Martin Simpson

So I watched some excerpts from the Dems’ debate last week, which is all I could take.

Once again the top of the bill was frontrunner Joe Biden.  (And boy, does that description tell you a lot about the strength of this field!)

His debate performance was uneven.  To his credit, he looked less crazy than most of the people surrounding him on stage.   (But then again, Marianne Williamson has managed that, too, so I’m not sure that that’s such a high bar to get over.)  On the other hand, he came dangerously close to having his dentures come out on stage.  Considering that in the last debate his eye filled up with blood, I’m almost afraid to watch his next debate.

Best-case scenario: he pulls out a 19^th century ear trumpet to try to catch what one of those whippersnappers are saying next to him.

Medium-case scenario: He tumbles sideways from behind his podium, then lies on the stage smacking at his medic alert bracelet and muttering, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

Worst-case:  the ear trumpet, the fall, and then incontinence.

Anyway, when I saw that, I started to feel sorry for the old guy.

Until I remembered that just a few years ago, he told a black audience that Milquetoast Mitt Romney and the moderate GOP — the team so spineless that they can’t even take their own side in a fight – were “gonna put y’all back in chains!”   And I didn’t feel sorry for him anymore.

Especially when he came up with his best line.  When someone asked him about how to deal with the achievement gap between black and white children, he jumped in with advice that only a young hipster like himself could dish out: “Play the radio… make sure the television” (here he closed his eyes, trying to correct himself and struggling for the right words), “excuse me… make sure you have the record player on at night… the, the… phone…”

That last collection of words – you grammarians out there may have noticed that it’s not a sentence – is not my hilarious send-up of the former Vice President’s speech.  It is a verbatim transcript of one of his answers.

Let’s do a close reading of it.  First he says to play the radio – the way, for example, my dad used to tell me that his dad and some of his friends used to sit in a semi-circle around a radio, listening to Jack Dempsey lose a heavyweight fight to Luis Firpo.

In 1923.

Then he says, “Make sure the television…” before catching himself, and realizing that maybe the best advice for children who aren’t doing well in school is NOT to watch more tv.

But no problem.  He’s got another cutting-edge example chambered and ready: “…make sure you have the record player on at night.”  Because kids these days love nothing more than spinning the hot new Benny Goodman platter, and doing the Charleston with their best girl all night long.

I probably shouldn’t disclose this.  But I’ve got a super-secret contact in the Biden campaign, and he told me that during Biden’s rehearsals for the debate, his original answer to this question was even worse, and it took his campaign brain trust several hours to talk him into going with the radio and record player answer.

His first pass at that question:  “Kids need to blow off steam, and take a break from the pressure.  Maybe they’ll want to take a metal hoop out into the street, and roll it up and down the block with a stick that they use to steer it.  Or they could climb onto one of those new-fangled bicycles with the giant wheel in front and the tiny wheel in back, and ride it down to the general store and get some penny candy.  If they’re older, they might want to take the horseless carriage downtown to catch a vaudeville act.  And don’t forget your friends who are stuck in an iron lung because of their polio; stop by the sanitarium on your way to catch a Negro League baseball game, and crank up the Victrola and leave it playing right by their head, so that they’ll have some entertainment, too!”

With all of that top-shelf Biden to choose from, live socialist Julian Castro managed to look more hapless than dead socialist Fidel Castro, when he waded in on Biden with an attack about his slipping mental state.  Incredibly, he chose the only time all night when Biden was correctly stating his position.  The other Dems onstage turned on Castro for his classless attack… until their anonymous spokes-weasels reinforced the message after the debate about how Joe really seems to be slipping lately.

Amy “Hillary 2” Klobuchar’s high point was when she correctly pointed out that page 8 of Bernie Sander’s health care bill calls for ending private health insurance as we know it.  Earlier, Bernie had proudly claimed, “I wrote the damn bill,” and Klobuchar responded that, “I read the damn bill.”  In a rare fit of lucidity, Pope Pete then said, “The problem with that damn bill you wrote… is that it doesn’t trust the American people.”

Then he launched into a fiery sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Gaia,” with its warnings about how anyone who disagrees on environmental or tax policy, or for what occasions one should be forced to bake cakes shall surely be cast into a lake of unquenchable fire.  And also have OHSA and the ACLU descend upon them with fuuuuurriious anger.

Kamala Harris managed to remind voters of one of Hillary Clinton’s most disturbing personality quirks: laughing maniacally in a manner psychotically disconnected from anything even remotely humorous being said.   Harris’ perplexing moment came when Biden pointed out that it would be unconstitutional for a president to unilaterally declare that the 2^nd amendment is null and void, and forcibly take away Americans’ guns.

Harris’ response?  “Instead of saying ‘no we can’t,’ let’s say, ‘yes we can!’   AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!”   The only thing missing was “CAW CAW CAW!” at the end.

Skateboarding Doofus gesticulated his way into another cringe-worthy admission, as he responded to a gun-control question with a shouted, “Hell yes, we’re going to take away your AR15!“   The trained seals in the audience cheered, and some of the dopes on stage supported his claim.   But all across America, professional Democrat pollsters and reasonable Democrat voters vigorously face-palmed themselves into unconsciousness, their last thought being, “For 25 years we’ve mocked all GOP claims that we want to come and take Americans’ guns away….”

Grandma Squanto played it safe, staying away from saying anything that she was really thinking.  The closest she came to danger was when a moderator peppered her with questions about whether her Medicare for All socialized healthcare plan would necessarily result in a huge middle-class tax increase.  (Everyone from Inuit children in igloos with no tv reception, to coma patients kept alive only by machines, to single-celled organisms in the depths of the Marianas Trench shouted, “Of course it would!”)

But Big Chief Purses Her Lips in Disapproval (#wemustneverstopmockingher) ducked and dodged and refused to give a straight (no offense) answer, insisting only that middle-class people need not be concerned with taxes, but only with “total cost.”

Which, every sentient being in our solar system knows, will skyrocket if we put geniuses like Sanders and Warren in charge.

 

But enough about yet another cavalcade of Dem hopefuls beclowning themselves on a debate stage.  I want to end by talking about the most fantastic story of 2019, and maybe of this century so far.

I’m referring, of course to the epic tale of “Big Joe Biden vs. the Dread Gang Leader Corn Pop.”

If you’ve not heard this story, you must drop everything and Google it right now.  It’s a story that Biden included in an autobiography over 10 years ago, and that he’s been retelling over the years.  The video version I saw was from some kind of speech that Joey Gaffes was giving to an audience of mostly young black people around a pool where he had apparently worked as a lifeguard, shortly after the earth cooled.

Anyway, Joe is a lifeguard in a pool on the edge of the ghetto, a job he took so that he could get a better understanding of black folks.  (I’m not kidding.)  And gang leader Corn Pop makes the mistake of getting up on the diving board on Big Joe’s watch.  Joe lets us know who he was dealing with:  “Corn Pop was a bad dude.  And he ran a bunch of bad boys.”  (Um, Joe, old white guys aren’t supposed to call adult black males “boy.”)  Joe points dramatically at Corn Pop and says, “Hey, Esther.  Off the board, or I’ll come up and drag you off.”

Because that’s straight out of “Dealing with Gang Bangers 101:  Open with an Insult, preferably by calling him by a Woman’s Name.”  Oddly, Corn Pop did not like that, and said that he’d be waiting for Joe with some of his homies (not a word that Joe chose, but I so wish it was!) with straight razors.  Joe takes a little rhetorical detour to explain the straight razor to his audience of extremely bored black teenagers who are showing zero interest in this old blowhard white guy telling self-aggrandizing fairy tales in their midst.  Quoth Joe, “In those days, remember the straight razors, you’d bang them on the curb, get ‘em rusty, bang ’em on a rain barrel, get ’em rusty.”

Now I’ve seen straight razors in old movies, but no, I don’t “remember” them.  And I can’t understand why banging them on a curb, or on a “rain barrel” – by the way, did you say this story took place in the 1960s or the 1860s? – would make them rusty.  Or why you’d want a rusty blade in the first place, if you intended to use that blade as a weapon.

But never mind.  Joe takes a six foot length of chain to meet Corn Pop, but first he apologizes for calling the guy “Esther,” explaining that he was referring to Esther Williams.

Who was a lady swimmer in a bunch of old movie musicals from the 40s, and therefore super-relevant to young black gang bangers.  Hence such famous rap songs as “I’ve got 99 problems but Esther Williams Ain’t One.”

Luckily for Corn Pop, the hardened, streetwise thug was so touched by Joe’s apology that he closed his straight razor, and he and Joe called a truce, and Joe lived to become an ancient old windbag who wants to be president.
My favorite part of the story is the gangster’s name.  “Corn Pop” is a perfect, right-out-of-central-casting name for a minority gang member… if you’re an old white guy who watched a lot of late 60s and early 70s cop shows, like Mannix and Banacek and Hawaii 5-0.

You just know that if any of his listeners had trolled him by asking, “What were some of the other bad dudes in his gang called, Grandpa Joe?” Biden would have said, “Well, there was his crazy sidekick Frosted Flake.  And his enforcer, Captain Crunch.  His right-hand man was Raisin Bran, and his best girl was Sugar Smacks.”

Ugh.  Trump has given his critics plenty of ammunition by his often juvenile braggadocio – his crowds are tremendous, his wall is going to be the biggest, most beautiful wall ever – but he’s got nothing on Joe Biden.

And it seems like the Democrats are absolutely determined to choose a candidate – either the old white lady in Redface, or Joe the Fantasizing Plagiarist – who makes Trump’s tall tales look like stoic self-effacement by comparison.

Avenatti/Corn Pop 2020!

As I write this, the Democratic debate is going on.  I’ve not watched any of it yet, because life is short, and I value my stable blood pressure and my sunny outlook on life.

But I will watch the “highlights” (and yes, you may take those quotation marks as ironic) later, because I love my country, and one of these knuckleheads may be elected to lead it, and I probably should find out what they said.  But not until after I’ve had some scotch, and some smart people I trust have had a chance to dig through that small mountain or manure to find the closest thing to a pony in there.  I’m looking at you, CO, and other prominent COers, and also Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan and Steven Crowder, and anyone else who is willing to take one for the team, and watch the interminable yammerings of the dementia of Democrats who are vying for leadership of the free world.

In the meantime, I am going to share with you what I’ve learned in the last week.

First, I learned about the meniscus.  Which, contrary to what I believed a week ago, is neither an ancient Greek philosopher and satirist (that was Menippus), or the comically elongated snout of some ridiculous-looking vertebrates (that’s the probiscus).

It is, in fact, a small bit of cartilage in the human knee, and its main function is apparently to turn an athletic, deceptively youthful-looking middle-aged man with catlike grace and agility into a pathetic, Bernie Sanders figure, hobbling around as if he is in his late 100s.

I partially tore the meniscus in my right knee, is what I’m saying.

The origin of the problem was likely over a month ago, when I spent my first day in London walking around 17 miles, after which my knee was strangely sore, and stayed that way for the last 6 weeks.  I would have brought it up during that European trip, but I spent part of that time hearing one of my traveling companions, a 93 year-old Kiwi whom I may have mentioned earlier, tell how he landed in Sicily, fought his way up through Italy, eventually climbing a Bavarian alp so that he could drink Hitler’s wine and pee in his bathtub.

After hearing that, I somehow didn’t want to say, “I walked up a flight of stairs in the Tower of London, and now my knee hurts.”

So, I did as my father before me — and his father before him – did.  I sucked it up, and did not complain or cry to my godfather that Mr. Woltz is never going to give me that part, and I don’t know what to do.  Nope.

I acted like a man, and did not seek treatment until a minor problem became much worse.

Then, after I spent a month transforming from an Olympic athlete into Abe Vigoda, my loving wife lovingly slapped me on the back of the head, and lovingly said, “You’re walking like Bernie Sanders, you moron.  Go see a doctor.”

So this week I did.  And now I’m scheduled for some PT, and a steroid injection into my knee, and some time in a rakishly fashionable knee brace that drives the ladies crazy, no matter how much I insist that I’m happily married, and keep your hands to yourselves, and my eyes are up here!

The moral of the story is that I’ve always known that we take some of the best things in life for granted.  The love of a good woman.  The forgiveness of a benevolent God.  The second amendment, which gives me the sacred right to shoot Beta O’Rourke in the face if he ever bursts through my door, his gangly arms flailing, hollering about taking my guns away.

To that list, I am now adding a pair of painlessly functioning knees.

Also, the blissful ignorance I lived in until last week, when I thought that Meniscus was an ancient Greek philosopher with a comically elongated nose.   Good times, gone too soon.

 

Speaking of excruciatingly painful things that degrade one’s quality of life, how about that Democrat town hall on climate change last week?  Which, if I’m not mistaken, ended only this afternoon, just in time for the Dems to get together and torture us with another debate.

Actually, the town hall was 7 hours long, yet somehow managed to feel longer than the war in Afghanistan.

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t watch that whole thing, either.  On account of my above-mentioned appreciation for the shortness of life, and the value of healthy blood pressure.

But I did watch some excerpts, and yikes!

First of all: 7 hours.  Of politicians talking!  About climate change?!  Which average voters rank near the bottom of urgent issues.

Second, their proposals sound like something that a team of political consultants would work around the clock to come up with as part of a list of positions NOT likely to win anyone any votes.

We can’t eat cheeseburgers, or fly in planes, or use straws that don’t turn into a cardboard-paste choking hazard after three sips.  Our utility bills need to be at least $1000 a month.  And if we drive a car, it must be an electric-powered Smart Car.  (Which made me think: if I had the choice of hobbling to work on one crutch with a shredded meniscus, or have two healthy knees but be forced to drive there in a Smart Car, which would I choose?)

(I’m thinking!)

Consider some of the damage the Dem candidates did to themselves:

Klobuchar (the only Hillary left in the race, now that Gillibrand is gone) said that she’d get rid of all coal plants.

Grandma Squanto (#wemustneverstopmockingher) saw heap big trouble with nuclear plants, which she would ban.

Spartacus said that he’d ban offshore drilling, and fossil fuels generally.

Which, taken together means that we better get used to running our power grid on good intentions, wishful thinking and narcissism.  Plus solar for a few hours on sunny days, and windmills when it’s breezy.  Great.

Joey Gaffes said that the Green New Deal is just peachy, and “deserves a lot of credit.”  Forty-eight seconds later he noted that 85% of the problem is caused by other countries, which (he did not say, but which is obvious) the Green New Deal would not affect at all.   Hearing that, God reached His invisible hand down and touched Joey’s plug-ridden, liver-spotted head.  And his left eye filled up with blood, and he said, “Goodnight, Tokyo!” then waved and walked off stage, and over to a young camerawoman, and put his hands on her shoulders, and softly kissed her neck until she ran screaming from the hall.

Which, spoiler alert, was nowhere near Tokyo.

Not to be outdone, Kamala “bury her in a Y-shaped coffin” Harris promised that one of her first acts as president would be to abolish the filibuster and ram through the Green New Deal.    Also, Trump is a fascist dictator because he likes to act unilaterally.

Bernie Sanders reached the intellectual high point of his 14 decades in public life, when he answered a question from Anderson Cooper about whether he’d reverse Trump’s decision to let people decide what kinds of lightbulbs they want to buy.

Bernie said, and I am not making this up – Google it if you don’t believe me – and I quote, “Duh!”

Pastor Pete covered himself in glory, too.  He said, “This [fighting climate change] is the hardest thing we will have done — certainly in my lifetime. This is on par with winning World War II. Perhaps, even more challenging than that.”

And he knows what he’s talking about, because he’s guided South Bend through 3 heavy snow storms, and the Great Garbage Strike of ’17!  Move over, Eisenhower, Pistol Pete is in town to save the day!

The only thing he’s right about is that the GND will outstrip WWII in at least one way: it’s going to be a hell of a lot more expensive!

Ugh.  The big Democrat winner of the night was Eric Swalwell, who was spared the indignity of embarrassing himself by his wise choice to drop out of the race in total humiliation a month earlier.

Avenatti/Swallwell 2020!

My thesis today is that we have lost our freaking minds.

Not every single one of us, obviously.  I mean, I’m writing this masterpiece, and you are reading it and nodding your head in agreement, so the two of us are good.

But everybody else?  They have either lost it, or are in the advanced stages of losing it.

And I don’t just mean the obvious crazies, like Joe Biden.  Right this minute he’s in the District of Columbia in 2019 having some vegetable soup that an aide prepared for him, and spilling most of it on a bib which that same aide put on him.  But he thinks he’s in Vermont, and that he’s still vice president, and that he marched with Martin Luther King in 1987, and this lobster bisque doesn’t taste quite right.

Or Don Lemon, who thinks he’s a journalist.

Or Chris Cuomo, who thinks he’s Michael Corleone, and why does everyone keep calling him “Fredo”?

Or our president, who could earn a black belt in judiciously targeted trollery, but instead thinks it’s a great idea to fire off an entire full-auto clip of free-associated tweets in all directions, because suburban soccer moms love that stuff!

Or Robert DeNiro.  (Enough said.)

No, I’m talking about nearly everyone else in our society.

“Do you have any evidence for such a wild claim, Martacus?” you are probably asking yourself.  Or, I guess, you are asking me.

Unless your name is “Martacus.”  Which would be weird.

Well thanks for asking, faithful reader, because I have only one bit of evidence, but I think it will be more than enough to prove my point.

It is this story from Campus Reform —  https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=13661  — about how all across our great nation, colleges are scrambling to get rid of their horribly offensive mascot names.  At first I wanted to give the colleges the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe there are still some left-over offensive mascots, from back in the bad old days.

I mean, if U Mass still has “The Virulent Anti-Semites” mascot, I am against that.  I am also unhappy with The Portland Pedophiles and the Washington State Ted Bundys.  Not to mention the Boise Bidens.

But no.  Here is the list of “controversial” mascots listed in the story, none of which I am making up:

The GW “Colonials.”  Because how terrible were those colonials, pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor just because they didn’t want to continue bending the knee to their English overlords?  Ugh!

By the way, this university is called “George WASHINGTON University”!   And it’s located in WASHINGTON, D.C.!!  But we cannot have it associated with any colonials!

Next up: the University of Denver “Pioneers.”  Because, I guess, most pioneers were red-state workaholics who clung to their god and their guns, and shockingly few of them were gender-fluid disabled people of color.  So begone!

Cal State Long Beach “Prospector Pete the 49er.”  The sin here is that those old miners were greedy for gold.  And greed is terrible!  At least according to the Cal State Board of Regents — who took a break from holding taxpayers upside down by their ankles and vigorously shaking them until enough cash fell out of their pockets to provide a raise for anti-American profs who have been enduring brutal 7-hour work weeks for a salary barely into the six figures — long enough to vote to condemn the greed of long-dead prospectors.

The University of Wyoming Cowboys might be the most offensive, because they launched a successful campaign touting their mascot last year, with the motto, “The World Needs More Cowboys.”  Which it manifestly does, judging from the reaction of at least one mewling professor, whose complaint I swear to you I am not making up:  “the word ‘cowboy’ invokes a white, macho, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, U.S.-born person.”  (And if you conclude that this professor necessarily wants more non-white, effeminate, non-male, handicapped, homosexual foreign nationals in our country, you would not be wrong.) (Also, good luck, future Army Ranger and Seal Team Six recruiters!)

Finally, with too many universities to mention, comes the most offensive of all: Native American team mascots of all shapes and sizes.  No more Indians, or Warriors, or Chiefs. Or Braves.  Or Seminoles or Sioux or Mohawks.

Or Fightin’ Warrens.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

The only two examples I’m almost willing to concede to these goofballs are the Washington Redskins and the U of Illinois mascot Chief Illiniwek.

“Redskins” is rough, I’ll grant you.  But now that these hysterics have made such an issue of it, we have to hold onto it doubly hard, just to avoid appeasing these loons.  Plus, “Washington” doesn’t seem so bad now – when compared to “redskins” – does it, you whiny oppression-studies professors?!

And the Illini Indians have the most unfortunately unimpressive tribe name ever.  And then they steered into the skid by naming their chief “Illiniwek,” which is the sound made by a TB patient with hay fever when he simultaneously coughs and sneezes.

But come on, Illinoisans.  Don’t throw the Blackhawk out with the Illiniwek!  (It’s a cliché for a reason.)

Speaking of Blackhawks, would any goalie ever feel the same fear up his spine if Stan Mikita was skating full speed toward him, with a “Chicago Pacifists” jersey on?  Okay, maybe he would.  But that cool Blackhawk image was still the icing (HA!) on the cake.

Fun fact: Stan Makita was from Slovakia, and he was deaf.  And yes, the Deaf Slovakians would make a great punk band name, and an even better team name.  Naming your team The Deaf Slovakians would be an offend-your-administrators two-fer, and they would immediately convene a meeting to try to push through “The Hearing-Impaired Peoples of Eastern European Origin” counter-proposal.  (And just try working THAT into a fight song.) (I mean, if fight songs hadn’t already been banned on grounds of toxic masculinity.)

In fact, “Deaf Slovakians” would also make an amazing army name.  Because when the Deaf Slovakians are marching on your border, you know that they will not listen to your cries for mercy. (HA!) And do some Biblical scholars believe that when the Deaf Slovakians meet the Color-Blind Slovenians on the field of battle, we will know that Armageddon is upon us?

Well, no they don’t, actually.  Did that idea come to me because I sometimes daydream of Melania Trump – in thigh-high black leather boots and a shining gold breastplate, naturally — leading a Slovenian army into battle?  Um, yes.  Yes it did.

Wow, I just went down a rabbit hole, didn’t I?  So where was I?

Oh yeah. Indian team mascots.

Lighten up, you perpetually offended jerks!  How can you not see that it is a compliment to have a mascot named after you?  We choose mascots because they embody admirable qualities.  We pick animal mascots that suggest strength – lions and tigers and bears – not ones that we look down on.  (That’s why there are no Washington Weasels – except in congress. Boom! – or St. Louis Skinks, or Rapid City Remoras.)  We choose occupations that we at least used to be proud of – there were Houston’s Oilers and Pittsburgh’s Steelers, not Houston’s Oligarchs and Pittsburgh’s Pimps.

And we chose Indian mascots because we admire warriors, and respect chiefs, and would like our children to be brave.

 

Finally, if you fancy yourself a compassionate leftist who sympathizes with the downtrodden and wants to solve our society’s problems, God bless you.  But do you really think that changing team mascot names should be your top priority? Have you not noticed that you’ve been running a lot of cities for decades, and they are not doing super-duper well lately?

Have you heard that San Franciscans are paying $2.3 million for a two-bedroom with no parking on a street down which they have to wade through an ankle-deep soup of human waste and dirty syringes?

Are you aware that Detroiters have to run serpentine from one burned out building to another to get to work, like it’s Beirut in the late 70s?

Do you realize that when mothers in Baltimore hear “back to school sale” they think about shopping for child-sized Kevlar vests in a variety of gang-graffiti-tagging-resistant colors?

Wake up, wokies!   If you win the next election and then tank the economy, finish off the last vestiges of quality public education, drive out anyone who pays taxes or wants to start a business, and then start a race war by imposing reparations and discriminating against some people because of their skin color, the voters are not going to be assuaged because you’ve passed House Bill 328 to change the name of the 49ers!

Can you PLEASE try putting out all of the raging social fires that you’ve started, before voting on the motion to change “firemen” to “firepersons”?!

Avenatti/Social Justice Warriors 2020!

First off, I have to apologize for a mistake in my last column.  After I’d made a joke involving Ben & Jerry’s re-named Neapolitan ice cream and three Democrat presidential contenders – I know, that old cliché – I returned to explain it afterwards.  Mostly I did that to get in my obligatory #wemustneverstopmockingher reference, but I made the mistake of saying that I didn’t want any CO readers to miss the joke.

And many members of the CO nation objected, saying that of course they didn’t need the explanation to get the joke.   Don Douds may have put it best, asking if I thought the CO audience was the Huff Po audience, or something?

Ouch!  That one stings.  But he’s right.  I should never have doubted this audience.  So mea culpa, and I resolve never to condescend to you folks again.

 

Which reminds me of a joke I heard years ago.  The speaker says, “People say that I’m condescending.” (pause)  “That means…”

I tried to tell that joke to my youngest daughter, when she was around 9 years old, and she unintentionally made it funnier.  She’s a very smart kid, if a little too sarcastic for my taste.  (I know – where could she have gotten that quality from?  I blame my otherwise flawless wife.)

So I told her the joke without telling her that it was the setup for a joke, and before even a beat passed at the end, when she would have figured it out, she jumped in immediately, “I know what that means!”   Perfect!

 

It’s time for another political obituary for another Dem who has dropped out of the presidential race.  This time, it’s Kirsten Gillibrand whom we won’t have to kick around anymore.

The character-less NY Senator has always stood for nothing beyond her own personal ambition.  She started her political career as a faux moderate who got an A- rating from the NRA, and she sucked up to the Clintons, back when they actually had power, getting herself appointed to Hillary’s senate seat when ol’ Equine Ankles left to run for president.  (Man, is that fun to recall!  Remember when Hillary was going to canter into the White House, before the Multiracial Messiah jostled her out in the backstretch in ’08, and then Orange Crush poleaxed her at the finish line in ’16?  Good times.)

Then, when the Clintons no longer had power, and the MeToo furies were tearing Slick Willie’s dessicated carcass to pieces in 2017, Gillibrand bravely came out and declared that he should have resigned over the Lewinsky scandal. Even though she’d taken some warm-focus pictures with Bill when she was running for Senate.  Which happened many years after everyone knew that Bill had groped his way into and through the highest office in the land, not to mention that time when he definitely raped Juanita Broaddrick.

Also, if you google those pictures, you’ll see that Bill is hugging Gillibrand, and usually has his hand around her shoulder.  But if you try to tell me that at no time during that photo op did he drop that hand down and squeeze her butt, I will call you a liar, sir!

And now — because when I’m not busy being a world-class husband and father, owner of the finest exemplar of canine virtue (Cassie the Wonder Dog, for new readers of the CO site), and friend to those who have pissed in Hitler’s bathtub, I like to fancy myself a Man of Letters – I’ve composed a final farewell to Gillibrand in the form of a haiku:

Kirsten, flip flopper,

Hillary 2, much too bland.

You let down!  Be gone!

Have I also written an anticipatory haiku for Grandma Squanto, you ask?  I have, even though right now it looks like she might be the last squaw standing from this motley crew of leftists.  Still, here it is:

There in the distance,

Rides a mean old white lady.

Indian? What?!  HA!

 

What’s that, you say?  Encore?

Okay, here’s another one for her:

 

We must never stop

Mocking her, the phony old

Translucent paleface.

 

Man, that’s fun!  I’d encourage all of you to write and submit your own haiku to the CO site.  Remember: 3 lines, with 5 syllables in the first and last, and 7 syllables in the middle.  Go to it!

Finally, I thought I’d share a couple of musical recommendations to brighten your day as you head into another work week after a long holiday weekend.  One of them is light-hearted, the other darker.

The first one is a video of James Taylor and Carly Simon singing a duet of “You Can Close Your Eyes” in their house in Martha’s Vineyard in 1977.  Looking back now, we know that their marriage was doomed, and that they had their own problems as all of us do, and maybe them more than most.

But on that day in 1977, they were at the height of their powers.  They were both tanned and young.  Taylor was good-looking enough that he could pull off that 70s porn mustache, and Carly was radiant, with that over-sized mouth of hers that shouldn’t work, but boy did it!  (A teenaged me was quite enthralled, since I hadn’t yet met my wife, and thus other women were not yet invisible to me.)

And of course their voices are beautiful, separately and together.  Watching that video, I can’t help but appreciate the fact that music is one of the best consolations of life.

Because I’m a Christian, I tend to see such things as occasions for gratitude to a Creator. God created cheetahs to run, and watching them in slow motion makes me grateful to Him for that.  Also, He made Mozart to compose music, and Frank Lloyd Wright to build houses, and Walter Payton to run with a football.

And He made James Taylor and Carly Simon to sing duets.

 

On a related but distinct topic, when it comes to the question of whether He made Bob Dylan to sing, I think the jury is still out!

I really like Dylan, and often find his nasally raspiness endearing, even though I wouldn’t call it technically beautiful.  But he’s obviously written some amazing songs, and lately I’ve been watching a video of one of his songs being performed by two young guys I’d never heard of before.  The song is called, “Not Dark Yet,” and the two guitar-playing singers are Bobby Long and John Fullbright.  It looks like it was recorded in somebody’s house, but they do a great job with that song: strong acoustic guitar playing, and a nice blend of voices that alternate on the verses and sing harmony on the refrain.  One of them wears a cool hat and plays a solid harmonica, and the other guy makes a hilarious Popeye expression when he sings, and I could listen to them all day.

This song has been stuck in my mind lately, mostly because the refrain — “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there” — syncs up with a recurring mood I’ve gotten into when I watch too much of the news.

So many trends in our society seem to be worsening.  Most young people are badly educated about American history, and depressingly few of them can name any of the bill of rights, or locate the Revolutionary War, the Civil War or World War II in the right century.   Throughout the West, no countries have replacement-level birth rates, which seems like a fundamental indicator of a lack of civilizational confidence, and of faith in the future.

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

More and more American children are born into fatherless households, which may be the most significant single predictor of future poverty and criminality.  Almost half of US adults pay no federal income tax at all, and when a larger majority of the population become consumers of taxes rather than payers of them, how can that not accelerate a slide into social division and dysfunction?  More and more people don’t feel patriotic about our country, and they don’t value even bedrock ideals such as free speech or free markets.

Respect for the rule of law – even considering the necessary caveats about needing to hold the cops accountable when they break the laws they are supposed to enforce – is decaying before our eyes.  Antifa thugs rampage and assault people, and go almost completely unpunished.  The most depressing videos I’ve seen lately are the scumbags in New York dousing cops with water and chasing them from the streets, while the cops cower and retreat.

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

Thus, the video of those young guys knocking that Dylan song out of the park speaks to me.

 

But then I catch myself.  Since the beginning of time, old guys like me have been bemoaning the way the youngsters are going to hell in a handbasket.  And even given the depressing facts listed above, we still live in a great nation, in a time of great successes.  Dickens was right: it is always the best of times, and the worst of times.

Sure, terrible leftist candidates have a real chance to win in 2020, and Fredo Cuomo and AOC still have jobs, and there are websites like Huff Po, populated by mopey leftists who aren’t having kids because global warming or white nationalist boogey men will just kill them all before you know it.

But there are also podcasts from Dennis Miller and Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan and Steven Crowder, and there is the Cautious Optimism site, filled with smart and charming people who are way too sophisticated to need a hilarious joke about the new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor explained to them.  The public might not love Trump (and not without reason), but they hold the Dems in contempt, which is right and just.  My daughters are gorgeous and brilliant, my wife has easily advanced to the World Series of Wives competition, and my dog is as loyal as the Royal Lancers.

Also, a new football season has started, and Christmas is coming.

So watch those two videos, and a nature documentary about cheetahs, and get pregnant if you’re able, and write some snarky haiku about the next Democrat candidates to leave the race.  And maybe watch an old classic I’ve mentioned before: Ray Charles and the Jubilation Singers doing “Oh Happy Day.”

Because, as I think about it, it’s not dark yet.

Period.

Avenatti/Gillibrand 2020!

I’ll begin today with a basic political truth: one fundamental difference between conservatives and leftists is that the former tend to want smaller and less intrusive government, while the latter is more totalitarian in their desire for government.  I don’t mean “totalitarian” in the Stalin/Mao sense of slaughtering tens of millions of people in order to achieve the goals of the new Five-Year Plan.  (Although for at least a slice of the radical left, if that hobnailed boot fits, wear it!)

I mean “totalitarian” in the sense of its etymological core: government’s involvement in the totality of a citizen’s life.  Including things like under what conditions we’ll allow you to start a business, and what we think is fair for you to pay your employees or get paid by your employer, and what kind of a lightbulb or toilet or soft drink that we think is good for you.  Also, we’re going to make you subsidize the kind of tv we think you should watch, and the kind of radio we think you should listen to, and the kind of bathrooms that you and your children should be able to use.

That stuff.

Now on the one hand, I can understand why leftists bureaucrats would want that kind of power.  If I were an ineffectual know-it-all who can’t get people to live like I want them to live, I might welcome the chance to bend them to my will through my exercise of governmental coercion.

What I can’t understand is why so many businesses seem to wade into political issues in ways that can’t possibly help them.

I’m not talking about companies whose identities are tied up with their politics.  I understand, for example, why the moonbats at Ben and Jerry’s continually turn out goofy ice cream flavors like “Rocky Road to Socialized Health Care” or  “Booker, Warren and Straw-beto” (formerly known as “Neapolitan”) or “Abort-your-Children Pistachio.”  (Though I didn’t need to put on my wizard hat to predict how bad the sales would be for that last one.)

(Also, Booker, Warren and Straw-beto.  Get it?   Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.)  (I don’t usually like to return to a joke or explain it, but this may have been my most oblique Grandma Squanto reference yet, and I don’t want it to slip by, unnoticed.)  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I even understand Nike, embracing semi-talented America-hating has-been QB Kapernick, since much of Nike’s target audience is a younger and fairly ethnically diverse demographic who don’t yet know what disastrous results leftist government inevitably creates.

That being said, the country is now pretty evenly divided politically, and as our politics become ever more heated, why would any company who wants a broad market for its products choose to wade into politics when it doesn’t need to?

Exhibit A is Gillette, which you may remember from their fall ad campaign arguing that men – i.e. the people who buy the vast majority of the razors in this country — suck.  Their tagline – which I may be paraphrasing, but I am not making up – was “Everything masculine is toxic and terrible and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself if you have a Y chromosome. Now buy our razors you filthy, disgusting animal!”  They also ran an ad featuring a dad showing his “transitioning female-to-male child” (you may know such a person by the archaic term “daughter”) how to shave!

When asked whether such an approach might not be as crazy as outhouse rodentia, CEO Gary Coombe blithely acknowledged that Gillette might lose a few of those male customers.  (“But what about all of the biological females with heavy beards that we’ll gain as customers for life!” this idiot must have thought).  But he was confident: the loss was “a price worth paying,” and he didn’t mind alienating some customers.

Make that “almost all” customers.  Because oddly enough, this appeal doesn’t seem to have been super effective with the razor-buying demographic.  To the tune of a loss of 5.24 billion (with a “B”) in the fourth quarter.  When you compare that to their previous fourth quarter profit of almost 2 billion, their gender-bigoted leftist posturing has cost them over $7 billion.

To give you an idea of how much that is, it’s more than BOTH the mysterious CO and I earn – TOGETHER – over an entire year!  I know – it boggles the mind.

How are we to respond to this news?

You know how.  Say it with me:  BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!  Add dozens of more “HA”s and exclamation points, until lack of oxygen causes your vision to begin to gray out.  Then recover, and repeat.

My favorite part of this story is watching Gillette trying to spin this gigantic loss.  For example, the company has announced that they will be “shifting the spotlight from social issues to local heroes.”

Yes.  The way the Nazis shifted focus in 1943 from getting massacred in the snow in Russia to running back toward Germany as fast as their frozen feet could carry them.

 

Okay, no column would be complete without a few more gems from the Biden camp over the last 10 days or so.

Gem A came from Joey Gaffes himself (hat tip to Nick DiPaolo), and is actually a two-fer.  When he was in Keene New Hampshire, he talked about what a great state Vermont is.  Not because he’s trying to start an inter-state rivalry between NH and VT.

Because he didn’t know where he was.  He even mentioned what a great town Keene is.  Which means that he knew what town he was in, but didn’t know what state that town was in.

His second beauty was when he couldn’t remember where he’d given an earlier talk.  Here are his actual words, which I am not making up:  “I just spoke at Dartmouth on health care, at the medical school — or not — I guess it wasn’t actually on the campus because people from the medical school were at the….”  Then he paused, and said, “I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts. I’m not sure whether it was the medical school or where the hell I spoke. But it was on the campus.”

Yikes.  “I’m not sure where the hell I was, or who I was talking to, or what day it was, or what state I was in.  Also, on a totally unrelated note, I am not going nuts.”

As I may have mentioned before, I am not a professional, highly paid political expert.  But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you ever find yourself insisting, “I am not going nuts!” you are not winning.

My other favorite Biden-related groaner came from his wife, Jill.  When she was pitching her addle-minded mate to some lefties who are unhappy that he is not left enough, she admitted that they might not be satisfied with every one of his positions.  But, she said, “You might just have to swallow and vote for Joe.”

Now regular readers know that I am nothing if not a high-class gentleman.  I never wear white after Labor Day, I know which fork which goes with which course, and which wine goes with which entre.   I’m wearing a full tux and tails as I write this in Stately Simpson Manor right now, and yes, I am also wearing spats.  Thanks for asking.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: my classiness is beyond question.  Also beyond reproach.

That is why I’m not going to follow a quote about swallowing and voting for someone with an obvious Bill Clinton joke.  Because I am far too dignified for that.

And also because I know that as soon as you read that quote, you already thought up a hilarious Clinton joke of your own.

But if you think about it, by reminding you of that quote, I inspired you to make that joke.  So while I’ve kept my (white-gloved) hands clean, I would also like to take credit for that joke.

In other words, let’s agree that it’s a testimony to me, that I inspired you to make a hilarious joke, without actually having to come up with that joke myself.

This is as close to a no-show government job as I ever aspire to get!

Avenatti/Biden 2020!

Biden’s most recent campaign ad came out, and it’s about what you’d expect – a gravitas-laden voice-over, a little bile directed at Trump, and a lot of fairy-tale praise for Old Joe’s amazing yet fictional accomplishments during his storied career.  But the best part is the tone-deaf way that the Biden political team decided to name the ad.  It’s called, and I am not making this up, “Bones.”  The first lines are, “We know in our bones this election is different.”

Now I’m not a paid political consultant, or even a small-town country lawyer.  I’m just a humble, salt-of-the-earth snark-master who just so happens to personally know a guy who urinated in Hitler’s bathtub.

But even I know that you don’t want to reinforce your candidate’s vulnerabilities in your own damn ads!  And what is Biden’s greatest vulnerability?

I can hear all of CO nation right now, simultaneously shouting out many different answers: “His stupidity!”/”He helped his crooked son line his pockets!”/“Too white!”/”Super creepy.”/”Gaffe machine!”/ “Flip flopper!”/”Fondler of campaign aids.”/”Can’t find his butt with both hands and a topographical map.”

And you would all be wrong.

Well, you’d all be right, because those are all Biden weaknesses.  But his main weakness is that he’s a doddering old man.  Bernie Sanders looks like a spry, mentally engaged 70-year-old next to Biden.

So what does the Biden brain trust start their ad with?  BONES?!  And the words, “we know in our bones…”

You mean the way a really, really, old, frail person can tell when a storm is coming in his bones?  You mean the way an octogenarian’s doctor asks her if she’s getting enough calcium to support her bird-like, fragile bones?  Good lord!

It’s like Nancy Pelosi starting a campaign with an ad called, “Ancient Egyptian Burial Wrappings.”  Or Skateboarding Doofus O’Rourke starting a campaign with an ad called, “Alpha Male.”  Or Bill Clinton starting a campaign with an ad called, “Fidelity.”  (Come to think of it, “Bones” would not be a good theme for a Slick Willie ad, either.) (“We all know in our bones – and we can’t stress enough that there is no “r” in that word – when a president is fit to lead our nation…”)

Or Elizabeth Warren starting a campaign with an ad called, “The Trail of Tears.”  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Nice job, Joe Biden.  You have gotten your walker off the starting line very, very smoothly.

 

In other news, my skills with language are being challenged by the fact that two more Dem candidates have dropped out of the race.  Because nothing challenges language skills like needing to write cogently on the subject of when a nonentity does something inconsequential.  But here goes.

Jay Innslee has dropped out of the presidential race, and the sound you hear is an entire nation of 300+ million people not noticing.

Innslee, picturesque Austrian mountain town and site of the 1976 Winter Olympics, announced…  No, wait.  That’s “Innsbruck.”

Let me google “Innslee.”

Oooookay, first off, only one “n” in his name.  Also, “Jay” is his first name, and not an initial that stands for something cool and interesting, like “Jocko” or “Jehoshaphat.”

According to his Wikipedia entry photo, he is “Generic White Guy from the 1991 Sears Catalog Menswear Section.”  Apparently he is also a climate change activist – the hell you say! – and had been in the first two Dem debates, though his only notable contribution was to call Trump a white nationalist.  So, no points for either originality or accuracy.

He officially withdrew on Wednesday night, when he said “it’s become clear” that he didn’t have a shot at winning the primary.

Typical climate change alarmist: he’s absolutely certain of what the exact temperature is going to be 93 years from this coming Tuesday at 4 o’clock Eastern time, but he just now noticed that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance at winning the Democrat primary.  At least he has a job to go back to: he’s the governor of Washington state.

Which I’ve got to believe has to come as quite a shock to the citizens of Washington state.  Where, Wikipedia tells me, he signed a document calling Washington a sanctuary state.

Of course he did.  Beat it, Innsbruck.

 

Seth Moulton is a different story.  First, he never qualified for either of the first two Dem debates.

Which begs the question: how the hell does someone get outpolled by Jeremiah Inslee and Marianne Williamson?!

Then I read his bio, and the answer became clear.  Moulton earned a physics degree from Harvard, then joined the Marines, and saw combat in Iraq.  He challenged Nancy Pelosi, focused his campaign on national security and caring for our veterans, and warned Democrats about “veering too far left.”

I don’t want to make him sound too good.  After all, he got elected as a Democrat from Massachusetts, so there’s got to be problems in there somewhere.

But he’s a straight, white, Marine veteran who talks common sense and might actually love his country.  So of course he had absolutely NO chance in today’s Democrat party primaries.  More’s the pity for him, and for us.

Goodbye, Seth Moulton – you were too good for the company you were trying to keep.

 

I found my favorite under-covered story of the last week on Don Surber’s fine blog on Thursday.   Just from his title – “Reporter wastes 2 days trying to show how easy it is to buy a gun.” – I knew it would be my kind of story.

The reporter in question is Business Insider senior correspondent Hayley Peterson.  After the shooting in an El Paso Wal-Mart, Peterson decided to go and buy a gun at a local Wal-Mart, to illustrate the grave danger of easily available handguns to our nation.

What followed was the opposite of what she expected.  She ended up going through a DMV-like experience, during which her attempts to buy a gun at Wal-Mart were thwarted at every turn.

First, it was difficult to find a Wal-Mart near her in Virginia that sold guns.  After “hours of googling and calling,” she finally found one.  When she got there, she found that Wal-Mart had a lot smaller selection than local gun stores, that they no longer sell handguns, and that they have stricter requirements than the law requires.  They also have security cameras, and extra training for the handful of employees who are allowed to sell guns.

Having no luck that day, she returned a few days later, only to be faced with a ton of paperwork, insisted on by competent employees.  When they discovered that Peterson’s address and the address on her driver’s license didn’t match, that ended her attempt to buy a gun at Wal-Mart.

To her credit, Peterson wrote the story, and Business Insider published it, even though it clearly didn’t match their preconceptions.  Do I wish that she had ended a little more emphatically, hammering home the moral of the story: guns are not legally easy to get, and people who jump through hoops to buy a gun legally are not the problem? Sure.

But supporters of the Second Amendment are constantly vexed by outrageously biased media coverage, and fact-less slurs from hack activists, as well as the opposition of well-meaning but uninformed people.  Our leftist pols have not helped, to put it mildly.  One of Obama’s most ridiculous pronouncements – out of a crowded field – was his 2016 statement that, ““it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.”

Hayley Peterson’s story just demonstrated – again – what a crock of Schumer that always was.  For that, I thank her.

Avenatti/Inslee 2020!

After a hectic couple of weeks at work, I finally have a few minutes to sit down and review what’s been happening in the world.

Aaaannnndddd… it’s a dumpster fire.  But an intermittently entertaining one.

I just now caught up to the most counter-intuitive news of the month, which blew up when it turned out that an investor in exercise equipment maker SoulCycle had given a fundraiser for Trump, and the tolerant left hit him with a torrent of abuse and boycott threats.

That’s not the counter-intuitive part.  Because there is nothing more intuitive than outraged leftists getting offended that someone who disagrees with them is investing or running a business or going out in public or expressing an opinion or breathing.

The counter-intuitive part is that Michael Moore (D-irigible) came out with a statement that he will no longer use SoulCycle.

Which gave me several thoughts:

1. Is Michael Moore actually self-aware enough that he’s making a self-deprecating joke? If so, that’s pretty funny, and thus the opposite of his usual insufferability.
2. If he actually did use Soul Cycle, sweet merciful crap! What would he look like if he had NOT been working out?  He looks like he’s always posing for a “before” and a “WAY-before” picture.
3. Is it possible that he was shorting Soul Cycle stock and then announced that he had been a customer, thus making a quick killing in the market? If so he’s got CO- or Silber-like investment chops.  (To go with all the pork chops! HA!)

 

The Trumpkin has been tweeting up a storm as usual, and he’s giving me a mix of agita and hiccups.  When he takes to late-night, serial tweeting, he reminds me of an 85-pound person firing an entire clip from a heavy machine gun on full auto.  The first bullet might hit his target, but after that it’s holes in the ceiling and upstairs neighbor’s exploding microwave and splintered door frames and glancing blows off the downstairs neighbor’s toupee and shattered shower tiles and RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

But just as I want to slap him, he lands a shot like a professional comedian.  Consider his comment when anti-Semitic nasty piece of work and jihad-enthusiast Rashida Tlaib pretended she wanted to go to Israel only to see her dear old granny who will likely be dead soon.  When Israel agreed to let her do so, she had a change of heart, and said, “No thanks, I’d rather hate Jews than see my grandma.”

Trump’s response, after rightly pointing out Tlaib’s hypocritical grandstanding: “The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She doesn’t have to see her now!”

That’s some top shelf burn right there – I don’t care who you are.  Nicely done, prez – but please, more aimed shots and less “spray and pray!”

 

Elizabeth Warren continues to be a delight.  She recently repeated the race-baiting lie that Michael Brown “was murdered by a white police officer.”  But the Obama DOJ issued an exhaustive report four years ago, the key findings of which are that Brown was a large, violent, African-American male who was justifiably shot by a cop because Brown was assaulting him.

To me, the key parts of that story are “cop justifiably shoots attacking thug.”

To Grandma Squanto, the key parts are “black guy murdered by white cop.”  She ought to be ashamed of herself, and the violent, “Ferguson effect” backlash that racial arsonists like her helped to create.

Speaking of Warren-related atrocities, have you seen the video of her trying to dance earlier this week at an event in MN?  Yikes.  But before you laugh at her, consider that she may have been having a grand mal seizure brought on by a potent combination of political hatred and utter lack of skin pigmentation.

Also, although she may appear to the naked eye to be what scientists would call “an old cracker lady,” can you explain why it began to rain heavily as soon as she started to dance?

I didn’t think so.  #wemustneverstopmockingher

 

Old Joe Biden appears to be losing it.  He has confused recently-defeated Brit PM Theresa May with beloved but long-dead Brit PM Margaret Thatcher (peace be upon her), he’s stated that RFK, JFK and MLK died in the late 1970s, and he’s said that poor kids can be just as talented as white kids.   He also said that he prefers truth over facts, and chocolate over vanilla and Big Foot.  Then he called his wife “mommy” and asked her if the mailman has come yet, because he’s waiting for his order from the Columbia Record and Tape Club, which went out of business when the only thing Obama was president of was the Choom Gang.

And that was all before lunch on Wednesday.

Also, he’s got a double-digit lead over the rest of the Democrat Z-Team.  Sooooooo… good for him, I guess?

 

I mentioned a while back that I was going to write a zippy little political obituary for each of the Democrat candidate as they drop out one by one, and now I’ve got a challenge: What does one say about John Hickenlooper?  Other than, “Who?”

Okay, his goofy name was a little entertaining.  “Hickenlooper/Buttigieg” would have made for funny bumperstickers.

Other than that, he had more support than Eric Swallwell, but less than Marianne Williamson.  (And you can look that last sentence up in the dictionary, under “Damning with faint praise.”)

We salute you, Johnny Hickenlooper!  You are the radon of Democratic politics: your presence is colorless, odorless and impossible to detect.

 

Did you catch the Dimmest Cuomo’s ™ Master Class in “How to Ensure that You are Forever Stuck with a Nickname You Hate?”

I love that the big dope decided to fight what he sees as an anti-Italian stereotype by… wait for it… getting in a guy’s face, dropping a dozen F bombs and threatening to kick him down the bleeping stairs.  The only thing missing was a warning that if the other guy didn’t shut up, he’d soon be sleeping with the fishes.

We get it, Cuomo.  You can handle things.  You’re smart.  Not like everybody says, you’re not dumb.  You’re smart, and you want respect.

Now put on your Gilligan hat and go out to the boat, Fredo.  Rocko will be out in a minute.  Because that’s the way pop wanted it.

 

Finally, as regular readers know, some of my favorite stories are the ones about stupid criminals.  In the past, for example, I’ve written about oft-arrested rapper Yung Mazi, who bragged that he was bulletproof shortly before being shot to death, and about the robber who took four guns away from a TN homeowner whose house he was breaking into, only to get shot by the fifth gun the man had in the house.  (As one does, in TN.) (Go Vols!)

One great sub-genre of the stupid criminals story is the incredibly stupid denial to the cops.

For example, when a guy is pulled over and the cops find drugs or guns in his car, he always says they are not his.  Which is sometimes pretty plausible, if he hangs around with the kind of miscreants who are always leaving their guns or drugs lying around.

If the gun or drugs are under his seat, maybe less so.

The funnier ones are when the cops find the contraband in one of his pockets, and he says something brilliant like, “These aren’t my pants!”

Well step aside, army of idiot criminals (and, coincidentally, large slice of the Democrat voting base), because you have officially been topped.

I give you the story of young Ms. Ashley Beth Rolland, 23, who was recently arrested in Louisiana.  A man with whom she’d been staying for a week accused her of theft, and the cops picked her up and searched her.  They found, and I quote, “a clear plastic bag with approximately 1 gram of meth and $6,233 in cash.”

Did they find that stuff in her car, you ask?  They did not.

Did they find it under her seat?  No. (But… sort of.)

Did they find it in her shirt pocket?  Nope.

Because this is a family column, I’m going to say that they found it… secreted in her person.

And yes, the operative pronoun here is not “on,” it is “in.”

Not as in, “I’ve got a song in my heart,” or “Deep down inside, I’ve got a little something called grit.”

I mean, “in” as in, “Let’s play a spirited round of ‘Democrat President and Young Intern.’  Today’s episode: “Where Did I Leave my Cigar?”

When you look at Ms. Rolland’s booking photo, I think you’ll be surprised.  She’s pretty attractive, with a rough-around-the-edges Olivia Wilde vibe to her.  At the risk of being look-ist, I would not have expected that.  If you showed me a lineup of mug shots and asked which of these gals is most likely to be carrying a mortgage down-payment on her, without the benefit of a purse or pocketbook, I would not have picked out Rolland.

All that being said, Ashley Beth Rolland is not a hero because of her crime.  She’s a hero because of her brilliant response to the accusations of the cynical police.

When the female officer had… I’m going to say “extracted” … the contraband, Rolland said that “the illegal drugs were not hers, and she did not know how they got there.”

How would you like to be her defense lawyer?  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… um… this is not what it looks like.  Well, maybe it is.  But you know how some people don’t trust banks?  Well my client REALLY doesn’t trust banks.  So….”

Avenatti/Rolland 2020!

Before I start today, I wanted to mention two brief stories about our Europe trip that I’d missed in my column last week.

Please forgive me though, because I don’t want to turn into the obnoxious, elitist jerk who goes on and on about having gone to Europe.  (“You simply must see Paris in the summertime.  The escargot are to die for!”)  We took a cost-saver tour, and the only thing that makes me a little big-headed is that I rubbed elbows with a bad-ass nonogenarian who pissed in Hitler’s bathtub(!)

Anyway, when we saw the armory in the tower of London, we came across two suits of armor made for Henry VIII.  (And you know the original Henry must have been a money-maker, because there were 7 sequels!) (And he had his own Herman and the Hermits song.)  One was much portlier than the other, and when I read some material on it, it turns out that both had been made for him in adulthood, but the second had been made 20 years after the first.

As an egalitarian American, it made me feel a little schadenfreude at Henry’s expense.  We regular folks tend to struggle with weight gain and loss as we age, but the worst ramification is that we have to donate or toss our skinny pants or fat pants from time to time.  But although Henry was the immensely powerful monarch of a great empire, endowed with access to anything he wanted — including the power to have troublesome exes beheaded when they became annoying (sweet, sweet consolation of 16^th century divorce laws!) – he still had to battle the “coronation 15.”

And because his fancy clothes were made out of long-lasting armor, great crowds of people get to traipse through his armory centuries later, and point like Nelson (the Simpson’s character, not the hero of Trafalgar), and say, “HA, HA!  Henry was a pudgy potentate!”

By the way, that’s why my will stipulates that at my death, all of my suits of armor will be melted down and re-cast into a statue of Cassie the Wonder Dog, gazing mournfully at the grave of her beloved master.

The other thing that I hadn’t mentioned is that my world-class wife surprised me at the end of our trip, by booking rooms in an Elizabethan manor house for our last night’s stay in England.  We had mostly stayed in reasonably priced hotels to that point, but Gatwick is far away enough from London that she was able to get us rooms in a place built in 1580 for not much more than a good hotel room in central London.

As a guy who’s rehabbed a few houses over the years, I really loved that place!  The interior doors were solid wood almost four inches thick, with old box locks that took skeleton keys to open them.  Almost all of the interior woodwork and much of the leaded glass windows were original, and the grounds were all sculpted hedges and English gardens.  It was a great place to spend our last night in England, and even though marriage isn’t a competition, my wife is somehow winning.

(If you’d like to see a picture of the place, you can check out Martinsimpsonwriting.com.)

 

Okay, on to some other scattered thoughts.

The bit of my last column that got the most reaction was the part where I chose my pronouns and adjectives (thee/thou, brilliant, handsome).  And by the way thank you all for not pointing out that my chosen adjectives aren’t exactly spot on, since I’m average-looking at best, and less than Einstein-ian in the IQ department.

That’s what I love about CO nation – you are blackbelts at the suspension of disbelief in the service of a joke!

But of course my point was that I’m a lot closer to being both brilliant and handsome than a biological male is to being a “she” or “her,” and ultimately it does no favors to someone suffering from gender dysmorphia to pretend otherwise.  The “list your pronouns” issue – though well-meaning, on the part of many liberals — is part of a larger leftist strategy to achieve political goals by using language to obfuscate/battle/re-shape reality.

And, as a side benefit, it tends to drive those of us in the reality-based community nuts!

Euphemisms – even well-intentioned ones – also work this way, and today’s elite left have raised euphemism to a misleading art form.  The prime objective of “Planned Parenthood” is to prevent parenthood.  The practice of preventing reproduction by aborting children is “women’s reproductive health.”  Non-citizens who came into the country illegally are “undocumented citizens.”  The top earners who pay the lion’s share of the taxes – roughly twice the percentage that they earn, per capita – are “not paying their fair share.”

War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength. (hat tip to Orwell)

Translucent Elizabeth Warren is “Native American.”  (#wemustneverstopmockingher).

I could go on.

The point is whoever controls the language, tends to control political battles.

I’m reminded of a joke that is attributed to Lincoln, though I’m betting it’s apocryphal.  It goes, “How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?”  The listener says, “5.”  Lincoln says no.  “Four.  Because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

To class things up even more (though Lincoln is no slouch in the quotable wisdom department), I’m also reminded of a few lines from Hamlet.  When he’s telling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark feels like a prison to him, they say that they don’t think so.  Hamlet replies, “Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”

Because Shakespeare is a freaking genius, there is some truth to Hamlet’s double-edged reply.  Because our attitude indeed shapes our emotional state, anyone can make a prison of Denmark; the glass really can be half empty or half full, depending on our outlook.

On the other hand, Hamlet is either crazy, or pretending to be so (lit critics differ on this point), and in one clear sense he is obviously wrong.  He is not in a prison, though his grim, tragic outlook makes it feel so.

I can’t help but think of the young, impressionable Americans – I hope it’s not too many — who fall under the influence of leftist thought leaders, and end up with a correspondingly distorted view of the world.  They live in the freest, richest, most opportunity-laden country in the history of the world, but when they look around, they see a hellhole of racism and sexism and bigotry.  They enjoy freedoms and comforts and security that kings and emperors could never have dared dream of even a few centuries ago, but they feel like victims, vulnerable and hopeless.

They have been taught since grade school that a tail is a leg, and now they feel like they’re surrounded by five-legged predators who don’t exist.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, Lighten up, little AOC followers!  The world’s not going to end in 12 years, and you’re not being persecuted by a shadowy white supremacist cabal.  And assuming you don’t vote in a raft of socialists in the next several elections, your lives are not going to be nasty, brutish and short.

 

Let’s end on a happier note, and one that always makes me smile: stories of hypocrites being hoist on their own petard.

Already in the last month we’ve had Grandpa Socialist Sanders get caught not paying his campaign drones the $15 wage that he’s been hectoring the rest of us to pay for several years now.  (HA!)  And we’ve had Ol’ Joe Biden – purveyor or racism accusations galore – getting caught saying that – I’m sure you’ve seen this fantastic quote – “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” (HA!!)

When I first heard that quote, I immediately thought of the greatest character on tv today: Ron Swanson.  If you haven’t seen Ron Swanson’s Pyramid of Greatness yet, drop everything and google that and watch it.  I’ll wait.

My favorite square on the pyramid is the one that’s as tongue-in-cheek funny as Old Joe’s latest gaffe is unintentionally funny: “Capitalism: God’s way of determining who is smart, and who is poor.”

Which brings us to Sarah Silverman, someone who I think is actually a pretty talented comedian, when she can pull her head out of her politics.  Which, sadly, is not that often lately.  She’s been an outspoken leftist, of the “Trump is racist and conservatives are terrible and anyone who doesn’t agree with me is horrible” type.

Which means that she’s not been funny for a while.

But those days are over, because I just saw an article about why she lost a recent movie role.  According to lefty Brit paper The Guardian, she was fired because of a 2007 skit she did in which she wore blackface.  The original skit was intermittently funny, and involved her getting into an argument with an African-American guy over whether Jews or blacks have had a harder time, resulting in an experiment where she went out in blackface to see “how the other half lives.”

Not the most original concept in the world, but she handled it well.  And the whole point of comedy is that you should be able to poke fun at everyone.  But more than a decade after that sketch, when she was on the verge of starting what she called a “sweet part” in a movie, the producers found out about the old skit and fired her.

To which any compassionate, empathetic person could only respond, “BWA HA HA HA HA HA”… let me pause to get my breath – “HA HA HA HA!!!!”

Is that situation really worthy of a “BWA,” 10 “HA”s, and four exclamation points, you ask?  Yes. In fact, if it weren’t for my mild, adult-onset asthma, I would be tempted to add another “BWA”, many more “HA”s and at least two more exclamation points.

Because it’s not just that a hypocritical leftist racist-baiter should get a karmic come-uppance.  But the way she reacts is perfect, archtypically lefty: convinced that right wingers are to blame, with not a smidgen of self-awareness.

She says, “It was so disheartening.  It just made me real, real sad, because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”  Which is ridiculous, because she didn’t kill somebody in Reno just to watch him die.  She did a comedy sketch 10 years before the p.c. police declared that no racial joke can ever be funny again.

She certainly has the self-flagellation move down pat, saying, “I cringe at material I did 10 years ago.”

But don’t think that she is actually accepting the blame for this.  Let her explain who is really at fault.  “I think it’s really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it,” adding that she dubs it “righteousness porn”.

First of all, I cannot think of a worse type of porn than “righteousness porn.”  Ugh.

Second, “it invaded the left,” did it Sarah?  Like maybe it came from outer space?

Look at her verbs.  “Invading the left,” makes leftists passive victims.  But then the right “mimicked it.”  It didn’t invade or infect or contaminate the right – in which case the right would be victims, too.  No.  It invaded the poor, victimized left, and then the evil right wingers picked it up and took it from there.

She closes with the most unintentionally perfect summary of the leftist mindset possible: “It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone.  It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.’”

Yes, Sarah!  It’s EXACTLY like that.  If only we could figure out what group started this awful political correctness that has turned on you, and caused you to lose a sweet job.  Because then maybe we could see to it that people with the mindset that started this trend could be made to suffer the consequences.

Oh, wait.

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Avenatti/Silverman 2020!

So while I was in Europe, soaking up the culture and meeting cool Kiwis who went to Europe to chew gum and urinate in Hitler’s bathtub (and they’re all out of gum), leftists in America were going all Thelma and Louise, fighting over the steering wheel and mashing the gas pedal as they raced toward the cliffs of insanity.

Exhibit A: Humans are rarely confronted with social experiments having conditions so perfect that they could have been designed in a laboratory.  But when we are, we should learn from them.

One such example was the division of Germany into east and west after WWII.  One group of people – with the same history, language, culture, everything – was artificially split, with half living in a free market/capitalist west, and the other half living in a totalitarian leftist-governed east.

Fast forward 30 years and West Germany has BMWs and functioning institutions and a clean environment and adorable Nena singing about 99 Luft Balloons, and East Germany looks like Baltimore or Detroit or any other leftist-run city.  The lesson couldn’t be more obvious: allowing statist, command-and-control leftists to run your society results in disaster.

The media wing of the Democrat party was offered a similarly instructive test in the form of two near-simultaneous events.   In separate mass shootings within 36 hours of each other, two evil and possibly mentally ill (but definitely evil) jackasses shot a ton of innocent victims.  One killer left copious evidence that he was mostly a right-winger, and the other that he was a left-winger.

Here was the MSM’s chance to shine.  If they were even minimally honest, they had two viable options before them: either argue that the killers alone were responsible for their actions, regardless of what political views inspired them to act, or argue that the pols on both left and right were at least partially responsible for inspiring these nutballs.

And, of course, they chose option C: the “right-wing” killer was triggered by Trump’s terribleness, and Trump and all conservatives are responsible for his evil actions.  But what about the leftist killer, who gushed about his love for Grandma Squanto and Screaming Socialist Grandpa Bernie?  His actions were Trump’s and conservatives’ fault too, somehow.

The MSM are thoroughly dishonest and immune to shame, and they have earned the contempt of decent people everywhere. Fox and the conservative media found on the net and elsewhere are far from perfect.  But if you believe ANYTHING you see on MSNBC, CNN or the big 3 networks, you should undergo a concussion protocol and be put into conservatorship until you are no longer a threat to yourself or others.

 

Exhibit B.   The FBI’s reputation has been battered once again.  In the wake of the exposure of James Comey, Strzok and Page, and doddering Bob Mueller and his army of faceless partisan Dems, it was hard to imagine that any insider could inflict a worse black eye.

But then former FBI agent Frank Fugliuzzi – whose name sounds like something made up by a lazy, anti-Italian sitcom writer – took to MSNBC, but only after asking a cameraman to hold his beer, and his copy of Mein Kampf.  Frankie noted that Trump ordered that flags be flown at half-mast to mourn the dead in the recent shootings, and then he argued that Trump has ordered them to be returned to their normal position on August 8^th.

Therefore, Trump is a Nazi.

While that might seem like an Evel Knievel-ian logical leap (“Hey Martin,” you may have asked, “Can you spell Evel Knievel’s name correctly, and also turn it into an adjective?”  Done and done, my friend.), F-squared has a solid explanation.  It seems that “H” is the eighth letter in the alphabet, and among cultist Nazis, the number “8-8” signifies “Heil Hitler.”

So Trump obviously planned for the two losers to go on shooting sprees in early August, so that he could order flags to be lowered then, so that he could order them to be raised later… on August 8^th!  8/8.  Get it?

Hey, on a related note, do you know what members of the animal kingdom are the most sympathetic to National Socialism?  (And no, it’s not anti-Semitic lemurs.  That’s too obvious.  Hang your head in shame for even guessing that.)

The answer is the octopus.

As Frank Fugliuzzi could tell you, an octopus has 8 limbs.  So when two octopi get together, put on a Marvin Gaye record, and make some sweet cephalopod love… the obvious number involved is 8-8, and the result is a veritable nautical Nuremberg!  Do you think it’s a coincidence that the top Nazis were famously enthralled by tentacle porn?  Duh! Wake up, people!

Okay, that got a little weird.

But not as weird as Exhibit C: the Democratic Socialists convention that took place in Atlanta last weekend.

By now you’ve heard all kinds of hilarious details that arose from this cavalcade of misfits. How they unironically call each other “comrade” in 2019.  The way they all agreed to do “jazz hands” rather than applauding, so that those among them who are hyper-sensitive to sound wouldn’t be tormented by… clapping.

But the most entertaining detail for me was when one beta male asked that people not talk amongst themselves, because he is easily triggered by background noise.   But he started his mewling statement with the words, “Guys, can we…”

So naturally some loon in the cheap seats said, “Can you NOT use gendered language?  If I hear the word ‘guys’ one more time from Comrade Patriarchy up there, I’m going to clap my hands, which will send you into a seizure that leaves you curled up on the floor in a fetal position!”

I paraphrased that a bit, but I believe I caught the essence of it.

But I left out something crucial.  This is how the beta male began his statement: “Um, guys, first of all, James Jackson, Sacramento, he/him…”

This “giving your pronouns” practice is a grammatical offshoot of the “gender is a social construct” anti-scientific goofiness that has recently become required thinking on the left.  But it’s also indicative of the leftist mania for controlling people in general.  If you’re a baker, you must be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding.  If you’re a pro-life employer, you must be forced to pay for your employees’ abortions.  And you can’t put salt on that, or buy a drink in a cup that’s too big, or drink it with a plastic straw.  Etc.

But the absurdity involved in “choosing your pronouns” allows the left to do some especially satisfying linguistic bullying.  When a person stands before you, and he’s built like a Clemson starting strong safety, with a beard as thick as a whale omelette, and he tells you that his pronouns are “she” and “her,” that’s an intimidation move.  It’s meant to force you to either meekly say something that you know is not true, or take the social and political consequences of “traumatizing” someone from a protected victim group.

Even a year or two ago, this would have been so absurd that no one would take it seriously.  But now it’s mandatory, and an emotionally satisfying way for pinched, humorless scolds on the left to virtue signal.

Case in point, re: humorless scolds — Just a few weeks ago, Liz Warren changed her campaign website to include “she/her” as her pronouns.  If I had any talent at computers, I’d hack into her website and add, “Her noun used to be ‘papoose,’ but now it is ‘squaw.’”  #wemustneverstopmockingher

In fact, I’d like to take a page from the lefties’ handbook.  If they can choose their own pronouns, I should be able to choose my own parts of speech.

So I have.

For my pronouns, I’m going Old Testament: “thee/thou/thine.”   From now on, my adjectives are going to be “brilliant” and “handsome.”   And I’ve chosen my adverb, too: “breathtakingly.”

Also, my title is henceforth, “Your Excellency.”

I can’t wait to get emails from my lefty colleagues at work, so I can correct the hell out of them.  Within a week or two, I’m going to bully them into sending inter-office emails like this:

“To: Martin Simpson

From: Whomever

“Your Excellency,

I wanted to touch base with thee about thy breathtakingly brilliant memo of last Monday, as well as how breathtakingly handsome thou appeared at thy presentation at the weekend conference.  Could I stop by thine office to meet thee for a few minutes later today?”

In fact, I think I might also start picking other peoples’ titles.

For my co-workers, I like the sound of “Thy Humble Servant.”

Avenatti/Jackson 2020!

Well, I’m back from Europe, although the time change has thrown me for a loop, so I’m still not sure whether I’m afoot or horseback.  But I’ve never been one to let a little disorientation keep me from offering a few thoughts.  I won’t go into an exhaustive travelogue, but I thought I’d mention some highlights.

We spent 3 days in London first, which obviously wasn’t enough.  I saw the usual bucket list of sites, but the Tower of London was a particular favorite, and contained one surreal moment.

We were in the White Tower, and I’d just read a plaque telling how Richard III had imprisoned 2 princes there who were never seen again.  Of course my thoughts went to Shakespeare’s play about the famously hunchbacked Richard.

So I turn from the plaque and bump into a guy with a hunched back!

Of course I don’t mean any disrespect to what I’m sure PC rules would have us refer to as “a member of the differently-postured community,” and God bless anyone with any kind of physical deformity.  But that freaked me out.

My wife noticed the odd look on my face, and said, “What?”

I nodded toward the guy, who was leaving the room ahead of us, and whispered, “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York.”  She just stared at me blankly and shook her head, not being as big of a Shakespeare fan as I am.

When she shook her head and turned away, I had a thought that has occurred to a lot of people who passed through that tower in the last 900 years: Tough room.

 

Amsterdam is beautiful, but I hadn’t anticipated how much the legal red-light district would depress me.  The booths themselves just looked like empty rooms to me, since (as I may have mentioned in earlier columns) all other women became invisible to me when I met my wife.

Even when I was single, and still retained the ability to visually perceive other women, I was never tempted by the idea of going to a hooker.  (Other than when I watched Rebecca De Mornay at the height of her powers in Risky Business.)  (Giggity.)

But even if I had been, I’d guess that part of the thrill would be the forbidden frisson of illicitness of the whole thing, a sense of having gotten away with a naughty indulgence.  But government-sanctioned and regulated sexual misbehavior sounds like the most soul-less, un-thrilling experience since Kamala Harris hooked up with creepy old Willie Brown in exchange for a government job.

Plus, if I had just finished with a woman and then saw a license on the wall, auto-signed by Chuck and Nancy and assuring me that she was healthy as a horse, I would sprint to the nearest de-lousing station and then seek out the most comprehensive round of antibiotics known to man!

We took a boat ride past some impressive castles on the Rhine, and saw the cathedral at Cologne, before traveling through Switzerland, which was as beautiful as advertised.  We took a cog train to the top of Mt. Pilatus, overlooking Lucerne, and later took a boat ride on Lake Lucerne.  We ate fondue and listened to some mountain horn-blowing, and saw the amazing speared-and-dead Lion of Lucerne carving in a granite wall, and I couldn’t help thinking of Aslan. (You may have guessed that C.S. Lewis is one of my top few favorite writers.) (He should be one of yours too, IMHO.)

There is much to admire about Switzerland and the Swiss, and their famous neutrality has been a wise course during most of Europe’s wars.  But their behavior during WWII rightly taints their reputation.  To be neutral in a conflict when the Nazis are on one side is unconscionable. To in effect collaborate with the Nazis and provide safe haven for much of their stolen loot is egregious.

But to spend decades after the war resisting attempts by Jews and other victims of Hitler to recover their property from Swiss banks should shame the nation.  (FYI, a great book on that history is The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead.)

We spent two days in Paris at the end of the trip, which let us start to scratch the surface.  We took a boat ride on the Seine at dusk, arriving back just as the Eiffel tower was lit up.  The next day I saw Napoleon’s tomb and the adjoining military museum, while my wife and daughters saw some frou-frou art elsewhere.

Not that I’ve got anything against art.

Except for modern art, which is uniformly terrible.  Firstly, because it violates Simpson’s First Rule of Art: If I can do it, it’s not art.

Secondly, because it doesn’t look anything like what it is supposed to.  If you paint a horse, and not 1 of 100 viewers can guess what it is, you are the Liz Warren of painters.  (That is, you are claiming to be something that you are definitively NOT.)  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

For example, here is a conversation that has never happened in the history of the world:

Regular Person: “Hey Michelangelo, why did you think it was appropriate to paint a platypus being chased by a leopard with Stegosaurus horns on a church ceiling?”

Michelangelo:  “That’s God, reaching out to Adam at the moment of creation.  And get away from me.”

Thirdly, the pretentious titles.  It would be bad enough if I had laid out a blank canvas on the floor, took Cassie the Wonder Dog into the middle of it after I’d dipped her bushy tail into paint, and had her roll over a dozen times, and called the result a Work of Art.

But if I then titled the result, “Man’s Inhumanity to Man,” you would never stop slapping me.  And rightly so.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  I really enjoyed the trip, and look forward to going back again.  But ironically, one drawback was that amazing things – statues, cathedrals, castles – suffer from proximity to each other.

During our Rhine cruise, we saw 11 castles that were between 400-900 years old.  If any one of those were in my home state, it would be the coolest structure there. (Except maybe for Wrigley or Soldier fields.)  But after a few hours on the Rhine, you’d turn a corner and say, “Oh.  Beautiful old castle #8.  Cool.”

As a lover of language, it was great to hear the various accents and expressions of Europeans.  It turns out that nothing is cooler than little kids yammering to their parents in adorable English or French accents.  And in London, I learned that the Victorians had called the first elevators “ascending rooms,” which made me love Victorians even a little more.

I also had a very cool encounter with a plain-spoken Swiss farmer.  He and his father have a dairy farm in a small alpine village, and our tour guide had arranged for us to get a horse-drawn cart ride around their farm in small groups.  The farmer’s son who took us around was probably in his mid-30s, with broken but understandable English, and a stoic grit that I recognize from the farmers in the Illinois towns where I grew up.

As we rode around the outskirts of town, he told us about a terrible flash flood that had hit the town in the early 1600s, destroying most of the buildings and killing a lot of villagers.  Afterwards, some local power-players from the Hapsburg empire – and he said “Hapsburgs” the way my grandpa would refer to the Japanese who bombed Pearly Harbor – scapegoated some alleged local witches for causing the flood.  “They murdered a number of women, and children too.”

Those words hung in the air for a moment, in our otherwise idyllic evening in the Swiss village.  And then he said, “It is a hard story,” and turned back to the horses.

A half hour later, during a stop by the town’s church, I was talking with him about the close-knit nature of the village, and he pointed to a nearby house.  A good friend of his lives there, and his 20-something daughter (one of the most talented yodelers in Switzerland, he told me) took a short motorcycle trip with her boyfriend to the Italian side of the alps two weeks ago.

While there, an Italian driver hit and killed the girl, and her father is now inconsolable.  After the two of us stood looking at the man’s house, he said, “It is a hard story.” And he turned and called his adorable four-year-old daughter, who rode seated next to him and held the horses’ reins, talking to the animals softly in Swiss German as they took us back to our hotel.

The coolest guy I met on the trip was actually taking the tour with us.  He was a New Zealander who I guessed was around 80.  But as we talked during our third day together, I found out that he will turn 94 on Christmas Eve.  When I asked him if he’d been to Europe before, he said that he had fought his way from Sicily up through Italy and into Germany when he was 19 years old.  I asked if he’d been at Monte Cassino, and he said that his unit arrived a few days after the Germans had retreated from there. I peppered him with questions about the war, and he answered me, but in a very low-key, modest way.

A few days later we were all eating together in Paris, and I asked him if his unit had been there during the war.  He said that they hadn’t gotten that far west, because France had already been liberated by the time his unit fought their way up through Italy, and then into Germany.  He said that they had an order change that sent them to Berchtesgaden, and I blurted out, “Did you see the Eagle’s Nest?” (Hitler’s mountain-top retreat there.)

He said he had.  His unit was arriving just as an American unit was leaving.  He asked a few of the GIs if they’d destroyed the place, and they told him that they hadn’t, but they’d liberated some of Hitler’s wine collection.  He said that he and his friends had heard rumors that Hitler might make a final stand there, and they’d hoped to be the group that captured or killed him.  But he killed himself several days earlier in Berlin.

I asked him what it was like to see Hitler’s private retreat, and what he felt when he got there.  In a deadpan delivery, he said, “We were all mad that Hitler had committed suicide. So we looked at the views and walked through the rooms, and then I drank a bunch of Hitler’s wine and I pissed in his bathtub.”

As a military history junkie, I was bowled over.  I had been talking with the guy for five days at that point, and asking specifically about his experiences in the war, and he tells me that as an afterthought.  If I hadn’t specifically asked about it, he wouldn’t have told me about it at all.

That shocks me.  If I had peed in Hitler’s bathtub, that would be how I introduced myself for the rest of my life: “Hi, I’m Martin Simpson.  I pissed in Hitler’s bathtub.”

If it was a social situation to which my wife had accompanied me, I would introduce myself and then my wife.  And then I’d point to my baseball cap, which I would never take off, and which would have embroidered on it, “I pissed in Hitler’s bathtub.”

The next day, when our bus got to Calais and we had to get out and be questioned by English customs officials before taking the ferry to Dover, I was right behind him in line. When it was his turn to step forward, I nudged his shoulder and said, “Tell them you pissed in Hitler’s bathtub. They’ll let you right through.”

That was one satisfying laugh to hear!

I’ve been catching up on the American political news that I’d missed, and will write another column in a few days.  But even though our internet was spotty over there, I did have a few people bring up politics. An Indian cabby in London, upon hearing that I was an American, said that he likes what Trump is doing very much.    And a guy from Hong Kong on our tour said that while he doesn’t care for Trump as a person, he really like’s Trump’s policies, and thinks he’s the right man to have in the White House now.

So according to my highly scientific poll of 2 people who brought it up, Trump’s policies have a 100% approval rating in Europe.

And that poll is at least as valid as anything you’ll hear from the petrified forest of blockheads at CNN and the MSM.

Avenatti/Williamson 2020!