than about the safety of homeowners in a Democrat-run hellscape like Chicago.”

After that, who knows?  A lot of slimy characters are imprisoned as serial rapists, when all they did was repeatedly rape women. 

“Your honor, I’d like to point out that in the Middle Ages, women availed themselves of cumbersome metal chastity belts, but today they are running around our streets with their nether regions negligently unprotected by anything requiring a blacksmith and a welder and a winch system to put on.  I’d also like to stipulate that my client does not even know how to operate an acetylene torch. So clearly, we are only here because his so-called ‘victims’ were traipsing around without any metal undergarments at all!” 

Ugh.  I hate to see it happen, but Chicagoans are getting what they voted for.

Speaking of karma’s bitter sting, you may have seen the story about Minnesota politician Shivanthi Sathanandan (pronounced just how it’s spelled), who was recently carjacked in her driveway and beaten by four young males in front of her two small kids.

S-Squared (I’m not typing that name over and over) is a bigshot in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and she is now outraged.  She posted a dramatic picture of her bloodied face, and an impassioned call to catch the “young people who are running wild… and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM.  PERIOD.”

Before closing with effusive praise for the police who responded, she challenged her constituents to “Look at my face.  REMEMBER ME…”

Many Minnesotans already remembered her, from an equally impassioned tweet from just three short years ago.  In that little missive she began, “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.  Say it with me.  DISMANTLE. The. Minneapolis. Police Department.” 

From there she went on to tackle the root cause of the post-George Floyd crime wave: Bidenomics!

No, wait.  That’s the root cause of stagnation and sky-high interest rates and a grocery bill that requires taking out a HELOC to pay.  (Which you don’t qualify for, on account of the aforementioned high interest rates.)

The root cause of crime is, of course, racism.  (Unless it’s black-on-black crime.  Or white-on-white crime.  Or Hispanic-on-Aleut crime.  Or black-on-Hispanic, White, Asian or Aleut crime.  Etc.)

SS had already found the upper-case letter button, even three years ago.  She said that as “allies” we should “LISTEN and LEARN from our Black siblings,” whose community MPD had clearly “failed.”  She ended with a flourish: “Be LOUD.  Spread this message.  Show your support. NOW is the moment for change.”

Well, three years later it turns out that NOW is the moment to change back.  Because now she’s all about aggressive policing, with the patrolling and the arresting and the throwing away of the keys.   (Did anyone else hear a little Bill Cosby voice while reading that last sentence?)

Her post doesn’t mention the race of her attackers.  Since any crime story that features a white perp features the words “white, whiteness, white supremacy, MAGA, racism,” and “Liz Warren,” (#wemustneverstopmockingher), I’m going to assume that the thugs in this case came from the community that the MPD had FAILED.

(By the way, can you imagine the Toobin-tacular moment for the lefty Boston Globe writers when it came time to report on the criminal exploits of pale Irish mobster Whitey Bulger?!) 

But SS is still enough of a lefty that she did point the finger at the guns that the thugs carried, too.  And come to think of it, the story doesn’t mention the make or model of the car that they stole.  

But if it was one of those sexy Hyundais, with their curvaceous rear quarter panels and their come-hither leather seats…  Shame on Double-S for being part of the problem!

They say that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.  But I wish my lefty friends knew that you don’t have to let your cities be destroyed, your property stolen and your loved ones violated and victimized.

You can just become conservative the same way that most of us around here did it: by getting some life experience, and thinking, and noticing what immiseration machines the various People’s Republics and big blue cities always turn into.

I’ll close with a crime story that could still have a happy ending.

The ACLU is suing the Indiana prison system after officials refused to provide “sex reassignment” surgery to a “transgender” inmate who killed “their” daughter.   That’s correct: the boneheads who have screwed up journalism have forced me to use three sets of scare quotes in one freaking sentence!

Let me provide three corrections:

1. There is no such thing as sex “reassignment” surgery.  You go into the operation as a dude with testicles, and you come out without testicles.  But you’re still a dude.  (Or possibly a Gavin Newsom.) 

2. You can’t change your gender.

3. “Their” is a plural pronoun.

In this case, the criminal is a monster who strangled his 11-year-old stepdaughter to death.  His name is Jonathan Richardson, but the “journalist” points out that he’s “also known as Autumn Cordellione.”

(Note for would-be J-school grads:  I shouldn’t be able to tell a reporter that my name is Martin Simpson, but I’m now also known as Ocelot Preckwinkle, and my pronouns are dipthong and umlaut.  You idiots.)

Jonathan is a looker, too.  He’s got a face and bald head covered with what look like amateur prison tattoos, two unconvincingly drawn-in eyebrows, and eyes that point in different directions.  (The eyes aren’t his fault.  But the brows, tats and murder rap are all on him.)

The ACLU thinks that not only should Johnny get his junk cut off, but the citizens of Indiana should have to pay for it. 

If tv has taught me one thing, it’s that when an alien hottie shows up in body paint and a silver bikini, Captain Kirk is going to have his way with her by the end of the episode.  But that’s not relevant right now.

But if tv has taught me at least two other things – and it has – it’s that the members of the incarcerated community are constantly turning random metal objects into homemade knives, and they are invariably not fond of child killers. 

(By the way, you know what societal force has caused them to be incarcerated, don’t you?  That’s right: Bidenomics!)

So after reading the tale of Johnny the They, I got out a glass and poured two fingers of what I like to call my “thinkin’ bourbon” (ahh, the brownest of the brown liquors)(Name that reference, CO nation!), and I applied my crystal brain to this conundrum.

And came up with a solution at which even the tragically bourbon-less amongst us could arrive:

The warden should escort Jonathan into the giant gen-pop area and say, “Hey everybody, this is Jonathan.  He murdered an 11-year-old girl, and he wants the state of Indiana to castrate him, but it’s not in our budget.  I’m going to turn off the security cameras now, and the guards are all going to play Angry Birds on their cell phones for 30 minutes. 

The first person to bring me Jonathan’s testicles will receive the thanks of the ACLU and the taxpayers of Indiana, and a pack of smokes.  Now get to shankin’!” 

You’re welcome, criminal law professors everywhere.

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/ Shivanthi “Hello, 911?  Forget what I said three years ago” Sathanandan, 2024!

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Three Leftist Lies Crumble (posted 9/8/23)

I’ll start today with a story that combines three of my pet peeves – white supremacists, lying leftist media, and sleazy smears of Ron DeSantis — into one Schiff-sandwich of a non-troversy.

Regular readers may remember that when my oldest daughter was a 2-and-a-half-year-old bundle of cuteness and smarts, I had already taught her to memorize three key things. 

The first was the prayer I’d say with her when tucking her into bed.  (“Now I lay Kate down to sleep/ I pray thee Lord her soul to keep/ Thy love guard her through the night/ and wake her up in the morning light.”)

(I have to admit that I’ve got a soft spot for the Old Testament/Germanic darkness of the OG version I was taught, with the line, “If I should die before I wake/I pray thee Lord my soul to take.”  Even as a child, after mom would recite that one with me and then turn off the light, I remember thinking, “What’s the over/under on me dying before I wake?  Good lord!”)

The second was the old “Which is your favorite one of Aristotle’s logical fallacies?”  (If you want the backstory to that one, you can read my amazing wedding speech for her, from last July, on my website Martinsimpsonwriting.com)

But the third one never failed to crack me up.  Whenever Katie was playing quietly in the room, or maybe just toddling through, and something happened on tv that I didn’t like – a ref blowing an easy call, a stock market dip, a bad weather forecast, etc. – I’d call out, “Who do we blame for this?”

And my adorable little offspring would sing out lustily, “The Democrats!”

I don’t care who you are: that’s just good parenting. 

But grown-up leftists do that same thing, and not as a hilarious parenting trick.  They’re serious.  If you doubt me, the next time a couple of lefties are walking by, call out, “Oh crap!  What do we blame for this?”

And they’ll stop and ask if it involves the weather or not.  If you say it does, they’ll say, “Climate change!”  If you say it doesn’t, they’ll say, “White supremacy!”

Unfortunately for the left, their demand for white supremacists far outstrips the actual supply.   Of course white supremacists do exist.  But just like asexual, Marxist, Biden-admiring furries, they are a repugnant affront to the senses, and there are very, VERY few of them.

You may remember Charlottesville, where to hear the MSM tell it, hordes of white supremacists came from the far corners of the globe to engage in a veritable gotterdammerung of racist violence. 

Translation: after a 6-month propaganda blitz by the most prominent supremacists calling on all racists to come to their gathering, only a few hundred trolls and homunculi (out of a nation of 330 million people) showed up.  They marched around with torches and chanted slogans as ignorant as those of antifa and BLM, and one idiot hit and killed a woman with his car. 

And yet our execrable MSM still evokes the horrors of Charlottesville (or January 6th, for that matter) in the same trembling tones once reserved for a dirigible explosion.

In this context, the left loves nothing more than when a handful of morons creep out of their mommies’ basements in their home-made uniforms and hand-drawn swastikas and puts on a pathetic demonstration. (Because a guy who ran a socialist workers’ party in Germany was a typical right-winger.  Got it?)        

So when around 35 such losers marched in Altamonte Springs, FL last Saturday, the MSM was all over it.  A few local Dems laughably claimed the cosplay Nazis (aka the German national socialist workers’ party) represented the ominous and growing rightwing threat to Florida posed by… members of a socialist workers’ party. 

But Rolling Stone – which believe it or not, used to be a magazine that covered popular music, before it became a left-wing rag dedicated to shaving IQ points off of its dwindling number of readers – out-smeared the local Dems.

The Stoners wrote a hit piece and pimped out a quick tweet claiming, “’We’re all DeSantis supporters!’ one marcher shouted.” 

But they were stupid enough to link to the video of the marcher saying those words.  And unfortunately for them, the video clearly showed that the words were a sarcastic response to a question trying to link them to DeSantis. 

Another subtle clue: moments later the same marcher yelled, “F*** Ron DeSantis!” while others cheered.  They later called DeSantis “a joke.”

In fact, one of the supposed leaders of the dopes – at least he was willing to show his face, and he gave his name as Christopher Pohlhaus – blew up the Dems’ narrative.  (Spoiler alert: Rolling Stone didn’t report this part.)  Pohlhaus ranted about “capitalism” and “billionaires” (is he a Bernie bro?), in addition to attacking Jews. (Ok, maybe not.) (Then again, considering Bernie’s trendy secular-left anti-Israel position, maybe so.)   

When asked about the presidential race and whether he would vote in 2024 – you know the young lefty with the microphone was holding his breath, praying to hear DeSantis’ name – Pohlhaus said, “My vote is useless.  I think Biden is better than Trump, because he sends rockets to Ukraine.” 

Cue the sad trombone, and turn off the microphone and the camera crew’s lights.

Speaking of evil race hoaxes, I have a story from America’s politically dysfunctional top hat. 

You may remember that several years ago, Canada was full of lurid stories that the Catholic Church had carried out “tens of thousands” of murders and burials of indigenous children at residential schools during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

For the Christophobic and whitey-hating left, this story was too good to check. Every lefty pol from Justin “blackface” Trudeau on down started fanning the flames of racial and religious hatred, as is their wont.  When a few people used ground-penetrating radar to locate “anomalies” which they said were mass graves, the government started calling for millions in reparations.

They also began a campaign of harassment of Christians and other non-sufferers of CRIS (cranial-rectal inversion syndrome), in some instances hounding them out of their jobs.  (You may remember a similar recent phenomenon in this country, when those with the temerity to suggest that a new virus might not kill 98% of the human population, and that maybe lockdowns, masks and vaccines didn’t work, were also shouted down and driven from polite society.)

Worse, many people naïve enough to trust the Canadian MSM were inspired to show off their virtue by vandalizing and/or burning between 60 – 85 Canadian churches.  

Fast forward to today, and many recent excavations have been undertaken at the suspected “mass burial” sites.  And apparently “anomalies” is Latin for “something other than dead indigenous kids.”  Because searchers have found not tens of thousands of corpses, or even thousands of corpses or dozens of corpses.

The number of bodies found to date?  Zero.

Does that mean that no indigenous people were killed in Canada in the last century and a half?  No.

Some certainly were killed, possibly by evil white folks, but also possibly by other indigenous tribes, such as the one led by Lizzie Warren’s great-great-grandsquaw “Howling Wench,” who reportedly had a temper as prominent as her cheekbones.  (#wemustneverstopmocking her).    

C’mon Canadians.  We used to make fun of you for being blandly nice, but lately you’ve turned into a bunch of totalitarian jerks, and we already have enough of those, north of Richmond.

Finally, I’ve got to discuss the most horrific week endured by a leftist bonehead this year.  And that’s counting Biden’s debacle in Hawaii!

Philip Bump is a political hack who writes analysis for the Washington Post.  If you’ve never heard of him, you’re lucky, because he’s the kind of guy who puts the “anal” in “political analyst.”   And yesterday he stepped on another rhetorical rake.

When foundations created in the names of 13 former presidents released a generic letter saying, “We reaffirm our commitment to the principles of democracy undergirding this great nation,” Bump put out a tweet claiming, “Fourteen presidents indirectly called out Trump’s threat to democracy today.  Thirteen former presidents signed a letter.  The current one released an ad.”

Bump was immediately mercilessly mocked, since there are only 6 presidents alive today – and that’s if you count Biden as “alive.”  If you go back 13 presidents, you get to Eisenhower.  And he’s no more capable of signing a letter – or putting out an ad – than Biden is. 

But that wasn’t even close to the most mock-worthy mistake that Bump made this week.  Because he went on a podcast with a comedian named Noam Dworman who had asked for someone to defend Biden on the issue of corruption.

Over the course of an hour – after first flattering Bump about how his name had come up as one of the smartest guys writing on that kind of political issue – Dworman dismantled one Bump claim after another.  But still, Bump kept grinding on. (HA!)

After Bump had repeated the risible talking point that while Hunter might be bent, there is NO evidence that Joey Gaffes did anything corrupt, Dworman went for the jugular with the simplest, most common sense question: “What do you take from Hunter’s text message to his adult daughter, ‘I have to give 50% of my income to pop?”

You have to watch and listen to what follows to really appreciate Bump’s self-immolation.  He talks faster and faster, and his voice takes on a whiny tone suggestive of what would happen if Joy Behar and Beta O’Rourke had a baby.  (Sorry for that mental image.)

But here’s a partial transcript:   

Bump: “I have NO idea what that means.  I don’t.  I have no idea what that means.” [Sidebar: None of the words in Hunter’s quote are longer than two syllables, and the meaning of his statement is obvious to even the dullest of dullards, such as AOC or Que Mala.]

Dworman:  But what could it mean?

Bump: I have no idea.  I don’t know.

By the end, as Dworman presses the most obvious question, Bump says that he feels like Dworman is trying to get him to leave.  Finally Dworman has had enough, saying, “Is this the way the WaPo handles people who disagree with them?”

And Bump starts to melt into the floor like the wicked Hillary of the West, saying, “Yeah, when I agree to be on for 45 minutes and then I get on for an hour and 15…”

Dworman shakes his head in disgust and says, “Go, go.”

And the poor schmuck pulls off his headset in relief.  And Bump goes into the night. (HA!)   

You really need to watch that video to get the full, cringy schadenfreude of it all.

You know it’s bad when even Jeffrey Toobin was like, “Dude, that is one humiliating piece of video!”

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Philip “speed” Bump, 2024!

What Happens When Biden Isn’t the Dem Nominee in ’24? (posted 9/4/23)

Can we all agree now that Joe Biden is not going to be the Democrat nominee next year? 

I’m becoming more convinced that CO was prescient when he predicted several months ago that the Dem nominee and likely next prez (shudder) is going to be Ken Doll Newsom. 

I don’t know what kind of crystal ball our fearless leader has, but I’ve got a crystal brain (hat tip to Adam Carolla) and a purple wizard hat that I occasionally take out of its climate-controlled glass case when I need to foretell the future.

But I needed neither my crystal brain nor my wizard hat to see the future for our Cadaver in Chief.  I only had to watch his performance in Hawaii, and a few more minutes of him being allowed to speak in public since.

I don’t want to beat a dead president, but that guy is not up for the job, if he ever was.

Sorry, the phrase I was looking for there was “beat a dead horse.” 

Or was it?

Anyway, Joey Gaffes couldn’t have done worse in the wake of the Hawaii fire.  First he went on vacation for a week, and when reporters asked for his thoughts on the fire, he said, “No comment.”

You want to talk about bad luck?  The poor dope has uttered two coherent words this entire year, and they happened to be those disastrously callous ones.  Normally, if he’d tried to say that, it would have come out as, “Na-ha kulamanna.”

And the lickspittle MSM hacks would have fallen all over themselves to tell us that “na-ha kulamanna” is native Hawaiian for “my prayers go out for the people of Hawaii, and my government will give them all the assistance they need at this tragic time.”

Then when Biden was finally shamed into going to Hawaii – interrupting a second vacation for a day and a half – he put on a tour de force of cringe. 

When called on to give comfort to people whose homes have burned to the ground and who have lost loved ones, he re-told the phony story about the towering inferno that nearly devoured his home years ago.  (“I remember that Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were in it, and Faye Dunaway, what a dish she was.  I once fought Corn Pop for her hand in marriage.  No joke.”)

Everyone knows that that story is not appropriate.  Or true.  He’s told it many times, embellishing it each time, in ways that make it even more offensive.  His wife grabbed the cat and made it into the ’67 Corvette in the garage, and then stayed there while the almost-deadly fire raged all around her.  Also, half of the house nearly collapsed.  And one firefighter was almost killed fighting the blaze.

Except that the fire department called it a minor kitchen fire and put it out in 20 minutes.

But even if it had consumed his whole house, killed his cat and burned up his ‘Vette, it still wouldn’t be acceptable to tell that story to a bunch of people who have just lost loved ones, and all of their material possessions too.  You KNOW that Biden’s handlers have told him to stop telling it. 

But he can’t help it.  Or he can’t remember it.  Or he’s a narcissistic sociopath.

“Man, that ‘Vette is sweet, and it would have been a real tragedy to lose that thing.  It can do zero to 60 in 2 seconds flat, even with the passenger seat crammed full of classified documents and one of Hunter’s hookers and a bunch of untraceable gold bars from the ChiComs in the trunk!  You folks know what I’m talking about, with your missing kids and your burned down houses.  Na-ha kulamanna, as you people say…. Who wants some ice cream?”

Biden looked even worse sitting at the event where a local was speaking about the tragedy.  Biden fell into a coma, or a nap, or whatever he does when he “calls a lid” on the day’s activities at 10 a.m.  Watching him slumped there with his eyes mostly closed and his mouth partly open gave me the creeps. 

He looked like what a family sees when the mortician has done a horrible job, even after you told him the ceremony was going to be open casket, and you’re not going to pay his full fee!  

So Biden can’t run again.  Which leaves Que Mala, the only politician in the Western hemisphere less respected and more reviled than Joe Biden! 

Nobody – left or right, young or old, alive or Pelosi – wants her to be answering that proverbial crisis phone call at 3:00 a.m. 

No one can picture her being woken up from a dream about yellow school buses driving through a landscape of magical Venn diagrams to hear the words, “China has invaded Taiwan!” or, “A deadly virus has been discovered in several port cities on the Eastern seaboard!”

Unless that caller says, “Quick!  We need someone to sexually service corrupt San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown for a shady patronage position,” everybody knows that Que Mala is not the person for that job.

(And yes, Que Mala got that job in 1994, so no, it’s not “too soon” for that joke.)

Anyway, I think we should take Biden’s likely absence on the Dem ticket next year into account. Especially if we’re considering nominating someone with very high negatives with independents, in the hope that Biden’s negatives are so high that we can still narrowly beat him. 

Turning to the world of entertainment, the Burning Man festival has been a nightmare this year.  I’ve never been the least bit tempted to go to some drug-and-music event with thousands of hipsters and hippies and who knows who.  (I’m sure there are some cool people there too, though I don’t get it.)  But given their travails now, I’m sympathetic.

First, many of the attendees were held up on a highway by their (normally) co-religionist environmental extremists, until the Paiute Tribal Rangers rode to the rescue.  (I saw them open for the Rooftop Koreans in ’98, and that show was awesome!)

It turns out that the highlight of the week for many people may have been watching the Rangers go to work on the virtue-signalers blocking the road.  If I can paraphrase Arnold’s reply to the question of what is best in life in the original Conan movie (and I think that I can): “To crush the protestors, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their men who identify as women.”

When the attendees finally arrived on site, they were just in time for a long, soaking rain that turned the area into a muddy hellscape.  And the mud is alkaline… so that sounds great.   Now one person has died, and organizers have told attendees that they might not be able to drive out for a while yet. 

Still, I’d rather be there than at the Democrat National Convention.  But this year, it’s a closer call than usual.   

Biden delenda est! … then maybe Newsom…

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Toonces, Joe Biden’s Corvette-Driving Cat, 2024!

Starting the Month with Some Happy-Ending Stories (posted 9/1/23)

I appreciate everybody’s feedback on the video I posted on my site yesterday, and I especially appreciated the great and powerful CO’s putting up a direct-link post to that video, too. 

In that video I ranted about annoying RINOs and the annoying people who call non-RINOs “RINOs.”  But now it’s the start of a holiday weekend, and I’m done complaining.  Today let’s just look at stories that make me happy. 

Regular readers know that few things in life give me the schadenfreude giggles like crime stories with happy endings.  And I’ve got several of those, starting with the story of Gerald Pope, an armed robber who had been plying his trade in the New Orleans area lately.  Allegedly.

Two weeks ago, an armed thug looking a great deal like Gerald Pope robbed a cabbie from an unnamed cab company at gunpoint.   Then last Sunday, a guy who could be Gerald Pope’s twin – spoiler alert: he doesn’t have a twin – robbed a cabbie from that same cab company. 

But on Monday, a guy who is pretty likely Gerald Pope – because he was carrying Gerald Pope’s ID, and looked extremely Gerald Pope-y, and had Gerald Pope’s fingerprints – went for the trifecta, when he approached a driver sitting in his cab. Pope produced a gun and demanded cash. 

The cabbie pulled his own gun and shot Pope.  News reports say only that he shot him “multiple times.”  For those of you scoring at home, that’s better than once, but not as good as, “he mag-dumped him.”

But it turned out that “multiple times” was enough, because Pope was pronounced DRT.  Which is paramedic-speak for “dead right there.” (Or “dead at the scene,” if you’re fancy.) 

Either way, observers at Pope’s residence report that they have seen neither white nor black smoke coming out of its chimney.  So I guess no new Pope has yet been chosen.

Speaking of bad popes: Francis. 

I’m not Catholic, but the more I hear about him focusing less on uncle Jesus in favor of some trendy lefty politics – climate change hysteria, attacks on free markets – the more I don’t care for that guy. 

He’s no Gerald Pope, obviously.  But still, no bueno.

But I digress. 

My next crime story comes from Chicago.  Surprise!

On Monday morning, a Spanish-language Univision Chicago TV news crew was taping a story on a recent rash of armed robberies.  I’m guessing their angle was, “How can this be happening, when Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country? Experts are baffled.”

They set up their cameras, checked their hair and their notes, and started filming on a public street.  Annnnnnndddd… they got robbed.

Cue the sad trombone.

Or in this case, the sad mariachi band.

Oh, who am I kidding?  There’s no such thing as a sad mariachi band.  If you can see those matching sequined suits and sombreros, and hear those peppy guitars and singing, and you don’t smile, you are dead inside.

Where was I? 

Oh yeah: the super-safe streets of Chicago, on account of it’s illegal to have guns there.

Three young fellows who apparently didn’t know that guns are illegal jumped out of two cars, pointed their illegal guns at the tv crew, and stole cash, a backpack, a camera and some camera equipment. 

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the camera crew shouted, “Aye, dios mio! Banditos! Silencio por favor Martino!”  (That’s the only Spanish I remember from two semesters of high school Spanish, and hilarious 1970s Fritos commercials.)

The criminals have not yet been caught.  Surprise!  “But don’t call them ‘criminals,’ said slower-witted Tracy Morgan impersonator (and Chicago Mayor) Brandon Johnson.  “Because that’s offensive.”

Normal Chicago residents said, “Let’s go, Brandon!”

The police are looking for the robbers, who are described as three Nigerians wearing MAGA hats.  So… be on the lookout, Chicagoans.   And maybe think about moving.

But the best crime stories of the week, and probably the year, form a tale of two protests.

The first one took place on August 21st, on Nantucket Island, where a group of environmental goons crashed a fundraising party benefitting MA Democrat Governor Maura Healey.  I don’t know anything about her, but I’ll bet you she’d tell you her pronouns without you even asking.

So the goons interrupted the festivities with inane talking points, followed by chanting banal slogans and unfurling stupid banners, eventually forcing the early end of the soiree.  (If you haven’t seen the video, you should, because that gathering was as white as Lizzie Warren, and twice as pretentious.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

And their pompous account of their great victory was as ridiculous as you’d expect: “We just swarmed a major fundraiser…. We demanded [Healey] ban new fossil fuel projects.  She refused.  So we shut down her whole event.  She fled.  Respect us or expect us.”    

How can we react to such an example of commie-on-commie comedy gold, other than to give the clueless young comrades a thumbs-up and a chef’s kiss?

A similar group of environmental warriors thought they’d do the same thing, only out on a highway that goes through tribal land of the Paiute Indians in Nevada.  This lefty group has given themselves some stupid names (Seven Circles and Extinction Rebellion), but I’ll just call them PNAFE (Pretentious Narcissistic A-holes for the Earth).

So PNAFE made a barricade out of a trailer and some other assorted junk that they put across the road, and then sat down in the middle of the road.  Because no one else’s lives are important, and we must all save GAIA by stopping traffic in the desert. 

Traffic backed up for a few miles, and word got out to the nearby police force called the Paiute Tribal Rangers.  And if you’ve got a better name for a garage band, I’d like to hear it.

The Rangers showed up in some pickup trucks, and they didn’t act like a bunch of asexual Massachusetts liberals.  In fact, they acted like a bunch of Indians who have been irritated by white jackasses for 150 years, and this was their time for some payback.

And their proper course of action was as plain as the white on Liz Warren’s face.  (Boom! Grandma Squanto two-fer!)

They used their loudspeakers to say things like, “Get off the highway, it’s a state route.  Everybody will be arrested if not.  30 seconds.  Get off the f*cking road.”

And then the lead Ranger drove his truck through the middle of the shoddily constructed barricade (I swear I could hear him yelling, “Leroy Jenkins!”), whipped back around, and started yelling at the doofi while pointing a pistol at them. “Get down now, get on the ground.  Don’t move.  What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?!”

Okay, that last line was from R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket.  But you get the idea.

This evoked a variety of emotionally satisfying shrieking from the female protestors, and the male protestors who I’m guessing identify as females.  “We’re non-violent! Please!  We don’t have any weapons at all!”

There’s a great line from Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, right after he shotguns the bar owner who had displayed the dead body of Clint’s fellow bad guy, played by Morgan Freeman.  The sheriff (Gene Hackman) snarls at Eastwood, “You just shot an unarmed man!”

Clint delivers the line perfectly: “Well he should have armed himself, if he was gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.”

When that delusional PNAFE member screeched, “We don’t have any weapons at all!” I wish one of the rangers would have said, “Well you should have armed yourself, if you were gonna cause a five-mile traffic jam.”       

Oh, how I love that story and video!  Because it’s got everything: smug leftists, tribal police, and tribal police smashing through the barricades of smug leftists.

We would be in much better shape if we became a nation of Paiute Tribal Rangers, smashing our (gasoline-powered) pick-ups through the barricades put up by a motley bunch of arrogant lefties.   

Have a good Labor Day, everybody!

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/the Ghost of Gerald Pope, 2024!

Surviving a Hurricane, Analyzing “Rich Men North of Richmond,” & Posting a New Video (posted 8/31/23)

Well, stately Simpson manor has survived Hurricane Idalia, which in our part of Florida was less destructive than Hillary.  (The storm, and the repulsive politician.)  I spent part of Tuesday trying to storm-proof our rental houses, including putting plywood over the windows of our old Victorian. (I’ll be posting more pictures of the nearly-returned-to-her-former-glory Rosewood at my website soon.) 

The main part of the storm passed to the west of us, and we didn’t even lose power.  I made another trip around the rentals today, and have 7 barrels and a pick-up bed full of yard waste to get rid of, but no major damage anywhere, thank God.

DeSantis did his typically excellent job of handling the storm, and in return, was attacked by both the right and the left, as per usual. While DeSantis was handling his bidness, Trump posted four tweets criticizing RDS’s poll performance and touting made-up “roomers” that he would be dropping out of the race to run for Senate.  (Ugh.)

The Dems were their usual classy selves as well.  When DeSantis went to speak to and support a group mourning the three black people shot and killed by a white racist in Jacksonville, he was booed by leftist racial arsonists. 

One local Dem pol actually had the sense to defend his right to speak, but afterwards the ghouls went right back to blaming the best governor in the country for everything from lynching to hurricanes to the heartbreak of psoriasis. 

Two related points:  1. Three black people shot to death?  Do you know what three murdered black people is equivalent to?  Any weekend evening in Democrat-run Chicago, between 8:00 p.m and 8:45 p.m.  (Except that you’ll never EVER hear about those black victims of horrific Democrat policies and governance.)

2. You probably haven’t heard this, but a recent story in the conservative Washington Examiner documented that DeSantis has had more cash spent on attack ads against him than Donald Trump and Joe Biden, combined!   Biden had $9.2 million spent against him, and even though Trump is leading RDS by 40 points, he’s only had $8.1 million spent against him.  Meanwhile, both sides ganged up to spend $20.2 million against DeSantis!

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but do you think that spending that much to smear and kneecap a candidate who is a statistical long-shot might just suggest that both President Trump and the Dems fear that RDS would otherwise have a decent chance to win?  I think it’s certainly clear that the Dems would rather run against Trump than DeSantis.  (You can easily find a half-hour-long compilation of clips of every major Dem and MSM leftist screeching about how RDS is worse than Trump, from earlier this year, when it looked like he had a better chance at the GOP nomination.)

I dearly hope that if Trump does get the nomination, the Dems end up regretting that decision!  

On another topic, several commenters have asked me my opinion of country/roots singer Oliver Anthony’s viral hit song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” and his subsequent ire at the song being brought up at the first GOP debate.

The song first: I like it, and I like the other songs of his that I’ve heard.  Regular readers know about my Appalachian roots on one side of my family, and my love of old-school country and bluegrass.  Anthony has come out of nowhere with a talent that fits right in with that tradition, and I love his rags-to-riches story too.  

I was disappointed to see him come out and slam conservatives in subsequent comments.  He was mad that his song was discussed at the GOP debate, and at what he sees as conservative attempts to co-opt it, when he says that he wrote it to attack politicians, and “especially” conservatives and/or the ones on stage at the debate.  

I really hope he doesn’t “Bud-Light” himself by insulting the lop-sided majority of his fans – who are conservatives.  And I don’t think he needs to, because even though he doesn’t seem to be aware of it – most people aren’t bookworm political geeks raised on reading Adam Smith, Hayek, Friedman and Buckley – the ideas in his song are mostly conservative. 

Some of the lyrics are politically generic complaints about the tough lot of the working class (long hours, lousy pay, can’t get ahead), and anti-politician animus.   But the chorus is pointed: “These rich men north of Richmond/ Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”

Point taken: politicians are power hungry, and that issue applies to both parties.  I always wonder at my lefty friends who don’t realize one consistent thing about conservatives: we’re usually disgusted with the GOP and RINOs more than they are!

But the conservative philosophy – even though many/most GOP politicians don’t live up to it – agitates AGAINST centralized political power and the DC/political elite who Oliver correctly says “wanna have total control,” versus the progressive left who embraces that total control completely.

Conservatives say, “that government is best which governs least.”  Conservative/originalist SCOTUS justices say we’re NOT going to dictate abortion policy, we’re going to leave that up to the people in the states.  Conservatives want less regulations, and more individual freedom.

Leftists don’t think regular people can make decisions for themselves, and so they micro-manage and dictate as much of daily life as they can.  They don’t like old fashioned lightbulbs, or toilets that require more water, or guns, or gas stoves, or gas-powered cars.  So they’ve banned the disfavored bulbs and toilets, and they’re trying to ban guns, gas stoves and regular cars.

So who wants “total control” again?    

Leftists also think that the money you work for is the government’s, and they’ll decide how much you get to keep.  They’ve never met a tax they don’t absolutely love.  So when Oliver sings that, “your dollar ain’t sh*t and it’s taxed to no end,” which party does that apply to best?

When he says, “I wish politicians would look out for miners/And not just minors on an island somewhere?”  I’ll grant you that a certain percentage of powerful men – and men in general – are pervs.

But when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, and a hundred other exploitative casting-couch purveyors and intern-abusing sleaze-balls like them, which political party has tolerated, covered for, and accepted them more?

And when Anthony gets to complaining about welfare abusers (Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/ Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.”), what can I say?  The Dems would rip him to shreds for even suggesting that any welfare recipients anywhere aren’t in danger of starving to death in the “food deserts” that evil AmeriKKKa has stuck them in.  

In his heartfelt but incorrect (IMO) political comments, Anthony criticizes the way his song is “being weaponized” by both sides.  He says the right are “trying to characterize me as one of their own, and the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation.”

It’s not “retaliation,” Mr. Anthony.  They recognize (better than you do) that your song is an essentially conservative (or at least anti-leftist) attack on their power-hungry desire to totally control and micro-manage your life.  And when you read from Psalms at a concert and drape the stage with the American flag, they recognized that you’re an evil, non-Christophobe patriot, and therefore their enemy.  

Please just continue making music, and telling the truth in your lyrics.  And if you get the chance, contemplate why so many conservative fans are drawn to it, and so many progressives want to discredit it.

Finally, I’d like to get some feedback from you all about a video I recently posted on this webpage, which you can find by clicking on “Videos” at the top of the page.

While I really enjoy writing these columns, I’ve also been toying with the idea of making a short video every so often, in which I’ll share some thoughts and invite some discussion on any subject that is bothering or intriguing me at the time.   (I’m also going to be speaking with CO to explore the possibility of doing some podcast-style videos with him and some of the CO contributors and/or commenters.)

This video – the subject is “RINO fights” – is a test of the idea.  At 13 minutes it’s a little longer than I intended, and yes, I’m old and have a face made for radio, but I’d still like to hear what you think.  So please watch it if you’re interested, and then give me an honest take on it.  (Is it too long?  Too rambling?  Do you like it more or less than my written columns? Etc.)

Also, if you’d like to engage and comment on the subject matter, please feel free to do so here in the comments on the CO page.  I’m trying to figure out how you can comment on the video on my web page, but you can share it from there, at least.

Please let me know what you think.  And remember…

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Hillary (the repulsive person, not the storm), 2024!

Pauline Kael Syndrome, & the Start of Football Season (posted 8/28/23)

One quick note up front today –

For those of you who read my travelogue posts from England and Scotland, I’ve found some videos featuring the Scottish shepherd who showed us his amazing border collies rounding up sheep.  If you search by “Neil Ross Scottish shepherd” you’ll find half a dozen videos of him and his almost-as-smart-as-Cassie-the-Wonder-Dog collies.

(And you’ll wish that our country could be governed by a handful of Scots shepherds and a kennel-ful of border collies, somehow.)

You’re welcome.

Now, because you people are my sounding board for troubling thoughts on politics (not to mention the wind beneath my wings), I’ve got to share two grim thoughts that have been creeping me out lately.

First, the latest illegitimate charges against Trump out of Georgia are filling me with an anger that is not healthy, even though it’s justified.  Corrupt DA Fani (she got the homonym right, but not the spelling) Willis has done something I wouldn’t have thought possible: make sleazy Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s idiotic indictments look only mostly corrupt and merit-less.

Trying to apply RICO laws to people who did nothing worse than challenge a hinky-looking election is beyond idiotic.  Especially since half of the national Democrat party did the same or worse after every election a Republican has won since 2000.  Including Ass Willis herself! 

Sorry, that’s “Fanny.”  Er, “Fani.”

Second, even as I’m furious about the Dems’ shameless and outrageous behavior in bringing all of these indictments, I’m getting an increasingly sinking feeling that the more immoral Machiavellians amongst them are using our righteous anger against us.  Through their grotesque weaponizing of the justice system, they’ve just about ensured Trump’s nomination, by causing most of us to instinctively rally to his defense (which we absolutely should), and to support his candidacy (which I’m not so sure about).

I’m most worried that we might be falling prey to the Pauline Kael Syndrome. 

Kael was a leftist film critic for the New Yorker who is famously quoted as saying, after Nixon’s landslide presidential victory in 1972, “I can’t believe Nixon won.  I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”  (Her actual quote was a little different, but in a way that revealed her condescending provincialism even more blatantly.)

That’s a near-perfect example of the bubble mindset that most of us naturally have: because we are surrounded mostly by like-minded people, we assume that most people in the country agree with us.  So when we see how utterly terrible Biden is, we assume that everyone sees it.  (They largely do: around 70% of all Americans polled say they don’t want him to run!)

And when we see how phony and baseless the cases filed against Trump are (the only one with any merit at all – though it’s still unjustified – is the confidential docs case in Florida, and then only because Trump foolishly said on camera that he didn’t declassify them!), we assume that everyone else does too.

But the same polls that claim that around 70% of Americans don’t want Biden to run also claim that around the same percentage don’t want Trump to run.  I’m not inclined to trust polls completely (to say the least!), but I’m also aware of the danger of dismissing any poll whose results we don’t like. 

And it’s not just one or two polls from the usual-suspect leftist outlets.  The Real Clear Politics average of several dozen recent polls show Trump and Biden tied, or Biden with a small lead of 1-2% of the popular vote.  Battleground state polls are slightly worse, as Trump appears to be trailing in the key states that will decide the electoral college totals.  

If Trump’s right, and the 2020 election was rigged and/or stolen (I’m sure of the former, and uncertain but leaning toward the latter), we know that since the Dems got away with it, they’ll try the same thing again.  So why haven’t we heard of any concrete steps that the RNC or Trump campaign are taking now to ensure that ’24 won’t be just as rigged as ’20 was?   

To top that off, no polls that I’m aware of are showing Trump with the 4-5% lead that he’d need to overcome Dem dirty tricks.  And that’s after nearly three years of the worst presidency in our history, when he’s running against the clearly corrupt — and physically and mentally decomposing – Joey Gaffes!  

We don’t want to believe that.  In my heart, I can’t really believe it!  Biden is so terrible, and his administration such a dumpster fire.  The economy is so damaged, our voluntarily open borders are a national wound that will weaken us for many decades, etc. and etc.

But deep down, I’m dreading waking up on the morning after the election in Pauline Kael’s position: “I can’t believe that Biden won.  Nobody I know voted for him.”   

I don’t think it’s a done deal, and things could change.  And anytime you’re running against a candidate as awful as Brandon – assuming he’s the candidate next year – you’ve always got a chance. 

But man, I have never wanted to be wrong about something so badly in my life!

Enough of that – let’s focus on the positive:

We’ve almost arrived at my favorite season of the year, which is marked by the beginning of football.  (I can’t say autumn, because September and most of October here in Florida is really “Summer 2: The Humidity Scourge Continues.”)

I’ve enjoyed playing and watching all kinds of sports throughout my life, including baseball, basketball, tennis and football, along with a few others.

Not soccer, obviously.  Because I was raised properly, and understand the world. 

God gave us the amazing gift of hands, with the concomitant blessing of opposable thumbs (Suck it, sloths and most other creatures!), and they are good for almost anything. 

Carpentry.  Punching bullies.  Releasing the snap on a young woman’s bra (though I’ve only deployed that tactic on one woman since I met the love of my life, and all other women became invisible to me.) Typing hilarious political and cultural columns. 

Flipping off Joe Biden if you ever come across his path.

So when some dimwit invents a game that involves us spitting in our Creator’s eye and eschewing the use of our providentially provided hands – not to mention giving ourselves concussions by intentionally hitting a ball with our noggin, rather than from squaring up and driving through a ball carrier head-first, as said Creator intended – we’re supposed to participate?

Bah.  BAH, I say!

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed many games throughout my life, but the only one that has stuck is football.  And even though my Chicago Bears (you’ve probably heard that they thrilled the nation with their “T” formation) promise to be mediocre again this year, and my Gators are not likely to threaten for the SEC east, my spirits always lift as the first kickoff approaches.

I know that some members of the fairer sex (spoiler alert: there are only two) can experience some spousal neglect when God’s favorite sport begins, as reflected in an old joke:

Guy 1: Well, my wife has divorced me.

Guy 2: Really? Why?

Guy 1:  She claims I pay more attention to football than to her.

Guy 2:  That’s tough.  How long were you married?

Guy 1: Ten seasons.  

But if any of the fine ladies in CO nation start to resent their football-obsessed husbands, remember that it could be much worse.  Your hubby might ignore you for parts of each fall weekend, and he might get a little too loud when he’s speculating as to whether some referee can distinguish between his arse and a hole in the ground.

But at least you are safe in the knowledge that he’ll never dramatically announce his pronouns, or that he’d like to be called “Zoe,” and that he’s begun hormone therapy as a first step to becoming his essential self as a woman.  Or – even more disturbing… a soccer fan.

So you’ve got that going for you.  

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Fani “What you talkin’ bout?” Willis, 2024!

Andy Ngo Wins a Suit Against Antifa, Suspicious Russian “Plane Crash,” & Customer Shoots Thief Without Spilling his Beer (posted 8/25/23)

The state of the 2024 race is so depressing that I’m not going to go into this weekend dwelling on it.  Instead, I’ve looked for other, more uplifting stories to write about:

My first good-news story comes from, of all places, Portland!  Four years ago, a violent leftist mob of (mostly peaceful) antifa scumbags – in the middle of several years of attacks and destruction – attacked Andy Ngo.  (He is a small Vietnamese-American gay journalist with the heart of a lion.) They threw projectiles at him, beat him with wooden signs and their fists, and threw noxious liquids on him, causing him severe injuries, including a brain injury. 

Tragically, none of them were beaten and imprisoned for many years.  But this week, in a Portland court-room (!), Ngo won a settlement from one of his attackers, and a judgment of $300K against three others.

His lawyer is conservative hoss Harmeet Dhillon (we could have had her as our RNC head, instead of RINO Ronna Romney-McDaniel!), and they both admit that they’ll have a hard time collecting the $300K, given the thugs’ “history of evasion.”

Not to mention their utter unemployability!  Look at a pic of one of the three, a pathetic dude named Joseph Evans who wears blue eye shadow and lipstick, and now identifies himself as a woman named “Sammich Overkill Schott-Deputy.”  (And no one has ever hollered at this delusional goon, “Make me a sammich!”) 

Right now his only chance to get hired anywhere is with the Biden administration’s nuke department, which has an opening since the bald, lipstick-wearing luggage-thief Sam Brinton is in the can.    

The next story proves that protesters in big Dem-run hell-hole cities like NYC CAN be arrested… but only if they are protesting their corrupt local government forcing illegal migrants into their neighborhoods. 

Several hundred citizens protested Democrats’ latest plan to create a 1000-bed tent facility on the grounds of what had been a nursing home (for elderly American citizens) in Queens.  Some protestors said inflammatory and outrageous things such as, “I don’t mind people coming here, but they’re coming here illegally, and then we have to support them.”

A dozen people practicing civil disobedience were arrested.  And this comes just a few months after the city agreed to pay $21,500 each to 320 leftist George Floyd protestors who had been “arrested, detained or subjected to force” by cops.  Great job!

Hey New Yorker taxpayers, aren’t you glad you get to pay off leftist protestors, and pay for the arrest of non-violent non-leftist protestors, and pay for many thousands of illegals who are costing you millions and further degrading your already diminished quality of life?

How’s that century-plus of voting Democrat working out for you?

But even NY Dems could have it worse.  They could be formerly living person Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader who clashed with Putin in the summer, and then coincidentally died this week in a totally coincidental plane crash.  

At this point the Putin News Network is about as trustworthy as CNN, MSNBC or the rest of our MSM.  So I have a few doubts about the veracity of Moscow’s account of Prigozhin’s death.  

Exhibit A: Prigozhin supposedly died along with 9 other people who were on a plane with him.  But that can’t be right, because you couldn’t find 9 people in Russia who would recognize that they were getting on a plane with the guy who screwed with Putin without all 9 of them doing whatever it took to get off that plane before it took off.

They’d be tumbling down that mobile airplane staircase like Biden tumbling up one!

Exhibit B:  This transcript of an interview between a Pravda Hack (let’s call him Jake Tappervich) and a dead-eyed Putin apparatchik that was leaked to me personally by one of my Kremlin insider sources:

Tappervich:  So you’re saying that Prigozhin died in a plane crash?

Putin Apparatchik (PA): Exactly.

Tappervich: Can we see the body?

PA: No.  Is very messy. When firing squad gets done with someone, you don’t want to show that on tv.

Tappervich:  Firing squad?  I thought you said it was a plane crash?

PA: Da, da.  Plane crash.

Tappervich: But you said, “firing squad.”

PA: Da.  Is Russian slang phrase for plane crash.  You know, like on 9/11, all the Russians were saying, “Can you believe both of those firing squads in NYC?” or “That Captain Sully, he successfully managed that firing squad in the Hudson River after hitting those geese.”

Tappervich: I speak Russian, and I’ve never heard that phrase before.

PA (squinting menacingly at Tappervich): Are you saying that President Putin is not fluent in Russian slang phrases?

Tappervich: No, no, of course not.  (nervously tugging at his necktie) So… has an official cause of death been announced.

PA: Da.  Many bullet wounds.

Tappervich (swallowing hard): Did you say, “bullet wounds?”

PA: Da.  As in, “when plane hits ground, it results in many bullet wounds.”

Tappervich:  So… that’s another Russian slang phrase?

PA. Da.  Like when we say, “President Putin’s last 8 rivals died after ‘falling out of high window.’”  Which of course is Russian phrase meaning “heart attack.”

And… scene.

Finally, let’s go to the“F— around and Find Out” file, to read the story of recidivist criminal and ineducable bonehead Cordelius Anthony Martin, who recently entered a convenience store in Cassopolis, Michigan, pulled a mask over his face, and announced a robbery. 

Sidebar: “Cassopolis” is a fantastic name for a small town. It’s got the great Greek ending of “polis” (meaning “city”), and the great first syllable of “Cass,” which is short for Cassie, who (as all well-informed people know) is my Wonder Dog. 

So Cassopolis, properly translated, is “Cassie City.”

As you might guess, Cassie City is one of those types of small towns referenced in the recent Jason Aldean song, “Try That in a Small Town.” 

And just as in that song, the lowlife Biden voter in this story did just that.  So feel free to pause here, pull up the video of that song, and play it softly in the background as you read the following account.  I’ll wait…

Okay, Cordelius – I’m assuming that if he had any friends (which I’m assuming he doesn’t), they’d call him “Cordy” – had armed himself with a box cutter.

Unfortunately for the Cord-ster, he was met not by a box – which would have been perfect for a crook carrying a boxcutter! – but by a clerk and a customer.  Judging by the clerk’s headgear, I think he was a Sikh.  And you know what that often means:

Stick fight! 

Usually in a stick vs. knife fight, the odds are pretty even.  The stick gives you longer reach and a chance to stay out of knife range and pummel the bad guy, if you are nimble, and have been well trained in the ancient Sikh arts of Stick Fu and Jui-stick-su.

On the other hand, a stick can’t easily open a carotid artery and wash the store in arterial spray.  So the knife guy has that going for him.

Unfortunately, the Sikh in question didn’t produce a stick.  Instead, he started to give up the cash to Cordelius.  (And at his home dojo, his Sikh sensei face-palmed himself in disgust.) 

Fortunately, all heroes don’t wear capes.  Sometimes they carry six-packs of light beer.  And that’s what the customer that night was carrying. 

But he was also carrying.  Because he had a concealed carry permit, and a pistol to go with it.   So it turns out that Cord-o had brought a boxcutter to a gunfight. 

Guess how that went?

Spoiler alert:  blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, BLAM!

That’s right, the customer fired 7 shots.  And as I watched the store video, I heard the late Howard Cosell’s voice in my head: “Down goes Cordy!  Down goes Cordy!”

Tragically, one innocent liquor bottle was hit by one of the shots.  But three of the shots struck home, hitting Cordelius in the arm, back and face.  He dropped to the floor and tried to crawl away – as one does after being shot three times – but the gunman held him there until the police arrived.

The greatest detail in this story?  The armed citizen – whose name has not been released – never put down the beer! 

Most Americans in this situation would be expected to say something like, “Hold my beer, and watch me shoot this criminal.”  But not this man.  This amazing, admirable, anonymous man.  He said to himself, “I’m going to hold my own beer, and STILL shoot this criminal.”

Now some persnickety types might point out that firearms trainers would teach you to adopt a comfortable and stable shooting stance, use your dominant eye to aim while keeping the front and back sights of your pistol aligned, and hold the gun in both hands.  

But if they’re so smart, why don’t they advise you to shift your six pack from your dominant, shooting hand to your non-dominant hand before you draw and shoot a criminal? 

And do they even take into account how freaking cool you look, holding a six-pack in one hand and perforating a criminal with the other?

Admittedly, Cordelius survived the shooting, and sure, only three shots hit him.  But again: a lot of blood was spilled, but not one drop of beer.

So let’s focus on the big picture: No beer harmed.  The armed hero citizen is not being charged.  And since Cordelius was already a thrice-convicted felon, he’s now eligible for life in prison.  We call that a win-win-win. 

If only our national political life were going as well as things in Cassie City!

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/ Sammich Overkill Biden-Voter, 2024!

Hillary is Still Terrible, & Chicago’s Great Plan to Ask Criminals to Not Commit Crimes (posted 8/21/23)

Well it seems that Hillary is in the news again.

And I don’t just mean Tropical Storm Hillary (and God bless all of those in that storm’s path), which I first saw in a headline that I assumed was a snarky attack on the Pant-Suited One.

No, I’m talking about the interview she gave to cute little guy Rachel Maddow talking about the bogus Georgia indictments of Trump.  That interview was a master class in sleaze, dishonesty and projection. 

Hillary started out by laughing uproariously about the latest indictment.   She tried to put on a serious face later – which was about as convincing as Liz Warren’s red face (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – and say that she did not “feel any satisfaction” from the impending show trials.  

She went so far as to insist that she felt “great profound sadness,” even as she struggled to keep a straight face.  (For the record, Ellen Degeneres, Martina Navratilova and Elton John all have way more convincing straight faces than the former First Enabler.)  

Maddow started the interview by complaining about how terrible it is for people to question the legitimacy of elections.  I swear that the following words actually came out of her mouth:

“If bad actors tell us falsely that every election was stolen, and that the only way an election is trustworthy is if they come out on top of it… it maybe wounds us as a democracy, and in a way that is hard to repair.  What do you think about how we get better, after the wounds that have been inflicted on us through this process?”

Now if Hillary had a shred of self-awareness at all, at this point she would have been sweating like Que Mala in church.  But no!  She had the gall to begin her response with this observation – and again, as God is my witness, I’m not making this up: “Well I think, you know, the truth matters.”   

She went on to lament the damage that has been done to, among other things, “our institutions” and “the rule of law.”  And she wasn’t talking about the damage done by her, or Stacey Abrams or Al Gore or Lurch Kerry or everybody at CNN and MSNBC, or any other filthy election deniers!

As regular readers may know, I’m not generally one to question the justness of God’s judgments – no matter how much this election cycle is making me feel like Job. 

But for that hideous woman to say that, and yet not be immediately turned into a pillar of salt (or alternatively, a pillar of fecal matter – which I think we all agree would be more appropriate, and which would require a lot smaller change in her chemical makeup), or at least having her pantsuit spontaneously burst into flames?

I’m just wondering if He might not owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology, is what I’m saying.    

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Trump’s best accomplishment in office was appointing 3 mostly solid originalists to SCOTUS.  But only slightly trailing that one was preventing a Hillary Clinton presidency, and the boils, locusts, rivers of blood, and the many other plagues that would surely have descended upon us with the inauguration of the Cankled Colossus.

No matter how angry Trump has made me in the last several years, and how much I’m hoping that we don’t nominate him and lose next year, I’ll always be grateful to him for that.

Moving from the nefarious to the ineducable, let’s check in on how well the mayoralty of Brandon Johnson is going in Chicago.

What’s that?  You’re in Chicago, and you can’t concentrate on my truthful and wildly entertaining column because of all of the gunfire, and watching your life pass before your eyes? 

Ok.  Grab your laptop and drop to the floor, then crawl serpentine into your bathroom, and slither up and into your tub.  Now you’re in the most bulletproof part of your residence. 

So take a few deep, calming breaths.  Remind yourself that if one of those bullets has your name on it, you’ll at least have died doing what you loved: reading the Cautious Optimism site.

Besides, the problem is practically solved, now that the Democrat brain-trust running your city has come up with a new plan they call, “The People’s Ordinance.” 

I know: usually when you put “The People’s” in front of something – as in “The People’s Republic of Wherever” – it usually turns out to be a Schiff-show.  But this plan is different.  It’s grounded in—

Oh no, wait.  It’s pretty much the same.

This plan is being pushed by Alderperson Maria Hadden (of guess which party), and it calls for all of the heavily armed Biden-voting youngsters who have been turning the Miracle Mile into the OK Corral to agree to a ceasefire.

I know (again): Why didn’t we think of that?  Just ask the criminals to stop committing crimes!  Brilliant!

For those of you who may sarcastically mock such a plan as hopelessly naïve – not to mention dumb as a bag of AOCs – you’re missing the best part.  It’s not a call for a total ceasefire, because that’s just not realistic.

It’s a call for a ceasefire just from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. each day. 

Which makes perfect sense.  After being raised in fatherless homes and going to sub-par and dangerous public schools for years (run by guess which party?), these people are basically addicted to shooting people.  And you wouldn’t ask a chain smoker to just quit cold turkey, would you?

No.  You’d try to get him to gradually cut down from two packs a day, to a pack and a half, and then to a pack, and so on.

This is just like that.  If the addict you’re dealing with is a three-clip-a-day man, you don’t just say, “Murder is wrong, so don’t shoot at anyone for an entire day.” 

Instead, you listen to your wise alderman (from guess which party?) and say, “I know you usually go through three clips a day, but how about tomorrow, you try doing one less drive-by, and get by with firing four or five fewer bullets?”

Before you know it, they’ll be passing four elderly people a day, and three mothers with toddlers, and not busting a cap in more than one or two of their arses.

I wish I were making this up.  But listen to Tatiana Atkins (guess which party), explaining the plan: “Our goal is to approach our city’s gun violence problem strategically and not all at once. Things didn’t begin this way overnight, and change won’t happen overnight.”

Well no, not if you’re ceding the nighttime hours to the criminals! 

The only thing that’s going to be happening overnight is that law-abiding citizens will be putting on their Kevlar vests and Kevlar shin guards and Kevlar jockstraps – or maybe their chainmail dresses if they’re females, or Dylan Mulvaney types – and topping it off with a helmet from a suit of armor.

Then they’ll crawl into their bathtubs and try to read the Cautious Optimism site through the slats in their helmet visors as they reconsider their life choices.

I can’t believe that anybody in 2023 Chicago is still listening to these knuckleheads.  The people behind “The People’s Ordinance” are asking for the thugs to thug only after 9:00 p.m to reduce risks for Chicagoans who are “not involved in high risk activities.”

Sweetheart, the vast majority of Chicagoans have been voting for Democrat candidates and policies for the last 100 years, and that is the very definition of a “high risk activity!”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw a pic of a wooden fence, brightly hand-painted with this message: “Don’t Shoot!  I want to grow up.” 

Yes, and people in hell want ice water, too.  But if they keep voting for Dems and pro-criminal policies, they end up in hell.

With no ice water. 

And that’s why, today and every day, we must say…

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Alderman Maria “Please don’t shoot, it’s only 8:30!” Hadden, 2024!

A Column that Veers Between the Ridiculous and the Deadly Serious (posted 8/14/23)

Today I’ll start with some of the usual political foolishness, but I’m going to end with a personally scary story about something that happened to my daughter at Oxford after we left there.

First, after lavishing the Scots with praise during my columns on our recent trip to England and Scotland, I now have to criticize them, at least to the extent of acknowledging that their woke academics are as pathetic as our own. 

This past spring semester, the University of the Highlands and Islands gave a ridiculous trigger warning to their history and literature students who were assigned to read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.  The notice cautioned students that the book contains “graphic fishing scenes.” 

It’s been a long time since I read that – it wasn’t my favorite from Hemingway – but my first instinct was to wonder whether I could possibly have forgotten some gross scene that featured a human vs. fish sexual encounter! 

Because it’s 2023, and everything has gone insane. 

But nope.  The “graphic fishing scenes” are just scenes about… deep sea fishing. 

Just promise me that Disney doesn’t get hold of the copyright, because you know that if they remake a movie about that book, there’ll be some graphic fishing scenes, all right.  But they’ll be graphic because they tell the heartwarming tale of a trans-marlin who suddenly identifies as a turtle, and begins a torrid affair with a gay Cuban fisherman.  (Working title:  Broke Back Tortoise.)

Or better yet, the marlin doesn’t just realize that he’s a turtle, but that he’s a FEMALE turtle.  (Working tagline for the publicity campaign: “He puts the “gal” in Galapagos!”)

Seriously though, the proud Scots fought the ferocious Roman legions to a draw, and now they’re going to get their kilts over their heads over some fishing scenes?  They obviously haven’t been eating enough haggis!

In a surprisingly happy outcome to a California story, it turns out that the two Sikh store employees at a 7-11 who did God’s work by playing a little stick music on a career criminal who brazenly tried to steal a giant barrel full of cigarettes are NOT going to be charged with any crime.

While all normal people praised their performance (My review on Yelp, if I knew how to use Yelp: “Best percussion performance since I saw the Blue Man Group!  Two thumbs up!  Encore, please!”) we all feared that some Soros-ion DA would threaten the Sikhs with the death penalty or life in prison.

But the wave of public outcry over that possibility appears to have helped, and now the only one facing charges is the would-be thief, 42-year-old Tyrone Frazier.  

While reading a story about the case in the Business & Politics Review, I learned a few things I hadn’t known about Frazier.  His mug shot showed that his face is covered with bad prison ink.  (I’m shocked, I tells ya!)  At the time of his “let’s take my fists to a stick fight” encounter, he had multiple active warrants out for his arrest.  (Shocked!)  

And best of all, the cops came across him in the first place because HE had called THEM “complaining of pain from being struck by a stick.”   You’d have to have a heart of stone to not laugh at that.  Or at the wiseguy cops, who in their report noted drily that, “Frazier refused to provide further information on how he obtained his injuries.” 

I bet he did.  Because it wouldn’t help his street cred amongst the Biden-voting criminal community – “Now accepting MS13 gang bangers and criminals from all over the world!” – to admit that he ran head-on into a heat-Sikh-ing stick!  (Yes, that’s a bad dad joke, but a damn fine one.)

I paraphrase Uncle Jesus: “Sikh and you shall find… an arse whipping in a 7-11 if you try to rob it!”   (So let it be written.  So let it be done.) 

Turning to my scary personal story…

On Friday I posted the third and last part of my account of our trip to England and Scotland.   (And thank you for all of your kind responses.)  As you’ll recall, we spent the first two days of that trip at Oxford with my youngest daughter Emily, who was taking a summer study-abroad class there. 

We got back from our trip on July 27th.  (The columns were so delayed because I was too busy soaking up the UK goodness during the trip to write more than anything but notes.)  Because Emily’s course lasted until this past week, she was still in Oxford when we got a call last Tuesday evening from two of her friends.

They were with her in the Radcliffe Hospital there. 

Her whole class had gone punting on the Thames that day, and there had been an accident.  A “punt” is a flat-bottomed boat propelled by a person in the back who uses a long metal pole to push off of the river bottom.  (We saw some Oxford students getting the punts out one morning; going punting is a popular activity for students to do themselves, and to do with tourists to earn extra money.)

Somehow the punter lost control of the pole, and it smacked Emily very hard in the forehead.  She was dazed, and the university chaperone got her to the hospital quickly.  By the time her friends called us, a doctor had been in to assess Emily, and scheduled a CT scan, which she was now waiting for. 

The girls told us that Em wasn’t bleeding and that she hadn’t lost consciousness or vomited.  But they told us that for a short time after getting hit, she wasn’t able to speak, and when the doctor asked what her birthday is, she couldn’t remember it.  She definitely had a concussion, and Karen and I naturally started freaking out.

And then Emily spoke.  “I- I- I’m o- o- I’m o- o- okay.”

And Karen burst into tears, and my heart leapt into my throat.  This kid is a very verbal, fast-talking and whip-smart astro-physics student, and she sounded like John freaking Fetterman! 

She tried to stutter out another sentence to calm us down, and I told her to stop trying to reassure us!

The phone connection was bad, and Karen asked her friends to call us again when the doctor came back.  As soon as she hung up, she got on the computer to check on flights from Orlando to London.  We’d only been home for 4 days, and were kicking ourselves that we hadn’t stayed longer. 

I don’t think the distance across the ocean has ever felt longer to anyone since Columbus set sail with three rickety ships. 

Three hours later we got another call from the girls.  The docs had come in and taken Emily for a CT scan, then came back and announced that the results were “good,” and had released her to go back to her dorm.  But they had been in and out so quickly that the girls hadn’t been able to call us in time for us to speak to them.    

While the CT results were good news, the best news was that Emily talked to us from the hospital room before being released, and she sounded a lot better than before.  She was putting complete sentences together, and even though she didn’t sound like her normal self – “I can’t think of words right.” – she was much improved.

Over the next two days, she made good progress, and we decided not to fly over.  We talked to our daughter the nurse and to the doctors we know, one of whom consulted with a doc who runs a cutting-edge concussion clinic (the advantage of living in a university town with a top-level SEC football program!), and Emily’s recovery was following what they’d laid out as a best-case scenario.

A day after saying “I can’t think of words right,” she told Karen, “I couldn’t process language correctly.”  She had three or four days of wicked headaches and recurring nausea, but her “fuzzy brain” feeling receded more and more. 

The day after the concussion, she skipped her first class but attended her second, even though we and her chaperone had told her to take at least 2 days off, and maybe more.  She swears she has no memory of that, and considering the other holes in her memory, that might be true.  But she’s also a driven and ambitious kid, and I can see her trying to get back to it too quickly.

Oddly enough, when her professor told the chaperone he was surprised to see her in class after he’d been informed about her concussion, he also said that she had made some of the most intelligent comments in class that day.  When we asked Emily about that – after yelling at her for going to class –she said that she’d said something in class, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

The moral of that story: even with a serious head injury, the average Simpson is still smarter than a Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania!

But right after going to that class, she had a headache, and sat on the floor beside her toilet for half an hour, feeling like she had to vomit.  After that, she took direction better.  She slept 15 hours the next day, and then slowly got back into the swing of things.  She still needs to write her two final papers, which her profs agreed to take late, even though the class ended on Friday.

Tonight we picked her up at the airport, and we’ve got her back under our roof, and we couldn’t be happier.  Our daughter is still herself, but with some occasional headaches that we are going to over-react to, even though the docs say they are normal.

For the first time in 10 days, Karen and I are going to sleep well tonight.  I haven’t been this relieved – and politics haven’t seemed less important – in a long, long time.

Still…

Biden delenda est!