Tag: books

When it Comes to Crime, Many Democrat Chickens are Coming Home to Roost (posted 8/22/25)

I’ve been writing about crime a lot lately. 

And I’m not done, because as I’ve said in earlier columns, crime – what causes it, how to punish it, how we should balance the rights of criminals vs. law-abiding citizens – is one of several key issues (along with taxation and how the courts should view the Constitution, maybe?) that most clearly distinguishes conservatives from liberals.

While I think there are weighty, even philosophical issues at stake re: crime – to what extent does free will play a role when people are brought up in a debased criminal environment; in what circumstances can rehabilitation work for some criminals – the vast majority of crime raises much more basic questions.

Questions like, “How stupid is the average criminal?”  (Spoiler alert: Very, very stupid. Thankfully.)  or “Why are nationally elected politicians, and especially Democrats, so comically inept at it?” 

Taking the first question first, I can usually get some much-needed comic relief from the hilariously pathetic bungling of most criminals. 

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll remember stories about dip-Schiffs who crawl under a car on a sloping driveway and use a rusty, wobbly bottle-jack to lift it so they can steal its catalytic converter…only for it to fall on them and crush their dumb arses.

Unexpectedly!

Or the stories about rappers who confess to their crimes in their terrible “music” videos, or post social media pictures of them flashing a stolen pistol with a clearly visible serial number on it.

Or the story about the rapper 4XTRA, who recorded a video flaunting his possession of illegal M1000 fireworks, and shortly after a brilliant monologue about his plans for them – “You think I won’t blow schiff up wit’ dese, my narwhal?  Don’t friend with me, Imma blow a motherfriendin’ narwhal UP!” – that crazy narwhal blew two of his mother-friending fingers off. 

(I’d say, “Cue the sad trombone,” but no rappers play the trombone.  And I don’t think you can make a sad record-scratching sound on a turntable.)

In the movies, criminals are slick professionals.  They create elaborate distractions to draw away the police, and devise multiple pre-planned escape routes.  They wear disguises, and stash different clothing near the crime scene to change into.  They have multiple sets of identification papers in various aliases, and they stay off law enforcement’s radar.

In real life, criminals get prison tattoos that advertise their gang affiliations and their past crimes, so that cops can recognize them from a block away.  (“I’m a Gangster Disciple and I’ve killed 9 people, all of whose gang names I’ve inked on my body.”)  Even before they go to prison, they get a prominent tattoo on their face or neck, so that if they’re ever in a line-up – spoiler alert: they will be! – they can be easily identified.

And it’s always something memorable, like “Born to Lose,” or “No Regerts!”

Movie criminals drive non-descript panel vans with a magnetic business sign and multiple sets of plates that can be quickly switched out, or else fast cars that they drive up a ramp into the back of a semi-truck, or a hidden garage within a mile of the scene of the crime. 

Real criminals drive 100 pounds of meth and six illegals from the Texas border to New York in a car with two mis-matched doors, one working headlight and two broken taillights.  And a gaudy adhesive memorial stretching across the rear window that says, “RIP Chuy!  MS-13 Forever!”  And they don’t have insurance or registration, but they do have an expired Guatemalan driver’s license. 

And they speed and change lanes without signaling for the entire trip.

And their car is full of pot smoke, as if it were 1981 and they were Kilmar and Chong.  Or possibly Cheech and Kilmar.

Sure, those mouth-breathing low-life criminals provide us some easy laughs.  But what about the high-level masterminds, those who reach the peak of their profession, and should therefore have their criminal act together?

Nope!  I give you three quick examples: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and CA Senator Adam Schiff.

On the surface, Tish James might appear to be fairly smart.  She has three degrees, including a Master’s from Columbia and a JD, and she managed to get herself elected to multiple public offices, culminating in the top enforcer spot in New York state. 

Alas, degrees are often not worth the paper they’re printed on, and the majority of voters in New York state are imbeciles.  And Tish James is as dumb as a bag of hammers. 

Because she publicly went after Donald Trump on flimsy charges that he had committed mortgage fraud.  Other than wrongly listing a NYC penthouse of his as having 30,000 square feet when it was only 11,000 – an easily proven error on his part – her whole case came down to his valuation of Mar-A-Lago.  He said it was worth a ton of money, and Tish said it was worth $28 dollars and an expired bus pass. 

Yes, she managed to get a verdict against him from a transparently corrupt far-left judge, and a judgement for half a billion dollars, which was just thrown out by an appeals court as ridiculously excessive.  The judgment itself will almost certainly be overturned too, because James’ valuation of Mar-A-Lago was laughably low; Deutsche Bank assessed Trump’s properties and net worth to be sufficient collateral for his loan; and he paid that loan back with interest. 

But all of that is beside the point, because James made one of the most crucial blunders of morons: she falsely accused someone of doing what she was actually doing herself. 

She claimed that Trump was able to get lower interest rates on his loans by lying about the property he was borrowing against.  But she has a long history of doing exactly that, involving several mortgage applications and mortgages on which she perjured herself to receive preferable interest rates.  Most brazenly, in August 2023 – when she was going after Trump – she lied on a mortgage application in Virginia, claiming that house as her principal residence when it was not, and when NY law required her to live in NY to be AG.

Lisa Cook made the same corrupt move.  In the summer of 2021 she bought a home in Michigan by swearing on mortgage documents that it was her principal residence.   Two weeks later, she bought a condo in Atlanta, claiming that IT was her principal residence.  Unless it turns out that she has a third “principal residence” somewhere else, it looks like the Michigan place is her actual residence, since she is renting out her Atlanta condo. 

Again, the brazen stupidity of her fraud is hard to understand.  She’s a governor of the powerful Federal Reserve, which is charged with setting national interest rates that control mortgage rates, and she committed mortgage fraud?! 

A masked crack head who robs a convenience store and then immediately removes his mask in front of a security camera is not acting any dumber than a mortgage regulator cheating on her mortgages!   

Even better was her response when called on it.  Here’s what an honest and innocent person would say:

“These charges are false.  I did not lie on any mortgages, ever.  I’m immediately releasing both of the mortgages and applications in question, and they prove that I didn’t claim both properties as my principal residence, which would be fraud.  I demand an apology.”

Here’s her statement:

“I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.  I take any legitimate inquiries about my financial background seriously and am compiling accurate information to address them.”

Really, Lisa?  You’re “compiling accurate information?”  That shouldn’t be hard, since all you’d have to do is hold up the second mortgage and application, and point to the many spots in the documents where you identified the Atlanta condo as NOT your principal residence, but a rental or a second home. 

What’s that?  That’s not what the documents show? 

Keep compiling, sweetheart.

Finally we come to Adam Schiff, one of the sleaziest corrupticrats in Washington, DC. 

Schiff did manage to avoid the temptation to get a tattoo of his nickname (“Pencil Neck”) inked onto…well, his pencil neck.  But sadly, he was unable to resist the siren song of fraudulently obtained lower interest rates, just like Cook and James.

In 2003 Schiff bought a house in Maryland that he declared as his principal residence.  In 2009, he bought a condo in CA, which he identified as his principal residence, and for which he took a homestead exemption on his CA state taxes.  In 2020, after falsely claiming two principal residences for over a decade, he finally declared his Maryland house as his second residence. 

Last month, a Fannie Mae financial crimes investigation concluded that Schiff had engaged in “a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on five Fannie Mae loans over the years. 

I don’t know what that “possible” is doing in there, because you can’t have two “principal residences,” and he clearly claimed that he did. 

To top it off, the DOJ has now found that he’s been paying a 3% interest rate on both properties, well below any legitimate second home mortgage rate at any time when he financed or refinanced both properties. 

Did I mention that he also failed to disclose his mortgages on required annual financial disclosure forms until 2011?  Or that he’s now accused of wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud and making false statements to financial institutions? 

If I did, it’s only because it’s hard to make all of those points when you’re giggling uncontrollably. 

Looking back, Tish James ran for AG on a repeated promise to get Trump, and when she’d gotten her corrupt judgment against him, she gloated about how she was looking forward to foreclosing on Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago and everything else Trump owns.  And with the possible exception of James, nobody cut more ethical corners in pursuit of Trump than Schiff did.

I guess it’s true what they say – it’s always the ones you most suspect. 

Ironically, the one truthful thing that Pencil Neck and Tish James said over the last several years – and they said it a lot! – might now be coming back to haunt them:

“No one is above the law!” 

In the words of Nelson Muntz…

HA HA!

Hamas delenda est!

Throw-Back Friday (posted 8/1/25)

I’m up in Illinois with the cousins now, and looking forward to the reunion on Saturday.  I was overwhelmed with the warmth and number of your responses to my bittersweet column on Wednesday.  Thank you, one and all!

When I checked my computer last night before hitting the sack, one of my old columns came up in my feed.  I don’t know how that works, but it felt like a sign, since it was as goofy and lighthearted as my Wednesday column was somber. 

So I thought I’d re-post it here, for those of you who might have missed it the first time around.  I posted it 5 years ago in May (as you might be able to tell from the fact that I was still half-accepting the “covid came from Chinese bats” cover story).

I don’t know if it’s a “Best of,” but I hope it will be a little palate cleanser for you as you start your weekend!

New Entry in the “Stupidest Article of the Year” competition (posted 5/1/20)

Bill Weir has a newborn son, born during the quarantine.  That’s a cause for celebration, maybe even more than usual, against the backdrop of this time of disruption and social isolation.  After spending part of the lockdown watching hours of You Tube videos of surprise pregnancy and twins and even triplets announcements – with all of the accompanying shouts and cheers and tears and joyful shock – I’m even more attuned than usual to appreciation of new life.

But there are some red flags for the newborn Weir boy.

First, his dad named him “River.”  And no, it’s not a “Boy Named Sue” situation, in which you stick a kid with a name guaranteed to toughen him up via all of the expected abuse he’ll suffer because of it.  He’s just the kind of dad who names his kid “River.”  Strike one.

Second, Bill Weir works as the Chief Climate Correspondent for CNN.  Strike two.

Third, he wrote a ridiculous letter to his son, and published it for all the world to see.  And it is long, and tiresome, and packs more wrong-headed leftist tropes into one column than I would have thought possible.  (And I’m known for packing lots of tiresome and wrong-headed political tropes into over-long columns myself!) (By people who are wrong about everything, I mean.)  Strike three.

I won’t put you through the whole thing, but I think it’s worth sharing a few lowlights.

The letter starts,  “My dearest River,  Against all odds you were conceived in a lighthouse, born during a pandemic and will taste just enough of Life as We Knew It to resent us when it’s gone.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry we broke your sea and your sky and shortened the wings of the nightingale.  I’m sorry that the Great Barrier Reef is no longer great, that we value Amazon™ more than the Amazon and that the waterfront neighborhood where you burble in my arms could be condemned by rising seas before you’re old enough for a mortgage.”

Yikes!  There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t know where to start.

No, wait a minute: I do know where to start.

Don’t tell your kids where and how they were conceived!  The letter starts and ends with references to a vacation that he and his wife took to Croatia, and the Dubrovnik lighthouse they stayed in.  Where – he wants River and the world to know – they “did it.”

Ugh.  First, I can’t think of anything more gross for this young kid to read as he gets older than the details of his parent’s love life. 

Second, what an erotic narcissist: “You plebes probably conceived your normally-named kids in a bland 3 bedroom tract house, in the missionary position.  Yuck.  Meanwhile, my lover and I (and you know this is the kind of gag-inducing male who calls his wife his “lover,” just to stick you with  a mental image that you do NOT want) hiked up a wind-swept cliff-face in a romantic foreign land during a thunderstorm to break into a century-old lighthouse, where we alarmed the livestock with our creative lovemaking and exotic outfits.”

As you regular readers know, one of the best life strategies you can follow is to ask WWMD (What Would Martacus Do?), and then act accordingly.  So what have I told my children about their conception, I know you are wondering.

Did I tell them, for instance, that their mother and I – having grown bored after romping our way through a series of sexual escapades that made the Kama Sutra look like a spring 1956 edition of the Saturday Evening Post – decided to try something different, when the Ringling Brother’s Circus came to town?  So we broke into the big tent at 2 in the morning, and after spending a half hour getting the hang of the trapeze, managed an aerial encounter involving several flips, hanging onto a bar upside down with just my knees, and finishing in a fall into a giant net, and 9 months later our oldest was born?

Or that four years later, we came up with the idea for an assignation on the back of a 2-year old Palomino that incorporated the kind of horsemanship worthy of a young Crazy Horse at the height of his powers, in a little trick I like to call the ol’ “canter-canter-trot-TROT-GALLOP!”  And that 9 months later, our youngest was born?

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

The point is that of course I haven’t told them that!  All they know is that when a man and woman love each other very much, the man carries the woman through a bedroom doorway that is in black and white for some reason, and then the door shuts and the credits roll (“Gregory Peck as Martacus,” “Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Simpson.” “Nancy Pelosi as the Mummy,” “Elizabeth Warren as the Cigar Store Indian.”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  And nine months later, one of them is born.

And nobody is named “River.”

Weir moves from erotic narcissism to climate narcissism: “I’m so sorry that we broke your sea and your sky?”  I’m pretty sure that the sea is still there, and I was just looking at the sky this afternoon. Doesn’t seem broken.

And because he’s apparently learned all his science from Al Gore and Captain Planet, he thinks that his house is going to be underwater in 20 years or so.  And just like with my old lefty buddies who were sure that the oceans would be dead by now, and acid rain would have wiped out half of our population, and a new global ice age would have wiped out the other half, I’d like to call Weir and remind him of his hysteria and laugh at him, as he sits in his un-condemned and totally dry house.

Weir goes on:  “See, for decades, scientists told us that if we weren’t careful, humans would unleash an invisible enemy out of the jungle and into our lungs. But that was a story few wanted to believe.  So we kept cutting down jungles — and prairies and mangroves and the last few the places where the wild things are — to pave and plow, develop and devour everything inside.”

Does this guy think that the Flu Manchu came from humans cutting down jungles?  Has nobody told him about the Chinese boneheads eating the bats, or the Chicom boneheads and their fifth-rate lab safety procedures, or the progressive slave-state bureaucrats in Beijing who lied about everything (as commies are wont to do) until it was too late to stop a pandemic?  Apparently not.

“As you get older, this will be hard to understand. But we were under the spell of Genesis 1:28: to take dominion over every living thing.”

Good lord!  I love when non-Christians who wouldn’t know Saint Paul from Minneapolis-St.Paul expound on how the evil Bible teaches that we should destroy the environment.  “And God said, go forth and cut down the jungles, and pile up the wood and make a great fire, upon which thou must roasteth the bat, notwithstanding that it is the least delicious of all the fowl that flieth through the air. Then shalt thou cough on thy neighbors, who must thenceforth flee to the airports and disperse throughout the globe, spreading the pestilence while your vile and indolent government lieth about it all, and keepeth on with the intellectual property theft and the exporting of lead-based toys and contaminated drywall.”

I’m no theologian, but you don’t have to be Aquinas to understand that the Biblical mandate is for humanity to be stewards of the environment, not destroyers of it.

Weir isn’t done:  “We had the strange urge to carve straight lines out of nature’s curves and were under the spell of a uniquely human force called “profit motive.”

You mean like the profit motive that has allowed you to get a six-figure job writing terrible “journalism,” and allowed you to afford a house to take River home to?

The article goes on and on, but it’s too painful to spend any more time on.  I just find myself feeling sorry for his son, because he’s less than a month old and his dad is already filling his mind with alarmist doom and gloom.  “We’ve killed the planet, we’re all cursed, you’ll never know how things used to be so great, but now they’re terrible, and getting worse every day.  Sorry about that.  By the way, did I ever tell you the story about the time I absolutely wrecked your mother doing downward-facing dog on a faux bearskin rug on the flagstone floors of a Dubrovnik lighthouse?”

Not since the Cuyahoga was so filled with chemicals that it caught fire has any River been so badly treated.

To get the bad taste of this article out of my mouth, I’ve written a letter to my oldest daughter, to cosmically balance Weir’s toxic letter:

Dear Katie,

First, aren’t you glad to have a great name like “Katherine,” which is classic, timeless and versatile, and not something ridiculous like “Conifer” or “Aquifer” or “Saguaro Cactus Simpson?”  You’re welcome.

Second, never mind how your mom and I made you.  You’re here now, and you’ve been nurtured and educated and equipped to make your own way in the best nation ever.  You’re welcome again.

Third, we used to be much worse stewards of the environment that God has given us responsibility for, but because we have free markets, we have gotten wealthier, and our wealth has allowed us to innovate and improve our treatment of nature.  We’ve found ways to grow more food on less land, and our modes of building and transportation are becoming cleaner and less destructive with each passing year.  If we can just not watch CNN, elect less leftists, and get the Chicoms to stop eating the freaking bats, your future is going to be brighter than for any other generation in history.

Now get out there and be an Ameri-CAN!”

Avenatti/River Weir 2020!

AOC’s Troubles, and a Rapper Learns a Valuable Fireworks Lesson (posted 7/8/25)

Okay, there’s no time for small talk.  It’s July 8th, and I’m somehow already two weeks behind on July stories, and that’s not to mention the stories I didn’t get to in June.  So here we go. 

AOC has had a rough couple of weeks.  Besides the big things going wrong – the BBB passing despite the fact that she and the other Dems in congress fell on the floor and kicked their feet and held their breath; the Iranian leadership failing to start WWIII after Trump pulled out the MOP (not gay slang) – she’s made some missteps that have hurt her own personal brand. 

She’s tied herself to Mamdani in his bid to become NYC’s worst-ever mayor.  (And DuhBlasio and David Dinkins were NYC mayors, so the bar has been set high.  Or should that be low?)  Aligning herself with an extremist train-wreck like Mandami is playing well with the dead-end leftists in NYC, but it will become a big liability if she eventually wants to run for president, God help us all.

The bad news is that Mamdani is a phony.  He’s a trust fund baby pretending to be a poor Third Worlder; he’s used more phony accents than Cankles McPantsuit and Que Mala combined; he’s claimed to be black to get affirmative action preference when both of his parents are Indian.  (Dot, not Warren.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

The worse news is that the things he’s NOT phony about are his worst beliefs.  He’s an authentic Jew-hater, and an authentic communist.  So…great.

But AOC has also done more to expose her own phoniness, too.  Just like Mandami, she’s long pretended to have a much more hard-scrabble, blue-collar background than she actually does.   Her motive is obvious – being from an intact, financially successful family and earning good money yourself is a huge handicap for Democrats.  Which tells you a lot about the dysfunctionality of the Democrat party.

AOC has always tried to portray herself as a tough Latina “Rosa from the block,” and she’s leaned into her Bronx roots nearly as hard as she’s leaned into the rolling “r” and “s” sounds of her exaggeratedly Spanish pronunciation of “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”   Unfortunately for her, the people who knew her in grade school and high school are only in their mid-30s, and were not all killed by either global warming, net neutrality, or Covid.  Also, high school yearbooks from 17 years ago exist.

So the truth is out there.  AOC lived in the Bronx until she was 5, after which her family moved to tony Yorktown, in suburban Westchester County.  And though records are murky, she apparently caught a case of “WASP nickname syndrome” that may have resulted in a subsequent “Ocasio-ectomy.”  Because in high school she was not a chola from the Bronx, but sweet little Sandy Cortez from the ‘burbs. 

Not that she didn’t have some hardships in her life.  Her dad was an architect who started his own firm, but he died from lung cancer when she was only 19, and her mom did work some blue-collar jobs.  So there are some sympathetic aspects to her life story, if only she didn’t exaggerate to give her some non-existent street cred.

For example, in 2018 she said, “My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here and I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.”  Except that her own story demonstrates the opposite, since her birth on the mean streets of the Bronx didn’t stop her family from moving to the suburbs before she started school.

Also, “the scrubbing toilets” reference is a nice rhetorical flourish, and sounds much more downtrodden and noble than “cleaning houses.”  I don’t want to be a one-upper, but as a landlord for the last 29 years, I’ve unclogged and snaked out more than my fair share of tenants’ toilets, and I know how to remove and re-set one with a new wax ring, too.    

And don’t get me started on that time I had to crawl underneath a house to extract a decomposing possum.  (Did only part of his body come with me when I pulled on his creepy tail?  Do I still re-live that PTSD-inducing experience – including hearing the sounds and smelling the smells – on nights when I can’t sleep?  I don’t want to talk about it.)

So I guess I could steer into that skid, and call myself Martino from the barrio, and whine about how Bruce Springsteen hasn’t written a working-class anthem about my heroic rise from flannel-shirt-wearing hillbilly to Dr. Hilarious Genius who wears a full tuxedo around the house most weekdays. 

But I have too much stoic dignity for that.

Anyway, AOC has been catching more heat for her fabulist tales of her rough teen years lately, as many Yorktown residents are posting messages saying, “You’re from here!” 

One such guy – who I am sure I would love to hang out with – is a retired FDNY firefighter from the Bronx who now lives near Yorktown.  He told a reporter, “You can tell right out of the gate that she isn’t from the Bronx.  Listen to her!  [Then] listen to us!  We’ve been out of the Bronx for years but we still sound like idiots!  It doesn’t just go away.” 

But so far, AOC has not been dissuaded.  She recently made things worse for herself when she tried to engage Trump in an insult battle.  To be fair, Trump started it, by referring to her as “one of the dumbest people in Congress,” which as a president he shouldn’t do. 

On the other hand…Fact Check: true. 

(In fact, the quote I’m about to share with you isn’t even the dumbest part of her tweet.  That was her accusation that his taking out the Iranian nukes was “betray[ing] the American people… by illegally bombing Iran and dragging us into war.”  Annnndddd…the “war” was over before she could spell-check and post her tweet.)

But AOC had to take a closing shot at Trump’s roots in Queens: “Also, I’m a Bronx girl.  You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast.”

Now you may remember that Que Mala kept using the line, “I eat ‘No’ for breakfast!” until she was mocked out of it, on account of how stupid it sounds.  But you’ve got to give the Cackler this: at least it didn’t sound uncomfortably sexual.

Regular readers will know that I’m not up on gay slang.  And at my age, and after nearly four decades out of the dating game since I conned a Norwegian smoke-show goddess into becoming my smoke-show wife, I don’t even know much straight slang anymore.

But I know enough to recognize that a female boasting that she can eat Queens boys for breakfast is not coming across like she wants it to come across.  (Phrasing!)  Because here’s the bottom line (phrasing!):  If a guy from Queens is about to go on a date with a young lady from Yorktown, and he hears that she recently bragged about Yorktown gals being able to eat Queens boys for breakfast, he’s going to be…how can I put this?… NOT offended.

Perhaps I’ve said too much.  So let’s move on.

If you’re like me, you’ve been following rapper 4XTRA for years now.

What’s that?  You’ve never heard of him?  Really?  So you’ve never seen his “No Jumper” podcast, or heard any of his hit “songs,” such as “Gang Slide,” “Off the Bacc,” or “Who Imma Call?”  (I think that last one is a Sinatra cover.)       

Okay, let me fill you in.  He’s a large African-American fellow (unexpectedly) who is a rapper and “influencer” in LA.  He’s had a few run-ins with the law, but who hasn’t?  (I first met CO, Alan Paterson, and Jamie Galioto when we were all in the same cell block, and had to jump in and help Mark Teufel and Christopher Silber out of a jam.  My “thug life” knuckles didn’t tattoo themselves, people.) His last arrest came in April, only a few days after he’d gotten out after a previous arrest.

But he’s a patriotic guy, so naturally, he was excited about the Fourth last weekend.  He even recorded a short video for his fans, during which he was showing off a couple of impressive-looking M1000 fireworks.  In what I’m sure was just some light-hearted joking, he said he was going to use those against some of his rivals, in a 20-second video which featured around a hundred uses of the “N” word.  And I don’t mean “narwhal.” 

But let’s pretend for a minute that I do.

Saith 4X: “Imma ‘bout ta blow a narwhal up.  Friend all the narwhals…. I’m blowin’ a narwhal up!  See these, narwhal?  I’m throwin’ em in yo house.  I’m throwin’ em atchya, narwhal!” 

Annnndddd… a few hours later he blew two of his fingers off.  Unexpectedly!

Reports that his last words before the premature detonation were, “I AM bein’ careful!  Narwhal, please!  Hold my blunt and watch this, narwh—YOWCH!”  have not been confirmed.      

On the bright side, he can now use his influencer experience in a campaign to influence youngsters to not blow their fingers off with powerful fireworks.

On the downside, he is allegedly a member of the Rollin 40s Crips street gang.  I know even less about gang signs than I do about gay or straight slang, but I’m hoping for his sake that the gang signs for the Rollin 40s don’t involve the use of the two fingers he no longer has. 

Great.  I used over 1600 words, and I only got to two stories.  Just between you and me, I thought I’d knock AOC around (phrasing!) for 3-4 paragraphs – I’m way too immature to pass up that “eating Queens boys for breakfast” line – and then I’d be on to more stories. 

But I got on a roll, and Ocasio-ectomy popped into my head, and what’s a fella to do?  When God sends you a big wave and you’re on a verbal surfboard up on the crest, you ride that baby all the way into shore.

In other words, this looks like it might have to be a five-column week.   

Stay frosty, my narwhals.

Hamas delenda est!

Tim Walz Thinks He Can Talk to Regular Guys, & a Greek Lady Blows Herself Up (Posted 5/5/25)

I’ve got a hodge podge of stories for you this Monday, starting with the results from Friday’s semi-final round of the April Moron of the Month competition.  This vote was the closest so far, with Chris Van Halen edging out the broke baristas and Grandma Squanto to move on from the southern division.

So the competition has come down to four finalists, in reverse chronological order: 

Chris Van Hollen in his role as a dim-witted Juliet with a school-girl crush on brooding, gang-banging wife-beater Kilmar “Romeo” Garcia

Michelle Obama for her performance as a narcissist, and also a bitter, angry, black woman upset by the stereotype of black women as angry and bitter  

Elie Mystal, a racist, public “intellectual” who apparently thinks the constitution was written after 1965, and

Jasmine “Lashes” Crockett, another thick-as-a-whale-omelette racist who thought she was taking the moral high ground by arguing that we should allow illegals to stay here because… wait for it… we need them to be our slaves! 

If you need to refresh your memory on the finalists, you can see their nominating write-ups in four of my April columns, available at Martinsimpsonwriting.com.  Get your votes in this week, and I’ll announce the winner on Friday.  

Among the many worthy contestants I could have written about as April MOM contestants was former VP candidate Tim Walz, who recently gave a speech at Harvard (because of course he did) that touched on why Que Mala chose him as her VP pick. 

You’ve all heard his explanation: “I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, that I could put them at ease.  I was the permission structure to say, ‘Look, you can… vote for this.”

Or maybe we can’t.

I don’t claim to be King of the White Guys with pickup trucks who like football – though I am a member of the Ruling Council – but phony phrases like “code talking” are just the kind of idiotic language that we laugh at during our Council meetings. 

The word “code” implies some mysterious language, shared by a small in-group that is opaque to the larger world.  It calls to mind secret writing in invisible ink, Enigma machines, or Navajo code-talkers who outfoxed our enemies in WWII by using their obscure dialect that no outsiders could understand.

But men are almost half of the population, and we’re not particularly mysterious.  A thousand hack comics have done a thousand cliched bits about the limited set of interests – in addition to the aforementioned football and pickup trucks – that most men have: ancient Rome, World War II, action movies, women with a .7 waist-to-hip ratio and who like men, and 2-3 items from the following list: fishing, hunting, MMA, booze, cigars, and guns. 

Even when it comes to politics, we’re pretty predictable.  Give us lower taxes, law and order, free speech, merit-based rules, men kept out of women’s sports and spaces, and the right to shoot criminals who try to victimize us, and we’re good. 

Did you notice some of the stuff NOT on that list?

Jazz hands, crazy wives, tampons in men’s bathrooms, struggling to load a shotgun as if you’d never seen a shotgun before, and abandoning your National Guard unit right before you’re supposed to deploy with them to a war zone.  

Oh, and you know what NO pick-up driving, football-watching white guy would EVER seek from a theatre-kid, Temu Midwestern guy weirdo in a million years? 

“Permission” to vote the way we want to.

Which leaves only one thing we agree with Tim Walz about: he’s a knucklehead.

From Greece comes a new entry in the “Stupid Criminals” category:  

I have not kept up on a lot of current events in Greece, but apparently they’ve got a problem with crime, just like everywhere else.  Some of that problem comes from radical leftist groups who think that using violence to achieve their political ends is justified. 

Unexpectedly!

One such group calling itself Revolutionary Class Struggle – I hereby subtract 10 points for lack of originality – has recently decided to start bombing public buildings such as train stations.  One of their suspected members, a 38-year-old woman with a criminal record, carried out another bombing last Saturday morning.  

Her target was a bank building’s ATM.  She was apparently a firm believer in the old Greek saying, “Αν θέλετε κάτι να γίνει σωστά, κάντε το μόνοι σας.”  (“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”)

Because she took the bomb to the bank herself.  Unfortunately for her, just when she got to the site, she experienced the heartbreak of premature detonation.  She was carrying the bomb in her hands when it went off, and was so badly wounded that she was rushed to a nearby ancient amphitheater, where she died dramatically on stage.

Just kidding.  She was taken to a hospital and died there.  

No security video from the ATM has been released, but I’m guessing it sounded something like this:

“iii laos, enomenos, den mporei pote na ittithei – mpoum!”

Translation: “The people, united, can never be defeat—Boom!”

Followed by: “och!  ta car mou!  metaniono amesos gia tis apophases mou!”

Translation: “Ouch!  My hands!  I immediately regret my decisions!”

You may be wondering, “Martin, do you think your old Greek professor would be proud of you using English-to-Greek translation software to make fun of a leftist Greek terrorist getting blown up by her own bomb, instead of translating Aristotle, or the New Testament?”

Fine.  You got me.  I’m a complicated man, and though I love Greek philosophy and the New Testament, I’m also not above enjoying a little Three-Stooges-style illustration of the “you reap what you sow” verses.   

Especially when it comes at the expense of a would-be terrorist who apparently knew as little about bombs as Tim Walz knows about shotguns.

And just like the citizens of California, and New York, and Illinois, and other blue states and cities all over the world, that Greek gal learned a valuable, universal lesson: leftist plans tend to blow up in your face!

Okay, that’s it for my Monday column. 

Over the next several days, I’m going to post a few columns that are unusual for me.  I’ve been corresponding with several lefty friends, and one of them challenged me on the question of rule of law, and what I think of Trump’s defying SCOTUS in getting Kilmar back from El Salvador.  I gave him my thoughts, but also pointed out the many ways that Biden (and Obama) have defied the rule of law and the courts.

I then got to thinking about the nature of SCOTUS, and the ways in which its past and recent actions could potentially lead to an actual “constitutional crisis” – unlike the faux ones that the left imagines every time Trump does something they don’t like.

The result is several columns’ worth of my more-sober-than-usual thoughts on the courts.  I’ll be interested in seeing what many in CO nation think of those, and especially what any lawyers here may add, in terms of corrections and explanations…

Hamas delenda est!

Two Cheers for Rosie O’Donnell, & Handcuffs for Letitia James? (posted 4/23/25)

I have no central theme today, just a couple of noteworthy stories I’ve seen recently.

I’ll start with an unusual one for me, because it made me heartily say, “Two cheers for Rosie O’Donnell!” 

I can’t give her three cheers.  Because, as I mentioned just now, she’s Rosie O’Donnell. 

But we live in a world seemingly full of blowhard lefty narcissists who always insist that if the next Republican presidential candidate wins, they’ll leave the country.  And then they never do! 

But to her credit, Rosie put her money where her extremely large mouth is, and she actually followed through.  When Trump won, she moved to Ireland and applied for Irish citizenship.  And seriously: good for her. 

Obviously I think she’s off her rocker, politically speaking.  But if she’s convinced – against all evidence after his first term – that Trump is worse than Hitler, and will bring a nightmarish reign of oppression down on America, she demonstrated the courage of her convictions by leaving.  And as odd as this sounds, I think she’ll probably be happier for it.

Because there are millions of her political co-religionists in this country who believe that crap, and I don’t think it’s working very well for them.  You’ve seen them.  And you’ve heard them screaming, at their protests, and in courtrooms, and at various crime scenes.  “Abortions for all!  Death to Jews!  Bring back foreign criminals!  Death to America!  Heterosexual sex is gross!  Pay me not to work!  Screw you, dad!”

Do they seem happy to you? 

I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite books, John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  It appears early on, in a scene that is best-known for Satan’s monologue after he’s been cast out of heaven.  (His hubris is summed up: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”)

Shortly before that famous line, Milton captures an essential truth of human psychology in just two lines: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”  

I first read that as an undergrad, and though it stuck with me, it didn’t make a huge impact.  Mostly because I was pre-occupied at the time with weightier philosophical questions.  Questions like, “What’s the chances she’ll go out with me if I ask?” and, “Or her?” and, “Or maybe her?” 

Also, “Why can’t the Bears draft a decent quarterback to save their lives?”

But the older I get, the smarter John Milton gets.  (He’s like my dad in that way, God rest his soul.) And I’ve been around long enough to watch strong-willed people find the silver lining on every dark cloud, and make some hellish circumstances into a little slice of heaven. 

And I’ve seen people like Rosie – and Joy Reid, and Keith Olberman, and Noam Chomsky, and a cast of thousands like them – do just the opposite.  They’re living in the best country in the world, blessed with wealth and opportunities, and surrounded by signs and wonders.  But they find fault wherever they look, and wallow in their own self-created misery.

They look at a shining city on a hill, and see only a Mordor-ian wasteland of sexism, racism and a plethora of politically incorrect phobias.

They look at a flawed, bloviating president who loves the country and is doing some good things, and they see Orange Hitler.  They look at a rich genius who is sacrificing a lot to try to root out waste and fraud, and enable the government to more efficiently serve its citizens, and they see an evil oligarch.    

They look at Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren and they see a racist, hideous crone and a phony white lady pretending to be Sacheen Littlefeather—

Okay, I’ve got to give them those two.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, as they say. 

Also: #wemustneverstopmockingher

Where was I? 

Oh yeah, Rosie.  She made a hell out of America for herself, but Ireland seems like a cool place to me, so here’s hoping she can make a heaven for herself there.

Apparently two of her grandparents were Irish, but even so, she is reportedly worried because her application for Irish citizenship has not yet been approved.  And I think I speak for all of us when I say…

Oh no you don’t, Ireland!  No do-overs or give-backs!  You gave us Guinness, Liam Neeson, Yeats, and C.S. Lewis, and we gave you Rosie O’Donnell. 

Sure, you made a terrible, terrible trade.  But what’s done is done.  She’s your problem now. 

But to soften the blow, I suggest we start a go-fund-me to get Ireland to keep Rosie, along with any other nation who’s willing to take any other leftist celebrity irritants we can persuade to honor their vows that they would leave America if Trump won. 

If we can pay a great Salvadoran (you say, “Nayib,” I say, “BUKELE!) to take the worst of our criminal illegals, we should be willing to open our wallets to get other countries to take the wretched refuse of our teeming lefties.

Speaking of wretched, I’ve got to end with a great story from Schadenfreude Corner: the tale of Letitia James’ impending criminal charges!

No charge against Trump was more bogus than James’ lies about him wildly over-valuing Mar-a-Lago in order to get a more favorable loan rate from banks.  She claimed at one point that Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million, by relying on the low-end of a tax assessment (which are always lower than true market value), even though that assessment was 10 years old, and every real estate expert around said it was laughably low.

Later, she stated that the property should be valued at closer to $75 million, but then in an X post she listed the value as $25 million.  Trump was similarly inconsistent, valuing it in financial statements at between $426-612 million, but also bragging that the real value should be over a billion.    

All of which is moot, because the giant international banks from whom Trump sought the loan always do their own appraisals, rather than relying on biased owners.  Valuation of unique, high-end properties are especially difficult to nail down, but you don’t get to be Deutsche Bank by relying on sellers’ fraudulently high valuations.

All of which is even moot-er, because Trump paid back the loans with interest, and the banks said that they’d be happy to do business with him again.  Many NY lawyers and real estate investors agreed that this kind of a victimless case of a loan taken out and then repaid in full had ever been pursued before.

And now it turns out that lyin’ Letitia is a real estate investor herself, and that she was actually committing the kind of fraud that she accused Trump of committing.  For example, she bought several properties with her dad as co-signer, but falsely listed them as “husband and wife.” 

(Rumors that she learned that trick from an Ilhan Omar “Buy Real Estate With Your Brother/Husband” seminar have not been confirmed.) 

She claimed a property in Virginia as her principal residence, allowing her to get a lower mortgage rate.  Which was problematic, since she could not legally be the Attorney General in New York if her primary residence wasn’t in the state.  Also, the neighbors of the Virginia house reported that they’d never seen James there. 

She also bought a 5-unit building that she fraudulently claimed had only four units, allowing her to… wait for it…get a lower mortgage rate.   

So James was allegedly perjuring her hypocritical arse off, as she was using taxpayer dollars and her powerful position to wrongly go after Trump.

The cherry on top of this delicious schadenfreude sundae is that James’ half-billion-dollar, illegitimate verdict against Trump will eventually be over-turned, and she will almost certainly be convicted of a raft of felony charges.

My hope – sure, you can even call it a prayer – is that those two verdicts will come down around the same time. 

Because if I know Trump, he’ll find a way to be outside the courthouse where James will be led out in handcuffs, holding a gigantic, novelty check for the hundreds of millions of dollars he’d had to put in escrow, being refunded to him after he was vindicated in court.

Hamas delenda est!

From Corrupt Agencies to Illegals to Murderers, the Left Can’t Choose the Right Side (posted 3/19/25)

This is my third column of the week, and I’ll have one more on Friday, and attentive readers may notice that there has been one through-line in many of my recent ramblings: the left’s perplexing inability to choose the morally or even politically correct side in any conflict.

If there’s a clash between law breakers and law abiders, they’ll back the former.  Give them an illegal immigrant over a legal one, a gang-banger over a choir-boy, and creepy dude in a dress over a schoolgirl trying to shower unmolested every time.

I don’t get it, but bless their hearts, they may never win another election if they keep this up.  And wouldn’t that be grand?

Three quick examples from the last week:

1. Even a political neophyte knows that the Department of Education has made itself toxic.  The lion’s share of all education decisions are made and money is spent on the state level, which is as it should be.  The Ed Dept is crammed full of well-paid and insular educrats in DC, where the rotten 98% give the other 2% a bad reputation.

Since its founding in 1977, $1.4 trillion (!) has been spent on the Ed feds, and the proof of the pudding is in the gagging.  As our education has become more expensive, student test scores have plummeted.  Our students can somehow count all 57 of the 2 genders, but nothing else.  They read few classics, and most of the history they “know” just isn’t so.

As the great Dennis Miller once noted, the fact that only one of the “Three Rs” actually starts with the letter “R” tells you everything you need to know. 

Enter Grandma Squanto Warren, being asked for her reaction to Trump’s much needed culling of the Ed Department last Friday.  A smart politician would have said something like, “I welcome any efforts to scrutinize the department, because it can definitely do a better job than it’s been doing.  But Trump is taking the wrong approach blah blah blah.”

So what did Warren say?   Watch the 45 second video of her quasi-teary, content-less mush of glittering generalities that never comes within a mile of the reality of the grift-apalooza that is the DC education establishment.

I haven’t seen a fake Indian that sad since the Italian-American actor with the stage name “Iron Eyes Cody” (his real name was something like Rocco Vincenzo Corleone) made those commercials crying over littering in the 1970s. 

But what else would we expect from the empty headdress from Massachusetts?  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

My only disappointment was that she didn’t take the time to emote about her fond memories of the one-room school-tepee where she learned her ABCs (A- always, B- be, C- Cherokee) back on the wide-open prairies of Martha’s Vineyard.  (#neverstop) 

2. The latest example of the MSM ineptly trying to elicit sympathy for an illegal comes from Philly, where Virginia-Basora Gonzalez, 36, sobbed as ICE agents re-arrested her.  If you google her name, I’ve got to give you a trigger warning on opening that picture without preparing yourself.

Because, yikes! 

Some say that she looks like a bowling ball with eyes.  She got picked up wearing sweats and a large shirt that… how can I put this?

You’re going to need a bigger bowling bag. 

Okay, I apologize.  I just did a thing that lefty “journalists” always do, and that drives me crazy, when I said that “some say” she looks like a bowling ball with eyes.

It’s me.  I’m the one who says that.   Because you look at her, and tell me that she’s not a Brunswick 16-pounder with an insanely long stretch between the thumb and finger-holes when you’re looking for a smooth-rolling 12-pounder on league night and you forgot your ball at home. 

Before you can say anything, I know: I shouldn’t criticize anyone’s appearance, especially when I look like this.  Sure, I’m not as bad as I was a week ago, when I was more poison ivy than man.  But I’m still not the matinee idol that you’ve come to know and love over here, either.

Anyway, forget all that.  I mock her only because she’s been criminally playing our system, in very familiar ways:  first arrested in PA for 40 grams or more of fentanyl and aiding and abetting in June of 2019.  (I don’t know what she was aiding and abetting, unless it was helping somebody bowl three perfect games in one night.) 

After serving out part of a short sentence, she was deported back to the DR, only to illegally re-enter and get caught again last week.  And yes, I know that my lefty pals will say that lots of Americans deal drugs too.

Yeah.  We know.  We’ve got plenty of our own drug dealers, which is just one reason why we don’t need to import more of them.  Especially ones that, when you drop them in your backswing, they’re going to take out several people sitting behind the ball return. 

3. To hear him tell it, Jessie Hoffman Jr. 46, is a peaceful man, deeply devoted to his Buddhist breathing and meditation rituals, and put upon by SCOTUS’ unwillingness to respect his religious beliefs. 

But to hear me tell it, Hoffman is a worthless POS who – if Buddha were here right now, and not too rotund and apathetic to dish out a righteous beating – would dish out a righteous beating to Jessie Hoffman Jr. 

(What is the sound of one hand clapping?  I don’t know.  But I do know that the sound of two hands in a blur of quick jabs using Jessie Hoffman’s stupid head like a speed bag is the sound of justice.)

What’s my beef with Jessie Hoffman, Jr., you might be asking?  Just that in 1996, he kidnapped 28-year-old Mary Elliott, a young wife who had just gotten off work, forced her to withdraw $200 from an ATM, then drove her to a lonely spot in the country, terrorized her, raped her, and shot her in the head. 

Last night, 29 years later – i.e. one year longer than Mary Elliott’s entire time on earth – the state of Louisiana finally executed Hoffman.  It made the news because they used the novel method of administering nitrogen gas through a respirator mask until Hoffman died of nitrogen hypoxia.

On one hand, I’m all for the kind of federalism that means that all 50 states are free to experiment with various and sundry ways to kill the many vicious murderers and rapists who desperately need killing in these United States.  So I appreciate this kind of outside-the-coffin thinking.

I might also note that we’re only trying new methods because an endless stream of morally disordered bleeding hearts have been kvetching over every existing execution method like a sociopathic Woody Allen.  (I mean, a Woody Allen way more sociopathic than the actual Woody Allen.)

“Gas can make people choke, and nooses are really scratchy.  Some gunshots are so loud they could give you a heart attack.  And don’t get me started on electrocution!  I once walked across some carpet in my stocking feet and touched a lamp, and I thought I’d die!”

State authorities chose nitrogen because it’s supposedly painless and humane.  The murderer-sympathizers aren’t satisfied though, worrying that if the respirator mask isn’t fitted tightly enough around the vicious animal’s face, enough oxygen might seep in to prolong his death, or make him nauseous, or even cause him to choke on his own vomit. 

I’m serious.  That’s what keeps them up at night.  The murdering rapist might die with a tummy ache, or go out like Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham and Bon Scott.  (And those guys ROCKED!) 

Too soon?  Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Anyway, I cannot imagine caring if Jessie Hoffman was a little uncomfortable right before he died, only 29 years too late.  In fact, if you told me that inhaling nitrogen caused the sensation of being kidnapped at gunpoint, driven to a lonely spot, stripped, raped and shot in the head execution style, the only other question I’d have is whether we could tweak the nitrogen mixture so that those same sensations would intensify, and last longer.

“So Martin, what was that Buddhist angle you mentioned earlier?” you might be asking.  In which case I’d thank you, because I’d forgotten about that part.

One of cowardly rapist Jessie Hoffman Jr.’s reasons for appealing his death sentence was that the nitrogen would violate his religious freedom because – and I swear I’m not making this up – “nitrogen hypoxia would interfere with [his] Buddhist breathing and meditation during his final moments alive.”

Hey Jessie, you know what else interferes with breathing and meditation?  [begin Kinison filter] BEING DRAGGED OUT INTO THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE AND SHOT IN THE HEAD BY A HEARTLESS, 0RECIDIVIST PIECE OF CRAP!  OH! OOOHH!!! [end Kinison filter]

Tragically, Hoffman appears to have died painlessly. 

But still, let’s all synchronize our watches, in anticipation of Melting Face Maxine Waters stepping up to a microphone to announce a protest to honor civil rights martyr Jessie Hoffman Jr., who was killed by the most white-supremacist of all elemental gases: Nitrogen.

In 3… 2… 1…

Hamas delenda est!   

Stupid Criminals, Foolish Victims, & Leftist Govs Produce Predictable Failures (posted 12/11/24)

Earlier this year I wrote about some new categories that would become regular features in my columns, including headings like “Unexpectedly!,” “We Don’t Hate the Media Enough,” “Schadenfreude Corner,” and “Stupid Criminals.”  Since I haven’t returned to them in a while, I’ll do so now:

Stupid Criminals

Nowhere do political theories show up more clearly than in crime stories.  Most everyone makes room in their thoughts for both punishment and rehabilitation, but conservatives believe that you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish.  So their laws tend more toward punishment.

For example, in red states like Texas and Florida, our stance on the death penalty can be summarized by the saying, “If you kill someone around here, we’ll kill you back.” 

Meanwhile in blue states, there’s a lot more focus on rehabilitation, and assigning responsibility to anyone or anything rather than the criminal.  E.g. criminals aren’t moral agents with free will, but the helpless pawns of the system, institutional racism, or capitalism. 

Therefore, in NYC, the judicial system doesn’t look at Jordan Neely and see a habitual drug abuser and violent recidivist terrorizing the citizenry, but a charming Michael Jackson impersonator unjustly attacked by a so-called “Good Samaritan.”  Because: racism. 

But those two examples are extremes, and many stories fall in between them, at least in part because denizens of some blue cities are starting to realize that their earlier views might have been AOC-level stupid.

Take the case of two armed robbers in New Orleans named Cecil Batiz and Teony Juarez, two teenaged Mensa members who decided to terrorize a clerk and rob a convenience store on December 3rd.  After pointing pistols at the clerk and grabbing a bunch of cash, they both demonstrated that they’d forgotten one of the prime rules of robbing people: keep your head on a swivel.

Because while the morons were paying attention to their take, the clerk pulled his own pistol and demonstrated that he knew the prime rule of both suppertime and shooting criminals: everybody gets a first serving before anybody gets seconds.  So he shot Cecil in the abdomen, and then Teony in the arm, as he was returning fire before bravely running out the door. 

Then the clerk gave Cecil seconds, as he lay on the floor trying to get his gun up.  Cecil took the room-temperature challenge, while Teony was only wounded, and later arrested.  And the good citizens of New Orleans, upon watching the video of the clerk getting the drop on the criminals, cheered like the Saints had just hit a game-winning field goal.

New Orleans’ DA is a George Soros-funded jerk named Jason Williams, so you’d think that the store clerk is in trouble.  But it turns out that in October of last year, Williams and his mom were carjacked, after which Williams said that he had changed his thinking about crime and punishment. 

When asked about the robbery gone wrong, Williams noted that “it’s painfully obvious to anyone who saw that video what those two people were doing in the store” and that “once somebody puts a gun in your face, the rules change.”  

Yes!  Even a once-blind lefty can sometimes see the light!

But not so fast, cautious optimists!  Consider the opposite case of Darcie Bell, over in…

Schadenfreude Corner:

Darcie is a leftist right out of central casting:  lives in San Francisco; wears Rachel Maddow glasses and a face mask (because of course she does) in her social media pic; has posted many times calling for the police to be defunded.

But now she’s decided to move out of San Fran, as she shares in a X post: “I’m like moving out of my house because I can’t afford to live here anymore.”  Even though she’s got graying hair, note that she still includes the superfluous “like” as if she were an annoying teenager. 

But with even less excuse, since teens do that as an unconscious verbal tic when they speak, and Darcie actually wrote the word out in a tweet!

Anyway, the poor dear has been priced out of her feces-caked liberal paradise.  But that’s not her only complaint: “My kid just broke his femur at one of your many, underfunded SFUSD schools, and there was no nurse present to help him.”  Not one our OUR schools, Darcie, one of YOUR schools.

And did you ever wonder why, when you are paying such high prices and taxes, your schools are still underfunded and sub-par?  Which party has been running those schools for the last century or more, sweetheart?

She concludes thusly: “Lmao.  WTF is this city?”   

Answer: This is exactly TF what you voted for this city to be!

But the funniest part of Darcie’s story is yet to come.  Because when she loaded all of her belongings into a U-Haul truck to make her move… wait for it… and put down your drink …some low-life scumbags stole the U-Haul! 

Cue Nelson Muntz, pointing at Darcie Bell: “HA! HA!”       

She turned to social media and asked for people to look for the stolen truck.  But apparently there are a few wise guy conservatives still left in San Francisco – Christopher Silber, I’m looking at you! – because many people pointed out that she could call the police.  Except, oops, she hates the police, and wants them defunded.

Ms. Bell didn’t appreciate that viewpoint, because her next post sounded a little more like angry Joy Reid or sulky Sunny Hostin: “I haven’t found my sh*t!  The cops didn’t do sh*t!  U-Haul made me file a f-ing police report!  There’s cameras all over this city.  They haven’t done sh*t!  I just want my stuff back!”

Cue the sad trombone, followed by Nelson Muntz saying, “HA HA!”, followed by Sean Connery saying, “Suck it, Trebek!”

And lest you think that Darcie may finally have learned something…

Cue Doctor Evil: “How about NO!”

Because her last post before “muting” her X thread said, “I don’t care about the people who stole it, people steal sh*t, I just hope they take the stuff they need and I can recover the personal stuff.” 

Darcie, Darcie, Darcie.  Thieves don’t steal a U-Haul because they need it!   They steal it because they are thieves, and because they have the work ethic of Hunter Biden, and because boneheads like you allow and excuse theft. 

But here’s a thought that should comfort you.  In your leftist theology, private property is theft.  So you really didn’t have any right to your “personal stuff,” and those thieves were really just redistributionists, following Obama’s commandment to “spread the wealth around.” 

I mean, you don’t want to be an evil capitalist, greedily clutching your precious “private” property, do you?

Finally, we have a couple of blue states clocking in with entries in the “Unexpectedly!” column:

First up is California, where Ken-Doll Newsom signed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage in September of last year.  Ten months later, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that CA had lost 6,166 fast-food jobs. 

But those losses were worse than meets the eye, because they followed the same period a year earlier, when CA had added 17,528 such jobs, for a net comparative loss of nearly 25,000 jobs. 

So a leftist politician substituted his arrogant judgment for that of the millions of free citizens participating in a voluntary free market…and thousands of people lost their jobs. 

UNEXPECTEDLY!  

Meanwhile, my late, great, home state of Illinois has been suffering under the governance of a succession of far-left goofballs for many decades.  The latest party boss is Governor “Goodyear” Pritzker (D-irigible) – #putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg – who has managed to add to a pension shortfall that has now reached $172 billion!

That’s right.  Illinois Democrats have managed to over-tax their citizens and over-promise pension windfalls to their government workers to produce “the worst public pension debt bomb in the country.”

Illinois’ debt is almost twice as much as that of the six surrounding states combined, and it’s more than the shortfalls of the 33 best-performing states, COMBINED.

So a state presided over by a far-left governor, dominated by a giant city presided over by a string of far-left mayors, has produced an economic disaster. 

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Hamas delenda est!

Some Annoying People, But Look: Flamethrower Robot Dog! (posted 4/26/24)

Hey, you know who’s a terrible person?

Whoa, whoa, don’t everybody talk at once.  All right, considering the news lately, that was a bad way to start a column.  (But yes, all of the people you named just now – either out loud or in your head – fit the description.) So let me try again.

Megan Rapinoe continues to prove that she’s a terrible person. 

You might not remember her from her soccer playing (because soccer is totally non-memorable), but you probably remember her whining about how Big Soccer is totally sexist for not paying female players the same as male players.

You also might remember that after she ended her career by tearing an Achilles while she was walking on soft grass with nobody within 10 yards of her, she drew a theologically stupid moral from that story (God does not exist), rather than the obviously correct one (God is hilarious!).

Now that she’s safely retired, she’s pushing the anti-woman idea that “trans-women” (i.e. mentally ill or creepy men) should be allowed to play women’s soccer.   

Think about that.  She couldn’t take a quiet walk on a nice lawn without shredding her Achilles, but she wants to shame other women into going toe-to-toe with hulking male power forwards or kick-strikers.  (Yes, life is too short for me to spend a single minute researching what actual positions exist in soccer.)

But in her defense, if she would come out of retirement to play one game against men and get her arse thoroughly kicked…I might watch that one soccer game.

Speaking of obnoxious, sexually confused weirdos, if you haven’t seen the video of a “transgender” dude trying to shame a large black employee in a Texas Dollar General store for “misgendering” him, you need to do so immediately.  

When the deranged customer starts recording the guy, he responds by rolling his eyes and pulling out his own phone and narrating the events, starting with, “This fella’s giving me a hard time because their card’s declined—” after which the cry-bully starts swearing and leaves, promising, “You’re going to lose your job, sir.”  

First, I don’t disparage anybody’s job, when they’re working a low-status but honest job, paying their taxes and contributing to society.  Especially when compared to life-long welfare recipients, college kids getting worthless degrees paid for by school loans they expect Biden to “forgive” later (in other words, as previously stated, “life-long welfare recipients”), or MSM talking heads pulling down multimillion dollar salaries as professional liars, anybody working at Dollar General is making a great contribution to society. 

But that being said, I don’t think “You’re going to lose your job!” to a guy at Dollar General is quite the terrifying threat that this narcissist cosplayer thinks it is.

Second, if we’re going to grade events that bring shame upon you, I’m not sure that “dude dressing like a woman and throwing a hissy fit” is any worse than “your credit card was turned down at Dollar General.”

One commenter won the day: “Bro put the ‘trans’ in ‘trans-action declined.’”

If you’re ever in this employee’s position, I have some fantastic advice for you.  (When I’m out not being called a hilarious genius, I’m often called a hilarious guru.)

If you are ever confronted by a sexually confused guy raving at you in public about how he’s really a woman, just do what I do.  Hold both of your arms out in front of you, palms up and facing the hysteric, and in a quiet and soothing voice, say, “Just calm down, sir.”

Works every time, and you’re welcome.     

The most aggravating story of this week has been the persistent campus pro-Hamas “protests” that blue-state officials and administrators have allowed to go on for way too long.  One highlight was Ilhan Omar’s daughter getting suspended, and then getting even more entertaining in her drama-queen over-reactions. 

She was given some time on MSNBC (because of course she was) to whine about the many ways in which she and her anti-Semitic genocide-enthusiasts are the real victims.  When she was suspended, for example (after only a half-million warnings), she was left without any food or a place to stay. 

She said that the pushback against her side’s threatening actions was “hypocritical” because “every single protest that we have, there’s a group of counter-protestors who bring all of their their items, their flags and things like that.”

Got that?  If her group brings their pro-terrorism flags and banners, and protests, that’s great.  But if people who disagree with her do the same, they’re hypocrites.  (Talk about the pot calling the kettle Somalian!)

She also repeatedly accused the evil Jewish counter-protestors of having used “chemical weapons” against the peaceful jihad-supporters.  Hilariously enough, it turns out that the “chemical weapons” in question was actually “fart spray.”  You’ll not be shocked to hear that no one was burned, hospitalized or killed from the malodorous crime against humanity.

(Rumors that Eric Swalwell was seen in the encampment at the time of the incident have not been confirmed.)   

Not content to be out-dumbed by the offspring of Omar’s allegedly incestuous relationship with her brother, AOC gave her a run for her money in a hysterical tweet about Columbia’s “horrific decision” to request NYPD help to deal with the lawbreakers.  She was especially juicy-bootie-hurt (her words, not mine) because “counter-terrorism units” were deployed with the cops.

Yes, it’s truly “horrific” to have the cops come when people are breaking dozens of laws, and why would anyone use counter-terrorism cops against unruly supporters of terrorism?  It’s a world gone mad!   

But even among the crowds of morons seemingly besetting our society on all sides, there is still an upbeat story in the newest “Celebration of Excellence” category, and this one is an exception to a rule for me.

I’m not usually one for tinkering with things that aren’t broken.  I wish I could still buy a car with a metal key and crank-up windows, because a metal key never has a dead battery and the crank isn’t broken.     

And I don’t understand attractive young people who say, “I’ve got this great body that God gave me, with amazing curves and pristine, unblemished skin.  So let me cover it all with tattoos, causing people to guess which biker gang I joined and where I did my time.

And as regular readers – and all those with discernment and good judgment – know, there are few creatures on earth that are less broken, and less in need of tinkering, than dogs.  And I’m not just saying that because I own Cassie the Wonder Dog, or because I’m personal friends with the amazing Aussie-Whisperer, COSE.  

But this might be the rare time when I could possibly be wrong.  Because I just read a story in the Daily Mail about the Thermonator, which is “the first ever flamethrowing robot dog!” 

It’s made by a company in Ohio (USA! USA!), weighs about 37-pounds, features a variety of sensors and cameras, and carries a flamethrower on its back capable of “shooting a jet of fire up to 30 feet.”

And it’s only $9420!

Right now I imagine that most female readers are rolling their eyes.  But all of my male readers are saying either, “Yes, please!” or “RO-BOT DOG! RO-BOT DOG!” and high-fiving each other.

The company has a video of the Thermonator in action (I give it 5 stars), along with their sales pitch, which claims that the mechanical beast can be used for “entertainment, wildfire control, agricultural management, and ice removal.” 

They had me at “entertainment.”  Because I’ve got a great idea for that. 

With fast enough shipping, I can receive my flamethrowing robot dog this weekend – I’m already in the process of explaining to my wife that we can’t afford NOT to buy a flamethrowing robot dog – and race for New England. 

The next thing you know, I’ll be parked on the edge of an Ivy League campus where the pro-Hamas loons have set up their Jew-hater tents, reading the manual (“Congratulations on your purchase of the Thermonator 3000…”) to figure out how to set the flamethrower on “roast.”  

Do you think any of the Hamas-niks double-majoring in grievance studies and America hatred would get the Shakespeare reference if I yelled, “Cry havoc, and let slip the flamethrowing robot dog of war!” before I released the Thermonator?

Or I could just stick to the old standard…

Hamas delenda est!

Lawfare Is Looking Shaky, & Some Military Bad-Arsery (posted 2/23/24)

I know that the worst of the elite left is cheering that the corrupt NY judge and evil Letitia DeVille have run their banana republic lawsuit scam on Trump, and he’s now on the hook for almost half a billion dollars to get it eventually overturned. 

I’m so outraged and disgusted by that sham trial – and the other three! – that I can’t think straight, and I can’t add anything to the story that others here have not already said.

Except that I hope that the huge middle of the electorate – the independents, the casual and semi-apathetic voters, the RINOs and the mushy centrists – is paying enough attention and is sane enough to recognize the blatant corruption of the Dems, and punish them for it in November.

In the meantime, I wish that I had Trump’s ear, so that I could encourage him to stay focused on the important stuff.  He’s already got us in the conservative base with him, and he’s got a slight lead in the polls.  He just needs to remember the old political cliché: “When your opponent is decomposing before our eyes, stay out of the way.”

(I’ve paraphrased that slightly.)

For example, when the Hur report came out last week and Biden decided to stumble out and prove that he is tickety boo, mental-function-wise, he made things infinitely worse.  He yelled at the clouds, insisted that of course he knows what year his son what’s-his-name died, and bragged about how he got the president of Mexico to open the Panama Canal so the Gazanians could go see the pyramids. 

For the next 24 hours, the lefty establishment went to Defcon 4, insisting that the Hur report didn’t say what it said, and you didn’t see what you just saw.  

A flop-sweating lineup of MSM empty heads and Democrat hacks mumbled that sure, when he’s on camera Biden’s got the gait and demeanor of Bela Lugosi on horse tranquilizers, and he speaks like Ozzy Osbourne after a Fetterman-esque stroke.   

But behind closed doors, the guy cavorts around the Oval like Fred Astaire at the height of his powers!  When he talks foreign policy, it’s like Benjamin Disraeli and Metternich had a baby.  And his enunciation!  You remember when Professor Henry Higgins was trying to teach diction to Eliza Doolittle?

It’s like that!  Biden is at the top of his game, we tells ya!  He stands astride the world like a modern colossus!   

Trump should have pulled a giant, gilded throne up next to that media dumpster fire and roasted marshmallows over it, wearing a big Cheshire cat grin and saying nothing.

Instead, he got in front of a camera and said that he told our NATO allies that if they didn’t pay for their own defense, he’d tell Putin to do whatever he wanted to them.  Then he insinuated that Nikki Haley’s husband may have left her, saying, “Where’s her husband?  Where is he?”

Why?!

It doesn’t matter that he’s right about NATO’s recent under-funding of their own defense.  Many dumb and uninformed people think Trump is too friendly with Putin.  Of course, they’re wrong!  But is it helpful to say that?

And spoiler alert: Haley’s husband is in the Army National Guard, and is deployed overseas.  Which is irrelevant anyway, because you’re beating her by 30 points in her home state, and she’ll soon be out of the race.  There is no reason you should even say her name again.

Especially since Biden is out there throwing up on his shoes three times a week, and the media is dying to cover ANY story other than that!   

Please, Mr. President.  Don’t give them any other stories.  We all know that they hate your guts. Don’t make their job easier!      

Now onto happier news.  And there really is some.

We seem to be turning the corner on the recent trans madness, with more and more pushback against the groomers and narcissistic activists.  The first of what will surely be a tidal wave of lawsuits have been filed against docs and hospitals that have done mutilating and sterilizing surgeries on kids who later realize what was done to them.

And if common sense and the Hippocratic oath hasn’t stopped the butchers yet, gigantic financial judgments against them will likely do the trick.

Even though our borders are still disastrously open, the decisions by Abbott and DeSantis to send the illegals to big blue cities and states is causing just the opening battles of blue-on-blue warfare that is going to be schadenfreude-tastic to watch.  And if we can get Trump back in the White House, he’ll have a lot of support to reverse course immediately.

In fact, when it comes to fighting illegal immigration, City Journal (which I recommend to everyone) had a recent article proving how laughably wrong the leftist Cassandras were when they attacked DeSantis’ tougher immigration law SB 1718, which took effect last July. 

The law invalidated driver’s licenses given to illegals by blue states, required hospitals to quantify uncompensated care given to illegals, and forced employers to use E-verify to check new hires’ legal status. 

Of course the lefties tore their garments and gnashed their teeth, predicting that Florida’s workforce would plummet by at least 10%, and the economy would crater.  The state Dem party chair warned that, “Ron’s ‘woke’ war will cause prices to increase on all goods and services,” and other hysterics wailed about the inflation that was sure to follow. 

Annnnddddd… the opposite happened.  Unexpectedly!

Florida’s economy grew by 6 % in the third quarter, the population growth since then was 2nd in the nation, and food shortages and inflation never materialized.

I mean, other than the commonplace nationwide inflation caused by…Bidenomics!

You might think that birthday boy CO and I, as two of the state’s most influential citizens, spend a lot of time conferring on such economic issues, perhaps over expensive cigars and Kentucky’s finest bourbon. 

But you’d be wrong.  Because CO sent me a text last week, and it was about something far, far cooler: the recent hellfire missile strike that our military used to take out a smelly terrorist chieftain in Iraq earlier this month. 

Did I mention that the missile in question was one that used six gigantic flying blades rather than the usual explosives, and that it is called “the flying ginsu”?!  (I know: how can a country capable of that kind of awesomeness be losing a shipping war to a ragtag bunch of Houthi pirates?)

(You know the reason: Bidenomics!)

So the Iran-backed leader of Kataib Hezbollah, Abu Baqr as-Saadi, was riding in a car when a missile dropped onto his car, with the aforementioned flying blades being released right before impact.  Thus turning his car into a convertible, right before turning as-Saadi into “a-Salad”.

Yes!  The Flying Ginsu!  It slices, it dices, it circumsizes and it beheads!

More please.

Finally, you probably haven’t heard about this, but a great American died at the age of 74 on February 12th.

His name was Chuck Mawhinney, and he was the deadliest Marine sniper in Corps history, with 103 confirmed kills and another 216 probable kills during his 16 months in Vietnam.  

His biggest single day was, ironically enough, Valentine’s Day of 1969.  He took up a position along a river that a platoon of Viet Cong wanted to cross, and he picked off 16 of them, persuading the rest to retreat.

Nine days later, he turned 20!    

According to news stories, after the war he lived quietly, working for the forest service and fathering three sons, and not even telling his wife about his sniper service. It wasn’t until a fellow Marine sniper wrote a book mentioning him in 1991 that he got his first public attention.

His obituary contains many indications of what a great man he was, starting with the fact that, “His friends, neighbors and co-workers had no idea that the soft-spoken man had killed at least 103 enemy combatants.” 

(Just like the mild-mannered Kiwi I met in Europe who had urinated in Hitler’s bathtub in the Eagle’s Nest, Mawhinney was no braggart.  As opposed to, say, I would be, if I had done anything anywhere near that cool.  “Hey, I know you’re just doing an oil change for me.  But have I mentioned that I killed several hundred commies in Vietnam?  And that I pissed in Ho Chi Minh’s bathtub?”)

In what turned out to be the last year of his life, Mawhinney was approached by a writer named Jim Lindsay, who got him to agree to let Lindsay write a book about him.  That book came out recently, and it’s called, “The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time.”  

And it is the next book that I will be reading.   

“He listened to other people tell their stories,” said Lindsay. “He never told his story. Nobody knew he’d been in the war or what he’d done.  He was a good man.  He was a good father, a good husband and an asset to the community. He was a pretty cool cat.”

Indeed.  We should all be so lucky to have an obituary like that.  Plus, he killed between 103 and 319 Communist soldiers!

RIP,  Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney.  Semper Fi.

Also, a very happy birthday to the Founder of the Feast, our very own CO!

Also, as ever…

Hamas delenda est!