Martin Simpson

The responses to my last column once again prove that the CO nation is full of some witty people, with impeccable taste.

You all answered the call with some more suggestions for a collective noun to describe Dem presidential candidates.  A “dementia of Democrats” and a “failure of Democrats” were particular favorites, though I can’t discount the alliterative fun of “clown car of candidates” and “gaggle of goofballs.”

The positive response to the title of “Martacus” is growing on me.  Just this morning, I was standing in front of a full-length mirror in a toga (as one does), testing the sound of it.  Cassie the Wonder Dog stood by watching, and she seemed impressed.

On the other hand, John Gabris suggested that the ultimate test of the new name will be whether my wife will use it.  Early results are NOT encouraging.  On the other hand, she has inexplicably not taken to calling me “@hilariousgenius,” either, no matter how nicely I ask.  So I may have to disregard her opinion on this, as on a few other things.

We’ve got a new addition to the declared field of Dem candidates…and never has a “dementia” of Democrats more aptly applied than it does to Bernie Sanders.  The socialist dictator-enthusiast threw his hat into the ring on the 19^th.  Comically, it was a bicorne hat (like the one Napoleon wore), which was very fashionable in the early 19^th century, when Bernie was a young man.

(Speaking of which, I know that “octogenarian” describes people in their 80s, and “nonagenarian” people in their 90s.  But what word describes a guy in his late 100s like Bernie?  I want to say “centurion,” but I know that that’s one of those Roman soldiers.)  (Speaking of which, call me Martacus!)

(See what I mean?  It’s growing on you, too.)

I remember reading in 2015 about Bernie’s checkered past: kicked out of a commune for being too lazy (How is that even possible?!), no consistent job until he got elected at age 39, composer of amateurish pornography.  But the most shocking story was that as a young adult, he stole electricity from a neighbor when his own utilities were cut off due to lack of payment.

I wasn’t shocked that a leftist was stealing what belongs to others. Because, duh!

I was shocked that electricity had been invented when Bernie Sanders was a young adult.

It should be fun to watch Bernie wheeze his way around the track one more time, forcing the other candidates to move even farther left to counter him.  Assuming that they won’t already be so far left that they are barely visible, far out on the horizon.

 

But all of the fun this week has not come from the presidential candidates – it has also come from unstable types like Jussie Smollett and AOC.

I knew that the Smollett story was fishy, for several reasons.

First, Simpson’s Law of Ridiculous Names obviously applies in the case of “Jussie.”  Oddly spelled names have been scientifically proven to be associated with shaky character — you need look no farther than Obama flunky Jeh Johnston for evidence.  We can accept a “Justin,” and we can accept a “Jessie,” but “Jussie” is a no-go.

Also, he wanted us to believe that Trump supporters do the following: live in Chicago, recognize an obscure actor from an obscure tv show, hang out at 2 a.m. in a polar vortex with a bottle of bleach in one gloved hand, and a noose in the other.  (Someone has to say it: it was a FAKE NOOSE!  HA!)

Smollett’s tired, hackneyed leftist talking points in interviews were so boring that I started to believe that the only reason the cops didn’t point the finger at him earlier was that he wasn’t interesting enough to be a “person of interest.”

Finally, for a leftist, anti-white/anti-conservative/anti-common sense media, the story was too good to check, which always means that it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Cochise Frigidaire (the dentally-challenged Native American Vietnam-era refrigerator repairman who fantasized about conservative white kids screaming “build the wall” at him) was lying, but the MSM fell for it.  As was frequent-flyer but terrified-of-flying baby-talker Christine Blasey-Ford.  As were a variety of other atrocity-committing MAGA-hat-wearers who turned out to be imaginary.

If you are wondering if the MSM will ever learn, don’t hold your breath. Especially in a polar vortex.

 

But the award for most entertaining lefty of February has to go to AOC (Annoying Oblivious-Cortez).

Her roll out of the Green New Deal was a thing of beauty, combining all of the standard elements that we’ve come to expect from her party: utopian assumptions, laughable misunderstandings of the way the world actually works, and breathtaking incompetence.

Let’s lead with the incompetence.  (She certainly did!)

Remember when FDR pushed ambitious legislation that turned a temporary economic downturn into the Great Depression, or when LBJ started a War on Poverty that poverty won by a TKO in the 10^th round, or when Obama promised shovel-ready jobs that turned out to not be so shovel-ready?

Or when Obama promised that you could keep your doctor and your plan, and that you’d save $2500 on your health care costs, but it turned out that you could keep neither your doctor nor your plan, and you had to sleep with creepy old Willie Brown to get an appointment with your GP?

Wait, maybe that last part was just Kamala “bury me in a Y-shaped coffin” Harris.  (Hat tip to Black Adder.)

Well, AOC’s GND was just that kind of FUBAR CF, served with a side of WTF and another of STFU. (Acronyms are fun!)

First, she released a FAQ (and yes, the “F” stands for the same thing it did in the previous acronyms) describing the plan.   But the plan was so breathtakingly stupid – let’s confiscate the earnings of hardworking people to pay people who are unwilling to work, and then ram corks into the ends of cows that do not moo, and then replace air travel with trains! – that she immediately had to start backtracking.

She tweeted – and I quote – “There are multiple doctored GNC resolutions and FAQs floating around.  There was also a draft version that got uploaded + taken down.  There’s also draft versions floating out there.”

So the documents are “doctored,” but also draft versions, which were presumably not doctored, but were only preliminary and thus invalid, even though they don’t contradict the essence of later versions, which are no less dumb than the earlier versions.

Also, the dog ate my homework, eyewitness testimony is unreliable, my email was hacked, and table 3 clearly ordered the pitcher of kerosene served in breadbowls that I brought them.

In a 2/7 morning interview with NPR, AOC was asked, “Are you prepared to put on the table that yes, [conservatives] are actually right, what this requires is massive government intervention?” Her answer, which I am not making up: “It does.  It does.  Yeah, I have no problem saying that.”

Until that same evening, when she had a big problem saying that.  This time the interview was on MSNBC, and her response was subtly different:  “One way that the Right does try to mischaracterize what we’re doing as though it’s, like, some kind of massive government takeover.”

Anyway, after a few days of walking around in circles and stepping on rakes, AOC was finally knocked unconscious.  Her staff then leapt into action, telling reporters from the Hill that, “…while doctored FAQ documents are circulating on the internet, the one [we] released was an unfinished draft that [we] had not intended to publish.”

In related news, Carlos Danger (and why isn’t THAT guy a declared presidential candidate, by the way?) released a statement of his own:  “You know all of those pics of my genitalia that I sent to all of those underage girls?  I did not intend to publish them.  Sooooooo… can I be in Congress again?”

But the hijinks didn’t stop there.   Chinless cartoon turtle “Cocaine Mitch” McConnell plodded into action, proposing a vote on the GND in the Senate.  And leftists politicians cheered, eagerly climbing over each other to get in front of cameras and take credit for this visionary legislation.

Ha!  I kid.  They actually ran for cover, because even they know ridiculous it is.

But AOC was not deterred.   She touted the amazing benefits of the GND, saying that it can be a new “moon shot.”

When I first heard that, I thought that she might be planning to drop her pants and expose her rear end in the next House debate.  Which might be her best chance to distract the electorate from what is in the GND.

On the other hand, if it works, it might encourage DMH (“Dessicated Mummy Hands” Pelosi) or Hillary to try the same tactic.

So, please God, NOOO!!!

The encore to the GND launch was the Amazon kerfuffle.

True to her socialist hatred of all things prosperous or successful, AOC led the charge to prevent Amazon from bringing high paying jobs and a gusher of tax dollars to her constituents.  When Amazon agreed not to inflict these benefits on her district, AOC exulted, “Anything is possible!” and celebrated the victory over “corporate greed” and “worker exploitation.”

That’s the kind of “can’t do” spirit that made the left great.

Some of her supporters – who were all standing around with nothing to do in the middle of a work day – said, “Yay?”

Also, “I was told there would be a free lunch.  And afterwards a moon shot.”

From her interviews, it became clear that AOC thinks that a “tax break” means that New Yorkers would have to GIVE Amazon $3B, rather than agreeing to take $3B LESS up front (and then many billions more later ) than they would have otherwise received, if any hypothetical company was masochistic enough to invest in a hostile blue state.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as a political thinker, she makes a hell of a bartender.

Thus spake Martacus!

So I was traveling for a big chunk of the last week, and now that the news cycle moves at the speed of light, I feel like I’m a month behind on mocking every public figure in the news.  So this is going to be a “lightning round” kind of a column.

First, I think we need a new word to describe the current crop of Democrat presidential candidates.

I’ve always enjoyed the way that English has a bunch of idiosyncratic collective nouns for groups of various animals.  In addition to the plain vanilla “flock of birds” or “herd of former first ladies,” there are cool oddities such as a pride of lions, or a murder of crows.  (By the way, if we were to apply those kinds of terms to specific parts of the Democrat base, I’d be hard pressed to come up with better options than “a pride of transgenders” and “a murder of abortionists.”) (Not to mention a “warren of Northeastern WASPS.”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’ve been turning this idea over in my mind, and so far I’m thinking of the following options:

A confusion of Democratic candidates

A scourge of Democratic candidates

An embarrassment of Democrats

What do you think, CO nation?  Will one of those work, or do you have any better alternatives?

 

Let’s take a quick run through the Murderers’ Row of Stupid™ that is the current Dem lineup of declared candidates:

1.Spartacus.  Ugh.  He announced with a slickly banal video comprised of 73 cliches strung together – children are our future, gluten-free apple pie is great, I like Main Street not Wall Street – whose emptiness is only exceeded by that of the vast vacuum of deep space, and the tumble-weed-occupied hollowness of his own cranium.

I still can’t get over the fact that he called himself – un-ironically, and with a straight face – “Spartacus.”

Not since a young Gordon Sumner announced that he was henceforth to be known as “Sting” has someone so narcissistically renamed himself.  It’s a tribute to Sting’s musical talent that he was able to pull that off.

But kooky Cory is no Sting.  And he’s certainly no Spartacus.

Look, Cassie the Wonder Dog Simpson did not call HERSELF “the Wonder Dog.”  That’s an honorific bestowed by her many admirers and her owner.

And I could not get away with bombastically calling myself Martacus.

Though now that I’ve typed that, I like the way it looks.  Maybe when I’m ready to announce my exploratory committee, I run that one up the flag pole and see who salutes…

 

2. Elizabeth Warren. The gift that keeps on Indian-giving, and she who must eternally be mocked, manages to step in it again. After denying for months that she ever claimed Indian ancestry on official documents, a mid-80’s application to the Texas bar surfaced with her signature on it affirming her Native American ancestry.

To make matters worse, she met with the head of some Indian organization and gave a classic misdirection apology, saying that she regrets clouding the issue of tribal affiliation or membership.  As if the problem were that she didn’t properly document the genealogical minutiae that would establish her 1/1024th bona fides, rather than that she’s less Indian than Bjorn Borg!

By the way, if no one has gotten to this yet, can someone please check her high school yearbooks?  I’m sure that most of what we’d find is about what we’d expect.   Her favorite album was the Beatles’ White Album, her favorite song was Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” etc.  (And yes, that’s the deep pull of the day: a Procol Harum reference.) (#neverstopmocking)

But maybe we’d find out the sweetest possible irony: that once, for a Halloween party, she wore redface.

3. Amy “Who?” Klobuchar. This Minnesota Senator made her announcement outdoors, which meant that she warned about how global warming is going to roast us all, while a benevolent and hilarious God sent a snowstorm that threatened to bury her in a neck-deep drift as she read.

Also, within 24 hours of her announcement, reports surfaced that she is one of the worst bosses in DC, with a very high staff turnover rate, due in large part to her tendency to scream, belittle and throw binders at her subordinates.  According to reports, she has consulted Hillary Clinton, who advised her that lamps are easier to throw than binders, and that accuracy depends mostly on snapping the wrist on the release.

4. South Bend, IN mayor Pete Buttigieg. Never heard of this guy.  But he’s got “butt” right there in his name, so he should fit right in with this crowd.  And the bumper stickers will be funny.

5. Former HUD secretary Julian Castro has two things going for him. He can bask in the warm glow of success that we all associate with our nation’s well-run and desirable public housing projects, with their picket fences and spotless elevators and charming small-arms fire. And he’s named “Castro,” which subliminally endears him to leftists who cannot get enough of murderous socialist dictators.  As long as the competing ticket of Carl Hitler and Freddy Stalin continue to have fundraising trouble in the Midwest, Castro has the inside track to the mass murderer aficionado slice of the moderate left.

6. Kamala Harris. This gem is seen by many as the front runner, and I can see why.

She doesn’t have “butt” or “Castro” in her name, she’s never called herself Spartacus, she’s never pelted subordinates with office supplies, and she doesn’t have to pretend that she’s not white, because she’s not.  She’s also not Hillary Clinton, which is a huge advantage, in life and in politics.

On the other hand, she was a prosecutor, which for a distressingly large slice of the leftist electorate makes her one of those little Eichmanns who crush the noble victim classes under the heel of the patriarchy, or something.

But on the third hand, she was apparently a mediocre prosecutor at best, so she might be able to argue that she was secretly undermining the system from within by being terrible at her job.

On the fourth hand, she slept with creepy old San Francisco mayor Willie Brown to get two of her first jobs in politics.  She was 29 at the time, and he was 60.  And married.  And not exactly Idris Alba.  (Who you may remember as the guy who narrowly edged me out for People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year in what many have called “a very suspicious result.”) (And by “many” I mean “me.”)

So you know it was true love.  Because the heart wants what it wants.

And apparently what the heart sometimes wants is a $72K per year no-show job on the California Medical Assistance Commission.

There’s a name for someone who does what Kamala Harris did with Willie Brown to launch her political career.

And it rhymes with the last name of Cory Booker.

But as hilarious as the announced candidates are, other Democrats have been even funnier this month.  I want to talk about AOC (Annoying Oblivious & Callow) in my next column, but I cannot ignore the amazing shenanigans in the top echelon of the Virginia Democratic party.

Apparently the equivalent of “business casual” for Democrats in the 1980s was walking around in black face.  Two of the top three state officeholders turned out to have blackface pictures in circulation, and the third leftist stooge only managed to avoid that fate by being African-American, which seems to be what it takes for a Virginia Dem to resist the inexplicable draw to go full Jolson.

Unfortunately for him, he is also something of a Bill Clinton/Ted Kennedy old school Democrat (genus: “grope-a-saurus rex”), and has thus been credibly accused by two different women of rape.

And these weren’t Blasey-Ford-esque – “I only know that it happened sometime in the 1980s and somewhere in the Western hemisphere, and there were no witnesses and no corroborating evidence of any kind” – type of accusations.  These were made by credible women, who had dates and details and supporting contemporary accounts, and with whom the creepy pol admitted having sex.

And so naturally, the MSM and Democrats (but I repeat myself) have not said a word about this guy.  Thus launching the “Who? Me too?” movement, when the accused perv in question is a leftist.

Ironically, none of the above details about the Governor Blackface scandal are the worst part.

Even the picture of Gov. Northam was not the worst part.

(And you’d think that it would be hard to get worse than having your staff fidgeting in a meeting, until one of them clears her throat and say, “So… boss…  Were you the one in blackface, or the one in the klan hood?”  And then you notice that your p.r. person has her fingers crossed as she whispers, “klan hood, klan hood, klan hood.”)

The worst part was that just before the blackface scandal broke, the Governor revealed the leftist nonchalance about abortions up until the moment of birth, and – in his case, apparently – afterwards, too.

If I were hired to advise Democrat candidates (HA!), I would advise my clients to keep some old pics of themselves in blackface from their high school production of Porgy and Bess.  That way, when they get caught taking a bold pro-infanticide stance in an interview, they could leak those pics to the press, and hastily call a press conference to explain that they’ve always been admirers of George Gershwin’s work, and those were different times.

It’s a damage-control cliché for a reason: When the talk turns to baby killing, roll out the shoe polish.

 

Which brings me to my defense of dressing up as a member of another race.

I know.  But hear me out.

Of course I would never defend actual, old-style, racist minstrel show blackface.  That’s the perfect example of the kind of issue I used as teachable moments as I raised my children: if I saw a report on a blackface story as my then-2-year-old daughter was toddling by, I’d ask her, “Who do we blame that on?”

And she’d look at me angelically and say, “The Democrats!”

And I’d give her a hug and a cookie.

But enough about my fantastic parenting skills, and my thriving young adult daughter.

Blackface is obviously offensive and wrong.  But going to a costume party dressed as a favorite character of another race is the opposite, if it is meant to emulate and compliment, not denigrate.  White kids who look up to black celebrities might go to a party dressed as Michael Jordan or Bruno Mars, or – if they have not been raised properly – as Barack Obama, with makeup to match.

Even leftist hypocrites have been forced to implicitly admit that that is not offensive.  They’ve given passes to people like unpleasant professional shrieker Joy Behar (who once dressed up as a “beautiful African woman”), and Jimmy “Waaaah” Kimmel (who dressed up like Karl Malone and spoke in a parody of Ebonics).

Obviously, the purpose of a costume party – at Halloween or any other time – is to wear a costume.  If you’re dressing as someone, you want to try to look like that person.  If that person has different hair, you wear a wig.  If that person has a beard, you get a fake beard.  If that person dresses distinctively, you try to find similar clothes.

And if that person has a different skin color than yours, you try to match that.  Otherwise, no one at the party is ever going to guess that the white girl in the dress is supposed to be Beyonce, or the white kid in the suit is supposed to be Obama, or the black girl in the hideous pantsuit and the prosthetic Clydesdale ankles is supposed to be Hillary.  (By the way, if you are thinking that “Prosthetic Clydesdale Ankles” would be a good name for a punk band, you are not wrong.)

Which would lead us to the perfect world designed by humorless leftist poke-noses: a world in which everybody would go to costume parties dressed exactly like themselves.   Hooray!

I am Martacus, and I approve this message.

So we’ve all survived the January during which the Dems took over the House.  I’d like to look back and mock some people, but there is one truly sad thing to discuss first: the Democrats’ shocking move toward the extreme left on abortion.

Only a decade or so ago, the mainstream Left mantra on abortion was that it should be “safe, legal and rare.”  That was always a self-contradictory idea – what other medical procedure would you apply that to?  Tattooing?  Cosmetic surgery?  Kidney donation?

Yes, all of those should be safe and legal.  But then, why “rare?”

“Rare” was at least a nod toward the morally problematic nature of abortion, even if only in the most tangential, watered-down way.

Mainstream Dems also talked about abortion in qualified, carefully calibrated terms, focusing on extremely unusual situations: cases of rape, incest, or when delivery would endanger the life of the mother.

Sure, that talking point was hypocritical.   Rape and incest account for a vanishingly small number of abortions, and the “mother’s health” label was meant to suggest one thing – the very rare cases in which delivery truly threatened health – but in effect expanded to include “mental health,” which was then stretched to apply to any mother who suggested that having a child would be  at least slightly stressful for her.

Spoiler alert: having kids is stressful.  I’ve got two wonderful daughters, and along with love and pride and joy, they’ve caused my wife and I some stress.  (But the oldest is in her 87^th trimester, and the youngest is in her 68^th, so it’s probably too late to change our minds now, even for the Dems I’m about to write about.)

But as the old saying goes, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.”

Unfortunately, the elite Left can no longer be bothered to feign even a passing acquaintance to virtue when it comes to abortion.

Consider 3 examples:

1.Andrew Cuomo (of the abortion-enthusiast “Catholic” Cuomos) recently signed a far-left bill guaranteeing that women can get third-term abortions.  Added bonuses: you no longer have to be a doctor to perform abortions in New York state, and if you decide to beat a pregnant woman badly enough that she loses her baby, you can’t be charged with a crime against that baby.

Because the baby was not a baby, understand?  Thank you, Party of Science™!

To add to the tragic idiocy, Cuomo had the World Trade Center illuminated with pink lights to celebrate the passage of this ghoulish bill, and a bunch of leftist creeps gave the announcement a standing ovation.

2. Virginia Democrat Kathy Tran was caught in a high profile gaffe. I am using the political definition of “gaffe:” when someone is caught accidentally telling the truth.

Tran was supporting a bill that would allow abortions up to the moment before birth.  When the GOP majority leader asked her if her bill would allow such an abortion, if a mother and her doctor agreed on mental health reasons, she hesitated.  He clarified, by asking what if the mother was in labor.

And Tran said that yes, the bill would allow that.

As you would imagine, narrow-minded Americans who are against infanticide – call them crazy deplorables if you must – expressed what some might call “horror,” and Tran was caught up in a firestorm.

Within a few days, she tried a classic political correction.  When someone pointed out that she had answered the hypothetical question with a “yes,” Tran got a chance to correct the record: “I should have said: ‘Clearly, no, because infanticide is not allowed in Virginia, and what would have happened in that moment would be a live birth.’”

First, you’ve got to love that: “What I meant by ‘yes,’ was actually ‘no.’”  Got it?

Second, anyone willing to risk being called either a traitor to her gender or a mansplainer might respond:  A. If this bill passed, infanticide WOULD be allowed in Virginia, and B. That hypothetical would not involve a “live birth,” since the baby would not have made it outside yet.

Because the extreme left argument seems to be that the birth canal is a magic tube, and passing through it (preferably while a person in the room chants an ancient Druidian incantation) mystically confers personhood.  And since Tran’s hypothetical involved a baby who hadn’t yet made it through the magic tube, there is no infanticide.

Again, thank you, Party of Science™!!

3. Fortunately for K-Tran, leftist mansplaining Democrat Governor Ralph Northam rode to the rescue.

Unfortunately for her, he was no more able than she was to square the moral circle.  In fact, he made things even worse – something I wouldn’t have thought possible, after Little Miss “Yes-means-No” had shared her wisdom.

When asked about Tran’s now-infamous answer, he hemmed.  Then he hawed.  Then he harrumphed, and cleared his throat, and babbled for a bit.

Then, because he is a pediatric neurologist who must have thought that “pediatric” meant “foot doctor,”  (So close!), he stuck his foot deeply in his mouth:“[Third trimester abortions are] done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable.”

Yes and no.  I would guess that many late term abortions MIGHT result (note Northam’s repetition of “may” rather than “must”) from discovering that a fetus had severe problems that would make him or her non-violable.  But there’s nothing in this law – or in laws as proposed and executed (so to speak) by the far left in other states – that requires such a cause.

Northam continues, “So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Yikes!  Read that again.  The infant would be delivered.  The infant would be kept comfortable.  THEN a discussion would ensue?!

What would the discussion be about, Dr. Mengele?  The weather?  What kind of bullpen the Yankees have this year?  Whether the infant is likely to identify with the gender that corresponds to its genitalia?

Tragically, from the elite Left’s perspective, Dr. Northam’s mistake wasn’t the obvious moral one of considering whether we ought to hold a pillow over the infant’s face until it stops that annoying crying.

It was the political mistake of calling the “tissue mass” an “infant.”  Three times!

(And maybe the scientific mistake of not acknowledging the mystical work performed by the infant’s passing through the magic tube.  Hooray for Science!™)

This is so depressing that if I didn’t laugh at these people, I’d have to cry.

But to all of my friends who usually vote Democrat, please consider whether your party has left you on this issue.  Because if you find yourself giving a standing ovation to late-term abortions, or lighting up public buildings to celebrate them, it might be gut-check time.

 

Ugh.  How about a change of topic to something more cheerful, like an incompetent sex offender story?  (He said, in a deftly skillful transition.)

Meet Arturo Martinez, a sex offender with horns in his head who was trying to lure an under-aged female into his house so that he could allegedly assault her.   I don’t want to provide a link — in case you are enjoying a meal while you are reading this column – but you can Google it pretty easily.  I mean, how many sex offender freakazoids with surgically implanted horns in their heads can be running around out there?

Wait – don’t answer that.  Let’s just assume that if you come across one story like this, that’s the guy I’m talking about.

There’s a nice mugshot of him in the story, and he’s exactly what you would expect: well-groomed, leading man good looks, appears to be someone who may have given Idris Elba and me a run for our money in our hotly contested campaign for People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2018 award.  (Don’t bother looking through the back issues: I narrowly lost, and I’m as shocked about it as you are.)

HA!  I kid.

He actually looks like the kind of guy whom you can picture saying, “You know what will improve my chances with the gals?  Intentional facial disfiguration and surgically implanted skull horns!”  (By the way, last year at Coachella I saw Intentional Facial Disfiguration open for Surgically Implanted Skull Horns.  Killer show!)

Anyway, this guy’s look:  grotesquely elongated earlobes from wearing those mini-ear-frisbees in them, unnatural holes in his upper ears, and in his cheeks.  And oh, yeah… he’s also got horn-like protrusions in his mid-forehead, and four or more short metal rods sticking out of his head above those.

So, yeah, I’m not going to be giving him my blessing if he decides to propose to one of my daughters.

The story is grim, but I’m not going to dwell on the details.  Instead, as part of my Mr. Bright Side campaign, I’m going to find the silver lining on this particular human dark cloud.

And that is: thank God that most criminals are so incredibly stupid.

If you were a results-oriented criminal-American go-getter whose primary goal was to lure females into your house, wouldn’t you want to make yourself look as non-threatening and benign as possible?  I think of a Ted Bundy, who kept himself well-groomed, and got a fake cast to play on the nurturing/helping instincts of potential female victims.  Or a Bill Clinton, who posed as a US president to lure women into his big, white house.

But this guy is no Ted Bundy.  He’s not even (to drop a few standard deviations further down the IQ scale), a Ted Danson.

This Dating Game winner had a bunch of repulsive holes punched into his vaguely porcine face, then had some metal rods and subcutaneous horns implanted in his big, evil head.

Because nothing gets the ladies to drop their defenses like a guy who looks like he just stepped out of a Grimm’s fairy tale.

Also, assuming that he somehow did successfully assault someone, do you think he’s going to be able to lay low afterwards?  I picture the police having a news conference, “We’re asking the public to help us find the suspect, who is described as being white, bald and ugly, with horns and little metal spikes sticking out of—“

Annnnnddd the officer’s voice is drowned out by the instant ringing of every phone in the building.

I always think the same thing when I see some gangbangers being perp-walked into an arraignment.   I wish I could be in the crowd of bystanders and heckle those idiots, “Hey Luis, way to keep a low profile!”

Then the Democrat-voting (I’m guessing) offender would glare at me and snarl, “How did you know my name, homes?” (Which is what I assume he’d say, because I get all my information about the Hispanic underworld from watching crime shows on network tv.)

And I’d say, “Because it’s tattooed across your forehead, you dope, along with your gang affiliations, one tear drop under your eye for each murder you are thus confessing, and that super cool tribute to your mom, whom I’m sure is really proud!”

Anyway, let’s not all judge Arturo.  Maybe he just had those horns implanted into his head because he identifies as a dragon. Or a goat.  Or a moose.  And don’t you dare go and mis-species him, you cis-species bigot.

Also, he can use whatever bathroom – or watering hole, or trough – he wants.

File this story under “coincidences in the news:”

Earlier in January, far-left hack-haven website Buzzfeed was proven laughably wrong on yet another anti-Trump story, so much so that even Bob Mueller felt compelled to issue a statement saying that their latest story was full of Schumer.  This is not at all unusual for Buzzfeed, as you could guess if you went to their headquarters, and noticed that the big sign in their lobby that says, “Consecutive Days Without Getting a Story Wrong” has been stuck at “0” since 2012.

Anyway, on Friday, January 25^th they announced massive layoffs.

I know what you’re thinking:  HA HA HA HA HA!

Also: WHOO! Stop!  My ribs are killing me!  Let me catch my breath!

And finally: HA HA HA HA HA!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s dive deeper into the details of the story and tease out some nuance:

Far left website full of hateful “journalists” blows story after story, spends like drunken congressmen but can’t make a dime of profit, and is now careening toward insolvency like Hillary tumbling down some temple stairs after throwing a horseshoe.  The end.

That’s called “brevity,” people.  And it’s the soul of wit.

Actually, there are a few details worth savoring.  For example, the layoffs hit 43 of the 250 “journalists” working there.  Yet oddly, none of the zero conservative journalists who have ever worked there were affected.

Also, the hardest hit groups were the national desk, the entertainment team, and – I quote – “the LBGT desk.”

I know that I’m old and out of it, but what exactly is a “LBGT desk?”  A desk that thinks it’s an ottoman?  One that identifies as an armoire?  One that has some drawers that you pull out in the regular way, but others that must be pushed in?

And if you push in the pull drawers or pull out the push ones, it screams at you for being a cis-gendered bigot?

I’m so confused.

 

In other news, you might think that after the MSM humiliated themselves by jumping on the Buzzfeed story bandwagon and then having to retreat when it proved to be as phony as Lizzie Warren’s Cherokee birth certificate (#wemustneverstopmockingher), they might be a little gun shy about chasing the next “too good to be checked” political fairy tale.

But you’d be wrong.  Because at the first whisper of, “What’s that old Indian dude doing over there with those white kids in the red hats?” they stampeded across the national mall like Michael Moore when he hears someone drop a glazed donut a block away.

And within minutes, they were hand-fed a heavily-edited, minute-long video depicting a leathery-skinned old guy standing next to a young white kid in a MAGA hat.  So they raced off to immediately post their first, restrained accounts, with subtle titles like, “Sacred Native Elder nearly lynched by racist mob of Trump-supporting Stepford Children,” and “Bad Orange Man blows dog whistle, Sends bloodthirsty white-privilege junkies to dismember and consume saintly Minority Speaker of Truth to Power.”

Ten minutes later, when our leading leftist journalists had entered what is technically known as their “refractory period,” some sane citizens watched the entire video of the encounter, and Googled Nathan Phillips, and the MSM accounts turned out to be what AOC would call “morally right.”  (Which is to say, not even factually close to the truth.)

Read these accounts, and see if you can spot the subtle differences:

MSM version:  Nathan Phillips is a super-respected Native-American elder and Medal of Honor Winner who served many years in Vietnam. He was surrounded and threatened by obnoxious, age-ist and racist white kids who chanted, “Build the Wall,” and who blocked his attempts to get away from them.

Factual version: As a young man, Mr. Phillips had a history of assault and alcohol-related crimes.  He did spend two years in the Marines – and God bless him for that – but he spent his service time in El Toro.  (For those of you who didn’t get your Master’s in Vietnamese Geography, “El Toro” is not just outside of Da Nang.  It is, in fact, in “California.”) (Which, if I’m not mistaken, is a Spanish word which means “very, very far from Vietnam.”)

Although he didn’t win a Medal of Honor or a Purple Heart, he was a three-time winner of the prestigious “AWOL” award.   His service designation was not “mortar-man” or “tank commander” or “specialist-in-swimming-with-a-serrated-knife-clenched-in-his teeth.”

His job was actually listed as “util RefrigMan,” which my crack research team tells me is a refrigeration mechanic.

I’m not making that up.  He basically spent the war years as a Maytag repairman in California.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not one to talk.  I’ve never served, and I couldn’t repair a fridge to save my life.  On the other hand, I’ve never claimed to be an amalgam of Crazy Horse, Rambo and Gandhi, either.

But boy, did Phillips get a lot of support from empty-headed celebrities. Fright-wigged decapitation-fantasizer Kathy Griffin called for the innocent high school kids to be harassed and publicly shamed.  Several dozen talking heads on the various CNN and CNN-adjacent networks aroused themselves with fantasies of what punishments should be inflicted on these evil white kids.

Leftist pols got in on the act, too.  A typical tweet came from Rep. Deb Haaland, New Mexico Democrat and a Native American, who accused the students of “blatant hate,” and praised the way Phillips “put his life on the line for our country.”

Yes.  Because those fridges are very heavy, and if you are super-drunk when you work on one, it can fall and squish you.  That’s probably why he kept going AWOL, because he was tormented by ice-maker-related flashbacks.

Back to our story: the full video shows that Phillips was the aggressor, walking into the middle of the Catholic kids, banging his drum in their faces and trying to provoke them into a response.  In an act of restraint that’s hard for me to imagine young males are capable of, they did not smash his drum over his head, or respond in any way.  They did not chant, “Build the Wall,” as Cochise Frigidaire claimed, but sang their school song.

Other than that, the MSM got the story absolutely right.

The low point in this story for me was when I heard that Reza Aslan posted a pic of one of the Catholic kids, asking, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”

First, I was heartbroken to hear that a magnificent Christ-figure lion was dissing the kids.  But then I realized that the “Aslan” here was the tiny-brained leftist who was fired by CNN two years ago for some anti-Trump tweets that were too obscene and vile even for CNN.

And if that description – too malicious to be a CNN host – seems like it’s almost metaphysically impossible, I agree.  It’s like the other members of the Grateful Dead staging an intervention, in which they tell you that they are worried about your drug use.

But more importantly, I don’t like that TB (tiny-brain) Aslan may have violated my trademark by pointing out the innocent kid’s face-punchability rating.

Those of you who have followed my work for CO over the last several years probably remember all the R&D money that I put into developing the Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI)™ in 2017.

If so, you’ll also remember that Harry Reid has been designated the proud holder of the highest SFPI of all time.  But there are tons of people with higher SFPI ratings than the innocent Catholic kid, including Hillary, Barack, Trump, Lizzie Warren, Jim Acosta, Scowling Wookie, Spartacus, Ted Cruz (sadly), and a cast of thousands more.

In fact, the Catholic kid couldn’t even compete in the Minors Division of the SFPI™ tournament, because the undisputed champion there is David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg, of potty-mouth Parkland gun-grabbing fame.

Anyway, nice job, MSM.  Once again you’ve proven that no one should ever trust you about anything, ever again.

 

Finally, I thought I’d let everyone in on yet another New Year’s Resolution that I’ve made.  (At this pace, I should be making my last New Year’s resolution of 2019 right around the beginning of July.  Spoiler alert: I resolve to put on my biggest fireworks show yet!)

As a mature male with the ability to grow the 5 o’clock shadow/beard of a mature male who identifies as a male, I’ve been a user of shaving equipment since I turned 13.  (Did I skip right past the sad, weak little mustache stage of many adolescent males, and go straight to an impressive full beard that allowed me to begin dating college girls before I could legally drive, you ask?  Yes, thanks for asking.) (Also, how did you get access to my 9^th grade yearbook photo?)

When I saw the Gillette ad lecturing me about the dangers of toxic masculinity, I immediately had two thoughts:

1.Would any women’s fashion or haircare or makeup company EVER dare to insult their core audience this way?  “Hey ladies, you know how you are always making the men around you utterly miserable, with your constant nagging and terrible taste in movies and ridiculous voting choices and lack of driving ability and incomprehensible lack of appreciation for football and carpentry and logical argument and the music of Johnny Cash?   And the way that men die earlier, largely because your soul-sucking complaints eventually rob us of the will to live?   And don’t get us started on your unconscionable use of sex as a weapon.  Anyway, please buy all of our products, you awful, awful harpies.”

No.  You will never see that ad.

(*Also, please note that the preceding paragraph was written for humorous purposes only, and obviously has no relation to any female, living or dead, and especially not to anyone to whom I might be married, for example.)

2.Where is my Gillette razor, so that I can put it in the vice and then smash it with a framing hammer in “The Testosterone Zone” (which is what I have just now decided to call my workshop, where I keep a variety of power- and hand-tools which I use to build and maintain what we amateur anthropologists call “civilization”)?

Ugh.  Hey Gillette, thanks for the timely warning about the terrible dangers of “toxic masculinity.”

Here’s hoping that the men of America will soon teach you a little lesson about the horrors of “toxic profitability.”

Also, just in case you were hoping that whatever you lost by insulting your male customers might be made up for by increased sales to female customers – who, after all, need razors to use on their legs and underarms?  Well, think again.

Because the kind of women who get their gender-non-binary underwear in a bunch because of their outrage about toxic masculinity also happen to be the kind of women who do NOT shave either their legs or their armpits.

Enjoy bankruptcy, you condescending jerks!

On a related note, if any of the good people at the Schick razor company are looking for a sarcastic blogger with a firm jawline and no aversion to lucrative sponsorships – coincidentally, someone who was also a finalist for People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, as far as I know — please contact me through CO at the Cautious Optimism page.

 

This new year is not even a month old, and already I feel like I’m six months behind on mocking the boatload of ridiculous goofballs who are so far infesting 2019.

To start with, I have four thoughts about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  And I know what you’re thinking: that may be a half dozen more thoughts than she has, about anything at all.

First, I understand the impulse behind the “AOC” moniker.  Because I totally agree – with all right-thinking Americans – that saying “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” is a colossal waste of syllables.  I get it — “LBJ” and “JFK” were acceptable shortcuts – but I don’t like it.

It’s one thing for an ambitious and bombastic rapper to call himself the Notorious BIG.  It’s another thing for sad, leftist fan-boys and fan-girls to call ancient far-left justice Ginsburg “RBG.”  And even a third, more ridiculous thing to call the ex-bartender AOC.

In fact — if you’ll allow me the first rambling diversion of 2019 — I’m not thrilled with extra names, either.  John Wayne… that’s a fine cowboy actor.  But John Wayne Gacy was terrible.  As was Lee Harvey Oswald, and Henry Lee Lucas.  Jerry Lewis did some decent work with Dino, but Jerry Lee Lewis is the kind of guy who’ll elope with his 13-year old cousin.

John Booth, he’s a guy you can play poker or golf with.  But John Wilkes Booth?  That’s a homicidal Democrat who’ll kill a Republican president who just freed the slaves.

Come to think of it, one-namers are usually pretty unstable, too: Cher, Madonna, Prince.   And don’t get me started on name-repeaters like Sirhan Sirhan, or Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  She-Guevara and her cutesy initials nickname.

Ugh.  I guess I’ll end up referring to her as AOC.  But I’d like CO nation to know that when I use those letters, I’ll be thinking, “Annoying, Obtuse & Callow.”

Second, I initially agreed with whoever it was who said that AOC was the left’s Sarah Palin.  That comparison had a ring of truth, as both are attractive, female pols who burst on the national scene suddenly, and who soon proved themselves to be gaffe prone, and less than the deepest of thinkers.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that that comparison gives AOC too much credit, and Palin too little.  Whatever else you think of Palin, she paid some political dues before her national debut; she entered politics by getting elected to a city council, and then won a mayoral race, and then became a state Governor, before McCain picked her as his VP running mate.   Sure, she’s not exactly Disraeli when it comes to brilliant public speaking, but some of her most famous gaffes were actually invented by Tina Fey, and the rest were picked up on and emphasized by a relentlessly hostile media.

Compare that to AOC, whose entire pre-election cv comprised a brief role as “hot dancer #4” in a rooftop video shot during college, and a stint as a bartender.  Reports that she was less than a world-class mixologist cannot be confirmed, though anecdotally, if you ordered a rum and coke from her you were equally likely to get a tequila and hydrogen peroxide, or a gin and rubbing alcohol.

On the other hand, as a political thinker, she makes a hell of a bartender.

Third, it’s ironic to me that leftists have flocked to her at least in large part for the most anti-feminist of reasons: because she is young and attractive.  After all, is she saying anything that Bernie Sanders isn’t?  Or that Hugo Chavez didn’t?  Or that the grizzled guy with the hygiene issue and the methadone habit at your local library who talks to himself isn’t?

No.  But those cheekbones, and that red lipstick!  I see her dancing in that rooftop video, and I find myself thinking, “Maybe a 70% top tax rate isn’t so bad.  I mean, look at her little black skirt…”  Then my wife clouts me across the back of my head, and I come back to my senses.

I think Ogden Nash said it best:  “It’s always tempting to impute/Unlikely virtues to the cute.”

And here’s a sobering thought for those who are beguiled by her fresh face: Ashley Judd and Alyssa Milano were both pretty attractive not that long ago.  But their bilious thoughts seem to be seeping to the surface, and transforming them into haggard, aged-before-their-time harpies who are becoming as unpleasant on the outside as they are on the inside.

Fourth, Annoying-OC is a potent combination of someone who thinks stupid thoughts, and then says them stupidly.  In her case, she’s got a teenie/valley-girl delivery that the MSM has somehow managed not to notice.

In recent interviews, she made Ta-nehisi (gesundheit) Coates, a whitey-hating African-American pseudo-intellectual look like Immanuel Kant, and she made Anderson Cooper look reasonable.  She sprinkles “like” into her sentences, and she talks about people being at the “tippy top” of income earners.  She whined about how unfair it was to get too concerned with being “factually and precisely, semantically correct,” when we should be concerned with being “morally right.”

Because when I’m looking for moral instruction, I skip Aquinas and Augustine and Christ, and look for a youngster who can’t get a drink order straight.

Speaking of not being a slave to factual, precise correctness, in one recent tweet, she alluded to $22 trillion in military spending that “could not be traced, documented or explained.”  Some pedantic critic pointed out that that’s more money than the military has spent from the time of George Washington to George W.  But I guess he’s morally wrong.

There are so many things that she needs to – but cannot – explain.  Such as how we can possibly go to 100% non-polluting cars within 10 years.  And where she would get the $32 trillion required to pay for her Medicare-for-all proposal for only one decade.  And why table 2 ordered a pitcher of Bud Light, but she gave them a bottle of liquid soap and a Pez dispenser.

She complained about the way Trump “manufactures crises” — I give her a point for getting the plural of “crisis” right, but deduct a point for parroting a stale leftist talking point – but within two weeks made news by announcing that the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t stop climate manbearpig.  Also, people in Alabama have ringworm because the government hasn’t taken over healthcare.  Stupid Trump!

But AOC is not the only mockable lefty out there.  Not when Nancy Pelosi is doddering around the House.

My favorite moment so far this year was when Trump waited until the Dem leadership and their entourage were on buses heading for the airport for the greatest vacation getaway ever, and then he said that they couldn’t use the airplanes because of the government shutdown.

Ouch!  If Nancy’s withered head didn’t contain enough Botox to kill a former-first-lady-sized Clydesdale, I’m sure she would have had a very angry expression on her almost lifelike face.

As part of my “Look on the bright side for 2019” resolution, I feel compelled to point out that one stop on the Dems’ itinerary was to have been Egypt, and that could have been a disaster.  Because if Pelosi had visited the pyramids and some locals had seen her, there was a very real risk of a panicked stampede, among cries of, “The curse is alive! Flee! The mummy walks among us!”

My second-favorite moment of the year is a tie between Chuck-and-Nancy’s disastrous PR debacle/American Gothic recreation as they woodenly responded to Trump’s wall speech, and Lizzie Warren’s catastrophic home video (#wemustneverstopmockingher).

In a “what was she thinking?” moment, Warren followed in the footsteps of the hip kids these days by attempting a selfie video.  The whole thing was artificial and painful, but the best moment was when the highly educated Paleface Powhatan attempted a white working-class accent, saying, “I think I’m a gonna get me a beer.”

On the bright side, she did manage to open and drink from the bottle without breaking it and accidentally stabbing herself in the neck with the jagged edge and then covering the camera with arterial spray before bleeding out on the floor.

On the other hand, not since another phony old white lady  (CAW CAW) attempted a black accent (“Ah don’t feel no ways tah-rd, I come too fa-uhr…”) has an ethnic group been so defamed by an outsider.

I feel terrible for American Indians right now.  I don’t know which is worse: Liz Warren pretending to be one of them, or the fact that that creepy old non-Vietnam vet fraud who slandered the Kentucky high school kids at the March for Life IS one of them.

For me, the last third of 2018 was marked by three politically significant stories.  One was mostly bad, and the other two were very, very good.

The bad is obvious: the November election.  Sure, it wasn’t all bad.  Some egregious leftists narrowly lost (Beta in TX, whitey-hating racists for governor in GA and FL, quasi-animated wax figure Bill Nelson for Senate in FL).  The GOP picked up a few Senate seats.  Some entertainingly boneheaded Dems who are going to provide tons of future embarrassment for the left won (I’m looking at you, She-Guevara Googly Eyes).

But it was mostly bad, with Dems picking up over 40 house seats, and winning narrow Senate victories in red states that ought to be ashamed of themselves.  So enough about that.

Because my new’s years resolution is to be Mr. Sunny Side, I’m going to focus on two columns I wrote about the two best stories from late 2018: Lizzie Warren’s heap big DNA disaster, and Brett Kavanaugh’s triumph over the leftist orcs in DC and the media.

I wrote about Warren’s PR stunt/Hindenburg test-flight as the “act of unintentional self-immolation by the albino Apache herself.

Obviously, Trump was living in her empty, blonde head rent-free, or she never would have taken a DNA test in such a transparently desperate move to establish her Cherokee bona fides in the first place.  But once she took the test and found out that she is overwhelmingly white, the only rational path was obvious: swear the DNA tester to secrecy, destroy the results and start screaming about misogyny, or any other non-Indian-related bogus leftist talking point.

But no one has ever accused recent Democratic presidential contenders of being slaves to rationality.

So Warren compounded the problem.  She poured gasoline on the fire, steered into the skid, and made a terrible-PR mountain out of an embarrassing genetic molehill.

She produced a campaign-ad style video during which she talked to various members of the Warren family about how the old folks all used to wax poetic about their Indian ancestry.  If you’ve seen that video, you may have noticed something about the people in it: every last one of them is incredibly white.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I mean, unless you are a Democrat who wants to be president.

Anyway, she managed to act smug as the DNA tester confirmed that she does indeed have “some” Indian ancestry.  If by “some,” you mean “the same ratio as I have of stellar dust from ancient comet strikes in my backyard, as compared to regular old earth-dirt.”  And I’d expect all of my neighbors to mock me if I started calling my backyard “the Lawn of Tranquility.”

Of course the sweetest irony comes from knowing that Lizzie could only have thought that she’d get away with such a laughable claim if she knew that the dishonest MSM would cover for her.

 

And for about half a day, they tried, coming out with multiple variations of headlines touting “the strong proof” that her DNA test gave to her claims of uber-Cherokee-osity.

But within minutes, people who can do math started to point out that she is likely somewhere around 99.9% white, along with several other fun facts.  Such as that she likely has many more times as much DNA from at least one white male ancestor who helped round up the Cherokee for the Trail of Tears.  (Cue the sad trombone/peacepipe.)

And that the average white American has something like 8 times as much Indian DNA as Liz has.  Despite the fact that, according to extensive research that I just now completed, most of them have never contributed even ONE recipe to Pow Wow Chow!  You can look it up.

And that’s not all of the crab bisque that Lizzie now has on her face.  Because she hadn’t just been claiming that some distant ancestor 6 to 10 generations back was a Cherokee.  She was claiming that her own mother was so obviously Indian that her grandparents wouldn’t accept her into their family, so her parents had to elope.

During my afore-mentioned research, I covered the back of an envelope with my own mathematical calculations, and I’ve arrived at the following conclusion:  Liz’s mom was not 6 to 10 generations back.  She was roughly one generation back.

So at most, one of that woman’s grandparents’ grandparents’ parent MIGHT have been at least part Indian.  At worst, one of THAT person’s grandparents’ grandparent MIGHT have been an Indian.

But since the DNA test actually used DNA samples taken from central and south Americans, that magical Indian ancestor may have actually been a Brazilian snake-wrangler, or a syphilitic conquistador, or an alcoholic member of the lesser Spanish nobility who was forced to go to the New World to try to dry out, and also because his continually passing out in the soup bowl was proving embarrassing to King Ferdinand.

And yes, there is as much scientific evidence to support the syphilitic,snake-wrangling,hard-drinking dinner-disruptor theory as there is to support the “I’m-a-blue-eyed-Delaware-Cherokee” theory of Elizabeth Warren.

But the Mendacious Mohawk was not ready to give up yet.  In a post-disaster interview she said that she released the DNA results because, and I quote, “I am an open book.”

Yes.  And that book is called The White Pages.

She also fell back on the oldest of ploys used by people who have made some issue all about themselves.  She said, “This isn’t about me.”

No, it isn’t.  It’s about your ancestors.  Your very, very, VERY white ancestors.

She also said that she released the results because, “I see now that confidence in government is at an all-time low.  And I believe that one way we try to rebuild confidence is through transparency.”

Even better than that, in your case: translucency!

And so, I tip my hat to you, Elizabeth Warren.  After I have done my best for almost a year to mock you at every turn, you have put my feeble mockery to shame with your own towering act of self-be-clownery.

I am tempted to say that this whole charade boomeranged on you.  But I have too much respect for the aboriginal people who invented the boomerang to engage in such a gross act of cultural appropriation.

So I will just say, “Liar, liar, deerskin dress on fire.”

Now please tell me where I can go to contribute to your 2020 presidential campaign.”

 

The other great story was Kavanaugh’s escape from the slanderous lefty mob who almost succeeded in Borking him.  After following his tortuous path, I wrote a final, relieved column after his confirmation:

“Can you picture the joy around stately Simpson Manor today?  After several weeks of being furious and worried and depressed as a manifestly good man was demonized and smeared, I started to enjoy a trickle of good news this past week.

First, Creepy Porn Lawyer’s client turns out to be a singularly unconvincing loon selling a story that dozens and dozens of upper class girls were gang raped over a period of months by dozens of upper class boys in a suburb of DC, and no one ever reported it.  When she gave four names of people who supposedly witnessed this, one denied it, two couldn’t be reached, and one was dead.

It’s a cliché for a reason: when your best witness is a dead guy, pull the fire alarm and run out of the court room.

Next, Ramirez turns out to be a partisan hack selling a story that she was black out drunk at a party, and there were genitals, and she wasn’t sure whose they were until she spent six days talking to her leftist hack lawyer, who – when not chasing ambulances – also specializes in helping people “recover” decades-old genital-related memories.

By the way, I went to high school and college with a ton of girls, and I tragically got to see almost none of them naked.  But if there’s a way I can go to the offices of Soros & Alinsky Esq.  and “recover” some memories in which I was actually bombarded by parade floats filled with female nudity, I’m in.

In fact, if I could please “recover” a memory of when 1983 Nena went to my senior prom with me, and sang “99 Luft Balloons” before coming home to the luxurious apartment I never had and having her lusty Germanic way with me, I’d pay double.  Throw in that time I ravaged late 1970s Farrah Fawcett, and I will sign over my 401K.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: Ramirez’s story collapsed like a house of imaginary cards.

At the same time, Ford’s story grew weaker too.  All of the witnesses she named said they didn’t know what she was talking about.  Her story that she was terrified of flying was undermined by the fact that she has 500,000 frequent flier miles.  Also, for the last six years she has had a summer job as a wing-walker on an old biplane in a barnstormer act in Branson, Missouri.

Next up, the MSM was on the case, and dug up perhaps the most damning anti-Kavanaugh account yet.  It turns out that Brett Kavanaugh – when he wasn’t drugging high school girls and defending his pimping turf in vicious running gun battles with Bishop Don “Magic” Juan (Google him) – was also involved in a donnybrook in a bar near Yale.

That’s right.  He allegedly threw ice at a guy.  You may remember it from all of those “The Cube Heard Round the World” stories that dominated the headlines in 1985.

This was the last straw for my wife, who is, as many of you know, of Norwegian descent.  Until then, she had been trying to keep an open mind.  But when she heard about the ice throwing allegations, she was triggered.

Because, as she explained to me in a tearful conversation, the Norwegian people have long been tormented by racial slurs from their less blonde, less attractive, shorter, swarthier neighbors.

Growing up, she had heard it all:  Tundra Monkeys.  Glacierbacks.  Frosties. Fjord-billies.  Svens.

But the most painful of all was the “I” word:  Ice-chuckers.

(By the way, don’t kid yourself: Lizzie Warren has heard those same, hateful words.  She might say that she’s been called “squaw” or “wigwam whacko,” but she’s got “fjord-billy” written all over her.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

So the anti-Kavanists lost my wife.

My spirits were rising as the FBI report came back the only way it possibly could, given that the alleged bad behavior happened at an undetermined location, in an unknown year, and with no corroboration. And also was totally made up.

Then Cocaine Mitch called for a cloture vote, and Lindsay Graham’s evil twin continued to dazzle us all.  When a bunch of entitled know-nothing college kids at a genteel event at the Atlantic started booing him, he snapped, “Oh, boo yourself.”

Which, for the old Lindsay Graham, would have been the equivalent of jumping to his feet, roaring, “DIE  COMMIE SCUM!” and spraying the crowd with small arms fire from a belt-fed weapon.

Also, when some embittered termagant harassing him in a hallway called out, “If he would take a polygraph this would all be over,” Lindsay came back with a professional-quality retort, which I am not making up.  He looked back over his shoulder without missing a beat, and said, “Why don’t we dunk him in water and see if he floats.”

Boom!

Finally Friday comes, and Susan Collins speaks on the Senate floor in that shaky, Kate-Hepburn-in-a-bumper-car way that has always driven me nuts, but is now just adorable.  After a 45-minute speech laying out the manifest reasons to be disgusted by the left’s smear campaign (reportedly written by her lead staffer, Harold Obvious), she supports Kavanaugh.

Twelve seconds later, Joe Manchin shoulder-rolls to the nearest microphone, gives a clavicle-snapping forearm shiver to the septuagenarian who was explaining that we should always believe all women, and grabs the mike, shouting, “Me too!  Me too!  I’m voting for Kavanaugh too!”

So I grab the front paws of a startled Cassie the Wonder Dog and dance her around my living room, singing, “Oh Happy Day,” but replacing the line, “When Jesus washed my sins away,” with, “When Lindsay cleared the goons away!”

To vicariously experience that with me, google “Ray Charles sings Oh Happy Day,” and watch the video.  It was just like that, except with a lot less dashikis, and one confused and excited Aussie shepherd.

So Saturday comes, and I DVR the usual half-dozen college football games, but also the coverage of the Kavanaugh vote and aftermath on all 6 networks.  I am going to slowly work my way through all of that video between now and Christmas, savoring every profanity-filled chant and misspelled sign and red-faced tantrum from the hordes of lefty louts who descended on Washington to celebrate “Political Impotence Fest ’18.”

In the meantime, I’ve got my snacks arranged around me in my recliner.  I’m having a foot-long schadenfreude sandwich with a side of Cheetos (because the Dems tried to cheat, get it?), and I’ll be washing it down with a flagon of Leftist Tears, vintage 2016.

With ice. Delicious, never-been-thrown ice.

That reminds me: Just-ice Kavanaugh.

Ha! Crank it up!    “Oh happy day…”

 

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That was 2018, through my sarcastic eyes.  Next up: my first column of all-new material in this target-rich environment of 2019.  To read past columns, or to gaze in wonder at the Christmas picture of Cassie the Wonder Dog, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com.

 

As we headed into the summer, I was shocked to find that the MSM was not happy with the way Trump referred to immigrants:

“You probably haven’t heard about this – because CNN has been obsessed with covering nothing but the historically low black and Hispanic unemployment rates, and the strong economic numbers, and the way Mueller and McCabe and Comey and John Brennan and Clapper and Peter Stroke and his unattractive mistress have all been exposed as a cabal of sleazy perjurers who need to be jailed immediately – but Trump called some immigrants “animals.”

No, really.  He did.  I flipped back and forth through half a dozen channels for the better part of two days, and had it confirmed over and over again.  Apparently, he described as “animals” the following groups: hard-working Mexican single mothers, saintly Guatemalan priests, impeccably dressed Ecuadorian honor students, Costa Rican abuelas who are bravely fighting stage three breast cancer, adorable Chilean first-graders, and Salvadoran first responders who specialize in rescuing adorable Salvadoran kittens who get stuck in an especially sticky species of Salvadoran trees.

Of course, as it turned out, Trump was referring to members of MS-13, a merry bunch of sociopaths who divide their time between beheading innocent teenagers and competing in round robin “who can get the most hideous tattoos” tournaments.

My favorite MSM idiot in this story – in a very crowded field — is someone named Ana Navarro.  Ms. Navarro clambered onto her high horse to say how contemptible it was that anyone would ever refer to any human beings – no matter what they’d done – as “animals.”

Then, because God loves us and has a real grudge against Ana Navarro, 8 million Americans immediately Googled “Ana Navarro” and “animals” and “hypocritical beeyotch” (maybe that last one was just me), and came up with this tweet of hers from 2016:  “Should Donald Trump drop out of the race? Yes. He should drop out of the human race. He is an animal. Apologies to animals.”

Move over, “Boy who Cried Wolf,” and “The Scorpion and the Frog,” because I have a new favorite Aesop’s Fable: “How the CNN Horse’s Ass got Hoof-in-Mouth Disease.”

 

Later that month, I had the chance to rant about a pet peeve of mine that involves actual pets – “the boneheads who have convinced themselves and the airlines that they require an “emotional support” animal to accompany them to whatever destination they are traveling to.

And before I get going on the details, trust me: these folks are not flying to the International Symposium on Particle Physics convention, or Mensa-fest 2018, or the Simpson Family Reunion.  No. They are going to the Women’s March, or the Democratic National Convention, or the David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg fan club meeting at the Hilton by the airport.

Anyway, as most disastrous trends in our recent history, this one started out with good intentions.  Blind or physically disabled people needed the help of a smart, well-trained seeing-eye dog, so they were given permission to travel with their dogs.  (FYI, Cassie “the Wonder Dog” Simpson briefly considered a career in the helping professions – assisting the blind, or sniffing out drugs carried by criminals, or giving a vicious and well-deserved mauling to this nation’s enemies as a military dog – before settling on a lucrative position as my faithful companion.)  But immediately after the tiny number of people who legitimately needed a dog to travel with them got that permission, a horde of grifters and ne’er-do-wells and narcissistic scam artists followed hard on their heels.

Seeing-eye dogs were followed by support dogs and then by other support species.  Which was already a bridge too far.  I mean, how much support can your reasonably get from a cat, for crying out loud?  I love cats, my family loves cats, we’ve got several.  But no cat is ever going to pull a handi-capable senior citizen from a burning house, or run-down a fleeing Democrat voter with an armful of stolen loot, or sprint back to town to alert the police that Jimmy has fallen down the well.

Anyway, allowing other support species then devolved into perhaps the best indicator of modern American moral degeneration: the “emotional support animal.”  Ugh.  With 10 minutes of internet searching you can find stories about lost souls traveling with pigs, peacocks and monkeys, all of whom are supposed to be giving vital emotional “support.”   If you can stand to learn more about this, read a recent Dallas News article on efforts of several airlines to curb the explosion of support menageries tromping onto every flight and turning them into a demented Noah’s Ark with spotty wifi.

I’ll mention just one specific example.  A 39-year-old Kentucky resident named Carla Fitzgerald has recently traveled on multiple flights with her emotional support Indian Runner duck, which she named Daniel Turducken Stinkerbutt.

Where do I start with that?  First, the only acceptable animal middle name is obviously  “the Wonder Dog.”  Second, that name you stuck one of God’s innocent creatures with is not cute – it’s really, really stupid.  Other ducks are mocking your duck, and if he could get out of your clammy grasp, he’d gladly launch himself into the airplane’s jet turbines just to end his shame.

When I first read that story, I came to the detail that Fitzgerald was allowed to travel with her mortified duck because she had PTSD.  For the briefest of seconds, I thought, “Ah, geez, if she’s a combat veteran, I don’t know if I can savagely mock her…”  But then I read on: “…PTSD from a carriage accident years ago.”

A carriage accident?  What the hell?   Is this woman an upper-class 18th century lady whose vehicle suffered a broken wooden axle on the rutted path between Boston and Philadelphia?  Was she taking a romantic horse-drawn ride around Central Park after Kramer had fed the horse something that made it gassy?

And her “accident” took place “years ago?”  What’s the statute of limitations on carriage-accident-related trauma?   Forty years ago I saw a Benny Hill skit where he dressed up like a highwayman and robbed a stage coach, leaving the female riders in only their 1970s-style underwear and garters, for some reason.   Do I still get to drag my three-named platypus through first-class to an aisle seat in coach?

 

By the way, this might have to be a topic for a future column: the mission creep that has come to surround PTSD.  If you ran over an IED outside of Kandahar, or were raped by the kind of animal that Lil’ Mike Dukakis gave weekend prison passes to, you legitimately have PTSD, and God bless you.  If you had a bad experience in a spelling bee in 3rd grade, or someone called you the wrong pronoun, or you still can’t leave the house after the 2016 election, you don’t have PTSD.  You have TWS (terminal wussiness syndrome), and need some SKA (swift kick in the arse) therapy immediately.

I know this is a hard issue for the emotionally mature, well-adjusted readership of CO nation to identify with.  None of you reading this can likely imagine a circumstance in which you would ever find yourself calling Customer Support at Delta and saying the words, “Can I bring my therapeutic ocelot on Flight 3245 to Newark?”

Why not just walk up and down an airport concourse wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, “I have no pride, dignity or value to society.  Please commit me to an institution where I can get the electroshock therapy that I so desperately need.”

Or, alternatively, you could just listen to me, as the entire world should: if you are too emotionally fragile to travel in public without your support macaque, please stay home and work on your issues.

 

Speaking of listening to me, in June I read about leftist bullies in Colorado forcing a Christian baker to make a cake for the wedding of two hateful gay activists, and introduced what should become a bedrock principle of our democracy: “Mind Your Own Business You Totalitarian Jerks” (or MYOBYTJ):

“And I wouldn’t just apply it to religion, either.   For example, I dislike smoking; it’s expensive, and makes your clothes stink, and it caused the deaths of my mother-in-law and a favorite aunt in the last 6 months.  If someone wanted to open a bar or restaurant in my town that allowed smoking, I wouldn’t go there.

But you know what else I’d do?  I’d mind my own freaking business!  If a smallish town has 6 bars, why couldn’t one of them allow smoking?  No one who objected would have to work there, or eat there, or drink there, and most people wouldn’t.  If enough people voted with their dollars and stayed away, the bar would close.  But not because some crybullies forced them out of business.

I know that smoking is not good for you, but that’s not the point.

You know what else isn’t good for you?  Ice cream.  Riding a motorcycle.  Women half your age.  Many other women.  Many men, too.  Playing the lottery.  Cocaine.  Red meat.  Electing delusional white ladies to the Senate from Massachusetts. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  Really loud music.  Stepping in to defend a weak person against a bully who’s much larger and stronger than you are.

Half the juice in life is negotiating your way around and through those things.  For example, I once had a good meal at a steakhouse with a woman who wasn’t good for me (despite a cuteness of almost Nikki Haley-esque proportions), and then took her back to her apartment on my motorcycle, where she fed me some ice cream.

But just when I was about to do some things that would have left me with terrible regret (and possibly some soft-tissue injury) she pulled out some cocaine and said, “Let’s snort this, and then buy a lottery ticket and vote for Elizabeth Warren.”

Of course, I jumped up in righteous outrage and tossed some clothes at her and said, “Put your clothes on and get out of my apartment!”

And she said, “Those are your clothes, and this is my apartment!”

To which I wittily replied, “Oh, yeah.”  The next thing you know, I’m making a dignified (if pantsless) retreat, while she is screaming from the second floor landing like a crazy person, “Elizabeth Warren is a Native American role model!”

And I’m screaming back at her, “She’s as Indian as Ingemar Johanssen!”

“Who is that?”

“Google him!” I yelled.

“You better stop mocking Elizabeth Warren, and I mean it!”

“NEVER!” I screamed, as I roared away into the night, having learned a valuable lesson.

 

In July, one of my least favorite Obama administration officials – in a very crowded field – Jeh Johnson drew my ire afresh:

“You may remember him as Obama’s DHS secretary.  I remember him primarily as the man with the most annoyingly spelled name since Brett Favre.

Call me old fashioned, and a traditionalist.  And even ruggedly handsome, if you must.  But I am not one to go along with a society’s insane agreement to pronounce names incorrectly.  “F-A-V-R-E” features an “R” that comes after the “V” – therefore, “Fav-ruh.”  But all of sports media agreed to call him “Farve.”  The same thing happened with Cub shortstop Shawon Dunston (1985-2002), when everyone agreed to pretend that that “O” was not there, and call him “Shawn.”

But not me.  I could accept “Shawn” or “Sean,” but not “Shawon.” So I spent the better part of two decades talking about “Sha-won” Dunston and Brett “Fav-ruh.”  And people around me continually stared at me with what I choose to interpret as quiet admiration for my fidelity to the rules of English pronunciation.

Which brings me to Jeh Johnson.  In a sane world, his first name would have to rhyme with “meh” – which coincidentally enough, matches the emotion that the mention of his name should inspire, in even the best-case scenario.

But no.  “Jeh” wants to be called “Jay.”  And our sheep-like media just go along with it.  But we have a spelling for “Jay.”  It’s “Jay.”  I could even accept “J” for a first name, because that would be almost cool, and how else could you pronounce “J?”

But come on.   Pilots in trouble do not make frantic “Meh Deh” calls on the radio. I don’t sing “Oh Happy Deh” in church on Sundeh.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

So Chris Wallace interviewed Jeh on the subject of the morality of separating children from their parents when those parents illegally cross our borders.  Wallace pointed out that this was Obama’s policy, and that such hideously inhumane and cruel proceedings went on for years, with nary a peep from our debased, Jeh-humoring media.  Until Trump became president, and then separating children became the new Holocaust.

If you want to watch an example of a politician dancing around his obvious culpability while acknowledging nothing, watch that interview.  When Wallace asked him for a solution to illegal immigration, Jeh said, “We can’t have catch and release…”  Even though that’s what Jeh and his boss did.

And he said, “We did not want to go so far as to separate families.”  But that’s what Jeh and his boss did.

You almost get the sense that Jeh and his fellow leftists wants us to forget that Trump inherited the child-separation policy – the very one that the lefty mobs now claim to be so offended by – from Obama.

I have only one response to that: Not to-deh, Jeh.  No weh.

 

 

As another year has come to an end, I want to continue the tradition that I began last year, of doing a Dave Barry-esque look back at my favorite moments of the past year, as I commented on them in various columns.  Especially since CO’s site has continued to grow – over 23,000 followers now, and counting! — I know that many of you may not have caught these musings the first time around.  For those of you who did, I hope they bring back fond memories of mockery from days of yore.

So I give you “2018 Retrospecticus, Part 1: January – April”

2018 started on a high note, with me making a resolution to be more patient with people who disagree with me.

That resolution lasted until January 16^th, when a gaggle of reporters – and those mopes really put the “gag” in gaggle – interrogated Trump’s doctor for an hour.  The president had taken a physical along with a mental acuity test, and I wrote about the resulting press conference:

“The travesty started with the doc stating that Trump’s health is “excellent” and that he has “no mental or cognitive issue whatsoever.”  For a normal bunch of humans, that would elicit a “no story here” reaction, followed by a few perfunctory follow-up questions (“How about that cholesterol, though?”) and an early break for lunch.

But for this bunch of hacks, it was the opening salvo to a 21-gun salute of stupid.

They spent an hour asking variations on the same few questions (“But he might be crazy, right?” “Can you definitively rule out that he’s nuts?” “How many chicken nuggets is Trump short of a Happy Meal?” “But what about the dozens of leftist hack ‘doctors’ who have diagnosed Trump as a paranoid schizophrenic without ever having been in a room with him?)

The “mental acuity” test was a highlight of the circus.  The reporters thought it was a trap they were going to spring on Trump, but it turned out to be a rake that kept whapping them in their empty, coconut skulls.

Usually, I’m very content with my lot in life.  I married up, I’ve got two world-class daughters, I’ve got a good career and a small real estate empire, and the strength of 10 men, because my heart is pure.  My mental acuity is off the charts, and I own a dog who is the envy of the entire canine community.

But I think I would give all of my earthly possessions to have been in that doctor’s place at that press conference:

Reporter: “Why did you give him a mental acuity test in the first place?  Were you worried about that?”

Doctor Me: “Thanks for that inane question, you dolt.  Actually, he asked to be given that test.”

Reporter: “Is that because he is worried about his mental acuity?”

Me: “No.  It’s because he knows that a bunch of you soul-less hacks have been smearing him as mentally unfit.”

Reporter: “So how did he do?”

Me: “He got a 30.”

Reporter (beside himself with glee): “30%?!  That’s awful!”

Me: “Not 30%, you moron.  30 out of 30.  Put your shoes back on, Acosta – that’s 100%.”

Reporter:  “But this test doesn’t mean that he’s psychologically healthy, necessarily.  It only measures acuity, right?”

Me: “You can’t even spell ‘acuity,’ can you?”

Reporter:  “A – Q –”

Me (slapping my forehead):  “Idiots.”

Reporter: “Hey!  These are legitimate questions.  The people have a right to know about their leaders’ health!  We’re just doing our jobs!”

Me: “Like when you ignored Hillary Clinton’s bi-weekly near-death experiences during the campaign?  She had to wear Coke-bottle Mr. Magoo glasses for a while to help prevent seizures, and you never mentioned it.  She collapsed into the side of a limo like the sniper victim in Saving Private Ryan, and you ignored it.”

Reporter: “That wasn’t—”

Me: “During every other speech she went on a coughing jag like a chain-smoking octogenarian in a TB ward!  Nancy Pelosi slurs her speech like Chelsea Handler on the last night of Mardi Gras, and Frederica Wilson’s hat collection is clear prima facie evidence that she’s clinically insane!  And you’ve never asked any questions about any of them, have you?”

Reporter: “But—”

Me: “Shut up.  We’ve administered that same mental acuity test to some of the congressional Democrats.  Would you like to know how they scored?”

Reporter (in a wee, small voice): “no.”

Me (flourishing a print-out):  “Chuck Schumer got half a point.”  (looking over my glasses at the reporters)  “You get one point for spelling your name correctly.”

Reporters: “I don’t think we—”

Me: “The rest of the Democrat leadership scores didn’t make any sense to us, so we consulted a variety of experts.  Finally, a zoologist recognized that their calibrated scores were equivalent to those of several animal species.”

Reporters: “Oh, come on!”

Me: “According to these results, Elizabeth Warren has the mental acuity of a platypus.  And not the brightest platypus, either.  Fourth quintile platypus at best.  The kind of platypus that – if platypi had developed a tiered university system – would be trying to get her gen ed requirements out of the way at a community college with the hope of transferring to a weak state school.   Also, little known fact: the platypus is not a Native American species, even though the slower ones pretend that they are.”  (We must never stop mocking Elizabeth Warren.)

Reporters: “We don’t see what this has to do with—”

Me: “Nancy Pelosi?” (pause for effect)  “Third quintile racoon.”  (uncomfortable murmuring in the room)  “Dick Durbin?”  (no one will meet my eyes)  “Second quintile marmoset.”

Reporters: “What’s a—”

Me: “We had to re-test Frederica Wilson twice, before someone found a botanist who confirmed that she has the acuity of an unspecified deciduous tree.”

Reporters (after a long, shamed silence): “But still, what about Trump’s weight?  That’s not good, is it?”

Me: “That’s it.  Everybody line up.  I’m going to give a Three Stooges’ style sequential face-slap to the whole rotten lot of you!”

And, scene.”

By the way, one commenter noted that “Fourth Quintile Platypus” would be a fine name for a punk band, and I can’t disagree.

In February … Elizabeth Warren gave us all a Valentine’s Day present by revisiting her fairy tale genealogy at a speech to an American Indian group.

“This story has been extensively researched – and extensively debunked – and the smart thing would have been for Warren to let that old story get older.  But “smart” is not the Nordic Cherokee’s strong suit.

She used fake Indian ancestry to get an affirmative action job at Harvard, and launch her academic and later political career.  And she contributed a few alleged Indian recipes for Oklahoma Crab Bisque to a cookbook called (I’m not kidding) Pow Wow Chow.  (This clever recipe would definitely fool anyone who has never seen a crab, or been to Oklahoma, or is otherwise unable to look up either crabs or Oklahoma.)

But that’s done.  It’s in the past.  Or it would be, if she wasn’t stupid enough to bring it up again in front of the National Congress of American Indians!

Look, Liz, you’ve got to face facts.  You’re the least convincing Indian since Cher put on a bedazzled loincloth with a ginormous headdress and sang Half Breed.  (Watch that on Youtube right now, if you haven’t seen it.)  Or since an entire cast of buckskin-wearing vaguely ethnic extras made the tv show F-Troop (Youtube.  Right now!)  Larry Storch, who was supposed to be a white soldier, was a more convincing Indian than you.

Remember Iron Eyes Cody, the Indian who cried over litter in commercials? (Youtube, I tell’s ya!)  He was not an Indian.  He was an Italian guy named Vito Lucchese Siciliano, or something like that.  But at least he had dark skin and dark eyes, and changed his name to “Iron Eyes.”

You’re blonde, and blue eyed, and you look like a New England WASP who is none too pleased that the help is getting a little chatty as she dusts the cherry wood harpsicord that great-great-great-grandfather brought over with him on the Mayflower.   And your name is ELIZABETH!  First it was Elizabeth Herring, and then you married some sap named Warren.

And you know what no librarian has ever said, when surrounded by a semi-circle of bright-eyed four-year olds, on a faded carpet near the circulation desk?  “Gather round, kids, and I’ll tell you story of when the noble Sauk Herrings went on the war path against the fearsome Chickasaw Warrens!”

You’re a doddering old white lady, Liz, and you’re as phony as a Clinton wedding vow, and we will never stop mocking you.

 

In March… Planned Parenthood had a busy month.

“First, they supported the “March for our Lives,” gun-grabbing extravaganza.  Savor the irony: a Planned Parenthood event supporting children’s lives.

On a related note, mark your calendars for April: don’t miss the “National Socialist March for B’Nai B’rith,” on the fifth, the “Silicon Valley Amish Tech-stravaganza,” on the tenth, and the Bill Clinton “Promise Keepers,” rally on the 18th.  (Free “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” keychains to the first 200 people through the doors!)

Not satisfied with that shameless stunt, P-squared also took a brave stand on Disney princesses.  A Pennsylvania PP affiliate tweeted earlier this week – and I am not making this up, because no one could – the following:  “We need a Disney princess who’s had an abortion.”

Yikes.  That’s definitely what I wanted I wanted to hear from my daughters, when they were little: “Daddy, remember when Cinderella used to like that shiftless drifter, and then her belly started getting big, but by the time it was time for her to meet Prince Charming, she was skinny again?”

“Yes, honey,” I would never say in a million years, “she had to do that so that she could self-actualize, and marry up, and then slowly reveal her moral vacuity and make the Prince’s life a living hell until he prayed for the sweet release of death.”

“What’s ‘vacuity’?” my daughter would ask, and I’d say, “Look it up in the dictionary.  It’s next to the picture of Elizabeth Warren.”

“Should we ever stop mocking her?” my innocent daughter would ask.

And I’d say, “What do you think, Sweet Pea?”

And she’d look down at her shoes sheepishly, and mumble, “Never?”

And I’d say, “Never, ever, ever.”

 

But Planned Parenthood wasn’t through tweeting yet.  It also called for “pro-choice,” “Illegal immigrant,” “union worker,” and – wait for it – “trans” Disney princesses.

Yes.  A “trans” princess.  Because nothing brings a fantasy story alive like having a prince climb up the side of a tower using Rapunzel’s thick, lustrous beard.  Or like having the prince wake Snow White with a kiss, only to notice as her eyes flutter open that she has morning wood.

Nice job Planned Parenthood!

 

In April… I noticed a small story that struck me as emblematic of the bad behavior of elected leftists that is doing so much to worsen our civic culture.  The culprit this time was a Houston councilwoman named Kellye Burke:

“This upstanding citizen shares a last name with conservative genius of yesteryear Edmund Burke, so I’m predisposed to like her.  But it turns out that her last name is absolutely the only thing she shares with Burke.  For example, she spells her first name with a comically misplaced “e.”

Now maybe we shouldn’t judge her for that, because her parents might have stuck her with that spelling.  But she could have changed it.  “Kelly” is a fine name.  Kelly is the kind of girl who’s a lot of fun on a first date, and she smells nice, and she kisses you for just long enough when you’re dropping her off, and a few months later you take her home to meet mom and dad.

“Kellye,” on the other hand?  As soon as she gets off the main stage, she’ll be going to the Champagne Room, where you can buy her a watered-down drink for $47, followed by a lap dance during which she tells you how she is working her way through community college, and last fall she co-starred in a movie with Stormy Daniels.

Anyway, Kellye recently went into a little store called – I am not making this up – Tiny’s Milk and Cookies.  (I’m so hoping that “Tiny” is a good-natured 300+ pounder who gets a kick out of his/her ironic nickname, and I’d bet you that that place has some darn good cookies, which Tiny has perfected after long, exhaustive process of trial and error and taste-testing.)

At Tiny’s, Kellye sees four teenage girls, who are in line waiting – again, not making this up – to buy cookies for their church group.  Of course, they were wearing Antifa and “I’m With Her” t-shirts.

HA!  I kid.

One of the girls was wearing a Trump “Make America Great Again” t-shirt.

So naturally, “Wrong E” Kellye did what any mentally stable, enlightened leftist adult would do.   She walked up to them and screamed, “Grab them by the p—sy, girls!”  The girls were startled, and tried to laugh it off, but, “Nevertheless, she persisted!”  (Get it?  There’s the required Elizabeth Warren reference.  NSM) (i.e. Never Stop Mocking.)

Then, according to one of the girls’ fathers, “She yells it again.  At that point the girls were getting kind of scared, and then the woman starts going, ‘MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!’ while shaking her fist.”

Someone in the shop reported the woman to the cops, and when they investigated and cited her, they found out that she was a city councilwoman.  She was charged with a Class C Misdemeanor.

I think I know what the “C” stands for.

Next up: the best of May – August.  And in the meantime, please enjoy the 2018 Christmas portrait of Cassie the Wonder Dog.  Her favorite gift was a copy of Charles Krauthammer’s essays, which she has given a two-paws-up rating.

It has been depressing to watch politics over the last several weeks, but the Christmas season reliably pulls me out of all that.  We’ve put up the tree and trimmed out our new/old house, and I’ve had the first few fires in the fireplace lately.  As is my tradition, I’ve re-read The Christmas Carol, and I’ve been listening to a lot of great Christmas music.

This year I’ve got Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (you can’t go wrong with Bach) and Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (my favorite recent version is on a website called Reawaken Hymns), in heavy rotation.  But I also appreciate secular seasonal songs, and I’ve been enjoying various versions of ephemera like Santa Baby.

Also, in the wake of the recent leftist idiocy about Baby It’s Cold Outside, I’ve immersed myself in that one again.  Would it shock you to know that Ray Charles probably did it best?  Not if you’ve been paying attention.

I guess I’m saying that I’m a pretty ecumenical celebrator of Christmas, and I spurn no one of good will.

Except Zoroastrians.  They know why.

But enough about that contemplation of a loving God and our eternal souls – there’s a screwed up culture to discuss.

On the “reap what you sow” front, let’s look at two stories:

1.The Boy Scouts of America are filing for bankruptcy.   On the one hand, that is a sad commentary on our current cultural hostility to the kinds of values that scouting used to be associated with, and it might have been inevitable.  But recent attempts to fashion a new, “woke” Boy Scouts certainly didn’t help.

Brief aside: As someone who loves the English language, I beg you to stop mis-using “woke.”  It is NOT an adjective.  It’s the past tense of the verb “wake.”

As in, “When I woke, I found that I’d pummeled into unconsciousness the hipster doofus who’d told me that I need to be more woke about the environment.”

Back to the Boy Scouts:

So they decided to admit girls in 2013, confusing many of us.  “Wait a minute,” we said, pensively.  “So you’re a girl.  And you’d like to join some sort of a scouting organization?  Gee it’s too bad that no one has invented such a group for girls.  I mean, they could call it the Girl Scouts, and then girls would have a place to–.  Oh, wait.”

Then they decided that admitting gay scouts, and later gay scout leaders was a great idea.  Because the higher-ups in scouting were trying to teach the benighted people of America that there are really no differences between the sexes, and no reason to take sexual attraction into account when putting a bunch of adolescents together in such activities as staying away from home overnight, sleeping in cabins, swimming and showering together, etc..

And now the benighted people of America have given their response to the BSA: enjoy bankruptcy, you morons.

2. The Weekly Standard is closing.  This one saddens me too, because they hosted a lot of very smart thinkers and writers, and I once respected Bill Kristol.  But he has lost his mind about Trump, and for some reason the Standard has gone full Titanic, steering toward the Trumpian iceberg.  But the original Titanic, once it hit the iceberg and started taking on water, did not circle around and intentionally hit it again, and then again.

And the original captain did not ask his first mate, “Hey, who are all of those people jumping over the side?”  To which the original first mate did not reply, “Our subscribers.  They don’t seem to want to keep crashing into the iceberg over and over again.  Plus, the iceberg is now wearing a giant red hat and calling us all losers!”

But Bill Kristol was all, “Full speed ahead!  Republicans should vote for Hillary!”

And now, the icy waters of bankruptcy close over the wake (not the woke!) of a once-lively conservative publication.  RIP, Weekly Standard.

“Yes, Martin,” I’m sure that you’re saying.  “You’re obviously right.  Again.  When groups and individuals make bad choices and fail miserably, they are punished.   Also, I agree that you got screwed on that People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2018 thing.  If you and Idris Elba both had sexy 2019 calendars out, I would totally buy yours.”

First, thank you for your support.  But it’s too little too late, because in the lead up to the award, I became a little over-confident, and gave a vanity publisher a big down payment.  And now I’ve got a garage full of unsellable “People’s Sexiest Man Alive: Martin Simpson” 2019 Calendars sitting where my car should be, and my wife is furious.

But to your first comment: I’ve noticed that there is one place where failure is rarely punished: the Left.

I know you’ve heard it a million times, but socialism has turned huge swaths of the planet into rust belts and gulags and graveyards, and college kids are still wearing Che t-shirts.   Socialized medicine has led to first world countries with third world hospitals, but half of our citizenry is still clamoring for it.  Decades of exclusively leftist governance has turned once-proud American cities into blighted wastelands, but the lefties who flee the hellholes they created vote for Beto O’Houlihan McMurphy to try to do the same thing to Texas.

Ugh!  Even on an individual level, lefties tend to fail upward.  Bernie Sanders never had an honest job in his life, until he started getting elected to local office as a socialist in Vermont in his 40s.  And he was almost president!

Or take an even better example: the google-eyed It Girl of the Left, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She’s almost 30 years old, and her curriculum vitae so far consists of being an incompetent bartender.  (I have it from very reliable sources that if you ordered a scotch and soda from her, you’d be equally likely to get a glass of Pine-sol and a sugar cube, or a V-8 with a dandelion garnish.)

After an undistinguished career in drink mixery, she decided to run for a House seat in a heavily blue district against the semi-animated corpse of a soul-less leftist hack who hadn’t stepped foot in the district since the close of hostilities in the Spanish-American War.  Because it was an off-year primary and voter turnout was very low, she managed to win with a get-out-the-vote effort that focused primarily on a tight-knit group of both Ocasios and Cortezes.

So now she’s off to Washington to represent the people of her district, whom I wish well in their ongoing efforts with their methadone treatment.  (The plan’s not going to work unless you work the plan, people.)

A few weeks ago she spoke to a temple in Queens, and came out with the startling news that she’s recently discovered that she is Jewish. (Hat tip to Bill Leggott, who reminded me that I’ve missed this golden opportunity for mockery.)  I haven’t been able to find video of this speech, but if anyone finds it, PLEASE post a link.

But even without seeing the link, I’m going to put my wizard hat on (Yes, I’ve got a wizard hat.  I keep it on the top shelf of the closet, between the sombrero and the conquistador’s helmet.) and predict what it looks like: Big smiles from Alexandra that show off her undeniably cute dimples, hugs to sweet little Jewish ladies, some ridiculous platitudes delivered with energetic obliviousness, followed by her standing there with an expression that you’ll recognize if you’ve watched a recent NFL game, when a player was being taken into the tent for a concussion protocol.

If the rabbi allowed her to try lighting the menorah, I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance that she partially burned her own clothing.

In other news, the leaderships of both Jewish and Italian-American anti-defamation groups have recently opened high-level negotiations. So far, the Italians have suggested that they will claim Ocasio-Cortez, if the Jews will take Michael Avenatti.  But the Jewish response was, “Whoa. Hang on.  Give us a chance to think about this. You might need to take Michael Cohen, too.”  The Italians came back with, “Only if you’ll accept the Mooch.”

The talks are still on-going.

But lest we despair about the way things are going here, let’s remember that it could be worse.  We could be the English.

Consider the story – which I swear to God I am not making up — that a British school will now be teaching primary school children “that ‘all genders’ can have periods.”  The story goes on to say, “Advice on menstruation will be issued to boys and girls after Brighton and Hove City Council passed a motion to help minimise discrimination against the trangender community.

So the next time that obnoxious British guy in the next cubicle is mocking you because Americans have elected Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, you now have a pre-loaded reply: At least our schools aren’t teaching our sons how to handle their periods!

Come on, England!  You gave us Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, and Benny Hill.  Has it really come to this?

And it’s not just literature and government and great music and hilarious videos of nurses running around in lingerie.  Look at the history of medicine, and you’ll find an over-representation of great British docs and discoveries.  They came up with first way to measure blood pressure and the first smallpox vaccine, they pioneered the use of general anaesthetic, and on and on.

In fact, a Brit (Stephen Hales, 1677-1761) first came up with surgical forceps, and 200 years later a group of British pharmaceutical chemists working in Kent first synthesized Viagra.

And now you’re telling me that British school boys are being taught that they can benefit from the use of forceps to gently ease the delivery of the children from their non-existent wombs, while British school girls are being taught that Viagra can help them increase their sexual performance with the genitalia that THEY DON’T HAVE! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!  OH!  OOOHHHHHH!”  (Yes, English people, you could all learn something from a late, great American named Sam freaking Kinison!)

My only hope is that the kids are going to be smart enough to recognize their educrat overlords for the leftist dolts they are, and ignore them.

And if any British schoolboys happen to be reading this column, I have two messages for you.

First, yes, Nigel, I know that Idris Elba is British, and he was once in contention to be the next James Bond, but I don’t care: he’s dead to me.

Second, if you ever find yourself bleeding profusely from your genital region, ignore the idiotic mewlings from your teachers that this is just a natural part of the process during which a young boy becomes a woman.  Put down the chain saw and pick up your severed body part, and go to the closest hospital straightaway.

If, 30 days later, you find yourself bleeding from the genitalia again, this is NOT a sign that Aunt Flo is back for her monthly visit.   It’s a sign that you need to take a good long look in the mirror, and determine whether you’re the kind of person who should be operating power tools.

On that terribly inappropriate note, I want to wish all of CO nation a very Merry Christmas!

We’re already halfway through December, but I’ll confess that I’m having a tough time getting into the Christmas spirit, and I’m sure that you regular members of CO nation know why: Idris Elba was recently named as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2018.

Which means that I was unfairly passed over.  AGAIN!  And that’s after I spent the entire year following a strict regimen: I cut down to no more than 3 servings of ice cream per day; I spent 15 minutes four days a week practicing my smoldering, partially-raised-eyebrow look in the mirror; I never skipped leg day.

And still I was edged out by a guy whose name sounds like a sub-tropical disease that can only be treated by an extensive course of antibiotics and months of physical therapy.

You know, I’ve never really understood the kind of emotional pain that some women feel, as described in the old saying, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”

But now I understand.  Because I am living through the male equivalent:  “Always a hilarious genius, never People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.”  If Christmas weren’t coming, I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning.

 

Leaving aside my personal pain, my spirits have recently been lifted by the knowledge that America is apparently officially out of problems.

I know that some of you just choked on your egg nog.  “Out of problems?” I can almost hear you yell.  “The Democrats are about to take over the House, Mitchell Trubisky’s shoulder thing might still be going on, and Bush 41, Stan Lee and the guy who invented Sponge Bob are dead, while Nancy Pelosi and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are still plugging away, healthy as a couple of octogenarian oxen!”

Those are all good points.  But the Congressional gavel was held in Pelosi’s dessicated mummy hands before, and the nation survived.  And the Bears having signal-caller issues is not exactly unprecedented.  In fact, if you consult the New Testament, I think you’ll find that Christ himself warned that, “The poor – and uncertainty at the quarterback position in Chicago – shall be with you always.”

But if we are not out of problems as a nation, how can you explain the following 3 stories, which no culture with actual problems could ever trouble itself with:

1.The charming, witty and harmless seasonal song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” has become the subject of annual controversy.  What an earlier era saw as a light-hearted and flirtatious duet, the censorious kill-joys on the feminist left see as an ominous ode to rape.

By the way, here is the chorus from every top 10 rap song of the last 10 years:

“Ima f*** you up and your [n-word] beeyotch too

Ima f*** you up and your [n-word] beeyotch too

You betta [anatomically impossible transitive verb], you [expletive] [N-word] ho.”

Those lyrics are fine.  But, “This evening has been (Been hoping that you’d drop in)/ So very nice (I’ll hold your hands they’re just like ice),” is terribly offensive, and rapey.

Lunatic censors also point to the female singer slyly asking,”What’s in this drink?” as evidence that the male singer is about to roofie and ravage her.

Which answers the age-old question: Can humorless leftist scolds tell the difference between Bill Cosby and Bing Crosby?

Sadly, they cannot.

Before you object that frivolous complaints about one inoffensive song don’t prove much, consider

2. The story of the Princeton a capella singing group — which despite being the least threatening collection of males since the court eunuchs of ancient Babylon — are apparently also a part of rape culture.

It seems that the Tigertones have for a number of years been singing a song originally featured in the Disney film, The Little Mermaid.  The song is called, “Kiss the Girl,” and it features a singing crab urging a handsome prince to kiss a mermaid who obviously wants to be kissed.

Because nothing communicates evil patriarchal oppression like a crustacean with a Jamaican accent urging a white Idris Elba-figure to try for first base with a mythical half-woman/half-fish creature.

3. Our good friends at PETA have finally addressed another scourge of modern American life: insufficiently sensitive animal-related idioms.

I am not making that up. They issued a press release suggested that we replace offensive sayings like, “Bring home the bacon,” with “Bring home the bagels.”  Or “take the bull by the horns” with “take the flower by the thorns.”

Yes, their ideas are idiotic.  But this could be a fun parlor game for us to all play: let’s draw animal-related sayings out of a hat, and then come up with a PC reason to object to them.  I’ll start:

“a horse of a different color” – Somehow, I’m sure that that’s racist

“don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” – Obviously classist, because who but the evil 1% could afford to give horses as gifts?  Plus, why should any human have the right to “own” an animal?  Plus I suspect that there is a subliminal Stormy Daniels joke in their somewhere.

“sly as a fox” – Are you suggested that other animals are stupid?  I mean, “mentally handicapped.”  I mean, “mentally handi-capable.”  You know what I mean!

Don’t get me wrong: I love animals.  In fact, I’d rather spend time with some particular animals – Cassie the Wonder Dog, most other dogs, even our three indifferent cats – than with many people.  People like the PETA officials who came up with this ridiculous list.  If I met one of them on the street, I’d be tempted to beat them like a rented mule.  No offense.

So I rest my case: if we have time to worry about innocent songs and animal metaphors, America is out of problems.

 

But you know who is not out of problems? Europe.

You might have heard that snooty Macron is having a touch of trouble with mobs of violent protestors trying to burn Paris to the ground every weekend for the last month.  Hilariously, the trouble started because the lefty elites who run France decided to inflict a 47 euro-per-liter gas tax on everyday French people, all in the name of stopping global warming.  Which it definitely will not do.

By the way, I made up the “47 euro” amount, because I refuse to look up the ridiculous made-up money that the EU-nuchs have chosen as their currency.

Brief diversion: I love the names of money that different countries come up with.  America did it best (obviously) with the dollar.  (I know: it was originally some kind of Spanish word.  But we took it and improved it.  You’re welcome, Spain.)  You can pay top dollar for something; you can bet your bottom dollar on something.  Clint Eastwood made a fine film with the super-cool title “Fistful of Dollars.”

My second favorite foreign currency name is the Polish “zloty.”  Partly because I love the Polish people, and partly because I love anybody sticking a “z” and an “l” together in any word.  Also, can the zloty be subdivided into 100 groszy, you ask?  You bet your bottom dollar it can.

My favorite foreign currency name?  The Vietnamese “dong,” obviously.   Mostly because of how fun it would be to be an adolescent boy in Vietnam, constantly referring to your money and snickering because adults couldn’t do anything about it.

Also, if “Fistful of Dollars” was re-made for a Vietnamese audience, it would have a hilarious title.  And Stormy Daniels would star in it.

 

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the collapse of Europe.

So you may have heard that another European gunman attacked another Christmas market, this time in  Strasbourg.  He killed at least 3 and wounded 11.  Which means that it’s time to dust off my timeless favorite quiz game: Guess that Murderer!

Question 1:  Just before opening fire on his innocent victims, the killer screamed a blood-chilling phrase at the top of his lungs.  Was that phrase:

1. Onward Christian soldiers!
2. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it OUT OF CLAY!
3. That government is best which GOVERNS LEAST!
4. Allahu Akbar!

 

Question 2:  What was the closest variant to the killer’s name?

1. Francois D’Orleans
2. Sven Nordstrom
3. Jim-Bob Thompson
4. Ahmed Yemeni Mohammed bin Sulamein

 

Cheer up, Europeans.  You may have to deal with bi-weekly terror attacks, but at least you aren’t forced to live with species-ist idioms like “cat’s pajamas” or “bees knees.”

Okay, rather than ending a column during this Christmas season on such a dour note, I will leave you with my two favorite recent feel-good stories.

First, Elizabeth Warren’s representatives reportedly started talking with Beta O’Rourke’s people recently, causing rumors that they may be contemplating a joint run at the presidency in 2020.  Which would be just perfect: a fake Hispanic Irish-American guy teaming up with a fake Indian WASP lady (#wemustneverstopmockingher) on the same ticket.

I can’t think of a picture that better sums up the phoniness of the Democratic party in 2018.

Second, a judge has ordered Stormy Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees, racked up (HA!) to defend himself against the defamation suit which a court threw out as frivolous.

To repeat, for the record: I didn’t vote for Trump in the primary, and voted more against Hillary than for him in the election.  I don’t like the way he has acted with women in general, and with ol’ Equine Visage in particular.  I wish he’d stay off twitter, and that he could maintain his aggressive counter-punching with about 90% less boorishness.

But you’ve got to give credit where credit is due.  He had an affair with a porn star, then paid her $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about it.  When she did not keep her mouth shut (I haven’t seen any of her films, but I understand that that is not a-typical behavior for her), he ended up winning a judgment against her for $292,052.

Do you realize what that means?  He had sex with a woman who is a professional at having sex for money, and SHE ended up paying HIM $162,052.

That’s right, lefties who say that Trump is a failed businessman: he had a one-night stand with a porn star, and made a tidy profit on it!

Top that, Idris Elba!