Martin Simpson

Late Thursday I wrote a column celebrating what had been one of the best weeks ever – but I wrote prematurely, because I only covered Sunday through Wednesday.  And the good times did not stop flowing on hump day.

In fact, they continued on Thursday, when Trump went after Pelosi… at a prayer breakfast!

Okay, even I have to admit that that was not a good look for Trump.  Hammer the sleazy Dems in a news conference, or standing by a helicopter, or even through a barrage of childish and offensive – and yet hilarious — tweets.

But not at a prayer breakfast!  I agree that the SOTU is not a sacred occasion, nor are campaign stops, Rose Garden speeches, or rallies.  But I wish that Trump could have held his fire until after the prayer breakfast.

That being said, I am a flawed and fallen person, as are we all.  I constantly need forgiveness and grace.  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  That thing I don’t want to do, that is the very thing that I do.  And etc.

So if Trump’s team had asked me on Wednesday night to write a prayer for him to deliver at the prayer breakfast, l would have asked if Nancy Pelosi was going to be there.  And when the answer was yes, I would have said, “Let me think about it.”

Then I would have poured myself a big ol’ scotch, and fired up my computer, and sat in quiet contemplation.  The part of myself I like to call “St. Martin of the CO site” would perch on my right shoulder, wearing a set of angel wings and a halo, and say, “C’mon, man.  It’s a prayer breakfast.

But on my left shoulder would be “Martacus,” with devil horns and a Roman centurion helmet, working on his third scotch, and whispering, “It’s Nancy freaking Pelosi.”

And then I would high five little Martacus (which sounds like a double-entendre, but I swear it is not!) rub my hands together and cackle like Hillary when she’d just bullied one of Bill’s powerless female victims into keeping quiet.  And I would write this prayer – which you should read in Trump’s voice, if you can:

“Oh Lord, — and I don’t mean the pagan god Ra, who was worshiped by a certain person sitting at one end of this table, and who everybody knows was a false god, right?  I mean, the body of a human guy with the head of a bird, and he’s supposed to represent the sun somehow? Ridiculous.  Totally fake god.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: Dear Lord, thank you so much for taking me through the trials and tribulations brought upon me by my enemies.  And by “trial” I mean total sham trial. Everybody knows that.

Thank you for giving me a complete vindication and victory over my persecutors, with their pencil necks and their phony transcripts and their bulging eyes and their made-up charges.  Sad.

During these trying times, I got great comfort from many parts of life.  From my smoking hot wife – love you, honey! — and the record low unemployment, and your generous gift of drones, which I wisely used to kill those three terrorist creeps. Tremendously accurate strikes.

I’ve also drawn comfort from knowing that I am totally acquitted, while you have confused and thwarted my opponents, to the point that they have spent what feels like 40 years wandering in the gymnasiums and VFW halls of Iowa, having lost the ability to do simple math.  That was truly a good one, God.

But Lord, I’m not a perfect man.  My phone calls are perfect – so perfect! — but I am not. And I know that I need to be able to forgive my enemies, and not hold grudges.  And I confess that, frankly, I have been holding a grudge against someone in this room.  From the time I first saw her when I was only a child, and she was starring in one of those great 1930s Universal classic monster movies, she has terrified me.

Even further back, when she was standing beside her pharaoh, and Moses brought your 10 commandments – top notch commandments, by the way.  Just terrific! — down from the mountain, and she tried to tear them into pieces, like a complete lunatic.

By the way, lord, I also thank You for visiting me in a dream last night, and giving me the idea of having my next 4 SOTU speeches carved on stone tablets, just in case.

In conclusion, please continue to bless this most amazing of countries, and defeat its enemies.  Smite them with boils and coronavirus and primary challenges and near-lethal levels of botox, fill their filthy streets with fecal matter and dirty syringes, and make them bleed from the eyes when they say something especially stupid in the middle of a debate.

Amen.”

Okay, so other than Trump letting loose in the prayer breakfast (and I want my president to be better than me, with my sarcastic mockery and hilarious, repetitive mummy jokes), the week ended almost as greatly and bigly as it began.

Later on Thursday, Trump tore some more burial strips off of Pelosi (HA!  I can’t stop myself) in a secular press conference setting.

That same day, Grandma Squanto got off of a private plane in New Hampshire, after thundering against global warming and CEOs with gigantic carbon footprints taking private planes everywhere.  When she saw a camera man nearby, she ducked behind one of her aides, and kept maneuvering to keep that person between her and the camera.  Which was hilarious!

That might have worked when you hid behind your horse as you stalked a US cavalry unit, or snuck up on a horde of delicious, migrating crabs on the plains of Oklahoma, Lizzie.  But it doesn’t work in an airport filled with cellphones in 2020!  #wemustneverstopmockingher

On Friday, another round of great economic numbers came out, highlighted by almost a quarter-million new jobs created.  (Remember Paul Krugman, on election night?  “The economy will never recover from Trump’s election!”)

But there was one job loss announced that day.  That was Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who underwent an unscheduled rectal exam via a drone-fired missile in Yemen.  After he had survived a raid earlier in Trump’s administration, al-Rimi taunted Trump, saying that “the new fool of the White House received a painful slap across his face.”

When asked about that at a press conference, Trump said, “Ooh, I got a rhetorical face slap.  And now al-Rimi is “al-ream-y.” What a loser!”

Okay, Trump didn’t say that.  But he should have.  And admit it, you heard that in his voice, didn’t you?

And after all that – after the Three Stooges show in Iowa, and dessicated mummy hands impotently tearing up the triumphant SOTU speech, and a not-even-close acquittal and another dead terrorist – it was Friday night.  And the Democrats had another debate.

And it was beautiful!

Seven leftist dwarves took the stage (insert your own “Bloomberg is the 8^th dwarf” joke here), and proceeded to stake out the farthest left positions they could.

My summary of the transcript: “I’m more unelectable!” “No, I am!” “No, my outlandish positions will offend and repulse way more regular Americans than yours will!”  “No more malarkey!  23 skidoo!  Remember the Alamo!”

Ugh.  There were way too many idiotically repugnant positions to sort through, so I’m just going to pick one: America is RACIST!

Bernie had perhaps the most perfectly condensed statement of the main idea, when he said, “We have a racist society from top to bottom!”

His statement was slightly more hyperbolic than the others, but all of them joined him in the idea, with Mayor Pete indicting our racist ”justice system, education, healthcare and housing.” Then, when a moderator asked Grandma Squanto if that was “a substantial answer” from Pastor Pete, the Potawatomi Prevaricator™ (copyright by me, right now, in case she gets the nomination and I need to start turning out t-shirts and bumper stickers to supplement my meager writing income) said, “No,” and went on to up the ante even more on how terribly racist America is.

Amy Klobuchar, afraid that she wasn’t going to get a chance to crap on our country too, got the moderator’s attention by heaving a binder right into her skull.  Witnesses differ on whether that pitch was more of a curve or a slider, but everyone agreed it hit the sweet spot of the strike zone.  Or in this case, the moderator’s right orbital bone.

While paramedics gave the moderator medical attention, Klobuchar took advantage of the air time to condemn,` “the systematic racism when it comes to voting.”

Okay, I made up the part about the binder throwing.  Because she is always careful to do that behind closed doors, and only against aides who are unimportant enough that nobody notices when they disappear, and their bodies are never found.

But I didn’t make up her quote, which is much more damning than the niggling question of whether she may have pelted an intern or two – or 28 — with a blunt object here and there.   Because at least her bad temper might pay off in the White House, when she could potentially lose it and bean Soleimani or Al-bag-deady or al-Reamy when they are attacking our country.

Oops – she can’t do that.  Because Trump already killed all of them!

So why do we need to elect an angry little America-hater with a Triple-A level arm, at best?

That’s right.  We don’t.

Sing it, Ray Charles: “Oh happy day…”

 

Avenatti/Al-Reamy 2020!

Before you begin reading this column, let me ask you to go to Youtube, find the video of Ray Charles singing “Oh Happy Day” in front of a choir of the happiest dashiki-wearing folks you’ll ever see, and start that playing softly in the background.  Because a column this happy requires a soundtrack.  (Also, don’t miss the awkward yet adorable little dance/walk thing that Charles does at the end of the song.  Because that is the same exact awkward dance/walk that I did in my living room – with Cassie the Wonder Dog watching me in confusion – as I watched Nasty Nancy P tearing up Trump’s SOTU speech on Tuesday night.)

Was this last week the happiest week in our nation’s history?  I can’t say that definitively.  I got married 30 years ago, and that was a pretty good week.  I’ve been present at the birth of two daughters, and those were pretty good weeks.

We adopted Cassie, the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986, Trump thumped Cankles McPantsuit in 2016 like a 19-year-old Mike Tyson knocking Eddie Richardson into the troposphere in the first round, and George Washington crossed the Delaware and whipped some German mercenaries at Christmastime.

Those were all pretty good weeks.  But this week was right up there.

On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl.  I love Mahomes, the Chiefs hadn’t been on top for 50 years, and though it’s not the 49ers’ fault, they represent the most far-left, feces-filled (but I repeat myself) city in the country.

On Monday, the Democrats ran the greatest caucus in the history of caucuses… right into the ground!  Move over, wax-winged Icarus, and step aside, unsinkable Titanic, because we have a new, perfect illustration of human hubris leading to a disastrous face-plant, with extra points added for sheer hilarity!

Four years after Bernie’s people insisted on changes after Iowa was corruptly and/or incompetently given to Hillary, the woke whiz kids came up with an app that was guaranteed to streamline the process, and demonstrate the flawless efficiency that is the hallmark of leftist rule.

And boy, did it!

End result: 5000 years after the invention of the abacus, 2200 years after the invention of paper, and 350 years after the invention of the pencil, the Democrats are still not able to count a small number of white people in a very small state.

And these white people weren’t hiding in duck blinds, wearing camouflage.  They were standing around in well-lit gymnasiums!

If you haven’t been in a Midwestern gym lately, they have tan-colored wood floors, and dark wood bleachers.  White people in that environment are pretty easy to spot.  Unless you are a leftist bureaucrat with a killer app, apparently.

How bad was it?  After three days, we still aren’t sure who won.  In fact, on Wednesday (and I am not making this up), the state Democrat party said that the partial totals had been certified as accurate, and then later in the day had to admit that some votes that were cast for Bernie had been erroneously counted for Butch Patrick.

I know, that’s what I thought, too: Are you telling me that tv’s Eddie Munster got some Democrat votes in Iowa?   I mean, it makes a little sense, since tv’s Herman Munster won the Iowa caucus in 2004.  But still, I don’t think any pundits were expecting Eddie to have such a good showing.

Wait a minute.  My crack research staff informs me that it wasn’t Butch Patrick, but MA governor Deval Patrick.  Also, Herman Munster did NOT win Iowa for the Democrats in 2004 – that was John Kerry.  Honest mistake.  And by the way, I would sooner vote for the ticket of Herman and Eddie Munster in 2020 than whichever two boneheads the Dems end up nominating from their current field.   (Also, Uncle Fester would make a better Attorney General than Obama’s Steadman Holder or Loretta Lynch.)

Ironically, the biggest winner from Iowa’s Cluster Caucus™ may be Joey Gaffes, because the lack of promptly announced results dampened the effect of his terrible, 4^th place finish.  And he didn’t help himself by his performance when he showed up at one gym in Cedar Rapids:

Biden: “Hello, Boise!”

Voice in the crowd: “That’s Idaho.  This is Iowa!”

Biden: “I know that.  I’ve always loved the amazing potatoes you folks grow here.”

Voice: “That’s still Idaho.”

Biden: “Thanks for coming out.  Go Utes!”

Voice: “That’s Utah.”

Biden: “Listen, fat—”

Biden’s handler (whispering): “These are supporters.”

Voice:  “Why are you bleeding from the eyes?”

Biden: “You want to do some push-ups with me?  Let’s go.”

Handler: “Please don’t do that.”

Biden: “Do you want to compare IQs?  Come on, man!”

Handler: “Okay, we need to get back on the road.”

Biden (waving):  “I love the Green Mountain State!”

Voice: “That’s Vermont.  This is Iowa.”

Biden:  “Give me a break!  Get your facts straight, Jack.” (his handler starts tugging him toward the door.)  “No Mularkey!  23 skidoo!”

Handler: “Okay, Mr. Vice President—”

Biden (as he’s pulled outside): “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”

And, scene.

 

Then came Tuesday, and the best SOTU speech ever.

I don’t care for the modern tradition of the televised SOTU.  They are always a bit of a dog and pony show, with guests used as props, awkward applause from one side and poker faces from the other, and a whiff of monarchy about the whole thing.  I’d rather we went back to George Washington’s practice, and had the prez deliver a letter to be read by a faceless functionary: “Interest rates are low, employment is high, we’re working on a treaty with the Turks, and #wemustneverstopmocking Liz Warren.  The state of the union is solid, and if we could throw some of these leftist bums out in the next election, it would be even better.  Good night, and God bless America.”

But if we have to have a SOTU, THIS is the SOTU we should have.

Trump was at his showman-like Trumpiest, showcasing an effective line-up of guests: the Tuskeegee airman survivor; the non-commie, legitimate leader of Venezuela; the Army wife and kids with the surprise reunion with their vet dad; the black girl who gets to escape her crappy public school.   All of those people should have been non-controversial applause points for both sides, and yet the Dems were grudging at best.

And Trump was also at his trolliest: he had Melania give Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Rush Limbaugh!  At the SOTU!

And the Dems played right into his hands.  A bunch of them walked out like pouting children. AOC ostentatiously did not attend.  Which is par for the course for her, since all of us look at America and see the greatest, richest, most free country in the history of humanity.  But when She-Guevara looks at America, it’s all helipads and ringworm as far as the eye can see.  (I know that doesn’t appear to make sense.  But read my January column at Martinsimpsonwriting.com about her interview with Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) Coates, and it will.)

And just when you thought that the Dems couldn’t come across any worse, Nancy Pelosi said, “Hold my canopic jar.”

She looked like a crazy lady during most of the speech, alternating between fumbling with the speech pages, staring vacantly, and shaking her head and apparently talking to herself.  When it was over, she famously ripped up the speech, in a graceless gesture that made her look like a petulant child.  Which is ridiculous, since she was actually a child during the Ptolemaic dynasty in ancient Egypt.

Trump’s ability to draw his opponents into unforced errors is really amazing.  He has strengths that none of them have.  He also has some glaring weaknesses – a bullying and petty streak, an instinct for childish insults – but those are baked into the cake re: our view of Trump.  People have been so glad to see a Republican who will fight back and get into the mud with sleazy Dems, they forgive him for flaws that would doom another candidate.

The Dems’ only possible path to defeat Trump would be to stick to the high ground, and let his less appealing qualities alienate moderates, independents, RINOs, and suburban women who are offended by them.  But I can’t think of the last Dem who has consistently taken the high road (Obama only seems to have done so in comparison to the latest gaggle of Schiffs and Tlaibs and Ilhan Omars), and Nancy can’t help herself.

Her attacks on Trump as childish and petty are totally undermined by her tantrum after his speech, and Schiff’s wild warnings that Trump’s going to give Alaska to the Russians, and the various Dems’ shrieking about him being Hitler and a fascist and etc.   (I’m assuming that some folks at the RNC are even now cutting some “take back the House” ads featuring Pelosi’s shenanigans at the SOTU.  If any of them are reading this, I’d like to suggest a possible slogan for the campaign: “De-gavel the Mummy in 2020!”)

Similarly, the Dems seemed to be making some political hay a while ago by pointing out the chaotic goings-on in the White House, with appointees being hired and fired and thrown under the bus on a regular basis.  “We,” the Dems tried to argue, “would be a return to normalcy and competent, orderly governance.”

But have you noticed how smoothly Detroit is run?  And San Francisco?  And Baltimore, and Philly, and New Orleans, and Chicago, and every other city and state that the Dems have had one-party control over?

And did I mention Iowa, where it seems like just this Monday when they couldn’t do a simple head count?    These dopes couldn’t pick the winner of a one-horse race.  They couldn’t manage a three-car funeral.    They couldn’t find their Nadler with both hands and a topographical map.  If these guys were coroners, half their patients would survive the autopsy!

And then it was hump day.  And the Dems in the Senate began humping a table leg they’d mistaken for an interested partner, while the bad orange man was acquitted.

They needed 67 votes to get rid of Trump.  They got 48.  As the Democrat leadership in Iowa could tell you, that’s 115 votes less than they needed.  Or, wait, 7 votes.  No… hold on….  By their calculations, Robert Duvall is now president.

No, it’s Patrick Stewart.  Make that Danny Partridge.  Or Danny Patrick.

NO – Deval Patrick.  He won Iowa.   And Cousin It is leading in New Hampshire.

Can you hear that sound?  It’s Ray Charles, laughing softly as his head bobs back and forth, and his gifted fingers start dancing lightly across a keyboard.

“Oh happy day…”

Avenatti/Eddie Munster 2020!

As we await the vote to acquit Trump – and the hilarious wailing and gnashing of teeth that will accompany it throughout the media — I’d like to start a new week with three other stories that brought me joy this past week.

First, Don Lemon’s perfectly emblematic laughing fit with two other non-entities on his insufferably stupid show.

Everybody agrees that among Hillary’s worst mistakes in 2016 – right up there with “being Hillary Clinton” and “running for president” – was her dismissal of half of the country as “deplorables.”  Smart politicians go to great lengths to criticize their opponent, but not voters who might be considering their opponent.

Enter Don Lemon, who had two equally dim bulbs on his unwatchable show who mocked all Trump voters as idiotic hicks.  One guy did a hilarious Southern accent, and the other one mocked the way conservatives can’t spell, or understand a map.   And Lemon could not stop laughing for two solid minutes.

A day later he explained that he hadn’t been laughing at conservative people, but at the joke.

Yes.  The joke.  The one about how stupid conservative people are.

You know what voters really love, elitist hacks?  Being lectured on IQ by people who think that bovine flatulence is going to destroy the earth in 8 years, and that there are no such things as X and Y chromosomes, and that socialist dictatorships produce a thriving economy and a bountiful sugar beet harvest.

This is how you got President Trump, CNN.  And it’s how you’re going to get him for four more years.

 

Second,  the super-satisfying way the Brits left the EU.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Britain, even though their history is a little hit-and-miss.

On the “pro” side, they gave us Shakespeare and the Spitfire and the Beatles and the long bow (my personal favorite of all the bows), and they founded us.

On the “con” side, they got a little too Democrat-y for their own good and started taxing everything that moved, so my ancestors had to send them packing with the help of the Kentucky long rifle and a little something I like to call “grit.”

But as other countries go, they’re pretty damn good.  And lately, they’ve been getting better, culminating with the arrival of my two new favorite Brits: Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage is one of my favorite Brits for several reasons.  First, because every nation should have a most-perfect-first-name for their citizens; that name, for Brits, is obviously “Nigel.”  (For France it’s “Francois,” for Mexico it’s “Juan,” for all Scandanavian countries – and don’t pretend you are not all essentially the same country – it’s “Sven,” for Germany it’s “Hans,” and so on.) (For America?  Do I have to state the obvious?  Okay, I will: “Martin.”)

Second, I absolutely loved the way that Farage led the UK out of the arrogant, micro-managing bunch of swampy poke-noses who run Washington DC.

I’m sorry, make that Brussels.  The arrogant, micro-managing bunch of poke-noses in Brussels.  Honest mistake.

Anyway, Farage has long pushed for Brexit against a gaggle of condescending jerks who said it would never happen, that no one populist and a crowd of freedom-fetishizers could ever win over Cankles McSocialist and the Dem/MSM establishment.

I’m sorry, make that the EU.  Honest mistake again.

So last week, Nigel made a final speech in the Reichstag, bidding farewell to the EU.

Shoot!  Not the Reichstag.  The Javits Center.   He made the speech in the Javits Center, under many suspended bags of blue and white pieces of paper meant to symbolize the glass ceiling, which the Brussels Brain Trust (great wrestling tag team name, by the way) intended to release in the celebration over the anticipated British vote to stay in the Eu.

Good lord!  Where is my mind today?  It wasn’t the Reichstag or the Javits Center, but the EU Parliament building.  Honest mistake yet again.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Google Farage’s speech, which was so perfect that I thought I’d hallucinated it when still gripped with my flu fever last week.   Everybody who appreciates freedom and standing up to bullies should watch it.  But the ending is especially great.

He closes by pulling out a small Union Jack flag (his colleagues all do the same), and he waves it around as he says that he is waving goodbye.  “We look forward in the future to working with you as a sovereign—”

At that point – in a moment that couldn’t be better scripted to more clearly illustrate what’s wrong with unaccountable, leftist, big-government entities – the Euro-crats cut off his microphone.  Because he was in the middle of stating that the Brits would be happy to interact with all European peoples as one sovereign, self-determining people, but not as a vassal state, as the arrogant elites in Brussels see them.

And those elites literally silenced him.

A moment later, a sour-looking lady who looks like she identifies as an 1880’s librarian said, “If you disobey the rules, you get cut off.  Could we please remove the flags!”  As she said this, she looked at Farage as if what she’d really like to cut off was not his mic, but what Bruce Jenner cut off of himself.

But Nigel just smiled at her.  Because guess what, angry old Euro-weasel spinster bureaucrat?  The Brits don’t have to obey your rules any more, and you can replace the Union Jack with that “Six Flags Over Micro-Managemen- Land” goofy EU flag of yours.

And I think Nigel might have a suggestion as to where you can stick that flag pole.

 

Last but not least is that fan favorite, Grandma Squanto.

As Liz Warren’s campaign seems to be heading toward life support, and she contemplates the prospect of returning to her previous place of employment – and yes, I do mean a cigar store (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – I came across a report that I thought must surely be some parody story in the Onion.

But then I looked it up and found out that it was real.  I’m speaking, of course, of her plan to choose a secretary of education, when she becomes make-believe president.

She was asked how she would make education inclusive.   (Which is an idiotic question, but I don’t have time for that right now.)  And Warren points to two criteria.

First, “It has to be someone who’s taught in a public school, hello?”

I love when 100 year old white ladies try to sound like a dim-witted character from a third-rate sitcom with a racially diverse group of teens who were what the middle-aged writers thought was hip in 1987.

Then – and I cannot stress enough how much I am not making this up – she told a story about meeting a 9-year-old transgender kid a few months ago, who asked about what she would do to help transgendered kids.  And she said that, “I’m going to have a Secretary of Education that this young trans person interviews on my behalf, and only if this person believes [this] nominee is absolutely committed to creating a welcoming environment … will that person actually be advanced to be Secretary of Education.”

Leave aside the issue of transgenderism, or gender dysphoria, or terrible parents who should be Baker Acted and possibly horse-whipped.  That’s such a politically correct minefield that it can’t be resolved here.

But forget all that, and focus on the core of what she said: she wants us to believe that she’d have a confused 9-year-old child vet her cabinet nominees.  That’s a confidence-builder, isn’t it?

Can you picture Ronald Reagan stopping by the local middle school after his inauguration?  “Hey, kid, are you not sure whether you should pee standing up or sitting down?  Good.  Stop eating that paste, and come over here and talk to Cap Weinberger and George Schultz for a minute, and tell me who you like for SecDef.”

On his podcast, Adam Carolla often plays a game he calls “Stupid or Liar,” in which he takes a clip or a quote from a prominent celebrity or politician, and asks his audience to determine whether that person is an idiot, or just lying.

A recent example was when vacuous Democrat waste of a haircut Gavin Newsom claimed that all homeless people need is affordable housing, because high rents have caused their situation.

As if a guy sitting in his own filth, shooting heroin between his toes and explaining to anyone who will listen that he is Napoleon and is about to make a triumphant march on Paris, would get right back on his feet if the city of Santa Monica would just offer him a 2/1 with off-street parking for $650 a month.

Carolla’s conclusion: Newsom can’t be stupid enough to believe that.  So he’s a liar.

But what do we conclude about Grandma Squanto?  Your first instinct has to be that she can’t be stupid enough to believe that she should give a bunch of kids some crayons and ask them to write out a full roster of names that she can then declare her cabinet.

On the other hand, she stared at her vacant, translucent face and watery blue eyes in various mirrors for 30 years, and was apparently convinced enough that she was an Indian to take a DNA test and then publicize it.

So what you do you think?  Liz Warren: stupid or liar?

 

Avenatti & Stupid-or-Liar 2020!

Now that my fever has lifted and my flu is gone, I went back to see if I had actually hallucinated a speech by AOC on how wealthy people should behave.   And as you probably know – if you’ve got a strong stomach and a masochistic desire to be lectured by uninformed ex-bartenders – I did not hallucinate that speech.  It is a real thing that happened.

Now some people say that AOC is a pretty face stuck onto an empty head.  Others say that she’s the kind of crackpot socialist who wouldn’t be able to start or run a business if her life depended on it.  Still others say that her inability to properly execute a drink order is exceeded only by her inability to understand basic economic principles.

Yet even more others say that her earning a degree in economics from BU is the greatest stain on an American university’s reputation since Bill Clinton spent several years teaching law and Advanced Co-ed Groping (5 credits, counting the lab work) at the University of Arkansas.

And all of those people are absolutely correct.

So why would I take the time to dissect her latest interview?

Because it is hilarious, of course.  But also because she may be the most accurate representative of the outlook, philosophy and agenda of the most committed and influential part of the leftist base of the Democrat party, and is thus worthy of our attention.

She was interviewed by Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) Coates, who is quite an over-rated thinker himself.  But sitting next to AOC, he looks like a cross between Stephen Hawking and Wittgenstein and some other really smart guy whom I can’t think of now because I’m appreciably dumber after having read AOC’s  ramblings.

In an interview to celebrate MLK Day, AOC discussed her plan for a 70% top income tax rate, explaining that the moral question involved is, “What kind of a society do we want to live in?  Are we comfortable with a society where someone can have a personal helipad while this city is experiencing the highest level of poverty and homelessness since the Great Depression.”

First, I’m not sure that the biggest economic boom of the last 50 years squares with the highest poverty rate since the depression.  On the other hand, NYC is completely ruled by leftists, and their ability to create high poverty rates can’t be denied, so…

Second, what?  A HELIPAD?  That’s the problem in NYC?  All of those damn helipads, cluttering up the place?  Why, it’s getting so bad that one of the Democrats’ pet homeless guys can barely get his sleeping bag rolled out before he has to run for cover to avoid the descending helicopter that lands right on his stuff.

Because everyone knows that one of the leading quality-of-life problems facing the homeless is the heartbreak of helicopter landing-gear tire marks on your sleeping bag.

It’s a cliché because it’s true.

When AOC was then asked if it’s possible to live in a moral society that includes billionaires, she said (duh!), “No, it’s not.  I’m not saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffet [and yes, she left me off that list just because she knows how much it bugs me] are immoral.  But a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.”

Ah, yes.  Remember that glorious time before Carnegie and John Rockefeller, when the Western hemisphere was blessedly ring-worm-free?  Well, not anymore.  Thanks, economically super-successful jerks!

She had some more “thoughts” on economic inequality, too:

“I think it’s wrong that the majority of the country doesn’t make a living wage.”  To which I can only say, Source?

“I think it’s wrong that you can work 100 hours and not feed your kids.”  Source??

“I think it’s wrong that corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid by the government, experiencing a wealth transfer from the public, for paying people less than a minimum wage.”  Source???

That’s three sentences in a row that start with “I think,” with nary an actual thought in sight.

But don’t worry, because she did a senior research project at BU in Widget Production.  So when Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) posed the, “I’m a billionaire who made and sold widgets” hypothetical question, he was right in her wheel-house:

“Well, you didn’t make those widgets, did you?” the bottom-quintile bartender replied.  “Because you employed thousands of people and paid them less than a living wage to make those widgets for you.  You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages.”

I love that she is offered a hypothetical about a non-existent product, and she imagines a fully-fleshed out world that is made up out of whole cloth, and yet it just coincidentally corresponds to the hateful, envious world-view of the far left:

How many employees are engaged in widget-making?  Thousands.  (No CAD-heavy widget-manufacturing workplace for her!)

What do those employees get paid?  Less than a living wage.  (Yet somehow they are still alive?  How does that work, exactly?)

What furniture does a widget magnate favor?  A couch.

Oh, wait, now those sub-living wages have plummeted from the last sentence… now they’re “slave wages!”

Um, Ms. Cortez?  I’m no antebellum history buff, but if I remember correctly, slaves didn’t have “wages.”  That was a pretty big part of being a slave, I think.

Anyway, AOC believes that the idea that Americans should aspire to “be a billionaire and own more than millions of families combined’ is not an aspirational or good thing.”  (By the way, I wonder if she’s offended that I pay more in federal income taxes than “millions of families combined?”  Not because I’m super-successful – though, have I mentioned my amazing wife and family, and world-class dog? – but because 48% of Americans pay no federal income taxes.)

Her main take-away quote is that, “No one ever makes a billion dollars.  You take a billion dollars.”

Got that?  If you produce a good or service for which millions of people voluntarily exchange their own money, and your piece of that ever totals a billion dollars, you are a thief – a taker, not a maker.  And AOC says that our system “should not let [you] exist.”

Yikes.  Is there any other way to read that other than you should either be killed, or at least robbed?

And what is the magic number where net worth tips over from “good/aspirational” to “must not be allowed?”

I know that it’s not six figures, because she went from bartender’s wages to that when she got elected, and she doesn’t seem troubled.  And if she’s a typical pol, she’ll have a net worth in the millions very soon, and I’m guessing that that amount of wealth won’t perturb her.

Because you “make” $100k, and you “make” $1 million.

But you “take” $1 billion.   You ring-worm-spreading, fascist helipad-enthusiast!

The scariest thing isn’t that the way she looks at the economy and our society is so uninformed and malevolent.  It’s that when she spouted this garbage, she was in a giant, public space full of people who were supposed to be there to honor MLK Jr., and she got repeated rounds of applause for doing it.

No, I take that back.  There’s one thing scarier.

In fact, consider this a trigger warning: If you are faint of heart or weak of stomach, please stop reading right now.  Because I’m about to share with you the single scariest paragraph I’ve read since years ago, when I came across the part in Pet Sematary where that unutterably creepy dead cat shows up back at the house.

Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One of the fawning articles about AOC’s interview ended this way:

“The representative was recently appointed to serve on the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees Wall Street. ‘I’m looking forward to digging into the student loan crisis, examining for-profit prisons/ICE detention, and exploring the development of public & postal banking,’ she said in a tweet.”

Avenatti/Ring Worm, 2020!

I’m just on the tail end of a killer flu. Fortunately, I have the strength of 10 men, because my heart is pure, and so I think I’m almost over it.  But while in the grips of heavy doses of Nyquil, a Z-pac and some doctor-recommended, purely medicinal scotch, I had some fevered sleep experiences.

The kind of troubled sleep that – if I were of a poetic bent – might have resulted in me waking up with a fully formed poem in my head.  (“In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree…”)

But because I’m more inclined to politician-mocking, I kept dozing and waking, but no matter how much time had passed, Mr. Mackey from South Park was still yammering on tv.  “Trump is bad, mmmkay?  And his phone calls?  Those are bad.  And we can’t let voters decide who gets to be president, because that would be bad, mmmkay?”

(And okay, there was one bout of troubled sleep from which I woke with this going through my mind:  “In Washington, did Adam Schiff, a mock-trial dumpster fire decree…”)

Now that the fever has broken, I realize that those were only partly delusions.  Because Pencil-Neck has apparently been on tv all week, telling the same stale lies with the same bug-eyed expression that has earned the House Dems a popularity rating right down there with heat rash and Cats: the Movie!

Since CO and many COers have already dissected the Dem’s sham-peachment performance in detail, I thought I’d piece this column together from some notes I wrote on various other stories over the last week or so.

Sure, I wrote these notes on a yellow pad as I slipped in and out of consciousness and a high fever, so they might not be as cogent as I might wish.  But I’d still stack them up against anything that Nadler or Schiff said in the past week:

1.I saw that the MSM spent approximately 1000 hours warning all of America that the 2^nd amendment rally in Virginia last week was going to be a flashpoint attracting neo-Nazis and white supremacists from all over.  “This will make Charlottesville look like a walk in the park!”  “These gun nuts will be marching down the street like a cross between Yosemite Sam and Al-Qaeda, firing six-guns and AK-47s into the air.  Run for your lives!”

Net result: 0 disturbances, 0 vandalism or crime, 0 shootings.   Total hours of MSM news time devoted to the totally peaceful results: 0 hours.

I was a little surprised that there weren’t any incidents there, just because I figured there would be some lefty or ANTIFA troublemakers infiltrating the proceedings, and firing off a few shots that the media could then blame on 2^nd amendment supporters.

But then I remembered that the marchers were all carrying.  So the first evil jerk who opened fired would be like the evil jerk who opened fire in that church in Texas recently.  (If you haven’t seen the video – and if so, is there something wrong with your television, son? – one armed deacon put him down with a head shot in about 3 seconds, and his body was then surrounded by three other parishioners with pistols.  God bless Texas!)

Also, keep beating that “the Nazis are coming!” drum, MSM.  Just because you’ve been laughably wrong the last 327 times in a row, doesn’t mean you will be again, right?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you could fit all of the neo-Nazis in America in an average community college gym, and the bleachers wouldn’t be completely full.   It’s hard to believe that the MSM can’t see how stupid they’re making themselves look.  They’re the Boy Who Cried Himmler, and nobody is listening anymore.

2. Speaking of people who are oblivious to how they come across to everyone else, Hillary cantered her way back into the public eye this week. First, because she’s being sued by Tulsi Gabbard for calling her a Russian agent.  (Would it be lookist of me to point out that Gabbard seems a little too easy on the eyes to be a leftist politician?  She’s not the least bit mummy-like or equine, which I’ve come to assume are pre-requisites over there.)

Second, because she tore into Bernie, sneering that “he’s never gotten anything done, and nobody likes him.”   The latter charge is pretty rich, considering that within the last 20 years, Hillary has taken over first place in the “Least Liked Leader in the History of the World” competition.  (Good news, Ivan the Terrible and Vlad the Impaler – you’re both off the hook!)

The former charge has the benefit of being true, but I see that as a good thing: I’d rather that our socialists get nothing done.  Because when socialists accomplish a lot, it ends in gulags and poverty and starvation and mass executions.

Also, is Hillary the one to point fingers about people not accomplishing anything?  I mean sure, she was Secretariat, but other than that?  She came to prominence and won a senate seat because of her husband, and in the one race she ran on her own merits, she lost to an orange caricature whom no one thought could win.

I’m sorry, my crack research staff is telling me that Hillary was Secretary of State, not Secretariat.  Honest mistake.  (Make your own joke here.  Mine:  One of them had broad, powerful flanks, tremendous ankles and did her best work in the mud, and the other one was a famous race horse…)

Third, Hillary gave an interview to the Hollywood Reporter in which she defended her association with Bill Clinton-doppelganger Harvey Weinstein.  She said, and I am not making this up, “How could we have known? He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general…”

Yes, how could anyone ever have known?  I mean, other than the fact that at least three influential lefties (Lena Dunham, Tina Brown, and Ronan Farrow) reportedly warned Hillary or her campaign about Weinstein.  Also, his lecherous, predatory ways were so widely known for so long, that Seth MacFarlane could make a famous joke during the Oscars in 2013 congratulating five supporting actress nominees because they would “never have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein again.”

Of course, Hillary is the same woman who was married to Slick Willy for decades, and yet never seemed to notice that every intern leaving his office was straightening out her hair and clothing, rubbing her behind or muttering, “I can’t believe that law professor/governor/president Bill Clinton just sexually assaulted me!  If only there were a woke, powerful feminist around here that I could report this to.”

Yes, Hillary.  How could you have ever known?

3.  Either I fell asleep with F-Troop on, or Grandma Squanto is looking more and more like a bullet that our body politic has dodged.

I’m sorry – make that an arrow.  An arrow that we’d dodged.  #wemustneverstopmockingher

She stepped on several political rakes recently, the first of which was her galling open-mike confrontation with Bernie after the debate, which showed what a terrible person she really is.  It’s bad enough that she sits on this supposed bombshell until the eve of a debate and then spring it on him, but then she has the nerve to accuse HIM of lying about HER?

I love the way the dopes on CNN and MSNBC all rallied around her, saying that they believed her version over Bernie’s.  I mean, why wouldn’t you believe a white lady who claimed to be an Indian, and who claimed that her kids went to public schools, and that she was fired for being pregnant, and that she could spend 32 trillion on a bloated health care bureaucracy without any middle class payer paying a single extra cent for it?

Her next fantastic gaffe came when a regular guy confronted her several days ago, saying that he took extra jobs and sacrificed to get his daughter through college without debt, and wondering if her free college giveaway means that he’ll get his money back?  She laughed at him and said, “Of course not.”

And then he gave the most concise summary of the effects of leftist economic policy that I’ve ever heard: “A friend of mine who makes more than I do bought cars and went on vacations and didn’t save, and his kid will get to go to college for free.  But because I worked hard and did the right thing, I get screwed?”

That about sums it up.

Liz gave some interviews the next day to try to undo the damage, but if she were to win the primary, I’m assuming that she’ll get to hear that little exchange again in some totally justified attack ads.

But best of all, Warren lost the endorsement of the Sioux City Journal to Joe Biden.  Sure, on the same day she got the Des Moines Register’s endorsement.  But when the paper with “Sioux” in its name  spurns Talking Bull, you know that’s got to sting.

It would be like The Indiana Gay Times dissing Mayor Pete in favor of straight Joey Gaffes.   Or Kiplinger’s Billionaire Quarterly going for socialist Bernie over Mike Bloomberg.  Or Binder-Thrower Illustrated picking Biden over Amy Klobuchar.

Finally, I’ve also got several more notes that I’m assuming represent my fever and heavy doses of Nyquil talking. See if you can make any sense out of them:

What would happen if AOC gave a lecture during which she explained that billionaires don’t earn their money, and explaining to them how the economy works, and how they should turn their businesses over to her?

Mr. Mackey and the house Dems are screaming that they now require tons of witnesses and evidence to prove the case that they spent months insisting they had already proved?

What do Mr. Peanut and Jeffrey Epstein have in common?  Neither of them killed himself.

Avenatti/Mr. Peanut 2020!

The theme today is an especially satisfying one: lefties reaping what they sow.

Exhibit A: Stephen King.

I long ago had to make my peace with the idea that many talented people in the arts whose work I really enjoy are actually – when they are not making good music or movies or writing good books — bitter leftists who, if they knew me personally, would hate me and everything I stand for.

And I am absolutely adorable, and accustomed to nothing but praise from all who know me, so that really hurts.

Nevertheless, I’ve had to manfully struggle on, knowing that even though I like Springsteen’s music, and DeNiro’s and John Cusack’s acting, and Ken Burns’ documentaries, I have to separate the artist from the art.  Because in these and so many other cases, the artists are boneheads, or worse.

Which brings me to Stephen King.   I’ve read a lot of his work over the years with a lot of enjoyment.  True, most of it was decades ago.  The early novels and novellas entertained me and creeped me out, and I’ve got a lot of his tomes on my shelves in the library in Stately Simpson Manor.

But he’s been a vitriolic, bile-filled loon on the subject of politics for pretty much his whole life.  Which is why I’ve been especially pleased to see him getting hoist on his own political petard by his leftist co-religionists this week.

It turns out that he committed the unpardonable sin: he resisted the fascist pull of identity politics.  When commenting on complaints that this year’s Oscar nominees are too white, King said, “For me, the diversity issue — as it applies to individual actors and directors, anyway — did not come up. That said… I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”

That’s a logical and ethical statement.  So of course the SJW’s went nuts, attacking him as a racist white guy who cannot talk about race because his white privilege has kept him from understanding any kind of struggle.  (Never mind that King was an underclass poor kid raised by a single mother who lived in a shabby trailer until his novel Carrie became a surprise best-seller.)

King quickly went wimpy, tweeting about how minorities are “shut out of the game,” but I can only hope that the leftist trolls and censors show him the same grace that he’s shown conservatives over the years.  That is to say, I hope they assail and harass him at every turn, until that glorious day when this thought occurs to him: the people I’ve been aligning myself with are small-minded racial bean-counters and bigots.  Maybe I should pull my head out of my politics, and reconsider things.

 

Speaking of groups that are too white, how about Exhibit B: the Democrat debate line-up.  How sweet is the irony that the party who constantly slanders conservatives as toxically white, and virtue signals ad nauseum about how racially diverse they are ends up with a debate stage as white as Fargo in the winter.  As white as a Siberian tiger in winter.  As white as Edgar Winter.

Almost as white as… Elizabeth Warren.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

And the vanilla icing on that vanilla cake on the bone china plate sitting on a white marble counter-top: the minority candidates are gone because they couldn’t get the votes of… Democrats!  Racist, klan-loving, Jim Crow-supporting, Dixie-whistling Democrats!

I’ve loved watching various MSM commentators waxing outraged at great length about how unfair it is that all the minority mediocrities are gone, shunted aside by the votes of a racist American electorate.  Yet somehow, none of them ever mentions that not a single Republican has voted yet.  By the logic of their own egregious identity politics, the Democrats are terrible, terrible bigots.

And they’re not wrong.

 

Exhibit C.  The Oscars are going host-less.  And after the verbal napalming that Ricky Gervais gave the sanctimonious, hypocritical Hollywood Left at the Golden Globes, I don’t blame them.

But this should give them pause.  Because their vicious, narrow-minded, humorless hatefulness has become so venomous that it has turned what used to be one of the most sought-after, high-profile, prestigious gigs in their industry into a lose-lose proposition that no one in their right mind would consider taking on.

Every reasonable human in Hollywood would rather carpool with Soleimani than host the Oscars!

This is why you can’t have nice things, Hollywood.  This, right here.

 

Exhibit D. Visitors to Glacier National Park over the last 20 years or so may have noticed signs all over the place that proclaimed, “These glaciers will be gone by 2020.”

But you may have noticed, if you have been to Montana — or can read, or watch tv, or surf the internet, or have even intermittently functioning neural synapses – the glaciers are all still there.

If you are a normal person, and you put up signs warning of an apocalyptic environmental disaster that will strike in 2020… but it’s now 2020, and that disaster hasn’t happened… you would feel a little sheepish. You might think things like, “How could I have been so wrong?” and “Maybe the alarmist weirdos I’ve been following are not scientific geniuses, but just… alarmist weirdos.”

That’s what you might do if you were a normal person who put up those signs.

But the people who put up those signs are not normal people, but Gaia-worshiping political zealots who wouldn’t know the Maunder Minimum from an aggressive case of genital warts.

So they tried to sneakily replace those signs last year, without admitting how ridiculously wrong they have been.  Somebody noticed, and started posting pictures of the idiotic signs, and now the story has exploded in the alarmists’ faces.

As I mentioned in my last column, one of my goals is to always try to learn from my mistakes.  But not these knuckleheads.  They might have predicted 135 of the last 3 disasters, but they are not deterred.  And they’ve got a plan to deal with the next disasters, don’t you doubt it.

Oddly enough, step one is to transfer a bunch of your money and freedom to a bloated federal government.

Step two?

Cut out a bunch of copies of the number 3, and start duct-taping them over the number 2 in the signs that warn that the glaciers will disappear by 2020.

Finally, in the tradition that I started last Fall, I have another lovingly written haiku in honor of each of the most recent Democrat candidates who have dropped out of the race: Julian Castro and Spartacus Booker.

 

Fitting name, Castro.

Abortions for trans women?

Those are men, you dope!

 

Bug-eyed race baiter.

You call yourself Spartacus?

Not so Smartacus.

 

Avenatti – Missing Glaciers, 2020!

This is my first column of the year, and I feel like I’ve been out of the loop, and missing the camaraderie and good cheer of the CO Nation.  Still, I’ve made a few ambitious new year’s resolutions this year: I’d like work out three times a week, and write a relevant-yet-hilarious NCAA basketball/dead terrorist joke.  We’ll see if I can pull those off.

As the new year started, the Dem leadership was in their accustomed position: at war with reality.  And I’m not referring to just the usual leftist struggles with delusions such as “socialism is bound to work this time,” and “America is terrible,” and “Antifa is against fascism,” and “Bruce Jenner is a nice lady named Caitlin.”

No, I’m referring to the story that dominated the hopes and dreams of Dems for the last half of last year: when the American public saw the mountain of evidence that Trump was literally Hitler (only worse), they would storm Trump Tower with torches and pitchforks.  Instead, after a months-long sham impeachment investigation that got worse reviews than the movie “Cats,” the Dems rushed through a sham-impeachment vote, because it was super-urgent that Trump be impeached and tried before he could do any more damage to national security.

Then Nancy Pelosi tucked the signed articles of impeachment into her burial wrappings and shuffled back into her pyramid, where she hibernated through the end of the year in a sarcophagus lined with pictograms of a bad orange man trampling the world, and other fantastic scenes so outlandish that only a mummified Marxist could believe them.

Meanwhile, back among the living, two brilliant men were planning vicious attacks that would devastate some evildoers.  One of them was the aforementioned orange man, who was planning “Operation So-Long, Soleimani.”

The other was Ricky Gervais.

I don’t know which of their attacks I enjoyed more, so even though they are both pretty much old news now, I feel I have to take a few moments to savor both of them.

First, though, I have a lesson for my leftist friends, in the form of a role model that you would all richly benefit from emulating.  That role model, you should have guessed, is me.

Let me explain.

Ricky Gervais is a leftist, and an atheist, and he’s said very condescending and insulting things about Christians.  Donald Trump is an often-bloviating, undisciplined goofball whose tweets and public statements – when they’re not making me laugh and cheer – sometimes make me wince and cringe.

Ricky Gervais is also pretty stinking funny, and Donald Trump is three years into what is shaping up – policy-wise – as one of the best presidencies of my lifetime.

The reason that I should be your role model is that I recognize the flaws in both men, and yet am very happy to watch both Gervais and Trump, because 1. I know that life is too short to be continually upset by those who disagree with me, and 2. I learn from my mistakes.

I’m afraid that too many lefties do neither.

Take Gervais, and his schaudenfreude-tastic carpet bombing of the pompous Hollywood community at the Golden Globes.

Outside of the US Congress, you’d be hard pressed to find a more narcissistic, virtue-signaling, clueless collection of morally blind, professional useless people than the acting community.  So when Gervais got up there and torched them all, it was beautiful to behold.

He hit all the high points: they pose as eco-warriors but fly private jets everywhere; they pose as feminists but they sucked up to Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein as they preyed on women; they pose as socialists fighting corporate greed but they take obscene salaries from the biggest corporations on the planet.

In an early contender for “Best Quote of 2020,” he warned the nominees that, “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech.  You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.”

Every normal person in the country, when they heard that — I mean the day after the show, because no normal person was actually watching the Golden Globes live – cheered at that.

But were the actors in the room suitably chastened?  Of course not.  Even after the much-deserved verbal whipping, several actors STILL shared their deep political thoughts with us in their speeches.  Patricia Arquette (I loved her in True Romance 20 years ago) talked about how terrible Trump has us on the brink of war, and also Australia is on fire, because global warming, and Trump, I guess.

Michelle Williams – who I thought was the cute singer in the Mamas and the Papas a million years ago, but I was wrong – gave a vapid speech about abortion, without mentioning the word “abortion.”  After talking about her professional success, she said, “I would not have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose.”

By which I guess she does NOT mean that she chose an Uber over a private jet to get to the awards show, or that she chose a good acting coach or plastic surgeon.  I think that she probably means that she  got rid of an inconvenient life at some point in the past.  But hey, she got that keen little trophy out of it.

I know it would probably be bad form for me to point out that as I write this, I am looking at all of the trophies I’ve won in my life, which are lined up in impressive fashion on my bookshelves.

There’s the “Most Improved Player” from my senior year in high school football, my “High Average” bowling trophy from that same banner year, a third-place golf tournament trophy (I hit a pin-high approach shot with a five-iron on 18 that sealed the deal, thanks for asking), and my “Best Fantasy Short Story of the Year Published in the UK” award.

(That last one was for “Dancing About Architecture,” which you can read at Martinsimpsonwriting.com, if you are in the mood for some magical realism-style fiction.)

Also, I know: I didn’t mention my Runner-up Award for “People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of Year, 2018.”  Because that’s still a very painful memory.  And Idris Elba is dead to me.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

I’m proud of all of those trophies, as I’m sure that Michelle Williams is proud of the trophy that she won for pretending to be somebody else.  But I wouldn’t trade one of my daughters for any of them.

On the heels of the Gervais rhetorical drone strike on Hollywood, the bad Orange Man went Bad Orange Bad-Arse on Qassim Soleimani, in a hugely satisfying explosion that also took out another high-ranking Hezbollah terrorist with five names, starting with “Abu.”

(I’d devote more time to filling out my terrorist-name score card, except that all of them seem to be named either Mohammed or Abu, so it’s very confusing.  Also, every time I get my brackets almost done, Trump comes in and kills another one of them, and we’re back to square one.)

Heading into March Madness this year, I’m just going to save time and bet on Abu Gonzaga.  (BOOM!  Now I’ve just got to work out three times a week, and 2020 will be a wild success!)

As great as it was that Trump took out a clown car full of evil terrorists, it was even better to watch the aftermath in America, where every national Democrat seemed determined to do as much damage to their political future as Trump had done to Soleimani’s chances of getting his rental car deposit back.

It started before the strike, when a bunch of Dems — all of whom had nothing to say when Obama and “What Difference Does it Make? CAW CAW” did nothing when our embassy in Benghazi was destroyed – lambasted Trump for not preventing an Iranian attack on our Iraqi embassy on New Year’s Eve.

When Trump whacked Soleimani (and several assorted Abu’s) four days later, those same Dems hysterically screamed that he is a war monger who is going to KILL US ALL!

Propaganda filmmaker and Macy’s Day Parade balloon Michael Moore actually apologized to the Iranian mullahs for our president’s killing their pet Bin Laden-wannabe.  MSM reports said that he issued that apology in Farsi – I’m not making that up! – but if I know Mikey, he was likely trying to apologize while gnawing on a comically-oversized turkey leg.

And everyone knows that when you are apologizing to murderous scumbags with a maw full of half-chewed turkey, everything comes out sounding like Farsi.

It’s a cliché because it’s true.

Pelosi and a bunch of other Dems did their best to attack Trump’s action, suggesting that Soleimani was not so much as a terrorist with the blood of hundreds of American soldiers and many thousands of others on his hands, as a “beloved political leader.”

Chris “Tingle up My Leg” Matthews actually called Soleimani a war hero to Iranians, and compared the Iranian people’s reaction to his death to our culture’s reaction to the deaths of Princess Diana or Elvis.  (By the way, how much would you have liked to see someone show a picture of Soleimani’s bombed car with Elvis’ “Hunk of Burning Love” playing at that creep’s funeral?  “Lord almighty/I feel my temperature rising/ Higher, higher/it’s burning through to my soul!”)

Grandma Squanto also got her deerskin dress up over her head (#wemustneverstopmockingher), fighting repeated attempts to get her to call Soleimani a terrorist by insisting that he was a “senior foreign military official,” before she finally gave up.

Many Dems – probably after seeing how poorly their efforts at turning a dead terrorist into a Trump blunder were playing with normal human voters – eventually had to grudgingly admit that Soleimani deserved to die.  But then they immediately pivoted to how it was still a terrible mistake for Trump to kill him, and what if WW3 starts over this?

Hysterical MSM reports actually ran scare headlines about a possible draft, and “journalists” pretended to believe that Soleimani might turn out to be an Archduke Ferdinand for the 21^st century.  Iran would certainly strike back, and what kind of horrible, cataclysmic – possibly nuclear — attack would that turn out to be?!!!

Then, as reporters got into fetal positions and trembled, the mighty mullahs of Iran shook their terrible fists, and unleashed a hellish missile strike!  Did they target critical oil fields, or allied shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, or American embassies throughout the region, or Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv?

No. They struck some empty desert near an Iraqi military base.  In the immediate aftermath, MSM naifs breathlessly repeated Iranian media reports of dozens of US deaths and many more injuries.  Until it turned out that a revised casualty and death rate were adjusted to… zero of both.

If the killing of Soleimani was the cake, then the icing on that cake was the feeble Iranian response.  The mullahs were so terrified that the Orange Man would strike them again, they warned the Iraqis and Americans about their own missile strike, just to be sure they didn’t accidentally kill any Americans.

And now, the cherry on top of that icing is that the Iranian populace has taken to the streets, protesting and chanting against THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT!

When the Democrat leadership gets back home after attending Soleimani’s funeral, they are going to have some re-thinking to do!

Avenatti & an Abu To-be-Named-Later, 2020!

It’s the eve of Christmas eve, and I wanted to send one more, last-minute “Merry Christmas” to all COers everywhere, including to the founder of the feast, the mysterious CO himself.

In honor of the season, I want to focus on only good news. So the only political story I’ll mention is the surpassingly odd decision of Nancy Pelosi to not immediately send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.  The Dems spent months pounding the table and carrying on about the uber-urgent urgency of taking the historical step of impeaching a president for past-due library fines, or wearing white after Labor Day, or whatever it was.   And now that they have shaken the world and crossed the Rubicon and gone all in… they are just going to sit on the articles of impeachment?

This makes no sense.  But it is pretty entertaining, and I can’t imagine that it is going to end well for the Dems.

My favorite scenario would probably be to have the GOP force Pelosi to submit the articles of impeachment, though I can’t figure out how they could do that, or even if they legally can.

I just imagine them getting a warrant, and marching to the base of the pyramid beneath which she lives, and then pushing aside the giant stone that guards the entrance, and then descending the 113 steps down into her burial chamber.  Then pushing aside the stone slab that covers her, and snatching the articles out of her dessicated mummy hands.

The only way that scenario could be improved upon?  The GOP officials take Eric Swallwell with them, allow him to “express himself” in that eloquent way of his, and then hold their breath while they hurriedly replace the stone slab and retreat.

You’ve heard of a “Dutch oven”?  We could call this giving Nancy a “Dutch sarcophagus.”

But enough about politics, at least for a couple of days.  I don’t want to hear any more about “quid pro quos” – the only Latin I’m going to be thinking about is “adeste fidelis” and “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”

Instead, I’m going to praise another great Canine-American.  Because 2019 has been a good year for dogs.

Of course, it goes without saying that any year with a healthy and faithful Cassie the Wonder Dog in it is a good year for dogs.  But this year we also had Conan, the heroic dog who helped to corner and kill a smelly jihadi coward a couple of months ago.

And now we have Duke.  If you haven’t read the story, you can search something like “Police K-9 apprehends suspect,” and you’ll find the story, along with a great video of the event in question.

It seems that a creepy Californian named Julio Vasquez had been stalking his ex-wife, even after she got a restraining order against him.  After he showed up again at her work and threatened to hit her with his truck, the police found him parked near her house last Friday night.  Instead of cooperating with the cops, he led them on an hour-long chase that only ended when they did a PIT maneuver to stop his truck.  When the pig-headed Vasquez still wouldn’t get out of his truck, the cops shot his driver’s side window with a rubber bullet, leaving it broken.

And that’s where Duke comes in!  Watch the beautiful video, if you haven’t already seen it.  Moron Stalker is sitting in the driver’s seat behind his partially shattered window, when – from camera left – in comes a flying bundle of Canine Righteousness!  Duke makes a flying leap that takes him right through the window, startling the dimwit inside.  Apparently he had been used to bullying a smaller female, but he didn’t do so well against Man’s Best Friend!

Duke latched onto his left arm, and started whipping his head around vigorously, while his hindquarters were still framed in the window.  The best part?  Because Duke was doing what God made him for, he never stopped wagging his tail!

The video I saw didn’t have sound, but because I have a Master’s in lip reading, I’m pretty sure that Vasquez screamed, “Aye Caramba!  Dios mio, this loco lobo ees gonna sever mi arm-o!!  Thees diablo es no bueno!”

As I may have mentioned in earlier columns, I was not at the top of my class in high school Spanish.  Although I did often hear the Spanish equivalent of “Excellent job, Martin,” which I believe is pronounced – and you can check my translation here – “Silencio, por favor, Martino.”

Anyway, great job, Duke!

 

Finally, I mentioned that my dad passed away five Decembers ago, and naturally he’s been on my mind this past week.  So I thought I would share a favorite story about him, as my Christmas gift to the CO nation.

He was one of 9 kids, one of whom died in childhood, and they were the kind of poor family that used to good naturedly tease my aunt who was number 9, because she was so spoiled that she was actually born in a hospital, rather than at home like the rest of the kids.  So I got to hear a lot of the kind of dad jokes that involved how tough he’d always had it.  A favorite theme of his – deployed every time I complained about anything —  was how they’d had an outhouse in the backyard until he was 10 years old!

So about 10 years ago I got my pilot’s license.  I’d bought a 50-year old Cessna 172 to train in; it only cruised at about 110 miles an hour or so, but it was cheap enough that I could afford it.  I flew it from my home in north Florida to Illinois several times.  On my third trip up there, I was flying against a 30-knot headwind, which meant that I was only making about 75 miles an hour in ground speed.  As I neared the Florida-Georgia border, I was flying over I-75, and as I looked down at the traffic, I realized that one particular semi-truck was going faster than I was!  Over about 5 minutes time, he gained on me, passed beneath me, and slowly pulled away from me.

My flight ended up taking about 3 hours longer than usual, and as I crept along,  I became increasingly irritated by this.  I ended up having to make an extra fuel stop, and by the time I finally reached the airport in my parents’ Central Illinois town, I’d only gained about a couple of hours over what it would have taken me if I’d driven.   My folks met me at the airport, and we went out for a late supper.  My long day had left me in a pretty foul mood, and as our food got to the table, dad asked me what was wrong, and I unloaded about the flight: getting bounced around in the wind, watching trucks leave me in their dust, having to make an extra fuel stop, etc.

Dad was eating, and he never missed a beat.  Between bites, he said in a perfect deadpan, “I had to crap in a hole in the backyard until I was 10 years old.  But at least I was spared the pain of having a personal airplane that was too slow.”

Ouch!  He gutted me like a fish, and deservedly so!

But I learned a valuable lesson, and one that I now regularly deploy against my own spoiled children, when I mention that we never had computers or cell phones, and the minimum wage was $3.15, and if you wanted to know something, you had to look it up in a book.  And there were three tv channels, and tvs were 13 inches, and if you wanted to watch a show, you had to actually be at home when it was on, because there was no recording it.

I may not have had to go to the bathroom in a hole in the backyard, but I had to do it during a commercial.  So… yeah.  Tough times.

 

As you are enjoying your time with family this Christmas, remember my wise, dearly departed dad.

Because even if you have to endure flight delays and terrible weather and worse traffic, when you finally make it home, you won’t have to crap in a hole in the backyard.

Merry Christmas!

On the eve of the ridiculous impeachment vote, I have a few thoughts about the House vote, and the potential trial in the Senate.

First, there’s not much left to say about the House Dems’ mendacity during the impeachment process.  Yes, they’ve flip flopped a dozen times, and they’ve made fools of themselves.  Their lawyers made ambulance-chasers and slip-and-fall hacks look like Learned Hand, their arguments were specious, and their representatives couldn’t have more thoroughly beclowned themselves if they had been wearing big, red noses.  Like Emmett Kelly, or Bozo. Or Ted Kennedy.  (By the way, has there ever been a more perfect name for a judge than “Learned Hand?”)

But the best evidence of the utter emptiness of their case is the pitiful charges that they finally settled on.  After months of bloviating about treason and bribery and genocide and human sacrifice, they landed on “abuse of power” and “obstruction of congress.”

“Abuse of power” is a verbal Rorschach test.  Let’s consider a few hypotheticals:

Lincoln suspends habeas corpus during the Civil War.

FDR imprisons tens of thousands of Japanese-American citizens, and tries to pack the Supreme Court.

JFK secretly starts us on the path to Vietnam by sending unofficial advisors, and secretly backs the clandestine Bay of Pigs invasion.

Bill Clinton uses a naïve girl his daughter’s age as a humidor.

Obama uses the IRS against his domestic political opposition, and unilaterally nullifies US border policy after saying dozens of times that doing so would be unconstitutional.

I use my rugged charm and razor-sharp wit to overcome the way I look, and close the deal on making a Norwegian-American goddess my wife, marrying so far up that it is likely illegal in 37 states.

 

Which of these would constitute an “abuse of power?”  Which do you think the partisan hacks in the Democrat House would agree on?  (Hint: Lincoln was a Republican, and I am a conservative.  So only those two.)

If Trump’s phone call is an abuse of power, then every president who has ever lived, or who ever will live, is guilty of abuse of power.  And if the GOP were anywhere near as rabidly aggressive as the Dem elite left, the next time we elect a Dem president we’d start an impeachment investigation as soon as that president crossed his or her fingers to take the oath of office.

But “obstruction of congress” is even goofier.

Because obstructing congress is not only NOT impeachable, it’s not even WRONG!  And it’s not a bug in our constitutional framework – it’s a feature.

One of the most brilliant ideas of our brilliant Founders was the set of checks and balances that they hard-wired into our political system.  They knew human nature, and the insatiable human will to power, so they constructed a system in which “ambition checks ambition,” to quote either Madison or Hamilton, in Federalist 51.  The executive would be strong, but the jealous judiciary would check the executive.  The power-hungry Congress would have the power of the purse, but the executive could check them.  And the ambitious executive could be checked by the congress.

“Obstruction” is basically a synonym of “check.”  It’s only because the Founders were deft writers — in addition to being incisive thinkers — that they didn’t coin the phrase “obstructions and balances.”  Because that doesn’t sound nearly as good, even though it means essentially the same thing.

It’s Trump’s job to obstruct congress!  Especially when it’s peopled by the likes of Jerry the Hutt, Eric the Flatulent, Adam “Mr. Mackey” Schiff (Mmmmkay?),  Tutankhamen Pelosi et al.

To impeach a president for opposing the congress is like demoting a fireman for putting out fires, or firing a plumber for unclogging a toilet, or fining a cop for arresting the Democrat base for stealing and mugging.   (But mostly it’s like the unclogging the toilet thing.)

 

When it comes to the Senate trial, I am very worried that most of the GOP senators, conservative talking heads, and Rush Limbaugh are arguing that the Turtle should call for an immediate vote in the Senate and dismiss the charges in one day.  I have a high-minded reason for thinking they’re wrong, and multiple visceral, Machiavellian ones.

The high-minded reason is that our constitutional system requires a serious consideration of any articles of impeachment that the House ever sends to the Senate.  The momentous actions of a president and the congress should get scrutiny, and especially when an impeachment has been voted along completely partisan lines, that drastic step should be debated.

The Machiavellian reasons are several:

1. The House Dems were absolute jerks and ran a one-sided smear campaign, as evidenced by the fact that public support for impeachment actually dropped after people saw their case. The GOP senators don’t have to be jerks to give the Dems a taste of their own medicine — doing so would be simple fairness.
2. Conducting at least a week or two of trial will allow the GOP to actually correct the record. The Dems distorted the facts by interviewing some of the witnesses secretly, and by not calling some witnesses that would likely destroy their case; the whistleblower and Hunter Biden both leap to mind.  If the whistleblower is not a noble seeker of truth but a partisan leftist hack who colluded with Schiff’s office to bring distorted charges that were only corrected because Trump released the Ukraine call transcripts – and he almost certainly is! – the American public needs to see him testify.  (Or else squirm and take the Fifth, sweating like Grandma Squanto when the US cavalry comes charging across the prairie.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher). And if Hunter Biden is not an expert in the politics of energy exploration and extraction in Eastern Europe, but just a drug-addled degenerate sexual pursuer of his dead brother’s widow who was using his daddy’s name to extort money from a foreign nation – and he certainly is! — the American public needs to see that, too.
3. It would be political malpractice for the GOP NOT to press their advantage by slamming the Dems before going to a vote to dismiss. The House Dems lied and behaved contemptibly, and by doing so, they handed the GOP senators an over-sized wooden mallet.  We in the conservative base – and, I think, a lot of the general public, who are tired after three years of smears and hoaxes – are entitled to see at least a round or two of whack-a-mole.  But we’ll settle for whack-a-Schiff, and whack-a-Nadler.

I’m not saying that the GOP needs to conduct a months-long political circus, the way the House Dems did.  But we should at least put their feet to the fire for a little while, and cause them enough pain to make them think twice about pulling something like this again.

I know that there are risks in going down this path.  Voters might be so sick of the whole thing that they’d like to see the GOP vote it down immediately, and let things return to normal.

But there is an opposite risk, too.  Because if the GOP votes to dismiss the charges immediately, you know that the Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) are going to cry foul, saying that Trump obviously has something to hide, and that the GOP wouldn’t even look at the facts and grant a fair trial.

Sure, they’ll be lying through their teeth.  Just like they’ve been lying for the last three years.

But they’ll get headline and frontpage coverage of that lie, and it will be repeated ad nauseum for month after month, until by next November, a huge chunk of the American public will believe that Trump did something really, really bad.  Because otherwise, why would the GOP have just swept it under the rug and refused to have a trial?

Before you dismiss that as my paranoid fantasy, consider how many Americans – right now, after all of the Dem claims that have been proven false – believe that Trump paid for a Rockette line of Russian hookers to pee on Obama’s bed in a Moscow hotel, or that he was referring to white supremacists when he said that there were “good people on both sides”?

Fish are going to swim, birds are going to fly, and the Dems and MSM are going to lie.  I get it.

But we don’t have to make it even easier for them.  And if the public, when hearing these lies, remembers seeing Hunter Biden and the “whistleblower” hack and Adam Schiff, bathed in flop sweat while stammering through cross examination or taking the 5^th, they might be a little less likely to believe the smear.  Plus the attack ads – absolutely true ones! – will practically write themselves, and the GOP will be able to run them on a loop in all of the Trump districts where House Dems who voted for impeachment are trying to get re-elected.

In other words, to quote my favorite Brit (just barely edging out Boris Johnson),  “Cry havoc, and let slip the Cassie the Wonder Dogs of war!”

Avenatti/Hunter Biden 2020!

I must begin this column with a trigger warning for any Christophobes who may be reading this.

That doesn’t apply to the regular members of CO nation, of course, because although our happy online family seems to include Christians, Jews, atheists, agnostics, festivus observers, lepidopterists, and everything in between, COers are not the types to shriek hysterically and cover their ears if they hear someone else express a belief that they don’t happen to share.   Because we are well-adjusted, old-school adults.

But just in case anyone has wandered over here from Vox or MSNBC or the Hollywood Actors Guild, please re-insert your cranium where you’ve had it snuggly nestled since November of 2016, lest you accidentally hear some of the following 80-proof, super-offensive speech:

I love the Christmas season!  As I write this, we’ve decorated our house, and I’m listening to some sweet Christmas carols played on the cello.  (When I’m writing I can’t play anything with lyrics, or I get distracted.) But since Thanksgiving I’ve also been listening to a lot of Christmas-themed hymns and carols, in a variety of different formats.

If you like that kind of stuff, I’d recommend Audrey Assad’s “Abide With Me” (with a gorgeous, wintry video), Sufjan Steven’s oddball, banjo-inflected versions of “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” “I Saw Three Ships,” and “Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella.”   And, of course, the Hallelujah Chorus flashmob from a food court in PA about 10 years ago.

Which is not to say that this isn’t a season that can be very sad for some people, and I’ve got a little touch of that, too.  Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of my dad’s death, and that’s an old wound that never completely heals.  On the other hand, he’s with Christ and my grandparents and many other family and friends, and I know that I’ll see him again.  So how sad can that be?  One of the best things about being a Christian is that we are anti-Keynesians: in the long run, we are all alive!

So I’m usually in a pretty good mood this time of year.  But after the week that our country has just had, I’m on another level. A “Jimmy Stewart in the last 10 minutes of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’” level.  (That’s right.  I’m running around downtown, screaming like a lunatic. “YAY!  Merry Christmas, movie house!  Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building & Loan!”)

Probably the healthiest thing to be happy about is when good things happen to good people.  And to find an example of that, I can start in England, and the unprecedented victory of Boris Johnson’s Tories, and the Brexit that is now finally going to happen for the beleaguered British voters.

I can’t pretend to follow UK politics closely, but I’ve read enough to appreciate the parallels of the conservatives’ victory there.  After all, the “deplorable” British citizenry voted to get out from under the heavy hand of a distant, arrogant, micro-managing left in Brussels (think: DC swamp) years ago, and their own political elite have been condescendingly explaining to them why that can’t happen ever since.  So along comes a blustering, clownish, perpetually-bad-hair-day guy whom the elites disdain, and against most expectations, he wins a sweeping victory.  To sweeten things, he also happens to defeat an anti-Semitic, hateful far-left crank who has been demonizing rich people and fanning the flames of envy for his own self-aggrandizement.   Also, mobs of leftist thugs rioted and vandalized property in London to protest the democratic process, apparently because they cannot accept the results of an election.

Sound familiar?

I don’t know if that election is any kind of bellwether for next year in the states, but I certainly hope so.

Here in the states, we’ve got a lot of our own good news.  The economy – the same economy that whiz-kid leftist Paul Krugman said “would never recover” from Trump’s election – is firing on all cylinders.  The stock market is at record highs, unexpectedly good job numbers were announced last week, along with an upward revision of the numbers from the last several months, wages continue to rise, and unemployment is at record lows, especially among minorities.  Of course, our debt continues to balloon, which is an ominous indicator for the long run that neither party seems to care about, and the market is always cyclical, so this can’t go on forever.

But all things considered, we’re doing very well, so much so that two polls came out that gauged African-American support for Trump at 34%, up from the traditional low single digits.  That thunking sound you just heard was thousands of racial arsonist Dems, fainting dead away.

But it’s not just that good things are happening to some good people: bad things are happening to people who richly deserve them.

Yes, I’m speaking of the House Dems, who appear to have painted themselves into a corner with their stupid impeachment, and are now about to enter the “reap what you sow” phase of this fiasco.

The impeachment poll numbers are indicating just how toxic the congressional Dems have been making themselves.   Consider some non-impeachment examples first:

Human whoopie-cushion Eric Swalwell dared the GOP to “dispute” his “facts” – and then he listed about a dozen “facts,” the only one of which was actually true was that Rudy Giuliani was Trump’s lawyer.

Hateful anti-Semite and non-beauty-contestant Rashida Tlaib wasted no time in blaming “white supremacy” for Tuesday’s murders in a NJ kosher supermarket… only to delete the tweet when it turned out that – inconveniently – the hateful killers were black anti-Semites.

Joey Gaffes managed to cram his old guy’s Velcro-closing loafers past his horrifyingly white dentures again, this time by declaring that a citizen hero who used an AR-15 to stop a murderous creep who shot up a church “should not have had that gun.”  Yes.  More people should die in churches so that some ignorant and frightened politicians can feel better about themselves.

 

But the impeachment stuff is even more fun.

Dems are floundering, and for good reason.  After all of this build-up, they couldn’t NOT impeach.

But they also could not impeach on the totally bogus charges of the actual, real-life crimes of bribery, or extortion, or obstruction of justice.  Or on any of the other crimes that they’ve been referring to for the last 3 years.  (I, for one, never thought that human sacrifice charge was going to stick.)  And after all of the promised explosions, bombshells and IEDs, did they go to a vote with a bang?  Or a whimper?

What do you think?  They can’t even cogently explain what the charges are.  After a fierce internal debate that resulted in their dropping the “used the wrong fork for the main course” accusation, they ended up with only two charges.  As I understand them, those are:  1. He looked at us the wrong way.  And 2. He hurt our feelings.

Meanwhile, I don’t think the leader of the House Majority, and of the entire Mummified-American Community, can be sleeping very well these days.  I picture her laying on her stone slab, staring up at the stone ceiling, her eyes burning bright from deep within her facial bandages.  She’s got to be kicking herself, because she knew all along with that her party’s radicals were leading her down the wrong path.  But she was raised in a household where her faith in Ra guided her every move.

With a heart full of love – an organ, by the way, which she keeps in a canopic jar, along with her other embalmed internal organs on a stone shelf beside her bed – she staggers forward to what looks like an ill-fated impeachment.  I don’t know what more she can do to stave off the disaster at this point.

I mean, other than releasing the swarm of scarab beetles from the recesses of her burial wrappings to go forth and skeletonize her political opponents.

Wait, this just in:  Trump is now over 50% approval in a new poll of ancient, flesh-eating Egyptian scarab beetles.  So… I guess it’s back to the stone wall full of pictograms for Nancy and the House leadership?

One more bit of bad news?  Those “Don’t Mess with Imhotep!” t-shirts that the DNC had printed up are not selling well at all.

 

I know what you’re thinking: did someone challenge Martin to work a half-dozen “mummified Nancy Pelosi” jokes into one column?  Yes, someone did, thanks for asking.  In fact, it was the same person who said that I would never be able to work a deft lepidoptery joke into a column.

So, done and done.

Anyway, one other part of the impeachment that I enjoyed was watching IG Michael Horowitz trying his best to stay out of the partisan fray, even if it meant torturing logic and the language.

For the former, consider that his report found 17 major errors, but because none of the corrupt Obama supporters at the FBI or CIA either wrote down or would admit to having been biased, Horowitz had to report that he had found no “testimonial or documentary evidence” that those errors are connected to any bias.  Even though those errors were made in favor of the anti-Trump trolls 17 times out of 17.  Even Paul Krugman could understand those numbers well enough to calculate what percentage of those errors were made in favor of Trump.  (Keep your shoes and mittens on, AOC: it’s 0 percent.)

For tortured language, I’d point you to Horowitz’s response to the charge that Obama had had “spies” in Trump’s White House: he said that he’d prefer to use the term “confidential human sources” rather than spies.   As if that changes who they were, or what they were doing.

At some point, euphemisms become lies.  And they also clot up the language unnecessarily.

Would I have enjoyed the James Bond film “The Confidential Human Source Who Loved Me” as much as I did the original?

Would I have even read LeCarre thrillers like “The Confidential Human Source Who Came in From the Cold?”  Would my favorite part of Mad magazine have been “Confidential Human Source vs. Confidential Human Source?”

Wouldn’t my childhood have suffered if I’d hung around with my friends on a rainy Saturday afternoon saying, “I confidential human source, with my little eye, something that starts with a ‘b’?”

They were spying, Michael.  Because they were spies.

Finally, one last happy tidbit comes to us from the world of sports.  It turns out that the NFL is finally done with mediocre, cop- and America- and whitey-hating third-string quarterback Colin Kaepernick.  Apparently the bile-filled has-been with 1976 Lionel Richie’s Afro burned his final bridge when he snubbed the special arrangements that the NFL had made to give him a special workout, moving the event to a nearby location at the last minute so that he could have his own cameraman film it.

The icing on that particular schadenfreude cake is that the wide receiver who went to that event to catch Kaepernick’s passes was supposed to be the human equivalent of a piece of utilitarian furniture, or maybe a Golden Retriever.  Kaepernick was the attraction.  The receiver was just supposed to catch the balls and return them.

But three weeks after the workout session, Kaepernick was still whining as an amateur, rather than professionally.  But the receiver signed a contract to join the Redskins’ (no offense, Liz Warren) (#wemustneverstopmockingher) practice squad.

It’s as if a whiny hitter got a try-out in a batting cage with a mechanical pitching machine in front of some MLB scouts.

And then the Yankees signed the pitching machine to a 3-year deal for $12.6 million!

HA!  YAYYYYYY!  Merry Christmas, Mr. Kaepernick!  Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building & Loan!”

Avenatti/ Kaepernick 2020!