Martin Simpson

As I promised on Friday, I’m going to risk the good will – and, let’s face it, the near-worshipful admiration – of many in CO nation by declaring my ‘druthers in the upcoming Trump v. DeSantis primary battle.

I hesitate to do this, partly because I think I’m going to be disagreeing with the esteemed CO, and as we all know, if you’re on the opposite side of an issue from CO, you’re almost guaranteed to be wrong.  (Except when he’s in a dispute with the COW, in which case we all just huddle in a corner and wish that dad and mom would stop fighting.)

CO wrote a rightly outraged piece after Trump was indicted, saying that after that illegitimate exercise, he is backing Trump.  Many on our side have obviously done the same, since Trump’s poll support and fundraising have jumped post-indictment.

So I know that Trump is the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination right now.  But I’m going to make the case for DeSantis anyway. 

I actually made part of this argument in a column that is now posted at Martinsimpsonwriting.com, and dated 11/14/22.  So if you are interested, please go there, scroll down the right side list of my columns, and read that piece first.  I still believe that what I said then is correct, but in this column I’m updating and expanding my thoughts based in part on the added data that I’ve seen over the last 5 months.

To summarize that piece, I give Trump huge credit for far exceeding my expectations when I voted for him in 2016, I voted for him in enthusiastically in 2020, and will do so again if he’s the nominee in 2024.  He has more conservative presidential governance accomplishments than anyone since Reagan, and the heart of my argument is really more pro-RDS rather than anti-Trump.

That said, I have three main theses today.  (Martin Luther had 96; Martin Simpson has only three.   Does that mean that I’m better than Luther?  Probably.  Also, suck it, all you who say I’m too long-winded!)

(Okay, that last thought clearly proves that I’m not better than Luther.  Because no one can imagine Luther saying, “Suck it, Zwingli and the current Pope!”)

(Although don’t you think I should get some extra points for that deep pull from the semi-obscure Protestant reformers category?  How many of you have a relevant Ulrich Zwingli reference chambered and ready at a moment’s notice? Show of hands?)

Where was I? 

Oh yeah. 

3 Theses:

1. We have to win!

2 Leftist Dems are the real opposition. 

3. Politics 101: make it as easy as possible to vote for you and as hard as possible to vote for the other guy. 

1. Ultimately I think that RDS has the better chance to win in ’24, for several reasons:

He’s got the crucial upside that Trump has – the willingness/appetite to fight back – but with much greater target discipline.   (I can’t imagine RDS spending time on Rosie O’Donnell’s weight, or the equine qualities of a porn star’s face, for example.)   

His executive performance as governor is easily better than anyone else’s since Reagan.  It’s true that presidential experience is at a higher level, but governing a huge state is the closest a non-prez can come, and RDS has nailed it.

He’s taken principled, conservative stands on one issue after another, and many of them have been quite risky: he re-opened the state and lifted mask and vax mandates very early during covid; he’s taken on education behemoths at the K-12 and university levels that no governor ever has; he punched back on tourism/financial giant Disney, and took away their sweetheart tax breaks.

He’s been very strong on gun rights, and on abortion, the latter of which opens him to a lot more political risks than if he had stuck with a 15-week ban (already the strongest in all but the reddest of states).  He’s also been excellent on taxes and fiscal responsibility, as well as strengthening voting integrity, which might be the most important single issue, since all other political outcomes depend on clean elections.

And the results have proven him right. 

Florida has been the most purple of battleground states for two decades.  Our nation was spared an Al Gore presidency in 2000 by less than 800 votes here!  In the last 7 presidential elections, FL went GOP in 4 and Dem in 3, and the winning percentages in the last 4 have been 50.9% & 50.01% by Obama, and 49.02% & 51.22% by Trump.

It was still that tight when DeSantis won in 2018, squeaking by a terrible, little-known Dem candidate by less than half of one percent, and only 30,000 votes.  Four years later, DeSantis won in an unprecedented landslide, beating a high-name-recognition FL ex-governor by almost 20%, with a winning margin of over 1.5 million votes!

DeSantis did in a divided state what the GOP has not been able to do in a divided nation since 1980: win going away.  He even won in deep-blue, urban Palm Beach and Dade counties, which hadn’t happened since the Conquistadors overcame a huge panhandle majority for the Seminoles to take the 17^th century!   

Next, I hate this fact, but I have to say it: most presidential elections are determined by the votes of independents in the middle.  The mushy, moderate, “thou art lukewarm, so I spit thee out of my mouth!” middle.  

Committed Dems will vote for a barely animated corpse if he’s got a “D” by his name.  They’ve voted for a fake Indian (#wemustneverstopmockingher) and a real socialist (dozens of them, in fact), and they’ll continually re-elect the locust-swarm of career pols who have been destroying their cities for decades.   

They voted for John Fetterman even though he opened a debate by saying goodnight, and then stood there swaying and drooling on his shoes for 90 minutes!

Similarly, committed Republicans will hold their noses and vote for RINOs and weirdos against Dems, and I’m no different than the rest.  (If I woke up on election morning and found out that Satan was running at the top of the GOP ticket, I’d have to hesitate. But if Satan was even half-decent on immigration and a few other issues, I’d be Team Satan ’24!)

I voted for McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, for crying out loud!  (And yes, I’ve compulsively showered ever since.  And no, I can never completely wash the shame away.)

But we shouldn’t ultimately pick a candidate who can win the GOP base, but is a toss-up at best in a general election.  And this is where I think DeSantis has a definite edge over Trump. 

I’m going to cite some general trends in polls, but I must state up front the caveats that polls can be biased and wrong and all the rest.  Everyone cites them when they’re good and bashes them when they’re bad.  But in the aggregate and over time, they’re the only info we’ve got, absent an election.

Obviously Trump’s poll numbers in the GOP primary are strong, and getting stronger since the indictment; he’s the smart money bet to win the nomination right now.  But RDS consistently polls better with independents than Trump does, averaging around 15 points higher with that group.    

Trump has a much higher floor so far – many GOP voters will stick with him no matter what – but he’s got a carved-in-stone ceiling, too.  Trump-hatred is now irreversibly baked into the cake for many non-GOP voters.  Some large proportion of the country – 40%?  45%? – hate his guts, and they will never, ever vote for him.

DeSantis partisans shouldn’t be too sanguine about that, because the Dems and the dishonest MSM – but I repeat myself – are going to smear RDS and bring his numbers with independents down, just like they do with every GOP candidate.  

But Trump’s negatives are set in stone, while DeSantis has the chance to conduct a strong campaign and good debates – if he’s as disciplined in ’24 as he has been for the last 5 years – to limit or even counter much of the damage. 

2. The leftist Dems are our real opposition, and I think that fact gives RDS an advantage, too.

DeSantis has been very effective and disciplined on the attack, and always against the Dems and on strategic policy grounds.  And he has the sense of humor of a happy warrior (which Trump, at his best, also has).  Flying the illegals to Martha’s Vineyard was a wry shot at leftist hypocrisy.  He announced one conservative policy in tiny little Brandon, Florida, just for the winking joke.   

And he deftly skewers reporters and counters leftist smears in press conferences with just the right touch of pugnacity without red-faced anger.  The cliché of “an iron fist within a velvet glove,” comes to mind. 

For Trump, unleashing strong, often entertaining attacks on opponents has always been a strength.  He’s all iron fist and no glove, and the iron fist has little spikes welded to each knuckle. And it’s holding a mace, with bigger spikes on it.

But he tends to wield it in all directions, and against all foes, including non-politicians (fat Rosie, horseface Stormy, Megyn Kelly, etc.), Republicans (Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb), and the Dems.

I’ve never been that bothered by his insults, because they were often just returning fire, and they were mostly against people who deserved it.  And I understand the rough elbows during a primary, where you need to beat your GOP rivals to get to the general.

But some of Trump’s insults are gratuitously mean enough that they reflect worse on him than his targets.  To call Ted Cruz’s wife ugly and say that his dad killed JFK is just creepy.  To mock McCain for having been a captured POW is not a good look, especially for someone who hasn’t served.

In general, I think most hard-edged insults to decent conservatives – even if they are too moderate for my taste, as most of them are – don’t help. When it came to governing, he needed people like Rubio and Cruz, and if they had been as petty when he was president as Trump had been during the primaries, they could have crippled his agenda.

McCain WAS that petty, and he killed the repeal of Obamacare as a consequence.  That’s primarily on McCain, but it’s no credit to Trump, either.  

One other issue on which Trump has been attacking in all directions involves the way he’s driven to relitigate and get vengeance for 2020.   I completely understand this, and empathize with his justified anger, as I’ve said elsewhere.  If I had been in his shoes, and had been as thoroughly screwed as he was in that election, I would probably spend a lot of time seeking revenge, too.  (Have I mentioned that I’m an Appalachian-American, and prone to feudin’?)

But it’s not useful, and a disciplined candidate would eschew it.  It takes the focus off of your opponent’s weaknesses, and frustrates and exhausts everyone who doesn’t already love you.

And when one of your negatives with many independents is your ego, it makes the next election an individual psychodrama that is all about you, instead of a fight for the future of the nation that is all about delivering us from the disastrous reign of Biden!

In fact, his anger over 2020 helped us lose the 2 senate seats in GA in 2021 that allowed Biden to spend 6 trillion, open the border completely, etc.  Trump’s personal grudge against Brian Kemp in GA led him to push a hugely unpopular Perdue gubernatorial campaign in ‘22.  Only Kemp’s primary win and strong performance spared us from Governor Stacey Abrams!  

His attacks against other GOP candidates before and since the midterm election were especially ill-considered.   He held a rally a week before the expected “red wave” election, and he criticized DeSantis and Youngkin (2 GOP bright spots in the last several years) as much as he did the Democrats.   

Even if you argue that GOP-on-GOP attacks are justified during a primary, nobody can say that they’re helpful on the eve of an election, when the real fire should be focused on the opposing party and their terrible candidates and policies!

Darn it!  After making an early crack about how I’m not too long-winded, I realize that this column is too long, and will need to be broken into two parts, for those of you who care to continue. (Oh, the irony!)

So I’m going to stop now, and ask you to look on the bright side, cautious optimists: I’ll post the second half tomorrow, making this a rare, three-column week!   

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Satan (D-Hell), 2024!

I’ve tried to make this my best column ever, because on Monday I’m going to be taking a big risk of alienating some in CO nation.  That’s right, I’m going to give my thoughts on the contentious “Trump vs. DeSantis” debate. 

I may even partially disagree with the great and powerful CO.  So prepare for chaos: tectonic plates shifting, cats and dogs living together, who knows what else?  But in the meantime…

Here’s some news that will make you laugh, and then cry.   Or vice versa.

Chicago has been selected to host the 2024 Democrat National Convention!  Mayor J.B. “Jabba the” Pritzker announced the news with a giddy tweet: “I look forward to welcoming everyone to the Midwest and showing off our diverse communities, impeccable hospitality, and world-renowned venues.”

By “diversity” he is referring to the Benetton rainbow of ethnic diversity that peoples the violent rioter community.   (We’re so diverse that even our Maga-hat-wearing Jussie Smollett muggers are from Nigeria!)

By “impeccable hospitality” he’s referencing the new policy amongst Chicago carjackers: if you survive the first three gunshots, the next bullet is free!  (Chicago puts the “hospital” in “hospitality!”)

My first thought on reading this was that I’m going to get a huge tub of popcorn next August, and sit back with my Wonder Dog at my feet, and watch Democrat delegates running serpentine into and out of the United Center as the echoing gunshots evoke the ambiance of Mogadishu in the springtime. 

(Best case scenario: enough of them end up in either intensive care or the Democrat-voting-stronghold cemeteries of Chicago to deny the convention a quorum to actually choose a nominee!) 

But then I remembered: Democrats are world-record holders in dishonest hypocrisy.  (Or was that hypocritical dishonesty?) (You say “potato,” I say “Que Mala.”)

So I’m sure that shortly before the convention starts, they’ll sweep the homeless off the streets, temporarily jail all of the gangbangers (“C’mon guys, it’s just for two weeks, and then you can go right back to preying on our helpless citizens!”), and put more cops with guns and armored vehicles on the street than Patton had when he was liberating Bastogne from another bunch of evil socialists.

I don’t know who really made this decision, but I’m absolutely certain that it wasn’t Joe Biden (RIP).  In fact, I’m guessing that Pritzker paid off the appropriate grifters (by the way, “Pritzker and the Grifters” would not be the worst band name ever), and then made the following phone call:

Pritzker: “Hello Mr. President, this is J.B. Pritzker.”

Biden: “Huh?”

Pritzker: “I’m calling to tell you that the convention is going to be in Chicago next year.”

Biden: “What?”

Pritzker: “Isn’t that great?”

Biden: “I like ice cream!”

Pritzker: “Yeah… I’ve heard that.”

Biden: “Who is this?”

Pritzker: “Okay then.  Gotta run.” [click]

Biden: “Mint chocolate chip is my favorite.  Or just chocolate chip.” [long pause] “Hello?”

Biden looks at the phone, then hangs up.

“Dr.” Jill: “Who was that?”

Biden: “It was Pretzel.”

“Dr.” Jill (rolling her eyes): “What did pretzel want?”

Biden: “He said the retention’s gonna be in the Congo new year.  Or maybe… we’re gonna have detention in Cabo.”

“Dr.” Jill: “That’s nice, dear.  Do you want some ice cream?”

Biden: “Oooh yeah!  Lint droplet slip.  I mean, squint gauntlet trip”.

“Dr. Jill: “Mint chocolate chip?”

Biden (pointing one finger in the air, triumphantly): “That’s it! 

And, scene.

Whoever was writing the press release cleaned things up.  But the final draft of the announcement still had this sentence in it, which I swear I am not making up: “Chicago was chosen after getting top grades in an evaluation by the DNC’s Technical Advisory Group, a panel of experts considering factors such as hotel capacity, transportation, security, financing and other logistics.”

Wow!  Can you imagine the palpable fog of incompetence, avarice and delusion filling the room when the dunce-cap-bedecked DNC “Technical Advisory Group” gathered in one place?  In their list of criteria that made Chicago such a winner, they had the gall to list “security!”  

I would deploy my Sam Kinison filter™, but I’m afraid that plugging “security” into a discussion about Chicago would break it.  And something tells me we’re going to be needing it over the next 19 months.   

Pritzker accidentally told the truth in the last line of his announcement tweet: “There is no better place to tell the story of @JoeBiden & @KamalaHarris.” 

No disrespect to San Francisco, Baltimore, St. Louis, Sodom, Gomorrah, or the other most crime-ridden, dysfunctional dumpster-fire cities.

But, yep.

Moving on…

On Monday night I drafted some thoughts on the Bud Light/ Dylan Mulvaney fiasco which was then just breaking. (Because I’m always on the job, working for the fine people of CO Nation. You’re welcome.) But now that story is feeling like old news. 

However, a few aspects of it are representative of other stories and long-term trends.  Take, for example, Alissa Heinerscheid – and yes, her last name looks like a devastating insult in German – the PR boss who came up with the idea to use Boy Barbie to pitch Bud.  (And he looks more like a catcher than a pitcher, doesn’t he?) 

Heinerscheid is typical of our insulated, cultural elite: liberal arts degree from Harvard, MBA from Wharton, high-powered, bi-coastal job.

And yet she thought that the best way to sell a least-common-denominator product consumed mostly by blue-collar males would be to hire a grown (if cringingly effeminate) “man” pretending to be a pre-teen girl. 

Well, I guess that’s one approach, though it’s not one I’d bet my career on.  But then again, I’m no fancy, high-priced marketing expert.  I’m just an average guy, i.e. one who has to struggle manfully not to poke my eyes out with a sharp object whenever I see Dylan Mulvaney’s woman-face act on tv.

Heinersheid’s now-infamous quote that the challenge for her is that the Bud Light brand “has been in decline for a really long time” reminds me of the famous Hemingway quote from The Sun Also Rises, in which one of his characters, when asked how he’d gone bankrupt, answered, “Two ways.  Gradually and then suddenly.” 

I think Ms. Heinersheid is going to find that Bud Light may have been declining gradually.  But she’s about to see “suddenly” kick in.  

[And in the four days since I wrote the previous two paragraphs, “suddenly” has arrived for Ms. Heinersheid.]

It’s hard to imagine how any influential corporate big shots can make such disastrously risky decisions.  Until you consider the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and CEI (Corporate Equality Index) scores assembled by influential far-left groups like the Human Rights Campaign.

These scores are supposed to indicate “ethical investing,” but in this case, “ethical” means “leftist.”  (You know, the way war means peace, and freedom means slavery, and ignorance means strength.) 

Since some of the largest asset funds use those scores to steer investments, many intelligence-insulting ad campaigns have been foisted onto the public by corporations more concerned with getting leftist approval than providing a good or service that customers actually want.    

Some a-political and conservative groups are pushing back on those biased scores, and I hope that they will succeed in getting rid of them.  But until that happens, I think we need to fight fire with fire. 

To do my part, I hereby introduce the Simpson Common Sense Index (SCSI), a much more logical way to judge the merits of corporate leadership.  I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but below I offer some of the SCSI criteria for your consideration.

If the CEO and/or top executive team members have done the following listed behaviors, they receive the corresponding score adjustments:

If they’ve voted for any Democrat since Daniel Patrick Moynihan died, they start at an absolutely fair zero points. 

From that position, the following points will be subtracted from their zero:

If they’ve ever said, “My truth” non-sarcastically — minus 10

If they’ve sent their own kids to private schools while voting to force middle-class and poor folks’ kids into public schools – minus 20

If they own a gun or employ anyone who carries one, but have voted to keep law abiding citizens from owning guns – minus 20

If they’ve lectured others about CO2 levels but have ever flown private – minus 20

If they’ve ever cited The Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Watch, the UN’s Human Rights Council, or Dr. Fauci approvingly – minus 10 points each

If they’ve ever said that newborns “are assigned gender at birth” with a straight face – minus 20

If they’ve ever used the adjective “Reverend” when describing oily charlatan Al Sharpton – minus 10

If they’ve ever used the adjective “Reverend” when describing rhyming charlatan Jesse Jackson – minus 10

If they’ve ever booed anyone for saying “All Lives Matter” – minus 10

If they’ve ever put one of those idiotic “Co-Exist” bumper stickers on their car — minus 20

If they’ve ever ridden in a car with one of those idiotic stickers without berating the owner – minus 10

If they’ve ever said “LGBTQ” in reference to the gender-non-conforming – minus 1

If they’ve ever added the “+” to “LGBTQ” – minus an additional 4

If they’ve ever added “2-spirit” to “LGBTQ+” – minus an additional 10

If they’ve ever said “LGBTQ” to indicate “Let’s Get Biden To Quit” – plus 20

If they’ve ever told the following joke – “Q: What do you call it when a Pride parade float catches fire?  A: LGBBQ” – plus 20 (but with an accompanying look of mild disapproval)

If they’ve ever told that joke in a faculty lounge:  plus 100, and a pricey bottle of bourbon for their retirement party.  

If they’ve ever used pronouns in any way other than God and the Anglo Saxons intended – minus 30  

Next week, if I survive the outrage from my Trump vs. DeSantis column, I’ll offer some behaviors that will improve the SCSI scores for companies who want to actually serve in the marketplace.  Until then, have a great weekend!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Jabba the Pritzker, 2024!

I hope you all had as good a weekend as I did. 

The Good Friday service at our church was somber, and properly so.  The cross draped in black; mostly old, lovely, minor-chord hymns with upbeat titles like “Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted;” the congregation leaving the darkened sanctuary in silence at the end. 

But just like a long Illinois winter – early sunsets, dead cornstalks in bare fields, dirty slush and road salt and slate-gray skies – imbues the first day of spring with that much more manic energy, the grim darkness of an appropriately contemplative and sober Tenebrae service evokes that much more exhilaration on Easter.

At the end of the Sunday service the choir sang Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, accompanied by brass and bells, and I left feeling ready to go out and love my neighbors and my enemies, and to fight the good fight. 

And, of course, to mock those who are mock-worthy.  (Because I’m just as God made me!)

Speaking of which, after a post-church nap I took a quick stroll through some good websites.  Of course, top of that list is Cautious Optimism (duh), and I saw CO’s posting of the pic from the 1950s of the NYC skyline with multiple buildings lit up with crosses at Eastertime.

And, because I  remember 1970’s tv shows, I found myself singing, “Boy, the way Glen Miller played/ Songs that made the Hit Parade/ Guys like us we had it made/ Those were the days.”

For those of you who remember that nostalgic song, there are several verses in it that weren’t in the shortened intro to “All in the Family,” and my favorites are, “People seemed to be content/ Fifty dollars paid the rent/Freaks were in the circus tent/ Those were the days.”

“$50 paid the rent,” hasn’t held up too well.  But “freaks were in the circus tent” is dead-on perfect!

Because now the freaks are in congress, and pitching Bud Light, and on blue-state juries!  And don’t we all wish a circus would come through town and take them with it?

Case in point: lefty fossil and amateur theologian Bette Midler had an uplifting Easter message for the nation.  If by “uplifting” you mean “exploiting dead children in a cynical attempt to disarm law-abiding citizens who are no threat to anyone except school shooters and other criminals.”

Midler tweeted, “On this most Holy Day in the Christian calendar, remember the slaughter of your own innocents in school shootings across America, and let this #Easter mark a #resurrection, for them and for your commitment to change.  It’s your turn.  #MomsDemandAction”

Ugh.  After reading that, and throwing up in my mouth a little, two appropriate Bible verses came to mind:  “Jesus wept.”

And – hat tip to Michaela for reminding me of the Lazarus verse that fits here with just a slight alteration:  “She stinketh.”

And if you are a more secular sort who doesn’t need a Bible verse to point out that hypocritical Bette is protected by armed bodyguards while preaching that peons like us shouldn’t be allowed guns to defend ourselves, God bless you, too!     

My favorite response to Midler’s obnoxious tweet was from a guy who posted a picture of an AK-47 with the tag, “I find it ironic that democrats hate the only thing socialism ever produced that works…”

Buy that man some non-Anheuser-Busch beer, and some extra ammo!

The aftermath of the Nashville shooting has provided the feckless Dems two more chances to prove what colossal jackasses they are, and they really stuck the landing on both!

First, in a patented leftist cranial-rectal inversion move, they cast their political co-religionist aggressors as the victims of those they’ve been attacking in the recent transgender wars.

Within just the last 10 days, for example, a transgender murderer killed 6 Christians in Nashville, another mob of transgenders and transgender-adjacents assaulted and terrorized swimmer Riley Gaines after a speech at San Francisco State, and ANOTHER transgender was arrested in Colorado for plotting to use guns and bombs to attack three schools along with non-specific churches.

(That’s not to mention the April 6^th Symposium in France – meant to “raise awareness of the plight of Afghan and Iranian women” – that had to be canceled after “trans activists threatened to violently ambush the event because of the presence of a gender critical speaker.”) (Because in France, irony is morte.)

Meanwhile, in that same time frame, Christian and non-Christian “transphobes” have murdered zero transgenders, been arrested zero times for plotting zero attacks on transgender gatherings, and have assaulted and held hostage zero transgender swimmers following university speeches.

So naturally, the intrepid LGBTQ army (not the cool, “Let’s Get Biden To Quit” one) has zeroed in on the real problem: imaginary violent transphobes who are threatening pacifist transgenders with genocide.

Brilliant! 

Second, in the aftermath of the Nashville shooting, three Tennessee Democrat state representatives insisted that the legislature pass new gun control laws that wouldn’t have affected the Nashville shooting anyway.  Inconveniently for them, a large majority of TN voters and legislators disagree with them, and out-voted them. 

So the “Nashville Three” (the “Stooges” on the end is understood) led a bunch of chanting, misbehaving, adult children into the state Capitol.  One of the reps smuggled in a bullhorn, and the two of the three took turns using it to amplify their screamed slogans and chants. 

For a while they were able to stop the chamber from doing its business, and many of the protestors jostled some law makers.  Finally they were removed for breaking long-standing and well-known Capitol rules, and days later the GOP-led chamber voted to expel two of them.  (The other’s lawyer argued that she had never used the bullhorn, and kept herself separate from other protestors.)

A responsible, sane Democrat party would have chastised their misbehaving members, reminding them that they have been ranting for two years about an “insurrection” in DC, most of which was no more violent than what they just did in TN. 

In fact, the TN “coup attempt” was actually much closer to a coup attempt than the events of January 6^th, since actual legislators were present when the mob was stomping around and screaming.  And no cops were allowing this mob inside, and voluntarily opening doors for them and giving them tours. 

Again, a responsible, sane Democrat party would have felt mortified and sheepish, and would have punished their own morons.  I’m not sure how a responsible, sane party of sentient fungi would have reacted.

I only say that because we are as likely to find a responsible, sane party of sentient fungi as we are to find a responsible, sane party of Democrats in 2023.

Therefore, the party fell back on its most reliable strategy: Cry havoc, and let slip the charges of racism!  (The two expelled idiots were black, while the other, bullhorn-less idiot was white.  But just to be safe, the TN GOP should expel her sorry butt, too!)

Many top Dems – the same dullards who have been howling that January 6^th was worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and the Jussie Smollett pseudo-lynching, all rolled into one! – now shamelessly reversed themselves.       

Remember when being inside a government building without permission was a grave threat to democracy?  Well now, it turns out, STOPPING people from being inside a government building without permission is a grave threat to democracy.

AOC – proving yet again that she is all juicy booty (her words, not mine) and no brains – claimed that the GOP insistence on following government rules and decorum was “stoking fascism.” She also promised more bad behavior in the future, because asking those Dems to follow the rules “is only further radicalizing and awakening an earthquake of young people.”

(As a writer who appreciates a good analogy, must I point out that an earthquake can neither sleep nor awake, and it cannot serve as a collective noun consisting of many people?)

She finished with a flourish: “If you thought youth organizing was strong, just wait for what’s coming.  Gen Z don’t play.”

First, great impression of a spoiled 12-year-old girl threatening to hold her breath if she doesn’t get her way.

Second, as a factual matter, Gen Z DOES play.  It plays “dress up as a girl when you’re a boy,” and it plays soccer. 

Neither of which we find as scary as you seem to think we do.

Since AOC’s antics apparently weren’t embarrassing enough – I swear, if she was a cartoon character, all of the thought bubbles above her head would be empty – the dynamic duo of Joey Gaffes and his vapid VP got involved. 

Que Mala jetted into town to meet with “the Tennessee Three,” and then went to a church, where she tried out an angry preacher voice and waved her arms in almost human-like gestures as she screamed things like, “You don’t silence people!  You don’t stifle people!”   

She didn’t say, “You don’t arm your mentally-ill self and go into a Christian school and murder 6 innocent people!”  I guess there wasn’t time for that, when a-holes with bullhorns were being kept from disrupting the democratic process.  

I never thought I’d say this, but I found myself wishing that she would pull out that unhinged Joker cackle of hers instead.

Not to be outdone, our Cadaver-in-Chief invited the TN3 to meet with him at the White House.  He hasn’t yet had time to meet with the loved ones of the 6 murdered people in Nashville.

And for that, I’m sure they’re grateful.   

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Sentient Fungi, 2024!

If this column reads a little discombobulated, it’s not you.  It’s me.

I like to think of myself as man with his share of common sense.   I’m old enough to know better, and I’ve been around the block a few times.  My eyes are not ones over which the wool can usually be easily pulled.

And yet the world is making less and less sense.  Let me give you a few examples.  

Two weeks ago, 92-year-old Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and 66-year-old Ann Lesley Smith got engaged, but this week they canceled the engagement. 

If those crazy kids can’t make it, what chance do the rest of us have?

Chicago, having delivered itself from the scourge of Lightfoot, picked perhaps the only other far-left loon in Christendom who could be as bad as she was.   (At least his name – Brandon – will be easy to remember, during the chaos to come.)

On a different topic, I’ve always thought that I’ve understood how marketing works.  If you’ve got something to promote, you identify your target audience, learn everything you can about them, and create ads that appeal to their interests and beliefs.

For example, if you’re looking to draw eyeballs to the View, your target audience is going to be unemployable women with low-to-middling IQs and physical appearance, who will feel better about themselves as they watch women who look and sound even worse than they do.

If you’re pushing the Joy Reid show – may God have mercy on your soul – you’re looking for an audience of black folks and white liberals who share a deep-seated hatred of white folks, and America.  And logic. 

If you’re promoting the Stephen Colbert show, your target audience is… the family and both friends of Stephen Colbert. 

That’s all logical, and it’s how the world used to work.  But not any more.

In 2019, Gillette came out with a new ad campaign.  Common sense would say that a razor maker – which sells a large majority of its products to men – would try to appeal to, you know…men. 

Instead, Gillette found an ad director and agency with a reputation for hostile, feminist campaigns, and they produced a 90-second male-bashing meditation on “toxic masculinity.” It was a dog’s breakfast of every negative stereotype of males – bullies, homophobes, sexual harassers, mansplainers – and also included the shrill Ana Kasparian from Young Turks discussing sexual assault, followed by a split screen of a bunch of leftist MSM empty heads yowling on the topic.

It ended by transforming the previously well-known previous Gillette slogan (“The best a man can get”) into a scolding, sarcastic, “Is this the best a man can get?”

The ad was slickly made, but the message was clear to every male who watched it: “You’re all filthy, disgusting pigs, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.  Now buy our razors, jerks!”

Guess how that worked?

The giant parent corporation Proctor and Gamble owns Gillette, and P&G did very well that year; all of their brands went up in value. 

Except Gillette.  Which reportedly lost $8 billion dollars.  With a capital “B.”

So okay, that was colossally stupid, and everyone on Madison Avenue learned their lesson, and no one ever made such an idiotic, crap-on-your-customers ad again.  The end.

HA!  I kid. 

Because many other morons kept making the same blindingly obvious mistake.

The NFL is watched by males, and the women with the good taste to love those men, and football.  They are not racists, as you could infer from the fact that they watch a game played mostly by black Americans, and they hero-worship many of those black Americans. 

(As a case in point, when my wife and I were ready to have kids, I suggested that if we had a son, his name should be either “Antonin Scalia Simpson,” or “Walter Payton Simpson.”  My wife pointed out that we are not Italian, and little Antonin’s initials would spell “ass.”  So Walter Payton it was.  Until I had two daughters.  And when I suggested “Walterina,” my wife gave me a single look that caused part of my body that is normally on the outside to migrate to the inside.)

(Perhaps I’ve said too much.)

Anyway, the brain trust at the NFL knew that their target audience was mostly regular guys.  (Or as the MSM calls them, “predatory foot-soldiers of toxic masculinity and the patriarchy).”

So naturally, they started dressing the players partly in pink as part of an interminably long campaign to bring awareness to… wait for it… breast cancer!   (You know, the same way the LPGA has made all their lady golfers wear black arm bands and talk endlessly about testicular cancer.)

Then they promoted a number of black players’ ill-informed protests against racism (Michael Brown never said, “Hands up don’t shoot!” before he got shot, because he was too busy assaulting a cop and trying to take his gun.), and cops, and America, and the national anthem.

All of this was led by Colin Kapernick, a quarterback so skilled that he was benched in favor of the immortal Blaine Gabbert.  (For those of you who haven’t been to the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, you’ve got to see the scale model of a football version of Mount Rushmore.  From left to right, the images carved there are as follows:  Marino, Montana, Brady and Gabbert.)  

Luckily for the NFL, the male devotion to football is so strong that they could only dent the ratings, rather than kill them.

Similarly, hockey is a game so filled with alpha males that many fans buy a ticket to a fight, and are pleasantly surprised when a hockey game breaks out.  So naturally, the geniuses at the NHL started having “Pride Nights” and making players wear warm-up jerseys with the gay rainbow, and reacted with shock when many players and teams resisted bringing sexual politics into hockey. 

(I don’t follow hockey, but I see a potential compromise: if woke totalitarians won’t make hockey players wear gay pride junk, hockey fans won’t make gay porn stars and drag queens wear hockey jerseys and blacked-out teeth while they work.)       

Speaking of drag queens, the Country Music Awards just featured a singer surrounded by a bunch of unattractive men in Liz Taylor’s old wardrobe.  This wasn’t the Tony awards, or the Emmys, or the Grammys.  It was the Country FREAKING Music Awards!  The world has gone mad!

Some of you might have guessed what I’ve been leading up to: Bud Light just signed a deal to have Dylan Mulvaney become their spokesman. 

If you don’t know who Mulvaney is, you’ve been spending your time more wisely than I have.   He was a little-known actor and singer in several Broadway shows, and he once went on a game show, where he put on the most over-the-top, drama queen, super effeminate gay routine ever.

But a little over a year ago, Mulvaney found a way to transform himself from an unknown flamingly gay guy to a celebrity spokes-they by jumping on the transgender bandwagon.  (Though that may be a circus wagon that just identifies as a bandwagon?)

He began a daily series of TikTok videos called “Days of Girlhood,” in which he documented each day that he’s been pretending to be a girl.    

I’m not sure which is the most nauseating thing about his new career, though there are several serious contenders:

The President of the United States (RIP) gave this weirdo a public platform by meeting with him to discuss women’s issues.

It would be insane enough if Mulvaney was just pretending to be a woman, but he’s not; he’s pretending to be a flighty airheaded girl in her early teens.  But the guy is 26! 

(Try calling the women in their mid-20s at your work place a bunch of “girls,” and see if you escape with your groin un-kicked.)   

I think the worst part is that the guy is doing a “woman-face” routine that is every bit as insulting to real women as the vaudeville black-face routines were to black people.  He offensively mimics the worst stereotypes about women.  

In his first video, “Day 1 of being a girl,” he said, “I’ve already cried three times, I wrote a scathing email that I did not send, I ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford, and then, when someone asked me how I was, I said, ‘I’m fine,’ when I wasn’t fine.  How’d I do, ladies?”

Well, you defined “femaleness” as being unstable and hysterical, unable to manage money, and emotionally stunted.  So… great job, fella!

What can Anheuser-Busch be thinking?  How many beer drinkers out there have been dying to drink Bud Light, if only it were pushed by a grown man with a fetish for acting like a teen girl? 

And what has the world come to when the most sane response to an offensive commercial comes from Kid Rock, who blasted a case of Bud Light with an automatic weapon and said, “F**k Bud Light?”

(And just like that, I’m a big rap music fan.) 

But rather than end on that down note, I’ll close with the undisputed Greatest Commercial Ever Made, which I guarantee you will love.

The story starts last March, when yet another razor company repeated the same mistake that Gillette made.  After advertising on the Daily Wire’s great conservative podcast network for several years, Harry’s Razors dropped their sponsorship after received a single complaint from a mope who got offended when one DW host pointed out that men and women are different.

But dropping their sponsorship wasn’t enough for the hateful dopes at Harry’s – they had to issue a virtue signaling smear at DW.  They “condemned” DW’s “hate speech,” and promised to “prevent any values misalignment” in the future.

So DW’s co-CEO and “god-king” Jeremy Boreing did what any fightin’ Appalachian-American like myself would do: he launched a feud! 

Within several days, he had started a razor-selling business called Jeremy’s Razors.  He cut the aforementioned greatest ever ad, started the website “ihateharrys.com,” and within 3 days in business, he’d sold 25,000 razor subscriptions, and had more Twitter followers (35K) than Harry’s had amassed in 10 years (32.5K). 

He also put up a giant series of ads directly across from Harry’s company headquarters.   

Seriously, you’ve got to watch the Jeremy’s Razors ad.  It’s got everything that makes an ad great: flamethrowers, a reference to the guys who shot Bin Laden, great tongue-in-cheek humor, and Jeremy on a huge throne, wearing a crown and a fur cape, flanked by two models on one side and a bald eagle on the other. 

And most importantly, a cigar-store Indian version of Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

So boycott Budweiser, watch that ad at least twice, think of me, and you’re welcome.  

Now I’ve got to post this column, and then begin preparing myself for our church’s Tenebrae service, which I’ve written about in previous posts. 

“Tenebrae” is Latin for “darkness.”  The service takes place on Good Friday, and features a somber reading of scripture about the crucifixion, while a series of candles are extinguished along the way.  It ends with a darkened church and a loud sound – “strepitus” – symbolizing the stone being rolled in place to seal Christ’s tomb.

Tonight’s service, coming halfway through the Biden administration and amidst our nation’s incipient unraveling, sadly fits my mood.  “Democracy dies in Tenebrae,” and all that.  

But tonight, I’m going to soak in some other, better words: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.”

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Dylan “Woman-Face” Mulvaney, 2024!

No, I’m not going to discuss the Trump indictment, for several reasons.  First, I’m no law-talking guy.  (“Do you mean ‘lawyer,’ Martin?”  Yeah.) (Obscure Simpson’s reference? Check.)  Second, I’m sick to death of hearing about it.

Third, it’s Palm Sunday, and I’m supposed to be looking forward and getting my mind right for Easter.  Instead, thinking about Alvin Bragg and the shameless Dems’ egregious behavior gets me in a vendetta kind of mood, which is not where I want to be. (Obscure Christopher Walken in “True Romance” reference?  Check.)  

So I’m going to write about a few stories that fall into happier categories for me: crime stories and laughable leftist foolishness.

First up on the crime beat we have the story of Ricky Jimenez, 23, a resident of Houston.  On March 28 he stopped at a food truck where a grandmother was cooking soul food.  Ricky asked about the food, and then stuck a gun in the window and pulled the trigger.

So cue the sad trombon—

No, wait.  Ricky’s gun jammed.  So grandma pulled out her licensed pistol (because: Texas!) and gave Ricky a little of the ol’ ballistic behavioral adjustment herself.  Then, according to the news story, Ricky “attempted to leave the parking lot.”

I’ll bet he did.

He made it around 50 feet before he took the asphalt challenge, still within smelling distance of grandma’s great soul food.  Not that he could smell it.  Because he was dead.

So I guess, cue the happy, New Orleans’ style jazz parade happy trombone!

A sadder story, also from Houston, involved two young thugs who followed a 44-year-old Asian mother after she’d withdrawn cash from a bank.  Zy’Nika Woods drove, and when the victim was out of her car, Joseph Harrell jumped her.  He grabbed her wallet and knocked her down, and then body-slammed her onto the concrete, leaving her paralyzed.

Which raises the obvious question: Does Texas law allow a scumbag thief who paralyzes someone to be sentenced to paralysis?  And if not, how soon can we get that on the books, and can it be applied retroactively to Woods and Harrell?

I think such a law would be a pretty effective deterrent to other would-be thieves out there.  Can you imagine the benefit of televising a judge reading out the sentence?

“Mr. Harrell, you are going to serve 5 years in prison, and pay a $1500 fine.  Oh, and you’ll be taken to a parking lot and repeatedly dropped on the cement until you’re paralyzed.  Bailiff?  Let’s get to paralyzin’!”

Utah has an even better idea.  After having to postpone a death row inmate’s execution several times because they’ve had a hard time getting lethal injection drugs, Utah’s governor just signed a bill to go “old school,” in the best possible way:

They’re bringing back firing squads!

If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a long draw of bourbon, and write an improvised, ideal Utah execution screenplay scene:

INT.  We open on an execution chamber, with a condemned serial rapist strapped to a wooden chair, with 5 riflemen standing and facing him, and a warden standing to one side, beside a telephone on the wall.

Warden:  “Okay, the warrant being read, we’ll proceed with the execution.  I’m going to count down from 5—”

Rapist: “Don’t I get a blindfold?”

Warden: “Do you want one?”

Rapist: “Yes.”

As the warden steps up to tie a blindfold around the condemned man’s eyes, the fourth rifleman in line, whose name is Brian, says, “Wussy.”

Rapist: “What?”

Brian: “You heard me.”  (As soon as the blindfold is in place, Brian raises a middle finger.)  “How many fingers am I holding up, wuss?”

Warden: “Knock it off, Brian.”

Brian (muttering): “Big strong rapist needs a blindfold.”

Warden: “Okay, I’m going to count—”

Rapist: “Are you sure the phone is working?  The governor might call.”

Warden: “Yes, we checked the phone an hour ago.  Now then, I’m going to count down from—”

The phone rings.  The rapist sits up straight and gasps, then laughs.  The warden picks up the phone, and listens for a few seconds.  Then he turns to the riflemen.  “Did somebody order a pizza?”

The rapist groans, and four of the riflemen turn toward Brian.

Brian (raising a hand): “Guilty.  Listen, tell the guard at the gate to pay for it, and I’ll get him back.  I got enough for everybody.  Well…not EVERYBODY.  Wuss!”

Rapist: “You son of a—”

Brian: “Stop whining.  Tell you what: you can have my piece, if we all miss.”

Warden: “All right, all right.  Now I’m going to count down from 5.  Riflemen, take your aim…”

All five riflemen raise their weapons.

Warden:  “Five…”

POW!

Warden: “Brian!”

Brian: “You said ‘Five’.”

1^st Rifleman: “He’s counting DOWN from 5!”

2^nd Rifleman (looking at the rapist): “You’re a terrible shot!  You’re supposed to aim for the heart, and you hit him in the groin.”

Brian: “Oops.”

Rapist (in great pain): “C’mon, let’s go!”

POW!

3^rd Rifleman: “Brian!”

Brian: “He said ‘let’s go.”

Warden: “He’s not in charge here, I am!”

Brian: “Got it.  Sorry.”

5^th Rifleman: “And you shot him in the groin again.”

Brian: “He rushed me.  I barely had time to aim.  Let’s not get all bogged down in who shot who early.”

Rapist (in greater pain): “YOU DID!”

Brian: “Agree to disagree.  Come on guys, pizza’s getting cold.”

Warden: “Okay, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”  

POWPOWPOWPOWPOW!!

The rapist slumps forward, and all 5 riflemen lower their weapons.

2^nd Rifleman (looking at Brian): “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.” (to the Warden) “Wasn’t Gary supposed to be up tonight?”

Brian: “I paid him $100 to let me take his place.”

Warden: “What?!”

Brian (nodding toward the dead guy): “My little sister was his third victim.”

The other riflemen look at each other.

Warden (clapping Brian on the shoulder): “Pizza’s on me!”

And, scene. 

On to two stories of lefty foolishness, on one of the topics about which the lefties are most predictably foolish: transgender stuff.

The first story comes from JFK airport, where a trans “woman” – i.e. a guy – complained about an aggressive frisking at the hands of a TSA agent. 

And because it’s 2023, this is an actual sentence in an actual news story: the “…woman was left in tears after she claimed a TSA agent punched her in the testicles.” 

Now in some of these stories, the “trans woman” is pretty obvious.  As in, when you’re about 50 yards away you think, “Hey, since when does Mike Ditka wear a frilly blouse and… Oh good lord!” 

But in the pics that accompany this story the mix-up isn’t so obvious.  So I imagine that the TSA agent was moving her hand into what she expected to be empty space, when… surprise!

As someone who was “assigned male at birth” as they say, and who also played a lot of contact sports with a lot of juvenile males, I am well acquainted with the temporarily debilitating sensation of the proverbial “sack tap.”

And I really do feel sorry for this person.  As I said in my column on Friday, it has to be terribly painful to live in such denial of reality. 

But this could end up being a healthy therapeutic experience for “her.”  Because there’s nothing like a good, hard whack on the juevos to serve as a wake-up call!

After the airport search, this poor guy ended up retreating to a women’s restroom and texting “her” story on social media, blaming the insensitive TSA agent and ending with the question, “Anyone know what I can do?”

Would it be rude to say, “Man up?”

If you’re wondering where this poor soul came up with her delusion, look no farther than NPR. 

In a March 26^th story, the brain trust drawn from the elite of our J-schools, and spanning the political spectrum from far left to ultra far left, reacted with predictable outrage to the news that the World Athletics Council is barring “transwomen” (i.e. dudes) from elite female athletic competitions.

In their truthy and unbiased opinion, the elite “journalists” said that the WAC took action, “citing a priority for fairness over inclusion, despite limited scientific research” supporting the idea that males have a “physical advantage” over females in competitive sports.

How can one respond to that? 

In many ways, I guess.  Most of which should start with the venerable Sam Kinison filter™:

“LIMITED SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?! NO PHYSICAL ADVANTAGE?!!  HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A SPORT?!  OH! OHHHH!!!!”  [end Kinison filter™]

Honestly.  NPR’s researchers could look at a few record books, where they would find that the elite male vs. elite female athletic performance gaps are huge.  A study out of Duke pegged the average difference at between 10-12%.  

For an idea of how that works out in the real world, researchers took the lifetime best speed of two female Olympic runners in the 100 and 400 meters respectively, and then totaled the number of men and boys (under 18) who beat the record-holding females’ times in the year 2017.  

In just that one year, 15,000 men and boys ran faster times – in each event – than each female record-holder’s lifetime best. 

Or, NPR “journalists” could have spent a half hour watching NBA and WNBA games, or men’s and women’s pro tennis matches, or golf matches, or weightlifting, or swimming, etc.

None of that is to put down female athletes, obviously.  But no one should be able to make the argument with a straight face that “male” and “female” are just malleable, easily transitioned social constructs.

Seriously NPR, do you WANT to get tragically confused males being whacked in the balls in our nation’s airports?

Because THIS is how you get tragically confused males being whacked in the balls in our nation’s airports!

Let me end on a more positive note:

As your humble Roving Correspondent, I want you to know that I am completely on board with the LGBTQ agenda!

If by “LGBTQ” you mean, “Let’s Get Biden To Quit!”                  

Have a good week, everybody!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Ricky “Food Truck Bandit” Jimenez, 2024!

Writing a column partially about the Nashville school shooting is going to be a bit like tightrope walking for me.  Partly because most people feel like we’ve heard enough about that story, but mostly because of how sad it is.  

My natural tendency is to mock and crack wise, and even though many of the political reactions to this story deserve mockery, and I do have some serious thoughts about transgenderism and how I think we should view it, I’d understand if many people aren’t in the mood for a discussion of this topic. 

If that’s you, you might want to skip this one.

For the rest of you, I’ll start with the obvious: the tragic, violent deaths of those at the school are heartbreaking, somehow even moreso because three of the victims were children.  Especially for those of us who don’t know those involved, offering thoughts and prayers really is the appropriate thing to do, even as hollow as that feels, and as often as that idea is mocked.  

But I do feel some dark schadenfreude from watching the self-owning, hypocritical leftist media tie themselves into knots as they have been trying to force the round peg of this story into the square a-hole of their ideology.

Sorry, that should have been “square hole.” 

Or should it?

Anyway, they are juggling so many internally contradictory ideas that they can’t help but beclown themselves in multiple ways.

For example, in their usual script, the gun itself is evil, and responsible for all gun deaths. 

UNLESS the gun is wielded by a right-winger, or a straight white guy of indeterminate politics, in which case the gun is incidental, and the gunman is evil, and responsible for all gun deaths.  (In this case, obviously, the gun is at fault.)

Also, all guns are assault weapons!  Even if they’re pistols, or tiny little derringers from an Old West poker game, or flintlock muskets that take 22 minutes to reload. 

But you put two AR-15s in the hands of a transgender shooting Christians at a Christian school, and leftist craniums are exploding and bouncing off ceilings from sea to shining sea.  (If by “sea to shining sea” you mean from each coast to about 10 miles inland, and then skipping over all the icky flyover states in between.)

You know that there is a certain kind of malevolent leftist – hopefully not a huge percentage of the left! – who can’t think of a more satisfying daydream than a transgender Rambo shooting up a bunch of people in a red-state Christian school.  

And yet they have to do their best to suppress the shooter’s “manifesto,” out of fear that it will likely express exactly that sort of Christophobic poison that they have been pushing for years.  

The poor MSM reporters stuttered and stammered as they tried to report at least some facts while also avoiding the obvious truth that is the transgender elephant in the non-binary room. 

Initial coverage made a big deal about how rare it was for a female to be a mass shooter like this.  Which is true.  Except that it can’t be true, because this shooter was “male,” like all the bad patriarchal shooters always are.  Because of their toxic masculinity. 

Which obviously arises from the ovaries “trans men” are born with, and is not the least bit affected by the functioning testicles that they absolutely never have, even if they do get genital mutilation/emulation surgery, in the worst metaphorical game of hide the pea under the shell ever known to mankind.

I mean, “personkind.”

And no, I’m not going to explain what is the metaphorical pea and which is the metaphorical shell in that horrific game.   Because I don’t know, and you don’t know, and Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t know.  Even though he’s been doing his best to hide the pea for quite some time now.

Or was it the shell?

Nevermind.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah.  My favorite med-idiot (I’m trying to create a neologism from “media” and “idiot,” but I know that it’s not there yet.  Maybe “meediot?” or “media-idiot?”  I’ll keep working on it.) was “science” writer Benjamin Ryan, who stumbled through a pronoun minefield.

First he said that the shooter was killed “after she gunned down” her victims.  Later, he called the shooter “he.”  Finally, he solemnly intoned about how the shooter had been “assigned female at birth.” 

That phrase is a ridiculous, moronic linguistic malformation; it easily belongs in my top 5 leftist-language pet peeves.  It both gets my goat AND gets my dander up, until I’m left to just sputter in anger, as I watch a dander-covered goat gamboling about, just out of my reach.

Nobody is “assigned” anything at birth!  The phrase suggests a doctor walking through a nursery full of newborns, trailed by a nurse who is writing down every infant’s assignment as the doc taps each crib and says, “Eenie, meenie, miney, Boy.  Eenie, meenie, miney, Girl.”

Or possibly, “Duck, duck, Vagina.”  Or “Black sheep, black sheep, have you any Penis?”  Or however such phantom “assignments” would be given out.

These people are idiots, and I feel like they’re shaving several IQ points off of me just in the process of writing this column.  (Re-read the last 250 words or so.  Do they not indicate someone who is slowly losing his faculties?  The whole family is worried about me, and Cassie the Wonder Dog is staring at me with her gorgeous dog head cocked at an extreme angle.) 

Again: none of this is about the shooting.  It’s about the way the ghoulish, bad-faith left is trying to make political hay out of it, which we should always push back on.  Yes, that gets us talking politics in the wake of a tragedy, which we’d all rather not do.

But we don’t have that luxury, because that’s not the way politics and culture work: if the other side is constantly aggressing, and we either passively cede ground — or worse, try to fight by one-hand-tied-behind-our-back, Marquess of Queensberry  rules – the aggressors are going to win. 

In this specific debate, we need to go back to the most basic fact from which all other arguments, responses and policies flow: authentic transgenderism is a mental disorder. 

I say that out of compassion for everyone it affects.  I’ve known people with various mental issues.  My mom has Alzheimer’s, as did her mother, and I struggled with a natural depression during the five months when my dad was dying.  I can only imagine how awful it would be to feel alienated from your own body and gender, and I seriously empathize with anyone experiencing that, and wish only the best for them.

But if a condition is wrongly diagnosed, the prescribed treatment is bound to go horribly wrong.   

A hallmark of nearly all mental disorders is that the patient mis-perceives reality.  In various psychoses, the patient thinks voices are talking to her – from the radio, or fillings in her teeth, or from the empty air around her – when there are no voices.  Or the patient thinks he’s Napoleon, or Christ.  (Spoiler alert: he’s not.  There has only ever been one of each.)

In the body dysmorphia subset of mental illnesses, the same holds true.  An anorexic looks at her emaciated frame in a mirror and sees an obese person.  Some rare illnesses have involved people who felt that they are alienated from one body part, that it is somehow not part of them; one such patient mangled his arm to force its amputation; another intentionally blinded himself.

Transgenderism seems logically related to that subset of mental illnesses, and in none of those other cases would we condone doctors or society indulging the sufferer’s delusion.   Many Americans think it’s compassionate to agree and go along with traumatic surgeries and health-threatening drug interventions for those with one body dysmorphia, when they would NEVER agree with an anorexic that she is disgustingly fat.  

There is clearly a strong element of social contagion with transgenderism, as the numbers have been exploding far beyond any biological or naturally occurring phenomena would.  And it coincidentally affects far-left parents in blue states disproportionately; many high-profile parents have “discovered” that several of their kids are trans or non-binary, which is statistically unlikely, to say the least!

The one bit of truth in the leftist script is that there have always been people who are gender stereotype non-conforming, as with more masculine or “tom-boy” girls, or more effeminate boys.  Those are so common as to be a familiar fixture in all cultures.  In that sense, if not in the sense that the radical LGBTQ activists claim, gender expression is very commonly on a spectrum, from hyper-masculine to hyper-feminine, and encompassing everything in between.

I think most people in this group would fall into one of three common-sense categories:

1. In many cases, these are characteristics or tendencies that don’t dominate personalities, and can be very well accommodated into lifelong, well-functioning relationships.  You all know couples in which the man is more stereotypically sensitive or “feminine” – eschewing sports, hunting, or activities more often associated with testosterone – and women who are the same in the opposite direction: hard-charging, aggressive, or confrontational in their careers and social relationships, etc.

Even though most women don’t go into traditionally male-dominated fields (engineering, construction, the military), some do.  Even though most men don’t go into traditionally female-dominated fields (elementary school teacher, caregiver, housekeeping), some do.  Even though most husbands don’t take a long paternity leave, and most mothers don’t willingly choose to go back to work a day or two after giving birth, some do.  

These aren’t people who should pursue radical means to try to change their gender; they are part of the diverse kaleidoscope of preferences and tendencies that make up varied human nature.

2. In at least as many other cases, some gender-non-conforming behavior in childhood is a transient phase that a young person goes through during the process of coming into one’s self that marks all passages into adulthood.  Every adult with a normally wide circle of acquaintances knows many, many women who went through a tomboy phase, before dating and settling into a satisfying traditional marriage, or becoming “earth-mother” types with many kids.    

3. In many, many other cases, gender-non-conforming kids just turn out to be gay.   

The comparatively tiny number of people who don’t fall into any of those groups and who are actually suffering from gender dysmorphia need therapy and treatment, not affirmation in their illness, and encouragement to pursue surgeries and drug regimens with life-long, severe consequences  

Today we look back with disdain on many fads that were considered to be at the forefront of “science,” endorsed by some of the most influential medical and cultural groups of their time.  

Some of these are tragic and dark – using lobotomies to treat mental illness, or eugenics to “compassionately” improve society – and some were ridiculous, as when phrenologists studied the shape of the skull to diagnose psychological attributes, or astrologers used horoscopes to make life decisions.

The current transgender mania is both ridiculous and darkly tragic, and history is not going to be kind to those pushing it now.    

In the meantime, we should show compassion to the mentally ill, and politically defeat those who – knowingly or not – are fighting for a bad cause, and doing life-changing damage to too many children.  

And thank the cops in Nashville, who bravely confronted a disturbed person, and used their guns to save many lives!

In Friday’s column I wrote about some of the best things in life, followed by some of the worst.  Today I’m starting with things that make sense, and will end with just one example that baffles me.

First up in the “that makes total sense” column: 

An article in the Washington Examiner, “The Collapse of Britain’s Health Service, the crown jewel of socialized Healthcare,” detailed the problems of – prepare yourself for a chain of sarcastic quotation marks — a “free,” “universal,” “healthcare” system.

Those problems include long wait times, excess deaths, and the government’s hiding of damaging data. 

After often waiting for literally hours – the average time Brits wait for an ambulance after having a heart attack is 90 minutes! – patients are commonly evaluated in waiting rooms or hallways.   Government figures show that “tens of thousands of people spend 12 hours or more on hospital gurneys after being admitted to the emergency department.”   

And leaked internal reports indicate that the government has been lying about wait times and excess deaths, because the real numbers are even worse.

So the government took control of something, and promised free and universal access to that thing, and then shortages developed and quality fell like Joey Gaffes mounting a mobile airplane staircase?

Makes sense. 

I refer you to the words of the late, great Milton Friedman (peace be upon him):  “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

In other totally predictable news, arrogantly woke Disney is having some serious financial trouble.

Starting at the end of this week, Disney will apparently make the first round of staff and cost cuts, following by a larger one in late April, which sources are now describing alternatively as “the big one” or a “bloodbath.”  (Both better movie titles than “Avatar: The Way of Water.”) The goal is to cut 7,000 staff and save $5.5 billion.     

Not that long ago, Disney was the California of corporations, holding an unassailable position at the top of the heap. 

Cali had amazing climate, topography, and natural resources, in addition to incredibly rich human resources in the forms of a premier university system, and the cultural and financial world-leaders of Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Around 40 years ago, any sane observer, looking at all that California had going for it, would say, “This state is so blessed in so many ways that even the most delusional and destructive of all political philosophies could not bring it low!”

And the first in a long line of socialist morons said, “Hold my kale smoothie, and watch this.”

And then… yada yada yada… it’s all brain-drain flight, fires, floods, and sidewalks covered in human waste and dirty syringes.

Disney was similarly situated, and has followed the same path. 

Its brand was one of the strongest in the world, buoyed by almost a century of classic animation masterpieces beloved by successive generations of star-struck fans, and theme park destinations where American parents would gladly take their kids to spend the second mortgage they’d taken out on their homes.

Then, as if in a Biblical “pride goeth before the fall” parable, a bunch of leftist locusts began to eat away at a great company.  They decided to start forcing a “not so secret gay agenda” into every movie and cartoon in sight, and were dumb enough to be caught on video bragging about it. 

Leftist political and sexual agendas forced rewrites of cherished stories.  Suddenly the (Danish) Little Mermaid had to be black, and the Lion King had to be a vegetarian, and all of the villains had to be straight white guys.  Snow White (voiced by Ellen Degeneres) was awakened by a (French) kiss by Cinderella (voiced by Dylan Mulvaney).

The Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe still lived in a giant piece of footwear.  But now it was an enormous Birkenstock that had been converted into a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.

“Martin, were there trans storylines?” you are not asking, because you already know.

I’ll put it this way:  Jack and Jill went up the hill… put Jane and Jill came down. And that was NOT water in the pail on that return trip. 

Perhaps I’ve said too much.    

To top it all off, the corporation that had enjoyed a 60-year-long sweetheart tax deal for Disney World  decided to pick a political fight with Ron DeSantis and the parents of Florida.  Brilliant!  

(If that’s not the perfect political example of a “F*** around and find out” story, I don’t know what is!)

Perhaps the best individual story that summarized Disney’s woke idiocy is that of Victoria Alonso, the uber-powerful president of production, VFX and animation at Marvel, which Disney bought for $4 billion in 2009. 

Alonso proudly touted her own status as an openly gay woman of color — although judging from pictures, she’s about as “colorful” as Lizzie Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – and received many MSM journalistic tongue-baths that noted her “fiery passion and outspokenness over diversity and inclusion.”  

You’ll not be surprised to know that she has a memoir coming out next month – at Disney book label Hyperion Avenue, naturally – about her corporate rise, with the clunky, non-sensical title “Possibility is Your Superpower.” 

As a one-time voracious reader of comic books, I cannot imagine a less enticing superpower than “possibility.”  I mean, if an armored suit, X-ray vision, the power of flight, and using webs to swing around NYC were all off the table, I STILL wouldn’t pick “possibility.” 

In fact, I’d quickly choose either “parallel parking on the first try” or “being able to come up with annoying running jokes in political columns” over “possibility” any day of the week!

Anyway, Alonso’s story ends in a hilariously satisfying way, and one that is likely to depress the sales of her idiotic autobiography.

She went to the unwatched Academy Awards ceremony a couple of weeks ago, and when she noticed that the two photographers on the red carpet were both female, she made a big, politically correct deal of it.  She insisted that the women put down their cameras and take a pic with her, gushing, “Look at this!  Two women!  We’ve worked so hard to get here and we’re not going anywhere.”

aaannnnnddd…

Eight days later she was fired.

To which there are only three acceptable responses:

1. Cue the sad trombone.

2. HA!  HAHA!!  HAHAHA!!!

3. That makes perfect sense.

Here’s a story that doesn’t appear to make sense, but only at first glance.

It’s the story of Tiffany Thomas, who won a professional women’s cycling race last week in NYC.   Although her teammates on the elite LA Sweat cycling team range in age from 24 – 32, Thomas is 46!    Several news reports stated that, “Tiffany only started cycling [at 40], yet she was immediately successful and has since dominated events.”

So is Thomas just one of those athletic anomalies who defies the normal strictures of aging to remain competitive long after most have retired?  Is she like Tom Brady?

Well, sort of.

Because like Brady, Tiffany Thomas is [cue Austin Powers voice] “a man, baby!”

And now it all makes sense.

Obviously, the headline, “Old, Inexperienced Woman Cyclist Dominates Elite Young Women Cyclists in Race,” is counter intuitive. 

But “Older Dude Kicks Female Butt in Women’s Cycling Race?”  Well that just rings true, doesn’t it?

Insulting. Aggravating. Obnoxious. 

But true. 

(Fun fact, proving that irony is dead:  When Thomas isn’t using the power of testosterone to crush his smaller, more estrogenical competitors, guess what his day job is.  That’s right: BIOLOGIST!  You can’t make this stuff up.)

So I guess there’s really only one thing that doesn’t make sense to me right now, and it is this: 

I’ve watched all of the Lord of the Rings movies, and found all of the hobbits in them to be quite charming. 

And yet I don’t care for Janet Yellen at all. 

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Victoria “Looking for Work” Alonso, 2024!

Boy, is our world a dizzying mix of the amazingly good and the hideously bad!  

I usually take a few daily notes on things I’m thinking of writing about, but this week my notes were all over the map. 

I noticed a ton of things that are really, seriously great, as I went down internet rabbit holes on several different topics.

As I was re-listening to some great country/folk songs from Billy Strings and Colter Wall, I came across a handful of new-to-me singer/songwriters, including Tyler Childers and Benjamin Tod. They’re both blue-collar, no-frills singers – acoustic guitar, raspy voices, dead-on lyrics – from the parts of Kentucky that my dad’s family comes from, and I haven’t heard a bad song from either of them yet, though they’ve got a lot of sad ones.

I somehow went down another path leading me to dozens of videos about dogs.  Some featured K-9s putting the fear of God in some bad guys, or going through a retirement ceremony after years of faithful service, or – heartbreakingly – being given a sorrowful send off by a police department and citizens as they are escorted into a building to be put down, due to illness or injury. 

Some featured military dogs, which are like the K-9 ones, only even cooler.  Many focused on everyday pets – sometimes helping out owners with disabilities, sometimes going nuts greeting owners after they return from being away, sometimes merely acting goofy.

Just as I was reconfirming my belief that in general, humans don’t deserve dogs, I came across a series of people finding injured or sick strays, then nursing them back to health and finding families for them.  And if I weren’t as tough as a two-dollar steak, those would have made me cry. 

I also found some addictive videos showing grandparents and family members meeting newborns for the first time.  In several of them, a proud grandpa falls to pieces when he discovers that a grandson has been named after him. 

(Note to my married daughter, who should probably start having some babies soon: You can’t go wrong with “Martin” as a classic and timeless name for a grandson.)

I even found a bunch of videos about a guy named Devon Rodriguez, a talented artist who rides the subway in NYC, capturing other riders in super-realistic pencil drawings. 

I know, I was thinking the same thing: “…and then the stabbings began.” 

But no, he creates the drawings, and then surprises the subjects with them, giving them their portrait and complimenting something about them.

From there I somehow got to a bunch of videos showing kids or adults who were fitted with cochlear implants and were able to hear for the first time.  And then to videos showing color-blind people putting on special glasses that allow them to see color for the first time. 

Watching all of these inspiring and heartwarming videos reminded me of the best of people (and dogs).  Musicians who hone their talent and write raw and honest music, families celebrating new life, an artist seeing the beauty in strangers.  Inventors who help the nearly blind to see and the deaf to hear.

It brought to mind one of my favorite passages on the topic of human potential from Shakespeare:  “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!”

(Of course Hamlet is depressed when he speaks those words, and the following lines undercut that imagery.  But he had it right, all the same.) 

But then I watch some current events and political news, and my faith’s teaching on human nature was reinforced: created in God’s image… but fallen and depraved and ridiculous. 

Our political class, especially, is the worst.  

Everything in our country is going off the rails like a train full of toxic chemicals with Mayor Pete in the conductor’s chair, sitting on a huge phone book so that he can see out the window, and wearing an old-timey conductor hat and brand-new work boots that are even now creating blisters on his delicate little never-been-in-work-boots-in-their-lives feet.

Our numbskull-rich Congress held hearings in their eternal, logic-free attempts to ban all guns so that only criminals will be armed, and Sheila Jackson Lee ranted about how pistol-stabilizer braces turn firearms “into killing machines!”

For one brief moment I thought about a handgun turning into a robot Terminator the way Transformers turn into robots in toy commercials.

But then I remembered that Sheila Jackson Lee is a moron.

Since I’d never heard of a stabilizer brace, I did 30 seconds of research.  And found out that they don’t turn pistols into machine guns, or phasers, or sentient cyborgs of death.

They strap to your arm and help you aim your pistol.  Which remains a pistol, the whole time. 

And don’t tell Jackson Lee, but pistols are basically “killing machines” already, just like cars are killing machines, and banana peels are killing machines, and Simpson Slinger™ trebuchets are killing machines, in that they can all be used to make someone dead.

Ugh.  Jackson Lee also graced the hearing with a little history lesson, stating that the ATF has been “keeping us safe” since “as far back as 1886.”

Petty sticklers for detail might point out that the ATF was established in 2003, which was, technically, a lot LESS far back than 1886.   But they’re probably the same kind of dopes who think that a pistol-stabilizer brace stabilizes your pistol for you.  So what do they know?

But of course it’s not fair to just criticize political underlings – spokespeople who can’t speak intelligibly, flatulent congressmen who are too busy banging an Asian cutie to realize that she’s a Chicom spy, crotchety white ladies who think they’re Sitting Bull’s 4^th grand-niece, twice removed (#wemustneverstopmockingher) —  without criticizing the Big Guy at the top.

And yes, it was quite a week for Joey Gaffes, who was inexplicably let out to speak at several PR events, and incomprehensibility ensued.

He tried to say a few words at a Women’s History event, and how hard can that be?  (“Women are better than men!  Yay women!  Goodnight folks!”)

Apparently pretty hard, judging from this quote, which I am not making up: “This is a time for celebrating extraordinary women… like Jill, the First Lady, the first full-time lady, the First Lady who works full-time in addition to being the First Lady.”

Okay.  Moving on…

…to his attempt to point out how the Violence Against Women Act – which he called “the Violence zmm mm zuh Act” – has been a great boon to women of many colors (“Did he mention white women?” you are not asking, because you already know the answer.), before ending the list with “LGBTQ survivors.” 

Um. Well, considering the gross incompetence of KJP, “Admiral” “Rachel” Levine, and Mayor Pete, aren’t we all really “LGBTQ survivors” after the last two years, if you think about it?

Biden also made an impassioned promise to “keep guns out of the hands of domestic political advisors,” before some minion at the WH changed the transcript to what he had been supposed to say, which was “convicted domestic abusers.”

(Although, judging from the quality of Biden’s domestic political advisors, who’s to say which would be worse?)

But that wasn’t all.  On St. Patrick’s Day Biden claimed that the Irish are mostly low IQ, drunken jailbirds (I’m not making that up), before he headed over to a celebration of the Persian new year. 

And we all braced ourselves. 

I don’t know about you, but on my “Joe Biden Talks to Some Persians” Bingo card, I scored with, “Claims that his paternal grandpa was Persian,” “Claims to have marched against the Shah in Tehran in 1979,” “Remembers that when he was a young man, after going to the local synagogue and before going to the local black Baptist church, he’d pop into the Persian mosque everyday after school,” and “In middle school he sat at the feet of the Scranton Imam and learned to weave Persian rugs.” 

Sadly for me, I didn’t have “Claims to be a student, but not a practitioner, of Persian culture,” so I didn’t get my Bingo.  (That was really a thing he said.)   

And that was not counting his mangled attempt to read about 6 lines of poetry, multiple times.

But I love the written word too much – and there’s not enough bourbon in my house – to recount that atrocity here. 

To summarize today’s column:

First half – “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”

Second half – “Jesus wept.”

“Dr.” Jill Biden/ Sheila “Killing Machine” Jackson Lee, 2024!

Today’s theme – as it is so tragically often – is Cavalcade of Stupid. 

But before I get to that, I need to mention two important anniversaries that happened this past week. 

Saturday was the 34^th anniversary of the greatest feat of a groom metaphorically outkicking his coverage and landing an out-of-his league bride in the history of nuptial achievement.  On March 18^th, 1989, Norwegian-American goddess Karen Ludwigsen became my wife. 

Thus giving hope to average-looking, average-earning hilarious geniuses everywhere.  You’re welcome.

Did I tell the same groan-worthy running joke that I’ve been using every anniversary for years?  Damn straight.

To wit: “Today we celebrate 25 happy years together.  And we’ve only been married for 34, so that’s pretty good.”  Boom!

Less happily, last Wednesday was March 15^th, the infamous Ides of March.  And it marked another anniversary, one which went about as well for our country as the previous Ides of March went for Caesar. 

Because on 3/15/20, President Trump was misled into announcing, “15 Days to Slow the Spread” of covid.  Three years later, Fauci is still pushing the merits of masks, boosters, and preventative lockdowns.  Which is a good transition to the Cavalcade of Stupid.

First up we have Stupid Cities, specifically Chicago and Portland (the bad one in Oregon, not the good one in Maine). 

It seems that WalMarts are leaving both towns, and for similar reasons: badly run and hostile political environments, and rampant crime.  Regardless of your feelings about WalMart – and there are plenty of pros and cons – it’s a red flag when stores that serve your middle- and lower-income citizens flee, and that’s exactly what’s happening.

In February and March, 3 Chicago-area Wal-Marts closed, citing “underperformance.”  In Portland, the last two Wal-Marts in town will shut down this month.  In a PR statement, WalMart cited generic issues of financial performance, customer needs, location, and blah blah blah.

But other people got to the real causes.  Journalist (and national treasure) Andy Ngo noted that “WalMart has long been harshly criticized by the city’s left-wing politicians & residents, but this shutdown follows the consequences of the 2020 BLM-Antifa riots that normalized urban criminality.” 

One customer complained that nearby options were “three times the price,” and stated the obvious: “We gotta resolve the shoplifting one way or another, because that is simply the problem. It’s gotta stop.”

 The moral to the story, as always, is that you get what you vote for, and what you tolerate.  And, unfortunately for them, the citizens of Chicago and Portland are getting both, good and hard.

On the “Thank God Most Criminals Are Idiots” front, I have two stories.

The first one happened in Chicago in January, but I just now came across it.  The appropriately named 19-year-old Thomas Battle (he fought the law, and the law won), was already on parole for carjacking and robbery.  But that didn’t stop him from either driving or riding in another stolen car, which crashed. 

(Criminals: not good at crime.  Also not good at driving.)

Battle and the others involved ran from the cops on foot, and he ultimately chose a dumpster for his hiding place.  Luckily for him, even though Chicago is a Dem-run dumpster-fire of a city, the dumpster he jumped into was not on fire at the time.

Unluckily for him, the dumpster was behind a building full of Chicago police dispatchers, who promptly called the cops with whom they are in constant contact and said, “The moron you’re looking for is right here, in a dumpster.”

Unbelievably enough, Battle was illegally carrying a pistol.  Which should have been impossible, since Chicago is practically a gun-free zone, where carrying illegal pistols illegally is illegal. 

Why, it’s almost like depending on a raft of gun-control laws that no criminal ever follows is not a bright idea!

The second story is a tale not just of a specific crime, but of an entire crime wave.  It involves the recently invented crime of stealing catalytic converters from underneath cars. 

The incentive is to get at the precious metals – platinum, palladium, and rhodium – in the converters.  (I’ve heard of platinum.  But I think “palladium” is a place where I saw Tom Petty in 1989, and I’m pretty sure that “rhodium” is the made-up thing the bad military guys were looking for in Avatar.)  The National Insurance Crime Bureau reports that the theft of this one part has increased by over 1000% between 2018-2022.

(To provide a useful comparison, that is nearly as much as grocery costs have increased since the plague of the Biden administration befell our country.)

But every dark cloud has a silver lining.  In this case, the skyrocketing theft rate has been accompanied by a skyrocketing dead thief rate, arising from a lethal combination – in the felon-American community – of a high level of laziness with a low IQ. 

A few of the cases have happened when car owners returned to their vehicle and unknowingly ran over a Biden voter who was beneath their car trying to rob them.  I’d like to think that at least a few more were from owners firing warning shots into the thoraxes of thieves whom they caught in the act. 

(In which case the thieves came for a few troy ounces of rhodium, but left with a few troy ounces of lead. In their chest cavities.)

But the vast majority of the time, the cause of death is that the vehicle falls on the hapless thief, resulting in a fatal case of SOOCS.  (Sudden-Onset Organ Compression Syndrome. Duh!)

(Criminals: bad at life choices. Also bad at jack deployment.)

Sometimes these dullard-squishings happen in driveways or on the street, and sometimes they occur at car dealerships or mechanics’ shops. 

Unfortunately, many people, when faced with a choice between 1. finding a job and putting in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, or 2. grabbing a wobbly jack and risking contracting a nasty case of SOOCS under some taxpayer’s car, make a wrong and fatal decision.

So let’s all have a respectful moment of silence…

…for the hundreds of innocent catalytic converters that have been dented or otherwise damaged from falling on the thick skulls of many low-down dirty thieves.

From the, “These Open Borders are Working out Great!” files comes the story of two Hondurans who illegally came into our country (Thanks, Brandon!) and made their way up to Nebraska, where they killed a bald eagle.  They planned to cook and eat the bird, and sell its talons and other parts “as ornaments.” 

If you were making this up for a screenplay or a short story, no editor would accept it. “Who is going to believe such a thing?” he would say, if he’s been in a coma or under a magic spell for several years, and just woke up last Friday. 

But it’s true.  Two Hondurans showed such disdain for our country and our laws that they illegally crossed our border – amidst literally millions of others – and then made a beeline for Nebraska, where they killed our national symbol.   

Rumors that their next plans were to steal an American flag to use as toilet paper, wrap packets of deadly fentanyl in torn-up copies of our constitution and sell them to kindergartners, and then hitchhike to Philly and pee on the Liberty Bell have not yet been confirmed.

I have two modest proposals.  First, we build a series of gigantic trebuchets in south Texas, and fire these two Hondurans back across the Rio Grande as our first test of what I hope will be called, “the Simpson Slinger™.”

Second, since the illegal community apparently has created a market for black market bald eagle parts, I move that we pass a law requiring that any illegal alien caught wearing eagle-beak earrings, or hanging bedazzled eagle talons from the rear-view mirrors of their non-registered and uninsured cars be immediately deported.  (Preferably via the aforementioned Simpson Slinger™.)

Or at least be given $10 and a defective jack and told to crawl under the closest heavy SUV and don’t come back without a catalytic converter.    

Finally, I did another appearance on the “Mitch Wonders” podcast, this time discussing the pros and cons of the rapid advancement of technology, and especially the internet, in recent years.  If you’re interested, the segment is called, “The Gutenberg Parenthesis,” and you can listen to it at   https://www.buzzsprout.com/2041434

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Thomas “Dumpster Boy” Battle, 2024!

Figuring out the bank closures this week is above my pay grade.  Fortunately, we’ve got financial big brains here like CO and the Silber Surfer to explain the details, and I’d recommend that all CO nation follows their analysis on this topic.

For me, just hearing that the Silicon Valley Bank managed to find $73 million to donate to various BLM- and social justice-related causes is a red flag that they were bound to fail.  Ditto the news that Barney Frank was on the board of Signature Bank, which also went down last week.

Speaking of going down, remember that time when Barney Frank’s live-in gay hooker boyfriend ran a gay prostitution service out of Barney’s DC apartment?  I’m not making that up.  That is a thing that really happened. 

When the news got out, Barney insisted that he had no idea what had been going on.  But I don’t know which is worse: enabling your hooker boyfriend to run a gay brothel in your apartment, or being so clueless that your hooker boyfriend can do that while you remain clueless.

But either way, let’s definitely put a guy with that kind of judgment in charge of a bank!  What could possibly go wrong? 

My favorite part of the bank scandal story came from hacky Jen Psaki, whom I once thought had secured the title of the worst presidential spokesperson ever.  Until along came KJP, whose mindless word-for-word readings of stale and disingenuous talking points have vacillated between infuriating and soporific.

But she loves the girls as much as Barney Frank loves the boys, so your criticisms are invalid.

Anyway, after a jittery weekend, Biden’s handlers re-animated him with a huge jolt of electricity — if you’ve seen the classic movie Frankenstein, it was just like that, except that instead of a lightning strike, they used a diesel generator, and instead of taking place in a Gothic castle, it happened in the White House basement – and he staggered out to make a brief statement in front of the cameras on Monday morning.

The gist of it: Nothing to see here folks.  That’s no joke.  Our banking system is as solid as my economic agenda and our immigration system.  

He closed with a flourish: “Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe.” 

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that it would be easier to rest assured if Biden would just rest in peace, instead of being jolted back to life to come out and scare the children (along with the men, the women, and the markets) every time a chicken comes home to roost in the Rose Garden from one of his earlier terrible decisions.  

Once Biden was safely back in his crypt, the Ginger Prevaricator appeared on an MSNBC panel, to reassure their high-school-gymnasium-sized audience that the Biden White House is obviously on the case.  But the evidence she cited had to be the least reassuring message since Biden told the residents of East Palestine, OH that Mayor Pete was taking the reins on that train derailment situation.

Psaith Psaki: “What [Biden] needs to project to the public is, ‘We’ve got this, we have a plan….’ It’s important to know that President Biden does nothing at 9:00 a.m., he is a night owl.   The fact he is doing this at 9 a.m. anyway speaks to how vital the White House recognizes this is to have his voice out there, conveying it to the American public.”

I guess we’re just supposed to forget that for the last several years it was widely reported – if anything on CNN can be considered “widely reported” – that Joe Biden has an “early-to-bed” schedule. 

And really, isn’t that idea a lot easier to believe than a diligent Joe Biden burning the midnight oil?  If that codger isn’t tucked in for the night no later than 10 minutes after Matlock is over, I’ll eat my pointy purple magician’s hat.

Good lord, how much has our leadership bar been lowered?!  In the past, presidents would show that they were fully engaged in a crisis by demanding an emergency meeting with the Joint Chiefs, or calling their cabinet together on short notice, or sending a carrier group into the Persian Gulf.

But Joe Biden got out of bed to squint at – and mumble his way through – some boilerplate text in giant print on the teleprompter by the time most working people had already been on the job for an hour!  Hoorah!   

Psaki should be ashamed of herself for even psaying those words.  If Peter Doocy is reading this, I’m begging him to ask this question to KJP at the next WH presser:  “If the President’s getting up by 9:00 a.m. is supposed to be an indicator of how seriously he takes this crisis, can you give us a list of other wake-up times that would indicate the seriousness of other potential crises the WH may face in the future?”

My guesses:

Putin uses a tactical nuke against Ukraine?  Joe rolls out of bed by 7:00.

A Girl Scout troop with freshly washed, highly sniffable hair arrives for a photo op?  7:05

A single border agent on horseback in Del Rio uses his reins to speed up his horse?  7:15

Another video surfaces of Hunter snorting coke off of a hooker’s behind?  8:15.

Corn Pop shows up on the WH lawn with brass knuckles?  11:30.

A million MS-13 thugs breach our southern border, gas hits $9 a gallon, our national debt hits $38 trillion, and a Chinese spy balloon crashes into a train carrying deadly chemicals, setting off an explosion that kills every citizen in a Midwestern red state?

Joe hits the snooze button.

On a lighter note, I’m always on the lookout for funny stories, even if the political ones are sometimes tinged with tragedy, because they involve our leaders and how bone-deep stupid they can be.  But the harmless stories are even more enjoyable.

An example of such a recent one is a 2022 incident involving Whoopi Goldberg.  When she’s not being flatulent and oblivious on the unwatchable The View, she still occasionally acts in movies.  After a recent performance, one reviewer questioned why she had worn such a distracting fat suit in the film.

And then Whoopi had to come out and admit that… wait for it… she hadn’t been wearing a fat suit.

Ouch!  (Also, HA!) It’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for her.  I mean, if she weren’t constantly spewing misinformed hatred and slander at all even quasi-conservative Americans.

So in the spirit of punching up rather than down – since Whoopi is rich and famous and I’m just an obscure hilarious genius – here is an appropriate joke at her expense:

I never fat-shame people, because you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  On the other hand, if a book is really, really thick, no one is ever going to read it.     

(By the way, if Whoopi’s future biographer chooses “Flatulent and Oblivious: the Whoopi Goldberg Story” as a title, I expect royalties.  Because that is the perfect title, and I hereby copyright it, right now.)  

What prompted this is another very funny story you may have heard about: last week, Newark, New Jersey had a televised ceremony in which they became a sister city to the Hindu nation of Kailasa.

The ceremony featured the usual accoutrements of such an occasion: a joint signing at City Hall of a cultural trade agreement, along with an exchange of trophy-like gifts and a series of hand-shake photos.  

Usually, the worst criticism of such a harmless event is that it is a time waster.  As you may know, Newark is a Democrat-run city, which unfortunately (but necessarily) means that it is badly run. 

Therefore, it would probably be a better use of city employees’ time and resources to tackle the usual serious problems: potholes unfilled, criminals un-caught and un-jailed, taxes higher than a Biden-era grocery bill, city officials running gay brothels out of their homes. 

You know, the usual.

But if Newarkians want to take a little escapist break from the misery of the grifters and incompetents they’ve voted to saddle themselves with, what is the harm in extending the hand of friendship to the Kailasans?

Only one thing: Kailasa doesn’t exist. 

It’s a made-up Hindu nation, the invention of a notorious scam artist named Swami Nithyananda.  And because the city officials went to Dem-run public schools, and don’t have access to either maps or Google – not to mention Google Maps – they fell for it.

Of course, not that long ago Newark elected Cory “Spartacus” Booker as its mayor.  So this is hardly the most laughable fraud they’ve been duped by.

Their first clue should have been that sister city programs traditionally involve two cities – as the name “sister cities” implies – rather one city and one nation.

Their second clue?  That a nation anywhere on earth would want to be voluntarily associated with Newark, NJ. 

This situation gives me a great idea, though.  I say we reach out to Swami’s people, and get them to approach Biden and Que Mala, and propose an executive branch exchange with Kailasa.  They get our current leadership, and we get whoever they can round up to pose as their leaders.  

(To paraphrase the late, great William F. Buckley, “I’d rather be governed by the first 300 people in the Kailasa phone book than by the entire Biden administration.”)

We could even throw a few senators into the deal.  I know at least one who would jump at the chance to claim that she is an India Indian, since the American Indian thing didn’t pan out.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Have a great weekend, everybody!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/ Grandma Squanto Nithyananda, 2024!